The Problem of Immortality (Part 5 of 6)

SUPPLEMENT No. II .

EVANGELISM AND CONDITIONALISM AS REGARDED BY DR . DALE .

(See page 22.)

ONE of our former publications having been translated into English under the title of The Struggle for Eternal Life,¹ Dr. Dale was good enough to write the preface which appears at the beginning of the volume. We reproduce a portion of it, which explains the adhesion of the Birmingham minister to the conditionalist point of view :

1 See ante, p. 24, note 3.

SUPPLEMENT No. II.

The Essay on La Fin du Mal, by my friend Dr. E. Petavel, was read by him rather more than four years ago before the Theological Society of Neufchâtel. It provoked an animated discussion, which was renewed on the following day in the General Assembly of Pastors meeting in the same city, several eminent theological scholars taking part in the debate. The objections urged against the position maintained by Dr. Petavel, with brief replies, are appended to the Essay.

The great doctrines of the Christian faith have such close and organic relations to each other that it is difficult to investigate a question like that which is raised in this volume, without including in the investigation many other questions which it was impossible for my friend to touch. The reorganization of a single doctrine involves the reorganization of that theological province to which it belongs. It is my impression, however, that if the theory vindicated by Dr. Petavel can be sustained as I think it can its effect on theological thought will be friendly rather than hostile to those great truths which are commonly known as Evangelical. On one or two points the theory may require that the definition of these truths should be slightly modified, but their substance is left untouched; and if I may judge from my own experience, faith in Evangelical doctrine, instead of being enfeebled by the acceptance of this theory, is made more intense and more vivid.

The present condition of thought in this country on the future of the impenitent is very unsatisfactory, and even perilous. The traditional theory of the endlessness of sin and of suffering has lost its authority. It is probably still retained in the creed of an overwhelming majority of the adherents of the English Church, and in the creed of an overwhelming majority of Evangelical Nonconformists.

But its hold on the conviction and on the imagination of those who still believe it is not sufficiently firm to compel them, if they are preachers, to preach it with adequate earnestness and energy ; or to enable them, if they are private

Christians, to tolerate the vigorous and relentless enunciation of it by their ministers.

There are also many who, while they cannot see how the rejection of the traditional theory can be justified by the New Testament, consciously recoil from it as too terrible to be true. To preach it at all, to listen to it at all, is for these men impossible.

The result is that, even among those who have accepted neither the theory of universal redemption, nor the theory advocated in this volume, there is a general avoidance of the appalling revelations of the New

Testament concerning the " wrath to come."

Men may listen to

Evangelical preaching for years, and never be made to feel that their refusal to acknowledge the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ is likely to be followed by any awful consequences beyond death. The appeal to fear is being silently dropped. Augustine said that it very seldom or never happens that a man comes to believe in Christ except under the influence of terror. This sweeping statement, to whatever extent it may have been verified by his own experience, is flagrantly inconsistent with all that we know of the rise of Christian faith and hope in the souls of men in our own times.

But the menaces of Christ mean something.

The appeal to fear had a considerable place in his preaching ; it cannot be safe, it cannot be right, to suppress it in ours.

R. W. DALE.

BIRMINGHAM ,

No. III .

VINET'S ESCHATOLOGY.

(See page 63.)

§ 1. WHO POSSESSES IMMORTALITY ?

God alone is immortal, and he communicates his immortality only to such as are in conformity with him, to such as are united to him.¹

§ 2. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

Extractfrom a letter to Madame P.2

16 March, 1845.

To tell the truth, Madam, I think that our natural light on the subject of the immortality of the soul is quite insufficient to console and to fortify us, and what the ancients knew about it was very little, and very little consolatory.

More than that, I do not believe in the immortality of the soul, but in the immortality of man, who is body and soul, a complete and complex whole ; that is to say that I believe, with St. Paul, in the resurrection of the body, a dogma more reasonable than the other. Nor do I believe, or at least I have no proof, that God cannot dissipate this breath, efface this personality, destroy this ego composed of body and soul (if, indeed, it is composite). For this part of my faith

I have need, as for all the rest, that God should have been manifest in the flesh. Take away from the world the divine charity manifested in Jesus Christ, take away from it that moral apparition which subjugates the consciences and the hearts, and all becomes dark to me : I have

1 Etudes évangéliques. Discours sur les pierres du temple. 2 Lettres d'Alexandre Vinet, Lausanne, 1882. Vol. ii. , p. 278 sq.; Letter cc.- In this fragment and the two that follow the italics are our own.

SUPPLEMENT No. III.

only vague presentiments, conjectures, needs ; I have not that firm hope which gives life, impulse, support, and power.

§ 3. DANGER OF UNIVERSALISM, Extractfrom a letter to Madame Auguste de Staël.

30 September, 1839.

In the opinion of Mme. de B— there are two distinct parts and degrees : first, all men will hear the voice of the Gospel ; second, all men will listen to it.

And it is at once felt that the second of these ideas has more important consequences than the first. The consequences of both are serious. The persuasion that, here or elsewhere, the merciful appeal of the Saviour will be heard, seems to abstract something from the urgency of the order given to us to make known that appeal to every creature ; but there remain always God's order, sacred for every true believer, and the grave uncertainty in which we now are whether the soul, when called later on, will listen as willingly as it would have done earlier ; for who knows if a life without God, a life of sin, does not wear away the soul and extenuate it to such an extent as to render it incapable of listening, and almost of hearing ? Mme. de B- puts to herself this question, to which for my part I should have little hesitation in giving an affirmative answer.

I think that there is a moment known to God alone in which the renewal of the soul could only be the cessation of its identity. The Gospel supports this idea by more than one saying, and warrants the belief that for the soul, still living the natural life, there is a death more absolute, more irrevocable than that of which St. Paul speaks to the Ephesians when he says : " Ye were dead in trespasses and sins. " But this consideration, which seems to me to urge us with the greatest force to hasten the appeal to souls, does not exist, I admit, for all believers, as they do not all believe in this remediless mortality of the soul, or rather of the spiritual and divine principle which reveals itself in the soul. Nevertheless, and all things considered, I do not fear that the persuasion that all, here or elsewhere, will hear, is likely to extinguish in the heart of any true Christian his zeal for the conversion of souls. I know men who with that persuasion join with none the less ardour in every work of evangelization.

As for the second degree of the opinion in question, I mean the assurance that all, here or elsewhere, will listen, I do not remember very distinctly, Madam, how your late sister expresses herself with regard to it. But it seems to me that she does not admit that there may be for the soul at any period of its existence a danger of the total extinction of the spiritual principle ; and it seems to me that in a series of questions,

1 Lettres, etc. , p. 84 sq.; Letter cxliv.

which are questions only in form, she supposes a final and universal restoration by means of the acceptance of the offered pardon. If these questions were taken as affirmations, these affirmations, or rather this affirmation, would appear to me, on the one hand, to go beyond the author's purpose, which is to expound the system of Christian faith, and on the other hand it might excite some uneasiness in those who, not sharing that conviction of the immortality of the regenerative principle in the human soul, are at the same time well aware that man is disposed to put off his conversion as much from century to century as from year to year. This uneasiness, this scruple, I feel myself, and perhaps, if I had to come to a decision as to the advisability of publishing the writing that you have allowed me to read, it would cause me considerable embarrassment.

§ 4. THE NOTION OF COMPLETE PERDITION.1

An object that is lost [absolutely, not relatively lost] is also an object that is destroyed, that no longer has the integrity of its parts and its qualities, that has perished and is no more.2

§ 5. IMPLIED POSSIBLE SALVATION OF CONSCIENTIOUS HEATHENS.3

In order simply to say, I have need of a Saviour ; to add even, My punishment is greater than I can bear, Lord be merciful to me a sinner, and if thou canst pardon, pardon me ; in a word, my brethren, in order to feel our faults, to deplore them, to cry unto God from the depths of our distress, to refuse to apply to this interior malady all the dangerous remedies and deceptive palliatives of superstition, to embrace, as our only resource, the pardon of God when offered to us, is it positively necessary to have cognizance of the promise, to have heard the name of Jesus Christ ? My brethren, we could not believe it.

We attribute all these sentiments directly to grace, to the influence of the divine Spirit, who has always breathed where he would, and has never allowed himself to be bound ; only we believe that in all ages and in all places

Le Salut. See the Année pastorale, by D. Bonnefon, p. 346 ; Paris, 1880. This volume is a collection of plans of sermons, of which the last hundred pages contain notes of a course of homiletics given by Vinet at the Academy of Lausanne. The editor of this appendix, M. Jules Tallichet, a retired pastor, had previously published in the Eglise Libre ( 1877, Nos. 30-32) the sermon from which the above lines are taken. Vinet had made it the subject of his lesson on 10 Jan., 1843, and M. Tallichet had been able to refer to the summary written by his professor's own hand.

2 The text published in the Année pastorale has a note here, which is given as being also Vinet's own : " It is said of a man that he is lost or that he loses himself when, having the intention to arrive at such and such a place, or to attain such and such an object, he takes a wrong road which leads him away from the right one and misleads him. If the way that he takes leads him to the edge of a precipice or of an abyss into which he falls, then his loss is complete and consummated. "

* Nouveaux discours, Paris, 1842.

L'œuvre de Dieu, pp. 120-123.

SUPPLEMENT No. III.

there have been involuntary witnesses to the great truth which is at the foundation of all Evangelical truths ; we mean the conviction of our first fall, and of our powerlessness to raise ourselves again without the intervention of God himself. Well, what rank would you assign to such souls as had perceived this truth before the great truth of the divine media tion was revealed to them, souls which, so far as was possible to them have believed before having seen, relatively to those souls who, knowing Jesus Christ, believe in him with a literal and passive faith, not with a free consent, but with a servile belief, and who, to sum up all in one sentence, do not go out towards him, do not embrace him, and do not crown themselves with his merits, with his glory, and with their dependence upon him ?

Which of these two classes best fulfils the conditions of true faith ? To which of them is their faith the more likely to be imputed as righteousness ? To those whose belief is complete but dead, or to those whose belief is incomplete but living ? To those whose faith is a work, or to those whose faith is not a work ? To those who have not known the Saviour, but who have desired him ; or to those who, knowing him, do not desire or appreciate him ? To those who believe in a Saviour, or to those who believe in the need of a Saviour ?

Ah ! happier in their Your conscience, my brethren, shall decide. humiliation, and in their anguish, those who would fain believe and cannot ; those who are moved by a quenchless thirst for righteousness ; those who feel that in the greatest privation they have all if they have God ; those who every day cast off their own merits, even without being able to reclothe themselves, because he by whom they may be clothed has not yet been manifested ; because some obstacle, from without or from within, has hitherto prevented them from believing in Jesus Christ. They will one day believe in him ; God will not leave unfinished a work of which the best part is already accomplished in them. But this painful trial may be still prolonged ; it is needful that the prayers of the Church should work with them, should strive for them ; it is needful that from the midst of the assemblies and from the secret of the closet those who have been delivered should cry to the great Deliverer : " Lord, they believe ; help thou their unbelief."

§ 6. OBSERVATIONS ON THE PRECEDING FRAGMENTS.

In view of that declaration of the first-quoted letter, " I do not believe in the immortality of the soul, " one of our opponents, M. George Godet, has recognized that Vinet denies the survival of the soul alone.¹ But since there could be no immortality without survival, we do not under-

1 Chrétien évangélique, 1882, p. 503.

stand how M. Godet could write in the very same paragraph, " Does Vinet deny the immortality of the soul ? Not in any way." What ! does not Vinet deny immortality understood in the way that you have just indicated: the immortality of the soul alone, separate from the body ? Does it not look as though you were contradicting yourself, and has not the expression betrayed your thought ?

You will not contest the evidence. Vinet did at least deny the immortality of the soul understood in a certain way. Your " not in any way " reminds us irresistibly of the eloquence of a clever politician addressing the electors of a country village : " Gentlemen," said he, " your village has but little importance (murmurs) ; allow me to explain,

Gentlemen, it has great importance (applause)."

We accept M. Godet's categorical admission : Vinet denied the immortality of the soul separatefrom the body. We ask no more. It has never occurred to us that Vinet was an unbeliever denying the resurrection and all future life ; nor have we ever intimated anything of the sort. It is enough for us to show that by denying the separate immortality of the soul Vinet broke away at once from Plato, from Descartes, from the old spiritualism, and from the traditional dogma. We even ask ourselves whether that phrase, “ I do not believe in the immortality of the soul," ever appeared in French religious literature, with or without comment, before the appearance of Conditionalism. Or, rather, we will hold that such a declaration was already incipient Conditionalism. To borrow an expression from our honoured opponent, when this important denial of Vinet is well weighed " a certain boldness is needed in order to make him a representative " of unconditional immortality.

Perhaps, however, we shall be reminded that, after having denied the immortality of the soul alone, Vinet affirms " the immortality of man, who is body and soul." But " man," a collective expression, does not necessarily designate every man without exception, very far from it. In this matter Vinet makes important reservations which we will proceed to examine. We speak, of course, of the true Vinet, of the Vinet who had " reconquered himself," who must be preferred to the traditionalist Vinet of earlier years.1

1 In his recent studies of Vinet d'après sa correspondance inédite : Le développement de la pensée de Vinet, M. de Pressensé has thus expressed himself : "Gradually

SUPPLEMENT No. III.

It seems to us that the second letter quoted tends to a limitation of the number of actual immortals.

Vinet seems to admit the prospect of an " absolute " death. According to M. George Godet, it is there only a question of " moral paralysis. " We might well ask here what would be a personality of which the moral paralysis should be complete.¹ But to come more directly to the point, we would observe that M. Godet appears to forget that earlier in the same letter Vinet had said that he had little hesitation in affirming that a life ofsin wears away the soul and extenuates it to such an extent that the renewal of the soul could only be the cessation ofits identity. In other words, for Vinet the human soul is that which it is in our own view : a finite, contingent creature, which can be worn away and extenuated. To what extent ? Vinet fixes no limit. Let us, then, prolong the lines, and we shall reach, if not annihilation, at least a quantity practically equal to zero. According to Vinet, in order to restore a soul worn away to such an extent, it would be needful to begin by giving it a new personality, without identity with the first. This implies that the first personality no longer exists, for if it still existed it would, without perishing, benefit by the eventual renewal of the soul, and it could always be saved by a hypothetic conversion of its will, and so Vinet would not speak of an inevitable cessation of identity.

If, on the contrary, the first personality ends in non-existence, that is the best proof that it was not immortal. But, as we have said, our business is with the immortality of the personality. There is no true immortality without the maintenance of conscious identity. It is with the ego as with the king in the game of chess : it comes to an end when the king

-dies.3

Vinet came to understand to what an extent his conception of Christianity obliged him to break away from the dominant orthodoxy on points of the first importance ...

a progressive march on a painful road."-Revue Chrétienne, I Oct., 1890, p. 268.

Let us also here record M. de Pressensé's practical conclusion, as follows : " It is more than ever necessary that the mental activity, the conscientious labour of our French theologians, should be concentrated upon that scientific renovation which is destined to pass beyond the superannuated formulas, and come to close quarters with the eternal gospel."-Idem, I Nov. , p. 331 .

1 A man completely deprived of that which Vinet calls the spiritual and divine principle which is revealed in the soul would no longer be a being in the image of God ; and as it is the image of God that essentially distinguishes man from the animals, it may be said that such a man would no longer be a man, but a kind of brute. possible to understand the immortality of such a brute ?

2 With reference to Professor Drummond, page 33.

Is it

3 Checkmate, from the Persian Shah math, the king is dead; in Hebrew, ת ֶ מ par-

ת ו ciple of ת ו מ to die.

Let us add that in the fourth quotation Vinet defines his understanding of absolute perdition : the object completely lost is no more. An object is, according to the dictionary, anything that presents itself to the mind. The soul is an object, so that according to Vinet the soul that is absolutely lost is no more. The preceding quotations prove that he had little hesitation in affirming the possibility of a complete perdition, a " remediless mortality of the soul."

After his definition of absolute perdition, Vinet added : " It is possible that an object may still exist and yet be lost in so far as it had a definite destination to which it no longer answers ; and that except as it responds to that destination it might just as well not exist at all : ' It would have been better for him if he had not been born.' It is especially in this third sense that we can answer the question raised respecting our text :1 that which is lost is every man, and it is the whole man."

That word especially, on which we lay stress, seems significant ; it contains the idea of also. The preacher goes on to develope this third sense ; but far from excluding the two others, he implicitly adopts them. It is as though he had said : " first, every man is a lost being, gone away, or taken away, from his legitimate possessor ; second, every man is lost, going on towards a complete destruction ; third, every man is lost in the sense that he no longer answers to the destination apart from which he might as well not exist at all. It is at this last point of view that the preacher will place himself by preference in order to consider the sinner's perdition."

The detailed study of the second sense would evidently have scandalized his hearers. Vinet, who thought that the time had not arrived for an open rupture with the traditional dogma, on this point or others, restrains himself, and permits only a glimpse of his inner thought to be perceived. We believe that he would have displayed an heroic courage when the time had come, but men's minds were not then ripe. They are hardly ripe half a century after him. Besides, although Vinet was on the track of Conditionalism, he was still far from having discovered its formula. His dogmatics were preparing to weigh anchor, his thought was at work at the capstan, but the ship had not yet left the traditional port.

1 " The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost."

Luke xix. 10.

SUPPLEMENT No. III.

" This reserve on Vinet's part, which we might be tempted to think excessive, resulted from two causes : a psychological cause, which was his scrupulous dread of wounding a single conscience ; and an historic cause, arising out of the theological situation of our French Protestantism during his life. He was, in fact, taken from us before the occurrence of the theological crisis provoked by the famous letter of Edmond Scherer on inspiration, and by the foundation of the Revue de Théologieat Strassburg. If he had but lived a few years longer, he would no doubt have been obliged to declare himself publicly on the subjects that were then discussed with so much vehemence.

His reserve has given a great advantage to the strictly orthodox party, by whom the profound divergences of his views from those accepted by that party have been strangely minimized and even put out of sight. In truth, the portion of his correspondence published by Messrs. Rambert and Charles Secrétan ought to have sufficed to dissipate that illusion. But now the attempt to present to us a Vinet orthodox in the old sense is more and more abandoned."1

We believe that we have not gone beyond the thought of the Lausanne professor ; but if anyone should object that it does not reveal itself to the reader without a certain labour of induction, we willingly admit it.

Vinet decidedly had ideas in reserve (de derrière la tête), and they are not always to be discovered without an effort.

It will, however, be easy to justify the use of that expression, which has been looked upon as involving a reproach against a man for whose memory we have a very special veneration. M. George Godet has written : " Let us not dwell on the expression, thoughts in reserve, which is repugnant when speaking of a man so profoundly sincere as Vinet."2

The repugnance of M. Godet only proves that he has not had occasion to read a certain recommendation of Pascal, wherein the phrase to which objection is taken is used in a good sense. Pascal says : " It is well to have a thought in reserve, and to judge of everything thereby, while speaking, however, like the common people." According to Sainte-

Beuve, " that means simply that it is well to have a clear and wellgrounded conception of that which the good sense of the common people accepts without understanding."3

1 E. de Pressensé, Revue chrétienne, 1890, p. 263 sq. 2 Chrétien évangélique, 1882, p. 502.

Pensées de Pascal, disposées suivant un plan nouveau, by J. F. Astié, p. 270.

Paris, Fischbacher, 1883.

But it is so not only with Pascal. A contemporary writer, Amiel, has made use of the same expression without attaching to it an unfavourable meaning, but rather the contrary. He says : " In my reserved thought, my essay is to me of slight importance, and seems lilliputian ; I find these trifles useless," etc.¹ Here the thought in reserve is surely the wisdom of the inner sense blaming the vanity of the poetical writer. Moreover, Vinet's own comment on this expression is extant. To Louis Leresche, one of his most intimate friends, he wrote in

1823 : " I am anxious to see you

: for there is no one to whom I can open my mind as I can to you ; there are thoughts in reserve, as Pascal says, which, without dissembling or falsity, we do not care to tell to all the world." We will close by repeating what we wrote seven or eight years ago : " The thoughts in reserve which Vinet whispered in the ear of his correspondents are now published. This event is of a nature to encourage the most timid; it comes to put an end to the esoterism which has so long reigned in respect of these questions. May we not run the risk of following the wise and pious Vinet ?"2

SUPPLEMENT No. IV .

ANNIHILATION THE LOGICAL CONSEQUENCE OF THE FALL .

(See page 71.)

THE Creator's liberty is absolute. The best creation that we can conceive is that of free creatures. But the liberty of the creature is necessarily relative to that of the Creator, and therein lies the origin of good and evil, the possibility of a fall. The fall is a fact originating in liberty although not to be logically deduced from it, but the possibility of a fall is inherent in the best possible creation that is enough to justify God in permitting the presence of evil, but not enough to satisfy the needs of our thought.

What is the natural and logical consequence of the fall of the creature ?

In order to understand that, it will suffice to ascertain what is included in the idea of the fall.

The fall is a determination of the creature's will in a direction contrary to God's will, that is to say, contrary to the

1 Fragments d'un journal intime, vol. ii., p, 201. Geneva, 1884. 2 Critique religieuse, Jan. 1883, p. 330.

3 La philosophie de Leibnitz, fragment of a course of lectures on the history of metaphysics, by Ch. Secrétan, p. 125s.- Lausanne, 1840.

SUPPLEMENT No. IV.

infinite, the absolute will. Consider that in its origin we can understand the creative will only as a simple, that is, an infinite, absolute will. Now what is the consequence of this collision between the two wills ? It is impossible to conceive of any other than that the creature's will should cease to be, for if it were otherwise the Creator's will would no longer be absolute, but limited, limited by the contradiction endured. The creature's will ceases to be. But, according to what we have said, the creature is made for the exercise of his will.

Liberty is the reason of his existence, liberty is his essence ; the annihilation of his liberty is then the annihilation of his essence.

It is then the whole creature that is annihilated by the collision of the two wills, and that infallibly, irresistibly. Any other view of the case would be arbitrary and at bottom contradictory ; for, without going any farther, if you suppose the creature continuing to exist without liberty, you suppose the continuance of a thing without a purpose. The creature would exist, being no longer the best, since that which entitled it to be so called was the liberty itself. The creature would be no longer worthy of God; to suppose its continuance, in whatever mode, is to set up a contradiction to the idea of God.

The direct consequence of the fall is the total annihilation of the creation, if the will which at first formed it is to continue to reign without any obstacle. It is taken back, it has no existence, everything returns to the fathomless abyss of the eternal absolute essence.

But in fact events have not so happened, the creature has endured. The fall truly has taken place, for evil exists, and yet the creature has continued to exist, we are here and we are speaking. Besides, wonderful fact ! the creature exists with his liberty, not, of course, with the perfect liberty of the primitive creature, but still he is free. We are free, we will, we have power to will with or against God !

This proves to us that our previous reflections did not take in the whole case, and that God's liberty is infinite in a way different from what we thought. The theoretical problem may now be stated thus :

The free creature having set himself in contradiction to God's liberty, how can he continue to exist as a free creature ? Evidently that is because God's liberty is not only infinite externally, if we may so express it, but is also infinite internally. By virtue of this infinity it has imposed upon itself a limit. It has restricted itself, repressed itself, withdrawn itself, so as to leave room for the creature's liberty ; while naturally this would have been annihilated by God's liberty, which occupies all space, that is to say, all existence.

SUPPLEMENT No. V.

(See page 84.)

I. THE notion of evil is twofold. It implies the fault of a responsible agent and by metonymy the effects of thefault.

Viewed from the religious standpoint the fault bears the name of sin. In accordance with biblical data, sin may be thus defined : the insensate rebellion of a conscient and free creature, whose egoism rebels against the Creator. There are creatures who on their own sole responsibility and in their pride break the bonds of love which united them to their

Creator, creatures that prefer nonentity to any sort of dependence. "Godbeing the supreme good, God being love, and love being definable as the union of self-assertion and self-abandonment, sin consists in asserting self against God, in abandoning self to that which is not God, in not loving God, and in loving that which is not God instead of him. "2

Sin is insensate, for it tends to separate the creature from the God who gives it life; it is " the effort of a being towards nonentity ;" "that which exists without having a reason for its existence."4 "Good can exist without evil.

world

Evil is an intruder and a parasite in the it is the will that is self-centred and sets up itself as sovereign authority, the will of the free individual taking itself for its rule beginning with pride, or self-exaltation, ending with the subjection or the overthrow of all that resists it. "5 " It is an historic fact, which implies the previous creation of a free agent by a free God."6 Sin is fundamentally the only evil ; it has been called the principial evil. It is more than privation of good, it is hostility against good, its contrary and not merely its opposite.

" There is good reason for regarding as a fourth postulate that which in terms of religion would be called the postulate of sin. This is no less essential than the others to the definition of a moral world, since by it alone is it possible, while tracing physical evil to fault, to regard radical evil as a fact which has been, but which might not have been, and whereof the condition of possibility was a good, namely liberty. It is only in this way that pure goodness can be perceived as presiding over the

1 This essay is the reproduction, with some additions, of an article that we were asked to prepare for F. Lichtenberger's Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses, see vol. viii. , pages 580-590.-Evil being the great obstacle in the way of the immortalization of human nature, a study of the subject is in its proper place in our book.

2 Dorner.

3 Charles Secrétan .

4 J. F. Astié.

Louis Choisy. • Augustine.

6 César Malan , jun.

7 F. Pillon.

9 Thomas Aquinas.

SUPPLEMENT No. V.

origin of things as it may also preside over their end, and that the problem of the world's morality receives its solution. "1

Sin is displayed, consummated, and exhausted in effected evil (Germ . Uebel), which extends from the rebellious will to all the sinner's faculties, and to the world that surrounds him. The increasing disorder attains its climax in the arrest of all vital functions, and if no remedy is found the sinner finally perishes body and soul.

As is practically and legitimately admitted, good is life with all that maintains and favours it. It has been recognized that the instinct of self-preservation is the strongest of all natural instincts. Effected evil must then be all that which is contrary to life, which obstructs and destroys it ; its completion is in death, which is the extinction of life.

Evil in man is in its essence a culpable as well as absurd recoil towards nonentity. By extension the notion of evil includes everything that interferes with the interests of the man, everything that brings to him damage, hindrance, pain, or displeasure. The greatest of evils in principle is moral evil, that is to say, sin with a sense of guilt (culpa), and remorse, the most terrible of all sufferings, the bitterness of which is sui generis.

