The Problem of Immortality

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This translation of Dr. Petavel's work has been made by one who has long enjoyed thefriendship of the author and of the Rev. Edward White, and shared their conviction that immortality is not inherent in man, but is a gift of God offered to all in the Gospel. His study ofMr. White's book, Life in Christ, strengthened that conviction in his mind, and confirmed his persuasion that by means of this doctrine only can the whole evangelical system of the New Testament be united in a complete and harmonious synthesis, capable of satisfying the logical and theological requirements of Christian thinkers in the present day.

This persuasion gained fresh strength and precision in the perusal of the advance sheets of Dr. Petavel's French work ; and, having obtained the author's permission, the translator feels it to be a duty as well as a privilege to introduce the book to English readers.

Dr. Petavel has closely followed the controversy which has been kept up with scarcely any intermission, on the Continent as well as in England and America, during the years that have elapsed since the publication of Mr. White's book, the latest English edition of which appeared in 1878 and the French in 1880. In the present volume that controversy will be found brought up to date.

The original is in two volumes, the first of which was published in the last days of 1890, and contained Chapters I. to VI. with corresponding Supplements and the prefatory letter of Professor Charles Secrétan ; the second, containing Chapters VII. to XII. with the remainder of the Supplements, was issued only last December. In this translation will be found all the twelve chapters, with as much of the supplementary matter as could conveniently be included in a single volume, preference having been given to that which seemed to be ofchief importance to the English reader.

F. A. F.

Bristol, February, 1892.

TO MY HONOURED AND VERY DEAR FRIEND,

Rev. EDWARD WHITE,

The Christian apologist who has overcome many an objection of contemporary unbelief, the model controversialist whose fraternal arm has often sustained my weakness, while his love has cheered me in hours of darkness and his interpretation has enabled me more fully to understand the master-thought ofthe Scriptures,

E dedicate this book in its English form

With heartfelt gratitude.

E. PETAVEL.

Haute Combe, Lausanne,

February, 1892.

LETTER FROM PROFESSOR CHARLES SECRÉTAN .

MY DEAR SIR,

I could not thank you too much for the thought which induced you to communicate to me the sheets of your plea in favour of an acquired immortality.

Although I am not a competent judge in matters of exegesis, it yet appears to me clear that life must mean life and that death must mean death wherever the literal meaning is not absurd, and that a meaning cannot properly be declared absurd merely because it contradicts a dualism incompatible with all right understanding of real life. The idea of an immortality essential to spirit substance, making it impossible to assign to the existence of the creature either beginning or end, is a very near approach to pantheism, or else to polytheism .

The moral aspect of your doctrine is no less interesting to me.

We need to believe in the end of evil, in the death of death, in the absolute triumph of God. The sentiment of justice implanted in our hearts by God himself does not allow us to accept an infinite punishment as the penalty of a finite fault. To pretend that the fault is infinite would be to attribute to ourselves an infinite power, and in any case the full capacity of doing the right, which is precisely what the defenders of such a system deny to us, claiming on that point the support of universal experience. They are thus also constrained to acknowledge that the perpetual existence of hell and of the damned is necessary to the perfection of the universe, to the manifestation of the divine perfections, which consequently are not summed up in love. The idea of God which underlies this system is not a moral idea, his government can no longer serve us as a model, and if we should wish to apply to it the moral ideas according to which he intends that we should regulate our conduct, we should arrive at the most shocking blasphemies .

Under the influence of tradition, I endeavoured in my youth to explain the possibility of eternal torments by the possible persistence of rebellion ; but that infinite persistence in the bad use of a free-will always maintained is only an unrealizable abstraction . Besides, this conception, itself a considerable deviation from orthodoxy, had the serious disadvantage, from the properly religious point of view, of imposing upon the divine power an impassable barrier, since it might happen that after all the world would never be that which the divine goodness wishes it to be. No ; contingent evil may be explained by the positive value of liberty, but the religious consciousness cannot be reconciled to the presence of evil, unless it is affirmed that it has had a beginning and that it will come to an end.

On the other hand, the final salvation of all sinners, with or without their will, is no less repugnant to the moral consciousness, and the preaching of it could not fail to be mischievous to sinners, who are always looking out for reasons why they should not yet change their manner of life.

At one time I inclined towards this hope, certainly not imagining that God could ever allow a rebel to enter paradise, nor that for the sake of reaching an end he would convert the rebel against his will, but thinking that at last, by means of chastisement and patience, he would be able to lead all souls to conversion, thus subordinating the hour of the glorious consummation to the obstinacy of a single soul. It was not long before I perceived the moral weakness and the logical fault of this point of view, which at the same time asserts and denies the moral liberty of the creature .

I was, in fact, a predestined candidate for your doctrine, since I had always seen in evil not merely an insufficiency, a defect of being, like the logicians to whom we owe infernal metaphysics, but a direction of the will-that is to say, of the very being towards annihilation. I reproach myself for

having failed to carry out my principle to its logical consequence.

One word as to the gallery of ancestors and authorities that you lead us through. I do not see very clearly either the precise relation between the conditionalist doctrine and the connection of crime with atavism which was so pleasing to Edgar Quinet, nor the great advantage of counting Quinet among the number of your partizans.

I should like to caution you against the opinions of Professor Drummond. The great success of his work assuredly proves the existence in the religious public of a strong sense of the need to reconcile its convictions with science ; but it seems to me that before bringing Christianity within the bounds of evolution, it is needful to bring the fall within those bounds. If Christianity belongs to science, it is not as a chapter in biology, but rather as a chapter in medicine. Jesus Christ was a physician ; he remains our physician. The ideal of the natural man set forth by Professor Drummond is a false ideal ; the natural man is not a being of an inferior species to the believer, the natural man is an invalid ; and salvation is not offered to all with the reserve that a small number only are capable of receiving it. The system that makes of the elect a superior rank in the hierarchy of beings implies the most rigorous predestination and the express negation of human fraternity. Do not confound the survival of the worthiest with the survival of the fittest. Nature ends where liberty begins ; there is no moral order without liberty. Christianity belongs to the moral order, and the conscience has perceived that predestination cannot be reconciled with the appeals of the Gospel. Your accidental agreement with Professor Drummond on the particular subject of your book cannot prevent you from seeing the profound difference which separates you .

On the other hand, the extracts that you have brought together fully authorize you to reckon Vinet among your precursors. If he did not formally teach the extinction of unconverted sinners, it was because he did not write dogmatics.

Possibly he had not sufficiently defined his position ; possibly he did not perceive clearly enough the supreme importance of the doctrine with which we are concerned, to feel himself obliged to produce it in the pulpit, thus breaking away from the faith of the Church .

It is well known how much reserve he imposed upon himself lest unbelief should use the divisions among Christians as a weapon against them. Besides, in order to judge Vinet it should never be forgotten, in the first place, that he was not a professor of theology, but of literature ; and, in the second place, that he died before he was fifty. It is enough that conditionalism is the only possible conclusion from the premisses that he laid down.

In short, it seems to me that you effectually extinguish the eternal fires, which are no longer believed in, since, as you say, they are no longer preached, and to dissimulate while believing in them would be to incur a most fearful responsibility. You will doubtless win over the majority of universalists, who cannot but feel the danger of their doctrine, and who in your company find satisfaction on the most important point .

But, without ignoring men's eagerness to believe, and the fact that doubt is very often only the mantle which covers negation, I should be glad to find in your second volume a conclusive word to meet the case of those who deliberately hold themselves aloof from eschatological questions, they being persuaded that it is impossible to attain an idea of a future existence both precise and rational, and led away also by the idea that we ought to will to do right for the sake of right , without regard to personal consequences ; a sentiment closely akin to the pure love which desires only to know God, and does not fear to lose itself in God.

Your purpose is to remove an obstacle placed on the threshold of the temple, which prevents the entrance of large number. You would like, first of all, to constrain ministers to declare themselves openly on the question in disa pute ; it is to the Church that you speak, and if you succeed in leading it to a decision you will have gained an important point. When once the obstacle is removed, your fifth chapter appears to me, so far as an opinion can be formed on a single reading, to be an excellent summary of religion. But will you not say anything to those who remain outside the temple, in the grave-yard ; to those who perhaps trifling, perhaps also wishing to lead a good life, thinking perhaps of God and trying

to love him-are not at all anxious to quit this life, but for whom the prospect of complete annihilation is a subject rather of hope than of fear ? Such people are often spoken of, and I have reason to think that they would not be spoken of if they did not exist .

These, my dear Sir, are the first reflections suggested to me by the reading of your volume, so full of fire and faith. Pray accept the expression of my most earnest desire for the success of your laudable efforts , and believe me always,

Very sincerely yours ,

CH. SECRÉTAN .

VILLA PALEYRE, 29 Νου. , 1890.

CONTENTS .

CHAPTER I.

STATE OF THE QUESTION .

PAGE

I. Immortality is a problem which demands a dogmatic study-II . Importance of dogmatics, too little recognized-III . Confusion in the traditional dogmatics, especially in relation to the future life

IV. Sketch of the three competing systems of eschatology-V. Recent progress made by the conditional theory-VI . This progress explained in the first place by the fact that Conditionalism is a return to the primitive Gospel-VII . Also, from the philosophical standpoint Conditionalism has been well received by some of the great thinkers of the day.

The conditionalist solution deserves therefore to be studied, whether from the biblical point of view or that of philosophy-VIII.

Obstacles to be overcome

CHAPTER II .

IMMORTALITY AS VIEWED BY INDEPENDENT SCIENCE .

I. Biology and comparative physiology, geology and palæontology, and, indeed, all that is included in the term experimental science, fails to supply any proof of the immortality of the soul- II . Experimental science tends to assimilate the final fate of man to that of the animals-

III. The study of nature seems to teach evolutionism, or at least the law of a survival of the fittest ; if immortality were otherwise proved, that law might well suggest a Conditional Immortality- IV. The Platonic proofs of the immortality of the soul are not conclusive- V. Greater value of the moral proof---VI . Admissions of spiritualist philosophers and theologians -VII . The moral proof favours the hypothesis of an attainable immortality-VIII . Conditionalist thinkers and metaphysicians-IX. In view of the insufficiency of philosophy, the human soul cries out for a divine revelation

CHAPTER III .

IMMORTALITY ACCORDING TO THE OLD TESTAMENT AND IN

JUDAISM .

I. Fundamental principle of historical and grammatical interpretation-

II . Literal and ontological sense of the words life and death; in the

Old Testament death always indicates a cessation of functions-

III . Adam a candidate for immortality, and the necessary conditions of immortality -IV. The doctrine of the unconditional immortality of the human soul neither taught nor assumed in the Old Testament-

V. Israelitish piety has a glimpse of Conditional Immortality- VI. Lethargic slumber of the shades in the night of Sheol-VII .

Gleams of hope in relation to a future life -VIII . First allusions to the possibility of a resurrection- IX. Summary of the doctrine of immortality in the Old Testament-X. Subsequent infiltrations into Judaism of the Platonic doctrine-XI . Apocryphal books of the Old Testament

-XII . Pharisees and Sadducees -XIII . The Talmud-XIV. Maimonides --XV. The Kabbalah -XVI . Conclusions

CHAPTER IV .

IMMORTALITY ACCORDING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.

I. The immortalization of man by means of faith in Jesus Christ, the principal aim of the New Testament writings-II . With a scope beyond the horizon of the Old Testament, the question already raised comes up again : What do the biblical writers mean by the words life and death ?-III . We maintain the literal and primarily ontological meaning of these terms-- IV. Declarations of some of the most esteemed Commentators -V. Teaching of Jesus in relation to immortality-VI . Study of his favourite maxim-VII . Accordant teaching of the apostles -VIII . Preliminary reply to two categories of objections- IX. Profession of faith drawn from the whole body of biblical writings

CHAPTER V.

JESUS CHRIST THE ONLY SOURCE OF IMMORTALITY.

I. Biblical psychology

II . Interior anarchy ; subserviency of the superior principle in human nature- III . The awakened conscience institutes expiatory sacrifices - IV. Definition of expiation -V. The Levitical sacrifices-VI . Jesus Christ the supreme victim-VII . Regenerative effects of communion in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. By the restoration of the interior hierarchy, man again becomes capable of immortalization - VIII . Justification and sanctification by the Holy Spirit, uniting us to the Christ-IX. Divine pardon is never impunity -X. Chastisements inflicted upon the offender, even though penitent -XI . The promised resurrection—XII . Its relation to palingenesis

CHAPTER VI .

BAPTISM AND THE LORD'S SUPPER, SYMBOLS OF IMMORTALITY.

I. The baptism administered by John the Baptist- II . The baptism submitted to by Jesus - III . The baptism instituted by Jesus Christ and interpreted by his apostles, the symbol of a new birth -IV. The

Churches have distorted both the rite and its meaning -V. Protest ofthe Baptist Churches-VI . Admissions of Pædobaptist theologians-

VII. The history of the rite a protest against the alterations that it has undergone - VIII . Examination of an objection against baptism by

immersion-IX. The Lord's supper an emblem of the sustenance of the new life symbolically conferred in baptism-X. This another symbol, the key of which has been lost by the Churches through their

Platonism

CHAPTER VII .

THE SECOND DEATH, OR FUTURE PUNISHMENT .

I. Sin, a guilty revolt, tends towards the subversion and suppression of the conditions of human existence-II . Biblical symbolism of the fire and the worm, two agents of destruction- III . Principal characteristic of punishment in general and of future punishment in particular. Punishment essentially deprivation of a faculty ; the supreme punishment will be the deprivation of all faculties-IV. Accessory and minatory character of suffering-V. Admissions of several generally esteemed theologians

VI . § 1 , Spiritual or metaphorical death ; § 2, Virtual or proleptic death ; § 3, Putative or presumed death ; § 4, Everywhere and always in Scripture death indicates a suppression, never a manifestion of life-VII . Morality and efficacy of this notion of future punishment. In the first place, far from being too mild, it is of a nature to inspire a salutary terror-VIII . In the second place, it is not barbarous ; although terrible, it leaves room for mercy. The divine compassion is present and dominant even in the depths of hell 189

CHAPTER VIII .

CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY IN THE WRITINGS OF THE EARLIEST

FATHERS OF THE CHURCH.

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

Rome, Ignatius, The Pastor of Hermas, Polycarp—II . Recent discovery of the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles - III . The apologist Fathers : Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenæus, Theophilus of Antioch, Clement ofAlexandria, Arnobius- IV. The purpose of the incarnation according to the great Athanasius, surnamed the Father of orthodoxy

-V. Latest echoes of the primitive teaching : Lactantius, Nemesius,

Theophylact, Sophronius, Nicholas ofMethone -

CHAPTER IX .

THE DEVIATION OF THE CHURCHES, AND THE DOCTRINE OF

COMPULSORY IMMORTALITY IN AN ETERNAL HELL .

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

Feeble protests of Duns Scotus and Pomponatius-VI. Acknowledgements of the Reformers Luther and Tyndale -VII . Serious deficiency in Protestant dogmatics--VIII . Summary of the dogma called orthodox- IX . Pernicious consequences of that dogma- X. Alleviations imagined by evangelical theologians-XI . Scepticism of believers in

respect of eternal torments-XII . Unstable equilibrium of eschatological agnosticism-XIII . Shrinking from the necessity of a doctrinal reform, Evangelism is lapsing into Universalism

CHAPTER X.

THE THEORY OF UNIVERSAL SALVATION.

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

Brotherhood-VIII . Fearful dangers of an excessive optimism

CHAPTER XI .

EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCIPAL ARGUMENTS ADDUCED AGAINST

CONDITIONALISM AND IN SUPPORT OF THE TRADITIONAL DOGMA.

Introduction-- 1. That the indefeasible immortality of individual souls is taught implicitly, if not explicitly, in the Bible—II. The threatenings ofJesus- III. That the purpose of the Tree of Life was only the maintenance ofphysical life—IV. Certain declarations ofthe apostle Paul- V. That there is no relation between the notion ofmoral good and that ofexistence-VI . The mystery -VII . Various objections—VIII . A text from the Apocalypse-IX. Our principal opponent at last proposes an hypothesis approaching nearly to Conditionalism

CHAPTER XII .

HARMONIES AND BENEFITS OF THE TRUE BIBLICAL TEACHING.

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

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

SUPPLEMENTS .

1. THE FIRST

FOUNDATIONS OF

THE CHRISTIAN

DOCTRINE OF

II . EVANGELISM

AND

CONDITIONALISM

REGARDED

DALE

III . VINET'S ESCHATOLOGY

IV. ANNIHILATION THE LOGICAL CONSEQUENCE OF THE FALL

A STUDY OF EVIL

LIST OF BIBLICAL TERMS USED TO DENOTE DESTRUCTION

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF

SOME APOCRYPHAL BOOKS

TESTAMENT

PRETENSIONS OF THE KABBALISTS

IX . IMMORTALITY

ACCORDING

CONTAINED

Χ. ΕΡΙΤΟOME

OF THE OLD

BIBLE ;

DECLARATIONS

IN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS

CONDITIONALIST

DOCTRINE

AMERICAN

PASTOR

XI . SPIRITUAL

GENERATION

CESAR

MALAN,

JUN.

XII. SALVATION BY THE BLOOD OF EXPIATION

XIII . PALINGENESIS ACCORDING TO M. RENOUVIER AND M. CHARLES

BONNET

PHILOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE MEANING

THE GREEK VERB

SYNCHRONICAL TABLE OF CHURCH

FATHERS

XVI . CONDITIONALISM AND CONDITIONAL UNIVERSALISM

XVII . CLASSIFIED LIST AND REFUTATION OF OBJECTIONS RAISED BY

TRADITIONALISTS AND AGNOSTICS

XVIII. THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALMS

XIX. EXEGETICAL NOTE ON 2 THESSALONIANS 1. 9

ΑΝOTHER TEXT OF THE APOCALYPSE

XXI . THE SPECIFIC DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST FROM THE CON-

DITIONALIST POINT OF

VIEW

XXII . COMPARISON OF THE PRIMITIVE GOSPEL WITH

RELIGIONS

XXIII . TESTIMONY OF CONDITIONALIST MISSIONARIES

NON - BIBLICAL

CHAPTER I.

I. Immortality is a problem which demands a dogmatic study-II . Importance of dogmatics too little recognized-III . Confusion in the traditional dogmatics, especially in relation to the future life- IV. Sketch of the three competing systems of eschatology-V. Recent progress made by the conditional theory-VI. This progress explained in the first place by the fact that Conditionalism is a return to the primitive Gospel -VII . Also, from the philosophical standpoint Conditionalism has been well received by some of the great thinkers of the day. The conditionalist solution deserves therefore to be studied, whether from the Biblical point of view or that of philosophy -VIII . Obstacles to be overcome.

SUBJECT of a thousand desires, man in his best moments has an especial thirst for immortality. This is, at the same time, the highest and the deepest of our aspirations. An imperious instinct urges us to seek a better and more durable life beyond the shifting scenes of our actual existence. A fountain is open for the quenching of our thirst, but it is not known to all ; and many are drinking from the bitter cisterns of ecclesiastical tradition .

To lead back to the fountain will be the aim of our study.

This is the most vital of all questions. It was a wise saying :

In all affairs the end should well be kept in view.¹

What is to be our own last end ?

Are we really immortal ?

1 " En toute chose ilfaut considérer lafin."- La Fontaine.

If so, in what measure are we ? If not, can we attain immortality, and in what way should we seek it ? Is the reign of evil to continue for ever ?

Are there to be eternal torments ?

These are so many enigmas to be solved ; they command attention, as did those of the ancient Sphinx.

The implicit faith of the coal-heaver is sometimes held up for admiration. Simple and unquestioning, it is good for the coal-heaver, but knowledge imposes obligation. The instruction that we have received is a privilege which involves responsibility. Examining our faith, we should like to assure ourselves that it is well founded .

In accordance with the exhortation of the apostle Peter, we desire to be in a position to give an answer to anyone who should ask for the reason of the hope that is in us. Now, in relation to immortality, the old foundations are overturned, and no man has a right to maintain an opinion without having thoroughly tested it. We ought to recognize it as our duty to make a searching examination of this question, which needs a course of dogmatic study. The undertaking is laborious, but can there be in this world a subject of inquiry more worthy of our attention ?

We shall have to stem the tide of present-day opinion, which even in the Churches treats theology, and especially dogmatics, with disdain.

It is said that these are stale and sterile studies, and some are disposed to assert that any doctrine is good provided that a good use be made of it. Theology is out of date ; theologians are extractors of quintessences, the last representatives of a race happily dying out, almost fossils. Really religious people have come to the conclusion that theology is an unnecessary extra. Many a young pastor says glibly :

no longer study theology ; to study theology would be acting like those monks of Constantinople who were disputing about the light upon Mount Tabor when the Turks entered the city. The great need of our times is that, while maintaining the grand truths of the Gospel, we should set aside theories and devote ourselves to practical questions. " In our opinion this is a disastrous tendency ; by

giving way to it, " numbers have slipped into the ruts of an unhealthy and obscurantist pietism, or else have become victims of those extravagant sects which seriously compromise the cause of religion by their eccentricities. ” 1

We are, in fact, fully convinced that the destiny of individuals, as of nations, may be traced mainly to their beliefs.

Like unbelief, a dead faith leads to death, and erroneous belief produces disorder and perturbation ; on the other hand, a living and healthy faith is a principle of health and life for individuals, and by the individuals for the whole body politic. Like theology, like people . " My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge," said the prophet Hosea ; and apparently it was to theological knowledge that he referred, the knowledge of religion. At the present time the Churches are turning their attention to social questions .

This is to their credit, but the social ideal itself depends upon a certain theological conception of the Divinity.

In the troubled times through which we are now passing, theology is indeed more than ever important, it is always the queen of sciences, and, from a scientific point of view, he who is not acquainted with it is ignorant of that which he most needs to know. The death of theology would be the greatest misfortune, but its revival would be the revival of religion, the revived religion would elevate morality, and that in its turn would elevate humanity.

When a ship is driven by a storm, and the crew are busily working at the tackling and the pumps, the officer in command does not allow himself to be distracted either by the noise of the waves or by the shouts of the sailors. It is his duty to consult attentively the chart, the compass, the chronometer, the barometer, the nautical tables, the stars, if any are visible ; he will endeavour to take his observation, make his reckoning, and fix the latitude and longitude of his ship, in order, if possible, to avoid the dangerous rock.

In the universal

Church, this duty of the ship's captain is that which is specially incumbent upon the theologian .

In support of our view we will invoke the testimony of witnesses whose authority is beyond question. The late eloquent

1 A. Gretillat, Chrétien Evangélique, 20 Oct., 1889.

Pastor Bersier said not long ago to a minister of Lausanne , " What we especially need is a sound and strong doctrine.”

Pastor Recolin, of Paris, at the general conference of the Evangelical Alliance at Copenhagen, and the lamented professor Francis Bonifas, in the last article that he published, made the same avowal.¹ Adolphe Monod long ago protested, " in the name of reason and experience, as well as in the name of Scripture, against that contempt of doctrines which, so to speak, has itself become a doctrine . "

Such as is the doctrine, said he, such is the disposition ; as is the belief, so is the character ; as are the principles in the mind, so are the sentiments in the heart. " Often, it is true, a man seems to contradict his belief by his life ; but if that which he really believes be distinguished from that which he professes, he will always be found selfconsistent. " After all, a man is not two men ; he is always at bottom consistent with himself. There is a necessary and eternal harmony between his understanding and his will. His inclinations, his character, his morality are produced by his opinions, his principles, his doctrines, as a tree is produced by its seed ; and as the seed of a tree is the whole tree, trunk, branches, leaves, flowers, fruit, in the sense that it contains the germ of which all these are the developement, so a man's doctrine is the whole man, feelings, inclinations, speech, actions, in the sense that it contains the principle of which all these are the application. Therefore, let no one say that he desires sanctification if he cares nothing about the doctrine by which it may be attained. He might as well say : I wish to gather grapes in my field, but it matters little whether I plant in it vines or thistles. What folly ! Each fruit grows on its own tree, the grape on the vine, the fig on the fig-tree ; and so every disposition has its corresponding doctrine, there is a doctrine that leads to vice, another that leads to virtue, another that leads to sanctification, and it is this which must be sought for.2

Similar views have been recently expressed by a pastor of

Switzerland .

He writes :

" Tell me what you believe and I will tell you what you are. " This saying indicates what a mistake is made and what a terrible responsibility is assumed by those who presume to say that doctrines are of no import-

1 In our last chapter will be found their declarations to this effect. 2 J. Pédézert, Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Protestant Theology at

Montauban. Souvenirs et Études, Paris, 1888, p. 63, sq.

ance, that morality is everything. Morality may be everything, but that proceeds directly from the convictions, as the child from the mother. This being so, the indifference to doctrine affected by some people is one of the most profound errors that can be imagined ; if ever it should gain a footing in the Church, it would lead to moral paralysis.¹

A study of the past confirms this principle :

Inquire of history ; you will there perceive as an ever-recurring fact that everywhere and always the morals of the peoples have been in accord with their religious ideas. Such as is the divinity, such is the morality. Man has always a tendency to become like the object of his adoration. Vengeful gods who were honoured with cruel sacrifices, occasioned barbarous manners and favoured warlike passions. Notice, on the other hand, how under the smiling sky of Greece the worship of the voluptuous divinities of the most poetic of peoples favoured the developement of the arts, but at the same time caused the corruption of morals. In our own days, look at the nations won by the sword of Mahomet to the religion of Islam : the fatalist doctrine, which is at the foundation of that religion, has produced in those peoples a stupid resignation which paralyzes all energy, prevents all progress, and envelopes them in an enervating kind of atmosphere. And that which we observe with regard to religions, is true also with respect to systems of philosophy. Each different manner of regarding God and man and their mutual relations produces its own special morality. It has been said that ideas govern the world ; in order to be exactly correct, it should be said, religious ideas.2

A few lines from the late M. de Pressensé shall close this section ; they very concisely express our conviction as to the point that we wish to establish . He says :

History in every sense of the word is being prepared and elaborated upon those heights of thought where religious and philosophic evolution, silently at first, developes itself. It is there that may be found that parting of the waters which determines the great currents of history, carrying away with them men and things in a direction there determined.3

1 Paul Chapuis, Evangile et Liberté, 24 Jan., 1890. 2 No more dogmas (Plus de dogmes), No. 478 of the Paris Religious Tracts.

3 Revue politique et littéraire, 12 April, 1884.

We are in need of a settled doctrine, for there is now no such thing. The Roman Catholic doctrine sleeps in the tomb of scholasticism ; and on the other hand, primitive Calvinism is a doctrine that is no longer taught. Anarchy prevails in the doctrinal region, a veritable Babel of contradictory views.¹

Many teachers are drifting without being conscious of it, and in more than one group of the so-called orthodox their agreement is based upon misunderstanding . Our Protestant Churches especially lack an eschatology, a serious deficiency. Eschatology, the science of the last things, is the band of the sheaf, or, to use another metaphor, the keystone of the arch, we do not say the corner-stone, of Christian dogmatics. On this subject, however, uncertainty is the order of the day, and future judgement is a weapon scarcely ever used in present-day preaching. The law of mathematical justice which regulates eternal retribution seems to be utterly ignored, and even unknown.2

1 In an account of a pastoral conference held at Dieulefit, in the Department of the Drôme, in 1885, Pastor Auguste André made use of these terms : " The outcome and moral of all this is, as I asserted without contradiction , that when we seek to obtain definite convictions from modern scientific sources, we know not what to think for ourselves, nor what to say to our people. That which now bears the name of Evangelical theology is as yet only a transitory method. We do not want exaggerations on one side or the other, and, if I may be allowed the expression, we remain in a fix. You have cleared the way which should lead to the new dogmatics ; I beseech you then enable us speedily to reach the end. We are most anxious to find ourselves on solid and Christian ground, instead of under the shadow of a vanishing individualism."-Evangile et Liberté, 13 Nov., 1885 .