There is a direct connection between moral evil and the crimes and vices with their hereditary influence, whereof the malignity is felt by every individual of the human race ; also between moral evil and social disorders : wars, slavery, idolatry, polygamy, prostitution, pauperism, etc. The term physical evil has been applied to sickness and to the perturbations of nature : earthquakes, cyclones, hailstorms, inundations, the furious and often cruel fights among the animals in the struggle for life, pestilences, famines, etc. The term evil is also applied to sufferings of the affections, of the body, of the mind, to the lack of fitness or propriety, to the error that shocks the reason and the ignorance that humiliates it, to the ugliness that offends the æsthetic sense, and indeed to all that is out of place, to all that appears to be without use or purpose.

Ignorance, when not the result of idleness, is occasioned by that which Leibnitz has called metaphysical evil. necessarily limited, is consequently imperfect.

Every creature being This so-called evil is

1 Renouvier, Esquisse d' une classification systématique des doctrines philosophiques. Vol. ii. , p. 333. Paris, 1886.

2 Matt. x. 28.

Lange.

4 " That which has made men sinners is the physical and physiological heredity of inclinations satisfied in spite of the conscience and strengthened by bythat satisfaction, and then the solidarity produced by customs and institutions, institutions, by education and imitation.

So much is there of truth in that corruption of human nature which is neither a miracle nor a mystery, but a fact which is repeated every day under our eyes on a constantly varying scale. " Renouvier, Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses. Fragment quoted by M. Astié in his article Péché (Sin), p. 371.

really a good. Implying the possibility of sin, " it is the condition of the morality of the universe. "1

According to the Bible, God has so arranged the world that sin has produced evils. By a simultaneous and mutual action of the divine justice and mercy, evil as adversity becomes also chastisement. Sin, in principle free, comes to bear a providential character. " A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps ";" amidst all the agitations of life God leads him. Suffering the consequences of his fault, seeing with dismay his disfigured countenance in the mirror of evil, the chastised sinner is urged to repentance.

Evil as chastisement thus becomes for him evil as a benefit. At its starting-point insensate, evil thus fulfils a purpose, it becomes subservient to the conversion and salvation of the sinner. If the culprit remains obstinate, his final and total destruction will produce a salutary fear in the survivors. Pardoned or punished, evil serves to reveal and glorify two divine attributes : the avenging justice and the clemency of the sovereign lawgiver. Both of these shine forth to the eyes of faith from the cross of

Calvary.

II . These biblical theses as to the origin, the nature, and the teleology of evil command the respect of our religious consciousness. They put aside and replace the explanations of this great problem that have come down to us from pagan antiquity. At the bottom all paganism is a more or less disguised pantheism. But from the pantheistic point of view evil exists necessarily, for it is more or less closely connected with the divine nature. If it is necessary, it ought to exist ; if it ought to exist, it is good. This explanation of evil amounts to a denial that it exists.

In the systems of his own invention man exculpates himself by accusing nature. Adam's excuse, which cast the blame of his fault upon the wife given him by God, reappears, so to speak, in pagan ponerology.

The seduction of the world is considered as the sole cause of sin, and evil is held to result from the nature of things. In the dualist religions4 evil is personified ; it is God equally with the good principle. Matter is often regarded as the eternal principle of evil. In the Hindoo pantheism matter is injurious through the deceptive magic of its continual transformations ; in the Chinese doctrine of Fo-hi or Fo, it is the feminine or passive principle ; in the Greek system it is blind, and

1 Ch . Secrétan.

2 Prov. xvi. 1, 9.

3 Jer. ii. 19.

4 Persian, Slavonic, ancient Scandinavian, Paulician, Catharesian, etc.-Dualism, by considering evil as necessary, weakens the moral energy and deadens the sense of sin.

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without real existence.

It is none the less considered as eternal in its resistance to the God who organizes it.

Underneath this dualist opposition there is the hidden unity of pantheism. The opposition is produced by emanation from the eternal principle of the divinity : a descending emanation in the Hindoo system of the Vedas ; ascending in the Greek theogony. Among the Hindoos the starting-point of the emanation is the original light of Brahm, sinking down into the lower world of phenomena ; while among the Greeks the Olympian gods arise out of Chaos by the help of other and obscure divinities.

The wisest philosophers, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, erred grievously on this question of evil. According to Aristotle, real evil is only imperfection of being. Socrates imagined that " error is the only origin of our evil actions "; that men are deceived as to the nature of their obligations, but that " they do that which they regard as their duty." The poet Euripides, his contemporary, could have given him a lesson in true philosophy on the subject, by reminding him of this elementary truth : " We know what is good, we acknowledge it ; but we fail to do it."1 " Error and sin are closely related, but they are perfectly distinct facts.

Error has its seat in the intellect, but sin is an act of the will." 2

The fault of the Socratic philosophy is accentuated and aggravated in neo-Platonism.

Plotinus said : " Without the existence of evil the world would be less perfect "; and in order that no doubt should remain as to the scope of this declaration, he expressly ranks wickedness among the elements that contribute to the perfection of the universe.

Yet the voice of conscience made itself heard even among the heathen. It speaks in various myths relating to the fall. In Parseeism the fall of the first couple (Meschia and Meschiana) is connected with that of Ahriman and with the evil world created by him. In the Hindoo mythology the sinners of this world are spirits incarnate, undergoing imprisonment in punishment for offences committed in heaven . The philosophical and religious systems of Christendom have too habitually failed to recognize the rights of conscience. We will mention particularly the gnostic doctrines, the theory of Augustine, and that of

Pelagius.

The Syrian gnosticism of Saturninus, that of Marcion, and the

Manichæan conceptions proceeded from the Persian dualism. Basilides and Valentinus had taken for the foundation of their teaching the emanation of the Hindoo system, mixing up Platonic ideas with it.

1 Hippolytus, tragedy, verse 380, sq. , and Ovid, Metam. , vii. 20, sq.

2 E. Naville.

3 Prometheus, Edda.

Carpocrates went so far as to attribute to all natural inclinations the force of legal obligation. The serpent-worship or gnosticism of ancient Egypt was a most dangerous antinomism ; it identified evil with the laws revealed in the Old Testament. Greek idealism in very early times infiltrated itself into the theology of the Fathers of the Church, and so passed into scholasticism.¹

The doctrine of Augustine was grafted upon Platonism ; it went beyond the biblical teaching, seeing in the mortal sin of the first man the destruction by anticipation of all true liberty for his descendants. Pelagianism made the contrary mistake of denying absolutely the heredity of evil.

The conceptions of pagan antiquity are reflected in many modern systems. There are some which approach towards gnosticism by the hypothesis of evil inherent in matter. Dualism has its representatives.2 We perceive its influence in the ecclesiastical dogma which makes Satan the chief of an imperishable kingdom of immortals like himself. Other theories remind us of Brahminism by the supposition of a fall occurring before all time in the world of the creative idea. Ophitism or serpentworship was a forerunner of the systems which connect the notion of evil with that of primitive life, and see in the first transgression the emancipation of a slave. According to Edmond Scherer, " Evil is the condition of the spiritual developement of humanity throughout the ages. " In the grosser pantheism of Spinoza, evil is only that which prevents our enjoyment ; with more rigorous formulas, it is the old theory of Carpocrates. Those systems which treat evil as the result of an eternal conflict between matter and spirit are closely related to Pelagianism. From the standpoint of rationalism, evil is produced by the domination of sentient matter over the spirit, or by a discord between these two factors of human life ; as though moral evil had not its seat in the rebellious spirit, matter being entirely without will and morally neuter.5 According to Schleiermacher, evil has no objective existence ; it has no reality except in the human consciousness ; it manifests itself in consciousness of evil ; then the spirit triumphs over the sentient nature in repentance. Augustinism reappeared in the rigid dogmatics of the supralapsarian Protestants. Pelagianism is a characteristic feature of the new rationalism. It may be said that the Theodicy

1 " Scotus Erigenus, yielding to his Platonizing tendency, declares evil to be absolutely necessary, while for Augustine it was only relatively so.

It becomes an indispensable factor, like the shade in a picture." Astié, art. Péché, in the Encycl.

des sciences rel. , 1881, p. 337.

3 Kant , Steffens, etc.

2 Jacob Böhme, Bayle, Schelling, Daub, etc. 4 Hegel, K. L. Michelet, etc.

5 The Greek Fathers had recognized this : Τὸ σῶμα οὐχ ἁμαρτάνει, ἁλλὰ διὰ τοῦ

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of Leibnitz betrays the pantheistic element of Platonism. God's nature takes precedence of his will : " Sin is, not because God wills it, but because God is. "

The absence of sin would interfere with the universal harmony. Augustine had already expressed similar views ;¹ he inclined towards the same optimism; he is known to be the author of the pernicious and celebrated hyperbole : " O felix culpa quæ talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem ! O certe necessarium Adæ peccatum, quod Christi morte deletum est !" It was reserved for contemporary pessimism to identify existence and life with evil, so that the essence of evil would have its seat in the wish to live.2

Kant's philosophy and that of M. Charles Secrétan deserve honourable mention as having vindicated the supreme authority of conscience and liberty. M. Secrétan has sought to maintain both the liberty of man and that of God. Julius Müller has pointed out the principle of the eternal necessity of evil in most if not all of the systems that we have just referred to. We have not space to enter upon that analysis.

We will confine ourselves to the support of the theses formulated at the beginning of this article, by means of passages of Scripture and some considerations respecting them. This is the more necessary as among those propositions there are some which might pass for being new, although in fact they are as old as the apostolic age. But in order faithfully to interpret the texts " it is needful to break away more than has hitherto been done from the false or insufficient doctrines of Greek tradition." 3

III. Moses said : " I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil. "4

There is the relation between cause and effect.

Moral good perpetuates life ; moral evil leads to death. The words just quoted seem to sum up the teaching of the Pentateuch. They set forth the principal terms of the problem propounded at the outset of the book ofGenesis .

Almost at his first step along the road of life, Adam sees temptation rising before him. Supreme goodness could not but confer upon his most favoured creatures the supreme good of liberty. But liberty involves the danger of a fatal choice. Not being a machine, an automaton, an irresponsible being, such as the animal, the idiot, or the newborn babe, man, by himself, must make his own choice. Created innocent, he has to become righteous and holy ; this is required by the law of liberty, which is also the law of moral progress. Where would

1 De Gen. ad lit., xi., 7, sq. ; De lib. arb., iii. 9. 2 Schopenhauer, Leopardi, Hartmann. 3 Ernest Naville, L'Évangile et la philosophie, Chrétien évangélique, Oct. 1874.

4 Deut. xxx. 15.

virtue be if there were no possibility of being vicious ? Virtue is a thing so beautiful and so good that, for the sake of its possession, it is worth while to be exposed to the greatest of dangers, that of being able but not willing to attain it.

The prohibition relative to the tree of knowledge of good and evil was to raise the spirit of Adam and Eve above the inferior enjoyments of sense and of vanity. Man was intended to learn to prefer God and communion with him, or in other terms virtue and holiness, moral and religious progress, above those external advantages of which the value although more apparent was really less. Such is the condition of all education, and the fundamental purpose of the present life, which is the testing time of candidates for a life eternal ; some, even the majority, despise this sublime vocation, while a chosen few, comparatively, “ by patience in well-doing seek for glory, honour and incorruption."1

It is for each one to make his own choice according to his understanding, and to determine his own course among a thousand different ways ; the only course that he is not free to take is that of never choosing. The refusal to make a choice is not merely forbidden, it is impossible. People talk of equalities that are chimerical ; here is an equality that is veritable and fundamental, universal and tragical: the equality of all in respect of the obligation of making a choice, sooner or later, between the flesh and the spirit, between the old and the new man, between retreat and progress. In presence of this great equality all the provisional inequalities of strength, knowledge, fortune, are diminished or effaced. Even the greatest of potentates and the man of superlative genius must make this choice, must rise in the moral scale, and rise continually, or else go down, down, and perish for ever.

The divine fatherhood is far from being a lax indulgence. The living God wills, at all costs, the progress of his creature. The Spartan mother whose son was starting for the battle, handing him his shield, said : " With it or upon it ; victorious, bring back thy shield, or let it be thy bier ! " The divine law of moral progress cries to each one of us : " March, or die ! "

Men of honour understand this language, the cowards make vain efforts to evade the unavoidable necessity of choosing ; useless efforts, for in the case of a responsible being the refusal to choose the good is itself to choose the evil.

In the Greek language a wicked man is first of all a coward.2

To this category belonged a poor paralytic whom a Christian was

1 Rom . ii. 7 .

2 Κακός probably from χάζω, χάζομαι, to draw back, to slink away. Ὑποχωρῶν, stealing away.

Etym. mag.

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exhorting to patience and moral conversion ; he refused, saying : " Change my disposition, adopt new sentiments, I shall do nothing of the sort ; why did not God make me good all at once ?" So he envied the condition of the bee that makes its honey and the sheep that gives its wool without either knowledge or will ; as though there were not already a sufficient number of beings that are stationary in their native goodness ! God, on his part, desires the multiplication of free creatures who are voluntarily progressive.

But it will perhaps be said that the Creator might have so acted that the choice of evil should be immediately followed by the death of the culprit : why should there be a long and painful period of decay preceding the final destruction of the sinner ? We answer that a finite being cannot manifest himself entirely in a single act. Universal analogy indicates a gradual developement of all things, and with the providential intervention of grace, a period of suffering and decline gives an opportunity for the conversion and salvation of the culprit.

IV. The story in Genesis is complicated by a mysterious element : the intervention of a tempter in the form of a serpent. According to the New Testament, this serpent is " the Devil, who was a man-killer from the beginning."

The serpent was no doubt chosen as an emblem of the malign power because of two of its special physiological characteristics. First, having no eyelids, a transparent membrane taking the place of those movable veils, the serpent is, at least apparently, the animal that has its eyes always open. It may thus be understood why, notwithstanding the smallness of its brain, it has been thought the wisest, the most vigilant, and the most intelligent of all animals. It was thus that the owl among the Greeks was an emblem of wisdom because it sees in the dark. The name of the dragon, a kind of serpent, means : the one that sees. The serpent has even been worshipped, seeing that

1 John viii. 44 ; Rev. xii. 9 ; xx. 2.

2 Δέρκομαι οι δράκομαι, to have good sight.--The eyes symbolize knowledge ; εἴδω means both to see and to know. To have the eyes open is to be circumspect ; to have them always open is to exercise unremitting vigilance.

In heraldry the serpent is the hieroglyph of wisdom. In the caduceum, which was always carried by the Greek heralds in their negotiations, the two serpentsfacingeach other probably were symbols of the wisdom which when it exists on both sides pacifies enmities. The serpent was believed to see in the night, and so it was consecrated to Esculapius, the god of medicine, and to his daughter Hygeia, goddess of health. A divinatory perception was considered to be characteristic of the healing art. The diagnosis of a clever practician had made an impression on the popular imagination.

In Egypt the gods and the kings are always represented with the ureus or curled serpent upon the head. In Greece, Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom often wears a necklace of entwined serpents ; sometimes, too, a reptile untwines itself at her feet. The serpent placed in front of a mirror would be the symbol of reflective wisdom.

Serpents are still worshipped in Africa, in India, and in the West Indies.

kingdom of Dahomey a temple has been erected in their honour.

In the

in the popular imagination it possessed the divine attribute of perpetual watchfulness without any interval of sleep. The dragon was sacred to Minerva ; true wisdom never sleeps. One of the oldest gnostic sects, the Ophites, or serpent-worshippers, attributed to the serpent universal knowledge.

The second physiological peculiarity of the serpent is that under an inoffensive appearance it often conceals a mortal venom which has an almost magical effect. Clearness of sight, malignity, perfidy, terrible and mysterious power, all these qualities would naturally make of the being in which they were united the symbol of a maleficent intelligence.

The Bible is very sober in its teaching as to the personality of Satan : it presents him to us as aiding in the fall of man. The part that he plays in the drama is the ground of a divine intervention for the purpose of saving his dupes. We see in him a creature who, like man and before him, took advantage of his liberty in order to do evil, and who, by occult means that we know not of, can exert a pernicious influence. This is in the domain of faith; but, apart from the personality of Satan, may it not be said that, from a moral and psychological point of view, there is in every man a fatal disposition to imagine that he can do evil with impunity and obtain from it some positive advantage ? At the basis of a culpable consent there is the illusion which prevents the recognition of the inevitably deleterious character of the fault : " Ye shall not surely die," said the Serpent. In fact, that lie prevails even to the present day in the so-called " orthodox " doctrine of unconditional immortality. But it will not always prevail. The day is approaching, promised in the protevangel of Genesis, when the serpent's head will be crushed.

In the Hebrew language the head means also the principle and essence of the being ; it contains the brain that conceived the falsehood, and the tongue that uttered it.

V. Whatever may be the value of these interpretations of detail, we believe that the foundation of the story of the fall rests on the very nature of things. It is a question of the conditions of good and evil, of life and death. In order to ascertain these, reference must be made to the notion of being, and to the conditions of existence. Universal analogy shows that a being can maintain its existence only by virtue of a double series of relations : interior relations between its several constituent elements, and exterior relations with other beings. To maintain these relations is to maintain the being that sustains them ; to develope and multiply them will be in the same measure to develope and increase the being ; to cause these relations to cease is to destroy the being :

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the same result will be produced by the substitution for the normal relations of other relations incompatible with the nature of the being.¹ Disintegration and final ruin become the portion of the being that is outside of the conditions of its existence.

It is the fate of the locomotive that is broken and very soon comes to a standstill after having run off the rails.2

The moral law determines the conditions of existence for individuals endowed with liberty. There is no long life for man without some degree of virtue ; all excess tends to the shortening of life. History shows us that the duration of empires is in direct relation with their morality.³

Except the pessimists, there are few people who would refuse to subscribe to the principle laid down on the first page of Scripture. The creation of being is the primary good ; consequently its destruction is an evil. The creation of man, the crown and keystone of the arch of our universe, is a very great good: after the formation of man, God saw that it was very good.

The destruction of man will therefore be a very

1 It is possible to define good by saying that it consists in the existence of beings and the maintenance of the normal relations that unite them.

A relation is normal when, being founded on the nature of things, it does not by its establishment diminish the number of pre-existing relations, but on the contrary is favourable to the formation ofmore numerous normal relations. The multiplication of normal relations, and of beings that sustain them, constitutes progress. The destruction of a being or of any of its relations is an evil whenever it is not indispensable in view of the establishment of a greater number of relations. Evil would consist in the establishment of abnormal relations tending to diminish the number of beings and of the normal relations between thebeings.

2 In other terms, the supreme evil in the individual ends in the destruction of the being ; partial evil suppresses one or another special faculty.

" What is it that humanity in all ages has called evil if not the act, whatever it may be, which suppresses or restrains in us a force, or a faculty, or a sense, or an organ, or an action, or an affection, or a cognition ?

" For example, you call paralysis an evil because it destroys movement ; slavery, because it mutilates the will ; deafness, because it stifles speech in its passage ; blindness, because it extinguishes the ray of light on our eyeball ; prison, because it raises a barrier between the world and the man, and thus intercepts sympathy, that is to say, the soul of each one as represented in the soul and multiplied by the soul of each other ; proscription, because it deprives us of our country and makes of the whole world a prison without walls ; and lastly death, because it violently and prematurely suppresses the life in full possession of itself and in its full power. "-Eug. Pelletan,

Profession defoi du dix-neuvième siècle, p. 387. Here again the italics are our own. 3 ،، History does not permit us to doubt that the destiny of each nation is generally in proportion to its degree of morality. The picture of the misfortunes of peoples becomes confounded with the picture of their crimes ; and the annals of societies that are decaying are little more than the representation of a prolonged suicide. The general history of humanity leads to the same conclusion ; it refers most of the misfortunes under which the human race is groaning to a principle of corruption, everywhere diffused, which vitiates its faculties, misdirects its forces, interferes with its action, and makes of even its most glorious developements a series of frightful convulsions, of murderous shocks, and of bloody catastrophes. "--Vinet, Nouv. études évang pp. 247 and 248.

Paris, 1851 .

Gen. i. 31 ; cf. ver. 4.

great evil ; this is the reason why Jesus calls Satan, the type of evil, man-killer. " In the Hebrew language evil is primarily a rupture ; a etymologically and metaphorically, a corruption.2

The law of progressive developement being admitted, sin in man will consist in the refusal to develope the superior elements of his nature, reason and the religious sentiment. This refusal is a beginning of selfdestruction. Every sinner lowers himself in the scale of being. The palm-tree of which the top withers will die altogether. The man who does not rise, descends. Sin thus becomes a retrogression towards the condition of the animals.3

Although in a grotesque form, there was a profound thought in those mediæval paintings wherein Satan is represented as a man on the way to become animalized, with cloven foot, goat's horns, and the tail of certain quadrumana. 4 The return towards the animal state is evident in the coarse passions which carry off and kill so many victims. The more subtile sins of ambition, falsehood, pride, and religious indifference are also mortal. They destroy the normal relations of man with God and with the world ; these relations being necessary to human life, the egoist at last perishes in a sort of asphyxia. As Vinet has said, " We live in proportion as we love ; egoism is a consumption, a death, a suicide " . 5

The notion of retribution naturally springs out of that of evil. The punishment of sin is identical with its consequence for the sinner ; it is measured out in an adequate, exact, and necessary proportion to the evil committed. The ancients gave it the name of Nemesis. With sin and its punishment it is as with those ingenious suspended apparatus which can be raised or lowered at will, and always adjust themselves and maintain their equilibrium. Evil becomes its own chastisement ; it kills the evil-doer.

It is none the less God who chastises, since it is he who

1 John viii. 44 ; cf. Rev. ix. 11.

2 ע ר adj . bad and subs. evil, moral and physical, from ע ע ר , to break noisily (Ps. lxxiv. 3). So also the French word mal (evil) is derived from the Sanscrit mar or mal, to crush or pulverize. ה ו ע to curve or twist, pihel to overturn, whence ן ו ע iniquity, א ט ח ל ו ש deviation, error, ל ב ה vain ; ה ל ב נ folly. In the New Testament sin is also presented as a dissolving, disorganizing principle. Gal. vi. 8 ;

Rom. vii . 5 ; James iv. I, etc.

3 Péché ( sin), from the Latinpeccatum, connected with pecus (a sheep), whence the French pécore (beast, fool). Cf. Ps. xlix. 12.

+ In the fanciful illuminations of some missals Satan has a human body, but hairy, with a goat's beard, ears, horns, and tail, and an eagle's claws. 5 Nouveaux discours, p. 414 ; cf. p. 61 , sq. Paris, 1841 .

6 Eccl . xii. 14 ; Matt. xvi. 27 .

7 Ps. xxxiv. 21 ; cf. xciv., 23 ; Prov. viii. 36, xiii. 6 ; Jer. ii. 19 ; see also Supplement No. VI.-" The ills that come directly from God's hand are the least frequent and the least numerous.

In order to punish man God needs little besides man ; and all the forces of nature could not cause to us one half of the evil that we cause to

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has established beforehand the correlation between sin and death.

In creating, governing, rewarding, and punishing, everywhere and always, God acts only through intermediaries. Natural necessity is the divine will, since it is the work of God.1

The New Testament confirms and completes the same teaching. Evil proceeds from the responsible will of the creature, seduced by lust, by the world that lieth in the wicked one, and by Satan. It consists in the violation of the divine law. Sin, when full-grown, engenders death ; but, thanks to the compassionate wisdom of God, the very effects of sin sometimes serve in the salvation of the sinner.

In the greatest crime ever committed on earth, in the murder of Jesus Christ, the Gospel enables us to see an occasion for the highest manifestation of goodness, in the heroic devotion of the victim, and indirectly a means of saving those who believe." Those who, on the contrary, reject this same means of salvation, will be definitively lost. Sin will then in the end contribute to the creation of a new bond between the creature and his Saviour God, the bond of an altogether special thankfulness.º

When this result shall be attained, " evil must be annihilated. "10

VI . This leads us to speak of the end of evil. Faith in Jesus Christ puts an end to moral evil by renewing the will,11 and thereby the whole man.12 The end of moral evil will bring about the end ofphysical evil, which exists only on account of moral evil.13 Not that it dates only ourselves. "-Vinet, Nouvelles études évang. , p. 245. Paris, 1851.-" Such as we are, we need to see that misery springs from evil, and that the sinner is punished by his sin. It is the will of God himself that so it should be ; he has voluntarily left to our evil deeds the greater part of the execution of the sentence pronounced against them ; and there is nothing to prevent our belief, but rather everything to lead us to think, that the punishment of evil, here below and elsewhere, will be entirely the result of the evil itself, so that the merciful design conceived by God in our favour finds its full accomplishment in our regeneration, or our interior deliverance, the basis of which is the good news of pardon. "--Vinet, Etudes sur la littérature française au dix-neuvième Paris, 1849. 1 " God will not separate that which he himself has united. But he has united, by siècle, vol. i. , p. 341.

their basis, by their very essence, sin and misery, as well as happiness and virtue. He has made these things in such a way that they answer to each other, as the eye to the light, as the lungs to the air. He has put into our conscience the need for this correspondence, and the conviction that in the end misery must be connected with sin, that holiness and happiness will eventually be inseparable. "-Vinet, Le méchant et le jour de la calamité (Nouveaux discours), p. 61. Paris, 1841 . 2 James i. 13, 14 ; iv. 17 ; Matt. xxiii. 37 ; John v. 40.

I John v. 19.

4 I Thess. iii. 5.

5 I John iii. 4.

6 Rom. vi. 21, 23 ; viii. 6, 13 ; Gal. vi. 8 ; Phil. iii. 19 ; James i. 15 ; 1 John v. 16. 7 Acts ii . 17, 21 ; iii. 13-15 ; iv. 27, sq.; cf. Gen. 1. 20.

9 Rev. v. 9. 8 John xv. 22, 24 ; 2 Cor. ii. 15 ; Heb. x. 26-29. 10 Martensen, Dogmatique, translation of M. Ducros, p. 254. 11 1 Pet . i. 22 .

12 Rom. xii. 2 ; 2 Cor. iv. 16.

13 Ps. cvii. 33-36 ; Rom. viii. 18-22 ; Moulinié.

from the deluge or from the fall of man. Geology and palæontology teach us that cosmic evil goes back to the first days of creation. Therein some have seen an invasion of fallen angels, who are supposed to have created the monstrous beasts of the antediluvian world.¹

In support of this idea has been introduced the translation, " The earth became waste and void "; but M. Le Savoureux has made it clear that such an interpretation is not warranted by exegesis. Having nothing but hypothesis to deal with, we should prefer to suppose that, foreseeing the possibility of the fall, God when creating the world introduced into it, in materiam vilem, physical evil, which in itself is without sin ; so that, if the case should arise, it might serve to instruct and correct the sinner. It is thus that, in prospect of possible sickness and accidents, a ship is supplied with poisons which may serve as remedies ; surgical instruments, too, are added, which an ignorant person might take for instruments of torture.

Thus would be explained the passages in which God is said to have created darkness and evil.

Cosmic evil would then not be the effect of sin, since it existed beforehand.

God would have created it " in view of the possibility of sin, " as a resource laid up in reserve for the eventual correction and salvation of delinquents.5

In the hands of the divine educator, physical evil still serves in the developement of energy of character ; it obliges man to become prudent and provident ; it excites a noble compassion ; it can even provoke heroism.

That physical evil can be a benefit seems to be indicated by the respective morality of the northern and southern peoples, in Europe as well as in America. The delights of Capua enervated Hannibal's soldiers, whose courage had been invigorated in crossing the glaciers of the Alps. No climate can be more charming than that of some islands in the Pacific Ocean : there reigns perpetual spring ; there the breadfruit-tree furnishes abundant food that needs no preparation ; but such has been the corruption of morals that the indigenous population is rapidly disappearing. But let us now turn to Iceland, one of the poorest countries of the globe. Terrible famines have decimated these islanders,

2 Gen. i. 2.

3 Bulletin théol., 1864. 1 Splittgerber . * Isa. xlv. 7 ; Amos iii. 6. 5 " From the moment when the personal and free God determined, in his love, to create a free being in his own image, he had necessarily to take the risk of this grand enterprise resulting in the actual constitution of our world. Himself powerless to foresee the use that would be made of liberty by the intelligent and moral coadjutor that he had thought well to provide for himself, he had to be prepared for either event, according as the test should turn out, well or ill." J. F. Astié, article quoted, p. 369.

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but among them there is no police-agent to be found, nor any prison, and for centuries the memory of crime has been lost.¹

But we feel a strong repugnance to admit the necessity of suffering without any relation to sin. The normal dwelling of man, while innocent, is in paradise, symbol of exemption from physical evil. It is after his offence that man, banished from the privileged enclosure, learns to know cruel hunger, fatigue, and pain. It is true that suffering and death existed upon earth before the fall of man; but in the paradise of

Eden Adam was protected from them both.

The characteristic notion of paradise is, in fact, the absence of physical evil : a temperate climate, simple but plentiful food, no poisons, no wild beasts, nor briars, nor thorns, nor fatigues, nor pains. As soon as Adam has sinned, he is set to struggle against cosmic evil. These are two educational methods, the second being employed after the ill-success of the first.

This point of view would furnish a reply to the principal objection of a deep thinker, John Stuart Mill, in his posthumous work on Religion. He makes out, and finds it shocking, that the visible world could not be the work of a God at the same time all-powerful and all-good. Our reply is that the cosmic imperfections and evils have been expressly ordained for the purpose of discipline. Even for the men most favoured with the good things of earth this planet is still a place of exile, a vast penitentiary colony, where things are not all arranged solely with a view to the comfort of those detained in it, but rather with a view to their moral reformation by a mixture of kindness and severity.

Connected with physical evil there is that which has been called immorality in nature, as for example the evil inclinations of certain animals. On the hypothesis indicated, the animals, whatever may be the mystery of their origin, in addition to their practical usefulness, would have a symbolical destination ; they would be types of virtues and vices.

The tiger, the shark, the ape, the serpent, the dove, the bee, the sheep, etc. , would, so to speak, teach by their aspect the contrasts of moral life. 4 Man's education once ended, the moral edifice once built, physical evil would disappear. A new earth and new heavens would replace the existing world.5

It is a curious coincidence that on this point the Bible is in agreement

1 See En Islande, by Dr. P. Vouga. Bibliothèque universelle, 1880, p. 225.

2 Gen. ii. 16 ; iii. 16-19.

3 Cf. Gen. ii. 19, 20.

4 From this point of view the animal world would be like a vast psychological museum. The different species, like so many photographic proofs, would fix the thousand and one attitudes of the human soul. This fact has been abundantly utilized by the fabulists.

5 Ps. cii . 26 ; 2 Pet. iii. 13 ; Rev. xxi. 1 .

with the modern doctrine of evolution.1

A dramatic writer has had an intuition of the same truth : The good is stronger than the evil. To the question of one of his personages : Why do we so often see evil triumphing over good ?" he opposes this answer : “ Because we do not look at it long enough."2

In order to designate the ultimate fate of the irreconcilables, the New Testament employs the terms used by Plato in speaking of annihilation. The devil is to be destroyed. The lawless one being brought to nought, the revolt being suppressed, there will be no more curse, 7 death will be abolished ; it has already lost its sting. Death and Hades will join Satan in the abyss of destruction called in the Apocalypse the lake of fire and brimstone.10 " God will be all, in all, " in all those who will have survived the final judgement.11 This promise affords a glimpse of the suppression of that which has been denominated metaphysical evil; it may relate to an economy in which the categories of time and space will no longer exist. However that may be, the redeemed will survive for ever.12 Evil had abounded, it will disappear ; and grace will yet more abound.13

That all one day shall yet be well, our hope remains. That all to-day is well, is a mistaken view. The wise men have deceived me, God alone is true. 14 " The hypothesis of the temporary character of evil, legitimately suggested by the wish, and not to be rejected unless replaced by another hypothesis, is nothing else than the postulate of divinity. It consists, in fact, in a recognition of the need for the world to be good in its origin and good in its end; that is to say, such as to realize the purposes of being, purposes conceived and required by conscience, whatever may be the intermediate states through which it may pass. But that is to recognize the need in accordance with the most practical and most generally understood sense of divinity, that the world should be the work of God." 15

1 De l'élimination graduelle du mal, translated from Herbert Spencer, Paris, 1875 .

Social Statics, p. 80.

2 Dumas fils, L'Etrangère, act iii. 32 Thess. i . 9 ; Phil. iii. 19.

4 Heb. ii. 14, 15 ; Rem. xvi. 20 ; cf. Gen. iii. 15.

52 Thess . ii. 8 .

6 Rev. xix. 20 ; cf. Dan. vii. II , 26. 7 Rev. xxii . 3 . 82 Tim. i. 10 ; 1 Cor. xv. 26 ; Rev. xxi. 4 ; cf. Isa. xxv. 8 . 11 1 Cor. xv. 28.

10 Rev. xx. 14 . 9 1 Cor. xv. 55, 56.

13 Rom. v. 20 . 12 Matt. xxv. 46 . 14 Voltaire. The French lines are :

Un jour tout sera bien, voilà notre espérance.

Tout est bien aujourd'hui, voilà l'illusion. Les sages me trompaient et Dieu seul a raison.

13 Renouvier. Esquisse, etc. vol. ii., p. 290, sq.

SUPPLEMENT No. VI.

SUPPLEMENT No. VI .

LIST

BIBLICAL TERMS USED TO

DENOTE

DESTRUCTION .

(See page 88.)

In the Hebrew language there are more than fifty roots which are used either habitually or occasionally to signify the destruction of animated beings. Many of these are employed in the Old Testament to specify the ultimate fate of the impenitent, and convey the idea of a complete suppression of the individuals of whom they are predicated. This may be seen by consulting any of the dictionaries that are recognized as having authority ; as, for example, those of Gesenius and Fuerst and the English-Hebrew Lexicon of Selig Newman at the word annihilate, or by reference to the best critical versions.

It may be objected that the Old Testament has not sufficient dogmatic authority when the question relates to the future life, of which the Jews had but a vague notion. We reply by means of the following list, showing that the New Testament adopts, confirms, and gives precision to the teaching of the Old on the point in question. In so doing it makes use of the terms which serve to represent the corresponding

Hebrew words in the Greek of the LXX.

It adopts the symbols of the

Old Covenant in order to describe eternal realities.

Thus the biblical doctrine is, as we may say, clenched. In both Testaments the wicked are said to be " destroyed for ever," but the vague and indefinite eternity of the Old Covenant becomes absolute in the New.

The New Testament terms are the same that the English-Greek dictionaries give as the equivalents of the words annihilate and destroy, the same that are used by Plato in the Phado to indicate annihilation.1 The expressions are identical, only Plato denies that which the Bible affirms ; he sets himself to demonstrate that the soul cannot be destroyed. The Bible, on the contrary, asserts without reserve or restriction the final and total destruction of both soul and body in the eternal fire as the fate of the impenitent. On this subject the New Testament, like the Old, employs the strongest terms of ordinary language.

To the verbs and nouns in our list should be added a host of proverbial expressions, a long train of figures, which occasionally seem such as would mutually exclude each other, but which always by association of ideas point in the same direction :

1 See the developement of this proof in Rev. Edward White's Life in Christ, 3rd ed., pp. 360-369 ; also ante, p. 317.

The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head : the head in

Hebrew symbolizes the principle and essence of the being. This is, then, a promise that the very principle of evil shall be destroyed. The wicked, banished far from the tree of life, will be destroyed in darkness, in the place of silence. They will see no more, will hear no more, will speak no more. Bound hand and foot, they will be in the inaction of death. They will be devoured by the worm and the fire. The worm, however, which eats only dead flesh, excludes the idea of sensibility, and the fire excludes the simultaneous presence of the worm ; but these two metaphors both equally symbolize a complete destruction of the being that has already ceased to live. Even the remembrance of the lost is to perish. The wicked are to perish like brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed ; they will pass away like a morning cloud, like the early dew, like a dream when one awaketh ; they will be as the vessel broken to shivers, as ashes trodden under foot, as smoke that vanisheth, as the chaff driven away by the wind ; they will be as tow, as the bundles of dry tares, as thorns, as stubble, as vine branches pruned off, as wax, as the fat of the sacrifices, all combustibles more or less rapidly destroyed in the fire, all of these being images which exclude the notion of sufferings indefinitely prolonged.

Other images may be recalled : that of the lost sheep, threatened with speedy death by hunger and thirst or the wolf's jaws ; the withered tree, without root or branch, a stript trunk that can never again give sign of life ; the garment that is moth-eaten ; the abortion, dead before its birth ; the axe and the fire spoken of by John the Baptist ; sin likened to the leprosy that consumes the tissues. Everywhere and always we find the notion of a final cessation of the being's existence, of a decomposition, of a breaking of the links of the organism, of a return to a state of unconsciousness, never that of an immortal life in suffering.

In the Apocalypse the wicked are threatened with the fate of the inhabitants of Sodom : by fire and smoke and brimstone was the third part of men killed. There is nothing more deadly than sulphurous vapours ; they destroy life even in its microscopic germs.

In symbol they kill

Death itself, and death exists no more.-Rev. xx. 14 ; xxi. 4.

It is with the symbolism of the Bible as with its vocabulary : the sacred writers seem to have exhausted the resources at their disposal in order to affirm that which we maintain. If required to express in Hebrew or in Greek the notion of complete destruction, we would ask whether in the usual vocabulary of those two languages there are to be found terms more forcible than those in the following list.

SUPPLEMENT No. VI.

Our readers are recommended to refer either to the original texts or to the most exact modern versions. The quotations within parentheses lend an indirect support to the others by fixing the true and fundamental meaning of the words. The figures between brackets relate to the numbering in the Hebrew when different from the English.1

ד ב א ἀπόλλυμι, destroy : Psa. ix. 5 [6] ; Ezek. xxii. 27 (not in LXX. ( (Dan. vii. 26) ; come to destruction : Num. (xxiv. 20, 24) ; perish : Deut. (vii. 24) ; viii. 19, 20 ; xi. 17 ; Job iv. 9 ; xx. 7 ; Psa. xxxvii. 20 ; (xli. 5 [6]) ; xlix. 10 [ 11 ], wise men die, the fool and the brutish person perish ; lxxiii. 27 ; (cii. 26 [27] ) ; fail : (Ezek. xii. 22) ; ἀπωλεία, destruction :

Esther viii. 6 ; Prov. xxvii. 20, Abaddon, the place of destruction ;

Jer. xii. 17-New Test. R.V. ἀπόλλυμι, destroy : Matt. ii. 13 ; x. 28 ; Mark iii. 6 ; Luke vi. 9 ; xvii. 27, 29 ; John x. 10 ; Rom. xiv. 15; James iv. 12 ; Jude 5 ; perish : Matt. (v. 29, 30) ; xviii. 14 ; Mark iv. 38 ; Luke xiii . 3, 5 ; xv. 17 ; John iii. 16 ; (vi. 27) ; x. 28 ; xi. 50 ; Rom. ii. 12 ; 1 Cor. i. 18 ; xv. 18 ; 2 Thess. ii. 10 ; Heb. i. 11 ; (James i. 11 ) ; 2 Pet. iii. 9 ; lose : Matt. x. 39, (42) ; Luke ix. 24, 25 ; xv. (4, 6, 8, 9) 24, 32 ; John vi. (12), 39 ; Απόλλυων, destroyer : Rev. ix. 11 , cf. John viii. 44 ; ἀπωλεία, destruction : Matt. vii. 13 ; Rom. ix. 22 ; 2 Pet. ii. 3 ; perdition : John xvii. 12 ; Phil. iii. 19 ; 2 Thess. ii. 3 ; 1 Tim. vi. 9 ; Heb. x. 39 ; waste : ( Matt. xxvi. 8).

ת י ר ח א τελευταῖα, end : Prov. xiv. 12 ; xvi. 25-Ν.Τ. τελευτή, death : Matt. ii . 15 ; τέλος, end : Phil. iii . 19 ; 1 Pet. iv . 17 .

ך י א , ἀπωλεία, calamity : Job xxxi. see ד ב א ; καταστροφή, calamity : Job xxi. 17-Ν.Τ. καταστροφή, overthrow : (2 Pet. ii. 6) .

ל כ א , ἐσθίω, φάγω, κατεσθίω, κατέδω, καταφάγω, consume, devour : Deut.

vii. 16 ; Isa. i. 20 ; Hos. xiii. 8 ; ἔμπυρος, devoured : Ezek. xxiii. 37- N.T. ( Matt. xiii. 4 ; Luke xv. 30) ; Heb. x. 27 ; Rev. xi. 5 ; πύρωσις, burning : Rev. xviii. 9, 18.

ף ס א , ἐκλείπω, consume : Zeph. i. 2 ; take away : Hosea iv. 3-N.T.

fail : (Luke xxii. 32) Heb. i. 12.

ס ו ב , ἐξουδενόω, tread down : Ps. lx. 12 [14] ; cviii. 13 [14] , Vulg. ad

1 [The list, as prepared by Dr. Petavel in a different form, may be seen in his book,

The Strugglefor Eternal Life, 1875, and in the later editions of Rev. E. White's Life in Christ. It has here been re-arranged by the translator for the greater convenience of English students. The Hebrew roots are given in their alphabetical order, each being followed by reference to its occurrence in the O.T. , and generally by the word or words that are used to represent it in the Greek of the Septuagint and in the

English Revised Version. References are given to some of the N.T. passages in which occur those Greek words which are of chief importance in the controversy, with the corresponding English words according to the R.V. The list will thus enable the reader easily to trace the way in which the language of the N.T. is linked with that of the O.T. by means of the LXX. version. ] nihilum deducet; καταπατέω, καταπάτημα, tread down ; t. under foot : Isa. xiv. 25 ; lxiii. 6.

ה ל ב , παλαιω, consume : Job xiii. 28 ; Ps. xlix. 14 [15] -N.T.

become old : Heb. (viii. 13).

ע ל ב , ἀπόλλυμι, destroy : Jobii. 3, see ד ב א ; καταπίνω, swallow, s. up : Ps. (cvii. 27 marg. ) ; Isa. xxv. 8 --N.T. ( 1 Cor. xv. 54 ; 2 Cor. v. 4) ;

Heb. xi. 29 ; devour : 1 Pet. v. 8.

ר ע ב , καίω, κατακαίω, burn, burn up : Isa. i. 31 ; Mal. iv. 1 [iii. 19[ — N.T. Matt. iii. 12 ; xiii. 30, 40 ; Luke iii. 17 ; Rev. xvii. 16 ; xviii. 8 . ע ד ג ἐκκόπτω, cut off: Judges xxi. 6 ; συνθλάω , συγκλάω, cut off : Ps.

(lxxv. 10 [ 11 ] ; Lam. ii . 3)-N.Τ. ἐκκόπτω, cut off: Matt. (v. 30) ; Roni .

xi . 22 ; cut or hew down : ( Matt. iii. 10 ; Luke xiii. 7, 9) .

ע ו ג , ἐκλείπω, die : Zech. xiii. 8. ז ו ג cut down : Nahum i . 12 .

See ס א .

ל ז ג consume : Job xxiv. 19.

א כ ד break in pieces : Ps . lxxii. 4 .

ך ע ד , σβέννυμι, put or go out, quench, extinguish : Job xviii. 5, 6 ; xxi . 17 ; Prov. xiii. 9 ; xx. 20 ; xxiv. 20 ; Isa. xliii. 17 ; ἐκκαίω, [burn out] quench : Ps. cxviii. 12 - N.T. σβέννυμι : Matt. xxv. 8 ; Mark ix. 48 ; ἄσβεστος, unquenchable : Matt. iii. 12 ; Mark ix. 43 ; Luke iii. 17 .

ק ק ד , λεπτύνω, stamp small, break in pieces : 2 Kings [xxiii. 6( ;

Dan . ii . 44.

ג ר ה , ἀποκτείνω, slay : Gen. iv. 8 ; Ps. lxxviii. 31 ; cxxxvi. 18 ; κατα- σφάζω, slay : Zech. xi. 5-N.Τ. ἀποκτείνω, slay : Rom. vii. 11 ; ( Eph. ii . 16) ; kill : Matt. x. 28 ; xvi. 21 ; xxvi. 4 ; Mark iii. 4 ; x. 34 ; Luke xii. 4, 5 ; John v. 18 ; Acts iii. 15 ; 1 Thess. ii. 15 ; Rev. ii. 23 ; put to death : Matt. xiv. 5 ; John xii. το ; ἀνθρωποκτόνος , murderer : John viii. 44 ;

κατασφάζω, slay : Luke xix. 27 .

ס ר ה , καθαιρέω, break down : Ps. xxviii. 5 ; overthrow : Jer. i. 10 (omitted in LXX.)-N.T. destroy : Acts xiii. 19 ; pull down : Luke (xii. 18) ; καθαίρεσις, casting down : 2 Cor. x. 8 ; xiii. 10.

ח נ ז , καταλείπω, cast off: 1 Chron. xxviii. 9. Cf. 2 Tim. ii. 12 .

ל ב ח , bring destruction : Prov. xiii. 13.

ם ר ח , ἀναθεματίζω , ἀνάθεμα, devote, devoted thing : Lev. xxvii. 28, 29 ; cf. Deut . vii . 26 ; Josh. (vi. 17) ; destroy utterly : Deut. xiii. 15 [ 16 ] ; ΧΧ. 17 ; ἐξολοθρεύω, destroy utterly : Josh. x. 39 ; 2 Chron. xΧ. 23 ; ἀπόλ- λυμι, utterly destroy : Isa. xxxiv. see ד ב א Note in Segond's French version at Lev . xxvii. 29 : " These vows of devotion were irrevocable , and involved the destruction of that which had been so devoted." [The exceptional permission in Ezek. xliv. 29 does not invalidate this general statement.]-N.Τ. ἀναθεματίζω, ἀνάθεμα, curse, anathema : Acts (xxiii.

SUPPLEMENT No. VI.

12, 14, 21) ; Rom . ix. 3 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 22 ; Gal. i. 8, 9 ; ἐξολοθρεύω , utterly destroy : Acts iii. 23 .

ע ב ט ]to sink], ἐνεπάγησαν ἐν διαφθορᾷ, sunk down in the pit : Ps. ix. 15 [16] .

ה ב כ , σβέννυμι, quench : Isa. xliii . 17, see ך ע ד

ד ח כ , ἀφανίζω, cut off: Job xxii . 20 ; ἐκτρίβω, cut off : 2 Chron . xxxii . 21 ; εἰς ὄλεθρον, cut off : 1 Kings xiii. 34 - Ν.Τ . άφανίζω, ἀφανισμός, vanish away : Heb. ( viii. 13 ) ; James iv. 14, cf. 1 Pet. iv. 18 ; perish : Acts xiii. 41, quoted from Hab . i. 5, Sept. version ; consume : Matt. (vi . 19, 20) . Σαδδουκαίοις δὲ τὰς ψυχὰς ὁ λόγος συναφανίζει τοῖς σώμασι. Josephus, Antiq. xviii. 1, 4 ; ὄλεθρος, a word specially employed by Plato to signify extermination, destruction : 1 Cor. v. 5 ; I Thess. v. 3 ;

2 Thess . i . 9 ; 1 Tim . vi . 9 .

ה ל כ , ἐκλείπω, consume : Ps. xxxvii. 20, see ע ו ג ; συντελέω, consume :

Ps. lix. 13 [ 14] ; Isa. i. 28 ; συντέλειαν ποιεῖν, make full end : Neh. (ix. 31 ;

Jer. iv. 27 ; v. 10, 18 ; xlvi. 28) ; ἐκλείψιν ποιεῖν [a doubtful reading], make full end : Jer. xxx. 11 .

ת ר כ ἀποθνήσκω, be cut off : Gen. ix. 11, see ת ו מ ; ἐξολοθρεύω, cut off: Exod. xii. 15, 19 ; Lev. xvii. 14 ; xxiii. 29 ; Ps. xxxvii. 9, 38 ; Isa. xxix. 20 ; xlviii. 19 ; Zech . xiii. 8 ; ἐξαιρέω, cut off: Nahum i. 15 [ii. 1] ; Zeph . i. 3 ; ἐκκόπτω, cut down : (Job xiv . 7), see - ע ד ג N.T. ἐξολοθρεύω utterly destroy : Acts iii. 23 ; ἐξαιρέω, pluck out : Matt. (v. 29 ; xviii . 9) ;

αἰρέω, take away : John xv. 2 .

ת ת כ , συγκόπτω, beat down : Ps. lxxxix. 23 ]24[.

ט ה ל , φλογίζω, burn up : Ps. xcvii. 3.

ס א מ , ἐξουδενοῦμαι, melt away : Ps. lviii . 7 ]8[ .

ל ו מ , ἐκπίπτω, cut down : Job xiv. 2-N.T. come to nought : Rom.

(ix. 6) ; fall : James i. 11 .

ת ו מ , ἀναιρέω, slay : Isa. xi. 4 ; ἀποθνήσκω, die : Isa. xxii. 13 ; θάνατος, death : Ps. xiii. 3 [4] ; cxvi. 15.

" And now I must begin again, and first find another argument which will assure me that when the man is dead the soul dies not with him ” ( οὐ συναποθνήσκει).-Phado, ch. xxxviii., Jowett, p. 437-Ν.Τ. ἀναιρέω, slay : Matt. ii. 16 ; Acts ii. 23 ; 2 Thess.

ii. 8 ; kill : Acts vii. 28 ; put to death : Luke xxii. 2 ; take away : Heb.

Χ. 9 ; ἀποθνήσκω, die : Luke xx. 36 ; John vi. 49, 50 ; viii. 21 ; Rom. v. 6, sqq.; viii . 13 ; 1 Cor. xv. 3, 22, 31 , 32 (36) ; Heb. ix. 27 ; νεκρός, dead : Rom . vii. 8, without law sin does not exist ; Eph. ii. 1, 5 (James ii. 17 , 26) ; νεκρόω, mortify, marg. make dead : Col. iii. 5 ; θάνατος, death : John v. 24 ; viii. 51 , 52 ; Rom. v. 10, etc.; vi. 16, 21 , 23 ; 1 Cor. xv. 21 , 26, 54, sqq.; James i. 15 ; v. 20 ; 1 John iii. 14 ; Rev. ii. 11 ; xxi. 4, 8 ;

θανατόω, put to death : Matt. xxvii. 1 ; Luke xxi. 16 ; 1 Pet. iii. 18.

ה ח מ , ἀπαλείφω, destroy : Gen. vi. 7 ; ἐξαλείφω, destroy : Gen. vii. 4,

23 ; blot out : Exod. xvii. 14 ; xxxii. 32 ; Deut. xxix. 20 [19] ; Ps. ix. 5 [6] ; (li. 9 [ 11 ]) ; lxix. 28 [29] ; cix. 13, 14. To blot out the name of a being is to destroy the being ; to strike out the name from the catalogue of the living is to eliminate from the number of beings. " Let his name rot ! " was a formula of cursing, see Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, i. 69-72 . Cf. Prov. x. 7. According to the Talmud the damned in hell know not their own name ; it is the inconscient state of the second death-Ν.Τ. ἐξαλείφω, blot out : Acts (iii. 19 ; Col. ii. 14) ; Rev. iii . 5 ; cf. Luke x. 20 and Phil. iv. 3 ; wipe away : Rev. (vii. 17 ; xxi . 4) .

ץ ח מ , συνθλάω, smite or strike through : Ps. lxviii. 21 [22] ; CX. 5-

N.T. break to pieces : Matt. xxi. 44 ; Luke xx . 18 .

ס ס מ , ἀνταναιρέω, melt away : Ps. lviii. 8 [ 9] ; τήκομαι, melt away :

Ps . cxii . 10- Ν.Τ. τήκομαι , melt : 2 Pet. iii . 12 .

א צ מ to find ἃς ἔχεις, which are here : Gen. xix. 15 ; εὑρίσκω, find :

with neg. Isa. xli. 12 ; passive Gen. xviii. 29 ; pass. with neg. Job xx. 8 ; Ps. (x. 15) ; xxxvii. 36 (Jer. 1. 20) ; Dan. xi. 19. Not to be found is a Hebraism for having ceased to exist. That which is no longer visible to God's eye has ceased to exist. See Delitzsch on Ps. x. 15 ; cf. Jer. xxiii. 39, and the Bible annotée de Neuchâtel, in loco.-N.T. examples with neg. Rev. xii. 8 ; xviii. 21 (XX. 11) ; cf. 1 Pet. iv. 18.

ק ק מ , τήκομαι, pine away : Ezek. xxiv. 23 ; xxxiii. 10.