On the 18th June, 1890, in a report presented to the local section of the Swiss Pastoral Society, at Lausanne, Pastor Vallotton spoke of the " chaos of existing dogmatics." M. Dandiran, professor of philosophy in the national

Faculty, went even farther : according to him dogma as now formulated is effete, and the idea of authority which is at its base is ruined. Traditional dogmatics must be given up, and a new synthesis must be sought for. The reform needed is as important as that of the sixteenth century.- See Evangile et Liberté, 20 June, 1890.

2 The late Pastor Bastie, Honorary President of the Consistory and Moderator of the General Synod in 1872, had a deep sense of the necessity for a renewal of eschatology. Shortly before his death, in circumstances of great solemnity, he declared that in his view it was the most urgent need of the Reformed Church of France .

What has led to this abandonment of the old doctrine in general, and of the old eschatology in particular ? The answer is given by Professor Charles Secrétan in his admirable book on " Civilization and Belief."

He tells us that Calvinism is abandoned because it " presents to us a hateful God. " ¹ John Stuart Mill had previously spoken of the traditional God as " this dreadful idealization of wickedness . " 2

Calvinism, which in the sixteenth century was progress, is now behind the times. That is the reason why it is losing ground everywhere, but especially in France.

Since the eve of the Revolution of 1789, according to M. Paul de Félice, the number of French Protestants has diminished by more than a third , nearly a half. At that epoch they were a thirteenth part of the population, while now they would be only a thirty-sixth.3

Another equally significant fact: the distinguished thinkers in France who during the last quarter of a century have passed from unbelief or from Roman Catholicism to the Protestant faith might be counted on the fingers of one hand. Will it be said that the fault is altogether in the human heart, which is " desperately wicked "? But Jeremiah made the same complaint as to the human heart nearly three thousand years ago , and that fact did not prevent the successes of the apostles, of the reformers, of the men of the revival of sixty years ago. Will it then be objected that if the thinkers reject Calvinism it is because the truth is hidden from the wise and prudent ? But there was a time when Calvinism was pleasing to many of the wise and prudent. It must, then, be admitted that if Protestantism is no longer advancing it is because in its present

1 Civilization and Belief (La civilisation et la croyance), Lausanne, Payot ; p. 409. M. Secrétan is the first philosopher of Switzerland, and one of the foremost philosophic writers in the French language ; he is a corresponding member of the Institute of France, and of the Institute of Geneva ; a striking demonstration was made in his honour in 1889, on the occasion of the completion of fifty years of his professorship at the Academy (now University) of Lausanne.

2 Essays on Religion, p. 113. See the protest of Rev. Charles Kingsley in chap. i. ofAlton Locke, which is understood to contain some autobiographical details.

3 Christianisme au XIXe siècle, I Nov., 1888. See also the Chrétien Evangélique, 1888, p. 564. Alsace- Lorraine is naturally excluded from these calculations.

form it fails to satisfy the needs of our time.¹ This was the sad conviction of Vinet, as is proved by his correspondence . He wrote to Thomas Erskine :

My hope in Christianity is all the more lively that it is undivided. In nothing else do I hope ; but for me Christianity is not exclusively, nor even chiefly, that which has been preached to us these five-and-twenty years. That formula seems to me to be powerless and worn out so far as concerns the masses ; it is a sixteenth-century dish rewarmed and again become cold. That which was original in Luther's time is so no longer. We are speaking to this century in a dead language. Many people around me and elsewhere are willing to accept the result, considering that Christianity is not the business of the masses ; and I must admit that I do not know either in the past or the present a whole nation of converted persons ; but it is none the less true that Christianity has worked upon the masses, that it has created a Christian civilization, a Christian world (though I know in what a restricted sense that must be understood) ; and I see that to-day the masses remain apparently unmoved by our efforts. But, unless I am very much mistaken, the new form of the old and eternal truth is in course of preparation in men's minds.2

The fact is that the religious needs exist, and it is the suitable food that is lacking. As an indication of this state of things may be quoted the complaint of a well-known poet, François Coppée, of the French Academy. Formerly M.

1 After these lines were written we met with an article by M. Ménégoz which confirms them. He says : " M. Dreyer is affrighted at seeing the cultivated classes forsaking the Gospel, whereas in ancient times as well as at the Reformation epoch the Gospel attracted the best thinkers. What is the cause ofthis desertion ? Must it be sought in the worldly spirit of our century ? Certainly the worldly spirit draws away the soul from God ; but among those who turn their backs upon the Church there are spirits profoundly religious, souls thirsting for righteousness and truth. How is it that these men of high aspirations reject the Church and Christianity itself, or that which they suppose to be Christianity ? Long experience has led M. Dreyer to the conviction that these men are driven away by the old dogmatic formulas which ecclesiastical tradition has identified with the Gospel, with the Christian faith. This unhappy identification of dogma with the faith is producing most disastrous ravages in our cultivated classes. This state of If not willing to fail in her mission, things urgently demands a remedy.

the Church ought to endeavour to give satisfaction to these religious cravings, without giving umbrage to the claims of reason."--E. Ménégoz,

Annales de bibliographie

25 Jan.

d'Alexandre théologique, Vinet No. ccxxi

2 Lettres

Coppée seemed indifferent to religious questions, but his recent poem, Une mauvaise Soirée, ends with a veritable cry of anguish . The author tells how he went one evening into a

Socialist club and a Catholic church, and the priest's sermon roused his indignation more than the harangue of the communist orator.

Alas ! the doctrine preached in the Church was thoroughly

Calvinistic, and may be traced back to St. Augustine.

priest promised to the elect only :

A distant paradise that tires the thought.

For all the rest, the God of kindly love, In constant anger for a single fault, For human weakness pitiless, decreed The unjust, monstrous curse, eternal pain,

I know not what absurd and futile hell.

The poet thus concludes :

I left the church more sad than I went in.

The stars shone bright, the night was yet sublime, And as I raised my anxious eyes to heaven, Where, looking at me with their light serene, Thousands of peopled worlds moved on in space, I felt a mortal anguish seize on me.

Alas ! alas ! in both the club and church

In these few moments had appeared to me

The wanderings wild of reason and instinct, And old despair of man's intelligence.

Then where is the true law ?

Where certain faith ?

What should I hope, what think and what believe ? My reason fails within its prison walls. A need persistent of our helpless soul, Justice, is absent from our lower world ;

A man must be or freethinker or slave. For all that seems at first to be a truth

Is like the Dead Sea fruits that look so fine,

But when the stranger puts them to his mouth,

Are full of ashes and have bitter taste.

The spirit is a vessel, doubt a sea, A boundless sea, and bottomless withal.

The

In view of that night-sky where all those stars Were fixed like silver studs in azure blue,

A deadly sadness seized me, and I asked The silent Sphinx, the Isis under veil, If thus it was in all those starry worlds.¹

The poet's voice has found an echo in the article of a Parisian journalist :

We have now no chapel wherein to kneel, no faith on which to lean, no God to whom to pray. Our heart is empty, our soul bereft of ideal and of hope. You who have the happiness of believing in a sovereign

1 The French words are as follows :

Un lointain paradis dont le nom seul ennuie. Quant aux autres, le Dieu d'amour et de bonté, Pour une faute unique à jamais irrité, Leur gardait, sans pitié des faiblesses humaines, L'inique et monstrueuse éternité des peines,

On ne sait quel absurde et ridicule enfer.

Je sortis de l'église encore plus attristé. Les astres scintillaient, la nuit était sublime : Et, levant mes regards anxieux vers l'abîme,

Où, lançant jusqu'à moi leurs sereines clartés,

Vibraient les milliards de mondes habités !

Je me sentis atteint par une horrible angoisse. Hélas ! hélas ! au club comme dans la paroisse Venaient de m'apparaître, en ces quelques moments, L'instinct et la raison dans leurs égarements Et le vieux désespoir de la pensée humaine.

Où donc est la loi vraie ? Où donc la foi certaine ?

Qu'espérer ? Que penser ? Que croire ? La raison Se heurte et se meurtrit aux murs de sa prison. Besoin inassouvi de notre âme impuissante, Du monde où nous vivons la justice est absente. Pas de milieu pour l'homme : esclave ou révolté. Tout ce qu'on prend d'abord pour une vérité

Est comme ces beaux fruits des bords de la Mer Morte,

Qui, lorsqu'un voyageur à sa bouche les porte, Sont pleins de cendre noire et n'ont qu'un goût amer. L'esprit est un vaisseau, le doute est une mer,

Mer sans borne et sans fond où se perdent les sondes. Et, devant le grand ciel nocturne où tous ces mondes

Etaient fixés, pareils aux clous d'argent d'un dais,

J'étais triste jusqu'à la mort et demandais,

Au Sphinx silencieux, à l'Isis sous ses voiles,

S'il en était ainsi dans toutes les étoiles.

From the Revue des Deux Mondes, I Sept., 1887.

Ruler, pray him to reveal himself to us, for we hunger and thirst to suffer and to die for a belief and for an idea.¹

M. Emile Faguet, who may rightly be called " one of the princes of the younger criticism," declares that this century is closing as it began, with a very evident revival of the religious spirit, " by a return to the Christian idea."

After a long night march, the light that was not expected to reappear shines on the horizon, the faces are turned towards this bright dawning, and the most coldly hopeless recognize that they suffered chiefly from an unsatisfied hunger after faith and hope. This desire for faith, the most imperious of all desires, has caused many an eloquent cry to rise to heaven since Luther exclaimed : " What is righteousness, and how can I have it ?"

M. Melchior de Vogüé tells that recently at St. Petersburg two welldressed young men, commercial clerks apparently, presented themselves at one of the religious meetings instituted by Lord Radstock, and that addressing the unknown speaker in the tone of the street mendicant begging for bread, they earnestly cried to him : " Oh, make me believe !

make me believe !"

So too there are among us at the present time countless young men who are asking to be wrenched away from their negations.2

M. Jules Lemaître (a leading French literary critic) on his part has searched for the causes of this psychological phenomenon ; his reflections have all the greater value as they cannot be suspected of prejudice. He has expressed his views thus :

That to which Russian writers are led by the spontaneous movement of their religious and thoughtful minds, by the study of simple hearts, and by the spectacle of infinite sufferings and infinite resignation , we attain as I think by the bankruptcy of analysis and criticism, by the sense of the void caused in us thereby, and by the immense extent of the unexplained which they leave in the world.

For these or other

1 From Christianisme au XIXe siècle, 1 Nov., 1888.

2 Le Temps, May, 1887 ; article quoted in the Semaine Religieuse of

Geneva, 11 June, 1887. - For further details see three articles by M. Réveillaud on Signs of the New Times in the Signal of May, 1890 ; and an equally interesting article by M. Lacheret in Christianisme au XIXe siècle for 31 July the same year.

reasons it would seem that a softening of the human soul is taking place in this latter end of the century, and that we may be about to witness (who knows ?) a revival of the Gospel.¹

Everyone knows the hideous bankruptcy that alarmed Mirabeau. That of which M. Jules Lemaître here speaks is much more terrible.

M. Bourget has shown the horror of it in his novel entitled The Disciple, which is a severe lesson for the upholders of determinism.

Through denial of moral freedom the pupil is led to practical results of such an odious character that the teacher no longer dares to maintain his favourite doctrine. The working of his thought results in a lamentable contradiction ; troubled, tortured by remorse, he feels the need of prayer, and his tears flow beside the corpse of his too faithful disciple. We note in passing that the absurd hell of the Abbé Martel is to a great extent responsible for the unbelief of the unhappy Greslou.2

M. Eugene Melchior de Vogüé, that eloquent " interpreter of present-day aspirations," has become, as it has been well said, the apostle and director of the minds which are endeavouring to regain the heights without running in the common ruts. At a banquet given by the Association of Students at Paris not long ago, he spoke of the two special tendencies of contemporary youth : a preoccupation with the ideal or the mysterious, and a decided taste for action. He also said : " It is necessary to believe, there is nothing so good as to believe. You feel the need of action ; that is a virtue, but action should be guided by a principle. What principle ? That of faith." Such language may well charm a youthful audience full of generous and noble aspirations, but it would not suffice for minds of a certain order ; and for these M. Anatole France has replied in the

1 Revue politique et littéraire, 12 Feb., 1887.

2 Pages 116-126.-The Revue des Deux Mondes of 15 Aug. and I Sept. ,

1890, contains a drama which is a sort of pendant to the novel above mentioned.

The title of the drama is Neither God nor Master (Ni Dieu ni maître), its author being M. George Duruy, a University professor and a novelist of considerable merit. It depicts the conversion of a free-thinking doctor, who, laid aside by illness, abandoned by his unbelieving friends, and consoled by the devoted attention of a truly Christian woman, opens his heart to divine grace. Such a publication is also a sign of the times. The Imitation ofJesus Christ is not often quoted at length in a drama .

Temps : " I admit that it is good to believe, but it is also necessary to have something to believe. "

We understand the scepticism of M. Anatole France. His remark pointedly indicates the urgent need for a creed that can bear the bright light of full publicity.

To return to the verses of M. Coppée, it is evident that the author's despair is caused by the fact that the traditional

Churches, both Catholic and Protestant, present God in a false light . Orthodox eschatology brings discredit upon Christianity. A dead fly will poison a whole vase of perfume ; the dead fly must be removed. The stone that bars the way of faith must be put aside. God has to be revindicated . The clock of the Churches is too slow for the dial of the century. The Churches present to the world a caricature of the Divinity, and then they are astonished that the world fails to bow before their caricature ! God might say to the obstinate adherents of tradition, as to the Jews of the Old Covenant : " My name continually all the day is blasphemed because ofyou. " The France of to-day seems positively decided to perish rather than accept the God of Torquemada or of Calvin.

Gods such as these have too long been the occasion of bitter zeal ; they are half pagan, and should be replaced as speedily as possible by the true God of the primitive Gospel. The nets of the old doctrine being broken, we need to sit down awhile on the shore to mend them .

Having had the privilege of meeting M. Coppée, we took occasion to express our sympathy, and made it our duty to set before him the true God of the Gospel. The poet assured us that he had not the least feeling of hostility to such a God . This he has since then made clear to the world, by writing his touching and profoundly Christian drama : Le Pater.

1 Isaiah lii. 5 and Rom. ii. 24.

Cf. Ezekiel xxxvi. 23.

In the field of Christian eschatology three rival systems dispute the ground : the traditional dogma, Universalism, and Conditional Immortality. We do not now speak of the systematic doubt which would set aside all system.

At the very foundation of the traditional theory we find the doctrine, of Platonic origin, which endows our first parents and all their descendants with imperishable personality ; hence the triple effect of that which is called the fall : Ist, the death of the body ; 2nd, that of the soul, by which is meant a moral separation from God ; and 3rd, eternal death, which is said to be a conscious life in the endless torments of hell. By the fact of original sin, every man is supposed to be born subject to this triple doom .

It will at once be seen that in this theory the word death is employed in two contradictory senses . When it relates to the body, it designates the cessation of life, but when predicated of the soul, it bears the contrary signification of the perpetuation of life.

The hell of the Roman Catholics is still crowded with the tortures of a barbarous antiquity : gridirons, immense caldrons of brimstone and molten lead, and red-hot pincers.

Horned demons, urged on by Satan their chief, chase the damned and inflict upon them a thousand torments. Centuries elapse, but eternity remains, and without any cessation executioners and victims make the vast prison resound with frightful howlings . These grotesque horrors do not figure in Protestant eschatology, yet there, too, along with the much misunderstood term hell, are retained some of the elements of the Roman Catholic notion . Protestants who are faithful to the traditional orthodoxy believe, or think they believe, in the existence of a place into which the wicked will be cast, not to be destroyed, but to suffer for ever the torments of unquenchable fire in the company of the devil and his angels, with rage in the heart and blasphemy on the lips .

According to the Universalist theory, as well as the so- called orthodox, the human soul is born in possession of absolute immortality, but there will not be eternal torments even for

the greatest culprits. The infinite power of God, in accord with an equally infinite mercy, will overcome the resistance of human liberty. Final salvation is inevitable, every sinner will eventually obtain admission to paradise.

The third doctrine is that of Christian Conditionalism .

From this point of view man is a candidate for immortality. Perpetual life becomes the portion of the man who, by faith, unites himself to God .

The immortalization of man is the purpose of the divine incarnation. The life of the obstinately wicked is transitory ; even although prolonged beyond the tomb, it must finally be extinguished.

There is a Conditionalism which is philosophic rather than Christian, according to which the immortality of the conscient creature is not compulsory, but depends upon the good use of moral freedom.

Such was the Conditionalism of the Stoics, and in later days that of the Socinians, of Spinoza in his last works , of Locke, of J. J. Rousseau, of Madame de Stael, of William von Humboldt, of Edgar Quinet, of Charles Lambert, and of Victor Hugo. The Conditionalism specifically Christian, which we hold, teaches that immortality depends upon the moral and spiritual union of the human soul with the God- man.¹

The supporters of this doctrine believe it to be exegetically in conformity with the letter and with the spirit of the Scriptures, in conformity also with the analogy of the faith and with universal analogy. They proclaim the good news of immortality offered to everyone who, uniting himself heart and soul to Jesus Christ, becomes transformed into his image . But it is possible to fail of this salvation ; sin gnaws and kills the soul which makes no effort at self- control. Every sinner is threatened with moral suffocation ; he is on the way to lose the very reason of his existence-nay, more, he has in principle already lost it, and must speedily regain it under penalty of death eternal .

Our purpose is to defend and to recommend this doctrine of attainable immortality, which in France is little known and is entitled to be rescued from the oblivion in which, like many another truth, it has long been buried. Risen from its tomb

1 For information as to Philosophical Conditionalism, see a recent article in the great dictionary of Larousse, entitled Conditionnalisme.

only a few years ago, it has already in various countries conquered the conspiracy of silence, and has secured a place in the very sunlight of publicity ; it has its recognized organs and its literature ; it declares itself in the universities and seats of learning ; proclaimed by great preachers, it has won the respect even of the most hostile and the attention of the most careless. By transforming the notion of God's character, it gives rise to the hope of a renewal of Christian dogmatics.

The clearness and straightforwardness of this doctrine give it a great advantage ; it needs no alleviations, no dissimulations.

The traditional dogma seems, on the contrary, to be ashamed of itself-it lives upon reservations. At the present time it hides itself, it becomes extenuated, volatilized. A modern

Proteus, it is not to be caught. Through numerous alterations and ameliorations it will soon be nothing more than the soporific doctrine of a forced salvation, the final and vulgar fate of all, even the most worthless, who will attain it, whatever they may do or fail to do.¹ Modern orthodoxy borders upon Universalism , and Universalism also dreads the light ; it is an esoteric doctrine, needing a semi- obscurity, and reticence on the part of preachers. By suppressing the necessity for effort, it deprives life of motive power. In place of the tiger of the middle ages, we have the siren by whose melodious voice souls are seduced and drawn into the depths of the abyss.2

The hypothesis of the native, inalienable, and absolute immortality of every human soul is the mother of the two doctrines which we have to oppose. We believe that hypothesis to be false, antiphilosophical, antibiblical. It is not found in the teaching of the earliest Fathers of the Church .

In our own time we can quote against it some of the chief theologians of contemporary Germany. The idea of an immortality to be acquired is at the centre of the system of Rothe,

1 See Ch . ix. , Sect. xiii.

2 As illustrating the general relaxation of ideas relating to future punishment, see a remarkable article, entitled Le Purgatoire, in the Figaro of

19 April, 1889.

who has been called the most powerful dogmatician of our century. It is also found in the religious philosophy of Weisse.1 To Dr. Hermann Schultz, now professor at the University of Göttingen, we owe a profound study of the true foundations of Christian teaching concerning immortality. If we are rightly informed, no one has attempted a refutation of this book, and the author has maintained the same views in his recent

Dogmatics . They are also found in the system of Ritschl and his numerous followers, in the dogmatics of Twesten, and in the works of the venerable Professor Gess, formerly General Superintendent of the ecclesiastical province of Posen.

Long ago Rothe said : “ It is no longer maintained that the human soul possesses immortality by virtue of a supposed simplicity of substance. " 5 " It is admitted, " says Matter, " that the ontological argument is powerless to demonstrate the persistence of the personality. "

If the new edition of Herzog's " Theological Encyclopædia " be consulted, it will be seen that in his study of the subject, Dr. Runze does not trust to the old metaphysical evidences. He holds that personal immortality can only result from a living faith in the living

1 Die philosophische Geheimlehre von der Unsterblichkeit des menschlichen

Individuums, Dresden, 1834.-- Chr. H. Weisse's Psychologie und Unsterblichkeitslehre, etc., by Dr. Rud. Seydel, Leipzig, 1869.

2 Die Voraussetzungen der christlichen Lehre von der Unsterblichkeit,

Göttingen, 1861. - See in Supplement, No. I., an analysis of this important work.

3 Grundriss der evangelischen Dogmatik, Göttingen, 1890. 4 In the preface to his French translation of Life in Christ (L'Immortalité conditionnelle, ou la vie en Christ), by Edward White, M. Byse has quoted various declarations of German theologians in support of our point of view, to which we refer the reader.

5 Dogmatik, Heidelberg, 1870, vol. iii., p. 158.

6 A. Matter, Encyclopédie des Sciences religieuses, at the word Immortalité.

At the word Unsterblichkeit.-Dr. F. Brandes states very clearly the true foundation of Christian certitude respecting immortality. The believer, feeling himself a son of God, is confident that God could not allow his child to perish. " Our reconciliation in Christ ! That is the foundation of all our certainty, and as such it should always be declared in the Christian Churches. There is no other foundation, and herein is the saying true, that we can lay no other than that which is laid ( 1 Cor. iii. 11 ).

He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life, because in him he has his reconciliation with God." From an article entitled Des Christen Gewissheit in Betreffdes ewigen Lebens (The Christian's certainty with regard to eternal life), in

Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1872, p. 550.

God. The love of God is our sole guarantee against the extinction which threatens contingent creatures. The believer feels the effects of God's love, and is therefore sure of his immortality ; his assurance is not based upon a syllogism .

This kind of view is generally admitted in Germany. It hardly fits in with the traditional dogma of eternal torments, but unhappily the German theologians do not always carry out to their practical consequences the principles which they themselves lay down, and doctrinal reform scarcely reaches beyond academic circles .

It is otherwise, however, in Anglo-Saxon countries, where thousands of voices, lay as well as ecclesiastic, are impatiently demanding a revision of the ancient confessions of faith.

In the Churches of England and America there has been a considerable movement.

The circulation of the Christian

World, the most popular of English religious newspapers, was greatly increased when a discussion of this subject was admitted to its columns. Hundreds of volumes and pamphlets have been published of late years on both sides of the question, and a number of journals or reviews are almost entirely devoted to the defence of the doctrine of Conditional Immortality.¹

The principle of Conditionalism had been already advocated more or less by the philosophers Hobbes and Locke, the theologian Dodwell, the hymn-writer Watts, and Archbishop Whately. For a long time confined to the thinker's study, it is now on the way to become thoroughly popular, thanks to the concurrence of a number of eloquent preachers : Rev. Edward White, of whom we shall have more to say, Dr. Dale of Birmingham, Rev. W. H. M. Hay Aitken, and in the United States, Dr. Lyman Abbott, editor of the Christian Union and successor to Henry Ward Beecher, who himself accepted the same point of view.

Among the supporters of Conditionalism in America may be mentioned : Revds . L. C. Baker of Philadelphia, L. W. Bacon

1 Mr. E. Abbott, librarian of Harvard University, has published a catalogue of works relating to the soul and its destiny : some 5,000 volumes or pamphlets.

2 Dodwell unhappily compromised his position by making immortality dependent upon the ceremony of baptism as administered by the authorized representative of an Episcopal Church.

of Norwich, Connecticut , H. L. Hastings of Boston, T. S. Potwin of Hartford, C. H. Oliphant of Methuen, Dr. W. R.

Huntington, and among those deceased, Professor Hudson, Rev. Horace Bushnell towards the end of his career, and Rev. J. H. Pettingell.1 In England its defenders include Revds . S.

Minton- Senhouse, H. Constable, late prebendary of Cork, C. A. Row, prebendary of St. Paul's, J. B. Heard, W. T. Hobson, H. S. Warleigh, W. Griffith, and J. F. B. Tinling, various missionaries to heathen countries, the well-known Hebrew scholar Dr. Perowne, now Bishop of Worcester, chief editor of the Cambridge Bible for schools and colleges, and Greek scholars like Dr. Mortimer, formerly Head Master of the City of London School, and Dr. Weymouth, author of a critical edition of the Greek New Testament.2

Special mention is due to two lay theologians, the late Henry Dunn, and Dr. T. Clarke of Interlaken.3

In a separate group we may place the names of several scientific celebrities : Sir George G. Stokes, Secretary and late President of the Royal Society, Professor Bonney, President of

1 L. C. Baker, The Mystery of Creation and of Man, Philadelphia, 1884 ; The Fire of God's Anger, 1887 ; Words of Reconciliation, a monthly magazine. L. W. Bacon, The Simplicity that is in Christ, sermons, New York and London, 1886. H. L. Hastings, Pauline Theology. T. S. Potwin, The Triumph of Life, New York, 1886. Ch. H. Oliphant, The Extinction of Evil, the introductory chapter, Boston, 1889. C. F. Hudson, Debt and

Grace, New York, 1862 : this precious arsenal of dogmatic lore ought to be reprinted ; Christ our Life, 1863, etc. J. H. Pettingell, The Life Everlasting, Philadelphia, 1882 ; The Unspeakable Gift, third edition, Yarmouth,

2 S. Minton- Senhouse, The Glory of Christ, London , 1869. H. Constable, The Duration and Nature of Future Punishment, sixth edition, C. Е. Brooks, Malvern Link. C. A. Row, Future Retribution, London, 1887 . J. B. Heard, The Tripartite Nature of Man, third edition, T. and T. Clark, Edinburgh. W. T. Hobson, M.A., Conditional Immortality, London, 1889. W. Griffith, The Entire Evidence of Evangelists and Apostles on Future Punishment and Immortal Life, London, 1882. J. F. B. Tinling,

The Promise of Life, London, 1881. J. M. Denniston, The Perishing Soul,

London, 1870, etc.

3 Mr. Henry Dunn, The Destiny of the Human Race : A Scriptural Inquiry, London, Simpkin, Marshall and Co.; The Churches : A History and an Argument, 1872 ; Christianity irrespective of Churches, 1873 : a

French translation of this work has been published, with the somewhat too sweeping title, Le Christianisme sans Eglises, Paris, Sandoz and Fischbacher, 1878. T. Clarke, M.D. , A Gauntlet to the Theologians, London, 1888 ; The Fate of the Dead, London, 1889.

the Geological Society, Professors Adams and Geikie, and in Scotland Professor Tait, Secretary of the Royal Society of

Edinburgh , one of the authors of The Unseen Universe.1

Professor Stokes occupies the chair of Newton at Cambridge and he represents the University in Parliament. His discoveries in relation to the refrangibility of light have made him famous . He is also a Churchman, a lay theologian. On the 30th March, 1890, he gave a lecture at the Finsbury Polytechnic on personal identity. Supported by the authority of three Anglican Bishops, he denied the absolute immortality of the human soul. The daily newspapers reported these declarations, which made an impression that has not yet died away.

In the front rank of professed theologians we have named Dr. Dale, who is certainly one of the principal representatives of

English nonconformity, and a pillar of evangelical Christianity. His lectures on The Atonement received unstinted praise from

The Record, which is proverbial for its intolerance.

Seven editions of these lectures were published in four years.

At the risk of compromising his high position, Dr. Dale has not hesitated to make known the convictions to which he has been led by his study of the question of Conditional Immortality. In his acceptance of that doctrine The Scotsman of Edinburgh has seen " a sign of the times . "

Some years ago the North American Review, the oldest in the

United States, the Christian Union of New York, the Contemporary Review of London, and the Homiletic Magazine, published " Symposiums " 2 on the subject.

Their success was so great that some of these numbers had to be reprinted several times . An elaborate symposium has recently appeared in America entitled That Unknown Country, in which fifty-one separate contributors maintain the most divergent opinions. Buddhism, Confucianism, Mohammedanism, Judaism, and Roman Catholicism are represented, Cardinal Manning speaking for the

Vatican.

Scotland has been looked upon as an impregnable citadel of

1 Having been forcibly struck by the ideas of Mr. White, this author soon accepted them, and gave them currency in his Paradoxical Philosophy. 2 By Symposium is meant a series of articles in which various writers of different opinions treat the same subject from their several points of view.

3 A volume containing 943 pages, large 8vo, Springfield, Mass., 1889.

the traditional dogma, but various recent events show that it is Even beyond the Tweed ecclesiastical obscurantism has lost ground. A revision of the Westminster catechism is demanded on all sides. Most of the theological professors and nearly all the younger ministers of the Free Church have joined in the demand. Those of our opponents who look to Scotland for guidance should prepare themselves to face about.¹ not so .

Then who has not heard of the book entitled Natural Law in the Spiritual World ?

The author, Henry Drummond, is lecturer on science in the Free Church College at Glasgow ; he has been associated with the evangelist Moody. More than a hundred thousand copies of his book have been sold. We shall see that its tendency is essentially Conditionalist .

A friend of Professor Drummond, Rev. Marcus Dods, D.D., has recently been called to the post of professor of New Testament exegesis in the Free Church Faculty at Edinburgh . This appointment is also a symptom of the fermentation now going on. Professor Dods thinks, as we do, that the evangelical Churches are in some measure responsible for the progress of atheism in our days . He maintained this opinion at the Pan- Presbyterian Congress in London.

Not long since the well-known preacher Dr. Philipps Brooks, of Boston, said : " We are on the verge, I believe, of a mighty revolution " in theology. In a book published in 1889 under the title Whither ? the Rev. C. A. Briggs, D.D., editor of the

1 The Westminster Confession has lately been notably modified by the English Presbyterians. Revision is under consideration by the

Presbyterian Churches in the United States also. " At a recent meeting in Glasgow a Doctor asserted that the Westminster Confession of faith had ceased to be the heart of Scottish theology. Quoting the words of a friend, he added, ' The confessions of faith are already in their coffin, in a very short time they will be in their grave. Scotland will soon not only be free, but will take the lead among the free. That which is called high Calvinism is openly repudiated by all who think and reflect, even in the Churches where it is still the official creed. " J. F. Astié, Preachers : What they are, and what they ought to be; Revue de théologie et de philosophie, Nov., 1887, p. 605.

2 London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1883. This work has been translated into French by C. A. Sanceau, and published by Fischbacher, of Paris, under the title, Les lois de la nature dans le monde spirituel, with introduction by Eug. Réveillaud. A second edition of this translation has appeared. 3 Words of Reconciliation, 1890, p. 125 .

American Presbyterian Review, declares that the necessity of reform is felt especially in the region of eschatology ; he says : " All the faults of traditionalism converge at the point of eschatology, at which the entire Church is in a condition of great perplexity. "1

The proceedings against the five Andover professors, the threatened division in the American Board of Missions, the withdrawal of Mr. Spurgeon from the Baptist Union, are so many signs precursors of the coming renovation. In a discourse delivered at Boston before a thousand pastors, members of the Evangelical Alliance, Dr. Parker, of London, declared not long ago that among his colleagues in the Independent Churches none now preach the doctrine of eternal torments .

Even the Methodist body, that rear-guard of dissent, has been moved ; it has softened down the expressions in the chapter of one of its catechisms relating to the final doom of the wicked.2

Dr. Dale has characterized in a few words the present situation of the British Churches . He says :

I believe that for the moment the main current of opinion is running strongly in favour of universal restoration ; but that doctrine seems to me to be so destitute of all solid foundation that it is impossible for it to remain as a permanent article in the faith of the Church. I believe that in a few years the main body of opinion in the Free Churches, at least, in this country, will be in favour of that suspense of judgement which very many recommend ; and I cannot but believe that, after that, the main body of opinion will be found substantially on the side of the doctrine of Life in Christ of which Mr. White has so long been the champion. 3

Mr. White's name brings us to the starting-point of this controversy in its present stage in the English- speaking countries .

1 Whither ? A theological question for the times, by C. A. Briggs, D.D., New York, Scribner, 1889, p. 195.

2 The leaders of the body of Primitive Methodists appear to find themselves in great perplexity.

Heretofore they summarily expelled anyone who expressed doubt as to eternal torments, but the doubters have become so numerous that, in order not to depopulate the churches, a compromise has been invented : doubters may remain, but must not rank higher than teachers in the Sunday School. See Christian World, 24 July, 1890. 3 See in Supplement No. II. a fuller statement of the views of Dr. Dale.

Like Dr. Dale, Mr. White is a minister of the Congregational denomination. His book Life in Christ, published in 1846, forced upon public notice once more a truth which, although never without defenders , had long been obscured under a veil of false philosophy. But in vain did he appeal to the Bible and to the sacred right of free inquiry ; he and his book were both tabooed, and he was enabled to taste plentifully of the unspeakable delight of suffering for a good cause. Endowed with a large measure of bodily and mental vigour, and sustained by a robust faith, Mr. White has outlived the storm . While always faithful to his convictions, Mr. White has carefully avoided making a separate sect, having throughout his career maintained as close a connection as was possible with the Congregational body. Quitting the small country church of which he had been pastor some eleven years, he undertook the arduous work of evangelization in a populous London suburb. To this work he devoted thirty-six years of his life. Grown old in harness, he has now retired from the pastorate, but continues the ministry of preaching. His views have stood the test of experience ; they have enabled him to cope successfully with the unbelief which, to so large an extent, has permeated the working classes. In his chapel at Kentish Town has often been seen that rare spectacle-a full audience of artizans. In his special addresses to this class, so difficult of access, Mr. White uses the freedom of speech that characterized the utterances of the apostles. In his ministry, this messenger of the good news is not encumbered with the fetters still worn by so many evangelists ; his teaching neither revolts the conscience nor lulls it to sleep. To the human soul dying of thirst and of inanition, he presents Jesus Christ, the fountain of new life, the tree of life, the perpetual sustenance of the traveller wandering in the desert. In a word, his teaching is the revelation, in its most authentic form, of life and immortality in the Gospel.¹ The Church over which he so long presided has been distinguished by exceptional activity in

1 Mr. White attributes much of his success to the fact that he has constantly presented his conviction as a doctrine of life in Christ, the correlative doctrine of punishment taking only a subordinate place, and to his persistent use of the language of Scripture in relation to that doctrine.

[Note by the Translator. ] mission and philanthropic labours.

Latterly Mr. White's colleagues have recognized the excellence of his work, not only choosing him as one of the Merchants' Lecturers, but also placing him in the chair of the Congregational Union for the year 1886 .

The third edition of Mr. White's book consisted of ten thousand copies.

Dr. Dorner of Berlin, one of the most pious and learned professors of contemporary Germany and a competent judge, if such exists, had the highest esteem for this work ; he described it as a scientific work, very weighty, serious, and profound. "1

The movement of ideas bears some analogy to that of the currents in the atmosphere. The progress of meteorology has made it possible to predict the drift of the wind towards a given point. The time could be foreseen when the controversy agitating the Anglo- Saxon Churches would make its way to the Continent of Europe . That time has arrived, and we are in the midst of it .

An excellent translation of Mr. White's book was published by M. Charles Byse in 1880,2 replacing with advantage a little volume that we had issued eight years previously under the title La Fin du mal ou l'immortalité des justes et l'anéantissement graduel des impénitents. This modest little book was like the

1 " Ich finde, es ist eine sehr respectable, ernste und gründliche, wissenschaftliche Arbeit." Letter to M. Byse .-Professor van Osterzee also in his Religious Philosophy speaks of Mr. White's book as a work of great importance."

2 Edouard White, L'Immortalité conditionnelle ou la Vie en Christ, ouvrage traduit de l'anglais sur la 3me édition, par Charles Byse, 8vo, Paris, Fischbacher, 1880.

3 Paris, Fischbacher, 1872, 214 pages, 16mo.

This volume contained an essay presented to the Theological Society of Neuchâtel on 12 July, 1870.

An English translation was published in London in 1875 , under the title, The Struggle for Eternal Life, London, Kellaway. It has reappeared in a volume entitled The Extinction ofEvil, published by Rev. C. H. Oliphant, Boston, 1889. We had previously touched upon the subject in a lecture on

The Law of Progress, published in 1869. A veteran of the movement known as the earlier revival, M. Ami Bost, was, we believe, the first to formulate Conditionalism in the French language. He prepared a pamphlet entitled The Fate of the Wicked in the other Life (Le Sort des Méchants dans l'autre vie, 32 pages, 8vo, Paris, Grassart, 1861 ). This was the last of his writings, a worthy completion of a career devoted to the propagation of truth ; unhappily the sale of it was

swallow, which does not make the summer but tells of its coming.

In France, as in England, Mr. White's book has proved a powerful leaven. It has given occasion for interesting discussions at various annual conferences of pastors : in 1880 at

Marseilles, introduced by Pastor Edw. Delon ; in 1883 at Castres, where a paper was read by Professor Bruston ; in 1884 at Montpellier, M. Babut presenting the report ; ¹ at the general conference of French pastors at Paris in 1885, when M. Byse submitted a statement which was afterwards published as a pamphlet, entitled Notre Durée (Our Duration). In the discussion that followed the reading of this work there was not a single speech in support of the traditional dogma . In the following year M. Byse gave a course of lectures on the subject at Lausanne, closed by a sort of theological tournament.

Public debates, in which various views were represented, took place also at Geneva and Neuchâtel. A whole series of essays have appeared in the columns of the periodical press. Candidates for the ministry in the eight Protestant faculties of the

French- speaking countries have published numerous theses dealing with the same theme.4 prevented, and its light remained under the bushel, it is even doubtful whether it was noticed by a single newspaper.

1 The papers of Messrs . Bruston and Babut appeared in the Revue théologique of Montauban, 1885 .

2 Notre Durée. What says the Bible of Conditional Immortality ? Report read at Paris the 21 April, 1885, at the general conference of pastors. Paris,

Fischbacher.

3 Revue théologique, 1876-1880; Critique religieuse, 1879-1885 ; Chrétien évangélique, 1881, 1882 ; Alliance libérale, 1882 ; Evangile et liberté,

1887, etc.

4 We give the titles of those which have come to our knowledge ; they are for the most part conditionalist. N. Devisme, On the fate of the wicked in eternity. Montauban, 1869. E. Houter, The perfectibility of man after death. Valence, 1872. G. Soulier, Final restoration and the destruction of the wicked, Lausanne, 1873. J. Delisle, The doctrine of retribution in the Old Testament, Lausanne, 1874. E. Atger, On personal survival, Nîmes,

1877. E. Herding, Essay on immortality in Christ, Toulouse, 1883. J. Bach, Study of the idea of the Kingdom of God in the synoptic Gospels,

Laigle, 1883.

P. Poincenot, Essay on immortality, Laigle, 1884.

Malan, Eternal torments, Geneva, 1884.

A. Westphal, Flesh and Spirit :

An essay on the developement of these two notions in the Old and New

Testaments, Toulouse, 1885.

E. David, Study of conditional immortality

It is, in fact, evident that a real thaw has begun in the domain of eschatology. No one now openly maintains the old orthodoxy.

Several theologians of high standing have declared themselves in favour of Conditionalism ; others, more numerous, are only waiting for a suitable opportunity. Messrs. Auguste Sabatier, Charles Babut, D. H. Meyer, César Malan, jun., Ad. Schaeffer, president of the consistory of Colmar, have all published works which place them in the category of defenders of this point of view.¹

The movement has extended to Italy, where Signor Oscar Cocorda has published a remarkable volume entitled Pro Immortalitate ; L' Immortalità Condizionata ed il Materialismo.2

In Holland, too, Conditionalism has found a champion in the person of Dr. Jonker. We earnestly desire to see a translation of his masterly studies. 3

This may seem a great array of names ; in truth, names are not proofs, but, as it has been well said, " they represent proofs,"4 and they may produce a favourable presumption in impartial minds.

from the Biblical and philosophical points of view, Lausanne, 1885. F. Milhac, Essay on the religious ideas of Locke, Geneva, 1886. L. Vivien, The doctrine of Final Restoration, Neuchâtel, 1888. J. Wuithier, After Death according to the Jews, Neuchâtel, 1890, etc.

1 A. Sabatier, Mémoire sur la notion hébraïque de l'esprit, Paris, Fischbacher, 1879. Ch. Babut, Lenseignement de St. Paul sur la vie future,

Revue théologique, 1885. D. H. Meyer, Le Christianisme du Christ, Paris, Fischbacher, 1883. César Malan, Les grands traits de l'histoire religieuse de l'humanité, 2nd ed., Paris, Fischbacher, 1885 ; Manuel d'instruction religieuse, 1888. Ad. Schaeffer, De la certitude de la vie future, Paris,

Fischbacher, 1879 ; Au déclin de la vie, 1883 ; Le Bonheur : Esquisse d'une apologie rationnelle du Christianisme, 1887 ; Un Réveillon, Paris, Grassart, 1888. An English translation of the volume Au déclin de la vie has been published by F. A. Freer, under the title Sunset Gleams, and a German translation, entitled Auf der Neige des Lebens. The Réveillon is a charming story, which we specially recommend to young people.

2 A volume in large 8vo, 304 pages, Tipografia Alpina, Torre Pellice, 1883. L'Ape biblica, periodico mensile, Pinerolo.

3 Four articles in the Review of which he was one of the founders, Theologische Siudiën, Utrecht, 1883, 1884 .

4 M. Francis Chaponnière, Eglise Libre, of 9 Feb. , 1883.

We have spoken of a renewal, a new spring-time of theology. To what is the simultaneous developement of so many similar germs in various countries to be attributed ? The explanation is to be found, we believe, in the religious revival which, now and again breaking away from mere routine in the matter of interpretation, has assigned an honourable place to the impartial study of the Holy Scriptures. Biblical philology is a more rigorous science than is generally supposed. As the same texts form the recognized authority in all Protestant countries, an impartial exegesis must eventually reach everywhere the same conclusions . The day will come when the most tenacious traditionalists will have to pass through the Caudine forks of the authorized grammars and dictionaries.

Conditionalism has been regarded as a system of preconceived opinions, and even as a foreign importation. The recital of a personal experience will enable me to meet these accusations . It was a simple lexicological observation that led me into this line of thought. Formerly I preached the doctrine of eternal torments, and I therefore have this advantage over my opponents : that I know their point of view through having shared it, while they have not usually devoted much study to that which I defend.

It was the year 1854 ; I had just been admitted a student of the theological faculty at Neuchâtel, when the president of the commission directing the studies gave me as text of a first sermon this saying of Jesus Christ : " Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. " The translation of the venerable Ostervald was at that time a sort of Protestant Vulgate, its version was : " Fear him who can cause the loss of the soul," etc. (qui peut perdre l'âme) . This

1 Matthew x. 28.

2 The more recent versions of Rilliet, Lausanne, Oltramare, and Segond translate : faire périr l'âme. So also do those of Machet, Arnaud, the revised Ostervald, and Reuss. That of Darby has : Craignez celui qui peut détruire et l'âme et le corps. The old versions of Ostervald and Martin are so inexact that they ought never to be quoted in biblical controversies. It has been said that if Conditionalism be true Jesus ought to have said : " Fear expression perdre l'âme led me astray ; it was at that time generally held to mean to torment the soul for ever, and I naturally made my sermon an echo of the traditional dogma. Yet it was this very text that became the starting point of my doctrinal evolution. One day in consulting Alexander's Lexicon I noticed that the verb in the original Greek (apolesai) signifies primarily to destroy. This was a ray of light. " To destroy the soul ! " Then the soul must be perishable, I said to myself ; and I very soon saw the whole Bible illuminated by this new light. At the same time I was utterly ignorant that unconditional immortality had ever been questioned within the churches of Christendom . Not one of our professors had ever spoken to us of Conditionalism ; nothing was known either of the name, which is of quite recent origin, or of the thing.

Some years later I went to London, where I was received into the house of an aged lady who has left a blessed memory among the poor and suffering of the great metropolis. I mean

Mrs. Ranyard, the founder of the system of Bible women. She allowed me the use of her library, in which I met with a book bearing the title : Life in Christ : Four Discourses. This was an admirable exposition of the point of view at which I had secretly arrived. The author was the Rev. Edward White. " Do you know him ? " I inquired of my hostess. " He is my brother, " she replied. She introduced me to him, and that was the beginning of a most intimate friendship.

" When a man happens to be right," said M. Guizot, " he is often more right than he thinks. " In my new convictions I have found very much beyond all that I could foresee. They have been to me from time to time a stimulant, a restraint, a hope, and a consolation. They have taken possession of my heart after having captivated my imagination, and I have him who is able to kill (tuer) the soul," as if kill were a stronger expression than destroy (faire périr). Such is not, however, the opinion of Dr. H. Cremer, a philologist of the first rank. He says that destroy is a synonym of kill, strengthening the notion expressed by that verb. Moreover Jesus calls Satan a murderer (man-killer) John viii. 44 ; and it is not only the body but the soul also that Satan kills. Again it is said that the lord of the vineyard will miserably destroy (apolesai) the unfaithful husbandmen, Matt. xxi . 41. That evidently signifies that he will have them put to death, orkilled.

gradually discovered that they are also defensible from the point of view of philosophy.

In the next chapter we will give some declarations of the eminent metaphysicians who have testified to the philosophic character of Conditionalism. For the present we will simply mention a few names, for example : in Germany, Professor Lotze ; in France, Messrs . Renouvier and Pillon ; in Switzerland , Professor Charles Secrétan .

Unique prerogative ! Christian Conditionalism has found grace before the severe philosophy of the school of duty, of which M. de Pressensé quite lately said : " More than ever we need such a philosophy, for no other can have equal power to draw away our youth from sceptical dilettantism as well as from materialistic evolutionism . " 1

The chiefs of the neo-criticism have given a gracious reception to the idea of an attainable immortality ; they have considered it to be in conformity with practical reason, and it has become the unhoped-for pledge of reconciliation between theology and philosophy. The articles of M. Charles Renouvier dealing with the subject are like a treaty of peace between reason and the religious sentiment, those two rival powers whose hostility sets man at enmity with himself. At the request of M. Renouvier, we presented the theological aspect of the same subject in the Critique religieuse. We would here again thank our venerable friend for having provided us with such an opportunity of submitting, unfettered and without reserve, for the examination of the best thinkers, a conviction which is as dear to us as life itself, dearer, indeed, seeing that it is a question of the salvation not of an individual but of a great number.

In his book already quoted on Civilization and Belief, Professor Charles Secrétan explains the reasons why he too inclines to believe in an immortality that may be won.

These two patriarchs of French philosophy, M. Renouvier representing the philosophy of duty and M. Secrétan represent-

1 Revue Chrétienne, 1890, p. 157 .

ing that of liberty,¹ are excellent sponsors for Conditionalism, which, although apparently new-born, was in fact previously living in the cradle of the Gospel.

It is a curious coincidence that the doctrine which we maintain has obtained recruits even among the adherents of the experimental method. There are, in fact, Christian evolutionists who are opposing, not without success, the incomplete evolutionism of the materialists .

More consistent and more logical than many learned Darwinists, they require that the evolution of each man should go on so as to bring him nearer to the likeness of Jesus Christ, the model man. Professor

Drummond, of Glasgow, has been already mentioned ;

Armand Sabatier, professor in the Faculty of Science at

Montpellier, and M. Leenhardt, assistant professor of natural history at Montauban, are inclined in the same direction .

In the same class we may include another thinker, belonging to the old Bernese aristocracy, M. Henry de May, whose death took place in 1871. The Bibliothèque universelle of Lausanne published in 1885 four suggestive articles by M. Byse on M. de May and his book entitled The visible and invisible Universe, or the Plan of the Creation (L'univers visible et invisible ou le plan de la création).

This book contains a philosophy of nature.

In the author's view there is an exact correspondence between the material and the spiritual universe. The visible creation is the exact counterpart of the invisible universe.

It is a divine book wherein we may discover the secrets of the higher world.

As the dewdrop trembling on a blade of grass

1 Messrs. Renouvier and Secrétan were born within a few days of each other : the former on New Year's Day, 1815, the latter the 19th January of the same year.

2 Dr. Armand Sabatier, Essais d'un naturaliste transformiste sur quelques questions actuelles, 6th Essay, on Creation, physical evil, moral evil, death.

Critique philosophique, 31 Dec., 1886, and 31 Jan., 1887. See especially pages 51 , 60, 65, 71, 74.

The author is now preparing a work entitled

Essais sur la morale de l'évolutionnisme chrétien.

3 Quelques réflexions sur les rapports du christianisme et des sciences.

Discourse delivered at the opening of the scholastic year at the Faculty of

Montauban on the 6 Nov., 1884, by Prof. F. Leenhardt. Revue théologique,

4 Un positiviste chrétien. Bibliothèque universelle, 1885. These articles have been reprinted as a pamphlet, entitled Henry de May, un positiviste chrétien, Nyon, Switzerland, Kallenberg, 1889.

reflects now the silver moon, now the morning glow, and now the various colours of the meadow, so our planet is a mirror destined to reflect in our eyes the harmony of all things, the vastness of space, and the eternity to come.

By different ways Messrs. de May and Drummond have reached conclusions which are identical. They are two Christian positivists who, unknown to each other, starting from the same principle, have both arrived, as by a common accord , at the idea of Conditional Immortality.

According to Professor Drummond, the law of laws, the law which completes the universe and gives it perfect harmony is the law of continuity. There is not only analogy between the sensible and the spiritual worlds, but each law of which we can show the existence here below is like a line which extends indefinitely beyond the circle of our experience, throughout all economies ; in other terms : every law of nature is universal. Twenty years earlier the Bernese philosopher had expressed the same conviction when he wrote : " The laws remain invariable, it is only the elements that change."

" Every life," said M. de May, " is changeable and destructible ; the human soul, like all souls, is changeable and mortal. The life of a soul depends upon its conduct." To this idea M. de May attaches extreme importance. Notwithstanding a few contradictory passages, which may be explained by the difficulty of the subject and the long time occupied in the elaboration of his system, this recluse of the Black Forest rejects on the one hand the Platonic dogma of a natural and inalienable immortality of all human souls, and on the other hand the theological dogma of a damnation consisting in torments absolutely eternal. This important law of the mortality of souls involves the necessity of regeneration. Entrance into a world can only take place by a birth ; we therefore need to be born anew in order to become citizens of the kingdom of heaven. This is exactly the teaching of Jesus Christ. He came to offer to all men and to deposit in the heart of believers the germ of that celestial life, to place within our reach that lost immortality which we were incapable of reconquering by our own efforts. Those who freely and resolutely unite themselves to God in filial submission participate in his eternal existence.1

Professor Drummond has somewhat less explicitly indicated similar views ; he says :

1 Charles Byse, Henry de May, passim.

with-

' he soul, in its highest sense, is a vast capacity for God

T out God it shrinks and shrivels until every vestige of the divine is gone, and God's image is left without God's Spirit. One cannot call what is left a soul ; it is a shrunken, useless organ, a capacity sentenced to death by disuse, which drops as a withered hand by the side, and cumbers nature like a rotted branch (p. 110) . It ought to be placed in the forefront of all Christian teaching that Christ's mission on earth was to give men life. " I am come," he said, " that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." And that he meant literal life, literal, spiritual and eternal life is clear from the whole course of his teaching and acting. To impose a metaphorical meaning on the commonest word in the New Testament is to violate every canon of interpretation and at the same time to charge the greatest of teachers with persistently mystifying his hearers by an unusual use of so exact a vehicle for expressing definite thought as the Greek language, and that on the most momentous subject of which he ever spoke to men . Itis a canon of interpretation according to Alford, that " a figurative sense of words is never admissible except when required by the context "

(p. 235).1 Reuss defines the apostolic belief with his usual impartiality when-and the quotation is doubly pertinent here he discovers in the an apostle's conception of life, first, " the idea of a real existence imperishable existence " (p. 236).

The professor's position in the midst of a very orthodox and keen-scented public has induced him to introduce a saving clause. He says (p. 117) :

Should anyone object that from the scientific standpoint the opposite of salvation is annihilation, the answer is at hand. From this standpoint there is no such word.

Professor Drummond repudiates the term annihilation, but he admits the fact that the individuality of the obstinate sinner will be destroyed. This subtle distinction between destroy and annihilate had the advantage of throwing dust in the eyes of the sleuth-hounds of orthodoxy, it probably increased the success of the book a hundredfold ; but it does not prevent us from claiming the author as on our side. His standpoint implies and postulates the suppression of the incorrigible rebel, but that is exactly the supreme chastisement in the view of the

Conditionalist.

We know full well that no atom, no substance

1 History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age, vol. ii., p. 496.

is annihilated , but that does not affect the case ; it is a question of the maintenance or suppression of a person.

consciousness is the man.

The personal

What can be the value for the individual of any possible remainder or detritus, even if of an immaterial nature, when once the personality is destroyed ?

Even in the camp of the rationalist Christians Conditionalism has met with sympathy. Pastor Gerold, a recognized representative of that tendency, has acknowledged it. He says :

The doctrine of attainable immortality has a grand moral aspect ; it puts life eternal, so to speak, within man's reach. We are free either to ascend to the eternal life or to descend to the eternal death ; immortality is not imposed upon anyone.

Without pronouncing an opinion as to the fate of those who die impenitent, let us from this solution of the problem of the future retain the incontestable truth that those only can be sure of immortality who here on earth have laid hold on eternal life.¹

On the ground of exegesis, the theologian Scholten, who has been called the father of independent theology in Holland, has reached exactly our conclusions. He says :

According to the Bible, the life which the sinner loses is his very existence. The dry branch that is burnt is an image of the annihilation of the sinner. What will remain of his person ? Will it be his spirit ? but, born of the flesh, the sinner does not possess the life of the spirit ; his flesh ? but that is destined to perish with the world and its lusts.2

A journal of rationalist tendency states that :

The Conditionalist theory realizes a progress and marks a step towards the union of all Christians.3

It is thus permissible to believe that in Conditionalism is to be found the meeting-point of the four main spiritualistic tendencies of our time : biblical Christianity, rationalist Christianity, Kantism, and evangelical transformism.

In his most recent attack, one of our principal opponents,

Professor Frederick Godet, went so far as to admit that the

1 Le Progrès religieux, 27 Aug., 1881 . 2 L'Evangile de Jean, vol. i., p. 47. 3 Le Protestant, a journal of the rationalist Protestants, 27 March, 1886.

Conditionalist solution was the most defensible from a purely rational point of view.¹

On looking round we note that the battle in which we are engaged is half won, but it is only half won. To cease preaching the blasphemous doctrine of eternal torments is not enough : that doctrine needs to be replaced by teaching that will be at the same time more in accordance with the Bible, more moral, and more scientific. Only that which is well replaced is thoroughly destroyed, and, as we have seen, a system of dogmatics without eschatology is like a building without a roof, liable to be damaged by every change of weather . The fear of future punishment is now no more than a crumbling barrier, and in the moral life of many a soul, a false optimism being the fashion of the day, all is going from bad to worse . A member of the Supreme Court at Washington has perceived and indicated this fault. He said to a pastor :

You ministers are making a fatal mistake in not holding forth before men, as prominently as the previous generation did, the retributive justice ofGod. You have fallen into a sentimental style of rhapsodizing over the love of God, and you are not appealing to that fear of future punishment which our Lord and Master made such a prominent element in his preaching. And we are seeing the effects of it in the widespread demoralization of private virtue and corruption of public conscience throughout the land. 2

With Jesus Christ we also demand the fear of " Him who can destroy both soul and body. " The fact is that the Churches, which are passing through a period of intellectual feebleness, recoil from the necessary effort.

are deterred by a blind conservatism.

The most zealous

They are not willing to discuss that teaching which Reuss called " the favourite doctrine of all orthodoxies. " As an illustration of the existing deadlock

1 " What are we to think of this reasoning ? We cannot but be struck by its plausible aspect. And without the light of Christian revelation it would seem to me difficult to arrive at any other conclusion." That Unknown

Country, p. 405.

2 The Christian, May 9, 1890.

3 History of Christian Theology in the ApostolicAge, 1852, vol. ii. , p. 257.

may be cited the work of M. Ernest Naville on The Problem of

Evil, in which there is not a word as to the eventual fate of the victims of evil. That leaves manifestly an immense blank.