καταφθείρω, pine away : Lev. xxvi. 39 -N.T. corrupt : 2 Tim . iii. 8 ; destroy : 2 Pet. ii. 12 .

ח ס נ , ἐκτίλλω, pluck out : Ps. lii. 5 [7] ; ἐξωθίω, root out : Prov. ii. 22

-N.T. thrust out : Acts (vii. 45) .

ל פ נ , πίπτω, fall : Ps. xxxvi. 12 [13] ; πτῶσις, fall : Jer. xlix. 21 ;

Ezek. xxxi. 16-N.T. Matt. (vii. 25, 27) ; Luke xx. 18 ; 1 Cor. x. 12 ;

Heb. iii. 17 ; Rev. (xiv. 8) ; ῥῆγμα, ruin : Luke vi. 49.

ץ פ נ , συντρίβω, dash in pieces : Ps. ii. 9-N.T. break in pieces or to shivers : Mark (v. 4) ; Rev. ii. 27 ; break : (Mark xiv. 3) ; bruise : Rom. xvi. 20 ; σύντριμμα, destruction : Rom. iii. 16.

ץ ת נ , καθαιρέω, destroy : Ps . lii. 5 [7], see ף ו ס , ἐκλείπω, consume : Zeph. i. 2, 3 ; perish : Esther ix. 28, see ע ו ג ;

ἀναλίσκω, come to an end : Isa. lxvi. 17 ; λικμάω, consume : Dan. ii. 44-

Ν.Τ. ἀναλίσκω, consume : Luke ix. 54; Gal. v. 15 ; with κατα prefixed, Heb. xii. 29 ; λικμάω, scatter as dust : Matt. xxi. 44 ; Luke xx. 18.

ה פ ס , ἐκλείπω, consume : Ps. xxiii. 19 see ע ו ג ; συναπόλλυμι, consume : Gen. xviii . 23 ; xix. 15-N.T. perish with : Heb. xi. 31 .

ר ב ע , παρέρχομαι, pass away : Ps. xxxvii. 36, marg. ; παράγω, pass

SUPPLEMENT No. VI.

away : Ps . cxliv. 4 – Ν.Τ. παρέρχομαι, pass away : Matt. (v. 18) ; xxiv. 34 ; Luke (xvi. 17 ; 2 Cor. v. 17) ; James i. 10 ; παράγω, pass away : 1 Cor. (vii. 31 ; 1 John ii. 17) .

ד מ ע , διαμένω, endure : Ps. cii. 26 [27] ; ὑφίστημι, stand : Ps. cxxx. 3 ;

Mal. iii. 2 ; ἵστημι, stand, with neg. 2 Chron. v. 14 ; Ezra ix. 15 - N.Τ.

διαμένω, continue : Heb. i. 11 ; μένω, abide : 1 John ii. 17 ; ἵστημι, stand, as opposed to falling ; Matt. (xii. 25, 26) ; Luke xxi. 36 ; Rom. xi. 20 ; 1 Cor. x. 12 ; Rev. vi. 17 .

ת מ צ , ἐξολοθρεύω, destroy : Ps. liv. 5 [7] ; lxxiii. 27 see ת ר כ ; ἀφανίζω, cut off : Ps. xciv. 23 see ד ח כ ; ἀποκτείνω, destroy : Ps. ci.see

ם ו ק , ἀνίστημι, stand, with neg.: Ps. i. 5. Cf. ד מ ע ל ט ק ἀποκτείνω, slay : Ps. cxxxix. 19, see ג ר ה ; ἀναιρέω, slay : Dan .

ס מ ר , καταπατέω, trample underfeet : Ps. xci. 13 ; καταθλάω, trample : Isa. lxiii. 3.

break in pieces : Job xxxiv. 24 ; break : Ps. ii. 9 .

ץ צ ר , συντρίβω, break : Ps. xxiv. 14, see

ב ק ר rot : Prov. x. 7. ף א ש pant, marg. devour : Isa. xlii. 14.

ר ב ש , συντρίβω, destruction : Isa. i. 28 ; broken : Isa. viii. 15, see

ת ב ש παύω, make to cease : Deut. (xxxii. 26)-N.T. Acts (xx. 1 ; 1 Cor. xiii. 8).

ה א ו ש desolation : Isa. x. 3 .

ק ח ש , λεπτύνω, beat small ; Ps. xviii. 42 ]43[. ת ח ש , καταφθείρω, destroy : Gen. ix. 11 , see ק ק מ ; διαφθείρω, destroy :

2 Sam. i. 14 ; διαφθορά, corruption, destruction : Ps. xvi. 10 ; lv. 23 [24]

-Ν.Τ. διαφθείρω, destroy : Luke (xii. 33) ; Rev. xi. 18 ; decay : 2 Cor. iv. 16 ; διαφθορά, corruption : Acts ii. 27 ; xiii. 34, sqq.; φθείρω, destroy : 1 Cor. iii . 17 ; φθορά, corruption : Gal. vi. 8 ; 2 Pet. i. 4.

ר מ ש , ἐξολοθρεύω, destroy : Deut. vii. 24 ; Ps. xcii. 7 [8] ; cxlv. 20, see ת ר כ ἀπόλλυμι, destroy : Isa. xlviii. 19,

ע ק ש , κατάδυμι, sink : Jer. li. 64.

ש ר ש , ἄῤῥιζος γίνομαι, ἐκτίλλω τὸ ῥίζωμα, root out : Job (xxxi. 8( ; Ps. lii . 5 [7 ]-Ν.Τ. ἐκριζόω, root up : Jude 12.

ה ל ת , σταυρό , hang : Esther vii. 9, cf. ver. 10- N.T. crucify : Rom.

vi. 6 ; Gal. ii. 20 ; v. 24 ; vi . 14.

These quotations relate to " the annihilation of the evil element in man, of sin, and of the flesh. "-Prof.

Reuss, Histoire de la théologie apostolique, vol. ii., p. 163, edition of 1852. ם מ ת , ἐκλείπω, be consumed : Ps. civ. 35 ; Jer. xxiv. 10 ; Lam. iii. 22.

In the LXX. καταργέω is used to express a forced cessation of work, as representing the Chaldee ל ט ב : Ezra iv. 21, 23 ; v. 5 ; vi. 8 ; but it is not applied to life. For the N.T. use of the word see the following :

abolish : 1 Cor. xv. 24, 26 ; 2 Tim. i. 10, cf Rev. xxi. 4 ; bring to nought : 1 Cor. i. 28 ; vi. 13 ; 2 Thess. ii. 8 ; Heb. ii. 14 ; come to nought : 1 Cor. ii. 6 ; do away : Rom. vi. 6 ; 1 Cor. xiii. 8, 10 ; 2 Cor.

iii. 14 ; Gal. v. II ; pass away : 2 Cor. iii. 7, 13 ; discharge : Rom. vii. 6.

See p. 347 sq.

Ν.Τ. Ζωή, ζωὴ αἰώνιος, life, life eternal : the impenitent sinner shall not see it, shall not have it, judges himself unworthy of it : John iii. 36 ; v. 40 ; vi. 53 ; Acts xiii. 46 ; 1 John iii. 15 ; V. 12. Delitzsch says : " To see the grave is to suffer death (Ps. lxxxix. 48 [49] ; Luke ii. 26 ; John viii. 51) . On the contrary, to see life is to possess and enjoy it (Eccl. ix. 9 in Heb. and marg. R.V.; John iii. 36). Sight, the noblest of the five senses, is used to designate sensation generally, and meta- To see the fire is to become warm phorically all our perceptions . (Isa. xliv. 16) . To see is often used for mental perception. "- Comme tary on the Psalms, Ps. xvi. 9-11 , and Biblical Psychology, sect. x.

The following phrases may also be indicated as denoting a complete suppression :

ם נ י א ד ו ע ὥστε μὴ ὑπάρχειν αὐτους, let the wicked be no more : Ps . civ. 35.

ס פ א כ ו ן י א כ ὡς οὐκ ὄντες καὶ οὐκ ἔσονται, as nothing and a thing of nought : Isa. xli. 11, 12 ; xxix. 20. Cf. Rev. xviii. 21 ( 1 Cor. i. 19 ;

Heb . viii. 13) ; Acts xiii. 41 , R.V. , marg.

ו י ה א ו ל כ ו י ה , καθὼς οὐχ ὑπάρχοντες, as though they had not been :

Obad. 16.

Cf. Job . x. 19 .

ס פ א מ ן י א כ ם י ו ג ה ל כ , τὰ ἔθνη ὡς οὐδὲν εἰσιν καὶ εἰς οὐθὲν ἐλογίσθησαν, all the nations are as nothing, they are counted less than nothing : Isa. xl. 17. Cf. ver. 23 ; xli. 12 .

י ל ב ת ח ש , pit of corruption, or of nothingness : Isa. xxxviii. 17 .

א פ ו ס ־ ד ע ה ד ב ו ה ל ו ה ד מ ש ה ל ἀφανίσαι καὶ ἀπολέσαι ἕως τέλους : το consume and to destroy it unto the end : Dan. vii. 26.

Cf. ver. 11 .

SUPPLEMENT No. VII.

SUPPLEMENT No. VII .

ESCHATOLOGY

(See page 103.)

ONE thing is certain, namely, that the philosophy of the Alexandrian Jews pressed with all its weight upon the theology of the Fathers ; and it is possible that, through the Fathers, our own theology may still be here and there impregnated by modes of thought derived from that source .

The idea of the pre-existence of souls was quite foreign to the purely

Hebraic thought : the Pseudo-Solomon owes it to the influence of Plato and Pythagoras ...

The doctrine of the pre-existence of souls is found also in the Talmud and the Kabbalah. But it is probable that if this doctrine is thus to be found in the Kabbalah, in the Talmud, among the Pharisees, and among the Essenes, it has come to them from a foreign source. It is a doctrine which is neither explicitly nor implicitly taught in the Bible. The logical developement of the Old

Testament germs would never have produced it ; an extraneous influence was needed.

Some have indeed claimed to have found traces of the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls in certain passages of the Bible, 2 but those traces exist only in the Alexandrian translation of the passages in question. It is historically certain that the earliest Jewish writings in which that doctrine is found are the work of authors who were under the influence of Greek philosophy.... 3

God created the world and man. Death was no part of the Creator's plan. The world and man were all created for immortality. But the devil, the prince of death, who is death itself, was jealous of this world and this humanity, which were placed beyond the bounds of his jurisdiction. So he managed to secure allies within the fortress. Among men themselves a number made alliance with him, and thus death entered into the world. For the men who became allies of the devil, this death seems destined to be utter death, death of the body and annihilation of the soul. The wicked flatter themselves that the righteous will share their fate; and in this they are partly right and partly wrong. The righteous

1 Henri Bois, licencié ès lettres, doctor in theology : Essai sur les origines de la philosophie judéo-alexandrine, pages 1, 276 sq. , 289 sq., 298, 302, 304, 310. Paris, Fischbacher, 1890.

2 Deut. xxix. 14, 15 ; Job xxxviii. 19-21 .

3 In the subsequent paragraphs M. Bois sums up the eschatology of the Wisdom of

Solomon .

indeed die physical death, but as a reward of their virtue God gives to them the immortality of the soul.

Then comes the last judgement, when the souls of the wicked find themselves face to face with the souls of the righteous. The wicked are altogether troubled and astonished at the confidence of the righteous man and at his salvation ; they have no trace of virtue that they can show. They are condemned, annihilated among the dead for ever. The righteous, however, live eternally ; they are near to God, among his saints and angels, and in the enjoyment of communion with Him.

It is not easy to fix the meaning of θάνατος in the book of Wisdom, and this word has been variously understood by the interpreters ; for our own part, we are inclined to admit the following explanation : God's purpose is life, life absolute, in its ontological sense. The devil has caused the entrance of death, that is to say of destruction, into the world. The wicked, who are the allies and subjects of the devil, will be the prey of this destruction, destruction of their body and of their soul, of their whole being. As for the righteous, they die, that is incontestable, and the wicked think that, therefore, the righteous will suffer the same complete destruction as themselves. But the wicked are mistaken, they do not understand God's mysteries ; they do not know, or they do not wish to believe, that if the devil has succeeded in extending to the earth his empire of death, if, thanks to the devil's jealousy and the wickedness of certain men, death comes upon all men, it can finally swallow up only the wicked.

It strikes the righteous only apparently or in part ; for justice remains immortal in spite of the devil and the wicked. If the righteous die, it is only their body that dies, their soul does not die, although those who are without sense may imagine that it dies with the body ; their soul is in God's hand (Chap. III.). From this it appears that the fate of the wicked is probably destruction, and not eternal torments.

immortality.

The reward of the righteous is

Death, as it is given by the devil, as he has caused it to enter into the world, and as he wishes to make all share it, is the complete death of body and soul. Such is the death of the wicked. But God's mystery consists in this : that for the righteous he has reduced this death to the bodily death alone.

The righteous obtain the immortality of their soul, that is to say, of that which is most important ; and thereby the devil and the wicked are foiled .

The wicked will be chastised ; they will lose the immortality of remembrance (IV., 18), that immortality of which they had no hope (II ., 4), but which the righteous possess ( IV., 1 ). They will be completely ruined, overthrown, and cast down from their place, mute with

SUPPLEMENT No. VIII.

terror and head downwards, after which they will be cast out among the dead, without honour, covered with ignominy for ever. The righteous, on the contrary, will enjoy a blessed immortality, communion with

God.1

One of the fundamental principles of earthly retribution is, as we have seen, that each one is punished in the line of his sin (XI., 16).

Let us then apply this principle, so dear to the Pseudo-Solomon, to the final as well as the earthly retribution.

Verse 10 of chap. iii. seems to authorize this application (καθ' ἅ ἐλογίσαντο ἔξουσιν ἐπιτιμίαν). The wicked have declared that there is no life beyond the tomb. They have asserted that when man's end approached there was no remedy ; that after death they would be as if they had never existed. What will be their punishment ? It will correspond in quality to the fault. Have they denied immortality ? They shall be taken at their word ! That immortality shall not exist for them ; all that they have asserted as to the nothingness and complete destruction of man shall be verified for them.2

While the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament does not contain any undeniable trace of the influence of Greek philosophy, the Greek canon of the Old Testament, on the contrary, bears incontestable evidence of

Hellenization in the Greek translation of the Hebrew canonical works (the version of the LXX. ) and in the Apocrypha (Ecclesiasticus and The Wisdom of Solomon).

SUPPLEMENT No. VIII .

(See page 112) .

To the majestic simplicity of the Scriptures, to the sublime and consolatory doctrine of redemption by the blood of the only Son of God, the Synagogue had preferred its thousand and one traditions, true and

1 III. , 9, 13, 14 ; V., 16 ; cf. VI., 18-21. [Cf. Isa. lxvi. 24, and Dan. xii. 2, 3. ] [Precisely the reasoning of Victor Hugo, who may have been inspired by the same text. See ante, Chap. II . , sect. viii., § 5, p. 64.]

3 Dissertation sur la Kabbale ou la philosophie spéculative des Hébreux, read at the public session at the commencement of the scholastic course at the Academy of

Neuchâtel, on 18 Nov., 1848, by Abram François Petavel, doctor of philosophy, and minister of the Gospel, p. 50, sq.-Neuchâtel, H. Wolfrath, 1848. [Dr. A. F. Petavel, father of the author of this work, was born in the last decade of the eighteenth century, and lived until 1870. During many years he was professor in the Academy of Neuchâtel, of which he was twice rector. Throughout his long life he took a deep interest in the Hebrew people, and was a diligent student of their language and literature.] false, sensible and absurd, moral and immoral, religious and impious. Reason was stifled, liberty crushed, the memory failed under such a mass of prescriptions, legends, distinctions and contradictory decisions. If only Israel had returned to the Lord his God with all the heart and with all the soul !

He would then have met with the Master who is meek and lowly in heart, and would have recognized his voice. “ Ο Israel, if thou wouldest hearken unto me ! "1 " For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. " 2

Among the Jews there have been wise and God-fearing men who have said : " In the Scriptures there is a spiritual meaning which we ought to discern, in tradition there is a clue that we ought to follow ; there is truth, there salvation, and it is God who gives intelligence." These have well spoken, and if they had set themselves to search the Scriptures in a spirit of faith and obedience, and with continual recourse to divine aid, no doubt they would have found the salvation and the truth that they sought ; for " the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, " and " he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. "4

But others have come, who, following their own reasonings or drawing from foreign sources, introduced certain theories as to the nature of things, as to God, man, and the universe, transcendental and audacious theories, which were only told in secret with reserve and infinite precautions ; and, in order to prevent these theories from being traced to their true source and estimated at their proper value, as well as to legitimate in their own eyes the occultism that was mingled with their speculations, they affected to connect them with the text of the Scriptures by an artificial method and forced interpretations. They feigned or imagined that God had confided the secret to the first man, who had transmitted it to the patriarchs, and these to Moses and the elders of Israel, who had caused it to be passed on from generation to generation, and from mouth to mouth, by a small number of chosen and initiated souls, until the moment when this sublime and mysterious recipe, which is the meaning of the word Kabbalah, had itself been embodied in writings such as the SepherJetsirah, or book of the Formation, the Zohar, or book of the Light, and others, their origin being ascribed to very early time, although their appearance is but of recent date." He, therefore, who had succeeded in mastering the Kabbalah possessed the key of the revelations, the understanding of all the mysteries ; entering into close relation with the divinity, if he would he could work

1 Ps. lxxxi. 9.

4 Matt. vii. 8 .

2 Matt. xi. 30.

3 Ps. xxv. 14.

6 ל ב ק , in Pihel, to receive. 7 The first edition of the Sepher Jetsirah is that of Mantua, published in 1565 (Franck).

French , interdit.

SUPPLEMENT No. IX.

miracles, and mould to his will both spirit and matter, he was king of the creation.

Such is the idea which has been entertained of the Kabbalah among the Jews and elsewhere ; such are the advantages that were promised in connection with it.¹

SUPPLEMENT No. IX .

CONTAINED IN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS.2

(See page 143.)

THUS saith the Lord : Stand ye in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. Jer. vi. 16.

The Jews in Berea were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They examined the Scriptures daily to see whether these things that they were told were true. Many of them therefore believed . Acts xvii. 11 , 12.

I. MAN IS NOT BORN IMMORTAL ; IMMORTALITY IS AN ATTRIBUTE OF

GOD ALONE.

The Lord God commanded the man, saying : " Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. "

die." 3

Gen. ii. 16, 17 .

But the Serpent said unto the woman : " Die ! Ye shall not Gen. iii. 4.

Then the Lord God said : " Behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil, and now he must not put forth his hand and

1 Shall we be surprised at the pretensions of the Kabbalah, supposed by the Jews to be the key of all mysteries. when we find the Roman orator defining philosophy as the science of things divine andhuman and the knowledge of thecauses ofallthat exists ?.

Tusc. , iv. 26 ; Offices, i. 43. The Roman jurisconsults, not content to define their traditional doctrine as the science of the just and the unjust, declared it also to be the knowledge of things divine and human.-Instit. Lib. i. , Tit. i. , § 2.

2 In those passages in which our translation varies from the usual versions, we refer the reader to the original texts. See ante, p. 176, note 1 . For the better understanding of these passages they should be studied in their context and with the aid of the best translations. In French those of Lausanne, Perret- Gentil, Rilliet, Segond, Oltramare, Lasserre, Stapfer, and Ostervald revised by the French Bible Society, seem to us most suitable for this purpose ; in German, that of Professor de Wette rather than that of Luther, and in English the R.V. rather thau the A.V.

Without placing the Old Testament on the same level as the New, and while admitting that revelation has been progressive, we would call attention to the unity of biblical teaching in relation to the subject of our study.

3 The Serpent, which is the Devil or Satan, is the father of lies. That dogma is, then, of diabolical origin which for the sentence of death pronounced against the sinner substitutes eternal life in torments. Satan thus appears as the earliest and the most skilful advocate of unconditional immortality.

take of the fruit of the tree of life, to eat and to live for ever. " Then the Lord God sent the man forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden the cherubim with a flaming sword, to keep the way of the tree of life.¹ Gen. iii. 22-24.

Man that is in honour and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish. Ps. xlix. 20 [ 21], cf. 12 [13] .

Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.2

Matt. x. 28 .

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the spirit is spirit. John iii. 6.

As the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself. John v. 26.

I am the way, the truth, and the life ; no man cometh unto the Father but by me. John xiv. 6.

Because I live, ye shall live also.5 John xiv. 19.

God will render to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honour and incorruption, eternal life. Rom. ii. 7.

I say the truth

I could wish that I myself should perish accursed and separated from Christ for the salvation of my brethren Israelites. Rom. ix. 1 , 3.

1 If words have any meaning, these verses signify that the divine mercy wished to spare the sinful man such a horrible fate as that invented by a self-styled orthodoxy : an eternal life in sin and suffering. The tree of life and immortality are favours reserved for a chosen number of penitent sinners. See Rev. ii. 7 ; iii. 5 ; xxi. 6 ;

2 Unless this is a vain threat of Jesus, it implies that even the soul can be destroyed, and will be destroyed, when the case requires it. 3 Water cannot rise above its level ; flesh can engender only flesh. The unregenerate man, being naturally carnal, cannot form part of the kingdom of God, wherein love and self- sacrifice are fundamental principles, while the flesh is essentially selfish. 4 Unconditional immortality is, then, an attribute of the divinity exclusively.

5 The Christian's existence depends upon that of Christ.

6 According to the traditional dogma, God grants immortality or incorruptibility with eternal life even to those who do not seek for them.

All the damned would thus be immortal. This would be a direct contradiction of the apostle's declaration. 7 Paul here repeats the vow of Moses ( Ex. xxxii. 32). He is willing to renounce life, and even existence, if by this sacrifice he can save his people. This is a truly sublime devotion ; it is in conformity with the meaning of the word anathema, which designates a victim devoted to destruction. In Segond's version of the Bible there is a note to Lev. xxvii. 28, stating that " vows of devotion were irrevocable, and involved the destruction of that which had been so devoted. " But is it possible to conceive that Paul could ask to become one of those outcasts who, according to the traditional doctrine, in ceaseless torments, fill eternity with their blasphemies ? No, the apostle could never for a moment have dreamt of forming so impious a wish ! The wish that he might cease to be is not unlikely. That implies no eternal hatred of God, and even of the Saviour himself.

The inner consciousness revolts from the thought that Paul could consent again to blaspheme, even for a patriotic purpose, while there is nothing repugnant in the idea of a pure and simple sacrifice of existence. On the contrary, it is the most noble and admirable conception that can be imagined. This passage is one of the thousand rocks on which the ecclesiastical dogma makes shipwreck .

SUPPLEMENT No. IX.

There is a natural [unspiritual]¹ body, and there is a spiritual body ; and so it is written : " The first man, Adam, became a living soul," the last Adam is a life-giving spirit. The first man taken from the earth is earthy; the second man [the Lord] is of heaven. As is the earthy such are they also that are earthy ; and as is the heavenly [spirit] such are they also that are heavenly [spirits]. Brethren, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.

1 Cor. xv. 44, sq.

God only hath immortality. 1 Tim. vi. 16 ; cf. i. 17. Ye owe your new birth not to a corruptible germ, but an incorruptible, the word of God which liveth and abideth.

1 Pet. i. 23 .

Great and precious promises have been made to us, that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature, enabling us to escape from the corruption that is in the world through lust.

2 Pet. i. 4.

To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death. Rev. ii. 7, 11 .

I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

Rev. xxi . 6 .

Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have the right to come to the tree of life.

Rev. xxii . 14 .

II . IMMORTALITY IS A PRIVILEGE GRANTED TO THE RIGHTEOUS, AND A

FAVOUR

The king

OFFERED TO THE PENITENT BELIEVER .

O Lord !

asked life of thee ; thou gavest it to him, even length of days for ever and ever. Ps. xxi. 4 [5] .

1 Literally, a psychical body, animated by an inferior life, without spirituality, organized for the life of sense or governed by the senses.

homines cum brutis commune habemus

Animalis quod qui naturæ sensibus obnoxia appetitu et cupiditate regitur. Grimm, Clavis N.T. philologica.

2 A " living soul " in the Bible is synonymous with an animal or animated being. -

Gen. i. 20, etc.

3 The very name Adam signifies earthy, taken from the earth.

4 Φθορά, at the same time moral corruption and destruction, rottenness. " These promises should induce us to flee from the vicious tendencies of the world, which lead to corruption, that is to say, to perdition, to ruin, to death ; then, positively, to aspire after the divine nature, which is incorruptible, not subject to death. "-Reuss, Epîtres catholiques, p. 242.

The natural man does not partake of the divine nature, he possesses only its image. A pool of water reproduces the image of the sun, without participating in the nature of that luminary.

Cf. Luke x. 19 .

6 It should be remembered that in the Bible the word life keeps everywhere and always its ontological meaning ; it is firstly and fundamentally existence.

In the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof there is no-death.¹

Prov. xii. 28 ; see, too, xv. 24.

In this rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather rejoice that your names are written in heaven .

Luke x . 20.

The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost.³

Luke xix. 10 .

They that are accounted worthy to belong to that age, and to share in the resurrection from among the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage ; for neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels, being sons of God and children of the resurrection . 35, 36.

Luke xx.

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life. John iii. 16.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life ; he cometh not into judgement, but hath passed out of death into life. John v. 24.

Ye search the Scriptures because ye think that in them ye have eternal life ; and these are they which bear witness of me, and ye will not come unto me that ye may have life. John v. 39, 40.

The bread of God is he that cometh down out of heaven and giveth life unto the world. They said therefore unto him : " Lord, evermore give us this bread. " Jesus said unto them : " I am the bread of life the living bread which came down out of heaven .

this bread shall live for ever.

He that eateth

Verily, verily, I say unto you,

Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have

1 Delitzsch, in his Hebrew translation of the New Testament, uses the term ת ו מ - ל א which is here translated no-death as the rendering of the Greek worl ἀθανασία. — I Çor. xv. 53, sq .

2 In biblical phraseology a name inscribed in heaven is an image representing the notion of a perpetuity of the person whose name is so written.

has been per-

3 To " save " and to " lose " are two words the meaning of which verted by traditional orthodoxy. To save is in the original to conserve, to preserve or snatch from destruction, from annihilation. In English, to save money is to keep or hoard it. This meaning has not disappeared from modern usage : it is found in many an expression : to save life, save the State, salutary herbs, such as are wholesome, suited to maintain life, safe and sound. When the Bible speaks of salvation the first meaning of the word is conservation. Thus it is said : “ Thou savest [preservest] man and beast. " Ps . xxxvi. 6 [7 ]. So, too, in the New Testament : " Much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved." - Rom. v. 10. Here saved evidently signifies not to be snatched away from hell, that being a result of the reconciliation, but to be preserved alive by the communication of a divine life.

There is no lack of Hebrew or

Greek terms for expressing the idea of happiness. If, therefore, the sacred writers te ll us of life and immortality, why not allow these words to bear their natural sense ? 4 The wicked, too, will be raised, but they will have to die again ; this is called in the Revelation " the second death."

5 From a beginning of death to a renewal of life.

SUPPLEMENT No. 1X.

not life in yourselves .

.1 It is the spirit that giveth life, the flesh profiteth nothing ; the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life."

Simon Peter said : " Lord, to whom should we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life. " John vi. 33-35 ; 51, 53,57,58,

Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my word he shall never see death. John viii. 51 .

I am come that my sheep may have life, and may have it in overflowing measure.

I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish . John x. 10 , 28.

I am the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die. John xi. 25 ; see, too, xiv. 19. Go ye, and stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life.

Acts v. 20.

They glorified God, saying : " Then hath God permitted the Gentiles also to come to repentance, that they may have life." Acts xi. 18.

The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom. vi . 23 .

If the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from among the dead dwel in you, he that raised up the Christ from among the dead shall also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit that dwelleth in you.3

Rom. viii. 11 .

The names of Euodias and Syntyche Philip. iv. 2, 3 .

are in the book of life.4

When Christ who is our life shall appear, ye also shall appear with him in glory.

Col. iii. 4.

Lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou wast called.

1 Tim. vi. 12 .

1 Jesus declares that through him alone can man “ live for ever. "

This declaration is repeated twenty-eight times in the first six chapters of this Gospel, fifty times in the same apostle's various writings, and yet for all that there are those who maintain the native and indefeasible immortality of all souls !

2 In other words, the believer, whose body dies, shall not be subject to the second death. Using the orthodox vocabulary, this saying would run : " Even though he were miserable, he who is happy and a believer shall never be miserable. ” A veritable reductio ad absurdum.

3 Twenty times in this Epistle the apostle tells us that death is the punishment of sin, and in more than a dozen passages he reminds us that life and immortality are exceptional privileges. Will it be said that to " give life to mortal bodies " is to make them happy ?

+ The book of life, according to the biblical image, is the register in which are inscribed the names of all living ; to be blotted out of this book is to be cut off from the number of beings, in other words, to cease to exist. Such erasure is the penalty of a bad use of human freedom. See Rev. iii. 53 xx. 153 xxii. 19.

Some have thought to see in the book of life the election of grace ; but since the election is the object of an unchangeable decree, erasure from it would be contradictory.

The Lord is not slack but is longsuffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

2 Pet. iii. 9.

The world passeth away, and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.1 1 John ii. 17 ; see also 1 John ii. 25 ; iv. 9 ; Rev. xxii. 17 .

III . IMMORTALITY IS A CONDITIONAL PRIVILEGE :

THE BIBLE NEVER

SPEAKS OF THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.2

Ye shall keep my statutes and my laws, which if a man do he shall live in them.

Lev. xviii. 5 .

See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day that

I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse : therefore choose life.

Love the Lord thy God, to obey his voice and to cleave unto him, for it is he who is the source of thy life and who lengthens thy days. Deut. xxx. 15, 19, 20.

Moses said to Israel : " Take to heart all the words which I testify unto you this day for it is no vain thing for you, because it is the source of your life, and through this word ye shall prolong your days."

Deut. xxxii . 46, 47 .

Wisdom saith : " Whoso findeth me findeth life hate me love death. " Prov. viii. 35, 36.

all they that

Righteousness tendeth unto life, but he that pursueth evil doeth it to his own death.

The fear of the Lord tendeth unto life.

Prov. xi.

19 ; xix. 23.

The soul that sinneth it shall die.

When the righteous man turneth away from his righteousness and committeth iniquity he shall die because of it. Again, when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive. Because he hath opened his eyes and turned away from all his transgressions that he hath committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die. Ezek. xviii. 20, 26, 28.

1 Of the wicked, on the contrary, there abides only a remembrance, and that gradually disappears, like smoke that is dissipated. That which belonged to the wicked will become the heritage of the righteous, who survive. Matt. xiii. 12 ;

2 It has been asserted that the immortality of the soul is taken for granted. A doctrine which might rather have been taken for granted is the eternity of God ; yet the Bible teaches this : Rom. i. 23 ; xvi. 26 ; 1 Tim. i. 17 ; vi. 16. There would be stronger reasons for the Bible to teach the immortality of the soul, if that were true ; but it teaches the exact contrary.

3 In order to be in accord with traditional orthodoxy, the prophet Ezekiel ought to have thus expressed himself: " The soul that sinneth shall live for ever in torments.

If the righteous turn aside from his righteousness, he shall be eternally tormented ; if

SUPPLEMENT No. IX.

O house of Israel .

Return ye, and turn yourselves from all

For I have your transgressions, so iniquity shall not be your ruin. no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God ; wherefore turn yourselves and live. Ezek. xviii. 30, 32 .

Enter ye in by the narrow gate, 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 how few be they that find it ! Matt. vii. 13 . Good Master, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life ? Jesus said unto him : " ... If thou wouldest enter into life, keep the commandments." Matt. xix. 16, 17 . As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the

Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth may in him have an eternal life.¹ John iii. 14, 15.

He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto a life eternal. John xii. 25.

The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the spirit is life and peace.2 Rom. viii. 6.

If ye live after the flesh ye will shortly die ; but if by the spirit ye make to die the deeds of the body, ye shall live. Rom. viii. 13.

We are a sweet savour of Christ unto God in them that are being saved and in them that are perishing ; in these an odour of death, unto death, and in those an odour of life, unto life. 2 Cor. ii. 15.

Be not deceived, God is not to be mocked : whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap ; for he that soweth unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth unto the spirit shall of the spirit reap eternal life. Gal. vi. 7, 8.

Lay hold on the life eternal. 1 Tim. vi . 12 .

Blessed of God is the land which, drinking in the frequent rain, bringeth forth herbs useful to those for whom it is tilled. But if it beareth thorns and thistles it is worthless. It will soon be accursed, and its end a burning. Heb. vi. 7, 8 .

the wicked turn away from his wickedness, he shall enjoy unending felicity. Turn ye, so that your iniquity bring not upon you an eternity of misery, for I take no pleasure in the endless sufferings of immortal creatures."

1 The sight of the serpent restored physical life to the dying Israelites ; so, too, the diseased soul that contemplates Jesus on the cross is reanimated, is healed, is immortalized. The notions of holiness and happiness are quite in the background.

2 Φρόνημα, cogitatio ; item desiderium. Schleusner.-A.V. to be carnally minded, to be spiritually minded. The words might be translated : a preoccupation with the things of the flesh, of the spirit, or a carnal tendency, etc.

3 The apostle seems here to have in view the premature deaths of libertines and drunkards ; but the death which is the final extinction of all the faculties is not excluded.

+ Φθοράν, the contrary of ἀφθαρσία ; while, according to the traditional dogma, the wicked would enjoy a sort of imperishability.

We are not of them that shrink back unto perdition, but of them that believe unto the preservation of the soul.¹ Heb . x. 39.

Our God is a consuming fire. Heb. xii. 29.

to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war

Beloved, I beseech you against the soul.3 1 Pet. ii. 1I .

Our witness is this : that God hath given unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life, he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life. I John v. 11 , 12 .

To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life.

Rev. ii. 7 .

He that overcometh shall be arrayed in white garments, and I will in no wise blot his name out of the book of life.

Rev. iii. 5 .

IV. THE SINNER IS THREATENED WITH DEATH ; THAT IS, A GRADUAL

DESTRUCTION OF BODY AND SOUL.

Unto Adam God said : " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread until thou return unto the ground, out of which thou wast taken ; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return . "4

Gen. iii. 19 .

If ye shall still do wickedly ye shall be consumed, ye and your king.

1 Sam. xii. 25 .

Evil shall slay the wicked. Ps. xxxiv. 21 ; see, too, ix. 5 ; xxi. 9, 10.

The Lord shall cut off the wicked by their own wickedness.

The

Lord our God shall cut them off. Ps. xciv. 23 .

He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul ; all they that hate me love death .

Prov. viii. 36 ; see, too, xxiv. 20.

Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.

Matt. vii. 19.

Be not afraid of them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul ; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna .

Matt. x. 28.

What shall a man be profited if he shall gain the whole world and forfeit his life, or what shall a man give in exchange for his life ?

Matt. xvi. 26.

Therefore without faith the soul will not be preserved. 2 Cf. Deut. iv. 24 ; ix. 3. 3 Lusts not only defile the soul, they can kill it ; that is their tendency.

+ There is no question of eternal torments in this sentence, any more than in the previous threat. It may be understood that the divine goodness mitigates the penalty incurred by the first man, by allowing him to prolong his earthly existence ; but it is incomprehensible that the divine judge should add endless torments to the death with which he had threatened the guilty.

5 ᾿Απολέσαι, the same word used to designate perishable food, John vi. 27. 6 See ante a commentary on this favourite maxim of Jesus Christ, Chap. IV. sect. vi.

SUPPLEMENT No. IX.

From him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away.¹ Matt. xxv. 29 .

Those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, think ye that they were sinners [lit. debtors] above all the dwellers in

Jerusalem ? I tell you, nay, but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish. Luke xiii. 4, 5,

He that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. John iii. 36 ; see, too, v. 40.

If a man abide not in union with me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered, gathered up, cast into the fire, and burned. John xv. 6. Even as they cared not to have the knowledge of God, God gave them And over to their reprobate mind, to do things that are infamous. knowing the ordinance of God, that they which practise such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but also consent with them that practise them. Rom. i. 28, 32.

After thy hardness and impenitent heart thou treasurest up for thyself wrath for the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgement of God, who will render to every man according to his works : to those who by patience in well doing seek for glory and honour and incorruption, eternal life ; but unto them that are factious and obey not the truth but obey unrighteousness shall be wrath and indignation. Rom. ii. 5-8.

Death passed unto all men, for that all have sinned.

Rom. V. 12 .

What fruit then had ye ? Things whereof ye are now ashamed, and the end of which is death. For the wages of sin is death. Rom. vi.

When we lived according to the flesh, our bodies were under the the fruit whereof is death. Rom. vii. 5.

dominion of sinful passions, Ye are a temple of God.

God, him shall God destroy.6 Spirit. 1 Cor. iii. 16, 17 ; vi. 19.

If any man destroyeth the temple of

Your body is a temple of the holy

1 Man is only by that which he has : memory, imagination, will, various faculties, etc. If the man had absolutely nothing, he would be absolutely nothing.

2 Cf. Matt. xxi. 41. What can be the meaning of this " likewise," if not a spiritual fate analogous to the tragic fate of the victims referred to, a suppression of life.

3 Before being burnt and reduced to ashes he is withered, that is, he loses even the unproductive sap by which he lived although barren.

4 If by death we are to understand an eternal life in torments, this passage would imply endless suffering for all little children who have died. Contemporary orthodoxy recoils from this logical consequence of the system.

5 Sin is not death, but leads to it. See also Rom. vii. 5 ; Phil. iii. 19 ; James i. 15 ;

I John v. 16, 17.

What is the death here referred to ? Not bodily death, for that comes upon the righteous themselves ; not spiritual death, for the practice of sin is itself an effect of that kind of death. There remains, then, the second death, which kills and suppresses the soul as well as the body. Bodily death is, however, not excluded .

6 Φθερεῖ τοῦτον ὁ θεός, God will destroy him who destroys his own body. Nothing will in the end survive this double destruction.

If our Gospel be veiled, it is veiled in them that are perishing.1

2 Cor. iv. 3.

I tell you even weeping : the conduct of many among you is that of enemies of the cross of Christ. Minding earthly things, they make their god of their belly and their glory of their shame ; whose end is destruction. Phil. iii. 18, 19.

They that desire to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare, and many foolish and hurtful lusts such as drown men in destruction and perdition. 1 Tim. vi . 9.

If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins , but a certain fearful expectation of judgement and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries. Heb. x. 26, 27 .

Lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin, and the sin when it is full grown, bringeth forth death. James i. 15.

He that converteth a sinner from the error of his ways shall save a soul from death. James. v. 20.

If the righteous is scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear ?4 1 Pet. iv. 18 .

Your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.5 1 Pet. v. 8.

These as creatures without reason, made to be taken and destroyed, in their own corruption shall surely be destroyed. 2 Pet. ii. 12 .

No murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. 1 John iii. 15.

V. PARTIAL LOSSES OF THE GUILTY, EVEN THOUGH PENITENT.

but your carcases shall fall

The Lord said : " I have pardoned in this wilderness. " Num. xiv. 20, 32.

Nathan said to David : " The Lord hath pardoned thy sin, thou shalt

1 According to the apostle, to " perish " or " die" in the absolute sense is to be plunged into a sleep from which there is no awaking, into a night which has no morrow.

Cf. I Cor. xv. 18, 32.

2 The end of such men is destruction.

What can there be for them after the end ?

3 Sin is not yet death ; it brings that forth when it has attained complete developement, has reached adult age, so to speak . 4 The implied answer is " Nowhere !" because he will exist no more. Prorsus exterminabitur, he will be entirely destroyed. J. J. Hottinger, Commentary, in loco. Periit, Wilke and Grimm.

5 Literally swallow up.

Souls can be swallowed up. What can this mean but a definitive destruction ? The lion that devours does not give back the souls.

killed " Like brute beasts, born for a purely physical life, to be taken and they will perish in the same way.

The ruin of those who are perverse is represented as exactly similar to the death of the beasts that perish without any ulterior hope. " Reuss, Epîtres catholiques, p. 249.

SUPPLEMENT No. IX.

not die ; nevertheless, the child that is born unto thee shall surely 2 Sam. xii. 13, 14 .

• die." 1

After all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, and for our great guilt, seeing that thou, our God, hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve, and hast given us such a remnant, shall we again break thy commandments ?

Wouldest not thou be angry with us until thou hadst consumed us, so that there should be no remnant nor any to escape ? Ezra ix. 13-15.

Thou wast a God that forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance of their doings.

Ps. xcix. 8 .

The Lord hath chastened me sore, but he hath not given me over unto death .

Ps. cxviii, 18 .

Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, we should have been like unto Gomorrah . Isa. i. 9.

For my name's sake will I defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain for thee, that I cut thee not off. Behold into the furnace of affliction. Isa. xlviii. 9 , 10 .

I will put thee

O Lord, chasten me, but with judgement ; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing. Jer. x. 24.

Fear thou not, O Jacob, my servant, saith the Lord, for I am with thee.

For I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee, but I will not make a full end of thee.

I will chasten thee with judgement, but I will in no wise treat thee as guiltless. Jer. xlvi. 28. This I recall to mind, therefore have I hope it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed.3 Lam. iii. 21 , 22 .

I have overthrown you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a brand plucked out of the burning. Amos iv. 11 .

It is better for thee to enter into life having only one eye than to have two eyes and to be cast into the fire of Gehenna. Matt. xviii. 9. What is a man profited if he gain the whole world and destroy or forfeit himself ?

Luke ix. 25 .

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-dresser ; he cutteth off every branch in me that beareth not fruit, and every branch that beareth fruit he pruneth, that it may bring forth more fruit. John xv. I , 2. Ye should have hearkened unto me it would have spared you

1 Not only so, but the terrible threatenings of 2 Sam. xii. 10 sq. did not fail of their accomplishment.

2 This admirable passage contains a sort of epitome of the biblical teaching on the subject. Cf. Neh. ix. 30, 31 ; Ps. lxxviii. 37, 38 ; Jer. iv. 27 ; v. 10, 18 ; xxx. 11 ; and

Micah vii. 7-10.

3 Dass wir nicht vernichtet sind.

De Wette and Perret- Gentil, versus Segond.

4 It is in man's power to damage and even to destroy his body, his soul, himself.

this harm and loss.

But now I exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. Acts xxvii. 21, 22 . If Christ is in you, the body truly is dead because of sin, but the spirit lives because of righteousness.¹ Rom. viii. 10.

If any man's work shall

The fire shall prove each man's work. be burned he shall suffer loss ; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire. 1 Cor. iii. 13, 15 .

When we are judged of the Lord we are chastened that we may not be condemned with the world.

1 Cor. xi. 32 .

He that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly, and he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. 2 Cor. ix. 6 .

Exercise discrimination, having mercy for some with tenderness and for others with salutary fear, snatching them out of the fire. Jude 22, 23.

VI . GOD

TAKES NO PLEASURE IN PUNISHING, AND HIS

CHASTISE-

MENTS, WHICH ARE ALWAYS PROPORTIONED TO THE GUILT,

ARE

CHIEFLY THE WITHDRAWAL OF HIS FAVOURS .

God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them : " Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. " Gen. ix. 1 .

The Lord [is] a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth, keeping mercy for thousands [of generations] , forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, but without leaving the guilty unpunished. Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7.

The Lord's anger is but for a moment.

He will not keep his anger for ever. Ps. xxx. 5 [6] ; ciii. 9 ; cf. Isa. lvii. 16. The Lord is gracious in all his works. Ps. cxlv. 17.

1 " The body is dead," a prolepsis in the thought. The apostle speaks by anticipation of the death of the body, which is necessarily in prospect for all men. Todt ist er so gut wie nicht mehr vorhanden. er,

H. A. W. Meyer.

2 This blessing, accorded to sinners, would be a mockery if the majority of the children of men were destined, after this short life, to an eternity of torments. With such a prospect marriage would become a crime. " We should like to make the champions of the dogma in question feel that they ought never to marry, for in doing so they run a great risk of bringing into existence beings who will be damned to all eternity ! But, after all, the dogma of eternal torments has had so little practical influence over men's conduct in life, that it has never, even in the most flourishing days of orthodoxy, arrested the incessant increase of the species, nor prevented the aspirations of humanity after the future. With or without reflection, and swayed by the secret power of the truth, the human soul has always looked in the direction indicated by hope, and without paying attention to the threats of a dismal superstition, it has never hesitated to accept, as dictated by God, that instinctive law given to his creatures

' Increase

!' "-Alliance liberale,

Dec. 3, 1870.

3 " But : to absolve and multiply he absolves not." The

Pentateuch, by L. Wogue, professor of theology in the Jewish Seminary in Paris. Although he pardons, God does not leave unpunished ; there is always partial punishment. These two declarations, far from contradicting, complete each other. The unpardoned sin would require the complete suppression of the sinner. For the true notion of pardon see ante, chap . v. , sect . ix. and x.

SUPPLEMENT No. IX.

Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish and wine unto the bitter in soul ; let him drink, and forget his misery, and lose the remembrance of his trouble.1 Prov. xxxi. 6, 7 .

In that day thou shalt say : " I will give thanks unto thee, O Lord, for though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortest me."

The Lord men .

Isa. xii. 1 .

doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of

Lam. iii. 33 .

The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, and repenteth him of the evil ; who knoweth whether he will not turn and repent ? Joel ii. 13, 14 .

Whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man it shall be forgiven him ; but whosoever shall speak against the holy Spirit it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in the age to come.2

Matt. xii. 32 .

He will miserably destroy those miserable men, and will let out the vineyard unto other husbandmen. Matt. xxi. 41 .

Woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed !

Good were it for that man if he had not been born.4

Matt. xxvi. 24 .

Whosoever shall blaspheme against the holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.5 Mark iii. 29.

Love ye your enemies and do good, and lend without expecting return, and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be sons of the Most High, for he is kind toward the unthankful and the evil. Luke vi. 35.

1 The divine mercy would have the torments of the death agony attenuated as much as possible. Hence, no doubt, the custom admitted among the Israelites of offering an intoxicating drink to those condemned to death.

See the posthumous work of D..

Simpson on Anæsthesia. And is it possible to conceive that this same God would reserve endless torments for these same sinners ?

2 Jesus here implicitly teaches that some sinners may be pardoned in the future life.

We shall presently see that Jesus also teaches a gradation in future punishments as well as rewards.

3 This declaration, in order to be in accord with the traditional hypothesis, would need to be modified thus : " He will inflict a multitude of torments upon those miserable men, and their subsequent life will be only one endless torture.”

4 For those less guilty it is then good to have been born ; this legitimate inference does not, however, accord with the hypothesis of eternal torments inflicted upon all the impenitent without distinction. This same verse is opposed to Origenism . It would have been good for Judas to have been born if he were destined finally to be among the saved, the present life being but an hour or a minute in relation to eternity.

5 A sin eternal in its consequences since it will remain unpardoned and unpardonable. The adjective eternal sometimes bears the meaning of irreparable, ineffaceable, irrevocable, irremediable, definitive. Heb. vi. 2 ; Mat. xxv. 41 , 46 ; 2 Thess. ii. 16 ;

Jude 7, etc.

6 " If God loves his enemies, will he punish them otherwise than for their good ?

Can an eternal torment contribute to the benefit of the sinner ? " Th. Scott. Questions proposées à l'orthodoxie. As for irreconcilable sinners, they punish themselves, but Providence has placed merciful limits to this power of self chastisement. As they fail to renew their life at the eternal fountain, the wicked being exhausted will end by re-

That servant who knew his Lord's will and made not ready, nor did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not and did things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with few stripes. And to whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required, and to whom they commit much, of him will they ask the more.¹

Luke xii . 47, 48.

It is not with the free gift as with the trespass where sin abounded grace abounded more exceedingly. Rom. v. 15, 20.

VII . FINAL DESTRUCTION OF THE IMPENITENT.

Thou destroyest the wicked, thou blottest out their name for ever and ever. The enemies are come to an end their very memorial is perished. Ps. ix. 5, 6 [6, 7] .

Yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be ; yea, thou shalt The wicked diligently consider his place, and he shall not be. shall perish as the excellency of the pastures, in smoke shall they consume away. Ps. xxxvii. 10, 20 ; see, too, ver. 36.

They are utterly consumed.

As a dream when one awaketh, so, O Lord, when thou awakest thou shalt despise their image.

Ps. lxxiii. 19, 20.

When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of turning to the nothingness which preceded their creation.

After a long and painful death-process, during which the heavenly Father's compassion will never be falsified, the peace of a dreamless sleep from which there is no awaking will be their portion.

Woe to the senseless and thankless coward who would envy such a fate !

He would deserve to share it. To utter such a desire would be blasphemy against the holy Spirit, who, being love, desires to communicate to us his life and happiness. Free as we are, shall we reproach him for not forcing the door of our hearts ? What are we waiting for before opening the door to him ? Shall we allow it to rust on its hinges ? 1 These words, " few stripes, " can scarcely be reconciled with the idea of eternal sufferings . Even though the sufferer were to receive only one stroke each thousand years, eternity would multiply them to infinity. From the conditionalist point of view, on the other hand, the chastisement consisting in a loss of faculties or capacities, the correlation between the fault and its punishment is always easily and mathematically established. If he who has received much loses all, his chastisement will be ipsofacto much greater than that of the man who loses little because he had received little.

2 There is a multitude of those not invited, and a multitude of those invited but not chosen. The number of those chosen is small in comparison. If all the nonchosen souls were to live for ever in sufferings, would it not be mockery to affirm that the effects of grace were greater than those of sin ? The apostle's declaration here can only seem true if regarded from our point of view. The salvation of the small number of the chosen is the harvest which is abundant in spite of the frost and the hail, it is the net profit of the banker when he has made up his balance sheet.

From the conditionalist stand-point death will have only a limited effect, inasmuch as after having killed its victims it can do no more. The day will come when its work will be over, while the objects of grace will for ever subsist. The monuments of death will disappear, death itself " will be no more," while the grace of Jesus Christ will remain always operative. Thus will it superabound. Otherwise it would be necessary to have recourse to the universalist interpretation, which we have seen cannot be maintained .

SUPPLEMENT No. IX.

iniquity do flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed for ever. Ps. xcii.

7 [8 ] ; see, too, cxv. 8.

The Lord preserveth all them that love him, but all the wicked will he destroy. Ps. cxlv. 20.

There will be no future to the evil man ; the lamp of the wicked shall be put out.1 Prov. xxiv. 20 ; xiii. 9 .

The moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool.2

Isa. li. 8 .

The cup that ye have drunk upon my holy mountain, of it shall all the nations drink continually ; they shall drink it to the dregs, and shall be as though they had never been. Obad. 16.

Behold the day cometh, it burneth as a furnace, and all the proud and all that work wickedness shall be stubble. The day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his beams, and ye shall leap for joy. And ye shall tread down the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet.

Mal. iv. 1-3.

Gather up first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up, but gather the wheat into my barn. ... As therefore the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be in the end of the age.

Matt. xiii. 30, 40.

When the net is filled, it is drawn up on the beach ; they sit down and gather the good into vessels, but they cast away the bad. So shall it be in the end of this age, the angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the righteous, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire. Matt. xiii. 48, 49.

He that falleth on this stone shall be broken to pieces, but on whomsoever it shall fall it will scatter him as dust.5

Matt. xxi. 44 ; see, too, ver. 41 .

When they are saying, " Peace and safety," then sudden destruction cometh upon them.

1 1hess . v. 3 .

They shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction.6 2 Thess. i. 9. If we sin wilfully after having received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful

1 In biblical phraseology the lamp often designates the life.

2 " The image here employed (cf. ver. 6 and 1. 9) expresses the idea of a slow destruction of the world and of the wicked."

Bible annotée de Neuchâtel.

3 Symbol of a truly radical annihilation. + Literally rotten, spoilt.

5 As Mr. White has pointed out, this figure, like many others, seems to imply that the punishment of the wicked will consist in a destruction of their being.

6 See chap. xi. of this work, and the Classified List of Objections in Supplement,

No. xvii .

expectation of judgement and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries . Heb. x. 26, 27 ; see, too, ver. 29 . I saw a great white throne and the dead, great and small, standing before the throne. And books were opened, and then another book was opened which is the book of life ; and the dead were judged according to their works, out of the things written in the books.

Those who were not found written in the book of life were cast into the lake of fire which is the second death .

Rev. xx. 11-15.

VIII . END OF SATAN AND OF THE REIGN OF EVIL .