Not long ago a Genevese pastor set forth in a humorous article the programme of rules of conduct imposed upon their spiritual leaders by many Continental Churches, just the converse of that which is required elsewhere. According to him :

The pastors must not make themselves familiar with the scientific theories and the philosophical speculations of the present day, nor even with the consequences that these may lead to in theology and religion. They must not be acquainted with modern criticism, and must take care not to acquaint their people with the latest results of critical investigations. They must be careful not to construct a new theology upon the ruins of the old. They are expected to avoid all application of Christian principles to burning questions, and all attempts to solve the delicate problems of the age.1

On the other hand, the rationalists who have only two dogmas : God and the immortality of the soul, naturally dread an inquiry which would perhaps diminish by a half their already sufficiently poor religion .

Placed thus in face of a coalition of opposing forces, between the traditionalist hammer and the universalist anvil, Conditionalism would seem, humanly speaking, to have a gloomy prospect. It certainly rejoices the hearts of those who receive it, but in respect of worldly affairs it has caused them only worry and annoyances ; they have been kept in quarantine, they have been so isolated and exposed to so many affronts that nothing but the sentiment of a sacred duty has kept them to the fore. They have even been accused of seeking to “ please men. "

This accusation is indeed a climax.

If such had been their ambition, would they have professed a doctrine which, to adopt the expression of the Jews at Rome in relation to the Gospel, " is everywhere spoken against " ? Because of his Conditionalism M. Byse, in all other respects irreproachable as a pastor, was treated as a heretic by the Missionary Church of

1 That which is not required of the pastors.

Semaine Religieuse, of

Geneva, 8 Feb., 1890.

Belgium.¹ In England and America similar cases have occurred, and in France preachers who are Conditionalists are obliged to tone down their teaching. In the Union of the Free Churches an estimable pastor who denied endless torments found himself obliged to gain his living by labour in the fields .

In this controversy, in spite of all our efforts , offensive insinuations have been persistently introduced. One highlyplaced theologian has even assured us that certain persons are only waiting for the death of its first champions in order to embrace Conditionalism . In other terms, they reject a truth because it has been previously embraced and proclaimed by others with whom they are not in sympathy. If that were so, it would only remain for us to pray that God would withdraw us from this world where all our efforts to serve him seem to produce a contrary result. Seriously, however, we would entreat the critics to let alone the humble advocates of the doctrine and join us in the endeavour to solve the great problem.2

Come what may, " truth is great and will prevail "; the name of the truth in the Scriptures of the New Covenant is the unforgettable ; it baffles the most skilfully-planned conspiracies . Vainly do men bury it under heaps of error and falsehood , sooner or later it breaks forth from its grave and reigns, even over those who had buried it.

If Conditionalism has truth on its side, it will one day share in the victory.

Some eight years ago M. de Pressensé said that " the best

1 The injustice of this conduct was indicated at the time in a pamphlet, to which no reply has been made, entitled Le Péril de l'Évangelisme, a statement presented to the Society for Theological Science at Geneva, 1883 . M. L. Durand, formerly pastor at Liège, who had cast doubt upon the correctness of the pamphlet, was obliged to acknowledge that he had been mistaken .

2 With this object the critics ought to begin by expounding their own views. We are often left in entire ignorance of the opinion of our opponents on the point in question. They do not state it precisely ; it is left in obscurity. This is no doubt a convenient method, controverting a definite view of immortality without taking the responsibility of any theory. The critic keeps himself out of sight so completely as to be intangible. He reminds us of Homer's gods, who, while taking part in the strife of the combatants, themselves remained invulnerable. 3 I Esdras iv. 41 .

4 He Aletheia.

minds in all the evangelical Churches are divided as to Conditional Immortality. " ¹ At the same period an article in the

Semaine Religieuse of Geneva declared that this doctrine attracted " an ever- increasing number of theologians and independent thinkers," and that it was " a hundred times more acceptable than final restoration or eternal torments. " 2 During the last few years the adhesions to Conditionalism have become so numerous that the day is almost within sight when it will be accepted by all the best minds referred to by M. de Pressensé . When that time arrives there will no longer be any question of Conditionalism, or Universalism, or Traditionalism, but only of the glorious and pure primitive Gospel, which has been too long obscured by human inventions.

We repudiate the name of innovators with which we are often reproached.

It is with

Conditionalism as with Protestantism, which is hastening the day when there will be no further need to protest.

Protestantism has had to combat the obstinacy of the Romish Church, the most sectarian, the most haughty, and the most backward of all the sects .

Conditionalism has a better chance of success. While it professes to continue the work of the Reformation, and to return to apostolic teaching, too long forgotten, while it invokes the Bible and free inquiry, while it has eloquent advocates to plead its cause, the religious newspapers are obliged to make way for it, professors of dogmatics pay attention to it, pastors and people are anxious to listen to the public exposition of the doctrine. This state of things cannot long be maintained, Conditionalism must soon be either generally accepted or rejected . For the present the discussion continues ; if it is wearisome we ought not to complain. Protestantism was born of discussion ; if it were now to repudiate discussion it would be repudiating its own mother. Will our opponents try to place themselves at our point of view ? The traditional dogma, in a mitigated form it is true, is maintained by a great number of zealous laymen. Very few pastors attempt to set them right. In our eyes this dogma is a calumny upon the heavenly Father, it makes the divinity of Jesus Christ almost a superfluity, it discredits the Gospel ; it

1 Revue chrétienne, Nov., 1882. 29 Dec., 1882.

seems to us to have against it the Scriptures, the earliest

Fathers of the Church , the conscience and reason . On the other hand, the doctrine of the assured final salvation of all men finds many supporters. This doctrine, too, seems to us false, and not less dangerous. Exposed to the attacks of the upholders of these two theories, and earnestly desiring to edify, Conditionalism is obliged to use at the same time both the sword and the trowel. If it were to keep silence, its adversaries would use that silence as a weapon against that which we believe to be a salutary truth.

Strong convictions have never kept silence.

The French translation of Mr. White's book appeared in 1880. It has ploughed a broad and deep furrow, but after the plough comes the harrow¹ to break the clods turned up by the ploughshare . While presenting afresh in its essential features the thesis already developed by our venerable predecessor, we shall endeavour to remove the misunderstandings which are still common . It will be seen that some of our opponents would be Conditionalists if they were consistent with themselves .

As the basis of our work we have taken the notes of a course of lectures delivered at the University of Geneva in 1886, and at the Academy of Neuchâtel in 1887. That course was attended by pastors, theological students, and simple laymen ; many ladies, too, were present. We have, therefore, reason to hope that our book may be understood by all persons who interest themselves in the grand problem of the future life .

The Supplement is more especially for the use of professional theologians .

It contains various extracts and articles which may serve to support our argumentation .

An unexpected contrast : the philosophers have shown themselves generally sympathetic, the opposition has come from among the Churches, both Catholic and Protestant. To these,

1 A harrow forms part of the armorial bearings of the Petavel family. [Note by the translator.]

2 Passing beyond the limits of Protestantism, this controversy has shaken even the immobility of the Roman Catholic Church. Father Gratry accepted the principle of Conditionalism. In his view there are men " who are constantly going down towards non-existence with the consciousness of their increasing inanity and of their continual advance towards nothingness." See Ferraz, Histoire de la philosophie en France au XIXe siècle, p. 415.-

therefore, we submit our reply, but we desire to reach beyond the Churches, and to win that large and increasing class of literary men, the head and heart of a people for whom we have a profound affection. Many among them, groaning under their scepticism, are stretching out their hands in desperation towards an unknown God.

We desire to present to them the

Gospel taken at the fountain-head, the most precious thing that we know. This testimony of our affection will surely be acceptable to them. More than any other modern people, the French have the noble passion for " glory, honour, and immortality. " ¹ In order to satisfy that passion they make astonishing sacrifices . " Non omnis moriar, " I shall not utterly die ; this saying of Horace seems to sum up their aspirations.

The horror of utter death is with them a powerful motive ; it is the highest form of the instinct of self- preservation, and to it we can make our appeal. But many noble spirits have gone sadly astray. They may be seen exhausting themselves in heroic efforts to hand down to posterity-what ? The few letters that compose their name ? An illusory and even derisive triumph, if he whose name endures no longer exists. By dissipating this illusion, by setting before men the true glory, honour, and immortality, Conditionalism may serve to reawaken the religious sentiment in France. Worldly glory is a smoke which is quickly dissipated, along with the intoxication that it procures ; the true immortality is that of the person. This is the inestimable treasure which the Gospel puts within the reach of everyone who desires it, in a doctrine which, without contradicting our reason, completes the teaching of the most eminent philosophers . This we shall proceed to expound, as it presents itself to us in the purity of the primitive texts. Our zeal in the accomplishment of this task will be in proportion to the sadness caused by the frivolity of the multitude in respect of their eternal future, the involuntary blasphemy of the traditional theology, and the blind optimism which smilingly lulls so many souls into a fatal slumber.

The Abbé Méric, in his work entitled L'autre vie, 2 vols., 8vo, Paris, 1880 ; the Rev. Father Felix, S.J., in his volume L'éternité, Paris, 1888 ; and the

Very Rev. Father Monsabré in his Conférences de Notre Dame de Paris, Lent,

1888, have all three, more or less, touched upon the study of Conditionalism.

1 Romans ii. 7.

CHAPTER II .

I. Biology and comparative physiology, geology and palæontology, and, indeed, all that is included in the term experimental science, fails to supply any proof of the immortality of the soul.-II. Experimental science tends to assimilate the final fate of man to that of the animals .

III . The study of nature seems to teach evolutionism, or at least the law of a survival of the fittest ; if immortality were otherwise proved, that law might well suggest a Conditional Immortality. IV. The Platonic proofs of the immortality of the soul are not conclusive.-V. Greater value of the moral proof. VI . Admissions of spiritualist philosophers and theologians.- VII . The moral proof favours the hypothesis of an attainable immortality.-VIII . Conditionalist thinkers and metaphysicians. IX. In view of the insufficiency of philosophy, the human soul cries out for a divine revelation.

" MAN, who has scaled the heavens by the ladder of his astronomy, and by the study of the rocks divined the history of the globe, finds a more insoluble problem in his own nature and destiny. Though wearing so many crowns, as earth-subduer, legislator, soldier, poet, philosopher, and saint, this image of the infinite nevertheless scarcely arrives at the maturity of his powers ere death carries him away. He perishes like the moss or lichen beneath his feet. "

What is this mysterious doom of death which overshadows all, which awaits and engulfs us all ? Is it indeed the end of our individual being ? Does man, the " myriadminded, " when he expires, close his eyes for ever on these star-lit heavens to which he has gazed upward so steadfastly and so wistfully for a few brief moments ?

Is our life like the

1 The early sections of this chapter contain a summary of the first division of Mr. White's book, Life in Chrisi, previously mentioned.

bubble eddying around on the surface of a stream, appearing for a moment and then bursting and mingling its atoms with the water that bore it along ? This is the belief of five hundred millions of Orientals.

If, on the contrary, the individual survives, will it be for a moment, or for ever ?

Is our immortality absolute or relative, native or conditional ? Shall we live again with the consciousness of our identity ? If man is immortal, why the silence and the impenetrable night of the tomb ? These are the most vital of all questions ; as Pascal has well said : Immortality is a thing of so much importance to us, touching us so nearly, that whoever is indifferent with regard to it must have lost all proper feeling. " 1

There is such a thing as science, independent of religions and sects, modern science, to which we are indebted for a thousand admirable discoveries ; we will inquire of it. Precise, profound, and rigorously exact, it is entitled to our confidence.

So long as man was studied apart from the system of living creatures around him, it was possible indefinitely to exalt his nature and destiny ; poets and theologians gave free scope to their imagination. But since the progress of natural science has enabled us to embrace in panorama the whole range of animated creatures upon our globe, it has become impossible to found general theories upon the examination of a single species, or to affirm the exclusive immortality of man on the ground of attributes which are common to him and all living beings.

The ancient barriers have been removed.

Comparative physiology teaches that man is, like every animal, the product of a germ which has power to build up his organism, his faculties , and his mental and sensitive capacities.

The life cannot be separated, even in thought, from the being that it animates . Life independent of an organism cannot be scientifically demonstrated . In this respect there is not merely analogy, but identity, between the human race and the animals. A very ancient philosopher made the remark that man is born as a wild ass's colt. "

In all animal organisms, from the lowest to the highest, may be traced sensation, per-

Thoughts (Pensées), complete edition, by J. F. Astié, Paris, 1883, p. 345.

ception, voluntary movement, instinct, thought, in a developement always parallel with that of a nervous system consisting of brain or ganglia. The mind of man is developed in accordance with a universal law which connects with brain all intellectual phenomena. We observe the existence of thought wherever brain or ganglia are developed, but nowhere else. The heredity of qualities and capacities is subject to the same laws in all beings. If, then, the identity of the process of production indicates a corresponding identity of the process of dissolution, the final destiny of man will be exactly similar to that of the animals .

Comparative physiology does not furnish the least ground for hope that human intelligence can survive the brain. The mind seems to be one of the various manifestations of life .

This superior power is developed with the brain, it is not developed if the growth of the brain is arrested, as in idiots ; it lapses into insanity when the brain is inflamed ; it becomes feeble when the brain grows old ; and when the brain no longer fulfils its functions the mind ceases to act.

A blow on the head affects the intellect, a fermented liquor stimulates or intoxicates it, a narcotic sends it to sleep. Mental maladies and peculiarities are hereditary in the same way as purely physical qualities.

It is clear that the character of each child is the result of a great number of precedent individualities. Intelligence varies not only in accordance with the mass, but in accordance with the tissue and the convolutions of the organ of thought. In a word, the human mind is not to be conceived of as isolated ; its vigour, its feebleness, its maladies, its birth, its decline, are in exact correspondence with the condition of the cerebral matter on which it depends ; hence the legitimate conclusion-until the contrary is proved that the soul dies with the body. Sentiment, as the biologists say, ought to give way in the presence of facts. Science no longer permits the isolation of man in the midst of nature ; it sees in him only one link of the immense chain of organic beings, which, by an inevitable law, are being hurled into the abyss of nothingness. There are in the world a million of living species, whereof 999,999 are mortal ; science demands why man, the millionth species, should form the single exception, seeing that there is

nothing in his organism to warrant such a lofty claim. His birth is of the humblest, his genealogy uncertain. Transformism denies the intervention of a creative act in the appearance of man upon the earth.

Palæontology opposes transformism ; but from the point of view of geology, physiology, prehistoric anthropology, and ethnology, a special creation of the first man still remains only an hypothesis. It is impossible to build up the dogma of immortality on this quicksand.

Not only individuals, but whole species perish ; geologists have dug up and described as many as sixty thousand extinct species . From the earth's earliest days death has followed on the heels of life ; like the Saturn of ancient fable, Nature devours her children .

Her motherhood is similar to that of a volcano producing hosts of fugitive sparks which are speedily extinguished in the gloom of an eternal night .

The advocates of immortality bring forward the fact that the seeds of plants survive the plants themselves for an indefinite period, and that a butterfly emerges from the caterpillar's shroud ; and in the same way an invisible germ issuing from the human organism may perhaps survive the death of that organism . " It may be that under the appearance of a complete annihilation of the physical and spiritual life the very germ of the life still subsists, capable of reanimation under favourable conditions . " 1

A perhaps is not a proof. Some biologists, putting aside as chimerical everything which is outside their experience, have gone so far as to propose agnosticism as the basis of a new morality. They say : " Would not men be more likely to have a deeper love for those about them, and a keener dread of filling a house with aching hearts, if they courageously realized from the beginning of their days that we have none of this perfect, companionable bliss to promise ourselves in other worlds, that the black and horrible grave is indeed the end of our communion, and that we know one another no more ? "2

It must be admitted that the study of comparative psy-

1 On the Certainty of a Future Life (De la certitude de la Viefuture, lettre à un ami), by Ad. Schaeffer, Paris, Fischbacher ; Grassart, 1879.

2 The Fortnightly Review, 1873. Agnosticism, which is a kind of positivism, requires the evidence of facts ; we agree, but, with Mr. Edward

White, we demand all the facts.

chology has been hampered, like all the other branches of science, by the traditional theology. The Bible has been supposed to teach the absolute truth in all departments of knowledge, and its texts, frequently interpreted in a most arbitrary fashion, have hindered the impartial study of nature. A few quotations from the popular or poetic language of the prophets prevented the reception of the true theory of the solar system during nearly two thousand years. The biblical story of the creation, wrongly regarded as a scientific cosmogony, caused the postponement of the marvellous discoveries of geology until the present century. The notion of a universal deluge, and a mistaken view of the tenth chapter of Genesis, even now arrest the progress of ethnology. The moral nature of God himself has been concealed behind clouds of sacerdotal metaphysics ; it is, therefore, by no means surprising that the nature of man and that of the animals have been misunderstood. In this case, however, the excuse of being led astray by the primitive texts of the Old Testament does not exist, for, as we shall see, they conform in a remarkable manner to the facts of nature, and directly contradict the traditional psychology. In order to make them accord with a pretended orthodoxy, it has needed the extraordinary contortions of ecclesiastical exegesis .

" Man," says the Church, " has a soul, the animals have none ; they have only instinct. Hence the diversity of their destinies .

For the animal, death is the total destruction of the individual ; but the soul of man is spiritual, is of the nature of God, and consequently indestructible, eternal as God himself. Being a simple and indivisible substance, it cannot be dissolved, and being once in existence it must exist for ever. Even in the material world nothing is annihilated, no atom is lost. Forms are changed, organisms are decomposed, but substance remains .

So it is with spiritual substance.

God has endowed spirit with endless existence, and our moral nature demands immortality. " Throughout Christendom man is regarded as possessing an inalienable immortality which distinguishes him

from the beasts that perish ; and this principle is maintained as a postulate of the religious life, co-ordinate with belief in the moral government of God. While holding such views, it has been difficult to do justice to the animal world. By the side of beings endowed with the divine attribute of eternal duration, these humble creatures have had small chance of consideration ; accordingly, the " immortal " bipeds have exercised a tyrannical government over their perishable slaves. A more attentive study of these enslaved races, however, is gradually dissipating the illusions of scholastic psychology. A new science, comparative psychology, is demolishing the metaphysical arguments on which theologians have rested their hope of life eternal .

In fact, if our prospect of a future life depends upon the possession of a soul, we must either be resigned to share that immortality with all our collaterals of the animal kingdom, or else forego our own hopes, admitting that we are mortal, like them. The beast, too, has a soul ; he possesses the organ of thought ; he has the power of receiving ideas ; his memory is subject to the laws of the association of ideas ; he reflects, he learns, he dreams, he sometimes invents ; he has a sense of the beautiful, manners often exemplary, a feeling and thankful heart ; he loves his kind and man, his relative and his superior in the hierarchy of the universe.

For a long time it was the custom to attribute to instinct all that which in the animals resembles the manifestations of a spiritual principle, and by instinct was understood a natural impulse to pursue blindly some end, to do acts of which the agent does not perceive the purpose. Thus defined, instinct may certainly explain a considerable number of the operations of the animal mind, but not the whole of these phenomena, perhaps not the half. Instinct may to a large extent account for the activity of the bee, the spider, the mole, the beaver, and the first actions of the little child endeavouring to sustain its feeble life .

But if it be asserted that no animal has the consciousness of a special aim, or uses means intended to attain a definite purpose, then the theory does not correspond with the facts. To say that an elephant, a horse, or a dog does by instinct that which it has been taught to do would be almost as absurd as to speak of a child instinctively learning to read. In the philosophical schools there has been a sort of general conspiracy to underrate the animals. Descartes went so far as to declare that they were mere automata, and he said this with the evident intention to exalt the supremacy of man. It has been said that thought involves the immateriality of the thinking principle, and that immateriality implies immortality. But, as we have just seen, there are animals that think, and they would, therefore, according to this reasoning, be immortal .

But if this reasoning be false, if the beast possesses a certain faculty for thought without being therefore immortal, man cannot have any right to found a hope of future life on the possession of that same faculty.

So far as science can perceive, there is no exception to the general law of death. After a brief life of a few hours, days , or years, ali the denizens of earth, water, and air " return to their dust " ; their constituent elements are dissipated, and go to form parts of new chemical combinations, but the individual, as such, ceases to exist. Nature grants no privilege, in this respect, to the species that are distinguished either by the delicacy of their instincts or by the superiority of their intelligence. Each organism is developed, as we have said, from a germ, which produces at the same time both the energies and their instruments in a unity dissoluble only by death. Every part of the body is continually wearing away and being renewed by means of the blood ; the blood is the vehicle of life, which circulates or stops with it.

Death is the cessation of the organic functions.

The desire to find a natural basis for the doctrine of the immortality of the human soul has led some contemporary authors to attribute to the higher animals certain rights to a future life . Others have imagined the immortality of domestic animals ; the soul of the dog would survive, while the wolf in death would utterly die. There are even some who have not recoiled from the idea of an immortality for the infusoria ; then, since it is impossible to fix the line of demarcation between the animal and the vegetable, immortality has actually

been attributed to plants ; a resurrection has been promised for all the rose-trees and oaks that have vegetated upon the surface of the globe ! A step even beyond this can be taken by human fancy. Prehistoric men probably believed in the essential immortality of their bows and arrows, which they broke at the tomb of the hunter, so that their shades might accompany that of the deceased .

The imagination of certain believers uses the supposed immortality of man as an argument in favour of that of animals. On the other hand, contemporary science contests human immortality on account of the evident mortality of all living beings. In view of the intimate relationship between man and the other mammals, many students of nature in our day think they see in man only the effect of a gradual advance from anterior races, called anthropomorphic. According to this theory, man would be by collateral descent a distant cousin of the ape, " a twig of the branch of the catarrhinian¹ apes of the ancient world. " This is the theory of an ascending evolution, the triumph of which would place the name of Darwin on a level with those of Galileo and Newton ; it forms part of the vaster hypothesis of transformism, which supposes a common cradle from which, by way of gradual modifications , have issued all the living beings on the face of the earth.

It is clear that this system can be supported by numerous arguments ; its adherents include scientists of the first rank, and even spiritualists. It has been called the greatest synthesis hitherto conceived by the mind of man. Dr. Virchow, its chief opponent in Germany, admits that it exhibits a certain verisimilitude .

Professor Haeckel, in his work on the origin of man, supports his argument by reference to the morphology of the embryo, which in man seems to imitate in its changes the stages through which his ancestors would have passed in the progressive evolution of the animal races . In the human body, too, are found atrophied and useless organs which seem to be vestiges of a less perfect organization, while

1 Catarrhinian ; i.e., with narrow projecting nose.

2 Journal de Genève, 6 March, 1879 ; scientific correspondence. !

in certain animals these same parts have continued to attain their full developement.

Nevertheless, transformism still remains a disputable hypothesis. Not only has there not been found within historic times a single certain instance of transmutation of species, of the appearance of a new type really fertile and durable ; but, as we have already seen, palæontology bars the way of this theory. If it were true that in the depths of the past all existing forms had been produced by way of evolution from anterior organisms, the earth's strata wherein lie the fossil remains of antediluvian beings ought surely to furnish at least some specimens of species in course of transition.

So long as these links are missing in the chain, the Darwinist system will lack certainty. The testimony of geology is decidedly in favour of a creation of distinct groups by successive acts of divine power, or at least by successive acts of the plastic force of nature in numerous centres of formation .

As for Haeckel's theory, according to which the organic cells of the monera, or primitive monads, would have issued spontaneously from inorganic atoms, it is as decidedly a leap into the supernatural as is the hypothesis of a creating God, for it is recognized that every life springs from a germ .

After all, as Professors Goldwin Smith and Secrétan have said, the theory of evolution does not necessarily exclude the idea of a personal God causing the formative influence of various environments in the accomplishment of his works.

" By evolution may be understood the method adopted by the Almighty for the developement of the plan of the creation. In this sense the expression is in perfect harmony with faith in a personal and conscient God. "1

In relation to immortality, this system gives at least a presentiment of it.

It teaches that man has arrived at the twenty-second degree of the zoologic scale ; the very principle

1 J. F. Astié, La théologie des réunions de l'Alliance évangélique de New York, 1873. Report of Professor Anderson (Revue de théologie et de philosophie, 1875).

Professors McCosh, of the United States ; Pfleiderer, of

Berlin ; Fairbairn, of Oxford ; R. Flint, of Edinburgh ; Sir Andrew Clark ; and Messrs. C. Glaubrecht, Ernest Naville, Aug. Sabatier, Father Delsaux, D. Cochin ; Professors Arm. Sabatier, Leenhardt, Doumergue, etc., have made similar declarations.

of evolution requires a new transformation, a higher ascension, and a twenty-third degree.

If transformism truly excludes the notion of a native immortality of all men, it seems, on the other hand, to contain in germ the principle of Conditional Immortality. We are not disposed to speak slightingly of this bold theory, which is perhaps the wild stock on which will be grafted the philosophical Christianity of the future ; it at least contains one incontestable truth : the survival of the fittest and best conditioned species. Change is a condition of life, according to the law of nature ; the species which do not develope, decay and disappear. There is " an aristocratic and moral side " of natural selection " which assures the victory to the fittest and best " morally. But, as we shall see, according to the law of the Gospel also, change is a condition of life. From this point of view we are all only candidates for immortality, and Darwinism, completed by moral freedom , leads us to Jesus Christ .

Professor Goldwin Smith considers that " Darwinism would be only faithful to its principle in admitting the possibility of a developement in the future as well as the reality of a developement in the past. " If man has passed successively from the inorganic to the organic state, from the animal to the savage, and then to the civilized condition, why should not the evolution proceed still further, even to the transfiguration and immortalization of his being ? A sudden and final arrest of the process of evolution would be contrary to the data of a doctrine which denies immobility in nature. We should find the law of transformism reappearing in theology. The fittest and best conditioned species survive, those which fail to conform to the law of progress decay and disappear ; he who sins voluntarily does away with himself ; so that the unregenerate wicked would one day be the fossils of the moral world, and divine election would be but the choice of the fittest, with wide scope left for the exercise of individual liberty.¹

1 It would be possible to go so far as to say that the evolution of the visible universe is a condition of our moral liberty. The personal God, by withdrawing himself behind the laws which govern the evolutionary creation, perhaps wished to leave room for the birth and developement of human liberty. In fact, in the absence of evident and irrefragable proofs of the existence of a personal God, the spiritual birth and growth of man mention this tendency towards agreement for what it is worth, not as a proof, but merely as being like one of the toothingstones in an incomplete building, left projecting in order to be worked into the new part when added, and as furnishing a presumption in favour of an attainable immortality.

§ 1. But we will now resume the consideration of the proposition that immortality is unconditional. It has been treated as an axiom, while in reality it is only an opinion not merely very contestable, but actually widely contested. It does not even rest, like many other errors , upon almost universal consent.

Not to mention materialists and atheists, there are in the world five hundred millions of Chinese and Hindoos who in perfectly good faith do not claim personal immortality.¹ One half of the human race believes in annihilation, and aspires no higher ! The teaching which has come to us from ecclesiastical tradition inclines us to allow the Platonic hypothesis of the imperishability of individual souls to pass without examination. Stop it as it goes, stare it in the face, demand its title to acceptance, and it will be put out of countenance and reduced to beg of your bounty the place that it was accustomed to look upon as a right .

Too many people are unaware that profound thinkers, without being either atheists or Buddhists or Brahminists, can only take place in the atmosphere of faith. Since it is possible, from the evolutionist point of view, for pure reason to contest, and even deny, the existence of a Creator, the love of man for God will have so much the more spontaneity, reality, and worth, and will be so much the more free. Faith postulates a living God, believes in him, in spite of the fatalism of natural law, just as every one believes in the sun hidden behind a veil of clouds on a rainy day. If the existence of the living God could be mathematically proved, there would be no room nor reason for faith ; but if it be admitted that in God's view the faith of man, in spite of his forlorn condition in the midst of the vast universe, is like a pearl hidden in the ocean depths, it will then be understood that a world may have been created with a view to the production of that pearl more precious than the world itself.