" The

The Lord God said unto the serpent. woman shall crush thy head." Gen. iii. 14, 15 .

The Lord of hosts shall swallow up death for ever.

seed of the

Isa. xxv. 8 .

The beast was slain and his body destroyed, and he was given to be burned with fire. Dan. vii. 11 ; see, too, ver. 26 .

The God of peace shall crush Satan under your feet shortly. Rom.

The last enemy that shall be abolished is death be all in all.2 that God may

1 Cor. xv. 26 , 28 .

He in whom is all fulness was pleased to dwell in him, and by him to reconcile all things. Col. i. 19, 20.

The Lord Jesus shall slay the lawless one by the breath of his mouth and bring him to nought by the brightness of his coming. 2 Thess.

Our Saviour Christ Jesus hath abolished death.

2 Tim. i. 10 .

He also partook of flesh and blood, that through death he might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is the devil ; and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Heb. ii. 14, 15.

1 Cf. Rev. xiii. 8, xxii. 19 ; Ex. xxxii. 32 ; Ezek . xiii. 9 ; Dan. xii . 1 ; Phil. iv. 3, and ante chap. iv., sect. vii. , p. 136, and that which has been said about the book of life, p. 461 , note 4. 2 In all those who by faith and earnest endeavour will have overcome the deleterious effects of sin, and will have finally survived. It has been said that God would "

be all " in the lost as powerful justice, and in the saved as pardoning grace (Erbkam). In that case God would be even now all in all, for he pardons and punishes even here below.

3 Τὰ πάντα, " the whole creation," mentioned Col. i. 16 and 1 Cor. xv. 28.

This reconciliation of all things created cannot be made to agree with the existence of an eternal hell. In this passage the restitutionists have seen the final salvation of allmen without exception.

But, alas ! many souls will have utterly perished before the day in which the work of universal reconciliation will be consummated .

4 If he had wished to speak the language of traditional orthodoxy, would not the sacred writer have here substituted for " fear of death " that of hell and eternal torments ?

" Bring to nought, " καταργεῖν, is an emphatic expression used by the apostle Paul in the sense of abolition.

See p. 347 sq.

SUPPLEMENT No. Χ.

He hath been manifested for the putting away of sin.¹ Heb.

To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.2

1 John iii. 8 .

Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said : “ Behold, I make all things new." Rev.

xxi . 4, 5 ; cf. v. 13.

Nothing shall be cursed any more.

Rev. xxii. 3 .

SUPPLEMENT No. X.

BY AN AMERICAN

(See page 143.)

I HAVE spoken thus far of Jesus Christ as the Mediator, and of the Scriptures as the Record of God's Revelation . What now is the

Content of Revelation ? What that eternal purpose which is purposed toward us in Christ Jesus ?

I believe that man is a spiritual organism of whom life and death are predicable.

I do not believe in the natural and necessary immortality of man but in his potential immortality ;-to coin a word immortability.

in his " This is the record : that God hath given to us everlasting life, and this life is in his Son. Whoso hath the Son hath the life ; and whoso hath not the Son hath not the life." They who have not the Son have a life, but that life is probationary and perishable.

" The life which is life indeed " is a life " hid with Christ in God. "

believe the indispensable condition of eternal life to be conscious communion with, and obedience to God.

All our springs are in him.

1 Sin would not be entirely " put away " if it were going to be committed through eternity, especially as, according to all appearance, hell would be far more populous than heaven .

2 Sin, suffering and death. As shown in the preceding note, if the traditional theory were true, the purpose of the incarnation would not be attained 3 Where ? In the whole universe. The word there, in Paradise, which appears in some versions, is not in the original text. This gloss, moreover, would be in flagrant contradiction with the words οὐκ ἔτι, no more, since nothing accursed has ever been allowed to enter the new Jerusalem that is here in question. See in the Hebrew text and in the LXX. the parallel passage in Zech. xiv. II .

The same remark is applicable to the preceding quotation. Cf. Isa. xxv. 6-8.

theologicalopinion, by Rev. Charles 4 Extract from a pamphlet entitled, A Statement oftheologi

H. Oliphant, Pastor of the first Congregational Church, Methuen, Mass. , 1885.

him we live-if we live-and move and have our being.

To say that spiritual death is but disordered life is, it seems to me, to assume a heavy burden of proof. If life mean something other than conscious existence, and eternal life the everlasting fulness of that existence, it is not apparent to me. If death in one literature mean something other than disorganization and the loss of personal integrity, while in all other writings it has the simpler significance, it is not yet manifest to me. Every analogue with which observation acquaints us bears testimony to the fact that disobedience to the laws of organic life involves the penalty, first, of disease, and then of dissolution. So I think that " sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death. " Any doctrine, at least, upon this awful subject, which could be preached entirely in Scripture language , has seemed to me to possess great antecedent probability. And when to this is superadded the confirmation derived from the observation of all natural law and order, the objector must show, in the first place, that " invisible things are not clearly seen, neither understood, by the things that are made, " and, secondly, that Scripture language on this subject cannot have its literal values. With regard to the effect of this doctrine upon my own heart, I can humbly affirm that when, after years of perplexity, my mind fell upon so simple, and to me, unutterably profound a theodicy, the gospel of my Saviour asserted for the first time, to my understanding, its divine coherence ; the goodness and severity of God ceased their warring : " truth sprang out of the ground and righteousness looked down from Heaven. "

Sin being spiritual disease, the gospel is the " saving health " of God.

" The wages of sin is death ; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. "

Retribution is the inevitable portion of those who sin, and of this retribution, always painful, the event sooner or later will be everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.

I know not through what cycles of time the conscious torment of the sinner may continue, but trust I honour God by the reverent hope that it may not survive that far off and final catastrophe when " the last enemy shall be destroyed. "1

1 The view here set forth involves, it is to be noticed, neither the doctrine of arbitrary, judicial " annihilation," nor that of " the materiality of the soul," nor that of " the resurrection of the physical body" ; doctrines by which the simple, and, in my humble judgement, entirely irrefutable teaching of Immortality through Christ only has been sadly retarded and obscured.

SUPPLEMENT No. XI.

SUPPLEMENT No. XI .

SPIRITUAL GENERATION ACCORDING TO M. CÉSAR MALAN , JUN.1

(See page 147.)

ONE of those branches of natural history that have given rise to the most brilliant discoveries in our days is that of embryology, or the observation of the earliest manifestations of organic life in the plant or the animal. I cannot here expatiate upon facts of which the least complete exposition would require great detail and more knowledge than I possess.

It may suffice to remind any of you who are acquainted with the results of those researches of one fact which modern microscopists have brought to light in their studies of the eggs of animals of the kinds called " inferior," eggs which, on account of their transparency, allow of the direct observation of the first manifestations of life in the germ.

That fact is the presence, even in the egg that has not been fecundated, of actual animal life. This phenomenon of life, which is shown by an irregular, unequal, intermittent pulsation, is destined to cease if fecundation does not take place. This " life " is in that case gradually extinguished, and the work of decomposition soon begins, which might be called in relation to the organism in question an inverted evolution, or a life progressing towards death. On the other hand, from the moment when the egg is brought into contact with the fecundating element, this earliest movement of life becomes regular. The germ, which was already living, but with a life proceeding directly towards decomposition, begins at once to assimilate the surrounding matter with a sustained and progressive energy, and a new individuality has inaugurated the series of its manifestations in our universe.

Here, then, we recognize in the beginnings of a single life the successive appearance of two very distinct facts :

The first is one that we may be content to call a fact of existence, wherein that which is to become an individual life manifests itself already by an effort which is irregular, intermittent, and soon powerless.

This is the initial fact.

Left to itself, this form of life is destined

1 Revue de théologie et de philosophie, May, 1879. See also, by the same author, La Conscience morale, three essays read before a few friends, with an appreciative philosophic introduction by Professor Ernest Naville, a foreign associate of the Institute of

France .

Geneva, Paris, 1886.

2 That which follows has been suggested to me by an expression of Ebrard in his Apologetik. I take this opportunity of introducing that incomparable work to those of my readers who are not acquainted with it. I refer specially to the first volume.

• speedily to give place to that which will be its cessation and even its direct negation.

The second of these facts is that same life asserting itself and becoming the principle of a new activity, thus inaugurating a sustained progress by assimilating to its organs the elements of its environment ; while without this process those elements would have been devoted to decomposition. It is further the passage from the first to the second of these two forms of the same life : a passage due to the intervention of an agent similar but superior to that wherein resided the initial life, which left to itself would have had no power of persistence.

May we not look upon these facts of the genesis of animal life as a living parable of the spiritual facts that we have been considering together ? It is difficult to avoid noticing here the unanimity and persistence with which the witnesses of the living God and of his work always, when it is a question of the relation between God and man, in the Old Testament as well as in the New, place before us the image of a connubium, a personal, mystic union, wherein the human soul is called to become the " spouse " of its God.

You will recollect Paul's words on this subject when he speaks of the " mystery," of which he says he had a special knowledge, words at which we are always seized afresh with involuntary astonishment.¹

This is not the place in which to touch upon the emotional side of these images. On that side they have become familiar to the language of devotion. I only refer to them for the sake of the metaphysical truth implied in them. From this special point of view, I must call your attention to the answer which they give to our question : How are we to conceive of an eternal life ; of a life produced by the breath of God, which, if not subsequently submitted to the action of the fecundating and creative Spirit, is destined to extinction, involving, if not the immediate cessation, yet at least the gradual suppression of the human existence ?

SUPPLEMENT No. XII .

SALVATION BY THE BLOOD OF EXPIATION.2

(See page 153. )

THE author begins by calling attention to the fact that the traditional doctrine of expiation, so far from winning over to the Gospel the leaders

1 Eph. v. 32.

Cf. iii. 3-5, and ch. ii.

2 Extract from the minutes of the Theological Society of the Canton de Vaud, record of an essay presented by Dr. Petavel at the meeting of that Society on 25 March, 1889.

SUPPLEMENT No. XII.

of modern thought, seems rather to be a scandal to them ; it is looked upon as both absurd and immoral. These thinkers declare themselves unable to understand " this notion of a God who, being innocent, is immolated by a God who is just, in order to satisfy a God who is good. " Christian philosophers themselves reject, as contrary to the religious consciousness the substitution of the innocent for the guilty. M. Charles Secrétan, whose religious sentiments are well known, goes so far as to call such a substitution a monstrous idea, a blasphemous theory.

According to the venerable Lausanne philosopher, Jesus Christ died to give an example to the world, he sacrificed himselfto the spirit of sacrifice. But to accept this definition would be, as it seems to us, to put aside altogether the true notion of expiation.

The task of the theologian is to take up the question at the point where it is left by the philosophers. We have already had before us an exposition of the views of Professor Gess, which are very nearly those of the illustrious Dorner and of Professor Frederick Godet.

One of our members, Pastor Schræder, has pointed out the dangers of this theory.2

We are therefore obliged to seek a somewhat different solution.

The title of our essay requires a reply to these four questions :

I. What is to be understood by the word salvation ?

II. What is to be understood by the word expiation ? III. Do the Old and the New Testament teach salvation through the blood of expiation ?

IV. Can the religious consciousness understand and sanction the doctrine of salvation through the expiatory blood ?

I. Salvation.-Σωτηρία, the New Testament word, comes from the

1 La Civilisation et la croyance, op. cit. Pages 365-385. 2 Objections made by Pastor Schræder to the theory of Expiation setforth by Professor

Gess:

" We feel it necessary to put a note of interrogation at the end of our author's fundamental thesis. It reduces the atonement to a mere demonstration of God's justice, having for its only object to lead men to condemn themselves. The result would be that if we should condemn ourselves, if we should acknowledge our sin, expiation would cease to be necessary. Is this conception satisfactory ? " Is it certain that punishment has in itself no value, and that all its value lies in the sentiments of him who undergoes it ? No doubt human punishments ought always to have an educational and moralizing aim, because human justice is relative ; but does not our conscience demand an absolute retribution from the eternal justice ? Is there not in us a sentiment which requires that every fault should entail its punishment, and which attributes to that punishment, as such, its own proper value ?

" Our conscience demands that our fault should be atoned for, that reparation should be made for the wrong ; and, on the other hand, the conscience could not admit that the reparation should be made by any other than the culprit. It discards the idea that, in the suffering of the penalty incurred, an innocent person should take the place of the guilty. Vinet expressed such a conviction when he wrote : ' The transference of the guilt from one person to another is decidedly contradicted by our notions of morality. ' " Such are the two postulates of the religious conscience. Apparently irreconcileable, they render the problem of expiation difficult, if not insoluble."

root σῶς, which signifies subsisting, surviving. Salvation is synonymous with conservation or preservation ;1 σώζω, to save, signifies in the first place to preserve from imminent destruction. According to the biblical teaching the obstinate sinner is marching on towards death, θάνατος, and towards physical and moral decomposition, φθορά ; he is a being not capable of prolonged life. John the Baptist and Jesus Christ compare him to a barren tree, soon to be destroyed by the axe and the fire

Jesus threatens both soul and body with complete destruction in the fires of Gehenna, ἀπολέσαι. 2

Furthermore, Christian psychology reveals great disorder among the human faculties ; it demonstrates incontestably that in a thousand more or less subtile ways the spirit is brought into subjection to the sinful appetites of that which in Scripture is called the flesh. According to all analogy this disorder must logically result in a final arrest of all the functions of the soul. It is true that the absolute imperishability of individual souls was decreed by Pope Leo X. in 1513, and again by the Convention in 1794 at the instigation of Robespierre ; but it must be admitted that these two warranties are not quite sufficient.

II. The notion of expiation from the standpoint of the ordinary usage of the language.3

III. Salvation by the blood of expiation according to the Bible.

A. In the Old Testament.

Expiation byblood is at the very centre of the Levitical institutions of the Old Testament.

The Hebrew verb

ר ֶ פ ּ ִ כ kipper, the Pihel of ר ַ פ ּ ָ כ )the Kal form of which is not used in this sense), designates expiation with the meaning that we have attributed to the word. In fact, kipper is to cover, and as used in relation to an offence, means to divert the attention of the offended person by the offer of a compensation which so to speak covers, hides from his eyes both the offence and the offender ; but this compensation (which is in fact an expiation) always supposes a loss borne by the offender or by him who takes his place.4

1 The Latin word salus designates the conservation or preservation of existence, root salvus ; salva epistola, a letter not destroyed. Freund and Theil's Dictionary, and Doederlein's Synonymik. “ The Greek ὅλος is rightly identified with the

Sanscrit sarva and the Latin words salvus and sollus .

Sollum Oscè totum et solidum significat.

Festus . " --Max Müller, Nouvelles leçons sur la science du langage. Vol. i. , p. 358. Paris, 1867. So also in German, heil, whole, from Goth. hails. When the impenitent malefactor said to Jesus on the cross : " Save thyself and us, " it was evidently the conservation oflife, the prolongation of earthly existence, that he sought, not a mystic happiness.

2 Matt. x. 28.

3 See the definition given in chap. v. , sects. iii. and iv. , pp. 148-150.

+ The meaning of kipper ( Pihel) is established at its first appearance in the Pentateuch : Akapperah, Gen. xxxii. 20 [21], the identical verb, tense and person, of Exod. xxxii. 30. Lange thus comments on this passage : “ Jacob's expiatory presents

SUPPLEMENT No. XII.

It is true that God is often said himself to make the expiation, but it is important to note that he usually does so at the expense of the sinner, who provides the victim.¹

The great day of atonement, or expiation, is for the Israelite the most solemn in the whole year. The covering of the ark called kapporeth,2 the mercy-seat that receives the blood sprinkled by the high priest, is that which is most sacred in the holy of holies ; the shekinah, the very presence of God, was revealed above the mercy-seat. These details indicate the supreme importance attributed in the Old Testament to the expiation by blood.3

B. Expiation in the New Testament.-The New Testament borrows from the LXX. the terms that correspond with the Hebrew ר ֶ פ ּ ִ כ and its derivatives, ἱλάσκομαι, ἱλασμός, ἱλαστήριον, λύτρον, etc. Various declarations of Jesus Christ and of his apostles inform us that the work of propitiation was the main purpose of Jesus Christ's coming into the world.

Jesus himself said : " The Son of man came not to be ministered are to cover Esau's angry eyes and to prevent them from seeing henceforth his brother's offences. Jacob, who had usurped Esau's birthright, restores it to him in some measure ; these presents are a homage, the tribute of a vassal to his suzerain. This is his expiation. The verb kipper occurs here for the first time in the Scripture ; its meaning is to appease and expiate. " The LXX. rendering is ἐξιλάσομαι, and that of a somewhat similar passage is εἰς τιμὴν (Gen. xx. 16), which amounts to the same. Cf. Exod. xxx. 16. It is then not difficult to follow the line of filiation ofthe meanings of the verb kaphar. It means first to cover, overlay, then in its various forms successively to hide, efface (the remembrance of an offence by means of a satisfaction), expiate;; sometimes to cause to disappear, to annul.

1Alive coal taken from the altar burns Isaiah's lips, wherein there is a symbol of expiation ; it is at that cost that the prophet's iniquity is expiated, ר פ כ ת Isa. vi. 7.

ת ר פ כ the mercy-seat, is in the French versions propitiatoire, the place of propitiation.

3 When it is seen what a large place the idea of expiation occupied in the Hebrew's worship, and how everything in that worship was directed towards the reconciliation ofthe sinful man with the holiness of God, it is easy to understand that the great day ofatonement, or of expiation, would be looked upon as the very centre and core of the Levitical ceremonial. On that day was made a general expiation, for the people, for thepriests, and for the sanctuary ; it was therefore the most solemn of all the days in the year to the Israelite ; it was called the day of atonement, or simply the day. It was, moreover, the only day in the year on which fasting was obligatory, the mortification of the flesh being required to accompany penitence ; all work was to cease as on the Sabbath. The feast was kept on the Ioth Tisri, on the tenth day of the seventh month, and the choice of that day had certainly some relation to the symbolic value of the numbers 7 and 10, one the symbol of alliance and the other of perfection. It was necessarily the high priest who officiated ; on this occasion he put aside his splendid priestly robes and wore a simple white tunic. This costume was undoubtedly a symbol of purity and abnegation. The high priest began by offering a young bullock ; taking in his hand a bowl filled with the blood of this bullock, he went into the most holy place, which he had no right to do except on that day, and there seven times he sprinkled the blood upon the mercy-seat.... It is important to note that it was this entrance of the high priest into the most holy place that was the essential part of the celebration. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews ( ch. ix. ) teaches us to consider this ceremony in its entirety as a type of the propitiatory work of Jesus Christ. See J. A. Bost, Dictionnaire de la Bible, p. 325.

unto but to minister, and to give his life a ransom¹ for many. The propitiation, the highest purpose, crowns the ministry.2

The Saviour's conduct is diametrically opposed to that of the sinner. When the deleterious results of the fault committed are felt by the sinner, he often commits another fault by telling a lie in the fallacious hope of avoiding chastisement. This brings in reality only an aggravation of the punishment. Often, too, the sinner beseeches God to deliver him from the consequences of his fault, forgetting that God neither will nor can prevent a bad action from producing a baneful result. At bottom such a prayer implies, on the sinner's part, either ignorance or contempt of the true divine laws.

The Saviour, on the contrary, asks that he may bear the punishment of the sins of others. As a good son of the heavenly Father, he is so grieved to see God's law treated with contempt that he proposes to undergo that punishment which is the sanction of the law, which is itself indeed a law, the most hated, the most misunderstood of all laws. By thus acting, Jesus re-establishes the honour of the violated law ; to the contempt of which it had been the object, he opposes a superabundant respect.

But the law cannot be distinguished from God himself, of whom it is a vivid manifestation. By glorifying the law Jesus restores to God upon earth the glory which man's sin had obscured. As chiefand representative of repentant humanity, at the cost of his own blood he renders a solemn homage to the supreme law-giver. By his act he makes public acknowledgement not only of the culpability of the race, but also of the justice of the doom of death pronounced upon sinners. This acknowledgement, made by Jesus at the cost of his most precious life, constitutes in our view the very essence of the expiation. At the same time this painful sacrifice procures for man the most effectual remedy for his most inveterate malady, the levity which incites him always to hope for personal impunity or else to imagine that sin in general leads to no particular consequences.

IV. The religious consciousness in presence of the biblical doctrine of salvation by the blood of expiation.

As we have seen, the felt need of expiation is essentially the desire to make reparation for faults committed against God. This sentiment is eminently honourable, every tender conscience must share it. By

1 Λύτρον, Matt. xx. 28. 2 Cremer observes that in Æschylus and Euripides λύτρον is synonymous with expiation. See, too, Matt. xxvi. 28 ; John xii. 27 ; Rom. iii. 24, 25 ; Heb. ii. 17 ; ix. 22 ;

I John ii. 2; iv. 10, etc. In Heb. ii. 17 and ix. 12, Jesus is compared to the high priest, and the shedding of his blood to the sprinkling of the blood on the mercy-seat.

SUPPLEMENT No. ΧΙΙ.

voluntarily allowing himself to be put to death, Jesus, who makes himself our surety before God, desired to give absolute satisfaction to the legitimate craving of mankind for an atonement.

We believe that in our day the religious consciousness is still satisfied by the expiatory death of Jesus, for :

1. That voluntary death is a penal sanction given by the representative of penitent humanity to the divine law which humanity has violated. This spontaneous homage offered by a blameless victim is much more impressive than the sanction furnished by the sufferings and enforced death of the guilty. Besides, the value of the sanction furnished by Jesus is so much the greater because he of all men occupied the highest position in respect of personal distinction. The supreme law-giver has accepted with satisfaction this homage, which the apostle Paul says was to him " an odour of a sweet smell."2 This is the objective side of expiation, that which in the first epistle of John is called ἱλασμός, propitiation.3

2. The propitiatory death of the Redeemer, being a manifestation of justice, testifies that there is no such thing as impunity ; it also proves that sin, far from remaining without effect, causes its deleterious consequences to fall upon the innocent one himself, when his love leads him to intervene in favour of sinners. Impunity was the serpent's promise. The Saviour's blood was the most emphatic contradiction of that deception, of all the devil's deceptions the most pernicious.

3. Sin being the cause of our Saviour's sufferings and death, the spectacle of the cross appeals to our heart; that spectacle is fitted to inspire us with hatred of the sin which nailed our best friend to the infamous tree.

4. The religious consciousness sees also in the death of Jesus a manifestation of the heavenly Father's love, since Jesus was sent by him, and since God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Man is often inclined to indifference in religious matters and even to a smouldering enmity against God ; the contemplation of the cross of Calvary kindles in the heart the flame of a thankful piety.

5. Thus understood, the death of Jesus Christ banishes fear from the believer's heart, while it prevents pardon from ever degenerating into impunity.

6. The divine justice and love displayed in this death produce in the

1 It is in fact possible for the sinner to attribute the ills from which he suffers to hazard, or to the fatal concatenation of natural laws, rather than to the sin. Practically he does most frequently fall back upon this explanation ; and so the educational purpose of chastisement, namely, the manifestation of the deleterious effects of sin, is very often not attained. 2 Eph. v. 2.

3 I John ii . 2 ; iv . IO.

4 Gen. iii. 4.

believer's heart a humiliation mixed with gratitude, a compunction which in its turn leads to regeneration. The source of moral evil is dried up and the man receives the holy Spirit, which communicates to him an eternal life.

Restored to his normal condition, the man recovers the reason for his existence which he was letting go. He still pays a personal and inevitable tribute to the law of expiation, in a thousand sufferings and finally in physical death, but the resurrection will indemnify him for that temporary loss by endowing him with a spiritual body far superior to the earthly one.

This conception appears not to be open to the objections brought by Prof. Charles Secrétan against the traditional dogma ; for :

1. To suffering in itself we do not attribute any reparative virtue .

2. Jesus is not punished in the place of the guilty while these remain unpunished. Each of us is or will be punished in proportion to his actual faults. Jesus, the innocent, could not be punished ; he voluntarily submitted to certain consequences of others' faults, which is a very different thing.

3. Expiation is not a payment made to himself by God, the creditor. It is in his human nature that Jesus, the Chief and the voluntary representative of penitent humanity, renders homage to the divine justice, even unto blood.

4. The faith that saves is not a mere intellectual assent.

It includes an implied promise of cordial co-operation in the work of expiation¹ as well as in other works of Jesus Christ .

Moreover the biblical notion of expiation appears to avoid the dangers pointed out by M. Schræder in the theory of Prof. Gess ; for :

1. The biblical notion allows an objective value to the death of Jesus

Christ.

2. Also an objective value to the chastisement of impenitent sinners. As every cause is necessarily bound to produce its correlative effect, every fault committed in the objective world will result in an objective loss. The deleterious effect will always have an exact correlation with the gravity of the fault committed .

3. The innocent is not substituted for the guilty to the exclusion of the latter ; it is enough to admit that, in his propitiatory work, Jesus the innocent voluntarily participates in the expiation made by the chastisement of the guilty. The obstinate sinner, having to expiate alone, will perish entirely. In the case of the penitent sinner, faith and regeneration limit the deleterious effects of the evil. Jesus, the second Adam, expiates the initial fault of the first Adam.

It is never said that he has

1 We say expiation, not propitiation. Jesus alone, being sinless, propitiates.

SUPPLEMENT No. XII.

expiated all our faults. The annual sacrifice made by the high priest did not exclude the daily sacrifices of the ordinary priests. More than that, each Israelite made an expiation on his own account every time that he offered an expiatory victim. In the same way each Christian is a priest in the spiritual temple of which Jesus is the high priest ; each painful privation endured by the Christian in communion with Jesus Christ is a victim offered by him on the altar of eternal justice.¹ Sufferings and death are so many cases of tribute paid to the law of expiation, a law of moral continuity, the divine justice of which is in principle and in fact proclaimed by the Christian, following the example of his Master.

The high priest of the Israelites made expiation for the sins of the nation : and so Jesus, the high priest of humanity, has expiated the generic sin of our race. John the Baptist recognized in him the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. As head of the body which is the Church, Jesus Christ has suffered on account of the wounds of the body ; but that does not prevent the suffering of each individual member on account of his own local sores.

In some measure we all expiate by bearing the deleterious consequences of sin ; Jesus alone was able to join propitiation to expiation, because he alone was personally without spot and blameless.