1 Strict, or orthodox Buddhism teaches expressly annihilation without residuum, nirupadhis'esha nirvana. Qualified Buddhism and Brahminism simply announce the final loss by each individual of his personal identity, a return to eternal unconsciousness.

have denied this kind of immortality. Such sages, crowned with the double aureola of genius and moral purity, were the founders of Stoicism and Criticism , those two great schools of duty. Aristotle, for his part, scarcely mentions immortality ; the little that he does say about it is very much like Conditionalism . Cicero, as we shall soon see, was very sceptical about it .

Many, too, are equally ignorant of the fact that the ancient

Egyptians did not believe in the indestructibility of individual souls .

They were, in truth, Conditionalists : " Annihilation of the being was among them held to be the chastisement awaiting the wicked. "1 " The torments were not eternal ; they would be brought to an end by a second and final death. " 2

M. Guieysse states that :

The ideal of the Egyptians was to be able after death to come back to earth, to live according to their wishes in the form that might suit them best. This appears from the funeral ritual, or Book of the Dead. After a series of trials the deceased reaches the end of his journey, the great hall of Justice and Truth. There will his fate be pronounced without appeal .

The scales are prepared, the heart in one of them : will the faults outweigh it ? The deceased then addresses his judges, enumerating the crimes that he has not committed ; this is called the negative confession. But not to have sinned does not suffice, some good must also have been done. The wicked are plunged into fiery gulfs and delivered over to avenging demons. After a thousand torments they are subjected to a second death, for ever annihilated. To the righteous it remains only to pass through certain purifications in order to efface every trace of a stain. A glorious soul, he will then accompany Osiris everywhere, will live with his life, being born anew each morning with him, to traverse the earth at will under the form that he may choose to adopt.3

Ultimately, after many trials, if purity was not attained, the wicked soul underwent a final sentence at the hand of Osiris, judge of the dead, and being pronounced incurable, suffered complete and absolute annihilation.4

1 Lenormant, Manuel d'histoire ancienne vol. i ., p. 367, Paris, 1868. 2 A. Matter, Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses, at the word Annihilation of souls (Anéantissement des âmes).

3 L'Ancienne Egypte (Revue politique et littéraire, 18 May, 1878) .

4 History of Ancient Egypt, by Professor G. Rawlinson, M.A., vol. i. , p. 318.

See also De Pressensé, LL'Ancien monde et le christianisme,

§ 2. Kant in his Rational Psychology has weighed in the balance the Platonic proofs of personal and indefeasible immortality, and has found them wanting. The moral proof alone has weight, but that falls far short of proving such a forced and absolute immortality as it is put forward to establish.

Several of the dialogues of Plato, among them the Phado, Gorgias, and Timæus, have set forth these proofs ; in modern times they have been taken up and developed, in the sixteenth century by Ficinus, then by Leibnitz, and at the end of last century by the Jewish scholar, Moses Mendelssohn . In our own days the same reasoning has been put forward by the lawyer Goeschel, who, in addition to the alleged proof from universal consent, which we have just reduced to its true value, enumerates three principal arguments, which are called the metaphysical proof, the ontological proof, and the teleological proof. Let us examine them.¹

1. THE METAPHYSICAL PROOF.

It is said that the soul is a spiritual substance, a spirit, and a spirit cannot be divided ; therefore the soul is indissoluble, and indissoluble means imperishable. This conclusion seems to us illogical, for, as Kant has observed, if the indissoluble spirit cannot perish by way of decomposition, it can perish as the result of gradual enfeeblement, the effect of a persistent diminution of vital force ; a final extinction of the soul is therefore within the bounds of possibility. In order to strengthen this proof, the Platonists have felt it necessary to suppose that the soul is essentially divine. It is a defender of native immortality who has said that philosophically " the only guarantee of indestructibility for the soul would be to have always existed ; and it was because Plato felt this that in his view the dogma of prep. 108, sq. " The second death figures in the first line among the punishments inflicted on the wicked. Horus, the avenging god, delivers their souls to be annihilated. " Viscount E. de Rougé ; quoted by Mr. White, who has also printed in the Homiletic Monthly of March, 1885, part of a letter from

M. Edouard Naville, in which that famous Egyptologist declares his conviction that in the belief of the ancient Egyptians the fate of the wicked is destruction.

1 In this part we summarize the analysis of Professor Hermann Schultz (see ante, p. 17), with the addition of a few observations. 2 Critique of pure reason (Critique de la Raison pure ; traduction de J.

Barni, t. ii., p. 15, sq.) .

existence and that of immortality were inseparable from each other."1 The theologian Julius Müller had reached the same conclusion. But this doctrine of pre- existence has the inconvenience of leading straight to pantheism. As M. Ernest Naville has written in a private letter, which he allows us to publish : " Every doctrine which makes the soul immortal by virtue of its primitive essence is a covert pantheism. To me that is perfectly clear. "

No doubt the spirit of God gives to man his vital force ; but that does not mean that the creature forms part of the Creator, and on that account possesses the immortality of God himself. The created soul has had a beginning ; it may, therefore, come to an end ; it will come to an end unless an express purpose of the Creator perpetuates its existence.

That the soul is a creation of God must be admitted, the only alternative being pantheism. If the soul possessed an independent and absolute immortality, it would not be a creature, but would form part of God himself. If a creating

God be admitted, it must be recognized that he " can always return to nothingness that which he has taken from it. " Spiritualist philosophers, including Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, and in our days Messrs. Jules Simon and Charles Secrétan , have recognized this. But even without having recourse to this possibility, is it not allowable to conceive of a creature abusing his liberty to his own destruction ? Doubtless, the individual exists by the will of God, and the decrees of God are unchangeable, but it seems to us that they may at the same time be conditional. God can have created a being with a view to his immortality, at the same time making the immortality subject to the free option of the creature.

Even putting the Bible and a Creator out of the question, if the soul were of the divine essence, that would not prove the immortality of any individual, but merely the imperishability of a substance without individual character ; the perpetuation of a vital principle does not at all imply the perpetuity of individuals who are its ephemeral manifestations.

The great pantheist Hegel was logical when he affirmed that the spirit of

1 Le Chrétien évangélique, Du châtiment à venir, by Geo. Godet, 20 Jan. , man returning in death to the universal spirit at once loses its individuality ; but it is with personal immortality that we have to do ; who can feel any personal interest in an impersonal immortality ?

According to Schelling, in order to become immortal, man needs an act of will ; in the opinion of this philosopher, hardly one man in a hundred attains immortality. Schelling's system ends in dualism : man can set up his own will, can be in insurrection against God and defy him eternally : more than that, after having made himself immortal, by a fresh act of will ınan can destroy himself. It will at once be seen that this is far from being a necessary and inalienable immortality.

One more observation , addressed specially to those who believe in the soul as an imperishable substance. All will agree that a human being is not an indeterminate substance ; he has his individual characteristics, physical and psychical, more or less accentuated , and liable to be more or less effaced ; it is by no means inconceivable that these characteristics should be at some time entirely effaced. What would then remain ? A substratum, if you like. But the individual, who only existed as such by those distinctive characteristics, would have ceased to exist .

The conditions of first and second childhood, sleep, drunkenness, brutalism, insanity, swoon, death-all these phenomena are in our view either symbols of that suppression of the individuality or steps leading to its complete obliteration .

But that is all for which we contend, for it would be mere logomachy to contend for or against the indestructibility of a vital force common to men and animals, and even plants, an impersonal force, with which we have nothing to do in this discussion.

Once more : the question is of individual survival ; any other conception of a future life would seem to be futile.

After the foregoing lines were written, we were pleased to find them confirmed by the authority that belongs to the name of Lotze. According to that philosopher :

There is no need for the soul to be immortal.

The soul is not simply a substance ; it has certain properties, and we have no guarantee that it will never lose them.

Nothing prevents us from admitting that

the soul, like the body, may be composite, and may develope itself according to laws of which we are ignorant.¹

In another passage Lotze asks very reasonably, " Where is found inscribed that right of substances in virtue whereof that which has once been real must necessarily always exist ? We cannot well see what answer can be given to this question of one of the most remarkable thinkers of contemporary

Germany. " 2

2. THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF is founded on the fact that man has the notion of immortality. Every notion, it is said, corresponds to a reality ; man would not believe himself to be imperishable if he were not really imperishable.

reasoning we at once oppose Kant's argument.

To such

The notion of a thing is far from always implying the possession of the thing ; a man may have the idea of a sum of a hundred pounds, but that does not prove that he possesses a hundred pounds. A man has the notion of immortality ; that may well prove that there is such a thing as immortality somewhere, that it is the portion of some being or other ; but it does not prove that the individual who has the notion of it possesses immortality personally.

3. THE TELEOLOGICAL PROOF is the most popular of the three traditional proofs of a native immortality.

It rests upon the reasonable idea of a conformity between the nature of a being and the object assigned to his existence. The aspirations of man, the ideal towards which he is tending, suppose immortality. So also the inequities of the present life lead to the anticipation of compensations in a life to come, otherwise the lot of the animals would be preferable to that of man. We reply that the necessity for compensations in the future does not imply the need for an absolute immortality, for a temporary survival would suffice for the reparation of the inequities of the present life.

As for the desire to possess immortality, we know that a

1 Henri Brocher, Le Microcosme de H. Lotze. Théologie et philosophie.

Geneva, 1870, p. 442 .

2 Une Philosophie de l'histoire : La Philosophie de la liberté, par Charles Secrétan. Article by M. George Godet in the Revue théologique, October, wish is very far from being a prediction of the accomplishment of the wish.

Moreover, the wicked do not feel such a desire, so that even in accordance with this argument advanced against us, the wicked would not be destined to immortality. It is averred that man aspires to holiness, and that the present life is too short to enable him to attain to that ideal ; for that purpose immortality would be needful. So be it, but what is there to prove that this ideal must be attained by all men ?

Will it not suffice for an individual to be a link in the chain of humanity ? Can he not disappear cherishing the consoling thought that humanity does not die, and that he has to some extent helped forward the sublime purpose pursued by our race ? The Scripture speaks of men who died “ old and full of days " ; these men did not feel that their lives were incomplete. Besides, as we have already noted, this need of moral perfection is not felt by thousands of individuals who, far from tending towards perfection, are every day going farther from it. Aspirations after an imperishable life are, as it were, germs of immortality ; but the man may smother these germs, he may become altogether earthly, an absolute stranger to the heavenly life. If the germs of immortality perish, whence shall the immortality come ? It will be admitted that in that case there is no value in the teleological proof. Conclusion : The traditional proofs of the absolute immortality of individual souls have not a decisive value ; they lead only to the admission that man is susceptible of immortalization.¹

As we have said, the strongest proof is based upon our imperious need of justice. We all have at bottom a more or less distinct idea that in death we shall survive to be judged. The righteous hope for this " something after death " ; the wicked fear it. This is the moral proof, of which the biologists take no account.

In all times and in all lands there have been men who testi-

1 The presumptions favouring the possibility of survival have been set forth with persuasive grace in a recent article by M. Ernest Naville : Les conclusions de lapsychologie. Bibliothèque universelle, August, 1890.

fied their faith in a future life .

The tombs of the ancient

Egyptians show that they expected in the other world felicity for some and suffering for others. As we only just now mentioned, on every funeral papyrus and on the coffin of every mummy may be seen the scales of justice.

In one scale is the

. image of Truth, in the other the soul is weighed. Final annihilation was the lot of the great criminals only. The ancient literatures of China and India testify to a similar faith . Even the religions of nirvana admit an intermediate survival in metempsychosis. In Greece, Socrates expressed the belief of all virtuous men, and that belief was widely spread over all barbarous Europe long before the establishment of Christianity. In modern times, too, the irresistible instinct of survival declares itself in spite of scientific materialism : no reasoning silences completely the oracle which tells us of a judgement after death .

Man has the consciousness of his personality ; he studies it, and sets it in opposition to that which is not himself ; he has also the idea of God and that of an account to be rendered to him, three important notions which seem to be absent among the animals.

We feel ourselves free, but at the same time under a moral obligation ; we seek after indefinite progress, we aspire to immortality, we ask for a supreme sanction for our acts, we call God our Father, sometimes our spirits and our emotions reach forth even to his bosom, and will he for Our wearisome pilever banish us from his presence ? grimage in the desert of this world and our unsatisfied thirst are positive realities, and should the life to come and the

Father's house be nothing better than a mirage ? No ; if there be a God his justice and his goodness imply the reality of a future life.

It is the natural faith of the human race , and has asserted itself with indomitable energy. Our deep instincts of justice are not a delusion.

" What science could ever force man to believe that death swallows him up entirely, that his miseries are hopeless, and that all justice is consummated here below ? " 1

This proof forms part of the placita of the conscience ; it attests the survival of the individual personality ; but it does

1 Etudes sur la théorie de l'évolution, by L. Carreau, p. 132, Paris, 1879.

not prove a perpetual immortality. The metamorphosis of the caterpillar does not give immortality to the butterfly. It is possible that a final abolition of being may be the capital punishment reserved by God for incorrigible offenders . The immortality of which we get here a glimpse is not absolute nor unavoidable ; it is conditional .

In some minds it leaves.

room for doubts ; it becomes clouded in the eclipse of the moral sense. Idealist scepticism counts it among those truths of the conscience which, according to the expression of a brilliant writer, are beacons with changing lights. Sometimes they seem quite evident, then again it seems astonishing that anyone can believe in them. "1

John Stuart Mill, in a book which may be called his spiritual testament , while he does not reject this moral proof, points out the abuse to which he thinks it open. He reasons in this manner :

The common arguments are : the goodness of God ; the improbability that he would ordain the annihilation of his noblest and richest work, after the greatest part of its few years of life had been spent in the acquisition of faculties which time is not allowed him to turn to fruit; and the special improbability that he would have implanted in us an instinctive desire for eternal life and doomed that desire to complete disappointment. These might be arguments in a world the constitution of which made it possible without contradiction to hold it for the work of a being at once omnipotent and benevolent. But they are not arguments in a world like that in which we live.

One thing is quite certain in respect to God's government of the world ; that he either could not or would not grant to us everything we wish. We wish for life, and he has granted some life. That we wish, or some of us wish, for a boundless extent of life, and that it is not granted, is no exception to the ordinary modes of his government. Many a man would like to be a Crœsus or an Augustus Cæsar, but has his wishes gratified only to the moderate extent of a pound a week or the secretaryship of his trade-union.2

1 M. Ernest Renan, Discours de réception à l'Académie française, 3 April,

2 Three Essays on Religion, 1874.

In short, we have only twilight glimpses of immortality . The uncertainty underlying the thought of those two great men of faith, Socrates and Plato, may be understood if closely scanned. In their eyes immortality was rather a beautiful hope than a demonstrated truth. They said in effect : It is a thing that is worth the hazard of believing ; it is a splendid risk to run, a noble hope with which we may rightly be enchanted.

Cicero wrote as follows :

I have read and re-read Plato's Phædo, but, how it is I know not, while I read I assent ; when, however, I have put aside the book and have begun to cogitate for myself on the immortality of souls, all my assent slips away.¹

Professor Ulrici has said : " We speak of faith in immortality, for it is self- evident that in this matter there can be no question of knowledge in the strict sense of the word . " 2 According to Archbishop Whately, " No arguments from reason, independent of revelation, have been brought forward that amount to a decisive proof that the soul must survive bodily death . " 3 Bishop Perowne has declared that in the absence of faith " the immortality of the soul is a phantom which eludes your eager grasp. "4

Professor Bois, late Dean of the Protestant Theological Faculty at Montauban, whose orthodoxy is unquestioned, has arrived at the same result.

He says :

I do not wish to deny that in philosophy fine reasons may be found in support of immortality ; I think I am acquainted with them, and God forbid that I should try to diminish the force of any one of them.

1 Quæst. Tusc., i. 11 , and elsewhere : " Death puts an end to everything. If I die I shall no longer have the consciousness of anything " (Ep. famil. , vi. 21, 3, etc. Cf. Seneca, Ep. 102).--- " The future life is for Cicero not a demonstrated principle, says M. Denis, very truly ; it is only a hope " (Doumergue, La foi à l'immortalité. Christianisme au dix-neuvième siècle, 11 April , 1884).-Again, when Cicero has just lost a cherished daughter, the letter that he writes to an intimate friend, Servius Sulpicius, on the subject of her death, does not contain the least ray of hope concerning a life to come. So it is also with the letter of condolence to which Cicero replies.- On Greco-Roman Scepticism, see Victor Duruy, Histoire des Romains, Paris,

1883, vol . v., passim.

2 Herzog's Real-Encyclopædie, Ist ed., at the word Unsterblichkeit. 3 Future Life, p. 17 . 4 Hulsean Lectures, 1868, p. 31 .

But I shall be saying nothing which will not be admitted by every student of philosophy who keeps himself acquainted with the drift of contemporary thought, if I affirm that with our own intelligence alone we can only attain to presumptions, to conjectures, I may even say to desires. After all, what necessity is there that we should be immortal ?1 " Innate immortality is a doctrine rejected alike by philosophy and theology," wrote Chevalier Bunsen. The most orthodox Christians can hardly object to the declaration of the venerable Professor Gaussen, of Geneva, who has said :

" It would be temerity to wish to establish the immortality of the soul, as some have tried to do, by arguments founded upon its spiritual nature. "

Neither does Professor F. Godet , of

Neuchâtel, appear to lay much stress upon the traditional scholastic proofs, for he has recently expressed himself thus : " When once the hope of resurrection is given up, there remains no very solid guarantee of the survival of the personality after death. " 4 The late M. Dupont- White shortly before his death wrote :

The important matter is to know whether we shall utterly die. With regard to this, science and metaphysics have this in common, that they cannot teach us anything that is of real use, anything that carries conviction.... The weakness of spiritualism appears especially in this : that the spirit, even if a part of ourselves, and an indissoluble part, is not the whole man. Our spirit will live, it is said ; our spirit will not be annihilated. Be it sc ; but we have to do with the individual, who is body as well as spirit, with our own individuality, our identity, which exists only under this double condition.

The main point is not the immortality of the soul, but the immortality of the man.

This evidence is such that the Christian religion constantly speaks to us of the resurrection of the body, because apparently there is no duration, no identity, if the body and soul do not revive together, the one bearing the other, the other animating the one, Let us as they have always done in the condition that we call life. have done with it; nothing anywhere promises us an eternal existence, neither God, nor metaphysics, nor natural science. To the human intellect nothing seems less natural than this ardent desire of the human heart.

It is that which we most wish for and least meet with in the

De la valeur religieuse du surnaturel, p. 34. Le Christianisme et l'humanité, vol. iv., p. 336. Cours de dogmatique, vol. i. , p. 485 . Commentaire sur la première Epître aux Corinthiens, vol. ii., p. 395 .

path of our reasonings. We are therefore driven to this conclusion : the immortality of the soul is credible only as a formal article of a revealed religion, and such a religion is only credible if based upon miracles. Everything with the supernatural, nothing without it, and we die outright. If metaphysics teach us nothing at all, and if natural science teaches us nothing of any use, the only thing left for us to do is to turn ourselves towards religion.1

We quite understand M. Dupont- White's difficulty, and we will follow his counsel. Still, while we yet remain on the ground of independent science, we will take the opportunity of recording the declarations of several contemporary thinkers respecting Conditional Immortality. Their lively and numerous sympathies are doubtless due to the fact that, the old scholastic foundation having broken down, the hope of immortality has now no other basis than the moral proof. Morality itself is based upon liberty, and liberty, in order to be complete, seems to require a non-compulsory immortality ; in other words, an attainable immortality.

We are about to make these inquirers speak for themselves .

If, later on, we succeed in demonstrating that the primitive Gospel was Conditionalist, it will be found that these will have prepared an independent support for the Gospel. In the midst of the darkness of the human spirit they will shine like torches on the way that leads to the sanctuary of truth.

§ 1. An honourable place, at the very beginning of our list, is due to Vinet. By a sort of happy accident this independent thinker has, as it were, come forth from his tomb to lend to this discussion the great weight of his authority. Thanks to the recent publication of his letters, we have been enabled to

1 La grande question, ce que dure l'homme ( Critique religieuse, April,

1878) . The death of the eminent writer occurred in the very year of the publication of this article, the tendency of which was towards the point of view that we maintain. It may be interesting to mention that a daughter of M. Dupont- White is wife of M. Sadi Carnot, President of the French Republic.

salute in his person a pioneer whose genius, which forestalled

Mr. Henry Dunn in respect of the ecclesiastical question,¹ also forestalled the revival of Anglo-Saxon eschatology.

Long before our time Vinet was virtually one of us. At first subservient to the traditional dogma, he became its interpreter in a discourse which has been quoted without mention of the fact that it was published in 1833.2 At that time Vinet had not yet " reconquered himself. "

He had not then called the current theology " a sixteenth-century dish rewarmed and again become cold. " From Vinet the traditionalist of 1833 , we appeal to Vinet ripened and reconquered in 1845.3 From his latest writings it appears :

Ist . In opposition to Plato, Descartes, and the ecclesiastical dogma, he formally denied the immortality of the soul separate from the body.

2nd. He made the immortality of man to depend upon the resurrection of the body.

3rd. Universalism made him uneasy.

He did not encourage the publication of an essay favouring that doctrine.

4th. He admitted the possibility of salvation beyond the tomb for those who have not been reached by the appeals of the Gospel.

5th. Like Zwingli, like Mr. White, he speaks of the implied and eventual salvation of pious men among the non- Christians .

6th. He " had little hesitation " in affirming that " a life of sin wears away the soul and weakens it " to such an extent that " the renewal of the soul could only be the cessation of its identity. "

But, as we have seen in dealing with Professor

Drummond, there is no true immortality without the maintenance of the individual identity, and we reckon among the

Conditionalists all those who admit that sin may cause the loss of that identity.

Vinet " had little hesitation " in recognizing

1 Critique religieuse, Oct. , 1881 , p. 255. See also the preface to the volume entitled Le Christianisme sans Eglises, 1878, p. xxxvii. , sq.

2 L'indifférentisme religieux, quoted in the Chrétien évangélique, 1882, " Sermon preached in the French church at Basle the 29 Sept., 1833 reprinted in the Nouvelles études évangéliques." E. Rambert, Alexandre Vinet, vol. ii ., p. 330, sq.; Lausanne, 1876.

3 See M. Astié's study of Vinet in the Encyclopédie des sciences théolop. 504.

giques, vol. xii. This article has been separately published.

this relation of cause and effect, and on our part we have little hesitation in putting his name on the list of Conditionalists of the day before yesterday.¹

§ 2. Invoking the analogy of natural laws, some thinkers have seen in an attainable immortality the moral completion of the " struggle for life " and a certain " survival of the fittest. "

We have already made passing reference to some Christian scholars who are of that way of thinking. From a purely philosophic standpoint, evolutionist Conditionalism is represented by M. Charles Lambert. Spiritualism and Religion.2

He has left a work entitled

M. Lambert delights to bring out the analogy presented by the Conditionalist doctrine of immortality, as it relates to the human species, with that general law of nature which consists in the elimination of an infinity of germs, of beings or agents that, so to speak, have remained behind as being surplus or useless for the developement of nature as a whole. From this point of view Conditionalism would be a particular and the most important case of the general process of selection employed by nature, of the prodigality which is to be observed in all nature's works.

It would come very near to Darwinism.3

According to this philosopher, the world bears a harvest of innumerable human beings, some of whom allow themselves to drift towards the destiny of perishable animal life, while others are preparing themselves for a higher life. 4

If this is Darwinism, the famous law of vital competition, it must be recognized as a Darwinism perfected by an element of liberty and the sublime evolution of choice individuals on the other side as well as on this side the tomb .

§ 3. The thoughts of Edgar Quinet were turned in the same direction .

He asserted that :

See in Supplement, No. III ., some fragments taken from the Lettres d'Alexandre Vinet, Lausanne, 1882, and our remarks upon the interpretation that has been given of those fragments. 2 And as sub-title : Le système du monde moral et l'immortalité selon le

Christ, Paris, Calmann Levy, 1877. A first edition had appeared in 1864.

3 The great Dictionary of Larousse, second supplement, article Conditionnalisme.

4 Prévost- Paradol, Essais de politique et de littérature, 3rd series. A New

System of Philosophy, p. 317.-M. Paul Janet seems to have had some sympathy with this theory.

See his account of M. Lambert's work in the Revue des Deux Mondes of 15 May, 1863 : Un nouveau système sur la viefuture.

Man has power to turn back, to fall below himself.

He can at certain moments renounce even his manhood and debase himself to the level of the inferior animals .

When thou doest evil, what doest thou ? Know that thou returnest to the ages of the world when The old nature continues to mutter conscience did not yet exist.

at the bottom of human nature ; if man makes no effort to maintain his position, he falls back among the inferior beings that have preceded him, from whose midst he has emerged.

By crime he precipitates himself from the summit of the scale of being and falls below the very worm of the earth.1

§ 4. In a recent volume a well-known astronomer, M. Camille Flammarion, has shown himself equally favourable to Conditionalism . He makes an inhabitant of the planet Mars express himself thus :

Among the dwellers on the terrestrial planet the greater number are either ignorant, or indifferent, or sceptic, and not prepared for the spirit life ; they are fixed on the earth, and that for a long time. Many souls are completely asleep. Those only who are alive and active, who aspire to the knowledge of what is true, are destined to conscious immortality, those only are interested in the spiritual world, and are capable of understanding it.2

§ 5. By an intuition ofgenius, one of the greatest poets of our age, Victor Hugo, arrived as though in play at this conception, which others have only reached after years of patient study. One of his whilom guests, M. Paul Stapfer, now Professor in the Faculty of Literature at Bordeaux, has related a familiar conversation in which Victor Hugo expounded in his own fashion his conception of Conditional Immortality. He said : The butterfly is the grub metamorphosed ; it is so completely the same that each part of the creeping thing is to be found by analysis in the winged insect ; but the metamorphosis is so complete that it might be thought a new creature. Thus in our existence beyond the tomb we shall not be pure spirits, for that is a meaningless expression for both reason and imagination ; what is life without the organs of life, or a personality without the form that defines and fixes it ? But it would seem that we shall have another body, radiant, divine, and, so to speak, spiritual, which will be the transfiguration of our terrestrial body.

1 La Création, Book xii., ch. ix. and x., passim.

2 Uranie, 1890, p. 227.

The chiefdifficulty for friends, relatives, and old acquaintances will be to find and recognize each other in the costume of the angels but, after

• all, it will probably be an easier matter than might be supposed, on account of the relatively small number of the empyrean travellers. I can hardly imagine that all the human caterpillars will become butterflies ; I can hardly believe that all men, simply because they have lived as men, must be immortal.

That second birth, that resurrection which is the hope of humanity, is it not more likely to be the acquisition or the reward of some than the natural condition of all? And why save so many idlers who have not spun their cocoon ? Is it not reasonable and just that such caterpillars, I mean men who have not spent their life in some useful and honourable work, who have left behind neither monument nor example, and who have lived only for their belly, should die outright and return to the dust out of which, as the preachers say, they have crept forth for an instant ?

I know that I am immortal.

If others have no sense of their immortality, I am sorry for them, but that is their own affair ; why should I contend against their sentiments. No doubt they are right ; their instinct does not deceive them. One day I heard an address by a materialist, a zealous man of strong convictions, who denied the soul and God with as much force and faith as they are affirmed by an ardent believer.

He said to me : " It is vain for you to pretend that you have a soul and that it is immortal, that you know and feel it. For my part, I know, I feel that there is nothing of the sort in me, and I hold it for certain, for evident to the interior sense, that when once the body is deprived of life we shall be dead out and out, altogether gone back to nothing. My persuasion is as strong as yours ; to your sentiment I oppose a sentiment no less clear, no less firm ; which of us is right ?" I answered : " We are both right." " But how can that be ?" " Nothing easier to understand ; only listen to a parable : A poet, a great genius, call him Dante, Æschylus, Shakespeare, what you will, writes two verses ; he then goes out, he goes to think. During his absence the two lines converse together. ' How happy we are,' says the first ; ' we are now immortal ! What glory, O my friend, and what a duration : it is for ever, eternity is ours. So long as the human mind shall last, so long as human language shall remain, we shall live in the memory of men.'

Says the other : ' Dost thou believe that ?

What an idea !

have no such sentiment. I live ; but, oddly enough, it seems to me that I shall soon be dead. Yes, my friend, believe me thou art deceiving thyself ; put away the illusion, I beg ; in a moment there will be no more thought of us than if we had never existed, and it will be all over for me and for thee, my poor dreamer, all over, I am sure of it .' Thereupon the poet returns, advances slowly towards the table, reads over the two verses, takes his pen, strikes out one and maintains the other. So you see how both were right. "

This parable reappears in a poem by the same author.

Two verses Dante writes, then leaves, and those two lines Converse together.-Heaven is open, says the first, Good heavens, I am immortal !-I, the other says, Am mortal.--I, a star. And I, a grain of sand. -Thou doubtest then, although the child of heaven's own son ! -I feel myself but dead. But I, eternal feel. Then Dante comes again, and reading o'er the lines,

Allows the first to stand, but blots the second out. The severance between them by that blot is made ;

One dies, and one still lives, and so they both were right.¹

As M. Renouvier has observed, this passage is the more characteristic as it comes at the close of a long dialogue upon human destiny. The idea seems, indeed, to have made a deep impression upon Victor Hugo, for he returned to it at the grave of his friend Louis Blanc, where he said : " The heavenly law aims at the continued existence of such men. "

M. Leconte de Lisle,

Victor Hugo's successor at the French Academy, in the discourse delivered by him at his reception by that body, thus formulated what might be called the favourite thought of his predecessor :

According to the poet, God, being all justice and goodness, and the souls that he created being fallen and corrupt only through ignorance of the truth, an ignorance in which they are contented to stay or which

1 Religion et religions, p. 127, Paris, 1880. The French words are : " Dante écrit deux vers, puis il sort ; et les deux vers

Se parlent. Le premier dit :-Les cieux sont ouverts ;

Cieux ! Je suis immortel .-Moi, je suis périssable,

Dit l'autre. Je suis l'astre.-Et moi le grain de sable.

--Quoi ! tu doutes, étant fils d'un enfant du ciel !

-Je me sens mort.-Et moi, je me sens éternel.

Quelqu'un rentre et relit ces vers, Dante lui-même ;

Il garde le premier et barre le deuxième.

La rature est la haute et fatale cloison .

L'un meurt, et l'autre vit. Tous deux avaient raison."

is imposed upon them, has determined that all of them should be called, if they desire it, to a definitive restoration ; but their immortality is conditional, and many among them are doomed to total annihilation. Such was the faith of Victor Hugo.

§ 6. The religion of M. Renan has been made the subject of study.¹ Most ethereal of religions, it suggests the idea of the aroma left by a liquid perfume in an empty vase. The system of the celebrated academician is as though suspended, like Mahomet's coffin, between heaven and earth ; yet it may be said that a certain Conditionalism is clearly discernible at the summit of the vapoury edifice.

The thesis of the Phado, says M. Renan, is nothing but a subtilty. I rather prefer the Judeo-Christian system of the resurrection.... The resurrection would be the final act of the world drama, the act of an almighty and all-knowing God, capable of being just, and meaning to be so. Immortality would not then be, as Plato would have it, a gift inherent in man, a consequence of his nature ; it would be a gift reserved by the being who had become absolute, perfect, omniscient, allpowerful, for those who had contributed to his developement. It would be an exception, a divine selection, a reward granted by the triumphant good and true to those consciences only in which the love of the good and the true had in the past been dominant.

It may be supposed that all that which has existed still exists somewhere in an image that may be reanimated. The negatives of all things are kept. The stars at the extremity of the universe are receiving at the present time the image of facts which occurred centuries ago. The imprints of all that has existed live stationed at the various zones of infinite space. The supreme photographer has only to print from them new proofs. Surely he will revivify only that which has promoted the good and consequently the true. That will be our recompense. Inferior souls will have had theirs in the low enjoyments which they have sought after.

These are questions which I should have much liked to discuss with that poor Amiel, if I had had the pleasure of his acquaintance.2

The learned and graceful writer seems not to lose an

1 La Religion de M. Renan, an essay presented to the Academy at Lausanne by Maurice Millioud, a candidate for the licentiate in theology, 1890. 2 Journal des Débats, 7 Nov. , 1884.

opportunity of recurring to his favourite theme.

He says again :

If God exists he must be good, and he will at last be just.... We have no other foundation for our hopes than the great presumption of the goodness of the supreme Being. All will one day be possible to him. Let us hope that then he will desire to be just, and that to those who have contributed to the triumph of the good he will restore sentiment and life.¹

The same idea reappears also in the preface at the beginning of one of his latest volumes :

According to the first Christian idea, which is the true one, those only will rise again who have aided in the divine work ; that is to say, in promoting the reign of God on the earth. The punishment of the frivolous and the wicked will be nothingness.2

§ 7. To pass from M. Renan to M. Renouvier is to cross an abyss . An easy-going dilettantism gives place to a conviction resting upon the rock of the moral consciousness. We shall cross that abyss on the bridge of Conditionalism . This continuator of Kant has made the doctrine in question a subject of profound study. He tells us that :

It is in harmony with the spirit of the critical school, which bases immortality not on the indestructibility of the soul substance, but on the rights of the person to persistence and progress, and upon the natural laws regulating the functions of the conscience which are postulated by those rights. The solution given to the question of exegesis appears to have strong reasons to support it if the essential position occupied in Judaism and in primitive Christianity by the dogma of the resurrection as a condition of the future life be taken into consideration.

The importance assigned to this position diminishes in proportion to the increasing distance from apostolic times, and the developement of the notion of the natural immortality of the soul.3

More recently M. Renouvier has expressed himself in much more categoric terms. Like ourselves, he thinks he can find in

1 Examen de conscience philosophique (Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Aug.,

2 L'Avenir de la religion, preface, p. xx., Paris, Calmann Levy, 1890.

3 Critique philosophique, 24 April, 1873.

the doctrine of Conditional Immortality the unhoped-for pledge of a reconciliation between theology and philosophy :

The false rationalistic doctrines of the immortality of the soul being put aside, the philosophic point of view is brought into harmony with the religious standpoint.

The religious method and the philosophic method follow their separate ways which lead to the same goal ; the one inspired mainly by the sentiment of holiness and sin, of faithfulness and unfaithfulness, of blessedness and damnation, and for proof looking to Christ risen again and living ; the other directed by the moral law and seeking support in the necessity of a complete accord between that law and the future order of the universe.1

The religious doctrine of Conditional Immortality has the merit of setting aside both the pantheistic tendencies and that sort of demoralization which is caused by a lack of fixity in the ideas of life, liberty, trials, sanction. It relegates to the domain of mythology the barbarous fiction of interminable torments, which had attached itself to tradition in the system of a limited probation and definitive judgement.

This important movement in conjunction with the fact that the dogma of eternal torments is voluntarily left in the shade by the majority of pastors, who may still think themselves obliged to maintain it as a tradition, but dare not for shame display it, leads us to think that the future of Christian teaching, outside the Roman Church, belongs to

Conditionalism.2

§ 8. The eminent colleague of M. Renouvier, M. F. Pillon , has given expression to similar views.³

M. Lionel Dauriac, Professor in the Faculty of Literature at

Montpellier, who by his convictions is also attached to the neocriticism, has been good enough to authorize the quotation of a few lines from a letter which he has addressed to us :

The reconciliation between supreme pity and perfect justice, the only reconciliation intelligible to us, is in Conditional Immortality. The last page of my Introduction on the Stoic morality will explain to you my adhesion.

1 Critique philosophique, 31 Oct. , 1878.

2 Idem, 19 Jan., 1884. See also the articles of 2 and 23 Feb. of the same year, as well as the work entitled Esquisse d'une classification systématique des doctrines philosophiques, by Ch. Renouvier, Paris, 1886, vol. ii., p. 335, sq. The author there presents his Conditionalist theory in a new form.

3 See chap. xii. of this work.

§ 9. On this point M. Renouvier and his school are in agreement with the German psychologist Lotze, one of the most profound metaphysicians of our time, who says :

There is no doubt that the hypothetic notion of an indefinite preexistence of souls, in whatever form it may appear, as well as that of an unlimited duration of all souls, ought to be condemned ; it is evident that souls appear at one given moment and disappear at another. Our previous hypotheses are in conformity with this view. We have distinctly declared ourselves opposed to the idea of real beings who on account of a pretended right inherent in their substance could demand for themselves an eternal existence.

If, therefore, we speak of the soul as a substance, it is only in this relative sense : that in the world that is to be, which we are studying, it is a relatively stable centre of divergent and convergent actions ; and by this we do not mean that it is an element not subject to conditions, which would thereby be assured of eternal duration. On the contrary, it has only a conditional position. It has its beginning when the creative power, which alone is unlimited by conditions, confers existence upon it ; it comes to an end when that existence is taken from it. There is then nothing to prevent us from making the general assertion that souls are mortal ; but it is at the same time possible that a perishable soul might yet not perish, and that being conformed to the ideal, it might enjoy a perpetual existence to which in itself it has no right. If in the developement of spiritual life there is formed a personality of such value as to deserve an indefinite existence, we may well believe that such an existence would be maintained. If, on the contrary, there is nothing in the soul rendering it worthy of that individual permanence, the conclusion is inevitable that it is destined to perish.1

§ 10. Like Lotze and like M. Renouvier, M. Charles Secrétan , corresponding member of the Institute of France, belongs to the school of the moral consciousness of which Kant was the illustrious founder.

In his great work on the philosophy of liberty M. Secrétan inclined towards Universalism .

It was with agreeable surprise that we perceived, in his book on Civilization and Belief, that our old professor had himself reached convictions very much like our own. It is evident

1 Grundzüge derPsychologie; see also Principes généraux de psychologie et de physiologie, p. 163, sq., Paris, Germer Baillière, 1876.

p. 487, etc.

Metaphysik,

that his adhesion is all the more important as being the result of a victory of his thought over a previously adopted point of view.¹

Dealing with the greatest problems of our day, the political, social, philosophic, and religious problems, taking, as we may say, the bull by the horns, the author indicates solutions which are fitted to raise the hopes of all friends of humanity. The firm hand that lays bare the wound also applies the balm that may heal it . Full salvation is to be found in the Gospel better understood, which will prevent the foundering of civilization in the ocean of barbarism . But M. Secrétan shall speak for himself :

The Gospel, all through, relates to the life to come ; no Christian can deny such a life ; and in order to believe in it there is no need for a full understanding of its possibility ; the science that thinks itself warranted in setting it aside is no less transcendental in its negation than is faith in its affirmations, and has not faith's excuses. But how is this future life to be understood ? According to some passages in the holy Scriptures, it would seem that the fate of each one is to be irrevocably decided at the very moment of death, and that he is to pass immediately to his definitive condition. Other passages seem to indicate that the dead are to await in " the night in which no man can work," the solemn hour of a general judgement when the sheep will be separated from the goats, these to go into the eternal fire and those to eternal joy, joy and torment of which it is impossible to form a definite conception. In the present day we are taught that the passages in which our fathers thought they found eternal sufferings were wrongly translated. However that may be, the doctrine of eternal sufferings cannot be reconciled with the texts that teach the end of evil and the establishment of a final order of things in which " God will be all in all. " Without discussing the question of exegesis, we hold to that which in the primitive documents and in tradition answers to the needs of the conscience, and we reject the eternity of sufferings. Not, however, without some difficulty. The purpose of religion is not, in our opinion, to console humanity under its present evils by the prospect of imaginary delights ; its ambition is to heal the corruption of humanity. The

1 Since these lines were written, M. Secrétan has given a more definite adhesion in the prefatory letter printed at the beginning of this work. Just fifty years ago, however, he indicated in principle that the effect of the fall must be annihilation. See Supplement, No. IV.

conscience is our rule of interpretation. That cannot admit the infringement of liberty ; a forced conversion would be equivalent to a substitution of person. If the sinner, whose amendment becomes day by day more difficult, persists in his rebellion, he cannot enter into a state the conditions of which he rejects. But in whatever mode it may be viewed, the eternity of suffering is the eternity of evil. We have seen how a temporary evil may be consistent with the existence of God, but the eternity of evil would certainly be the negation of God in that attribute of omnipotence which to us seems inseparably bound up with the idea of a first cause. It is impossible to understand the eternity of that which ought not to exist ; it is a contradiction. Nor is it logic that is principally involved. Experience assuredly does not incontestably prove that the future will be better than the past, but in spite of experience we cannot forego the idea that all will end well. We should indeed be wrong to abandon that hope, for it is the power that sustains us in our task. The pretence that moral order is based upon an illusion is the wisdom of corrupt minds.

Evil must come to an end, the spirit of God must pervade all things.

But how ?

The dead-lock in which we find ourselves between two solutions equally contrary to the needs of the conscience is the result of their common supposition of an essential immortality of the individual spirit. This doctrine, which the whole Church has accepted, and popular theism (known as spiritualism and natural religion) has carefully maintained, comes to us from Greek philosophy, and we are not absolutely obliged to receive it.

In fact, the difficulties involved in the doctrine of a pardon unaccompanied by repentance, and a constrained liberty, and in that of the eternity of evil, will be avoided if we admit, with a school of thought now making itself heard, that impenitent sinners are to be destroyed, either in natural death or after further trials. Without here examining which of these three doctrines accords best with the texts to which they all appeal, it seems to us that the third escapes from the moral impossibilities against which the two others have been shattered, and they are perhaps not more ancient. Moreover, the third is very naturally justified by analysis. Moral evil is in fact not a simple deprivation of being, as it has been represented by a theology too abstract and too prompt in its conclusions, but evil is not without relation to non-existence ; it is a movement of the being towards non-being ; a tendency towards self-destruction. A created being, a derived being, wishes to place himself or to keep himself away from the basis and source of his being ; such is the common character of all forms of evil. By virtue of its definition, therefore, evil seems to tend towards its own

extinction, its own annihilation.

Thus the consideration of evil in itself leads us to the same conclusion as the study of the divine perfections : " The wages of sin is death."

We therefore incline towards an immortality to be won.¹

§ 11. M. Adolphe Schaeffer, pastor at Colmar, has more than once set forth the philosophical side of Conditionalism in the attractive form of stories.

A short quotation from this charming author will serve to illustrate his point of view :

The future life once admitted, it will be readily agreed that it is impossible that the same fate should be reserved for all men at the time of their death ; otherwise liberty, moral struggles, qualms of conscience, would be nothing but empty words. There is no standing still ; when separated from the great mass that we call humanity, there must be either progress or retrogression.

What then would you do with those who choose indefinite retrogression ? ...

Ah well, give them time. They will come back.

Very well. There are some who will come back, if not on earth, at least elsewhere. That is possible. Prodigal sons have been known to return .

I am willing to admit that beyond this life, in some world of an inferior order, a prodigal son might be deemed worthy to begin again the trial of his first stage

But if we are not to play upon the word " liberty " it must be granted that the final " restoration " of all is inadmissible. There are men who, by their own fault, become worthless. These become immortal ! They have no more thought of such a thing than the hard pebble beneath their feet. They would then be immortal in spite of themselves .

1 La Civilisation et la Croyance, 399, sq., 406. “ The proposition of this remarkable book is that there is an intimate connection which unites civilization to morality, and through morality to religion, and that the great, or rather the unique, problem of political and social science is the moral and religious problem. The work is divided into three parts : 1. The situation ; 2. The problems of philosophy ; 3. Religion. In the first part the author indicates the contradictions inherent in our political and economical civilization; and the danger with which it is threatened by the lack of harmony in its institutions and manners ; in the second and third parts he points out the beliefs which sustain and aggravate the evil, and those which might bring the remedy. Hence the title of the work, Civilization and Belief. The negative beliefs of atheism and materialism are causes of ruin for civilization, which would find safety in the positive beliefs of Christian theism, reconciled with the scientific spirit and with ascertained scientific facts ."

From the Grand dictionnaire universel du dix-neuvième siècle of

Larousse.

Second supplement, p. 835 .

I conclude : I believe in attainable immortality. Immortality is the result of choice, a reward granted to those who more than the rest have loved that which is true and good. The hypothesis of Conditional Immortality alone satisfies both justice and charity ; it alone respects both human liberty and divine love.1

§ 12. In a volume which very soon followed that of M.

Secrétan, M. Ott arrives by a different route at the same solution as M. Schaeffer :

We have thus far spoken of offenders who, unworthy and incapable at the moment oftheir death to enter the abode of felicity, might nevertheless by means of repentance and fresh trial obtain admittance afterwards. But suppose that there were some who would not repent, whose obstinate pride should still defy the divine goodness, and whose incorrigible perversity should be recognized by God ? Some thinkers, filled with ardent charity, have believed that all would be saved at last, that none would be finally excluded from the celestial kingdom. I willingly share that hope. Still, it must be admitted that the contrary is possible, that free will exists, and that an individual who should persist in an intractable egoism could not for that very reason be admitted into the society of the blessed, nor participate in the happiness which they enjoy, since reciprocal love forms the very basis of that society and the essential condition of the felicity of its members. For such confirmed egoists a new trial can be imagined only in case they should be called to an absolutely new life, without any remembrance of that which had gone before, a fresh start ab initio.

In that case there would be in substance the same soul, but no longer the same person, no longer the same ego, no longer the same conscience ; it would be another man. Moreover, with liberty remaining, it would still be possible for the will to be equally perverted in the new life as in the old, and the same in all others that might succeed. Under such conditions, in order that all men should be saved, it must be supposed that none of them would reach that absolute perversion from which he would not wish to be delivered. Such a result is not impossible, and it may be that God has foreseen it.

It would no doubt be the most desirable solution.

But in the contrary case what would happen ?

The situation before described would then appear in all its horror. To the sentiment of isolation would be joined that of universal reprobation; to the consciousness of a destiny missed, that of happiness irrevocably lost ; to the deprivation of egoistical enjoyments, the

1 Un Réveillon, p. 108, sq.

torments of humiliated pride and powerless hatred ; and this frightful condition would have to be endured with all appearance of its perpetuity without a possibility of change. This, it is true, is not the material hell, with its fiery furnaces, but it is the outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth, it is the dwelling-place of despair. Such a situation, lasting only a short time, would seem equivalent to the greatest sufferings, and if prolonged the misery of the sufferer would soon exceed the most horrible miseries that the ill-will of man could inflict.

It would thus be absolutely in opposition not only to the goodness, but also to the justice of God, to condemn to an eternity of such suffering the sinner guilty of even the worst of crimes. We have seen that justice would not allow the suffering inflicted on the culprit as punishment to exceed the measure of the fault committed. He would here be smitten with a punishment atrocious in its nature and indefinite in its duration. Now, every human action is finite, and he who has performed it could not be responsible for the indefinite consequences that might follow. By the very fact that this action would be punished with infinite suffering, the limits of justice would be exceeded, the punishment would be indefinitely greater than the crime. Besides, such an arrangement could not in any fashion be reconciled with the goodness of God. The duration of human life being infinitely little in relation to eternity, it would follow from the eternity of sufferings that those on whom such a doom were to be inflicted would really have been created for their misery ; for the mere power of making a choice during a lifetime so short, and the free and voluntary character of that choice, would not suffice to justify the enormity of the consequences attached to it ; it would always be inconceivable that a God in whom goodness is the dominant character should cause an eternity of frightful sufferings to depend upon the action of an instant.

How, then, is to be avoided the antinomy produced on the one hand by the necessary and definitive exclusion from the kingdom of heaven of the individuals who do not wish to become worthy and capable of entering it, and the perpetual sufferings supposed to result from that exclusion, and on the other hand the justice and goodness of God, who cannot doom even the greatest criminal to iniquitous punishment ? A good deal of attention has of late been paid in Protestant circles to an hypothesis which seems to solve this grave problem in a plausible manner, the hypothesis of Conditional Immortality.¹ It is supposed that only those souls that have become worthy and capable of future

1 On this question see the Critique philosophique, 1883, vol. ii., and 1884, vol. i.; also the Critique religieuse, supplement to the Critique philosophique.

life will enjoy the gift of immortality, and that the others will either come to an end with the body and be definitively annihilated, or else will not die until they have suffered the punishment of their misdeeds, but will all the same be annihilated after having paid their debt to divine justice. Evidently these souls would not be able to bring any reproach against God. He gave them being, that is to say, a condition better than non-existence, and granted to them many passing enjoyments, as well as the promise of eternal felicity under certain conditions ; they have absolutely refused submission to those conditions, and, doing evil, they have incurred the penalty of the law, and have borne sufferings not exceeding those which they have themselves caused. They die at last because they have not been willing to enter into the only combination in which it was possible for them to live. The justice and the goodness of God are thus equally satisfied, and the general plan of the world attains full realization. Unless all should be saved, and not one will should be found perverse enough to be finally struck out of the book of life, this solution seems in fact to be the best answer to the difficulties of the question.

Such are the ideas which, with our imperfect knowledge, we are able to form as to the future destiny of the good and of the wicked.

It is possible that most of these ideas may be false, and that the reality may be altogether different from that which we imagine. But that which is certain is the future life itself. It is an indispensable wheel in the universal machinery. It is impossible to deny it without denying God himself, and reducing all to the blind fatality of an aimless mechanism.1 " It is possible that most of these ideas may be false, " says M. Ott. Thus far the only thing certain is the interior voice which tells us of a beyond. This voice, at least, is an undeniable fact. It is not entirely drowned either by the noises of the world or the discordant cries of passion. We have the foundation of the edifice, and a few of the principal stones, but we still remain without a shelter. The innate hope of immortality is a delicate plant ; smothered by the briars of life or battered by the tempest, it survives with difficulty when it does not succumb . The plaintive accents of the conscience seek an echo ; the feeble plant demands a support. This is the senti-

1 Le Problème du mal, p. 314, sq., Paris, Fischbacher, 1888 .

ment that provoked the despairing cry of M. Dupont- White in the passage before quoted.¹

The Gospel comes as an answer to the cry. Shall we accept it ? Certainly if it is that which it claims to be, our joy will be as deep as is the trouble in which we are plunged by the thought of death. But there have been, and are still, so many false religions which anathematize each other ! The Christian religion presents exceptional claims ; we will examine them, not without using all the precaution needed in a matter of so much importance. Our philosophical research, which has produced so little in the way of positive results, will at least enable us to set up the criterion of an immortality in accordance with the best aspirations of our nature ; we are at an epoch in which religion has to justify itself at the tribunal of morality, and in which morality itself needs to find confirmation in the natural laws of the universe.

A religion truly divine will not contradict the data of a reason which itself is the gift of God. It will satisfy our legitimate hope of personal survival ; but, establishing that hope upon a moral basis, it will lay down conditions for the perpetuation of that survival. In conformity with the incontestable laws of an incessant evolution, that survival will be a progress , an ascending march towards God, or a decline, a retrograde and descending march towards the nothingness whence we have sprung. If, moreover, the doctrine that we wish to test makes the future life dependent upon an organism, it may not exactly agree with the old spiritualism ; but, on the other hand, it will have the acknowledgement of modern science, which conceives of individual life only under a form cognizable by the senses.

A religion two thousand years old, which would fulfil these conditions, would, in our opinion, bear the character of a revelation, for it would have anticipated, and even gone beyond , the results of twenty centuries of study.

It is from this standpoint that we shall study immortality in the sacred writings of the Old and New Testaments .

We shall not take the Bible for a book of which the inspiration is proved, but as the document of the religion proposed to us.

If the doctrine should commend itself to our acceptance, its very excellence will enable us to believe in the inspiration of the volume.

Who will solve for us the enigma of life and the darker enigma of death ? Who will cause the brazen door which closes to us the temple of immortality to turn on its hinges ?

All the efforts of human genius have not discovered its key. The builder of the edifice alone, as it seems to us, could give it.

If a key is handed to us which fits the lock and opens the door we shall be disposed to admit that it has come from God himself.

will try it .

This very key the Gospel claims to bring to us. We

CHAPTER III .

OLD

I. Fundamental principle of historical and grammatical interpretation-

II . Literal and ontological sense of the words life and death; in the Old Testament death always indicates a cessation of functions-III . Adam a candidate for immortality, and the necessary conditions of immortality- IV. The doctrine of the unconditional immortality of the human soul neither taught nor assumed in the Old Testament-V. Israelitish piety has a glimpse of Conditional Immortality-VI. Lethargic slumber of the shades in the night of Sheol -VII . Gleams of hope in relation to a future life--VIII . First allusions to the possibility of a resurrection - IX. Summary of the doctrine of immortality in the Old Testament-X. Subsequent infiltrations into Judaism of the Platonic doctrine-XI . Apocryphal books of the Old Testament

Pharisees and Sadducees - XIII .

The

Talmud-XIV. Maimonides-XV. The Kabbalah -XVI . Conclusions.

THE true biblical teaching in relation to immortality is now to be the subject of our study. This inquiry is all the more important as it involves the estimation in which we shall hold the documents of the Christian religion, and even that religion itself.

Is it easy to admire and to love a God who would destine a portion, if not the great majority, of his creatures to endless torments ? Yet a pretended orthodoxy imagines that it finds such a destiny taught in the holy Scriptures. The same prejudice is found very generally in the camp of our opponents.

Some of these, otherwise well instructed, declare that the Bible, in both Old and New Testament, teaches eternal sufferings.1

1 " The preaching of John the Baptist dealt only with judgement and eternal sufferings " (Ed. Stapfer, Les idées religieuses en Palestine au temps de Jésus- Christ, p. 208, second edition, Paris, 1878).-With all respect for

M. Stapfer, the only punishment spoken of by the Baptist is death, symbolized by the axe, the fire, and the water. The expression " eternal sufferings " (peines éternelles) was only admitted into the old French versions

Careful examination of the records will prove that under the powerful influence of Platonic philosophy the Scriptures and the God therein revealed have been calumniated ; they have been obscured by the dismal tint of the darkened glass through which they have been regarded. Our proof will be supported by competent authorities. Our conclusions will be those of exegetical scholars who have made the point in question the subject of special study. Following the chronological order, we shall begin with the Old Testament, the deep soil in which are to be found the very roots of Gospel teaching.

One of the most illustrious preachers of the latter part of the middle ages, Geiler of Kaisersberg, who is buried under the pulpit of Strasburg Cathedral, could say without irony that the holy Scripture is treated as though it were like wax for everyone to mould according to his own fancy.¹ Thanks to the reformers of the sixteenth century, that is no longer exactly the case. They had force enough to restrain the aberrations of traditional principles of interpretation ; they introduced into the study of the sacred text the fundamental principle of a sound philology : the historico-grammatical interpretation, which simply consists in admitting the literal sense wherever it is not manifestly absurd. This principle was the powerful war- horse of the Lutherans and of the reformed Churches in their struggle against the superstitions of centuries.

In the middle ages the mystical meaning had become the pest of exegesis.

of the New Testament by a falsification of which we need not now seek the origin.

The Greek text of Matth. xxv. 46 has eternal chastisement, not eternal sufferings.

The chastisement consists in the deprivation of life (cf. 2 Thess. i. 9) ; it is eternal in its effect, which endures even after the culprit has ceased to suffer. The versions of Lausanne, Rilliet, Segond, and M. Stapfer himself give the correct translation, abandoning the plural of the traditional rendering. [The English A.V. is not disfigured by this error, but it has an unwarranted variation in the adjective applied equally to the punishment and to the life ; this has been rectified in the R.V.]

1 La Bible au seizième siècle, by Samuel Berger, p. 32, Paris, 1879.

2 Exception must be admitted for the prophecies, the application of which to history is far from being always literal ; this exception may also be extended to the parables .

Luther said : " We ought to be most careful to search out the certain and veritable meaning, which can only be that of the letter, of the text, of the history. "

Luther, the child of the people, the mendicant monk, fought valiantly against the middle age ; Calvin, that son of the Renaissance, that thoroughly French intellect, that conquering genius, eventually triumphed over it. Speaking of allegory, he said : " By this means many of our predecessors have taken leave to play with Scripture as with a ball." •And again, in condemnation of allegory as the conquered enemy of the natural sense of Scripture : " As for me, I acknowledge that the Scripture is an abundant fountain of all wisdom, one which is inexhaustible ; but I deny that its riches and abundance consist in a diversity of meanings, which each one may hammer out at his will. Let us, then, know that the true and natural meaning of the Scripture is that which is simple and artless. This, then, let us receive and hold it fast. As for fabricated expositions, which turn us away from the literal sense, let us not merely leave them alone as doubtful, but let us boldly reject them as pernicious corruptions."1

M. Berger calls allegory a conquered enemy.

God that it were so !