Of him, then, we may well sing :

O let us all the love record

Of our resuscitated Lord,

And with the holy angels say : The Lamb shall have, as his of right, All worship, honour, strength and might, All glory, riches, praise for aye.³

1 Rom. xii. I. The apostle Paul exhorts the believers to offer their bodies a living sacrifice, θυσίαν, the word used in speaking of the expiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Cf. Heb. x. 12 ; Eph. v. 2. 2 Whither does this Lamb go, and whither does he carry the sins that he takes upon himself? Isaiah gives the answer : " To the slaughter." And the Gospel adds : " To Golgotha. " How John the Baptist was initiated into this mystery we have seen on the occasion of the baptism of Jesus ; chap. vi. , § 2. Cf. John i 29, 36 ; Isa. liii. 7, 10 ; 1 Pet. i. 19, and the name of the Lamb slain given to Jesus some thirty times in the Revelation.

3 Rev. v. 11-15.

The French words are :

Célébrons tous la charité

De ce Sauveur resuscité, Et disons avec les saints anges : Digne est l'Agneau de recevoir

Hommage, honneur, force, pouvoir,

Gloire, richesses, et louanges !

SUPPLEMENT No. XIII .

PALINGENESIS ACCORDING

M. RENOUVIER AND

M. CHARLES

(See page 166.)

HUME'S point of view, being completed by the concept of a continuity and a harmony of developement of the phenomena distributed and adjusted in space and time, leads the thinker to perceive in that harmony and that continuity the key to the difficult enigma of permanence and identity, a key which metaphysicians persist in seeking in the intangible substances of the soul or of matter.

With regard to the prolongation of the destiny of the individual man, it may be asked whether the future life of the soul, as imagined by the partizans of natural immortality, and the miracle of material and organic reconstruction, as pictured by believers in resurrection, do not at bottom closely correspond to the hypothesis or belief of an adjustment of future phenomena of which the series and functions, being the continuation of the present series and functions, under the law of memory, would constitute the true reality of the permanence and identity of the person.

In that case it would suffice to conceive that the same universal law, unknown in its natural foundations, which has produced the existing consciousness, is called to produce, under other conditions, a new consciousness wherein will be contained the former consciousness prolonged.

In order to complete the hypothesis of palingenesis without miracle, it is enough to observe that all nature, to one who should not understand but would have to guess at it, would be just such a miracle, if miracles there were. There is so much obscurity about physiological phenomena and about their connection on one side with the component elements, called material, and on the other side with the phenomena of perception, of memory, and of co-ordination of ideas, that it is no less difficult to understand that such phenomena have been produced than to understand how they might be reproduced so as to form sequences, and by recurrences and periods to make the permanence and identity real.

The obscurity spoken of, which is equal as regards the past and the future, makes it permissible for us without audacity to imagine, in an

1 Charles Renouvier. religieuse, July, 1878.

La grande question. L'Immortalité personnelle.

Critique

SUPPLEMENT No. XIII.

objective form, a concrete something of a kind insensible to our organs and our instruments which is in the individual, has existed before him, will survive him, and henceforth awaits the occurrence of future conditions of environment in which it will become possible to realize naturally, in a new organism, the pretended miracle of resurrection. But such an hypothesis is not at all necessary, for it is not necessary to know in what manner nature will work, any more than to know how in fact it has worked in order to give us being. This is said only to satisfy the imagination, to open to it a peep into possibilities. The true and most solid hypothesis is always that of which the terms are as general as possible, because thus it corresponds the better with the generality of the argument. The argument is essentially moral ; it rests entirely upon the universal notion of natural laws . The part that is known of those laws has to be completed by a law and a belief of an order natural and universal, under the inspiration of the moral law, the only one fully known to us, which for that reason ought to supplement all the others.

I will now endeavour to clear up these various points, paying special attention to those parts of the subject which have hitherto been the least popularized and leaving alone those which are best known to all my readers .

On the subject of the doctrines of natural immortality and of resurrection, I observe that the latter has been brilliantly sustained in England by Priestley among other materialist and Christian philosophers. The weakness of his partizans lies in the fact that they claim to establish doctrinally the cessation of all individual thought in the dissolution of the organism, and thus relinquish their position as philosophers and physicists by requiring for the restoration of the body the act of a deus ex machina of creation's drama. But they have a strong point : their idea is clear, concrete in its object, and they do not need to have recourse to the obscure fiction of an immaterial and abstract support of that which thinks. So, too, a philosopher who has some affinity with them, and whose doctrine deserves to be studied in this connection, Hartley, one of the founders of the English Association school of psychologists, attained to the conception of a sort of natural resurrection, which is closely related to the palingenesis of which I am expounding the principle.

The believers in immortality, for their part, I mean substantialists and spiritualists, had formerly plenty to do to defend themselves against the opponents of realized abstractions. Experience and the most likely inductions were far from favourable to them.

Their cause has become decidedly worse since the critique of " rational psychology " in Kant's great work, were it only in consequence of the remark (of which Kant was not the first to feel the force) that the existence and the attributes of the soul, as set forth by spiritualism, would not themselves be a guarantee against death. In fact, just as the body perishes by way of decomposition, so the thought and all the psychical faculties, being susceptible of enfeeblement, may perish by extinction. Extinction has the same relation to the intensity of qualities as decomposition has to quantitative agglomerations.

It is enough if the hypothesis of revivification, founded upon the exclusion of substantialist metaphysics and upon a more extended consideration of the natural laws of phenomena, be admitted in its generality, or as a mere working hypothesis, and whatever may be the unknown means by which it is to be realized, in the midst of a nature the profound ways of which are themselves unknown even in respect of the best known facts of actual experience. Nothing more is needed, indeed, to enable philosophical belief and theological faith and hope to obtain a firm footing in an intelligible conception of the universe : the former resting upon moral law and practical reason, the latter invoking revelation in addition. Still the way remains open for speculations as to the cosmic order of things in which such palingenesis would take place, and even as to the physical means that would be fitted to ensure the conservation of consciousness and the return of memory in relation with the bodily phenomena. It is important to observe here, although only in passing, that the immortality thus contemplated, so different from that of the soul-substance (pure spirit, in itself immortal) of the spiritualists, is not at all a forced immortality of all persons. It may just as well be a conditional immortality. There is room for conditions of enfeeblement and extinction as well as of continuation, or of the return and aggrandisement of the psychical powers in their adaptation to organisms.

The cosmic order of things in which this kind of palingenesis would take place might be represented in various ways equally acceptable, without any contradiction either of experience or of reason .

I will not speak of it, for that would be another subject, and in my opinion the hypothesis remains all the stronger from a purely philosophical point of view the more general are the terms in which it is stated.

As to the physical means, I have already indicated the one which has not failed to present itself to the mind of various philosophers and physiologists, because it attacks the problem directly, by supposing the existence of an imperceptible organism which survives the actual per

SUPPLEMENT No. XIII.

ceptible body and conserves the powers required for the production under new conditions of a form of body similar or superior to that which the individual has already borne. The naturalist Charles Bonnet, of the school of Leibnitz, the physician David Hartley, of the school of Locke, arrived at similar general views. Bonnet's hypothesis might now be presented, if it were a question of reviving it, in a form free from the inconveniences and errors by which it was discredited.

And

Hartley's ideas of palingenesis would deserve some of the attention which has been too exclusively bestowed upon that philosopher's vicious system of nervous vibrations , or with greater reason upon those of his works which were precursors of contemporary associationism.

The following fragment is also by M. Renouvier. It is taken from his already quoted work, Esquisse d'une classification systématique des doctrines philosophiques. The author, as will be seen, quotes the philosopher Charles Bonnet at considerable length.

In order to do justice to the hypothesis, it is desirable to consider only the general part of it ; that is to say, the supposition of a body at present imperceptible to the senses and beyond the reach of decomposition by the action of the forces actually in operation in nature. Itwill be easy to put aside all the rest in the following passages from Charles

Bonnet's Essai sur les facultés de l'âme :

We can imagine with some approach to verisimilitude that the callous body that is known to us is not the true seat of the soul, but an envelope of that seat, whereby it is connected with the whole nervous system, as by this it is connected with the whole organism.

I think myself justified in inferring the possibility that God may have made an organic machine with matter analogous to that of light, the elements of which might be sufficiently varied to provide for the composition of a great number of essentially different parts.

I conceive that it is by this ethereal machine that objects act upon the soul, and that the soul acts upon its body.

Whatever may be the manner of this communication, the fibres of the seat of the soul which correspond to the senses receive from them certain determinations which constitute the physics of memory or recollection.

Death breaks this communication between the seat of the soul and the senses, and between the senses and the world that we know.

But the nature of the seat of the soul is such as may preserve it from the action of the causes which produce the dissolution of the grosser body.

In this new state the man may retain his personal identity. His soul remains united to a little organism some fibres of which have retained determinations which are more or less durable.

1 Paris, 1885.

Vol. I., pp. 152-154.

In this organism there may be internal impulses from which may arise dreams which will help to strengthen the determinations originated in the former state.

Nature does not march by leaps and bounds.

She prepares long beforehand and in impenetrable darkness the productions that are afterwards to be exposed to the full light of day. If she has placed in the caterpillar the germ of the butterfly, in the seed the germ of the plant that is to spring from it, why should she not have been able to place in the human body the germ of a body that shall succeed it ? ...

The seat of the soul includes, then, a human body in miniature very Our present body is in direct relation with the world in which we now dwell : that different from the body that we are acquainted with .

which in miniature is enclosed in the seat of the soul is in direct relation with the world that we shall one day inhabit.

The seat of the soul includes, then, organs which are not to be developed on earth : it includes others which already exercise their functions here below ; these are those which correspond to our present senses. The almost infinite minuteness that these organs suppose is no real objection : nature works on a scale as minute as she pleases ; or, rather, great and little have no relation to nature.¹

Bonnet claims that, by showing that these determinations have an influence over the brain which is one day to be developed, he makes " the resurrection enter into the order of purely natural events. " Such is the idea of which the exposition is found in his principal work, of later date than the analytical essay, La Palingénésie.2

The sacred dogma of our resurrection is based mainly on the responsibility for our actions, and this again upon their morality. It is in the order of sovereign wisdom that the observance of natural laws leads sooner or later to happiness, and that their non-observance leads sooner or later to misery.

his future state.

The present state of man determines

The memory, which has its seat in the brain, is the foundation of the personality. The secret links that connect the imperishable germ with the perishable brain preserve in man the memory of his past states. He may therefore be rewarded or punished in respect of his past states.

He will be able to compare the judgement that is passed upon his actions with the remembrance that he will have retained of those actions.

1 Charles Bonnet. Essai analytique sur les facultés de l'âme, edition of 1770.

Chap. xxiv. , pp. 477-483.

2 Essai analytique, p. 476 ; Palingénésie, vol . i., pp. 309-319 .

SUPPLEMENT No. XIV.

SUPPLEMENT No. XIV .

PHILOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE MEANING OF THE GREEK VERB

(See page 214.)

In the New Testament the verb ἀπόλλυμι is often used to denote the ultimate fate of the impenitent.¹ We maintain that its meaning is always to destroy, to cause to perish, and in the middle voice to perish, to cease to be. Our opponents have claimed for it the restricted sense of taking away or losing certain attributes. In the following letter, of which he has kindly authorized the reproduction, Dr. Weymouth reviews the texts that have been quoted from classic authors in support of this restricted sense, and he shows that although sometimes in poetic style there is hyperbole, the destruction not being always effected, there is yet in view everywhere an eventual and total suppression of the individual himself. In the ordinary style, and particularly in the philosophical style, there is no hyperbole in the term that denotes cessation of existence. The same remark applies to the composites and derivatives of the verb ἀπόλλυμι. If we are rightly informed, Dr. Weymouth's conclusions have not been contested.

When sending us the authorization requested, our respected correspondent favoured us with some additional remarks, which we add in the form of notes to the original letter. 2

To the Editor of the English Independent.

SIR, While I am compelled to encounter Dr. Alexander as an opponent, I rejoice to see that he is disposed to adopt as his motto : " Speaking the truth in love." Most gladly will I meet him in that spirit, and endeavour to discuss without bitterness or dogmatism the question between us .

What that question is, is fairly stated by Dr. Alexander in the closing paragraph of his letter. Yet I would rather modify it thus : " Is there any evidence that ' the destruction of a man ' can signify ' the removal

1 See Supplement, No. VI., and pp. 319, 330.

2 As we have before said, Dr. Weymouth, formerly Head Master of Mill Hill

School, is author of a critical edition of the New Testament, entitled The Resuliant

Greek Testament ; London, Elliot Stock, 1886. We do not know an edition that rests upon a more rational basis, or that seems more worthy of confidence.

from him of all that constitutes the true dignity, worth, and happiness of an intelligent and moral being ' ?"

I. In dealing with this question, I will first take this word “ removal ” as referring to something external to the man himself; and I maintain the negative position. My impression, opinion, conviction (call it which you will) is very strong-based on more than thirty years' diligent study of the language-that ἀπώλεια or ἀπόλλυμι is utterly incapable of the above definition. But how am I to accomplish the proverbially difficult task of proving the negative ? Nothing would be easier than to collect examples by the score or the hundred in which ἀπόλλυμι as applied to persons is clearly our common English destroy, or, in its intransitive parts, perish, certainly not signifying the " removal from a man " of anything external to him ; and yet the induction would be incomplete. All I can do is to examine the passages in which the meaning which I have failed to find is alleged to exist.

Once more, therefore, I examine, at Dr. Alexander's invitation, the familiar opening lines of the " Clouds " of Aristophanes.

For Dr.

Alexander says : " I can hardly believe that Dr. Weymouth will deny that ἀπόλλυμι occurs in the sense of ruin, undo, be undone or ruined."

I do, however, most strenuously deny that these English expressions, which all refer to property and external circumstances, convey the true and proper sense of the verb ; and affirm that, applied to a person, it signifies (though, of course, it may be used hyperbolically) to perish, or cause to perish, destroy, or be destroyed. Now let us look at Dr. Alexander's case. Strepsiades, bewailing the mischief done him by his longhaired spendthrift son, exclaims : " He rides on horses and drives his chariot and pair, and his very dreams are of horses ; while I [not am ruined, but] am dying (with terror) when I see the moon in her twenties, for the interest will soon be due ;" that is, on the first of next month.

Surely my respected opponent will not take the " seeing ” here in the sense merely of " since " or " because," as the English " seeing " is often used. The Greek ὁρῶν has no such meaning. It is not the payment of the interest as ruining him, but the contemplation of the payment as killing him, which the words express.

No commentator, so far as I can ascertain, takes Dr. Alexander's view, nor can I see that it is possible to maintain it.

But in verse 26 Dindorf renders ἀπολώλεκεν by “ miserum reddidit." Yes, indeed ; just as the English and German and other modern languages will not admit certain grammatical figures (anacoluthon, for instance, and zeugma), so are they but little tolerant of hyperbole too. Hence it suits our modern modes of thought better to scrape and pare

SUPPLEMENT No. XIV.

and rasp down such strong expressions, as Dindorf has done, and as the lexicons commonly do. For all that, the exact meaning, I affirm, is " he has killed me outright. " The next passage by which my view is to be disproved is Aristoph. Av. 1113 (which is, I suppose, Dindorf's 1070). But nothing can be plainer than that the bird is here speaking of its eating, slaying, and killing worms and noxious insects, not even their ghosts surviving.

The third is Aristoph. Plut. 421. Well, it runs thus. Poverty is the speaker : " Why, I will wretchedly destroy you, wretched creatures, for ye are venturing on an audacious deed not to be endured ; wherefore ye are both dead men ” (ἀπολώλατον). As to the tense, Hickie quotes a just remark of Fischer's : " Poverty speaks of the future as already past, to indicate that it will certainly happen." (Compare Φοίβος

[ Eur. Or. 956, and Ion 1228.) The various translations, etc. , that I have within reach are all defective. Some rasp down the verb as to its essential notion ; some as to the tense, like Droysen, who renders : " Sterben müsst Ihr drum ."

But if, in this passage or in any other that is or may be quoted, there is room for doubt-though I cannot discern the slightest shade of ambiguity in it-it must be borne in mind that my negative position (which it is most unfair to call a mere assumption, being the settled conclusion at which an inductive process carried on for many years has landed me, and in which as to its affirmative aspect no scholar will deny that hundreds of passages support me) can only be overthrown by adducing from all Greek literature at least one passage in which the meaning of ἀπόλλυμι shall be clearly, unambiguously, unmistakably what we understand by ruin, and not what we understand by destroy.

The only passage I know which seems to approach the sense that I reject is Eur. Hec. 947, comp. 1098 and 1103 (Pors. ), where privation of the blessings of home and native country is spoken of in the words

Hickie translates, " Hath destroyed me far from my native land," which mistakes ἐκ for ἔξω. I should paraphrase thus : " Hath borne me off-which is death to me !--from my native land. " But it is important to observe that this is quoted from a tragedy, and we may therefore expect what I have in my former letter designated " the hyperbole of poetry and passion. " No such expression do I remember ever to have met with where the word is plainly used in its proper sense.

II. But it is not improbable that Dr. Alexander may wish his words " removal, etc.," to be understood so freely as not to be limited to that which is external to the man, nor, on the other hand, to touch the man himself-what he is essentially -but to include any great deterioration of his mode of being.

Well, I will help his argument by pointing out one instance where the noun ὄλεθρος is so used- Hom. Odyss. x. 250 and 421. Here the magic arts of Circe have changed the companions of Ulysses into swine, and this degradation of form is twice termed " destruction." I have no difficulty in seeing the use that may be made of this weapon, but to my own apprehension it is sufficient to reply that this again is a poetical, and I believe solitary, use of the word.

III. But, thirdly, is it possible that a man may be " destroyed," and yet exist ? Paradoxical as it seems, this view is suggested by Dr. Alexander's letter, and yet more distinctly by Mr. Hay's, and must be maintained by those who hold the “ orthodox " opinions as to the eternity of evil.

And, again, I will help my opponents with quotationsfrom the poets, which may seem to them weighty. For example, in the Odyssey (xi. 197) Ulysses is conversing in the lower world with the ghost of his mother, when she, speaking of her death by the decay of age, says : " Thus I perished ” (ἐγὼν ὀλόμην ). So in Odyss. xxiv. 186, the ghost of one of the suitors of Penelope says : “ We perished ” ( ἀπωλόμεθα). And in many instances in Homer ἀπόλλυμι is used where the existence of the departed spirit is expressly recognized. But, in fact, the Greek mind did not reckon the existence of the disembodied spirit as existence at all.

This seems to me to be amply proved by such a passage as I before quoted from the Hecuba.

And witness the death scene in the " Alcestis " of Euripides, line 389 : " Farewell, my children, " says the dying Alcestis. Her sorrowing husband speaks : “ Look towards them ! look ! " She replies : “ I am no longer anything." " Art thou leaving us ? " " Farewell. " The chorus interposes-" She is gone ; the wife of Admetus is no more !" Dr. Alexander would suggest that these phrases mean : " I am no longer with you," " she is no longer with us." I cannot admit it for a moment.

Not εἰμί, but the compound πάρειμι, would be the word to use then ; and there is no metrical difficulty, for

οὐ πάρειμ' ἔτι and οὐ πάρεστι δή would scan rightly enough.

former of these phrases is : " I am nothing now. " of non-existence be more strongly expressed ?

But to return now to Eur. Hec. 668, sq.

Besides, the

How can the notion (As to my first quoting it,

I would observe that I had not seen Dr. Alexander's letter when I wrote my letter to my friend the Rev. Edward White, which he has printed.) Mr. Hay has evidently not referred to this passage, or he would have

SUPPLEMENT No. XIV.

seen that it is not a shade or a ghost, but a living person, who uses the words in question. Hecuba has just received tidings that her daughter Polyxena has been slain as a victim by the Grecian chiefs ; and now attendants approach bearing a dead body, that of her only son who had survived the overthrow of Troy. One of them announces the fresh woe thus : " O, all-unhappy mistress, and even more than I say, thou hast perished, and no longer beholdest the light, childless, husbandless, citiless, eaten out with corruption."-- " But why bring ye here the body of Polyxena ? " They uncover the body, and she pours forth her agony of soul : " Woe is me ! I behold my son Polydorus dead, whom the Thracian king was protecting in his palace. I have perished, hapless being. No longer do I exist. " Now I appeal to the candid reader whether there is not here just simply a violent hyperbole ? Hecuba is addressed as " all-unhappy, nay, more than that. " Is not that hyperbolical ? She is said, so overwhelming is her affliction, to have perished and no longer to see the light, yet she stands living before them. Is not that hyperbole ? Then comes the plain, unexaggerated statement that she is without children, husband, or country. Then, again, a violent metaphor to describe her sorrow ; she is ἐξεφθαρμένη, as it were a dead body in the last stage of decay, corrupted from the centre right out to the surface all over. Let us have no scraping and rasping here .

Then again : " I have perished, and do not exist. "

If to any mind this seems a euphemism, a softened mode of expression, be it so ; to me it is hyperbole (like that in Or. 200, also expressive of bitter grief : " We have perished equally with the dead "-wrongly explained by Liddell and Scott, who have confounded 160 with 640). But call it by what name you will, this passage, taken with that in the " Alcestis," shows that the dead were regarded as perishing and existing no longer. The soul existed, a Greek would tell you, but only " as a shadow or a dream " (Hom. Odyss. xi. 206).

IV. But what if the perishing of the soul itself is spoken of? Why, then not even a shadow or a dream survives .

Socrates and Plato-for we must go to the philosophers now-taught both the antecedent and the prospective immortality of the soul, and denied that it can either γίγνεσθαι or ἀπόλλυσθαι, Phædr. 245 D, where γίγνεσθαι assuredly means " to come into being," and ἀπόλλυσθαι is clearly the opposite " to go out of being. "

In the same connexion he denies that it " has cessation of life ” (παῦλαν ἔχει ζωῆς, ibid., 245 C), and affirms its immortality

1 Verses 681-683 . In Herod. i.,45, ἀπολωλεκώς = φονεύς (ibid. ) : each being a violent hyperbole to describe the misery brought on a man by the death of his (virtually) only son.

Cf. Harpagon's language in Molière's Avare, when he has lost his money-box : " Je suis mort ; je suis enterré !" etc. August, 1891 .

(ἀθανασία), which he predicates also of the souls of the dead (Apol. 32). But he shows more fully what the destruction of the soul would be in the words of Cebes ( Phædo 70 A), who is inclined to think, in opposition to Socrates, that the soul, " when it has departed from the body, nowhere any longer exists, but on whatever day a man dies, on that day it is destroyed (διαφθείρηται) and perishes (ἀπολλύηται) ; the moment it departs and goes forth from the body it is dispersed like breath or smoke, and flies abroad, and is gone, and no longer exists anywhere." In 77 B another of the interlocutors asks Socrates : " What reason is there why the soul should not be born, be compounded of some elements or others, and exist before it comes into a human body ; and when it goes and departs thence, then itself also come to an end and be destroyed?"

(τελευτᾷν καὶ διαφθείρεσθαι). In 80 D the belief which Socrates condemns is expressed that the soul " is gone, scattered to the winds, and has perished " (διαπεφύσηται καὶ ἀπόλωλεν).

Elsewhere (88 B and 95 B) he contends that the soul is " immortal and indestructible "—ἀνώλεθρος-a word which he employs several times in this connexion, so that here we have the sense of ὄλεθρος clearly fixed. And, again (91 D), Cebes supposes that " this is really death-the destruction (ὄλεθρος) of the soul. " Finally, in 96 Α, ἀπόλλυται is the contrary of ἐστί-that is, destruction is the opposite of existence.

With passages such as these before me, I am astonished at Mr. Hay's off-hand and most erroneous assertion that " Plato and other Greeks spoke just as we do of the destruction of a man or of his life when he is killed. " Of Homer's poems, as above admitted, that would be true ; and Xenophon, though a follower of (Pythagoras and) Socrates, can speak as we do of men " wandering and perishing in the mountains "

(Anab. i. 2, 25 ), referring obviously to the destruction of the body only.

In the same passage, and speaking of the same men, Xenophon uses the verb as = lose, a sense which I have in my former letter admitted and accounted for.¹ But, in the more exact language of the philosopher, θνήσκειν οι ἀποθνήσκειν is to die, τεθνάναι is to be in the state of death ; and these words are constantly and accurately distinguished by Plato from ἀπόλλυσθαι and ἀπολωλέναι.

Mr. Hay adds : " No one word, such as ὄλεθρος, with simple negatives, expressed fully what they meant when they asserted that the soul itself shall not perish or be destroyed."

1 I lose = I destroy in relation to myself, so that the thing relatively to me no longer exists. (See 2 John 8. ) " The same word is appropriately used of Ulysses' companions and ship lost at sea ; for to him they were virtually non-existent." Agar

Beet in the Expositor for January, 1890, p 28. Professor Beet is an opponent of ours, so it is an amusing slip in his logic that he here reasons from τὸ ἁπολωλέναι = nonexistence, which he elsewhere denies !-August, 1891 .

SUPPLEMENT No. XV.

What, then, is ἀνώλεθρος ? Is it not an adjective from ὄλεθρος, with the simplest of all negatives, the prefix av-, which is the English un- ? But more surprising still, Mr. Hay goes on to speak of the " frequent addition ” of εἰς τὸ μὴ ὄν. Frequent, indeed ! So far as I remember or can find, it is unknown to Plato altogether, though it may be in Plutarch , who wrote some 500 years later. In Plato's Greek it would have been utterly superfluous. There to perish is to cease to be ; destruction is nothing short of extinction of being . And if the classical writers are to be appealed to to throw light on those solemn words which speak of the destruction of " both soul and body in hell," whose usage can be quoted as even approximating in authority to that of Plato ?

R. F. WEYMOUTH, D. Lit.

MILL HILL, March 8th, 1870.

SUPPLEMENT No. XV .

SYNCHRONICAL TABLE

OF CHURCH

(See page 229.)

THE table on the following page reproduces, with some rectifications and additions, the classification adopted by the late Rev. H. Constable in his previously quoted work, The Duration and Nature of Future Punishment. The figures in the first column give the approximate dates of the deaths of the Fathers mentioned. An asterisk (*) placed before a name indicates that with respect to that Father some reserve must be made .

In several passages Clement of Alexandria seems to incline towards

Universalism, which was formulated later on by his successor, Origen .

The works of Justin and Tatian contain such contradictions that the question sometimes arises whether the text has not suffered interpolation. The great Athanasius was à priori a Conditionalist but à posteriori a partizan of eternal torments ; see p. 242, note 4. Tertullian admitted, without reserve, that the soul is corporeal. Jerome sometimes approaches very near to the views of Origen, etc.