Would to

We should not then have taken the trouble to write, nor would our readers have the trouble of perusing, our book. Although conquered in theory, the mystical interpretation still reigns in practice, and on the point which now concerns us .

It still keeps the door of hermeneutics, it is this which maintains the scholastic sense of the fundamental terms of our discussion : those words life and death which are found in the prologue and the epilogue of the Pentateuch, on the first page of Genesis and in the last chapters of the Revelation, and which are, as it were, the two poles of the biblical sphere. Everything turns upon these great antitheses.

When man is in question, life in the historic and grammatical sense is an existence composed of action and sensation ; death is the cessation of that existence, the end of all action and all sensation. But it has come to pass that in consequence of the preconceived notion of the absolute immortality

1 Samuel Berger, op. cit. , p. 127.

of the human soul, and in defiance of the formal declarations of Scripture, the traditional exegesis starts from the principle that the life of the soul cannot possibly cease. The result has been to give to that which is called in Scripture death, in relation to the soul, the sense of perpetual life in the midst of sin and sufferings without end. For ever dying, the soul would never die. The painful death spoken of in Scripture is replaced by mortal pain, which is yet interminable . On the other hand, the life of the soul is made synonymous with holiness and blessedness. These contradictory meanings have passed from the biblical commentaries into the European languages, which have been thereby more or less falsified.

If we remain faithful to the principle of historic interpretation before laid down, we see that the traditional exegesis is false, for there is nothing absurd in supposing the cessation of the existence of a soul. The total suppression of such and such an individual is a notion very easy to conceive. If the existence of a soul separate from the body be admitted, the death of that soul will be the cessation of all individual functions. The possibility of this is not at all an inadmissible hypothesis. Every being that has had a beginning may have an end. This, as we have seen, is an incontestable principle.¹

It is vain to argue that when the soul is in question death is only an image. Were it even so, the image ought to correspond with the reality. An image reproduces the salient features of the object represented ; the characteristic and principal feature of physical death is neither disorder nor suffering, it is the complete cessation of all organic functions, immobility, and insensibility. If the death of the soul consisted in a life of suffering or disorder, the image that would most naturally be used to represent it would be an illness or persistent agony . Life and death are opposites, like black and white. To say that death is a kind of life, a certain " state of life," is like declaring that black is a kind of white, a certain state of white.

1 Infatuated with himself, man is too ready to forget that, being a contingent creature, he exists only by the good pleasure of the Creator.

" Contingent : that which is not necessary ; that which may be suppressed in thought without producing any contradiction ; that which our thought can represent as not existing."-Franck, Dictionnaire des sciences philos., at the word Contingent.

If death were a certain state of life, it would be a manifestation of life : the contradiction is evident .

The usage of all language protests against such violence done to the words. To die, when the predicate is something inanimate, means to cease to exist. When the unbelieving materialist tells us that after death all is dead, there is no doubt as to the meaning of the word ; it signifies that the dead person no longer exists at all. So also in the negative term " immortal " as applied to the soul : everyone will admit that the meaning is indestructible, imperishable.

If to die when spoken of the soul is to signify to suffer far away from God, souls that are immortal, or that cannot die, could not suffer far away from God ; their very immortality would prevent their liability to that fate, and the very terms of the traditional dogma would thus be contradictory.

Life and happiness are two distinct notions, although often brought together. The author of the Pentateuch does not identify them. In the book of Deuteronomy we read : " Ye shall walk in all the way which the Lord your God hath commanded you, that ye may live, and that it may be well with you . " In the same way, when death is spoken of it is not confounded with suffering : in case of rebellion the Israelites were to be afflicted by various maladies until they should perish. There is, then, here a double distinction of ideas , which needs to be restored in both Old and New Testaments from one end to the other.

In the Israelites' view life is, first and foremost, existence and duration ; that is clearly indicated in the Psalmist's declaration : " The king asked life of thee, thou gavest it him ; even length of days for ever and ever. "3

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

For the faithful Israelite these four notions are the cardinal points of his spiritual horizon. In order to ascertain our own position we need to define them in their mutual relation, which is that of cause and effect.

Moral good tends to the perpetuation of life, physical as well as moral ; moral evil leads to death, physical as well as moral .

1 Deut. v. 33.

2 Ibid., xxviii. 22.

3 Psa. xxi. 4.

4 Deut. xxx. 15.

The sentence just quoted is a summary of the teaching of the five books of the Pentateuch ; it sets forth the principal terms of the problem propounded at the very beginning of Genesis.¹ " 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.' And the serpent said unto the woman : ' Ye shall not surely die.'

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat ; and she gave also unto her husband, and he did eat.

And the Lord God said :

' Lest the man put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever,' therefore the Lord God sent him 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 and the flame of a sword , which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. "2

Like the learned Oehler, Dr. Hermann Schultz , and M.

Bruston, Professor of Hebrew in the Theological Faculty at Montauban, we see in this narrative a symbolical teaching.

M. Bruston calls it " a beautiful and profound allegory of the

Jehovist author. " Be that as it may, the psychological truth of the story is independent of its historic or non-historic character. In a form suited to the infantine simplicity of the early ages of humanity, we find in it the principal data of the

1 The Serpent, who is Satan, promises to man an unconditional immortality. See in Supplement No. V. our separate study of Evil, and of the necessary conditions of both present and future existence.

2 Gen. ii. , iii. , passim.

3 L'idée de l'immortalité chez les Phéniciens et chez les Hébreux, discourse pronounced at the opening of the scholastic year, 1878-79 (Revue théologique, Jan. , 1879). This discourse has been separately published. It is admitted by all that the prophecy relating to the bruising of the Serpent's head by the posterity of the woman is symbolical. It seems, therefore, natural to assign to the whole narrative a character which is evidently that of one of its parts.

question before us. Let us pause awhile before this picture, so that we may the better understand its teaching .

Man is here set before us as a candidate for immortality.

As a candidate, he is subjected to a test : if he overcomes the temptation, he will raise himself to the rank of the immortals and will never die ; if he revolts, he will lose life, and with it all the good things which enhance its value. To man the

Creator gives existence and offers immortality. So long as

Adam remains in the garden of Eden he is allowed to eat the fruit of the tree of life ; but his immortality is conditional : as soon as he infringes the condition laid down he is devoted to death, and he no longer has access to the tree which alone could render him immortal. In short, man is susceptible of immortalization ; he was created " in view of immortality, " 1 but he is not imperishable ; he does not enjoy a native and inalienable immortality.

Man was created good, says Oehler, that is to say, he answered to God's purpose in his creation. But the good that was in him was not yet the product of his free determination, thus he had not yet the knowledge of good.

Holiness is not given to man all at once, and without his doing anything towards acquiring it, for that is impossible.

It is possible for man not to die.

The possibility of attaining to immortality was put within his reach, it was a benefit reserved for him in case he should persevere in his communion with God.

An innocent being can attain to holiness only by an act of free decision.

Death is the sequel of sin. It was only in the state of innocence that it was possible for man not to die, that he possessed that posse non mori and that relative immortality of which we have spoken.2

Although not so explicit, Professor F. Godet seems to teach the same doctrine. He says :

The natural condition of man was such as would end in dissolution .

Remaining on the level of the animals by the preference given to desire over moral obligation, man has remained subject to that law. But if

' aphtharsia.-Wisdom of Solomon, ii. 23.

2 Théologie de l'ancien Testament, by G. F. Oehler, Doctor in theology, professor at Tübingen, translated into French by M. H. de Rougemont, vol. i., pp. 223-239.-Compare the English translation, Theology of the Old Testament, Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark, 1874, vol. i., pp. 227-229. See also later on the remark of M. Zietlow, chap. iv., sect. iv., § 6.

he had raised himself by an act of moral freedom to a level above the animals, he would not have had to share their fate.1

The fate of the animals is apparently the cessation of individual existence. Vainly does the eminent professor desire to reserve the immortality of the soul. He himself says elsewhere, " The soul is corrupted in its lusts. " To corrupt is to dissolve, destroy. Corruption is the breaking up (rupture) of a whole , the complete disorganization of a substance which has ceased to be what it was, and presents no longer any of its distinctive essential characteristics . The propriety of the image requires that the corruption of the soul should produce an analogous result. According to the same author, the second or eternal death is caused by the separation of the soul from the spirit, that sense of the soul for the divine. The soul and body, thus deprived of that superior principle, that primary element of the soul, become the prey of the worm that dieth not. ” 3

We would ask what remains of the individual after these successive separations . An individual exists as such only on condition of the principal parts not being separated. Further, as we shall have occasion to notice, the worm spoken of by the prophet Isaiah and by Jesus after him attacks dead bodies only.

It must therefore relate to the destruction of an unconscious remainder.4

We will now quote M. Bruston, who says :

According to the Jehovist author, man has violated the law of God ; he has allowed himself to be seduced by the attraction of the senses and by pride ; therefore is it that he suffers and dies. But if he had persevered in the way of obedience, he would have been able to eat of the fruit of the tree of life which was in the midst of the garden of Eden ; that is to say, he would have been immortal, as well as exempt from

1 Commentaire sur l'Epître aux Romains, vol. i. , p. 444. 2 Littré, Bescherelle.

3 Godet, op. cit., vol. i. , pp. 256, 442, sq.

4 Oehler teaches that the soul attains consciousness of itself by the spirit :

" Causa quidem, cur homo sui conscius sit, ex spiritu est repetenda. Homo, ut ex spiritu et per spiritum omnino vivit, ita per eundem agit, cogitat, intelligit," etc. (Veteris Testamenti sententia de rebus post mortem futuris illustrata, p. 15.) The spirit spoken of by Oehler is surely the " superior principle " mentioned by Professor Godet. According to Oehler, the soul separated from this principle loses consciousness of itself. That is a thesis essentially Conditionalist .

pain and suffering. He was not so, then, by nature, but he could become so by continuing in union with the author of life.

It was sin that made him mortal.¹

From the Old Testament point of view, the sinner must sooner or later perish, body and soul ; the mortality of his being extends to the whole individual. This appears from the following considerations :

1. God said to Adam, not :

" Thy body shall die," but " Thou shalt die," thy self shall perish. For Adam death could only signify that which he had been used to call by that name in relation to the animal world which surrounded him, and which had been subject to death throughout the geologic ages.

By death, says John Locke, some men understand endless torments in hell fire ; but it seems a strange way of understanding a law, which requires the plainest and directest words, that by death should be meant eternal life in misery. Can anyone be supposed to intend by a law which says : for felony thou shalt surely die, not that he should lose his life, but be kept alive in exquisite and perpetual torments ? And would anyone think himself fairly dealt with that was so used ?2

2. In the Levitical sacrifices the victim represented the sinner ; yet those who offered it were not required to inflict upon it a long series of tortures. Death pure and simple was all that the law of sacrifice demanded.

In the rite it was not the suffering, but the suppression of the life, that was accentuated. In practice, if the execution was prolonged, the sacrifice had to be rejected. In our own days even, if the shochet (the Jewish butcher) makes use of a blade with ever so small a notch in it likely to cause the least useless suffering, the flesh of the slain animal is terepha, forbidden to the faithful ; it is only allowed to be sold at a low price to non-Jews . The burning of the victim, too, was not a symbol of suffering, since it took place only after the immolation ; but was rather an emblem of the utter destruction which menaces the incorrigible sinner.

3. So also in the penal code of the Israelites, the heaviest chastisement prescribed is the death, pure and simple, of the

1 Op. cit., p. 214.

2 Reasonableness of Christianity, § 1.

offender ; there is never a word to indicate that the sinner may have to endure eternal pains.

It is an extraordinary fact, and a divine characteristic, that long-continued tortures are foreign to Old Testament legislation.

In the republic of

Israel there is no executioner, nor rack, nor torture, nor gallows, nor special place of execution.

The numerous and odious means of torture, which have dishonoured both ancient and modern civilizations, have no equivalent in the Divine code of Sinai.¹

Crucifixion is well known to be of Roman origin. In executions by stoning, it was usual, in order to shorten the suffering, to take care that the first stone cast should be large enough to crush the culprit's breast. The contemporaries of Noah, the inhabitants of Sodom, and the infamous Canaanites, were in turn overtaken by the water, the fire, and the sword ; their chastisement was terrible, but the accompanying anguish did not long endure. Nothing can be quicker than lightning, symbol of celestial vengeance .

The Old Testament never mentions a native and inalienable immortality. The expression immortal soul, that favourite formula of ecclesiastical phraseology, is not there to be found.

Nor is it said that God will immortalize sinners in view of eternal torments. So far from it, the clearest terms and the most striking images are used to teach the final and total suppression of evil and of obstinate evildoers.

In the Hebrew language there are more than fifty roots which habitually or occasionally relate to the destruction of animated beings. In the Old Testament they are almost all employed to announce the doom of the impenitent.2

To these words should be added a multitude of proverbial expressions, a long succession of images which sometimes seem to exclude each other, but which always, by association of ideas, and like fractions reduced to a common denominator, are found to be in accord when used to describe the end of the

1 In Germany the torture of the wheel was maintained until the present century ; it was abolished in France in 1790.

2 See in Supplement No. VI. a table of these roots, with the corresponding

Greek terms used in the Septuagint and the New Testament.

existence of evil and of obstinate evildoers. Everywhere we find the notion of a final cessation of being, of a return to a state of unconsciousness, never that of a perpetual life in suffering. It is with the symbolism of the Bible as with its vocabulary : the sacred writers seem to have exhausted the resources at their command in order to affirm that which we maintain.

It may now be asserted as a fact in biblical science : " There is nothing in all the Bible which implies a native immortality. " 1 -" The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is not to be found in the Bible, nor even its name. ” —“ Moses said not a word of it.

Not one Palestinian document speaks of it . "

Professor Vuilleumier, of Lausanne, has expressed his views

• as follows :

There is one point on which we regret to find ourselves in complete disagreement with M. Bruston. We refer to the notion of " the immortality of the soul " as applied to the idea, or, as it would be better to say, to the ideas of the Hebrews as to the future destiny of man. We still think that to speak of immortality of the soul with reference to the ideas, beliefs, hopes, presentiments, intuitions, etc., which were current among the Hebrews relative to an existence after this life, is to commit a veritable anachronism . The idea of the immortality of the soul is not a plant indigenous to Israel. It is an exotic seed, brought by a wind from the west at a later date. The land in which it originated is not the old Semitic soil, but the Greek soil fertilized by philosophic culture. That abstract distinction between body and soul, and that doctrine of the primitive and natural immortality of the human soul, are foreign, not, it is true, to later Judaism, but certainly to the ancient Israelites. Nothing could well be less in conformity with Hebrew anthropology, as we understand it, than the thought " that if (by the fault of primitive humanity) we have lost for ever the immortality of the body, we ought, at least, to be able by a pure life to reconquer the immortality of the soul."

We are firmly convinced that no exact idea of biblical anthropology and eschatology in the Old Testament and in the New will

1 F. Delitzsch, Commentary on Gen. iii. 22, sq. Die ganze Schrift weiss nichts von einer in der Natur der Seele begrundeten Unsterblichkeit.

2 Olshausen, Commentary on Luke xvi. 24-26, and 1 Cor. xv. 19, 20. 3 M. Michel Nicolas, Des doctrines religieuses des Juifs, chap. vi., pp.

317, 323. As we shall presently see, the lethargic sleep of Sheol is not true immortality, but a state of existence nearer to death than life.

be acquired until the use of terms and conceptions foreign to the Bible, such as " the immortality of the soul," are discarded. In any case, that particular idea is only one-the latest and the least Hebraic of the ideas which were current among the Hebrews (and the Jews) as to the fate of man after the present existence. 1

Towards the exoneration of M. Bruston we will add that in speaking of " an immortality of the soul to be reconquered by a pure life, " he leaves to be understood the final destruction of obdurate sinners.2

As additional evidence we will further record the declaration of M. Th . Henry Martin, whose very orthodox work was approved by Pius IX. He says :

We willingly admit that the philosophical doctrine of the simplicity and immortality of the soul is not found anywhere in the Bible. 3

Does this mean that all notion of a future life is absent from the Old Testament ?

Not at all ; but the hope of it does not rest upon a metaphysical à priori. It is not a dogma ; it is an aspiration of the religious and moral consciousness. Two factors concur in its production : faith in the living God, and

1 Revue de théologie et de philosophie, Lausanne, March, 1879.

2 Revue théologique, p. 215, Jan., 1879.

3 La Viefuture, p. 76, third edition . Moses says so little about life beyond the tomb, that some have gone so far as to deny that he had the notion of a future existence. It is forgotten that he had been " instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," and that for those worshippers of Ammon and Phtha, kings, priests, and people, the life to come and the resurrection were subjects of constant concern. The mummies, the paintings and inscriptions on the coffins that enclose them , are there to prove how lively and profound was that faith ; but it had degenerated into superstition. According to M. Th. Henry Martin, in

Egypt recourse was had to the good dead, who were supposed to counteract the baneful influence of the evil dead. " Moses reduced all to the belief in the one God, who rewarded or punished men on the earth ; as for the rest, he systematically avoided speaking about it." The body of Moses, buried in secret, was put out of the way of the worship which the Israelites might have offered to it. Thus at Geneva the precise place of sepulture of the reformer

Calvin is unknown. In these facts there is a tacit protest against the abuse of relics, which already existed in the time of Moses, and which was rampant during the Middle Ages. In keeping absolute silence respecting the future life, the Hebrew legislator may have meant to cut short the idolatry of which the shades of the dead were the object.

the experience of the ages. Under the sometimes crushing burden of life, the belief in immortality bursts forth from the piety of the Israelite like virgin oil from the oil-press. For a long time indistinct and confused, these aspirations would only at a much later date find their definitive formula in the term “ resurrection." It is with immortality in the Old Testament as with the seed in the plant.

Stalk, leaves, flowers , fruit, first appear, then comes the seed, symbol and pledge of a future life.

The key of the problem has been given to us in the story of the fall. Man has gone astray ; yielding to the tempter's voice, he stifled the voice of God, which spoke to him in the recesses of his conscience. The attraction of sensual enjoyment led him into the way of death. Still, all is not lost ; all may be restored ; man may make his way back again. Faith, obedience, and self-denial may lead him back into the way of life. An all-powerful and perfectly good God will save those whom he loves and by whom he is loved. Man is not born immortal ; he may become so . Immortality is a privilege granted to the righteous, a favour offered to the penitent believer. It is conditional. The righteous will live again ; the impenitent will be finally destroyed. Such is, as we shall see, the doctrine which gradually becomes visible in the canonical books of the Old Testament, as in dawning light .

The Pentateuch and the subsequent books make mention of an abode of the dead called Sheol.¹ It is a very long way from this belief to that which is called the immortality of the soul. Without being confounded with the grave, Sheol can scarcely be distinguished from it. The dead who are there give no sign of life. It is a subterranean abode in which thick darkness and the deepest silence reign. In Sheol nothing is seen, nothing heard ; there is no perception there, nor activity of any sort. Good and bad are there together, confined in bonds and darkness ; it is the suspension of life, a state bordering upon

1 Probably from shaal, not used, to bury one's self, in speaking of excavations of the soil. In German, Hölle comes from Höhle, a cavern . The English hell is from the Anglo-Saxon helan, to cover to hide.

nothingness. In Sheol " there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom," neither pain nor pleasure, neither fear nor hope ; everything is forgotten. God is no longer adored or known there. It is a heavy and endless sleep.1 In the book of Isaiah the shades are represented as awaking for a moment at the coming of the King of Babylon ; but this can only be a case of prosopopœia, since in the same passage the prophet makes the fir-trees and the cedars of Lebanon to speak.2

The apparition of Samuel to Saul takes place in the suspicious abode of a sorceress ; the shade of the old prophet wears a mantle, about the origin of which some information would be desirable.³

Exulting in life, the pious Israelite is saddened at the prospect of Sheol. He puts aside the thought of it, and delights himself by cherishing the hope of such a prolongation of existence as would come very near to immortality. His faith cannot admit the idea of the descent into and a definitive abode in the eternal prison-house of death. Even to his last hour he remains full of confidence ; he has vague glimpses of a victory over the tomb by means of a miraculous intervention of the Almighty in his favour.4

The wicked, on the contrary, when once they go down to Sheol , will never again see the light.

The glory of the wicked ends in sudden night, The dreadful tomb devours them utterly for aye. It is not so with him who feareth thee aright, He will revive, O God, more brilliant than the day.

Ye sinners disappear ! the Lord awaketh now.5 1 Gen. xxxvii. 35 ; Job xiv. 12, 13 ; Psa. xlix. 19 ; lxxxviii. 11, 12 ; Eccl.

ix. 5-10 ; Isa. xxxviii. 18 ; Ecclus. xvii. 26.

2 xiv. 8-10.

I Sam . xxviii.

4 Psa. i., vi. , xi., xvi., xvii., xlviii. 14, cxxxix. 24, cf. i. 6 ; Prov. xiv. 32, xv. 24, xxiii. 14. The words of Balaam, " Let me die the death of the righteous " ( Numb. xxiii. 10), attest, even in the Pentateuch, the hope of a life to come.

Racine.

Esther, act ii ., scene ix.; Athalie, act iii., scene viii.

French words are :

La gloire des méchants en un moment s'éteint, L'affreux tombeau pour jamais les dévore.

The

The notion of earthly prosperity indefinitely prolonged, Sheol being disregarded, is found in a large number of the Psalms. The thirty-seventh is composed entirely on this basis. Our translation of it follows the original text as closely as possible.

PSALM XXXVII.¹

Fret not thyself because of the wicked, Nor be thou envious of evil doers,

For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, And wither as the green herb.

Trust in the Lord and do good,

Dwell in the land quietly and cherish righteousness ; Delight thyself also in the Lord,

And he shall give thee the desires of thy heart .

Cast off upon the Lord thy care,

Trust also in him, and he will act for thee ;

He will manifest thy righteousness in the daylight, And thy judgement in the brightness of noon .

In silent submission unto the Lord

Await him !

Fret not thyself because of the prosperous man, Because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass .

Cease from anger and forsake wrath, Fret not thyself, it would lead only to evil ;

For the wicked shall be cut off,

But they that rest upon the Lord shall inherit the land.

Yet a little while and the wicked shall not be, Yea, thou shalt search his place, but he shall not be there ;

Il n'en est pas ainsi de celui qui te craint,

Il renaîtra, mon Dieu ! plus brillant que l'aurore.

Pécheurs, disparaissez ! le Seigneur se réveille.

1 The 22 strophes of the original text began with the 22 letters of the

Hebrew alphabet in consecutive order. By means of this acrostic arrangement the so-called alphabetic psalms were the more easily committed to.

memory .

While the meek shall be in possession of the land, And in peace shall enjoy abundant prosperity.

Against the righteous the wicked plotteth, Gnashing his teeth ; The Lord laugheth at him, For he seeth that his day is coming.

The wicked draw the sword and bend their bow

To cast down the poor and needy, To slay those who are upright in the way ; Their sword shall pierce their own heart,

And their bows shall be broken .

Better is the little of the righteous

Than the abundance of a thousand wicked ; For the arms of the wicked shall be broken,

But the Lord upholdeth the righteous.

The Lord knoweth the days of the upright,

Their inheritance shall last for ever ;

They shall not be overthrown in the time of calamity, And in the days of famine they shall be satisfied .

But the wicked shall perish-

The enemies of the Lord ;

They shall vanish like the beauty of the meadows, In smoke shall they vanish away.

The wicked borroweth and payeth not again, But the righteous is bountiful with gifts ; Those who are blessed of him shall possess the land,

Those who are cursed of him shall be cut off.

The Lord upholdeth the steps of the man Whose way is pleasing unto him ; Though he fall, he will not be utterly cast down For the Lord holdeth him by the hand.

I have been young, and now am old, Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken,

Nor his children begging their bread ;

He is always gracious and lendeth, And his posterity is blessed.

Depart from evil and do good, And thou shalt dwell in peace for ever ;

For the Lord loveth judgement, And forsaketh not those who worship him.

Those who do evil shall be destroyed for ever, The posterity of the wicked shall be cut off ;¹ The righteous shall inherit the land,

And dwell therein for ever.

The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, And his tongue upholdeth judgement ; The law of his God is in his heart, None of his steps shall slide.

The wicked watcheth for the righteous, And seeketh to slay him ; The Lord will not leave him in his hands,

Nor allow him to lose his cause.

Stay thyself upon the Lord, Keep in the way that he showeth thee ;

He shall exalt thee and cause thee to inherit the land ;

Thou shalt see the extermination of the wicked.

I have seen the wicked in his power Spread himself like a well-grown tree

That has never been removed ;

Yet he has passed away, and lo ! he is not ; I sought him, but he was not to be found.

Mark the perfect man and observe the just, For the upright a future is reserved.2 As for the sinners, they are utterly destroyed ;

The future of the wicked is cut off.

But the Lord saveth the righteous, He is their stronghold in the time of trouble ; The Lord helpeth and delivereth them, He delivereth them from the wicked and saveth them, Because they put their trust in him.

1 There is a change here necessitated by the alphabetic order. The conjecture of a word missing at the beginning of this strophe put forth by

M. Reuss seems to us unavoidable, if an attempt is made to restore the premasoretic text .

2 Cf. Prov. xxiii. 18, xxiv. 20.

So also in Psalm xvi . 10 , II :

Thou wilt not deliver my soul unto Sheol ; Thou wilt not permit him that loveth thee to see the grave ; Thou wilt make me to know the path of life.

The book of Job also sets forth the contrast that often exists between the latter end of the righteous even here below and that of the wicked :

The triumphing of the wicked is short. ... His roots shall be dried up beneath,

And above shall his branch be cut off.

His remembrance shall perish from the earth ; He shall be driven from light into darkness ; He shall be chased away as a vision of the night.

And, chased from the world,

He shall perish for ever.¹

The trial of the righteous, on the contrary, is only temporary. Job receives the double of that which he lost ; satisfied with days, he sees his sons and his sons' sons, unto the fourth generation .

For all this, it could not but be noticed that the wicked not only may enjoy long life, longer even sometimes than that of the righteous, but also that the righteous are frequently carried off before their time, or they succumb under the weight of unmerited misfortunes . " In that very day the old doctrine of exclusively earthly remuneration and the vulgar idea of Sheol were shaken with the same blow, at least in intelligent and reflective minds ."

The sage of Ecclesiastes seems to have had a presentiment of a future retribution. " There, " says he, speaking no doubt of that which is beyond the tomb, " will God judge the righteous and the wicked ."

His book closes with the declaration that " God shall bring every work into judgement, with every hidden thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil."

Certain psalms of comparatively late date connect the hope of a future life with the taking away of the patriarch Enoch .

The fifth chapter of Genesis, in which that story is found, is like a funereal hymn of which each strophe ends with the same

1 xviii., xx. , passim.

dismal phrase, “ and he died."

At the seventh recurrence the sequence is interrupted and the usual refrain is replaced by the mysterious statement : " Enoch walked with God ; and he was not, for God took him . " The same expression is found in

Psa. xlix. 15 :

The wicked are appointed for Sheol But God will redeem my life from the power of Sheol,

For he shall take me.2

So again in Psa. lxxiii. :

Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel,

And afterwards take me to glory.

My flesh and my heart may be consumed ; God is the rock of my heart and my portion for ever, For lo ! they that go far from thee perish. Thou destroyest those who are unfaithful to thee. But as for me, to be near to God is my good.

With these prospects may be connected the passages which represent the faithful under the Old Covenant as " strangers and pilgrims on the earth. " Considering themselves pilgrims, they " made it manifest that they were seeking after a country of their own. "

As the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says further : " If indeed they had been mindful of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But no, they desired a better country, that is, a heavenly. "4

The book that bears the name of the prophet Isaiah is the first to mention a coming resurrection. The notion of a carry-

1 Gen. v. 24.--The story of this carrying away necessarily supposes belief in a future life, otherwise, the fact being admitted that the Israelites were tenaciously attached to the present life, the shortening of the earthly career of the holy Enoch would have been a great scandal. Who will maintain that the author of the sacred story wished to scandalize his readers !