SYNCHRONICAL

Date

TABLE .

Native and inalienable Immortality.

Conditional of

Immortality.

Death.

Eternal Torments .

Universalism.

Barnabas .

Clement of Rome .

Ignatius.

The Didache. Hermas .

Polycarp. 164 *Justin . 172 * Tatian .

Theophilus of Antioch. Athenagoras .

Irenæus .

*Clement of Alexandria.

Minucius Felix. *Tertullian .

Hippolytus.

Origen.

Cyprian .

Gregory Thaumaturgus .

Pamphilus.

Arnobius.

Lactantius .

Theognostus.

Eusebius of Cæsarea. Titus of Bostra . Basil . Diodorus of Tarsus.

373 *Athanasius .

Didymus of Alexandria.

Ambrose.

*Gregory of Nyssa.

Nemesius .

Chrysostom. *Jerome.

Pierius .

Theodore of Mopsuestia.

Augustine.

SUPPLEMENT No. XVI.

SUPPLEMENT No. XVI .

CONDITIONALISM AND

CONDITIONAL

UNIVERSALISM .

(See page 278. )

CONDITIONAL Universalism claims to keep the golden mean between Universalism, properly so called, and Conditionalism. An inevitable and forced salvation would seem to be a denial of human freedom , and is therefore rejected on account of conscientious scruples.

On the other hand, Conditionalism is rejected as too austere. It is desired, on the one hand, that no one should be saved against his will, and, on the other hand, that the door of heaven should remain perpetually open .

Obstinate sinners are to be punished by chastisements which are eternally provisional, and it is expected that the day will arrive when the last rebel will submit.

In a word, it is the doctrine of salvation always possible for all.

This would be plausible, and we would willingly adopt a theory so seductive if it did not start from a false premiss, namely, the gratuitous supposition of a native and inalienable immortality. This is not a legitimate factor in the case, for we have duly ascertained and established, until the contrary is proved, that immortality in that sense has no foundation in philosophy. We have also ascertained and demonstrated that this à priori is energetically repudiated by biblical theology. As a consequence, this Conditional Universalism falls to the ground along with the forced immortality, as a branch falls when the trunk of the tree that bears it is cut down.

It is vain to invoke the eternal love of God, because free creatures who voluntarily and by degrees will have returned to nonentity no longer furnish objects for the manifestation of that love. The liberty of the beloved object must be the supreme object of the supreme love. If, by a culpable and fatal caprice and in spite of all the appeals of grace, the creature obstinately chooses death, the Creator will not use violence in order to impose life upon him. The rebellious creature must therefore come to the end of his individual existence within a period limited by the initial conditions of his life.

These few remarks seem to us sufficient of themselves to condemn this Conditional Universalism, but that which to us seems clear and decisive is far from being so to all. It is possible that we may have been led astray ; some error may have slipped into our reasoning. We will therefore put it to the test by submitting it to a fresh examination. Three distinguished advocates have undertaken the defence of Conditional Universalism ; we will first allow them to speak, and then consider attentively what they have to say.1

§ 1. PASTOR Berguer- BRETT.

The first place belongs to Pastor Berguer-Brett, who was the first to employ the term Conditional Universalism in the title of a thesis which dates from 1879. Since then the author has written in the Encyclopædia of Religious Sciences in opposition to the point of view that we are defending. The estimate of Conditionalism formulated by M. Berguer bears the character of a noble and rare impartiality. He says : " This dogmatic evolution is certainly the most important and interesting of those which are now in vogue. It is founded upon a very pure idea of human responsibility, and results from a sense of the need of restoring to Christianity its full moral power and efficiency."

The title given to the thesis, however, is open to criticism. The name Conditional Universalism has had a certain success. But is it really suitable ? Usually the name that designates a system corresponds to the affirmation which that system maintains ; thus optimism affirms that all is for the best in the best of worlds ; pessimism, on the contrary, teaches that everything in the universe is in a bad way and getting worse ; Conditionalism affirms that there is a condition to be fulfilled in order to the attainment of immortality, and so on. Now, what is the affirmation of Conditional Universalism ? The universality of salvation ? No, since it will always depend upon the free choice of individuals. At the bottom this condition is found to be the only element of certitude, the only absolute affirmation of the system, which thus, on examination, appears to be but a variety of Conditionalism with universalist hopes.

We shall not analyze an essay which M. Berguer himself no longer

1 In our replies we also take into account the arguments put forward by the late Rev. J. Baldwin Brown and by Archdeacon Farrar, two eminent champions of Conditional Universalism in England. 2Le Conditionnalisme et l'universalisme conditionnel. Geneva, Schuchardt. 3 Article Conditionnalisme in the supplement of that work.

SUPPLEMENT No. XVI.

defends as it stands .

There remains, however, the article in the

Encyclopædia before mentioned, wherein the author has renewed his attack by setting forth afresh some of his objections against Conditionalism, as we understand it. Most of these objections have been dealt with in our tenth chapter, and as for the rest they will scarcely bear criticism.

Two or three examples will suffice.

M. Berguer asserts that " an attentive study of the texts proves that the word death has only two meanings in the New Testament : bodily death, and condemnation in the future life." 1 On this statement our first observation is that the distinction between the two meanings indicated does not depend upon any definition ; there is no link of connection between them.

In his thesis the author tried to show such a link in a common notion of pain or anguish ; but, as we pointed out to him, that notion is only accessory ; there is often great anguish without death, and there are many deaths without anguish. We may add that the writers of the New Testament had in their vocabulary a plentiful variety of terms for designating pain or a state of misery. We are forced to believe that they knew and meant what they said when they spoke of death. In good lexicology a word has indeed only one meaning with extensions of that single meaning.2 Everywhere and always death must be the arrest of the functions of life, or of that which resembles life. This single meaning will cover the twenty-five accepted uses of the word die (mourir) in Littré's dictionary, for example, and all those in the New Testament, which is the book with which we are specially concerned. There are then not " two meanings but one meaning with several accepted uses.

The distinction set up by M. Berguer is, moreover, evidently incomplete, for the apostles exhort us often to " mortify " or cause to die the sins of the flesh. There is here no question of " bodily death " nor of " future condemnation." But the death thus indicated comes perfectly within the definition that we have given. As Professor Reuss has

و د said, it means " the annihilation of the evil element in man, of sin, and of the flesh. " 4 It is the end, the complete cessation of a guilty activity or life.

If it should be objected that sin is never entirely annihilated here below, we admit the fact, but we say that the precept naturally contemplates the ideal. Elsewhere Paul says : " Be perfected." 5 Absolute

1 Page 590. 2 See Preface to Littré's " Dictionary," p ix. sq. 3 Rom. viii. 13 ; Gal. v. 24 ; Col. iii. 5, etc.

4 Histoire de la théologie chrétienne au siècle apostolique, 1852. Vol. ii. , p. 163.

5 2 Cor. xiii. 11 , R.V.

perfection can never be attained in this world, yet no one would dream of reducing the value of the ideal term chosen by the apostle.

According to M. Berguer, the notion of annihilation appears to be absent in the great Greek philosophy. " Without going far to seek it, this notion is to be found in the fourteenth chapter of the Phado, where Cebes says : " But in what relates to the soul men are apt to be incredulous ; they fear that when she leaves the body her place may be nowhere, and that on the very day of death she may be destroyed and "1 perish." 1 Is not this the passage from existence to non-existence ? is it not annihilation ?

M. Berguer ends his article by saying : " The free being, as we believe, cannot use his freedom to destroy his life (it is not here a question of his earthly life), for life is the initial gift which dominates all the rest." With the best possible will, we cannot succeed in perceiving the force of this argument. Why should an initial gift be necessarily inalienable ? M. Berguer does not explain. The earthly life is surely an initial gift. Jesus, whose authority he will not contest, speaks of a man who " destroys himself," and in another place of a destruction of " both soul and body in Gehenna." 2

M. Berguer's reasoning is altogether vitiated by the erroneous assumption with which he starts ; the antiquated doctrine of the old spiritualism that the soul is " indestructible; that every conscient life belongs to the domain of the infinite and bears, in relation to its future duration, the character of the absolute. " These utterances show to what an extent pantheism has permeated the traditional scholasticism. It is now long since Rothe sounded the knell of these petitiones principii, saying :

" It is no longer maintained that the human soul possesses immortality by virtue of a supposed simplicity of substance." 3 It has been acknowledged that " the ontological argument is powerless to demonstrate the persistence of the personality. " 4 The clock of some French-speaking theologians is decidedly a good deal behind the time.

Kant and the school of duty ; Ulrici, William von Humboldt, the Chevalier Bunsen, Weisse, Baader, Rothe, Julius Müller, Twesten, Hagenbach, Superintendent Gess, Ritschl, Hermann Schultz, Lotze, in Germany ; Archbishop Whately, Bishop Perowne, Revs. Edward White, J. B. Heard, W. H. M. Hay Aitken, W. T. Hobson, S. Minton-

Senhouse, H. Constable, Professors Stokes, Adams, Bonney, Tait, Drs.

1 Jowett's translation, p. 414. Οὐδεν οὐδαμοῦ, literally = " Nothing nowhere. "

2 Luke ix. 25 ; Matt. x. 28.

3 Dogmatik, Heidelberg, 1870, 2nd part, p. 158.

4 A. Matter, Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses, at the word Immortalité.

This admission is all the more valuable, considering that M. Matter himself is a Universalist.

SUPPLEMENT No. XVI.

Dale, Weymouth, Mortimer, in England ; Dr. Bushnell, Professor

Hudson, Dr. Bacon, Revs. J. H. Pettingell, C. H. Oliphant, L. Abbott, in America ; Pastors Decoppet in Paris, Gerold and Ad. Schaeffer in Alsace, Cocorda in Italy, Dr. Jonker in Holland ; in France Messrs. Renouvier and Pillon, chiefs of the school of neo-criticism, Charles Lambert, Dupont-White, Edgar Quinet, Ott, Victor Hugo, Professor Armand Sabatier, of Montpellier, and among other theologians Messrs

Bois, late dean of the Faculty at Montauban, and Matter, honorary professor in Paris ; in Switzerland the philosopher Henry de May, A. Bost, Vinet (towards the end of his life), Professors Charles Secrétan

Ernest Naville, L. Gaussen, Gretillat, and Emery, Pastors P. Vallotton,

Choisy, Byse, and César Malan, jun.: all these thinkers belonging to so many different camps, all these religious minds have closely examined the traditional ontology and have declared it fallacious, something like the old astrology which also was a tissue of truth and fiction. The reasoned judgements of these men will naturally have greater weight than the opinions of those, however otherwise eminent, who have accepted the inheritance of the past without close examination.¹

If M. Berguer should one day, as he has led us to hope, at his leisure resume the subject that he has thus touched upon, we shall read with special interest any answer that he may make to the three masterly studies of M. Renouvier.2

It is well known that the late Professor

Lotze deserves to be placed along with M. Renouvier among the number of the metaphysicians of highest repute in our time. We therefore beg M. Berguer also to tell us what he thinks of a page taken from the German philosopher which seemed to us worthy to figure in this debate.

It is impossible to be more decidedly conditionalist.

1 The opponents of Platonism are reproached with a fondness for counting heads ; in so doing, however, they only imitate the first disciples, of whom

. Luke reports that they were " about a hundred and twenty."

2 The doctrine of Conaitional Immortality.Crit. relig. , 19th January, 2nd and 23rd February, 1884. In his third article (p. 57), M. Renouvier repudiates thus the hypothesis of M. Berguer, who had made the mistake of supposing M. Renouvier's opinion to be like his own :

" M. Berguer- Brett has fairly well mastered the principle ofphenomenism (pp. 59-61), but not so well its consequences, and especially he has failed to recognize the moral repugnance of neo-criticism for doctrines that tend to represent the universe as an endless developement. The ' Conditional Universalism' sm proposed by this author for sinners who will eternally make a rebellious use of their liberty (p. 85). It does not admit an end of evil, nor does it furnish a definitive solution to the problem of admits both the possibility of universal salvation and the possibility ofeternal torments salvation, the problem of the moral life. " I will add a word in reply to a criticism of detail which M. Berguer has devoted to an expression that I seem to have used, which he calls (p. 67) logomachy: ' An irreparable progressive annihilation. ' That the annihilation of any quality may come to pass progressively, by degrees, must I think be understood by every one ; and I call it irreparable when it reaches a point where all possibility of return and restoration is lost."

* See page 70.

Speaking of the method of the neo-criticism, M. Renouvier concluded as follows :

If it be a question of the moral judgement that ought to be formed by it upon speculations of a more extended order, and if it be necessary to compare the doctrine that fixes a definite limit to the tests of liberty and gives a definitive solution to the problem of moral evil, with those systems which contemplate an interminable succession of good or bad determinations of the will, with an infinite continuance of happy or unhappy conditions of life attaching thereto, the comparison does not result to the advantage of these latter, especially if they are examined along with their consequences in the region where they are fully developed, in the history of Oriental philosophies and religions.

On the ground of Christianity the question seems to me to be still clearer : the " end of the world," the " last judgment," the retribution in accordance with works are the very essence of eschatology. The condition of the " good " is absolutely and definitively determined : it is " life in Christ, " it is " salvation." How, then, should the condition of the others, whatever their number, remain for ever uncertain ? Such lack of symmetry is incompatible with a truly divine economy : it throws us back upon those systems of evolution wherein nothing ever comes to an end and all the affinities of which are with pantheism.

Thus the doctrine called universalist, that of the eternity of sufferings, and that of the destruction of the " wicked, " are those which alone satisfy the condition of a settlement of destinies, which alone can be rightly called definite solutions of the problem of evil. But in the first of these there is an irremediable moral vice : in the definitive result it equalizes good and bad actions, and consequently has a tendency to make us look upon the present life as mere sport and upon crime and virtue as things of no serious import, the good and the wicked being destined to come together at last. The second makes evil eternal, by making eternal the wicked and their sufferings ; it is suited only to an epoch in which the existence of a hell could pass for being necessary to the final satisfaction of the righteous ; but it sins deeply against charity and is out of all relation with justice. The third, the annihilation of the wicked, is the only one which, making goodness the condition of immortality, is in complete accord with that identification of Good with Life, of Evil with Death, in which a meeting-point is found for the dominant idea of the eschatological texts of Scripture and the most acceptable speculative developement of the postulate of immortality in the criticist doctrine of practical reason.1

1 Crit. relig. Feb. 23, 1884, p. 58 sq. M. Renouvier's " identification of Good

SUPPLEMENT No. XVI.

§ 2. M. AMÉDÉE ROGET.

The late M. Amédée Roget, of Geneva, was an excellent patriot and a conscientious publicist. He was president of the Association for promoting Proportional Representation. He was the author of a remarkable History of the People of Geneva ; he also wrote on religious questions, and he broke several lances in favour of Conditional

Universalism. We will reproduce his attacks and our replies. The first article by our lamented opponent appeared in the Alliance Libérale of 24th June, 1882 , under the heading :

SOCIETY FOR THEOLOGICAL SCIENCES.

The last session of the season was occupied with a second plea by

M. P. in favour of Conditional Immortality.

M. P. is a doughty champion ; when he has taken up with an idea he presses his adversaries very closely, he follows them from one entrenchment to another, and leaves them hardly the smallest opening through which to retreat. Thus M. P. gives no quarter to the doctrine of natural immortality ; his view, and that of the somewhat numerous school to which he belongs, is that the notion of the immortality of the soul was taught neither by the Old Testament, nor by the Talmud, nor by Jesus Christ, nor by the apostles, nor by the Fathers, and that the Scriptural texts as a whole, properly understood, lead only to one conclusion : the annihilation of the wicked; that the natural immortality of the soul is a Platonic idea which the current of Greek civilization at a comparatively late epoch introduced into the doctrinal system of the Christian Church, which originally knew nothing of it, and that this idea has exerted a baneful influence.

The opinion of M. P. is deduced by him from the texts with incontestable force, and when he eloquently opposes it to the revolting doctrine of the eternity of sufferings there can be no hesitation in agreeing with him. But this thesis of the annihilation of the wicked which M. P. would impose upon us in the name of the texts, is it really satisfactory to the religious consciousness and of a nature to inspire us with a lively enthusiasm ? These wicked men devoted to destruction are our brothers, and considering the moral infirmity common to all, it is not so easy to conceive for what possible intervening reason our with Life " must mean a final identification, for the two notions belong to distinct categories. See our reservations at p. 357 .

companions in existence should be destined some to life and others to annihilation.

The idea of the infinite love of God does not unite very harmoniously with the conception of the annihilation of one section of his creatures.

By the side of the hypothesis of annihilation there is that of universal restoration which can invoke in its favour some of the texts and especially the spirit of the Gospel. As Professor Bouvier has very pertinently observed, Jesus Christ said : " God is not the God of the dead but of the living ; " this saying implies the continuity of life. If the immortality of the soul is one of Plato's doctrines, we may be thankful that humanity has been inoculated by that great mind with a belief that has fortified the morals of so many of our kind, and has helped them to confront the trials of life.

Whatever we may think of the question in itself, the controversy raised by the champions of Conditional Immortality is very instructive in its bearing upon the further question of the weight to be attributed to dogmatic authority. For here is a doctrine, that of natural immortality, which during centuries has formed part of the teaching of the Christian Churches, Catholic and Protestant, and here are accredited theologians who boast of having succeeded in demonstrating that this doctrine is foreign to primitive Christianity and represents only a parasitic vegetation grafted upon the Gospel.

A. ROGET.

We replied in the Alliance Libérale of Ist July :

GENEVA, 29th June, 1882.

MR. EDITOR, —

When a cause is very good and the judge impartial that cause ought to prevail. The impartiality of M. Roget being as we may say proverbial, the believers in Conditional Immortality fully appreciate the judgement that he has delivered in your last number.

Their satisfaction is not however unmixed.

If our claims on the grounds of exegesis and history are admitted, that is a great point gained ; but that after all is nothing, or next to nothing, for the large class of minds who place their religious sentiment above the texts :

and we desire also to win these.

Independently of the texts, Conditional Immortality can accept the discussion on the ground of " the religious consciousness," which is that chosen by M. Roget.

" The wicked are our brothers, " says he, and he cannot bear the prospect of their annihilation. We deeply sympathize with these sentiments, which are worthy of a truly humble and loving soul. God forbid

SUPPLEMENT No. XVI.

that candidates for immortality should set up any arrogant pretensions ; by so doing they would place themselves among the number of those doomed to eternal death. But even charity cannot go so far as to deny the tragic and inevitable law of responsibility. The most compassionate of judges will condemn the parricide to death or perpetual imprisonment. And the supreme Judge, will he not punish ? It is evident that he does punish. It is said that his chastisements have for their object the salvation of the guilty. Supposing that to be their sole object, we will ask whether as a matter of fact it is always attained.

Here comes in human freedom, which with M. Charles Secrétan we feel obliged to take seriously into account, as no doubt M. Roget does too. From this point of view it may be perceived that voluntary sin leads to the aberration and gradually to the complete disorganization of the faculties of the impenitent sinner, who has no inalienable title to immortality. God does not directly annihilate any one, as we are accused of asserting, but he has too much respect for human liberty to force to live for ever those beings who obstinately court death, according to an expression of the book of Wisdom, or whose existence would involve moral impossibilities. The father of the prodigal goes out to meet the returning wanderer, he will not fetch him back against his will, nor receive him without conditions expressed or understood ; death in exile would be the punishment of final impenitence.

The Bible lays down as a condition of immortality personal communion with God in Jesus Christ. This communion, if mystical, is none the less a source of life ; philosophically, it is conformity to the normal type, the highest healthfulness of the soul, the true return to nature, of which Rousseau had only a glimpse, the reasonable condition of the perpetuation of the individual. From a scientific point of view, Conditionalism in relation to liberty is the graft of the Gospel upon the sturdy but wild tree of evolutionism. This doctrine is indeed of a nature to provoke " a lively enthusiasm," the enthusiasm of the deliverers who use their utmost endeavour to snatch men from imminent destruction .

Let us now ward off, or rather send back again a last arrow that comes to us from the side of the texts.

M. Roget opposes to us this saying of Jesus Christ : " God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." 1 Just so, we say, God is not the God of the dead, then there 1 Matt. xxii . 32 ; Cf. Mark xii. 27 ; Luke xx. 38. Jesus adds : " For all live unto him " ; but this word all should not be allowed to mislead : Jesus here speaks only of the faithful under the old Covenant, ver. 35. The expression " live unto God" signifies to live in moral communion with God ( Rom. vi. 10, II ; xiv. 8. Cf. Gal. ii. 19 ; 2 Cor. v. 15 ; 1 Pet. ii. 24). " This is further proved by certain texts of the fourth book of the Maccabees, in which it is said that ' those who die for God's are some who are " the dead."

In the same context God is called " the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," the God of the faithful patriarchs, but not in the same sense the God of such as Cain, Lamech, and Pharaoh, who have rejected him and upon whom he will not impose himself as their God ; those only will live of whom the Eternal is the God. Except from a dualist point of view, the transitory character of a life that is no longer nourished from its source must be admitted.

Being sinful creatures, we exist only as an effect of the divine mercy ; what will be the result if we deliberately cut the cord that holds us suspended above the abyss of nonentity ? The sinner who will not submit must perish.

This principle has been implicitly admitted even by some of those who are called Rationalists or Liberal Protestants, witness M. Gerold, director of the Progrès religieux, who wrote last year : " This doctrine has a grand moral aspect.

From this solution of the problem let us retain this incontestable truth, that those only can be sure of immortality who here on earth have laid hold on eternal life. Life eternal is no other than spiritual life, the life in and with God. It is only to be laid hold of by main force and earnest struggle. If we are brave men we shall not allow any obstacle to arrest us. " 1 " If ! " I stop at this solemn reserve, this sine quâ non, begging you , Mr. Editor, to accept the assurance of my high esteem .

M. Roget in his turn replied in the Alliance Libérale of 8th July :

Proceeding at full speed along the road of Conditional Immortality,

M. P. does not think it needful to halt before the objection that we put before him on the subject of the annihilation reserved for the wicked, which seems to us to be but little in harmony with the notion of the divine mercy.

Our courteous opponent answers us that " charity cannot go so far as to deny the tragic and inevitable law of responsibility. The most compassionate of judges will condemn the parricide to death or perpetual imprisonment. And the supreme Judge, will he not punish ?"

Undoubtedly the law of responsibility exists ; it is indeed the corner stone of moral order ; but wherein does that law imply, as a necessary consequence, the annihilation of the wicked and the impossibility for cause live unto God, like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the patriarchs,' xvi, 25 , cf. vii. 9. " C. Bruston, Rev. théol., 1885, p. 514. Whether this apocryphal book dates from the first century before or the first century after our era, it serves equally well to throw light upon the meaning and use of the phrase in question.

1 Progrès religieux, 27th August, 1881. See ante, p. 33 .

SUPPLEMENT No. XVI.

them to rehabilitate themselves in another economy. This it is that we cannot see. Conscience does no more than tell us that good alone is conformable to the divine will and that evil produces baneful consequences for him who commits it persistently. It is not in the name of conscience, it is in the name of a very contestable theological deduction that the doctrine of the sinner's annihilation is established.

Evil necessarily involves an expiation, this is the common teaching of the Gospel, of the spiritualist philosophers, and of the heathen religions which have risen above the worship of nature ; but expiation does not of necessity involve destruction.1

Why insist upon comparing to a human judge, who punishes because he can neither know nor do otherwise, the heavenly Father who can hold in reserve various means for bringing back the wanderers into the right way ? God's judgement is exercised in a very real manner, but it does not necessarily manifest itself in sentences of absolution or of condemnation.

Besides, human judges are scrupulously careful to graduate their punishments, and the divine judge would have only two alternatives : annihilation for some, immortality for others ! 2

The declarations of the Bible on this matter are largely open to discussion ; for it uses in different senses the terms life and death, the meaning of the word life being often confounded with that of spirituality, that of death with the idea of absence of spirituality. Moreover, for those who, whether by instinct or through a reasoned conviction, believe firmly in the indefinite continuity of personal existence death can have only the meaning ofpassage. 3

Again, M. P. says : " God has too much respect for human liberty to force to live for ever those beings who obstinately court death. " This obstinate disposition to court death needs to be explained and proved.

Further : " The Bible lays down as a condition of immortality personal communion with God in Jesus Christ. " Is that quite certain, and does it convey a very clear meaning to the mind ? Must we then look upon the numerous generations both before and since Jesus Christ who have never heard of the work of Christ as all devoted to destruction ? 4

Let us note that M. P. represents annihilation as indifferent to, if not desired by, Buddhists and the followers of Epicurus or of Hartmann ; in that case it would not have the character of punishment and would not satisfy the idea of justice.5

1 In chapter v. we have seen that expiation involves partial or total suppression of life or of certain vital faculties.

2 See our answer to this objection, p. 382 sq.

3 We have already had occasion to show that, in the Bible, death is always a cessa tion of functions. See chapter vii. , section vi. and p. 499. Ε.Ρ. 4 We do not. See p. 285 sq. E.P. 5 A culprit may have reasons for desiring prison or even death, but his desire does

No doubt M. P.'s thesis is relatively consoling when compared with the doctrine of eternal sufferings, but it keeps us still enclosed within an horizon which the Gospel does not forbid us to enlarge. The solidarity of all men in evil and in good is revealed to our conscience in a manner too striking for us to accept without repugnance a distinction so absolute as that which would devote one section of our fellows to destruction and the other to eternal happiness .

In our opinion, it is by considering salvation as a state of the soul making progress towards the good, and not as the counterpart of a supposed perdition, that the Christian thinker will raise himself above the uncertainties attending the eschatological problem and will contemplate it with complete serenity .

The discussion was resumed and brought to an end in the number of 29th July :

CHÊNE- BOUGERIES, 10thJuly, 1882.

I should abuse your hospitality if I were to continue a controversy the length of which would exceed the limits of your space.

Allow me simply to thank M. Roget, not this time for his concessions but for his criticisms, which bring the debate to a clear issue. In an early number of the Critique religieuse I will take care to fill up certain gaps that were unavoidable in my last letter.¹ It is true that while the eschatological problem is approaching its solution on the ground of exegesis there are several points still to be elucidated from the psychological point of view ; this is the reason why I made my appeal to all