2 Segond seems to us to weaken the sense by the addition " under his protection."

3 Verses 24-28. Cf. xlix. 15, and 2 Kings ii. 3-11, the carrying away of the prophet Elijah, whom God takes to himself.

4 Heb. xi. 14-16.- The notion of a carrying away reappears in Paul's reference to a mysterious ascension of the Church, I Thess. iv. 17 .

ing away (enlèvement) gives place to that of a raising again (relèvement) of the dead, or more exactly, from among the dead. The hope of a future life becomes, as it were, crystallized in this new conception :

The Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces ;

He swalloweth up death for ever.

Let thy dead live again, Let my dead bodies arise !

Awake and sing

Ye that dwell in the dust !

Let the earth bring forth the shades !¹

We regret that we cannot appeal to the well-known passage in the book of Job which has so long been supposed to contain a promise of the resurrection. The meaning of that text is the subject of much dispute and uncertainty.2

Chapter xxxvii. of the book of Ezekiel compares the restoration of Israel to the resurrection of a multitude whose bones strewed the plain :

Divinely led, my spirit to the desert went : The ground was covered o'er with numberless dry bones ; I tremblingly approach, Jehovah cries to me : If to those bones I speak, will they return to life ?

I said : O Lord, thou knowest.

Then said he to me :

Attend my words, retain them ; say to those dry bones : O ye dry bones, that now are naught but senseless dust, Arise ! receive again the spirit and the light, Assemble at my voice your members scattered wide, And be a second time with spirit animate ; Among your withered bones let muscles be restored, Your blood renew its round, your nerves resume their place ;

1 Isa. xxv. 8 ; xxvi. 19 .

But I know that my redeemer liveth, And that he shall stand up at the last upon the earth : And after my skin hath been thus destroyed,

Yet from my flesh shall I see God :

Whom I shall see for myself,

And mine eyes shall behold, and not another. -See Jean Bovet, La Vie à venir d'après lAncien Testament, Neuchâtel,

Arise and live again, and know me who I am ! I listened to God's voice ; obediently I cried : O spirit, breathe upon these bones, from west, from east, In haste new life to gain, Or breathe from north, O breathe ! . These long unburied hosts, awakened by my voice, Their dry and withered bones full soon together shake, To clearest sunshine now their eyes reopen wide, Their bones have come together, clothed again with flesh ! And on the field of death a multitude stands up, Becomes a mighty host, and knows Jehovah, Lord.1 " That the power of God can, against all human thought and hope, reanimate the dead, is the general idea of the passage ; from which, consequently, the hope of a literal resurrection of the dead may naturally be inferred. " 2

In the midst of the sanguinary persecution to which they were exposed by Antiochus Epiphanes, King of Syria, and during the wars which they waged for their religion and their liberty, the Jews of Palestine, educated in the doctrine of Sheol, and convinced that the

1 Lamartine, La Poésie sacrée-Méditations poétiques.

The French lines are :

L'Eternel emporta mon esprit au désert :

D'ossements desséchés le sol était couvert ;

J'approche en frissonnant, mais Jéhova me crie : Si je parle à ces os, reprendront ils la vie ? -Eternel tu le sais-Eh bien ! dit le Seigneur, Ecoute mes accents ; retiens les, et dis- leur : Ossements desséchés, insensible poussière, Levez -vous ! recevez l'esprit et la lumière ! Que vos membres épars s'assemblent à ma voix ! Que l'esprit vous anime une seconde fois ! Qu'entre vos os flétris vos muscles se replacent !

Que votre sang circule et vos nerfs s'entrelacent !

Levez- vous et vivez, et voyez qui je suis !

J'écoutai le Seigneur, j'obéis et je dis : Esprit, soufflez sur eux, du couchant, de l'aurore, Soufflez de l'aquilon, soufflez !

Pressés d'e lore, Ces restes du tombeau, réveillés par mes cris,

Entre-choquent soudain leurs ossements flétris ; Aux clartés du soleil leur paupière se rouvre,

Leurs os sont rassemblés et la chair les recouvre !

Et ce champ de la mort tout entier se leva, Redevint un grand peuple, et connut Jéhova !

2 Oehler, Theology of the Old Testament, vol. ii., p. 395 ; Edinburgh, T.

and T. Clark, 1875 .

souls of the righteous as well as those of the wicked descended to that underground abode, could not bring themselves to believe that God would allow so many noble martyrs who had died for his glory to remain there for ever in the company of renegades and pagans, and so they arrived at the idea of the resurrection of the body.¹

That which up to this time had been only a subject of speculation for doctors of the law sprang into new life, becoming a hope for the oppressed, and an encouragement for those who were fighting for the cause of God.2

To affirm the resurrection of the body was an ingenious method of solving the difficulty which for so long a time had troubled the consciences of Israelites, without denying any part of the ancient Mosaic faith. Moses had said in effect : " Man receives his reward upon earth." Every day this promise was being falsified by the facts. The just died without having received that which he had deserved. Israelitish warriors fell in crowds bearing arms for the sacred cause of Jehovah, one mother and her seven sons had perished martyrs for their faith, and for them would all be over ? Nay, these heroes shall live again. Their existence has not come to an end : they will come forth living from their tombs when the Messiah shall appear ; they shall be present on the day of his coming, and along with us who still live shall share in the coming glory.³

The full solution of the enigma can only be furnished by the participation of the righteous who have departed in faith, in the promises of God, the redemption of their nation, and the consummation of that kingdom of God for which they waited.4

The prophecy of Daniel satisfied these demands of heart and faith.

In the twelfth chapter the resurrection of the righteous is announced very positively : " Many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake.

And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that have taught righteousness to the multitude as the stars for ever and ever." The book ends with the promise given to Daniel of his own resurrection : " Go thou thy way till the end be ; for thou shalt rest, and shalt stand in thy lot at the end of the days. "

Bruston, art. cit., p. 229. 3 Ed. Stapfer, op. cit., p. 140.

2 Nicolas, op. cit., p. 331 . 4 Oehler, op. cit., vol. ii., pp. 392, 393 .

Not having been able to find in the Old Testament a single direct proof of a native and compulsory immortality, the partizans of the traditional dogma have fallen back upon indirect proofs. Out of twenty-three thousand two hundred and five verses they quote four which, as they claim, " imply " an inalienable immortality. We shall shortly have to study these four implications ; but at this point, seeing the general tenour of the Scriptures of the Old Covenant, we can already affirm that the doctrine of eternal torments has been foisted upon the

Old Testament .

Nowhere at all in these classic books of Israelitish literature do we find the interminable tortures of the Tartarus of pagan mythologies, of the Koran, or of ecclesiastical tradition.

Brought to the touchstone of the moral consciousness, this unequalled collection of documents issues victoriously from its trial. Its eschatology, sober and majestic, contains not a notion degrading to the divinity, nothing to revolt the moral sense .

The anger of Jehovah is not eternal ; his mercy endureth for ever.

No other declaration occurs so often.

And what a contrast there is between the lusts of the heroes of profane antiquity, such as Achilles and Ulysses, lions and foxes, who in Hades dream only of new combats, stratagems, massacres , and pillages , and the aspirations of men like Enoch, Moses,

David, and Isaiah ! The ideal of these Israelites is to unite themselves to the God who forgives, to the God who indited the Decalogue, and who gives liberally an eternal life to the faithful observers of his holy law. This ideal is like a golden thread binding together the writings of the canonical collection. Is not this phenomenon unique, and well worth the attention of the disciples of the moral consciousness ?

Dispersed abroad as a result of the wars waged for the possession of their country, the Israelites propagated their beliefs everywhere, and made numerous proselytes ; but they could not entirely protect themselves from the operation of influences which in turn permeated and perverted their doc trines.

The Jews in Egypt in particular became partizans of the immortality of the soul. As M. Nicolas has said : " There is no doubt as to the origin of their doctrine ; it came directly from Plato, in whom alone it is found surrounded by the same accessories and expounded in the same terms as in Philo. "1 On the other hand, the materialism of Epicurus had also its representatives in the Israelitish community. The Sadducean party denied all future life. The prospect of nothingness beyond death was, however, not one likely to become popular among those whose children were called upon to die in the flower of their age for the defence of the country. Thus it was the contrary doctrine of the Pharisees that eventually prevailed.

In the reaction against Sadduceeism, some Pharisees sought support in the doctrine of the Alexandrine Jews, and, like them, became Platonists, if we may believe Josephus, who was himself a Platonist, and has been reproached with clothing

Jewish ideas in a Greek garb. Gradually, at least outside Palestine, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and that of the resurrection became united, producing a hybrid compound of contradictory opinions .

On all these questions a general lack of precision prevailed, which was afterwards inherited by Christianity. At the present time this vagueness still exists. Like the Essene, the Christian thinks that death is a deliverance, and that the immortal soul goes direct to heaven at death. To this faith in the immortality of the soul he adds faith in a resurrection to come.

The soul will hereafter be invested with a glorified body. With the Pharisee he believes in the resurrection of the body, with the Essene in the liberation of the soul in death, and he finds it difficult to reconcile these two beliefs.2

By a truly extraordinary immunity the canonical books of the Old Testament show no undeniable traces of the influence of Platonic doctrines ; this influence is, however, evident in many of the extra-canonical books.

Nevertheless, we believe

1 Op. cit., p. 320.-Born at Alexandria about 30 B.C., Philo endeavoured to reconcile the Platonic doctrines with the religion of the Israelites. He was called in the schools the Jewish Plato. 2 Ed. Stapfer, op. cit. , p. 95.

3 M. Henri Bois, Lic. ès lettres and doctor in theology, has just published

that the apocryphal and pseudepigraphic books, both Jewish and Judeo-Christian, are yet to a large extent Conditionalist. Although they carry no authority in the Synagogue, we will quote a few extracts :

The Most High has made this world for many, but the world to come Like as the husbandman's seed perisheth, if it come not up and receive not thy rain in due season, or if there come too much rain and corrupt it : even so perisheth man also.1

Evil shall be put out, and deceit shall be quenched corruption for few.

• shall be overcome.2

Sinners will remain in Sheol the prey of eternal death, and will have disappeared in the day when God shall have pity on the faithful.3 The wicked will be as they were before their creation.4

Some there be which have no memorial, who are perished as though they had never been.5

The righteous will continue to exist after the destruction of the wicked and of their evil works.

Their life will be as long as that of the patriarchs, and the number of their children shall mount up to a thousand.6

The impious who deny immortality will be deprived of that which The wicked is consumed in his they deny ; their souls will perish .

wickedness.7

They shall end by extinction ; an eternal fire will consume them ...

for those who have slandered the only and eternal God could not continue for ever to exist.s

The author of the second book of Enoch is the first to teach a simultaneous resurrection of all men, believers and unbelievers, heathen and Israelite .

The second book of Maccabees also teaches a resurrection of the wicked, but apparently limits it to the unfaithful Israelites :

a book which supports these conclusions ; it is entitled : Essai sur les origines de la philosophie judéo-alexandrine, Paris, Fischbacher, 1890. See in Supplement No. VII . some passages from this book on the apocryphal books of the Old Testament.

2 Esdras viii. 1, 43, 44. 2 Ibid. , vi. 27, 28 ; viii. 53, sq.; ix. and xiii., passim. 3 Psalms of Solomon xiv. 6 ; xiii. 10 ; iii. 14 ; ii. 35 ; ix. 9 ; xv. 13 . 4 Assumption of Isaiah iv. 18, 38.

Ecclus xliv. 9. 6 Enoch x. 17 ; xxv. 6 ; xii. 13 ; cviii. 3 ; iii. 13 ; xcix. 6. 7 Wisdom of Solomon i. 11-16 ; v. 13, sq. Cf. iii. 10 ; iv. 19, sq.

8 Clementines iii. 6.

As for thee, Antiochus, thou shalt have no resurrection to life. Thou like a fury takest us out of this present life, but the king of the world shall raise us up who have died for his laws unto everlasting life.¹

Traditional orthodoxy has been accustomed to see in the Pharisees believers in the native and inalienable immortality of the human soul. This, however, is going rather too far. In fact, that doctrine never acquired full recognition at Jerusalem . The Pharisees were more nearly Pythagoreans ; they believed in the reincorporation of souls.2 Of Indian origin, adopted by the Magi of Chaldea, this opinion had been able to infiltrate itself among the Jewish people during their captivity in Babylon. Still, the heterodoxy of the Pharisees did not go so far as the Platonic heresy. They did not maintain the separate immortality of the soul, but, as the evangelist Luke tells us, the resurrection of the body.

We shall presently see that the Talmud attests the accuracy of the sacred writer.

It is here desirable to record the important testimony of the apostle Paul.4 A Pharisee, son of Pharisees, belonging to the straitest sect, Paul was the accomplished model of a party to which, notwithstanding certain reservations , he never ceased to belong. Before Claudius

Lysias and the whole assembled Sanhedrin he declares : “ I am a Pharisee. " Still, far from admitting native immortality, Paul elsewhere declares that if Jesus has not been raised from the dead, those who have died in the Christian faith have " ceased to be. "

When the apostle wishes to cast an apple of

1 2 Macc. vii. 9, 14, 23, 36. Cf. xii. 43, 44, and Enoch xxii. 4. 2 Indications ofthis tendency have been seen in John ix. 2 : the man born blind suspected of having sinned before his birth ; John i. 21, 25 : " Art thou Elijah the prophet ?" the question put to John the Baptist. Cf.

Matt. xi . 14 ; xvi. 14 ; xvii . 10, sq., etc.

3 Acts xxiii . 6-8. Cf. xxvi. 5-8.-See with reference to the Pharisees : Ed. Montet, Essai sur les origines des partis saducéen etpharisien, 1883 .

4 Paul, " nourished in the harem, knows its every turn," as M. Michel

Weill has expressed it.

51 Cor. xv. 18. Cf. Critique religieuse, April, 1882, p. 7 ; and for the meaning of apolonto, the Phado of Plato.

In the Greek language in ordinary use there did not exist a stronger term for expressing that which we are accustomed in conversation to call annihilation. " What," exclaimed

Socrates, " a soul created with all these advantages would no sooner have

discord among his accusers, it is still of resurrection that he speaks, not of immortality. The animosity between Pharisees and Sadducees was so keen on this point that several scribes at once began to defend the apostle, and the quarrel became so violent that the Roman officer had to put an end to the scene . Towards the end of his career the apostle of the Gentiles opposed the nascent heresy of native immortality by the declaration that " God only hath immortality. "1

Certain statements of Josephus have been quoted against us ; but in relation to theology that historian is not to be depended upon. This has been generally recognized : his veracity is suspected, his works betray his duplicity, his declarations have but little value in matters relating to dogma .

He gives us notions that are quite erroneous about the

Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. The parallel that he draws between their doctrines and the Greek philosophies has no solid foundation.2

Decidedly, on the subject now before us, the authority of Josephus is too unsatisfactory. When a quarter only of the number of authors of repute who have doubted his testimony shall have spoken in his favour, it will be time to think of giving him our confidence. Meanwhile, let us pass to the

Talmud .

The Talmud consists of two collections, the Mishna and the

Gemara. The Mishna, a collection of the " oral law," speaks neither of native immortality nor of eternal torments. The quitted the body than it would be dissipated and annihilated, as most men believe !" Diapephusetai kai apolôlen hôs phasin hoi polloi anthrôpoi, § 29. Cf. §§ 68, 129, 130, 143, 145.- See also Chapter XI. of this work.

1 1 Tim. vi . 16.-The word athanasian seems to have been chosen with a view to those who, even in our own day, argue that God only hath eternity (aidiotes) or incorruptibility (aphtharsia), but that he has shared his immortality with his creatures, angels or men. 2 Dictionnaire of Bouillet ; Jost, Histoire du judaisme ; Dr. Adler ; Ed.

Stapfer, Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses. Dr. Pocock, Archbishop

Usher, Bishop Warburton, Mosheim, Bretschneider, Prof. Hamburger,

Chief Rabbi Kaeuffer, Dr. Kitto, Boettcher, Hilgenfeld, Drs. Marks, Ewald,

Traill, Farrar, Hermann Schultz, Schürer, Messrs. Aug. Bost, Aug. Sabatier,

E. Montet, Philarète Chasles, are unanimous in their want of confidence in this historian .

chastisement of the wicked consists in their absolute extermination at the last judgement, in the “ annihilation of the sinful soul. "

The Gemara gives a commentary on the

Mishna : " The true sinners in Israel and the true sinners of other nations go down to hell and are judged during twelve months. After these twelve months their body is destroyed, their soul is burnt, and a spirit disperses them under the feet of the judges, for it is said : ' And the essence of the wicked shall become dust under the soles of their feet . ' '' 2 Rabbi Simon ben Lakisch has said : " In the future there will be no

Gehenna, for the wicked shall be as chaff, and the day that is coming will devour them. "

According to the Talmud, the existence of the soul and the body is only a conditional loan to every human being. It is true that in his great work on " Judaism, its Dogmas and its Mission " (Judaisme, ses dogmes et sa mission), the Chief Rabbi

Weill mentions a Doctor who is said to have taught an absolute immortality, but he does not give his name ; this solitary anonymous Doctor certainly would make a poor show as an opposing minority. One of the most celebrated Talmudists of our time, the late Emmanuel Deutsch, declared that according to the Talmud the chastisement of the greatest sinners is temporary. In this vast collection of twenty folio volumes one single passage would seem to be in favour of the doctrine of eternal torments ; but it is of relatively recent date, and not at all decisive. This is it : " The impious will descend into Gehenna, and will there be judged from generation to generation. " In this passage there is nothing that goes beyond the scope of certain texts of Scripture which relate evidently to temporal punishments, as, for example, the desolation of the land of Edom, which also is to endure “ from generation to generation. " The meaning would seem to be this : A sentence eternal in its effects will be pronounced upon the impious, who will be for ever destroyed.

1 Sanhed. xi. 2, 3 ; Rosch Hashahanah, 17a. It is the punishment of

Kareth, a cutting off.-Joseph Cohen, Les Pharisiens, vol. ii., p. 448.

2 Alex. Weill, Moïse et le Talmud, p. 244, sq. Abodah zarah, iii. 2 ; iv. I. 3 The Revue théologique in 1877 published an extract from his famous treatise on the Talmud. See particularly pp. 162 and 170.

4 Isa. xxxiv. 10.

" The Rabbis regarded the total annihilation of the soul as the supreme chastisement ; that is a point upon which there can be no doubt . "1

The Rev. A. Dewes, D.D. and Ph.D., has made a deep and detailed investigation of this precise point. He has compared the result of his own researches with the works of Lightfoot, Schoettgen, Buxtorf, Castell, Schindler, Glass , Bartolocci, Ugolino, Nork, Fritsch, and Eisenmenger. His conclusions agree with those of the learned Deutsch.2

In his Talmudic Dictionary , Dr. Hamburger thus expresses his view :

The Talmud adheres strictly to the biblical doctrine of immortality, rejecting categorically, on the one hand, the opinion that denies all immortality, and, on the other hand, that which makes immortality a consequence of the nature of the soul, as though that were of divine essence. The Doctors of the Talmud have declared formally against the eternity of torments.³

If the patience of our indulgent readers would permit, we could quote also the equally definite statements of Drs. Benisch and Phillipson, of the Rabbis Marks, Adler, Löwe, and Chief Rabbi Mossé, of Avignon ; but we will content ourselves with the declaration of Chief Rabbi Michel Weill : " Nothing seems more incompatible with the true biblical tradition than an eternity of suffering and chastisement. " 4

1 Limmortalité de l'âme chez les Juifs, by Dr. G. Brecher, translated into French by Isidore Cahen, p. 99 ; Paris , 1857.

2 See S. Cox, Salvator Mundi, London, 1877.-Dr. Farrar has examined the works of various other learned authors, and has arrived at the same result.

3 Articles Hölle and Unsterblichkeit.

4 Op. cit., vol. iv., p. 590.- In support of these affirmations we quote a few texts taken from what may be called the main current of talmudic and posttalmudic teaching : " It is the possession of the holy spirit which leads to immortality. ”— Abodah zarah, xx. 6. " The resurrection from among the dead is the portion only of the righteous. How could the impious live again, since even in life they are dead ?"-Sanhedrin, § 10. " The day of resurrection is the portion of the righteous only."-Taanith,

7a ; Bereschith rabbah, 13 .

The Pirke Eliezer admit (c. 34) a resurrection of the heathen, but say that the heathen who rise again do not remain in life ; they sink back into death. Thus the resurrection of the dead, according to the Jewish theology,

Following the example of the mediæval ecclesiastical doctors and the later Rabbis of the Talmud, the Gaon Saadias in the tenth century and Albo in the fifteenth taught eternal torments ; but they limit the number of victims to an almost impalpable minimum of monstrous sinners. Yet Albo has a glimpse of a final amelioration of their lot, and Saadias protests against the idea of native immortality.

It may, perhaps, be asserted that the Talmud is mainly Universalist. If that be so, it would have taken for granted an indefeasible immortality. Even that view cannot, however, be sustained . Dr. Farrar, himself an advocate of eternal hope, has admitted it. He devotes sixty pages to Jewish Eschatology, and this is his conclusion :

is the definitive appanage of those who are to have a part in the kingdom of God. As for those who fall into Gehenna, their lot is first suffering and finally complete annihilation, the second death from which there is no return. " The enemies of Israel who will come under the leadership of Gog will be immediately consumed by the burning up of their souls. They will not get away from Gehinnom, but will there be destroyed." Targ. Jerem. on

Numb . xi . 26 .

" The generation of the deluge will have no part in the future life, and will not even appear at the universal judgement, being already annihilated. The inhabitants of Sodom, on the contrary, will be present at the last judgement, for they are not yet destroyed."-Sanhedrin, x. 3. " As the cattle slain by the butcher have no renewal of life, so the impious will be definitively destroyed.”—Kohel. rabbah, 69b.

"The fire will destroy them little by little, beginning with the ears."

Kethuboth, 5b.---This strange detail has a symbolic meaning. Vinet, a deep thinker, spoke of souls rendered by sin incapable ofhearing, and apparently lost to all sense of their own identity. See ante, p. 62, and Supplement

No. III .

" The souls of the wicked will be ignominiously destroyed as well as their bodies ; they will have neither immortality nor eternity."--Summary of the

Faith, ch. 24.

" The bodies of the wicked will be destroyed a second time ; it is the second death. "-Targum ofJonathan, on Isa. lxv. 5, and Jer. li. 39, 57.

" The wicked will live no more in the world to come ; they will be consumed in the smoke of Gehenna."-Targum ofJonathan, Psa. xxxvii. 20.

" The chastisement will last twelve months, therefore did Noah remain one year in the ark."-Abodah zarah, i.; Edaioth, ii.

" Rabbi Acha asks whether there is any hope for those who have laid violent hands on the temple of the Lord. Answer : They will be neither damned nor saved ; their sleep will be eternal, according to the word of the prophets ." Targum ofJonathan, on Jer. li. 57.

"After the last judgement Gehenna will exist no more."-Asarah maamaroth, 85 ; Nedarim, viii.; Abodah zarah, iii.; Midrash rabbah, i. 30, etc.

Generally, it may be stated with confidence that the Rabbinic opinion was that of Abarbanel, that the soul would only be punished in Gehenna for a time proportionate to the extent of its faults ; and it is in accordance with this belief, and that in annihilation as being " the second death," that we must interpret the passages which are sometimes adduced from the Targums of Jonathan and Onkelos, and from various parts of the book of Enoch.1

In short, according to the great majority of Rabbis, Gehenna designates generally a brief chastisement followed by pardon .

For great sinners the chastisement will be prolonged ; for the worst criminals the chastisement will finally be either commuted or followed by complete annihilation. The Rabbis who have spoken of endless torments are very few, and the scope of their declarations is frequently contestable.2

Maimonides is a modern Rabbi who has formulated with unequalled authority the teaching of the Synagogue. The Jews have called him the eagle of the Rabbis and their second Moses. His confession of faith, in fact, occupies in the Synagogue a position similar to that of the Apostles' Creed in the Churches of Christendom, since every Jew is expected to repeat it daily. The Israelite who should call in question any one of the thirteen articles of this creed would be under the stroke of excommunication, and would lose all share in the age to come.

Here is the declaration of Maimonides on the point in question :

The punishment that awaits the evil man is that he will have no part

1 Eternal Hope, Excursus v. Cf. Mercy and Judgement, London, 1881 .

This last volume is a reply to Dr. Pusey.

2 This seems to be the case with the single quotation by Dr. Ferd. Weber in support of this assertion in his book : " Neither are passages wanting which relate to eternal torments." The author quotes only Pesachim, 54a : " The fire of Gehenna never goes out. " But we shall soon have occasion to see that even in the Bible " unquenchable fire " indicates a temporary fire, as, for example, the burning of Bozrah (Isa. xxxiv. 10, sq.). We note that Weber's paragraph as to the assertion of eternal torments contains only five lines, while whole pages are devoted to what might be called the Conditionalism of the ancient Synagogue.-F . Weber, System der altsynagogalen palästinischen Theologie aus Targum, Midrasch und Talmud, pp. xi. , xxxiv., 76, 190, 215, 326, 374, sq., 380, etc.

ΙΙΟ in eternal life. He will die, and will be completely destroyed. He will not live for ever, he will perish with his wickedness like the brute ; it is a death from which there is no return. The reward of the righteous will consist in this, that they will be joyful and will exist, while the retribution of the wicked will be to be deprived of the future life.¹

The doctrines of Maimonides are accepted by Simon ben Lakisch, Jehudah bar Elaï, Jarchi, David Kimchi, Manasseh ben Israel. In all Judaism there are no higher authorities .

Chief Rabbi Wertheimer has in a few words summed up the Jewish view in a lesson given in the University of Geneva ,

According to him, " the principle of the immortality of the human soul has been, is , and always will be, rejected by the

Semites, because for them God is all."

We have consulted in vain Weber's work, those of Wünsche,

Gfrörer, Gröbler, Hausrath, Schultz , Kleinert , Spiess, Wogue,

Jost, Ewald, Weizel, Alger, Edersheim, etc.

In none of these authors have we found anything to invalidate our view of the case. On the other hand, we have gathered quite a harvest of supplementary proofs .

It is with regret that we have to state that the truth on this point has been perceived by a sceptical scholar better than by many orthodox professors, who are still running in the Platonic ruts . M. Renan shall speak for himself :

When an Israelite, travelling through Egypt, visited the royal catacombs of Thebes, the Memnonia, the underground vaults of the Serapeum-those abodes of the dead so much superior to those of the living-the sentiment uppermost in his mind was the pity inspired by the view of the absurd. To him God would then appear great, unique, laughing at men and their follies. In his eyes, the chief of those follies was the pretension to immortality. "God alone endures," such has always been the fundamental basis of the semitic and monotheistic theology. Man is a transitory being, and the worst act of his pride would be to make himself equal to God by attributing to himself eternity. The Pharaoh who built pyramids for himself in prospect of an indefinite existence, far from being considered by the wise Israelite as a religious man, appeared to him to be impious. The belief in immortality seemed to him not merely not pious, but in opposition to God and to sound sense. The people believed in rephaim-ghosts ;

1 OfRepentance, ch. viii. Edition of Dr. Clavering, Oxford, 1705 .

there were sorcerers and sorceresses who pretended to invoke these shades and make them speak. If the wise men of Israel had allowed it, the people with their Sheol and their rephaim would have created a hell and a mythology like all the other peoples. But the wise men were strong enough to stifle these dreams at their birth. " In Sheol there is neither feeling, nor knowledge, nor vision, the rephaim are nothing. "-One being alone exists eternally, that is, God. Man is a creature essentially mortal.

The idea of an infinite destiny for man never enters the Jewish mind.

The Christian hope is at first only a reign of a thousand years.

With Greek philosophy the dogma of the immortality of the soul was introduced into the Church, and was associated, not very happily, with that of the resurrection of the body.

It is to be observed that the first Christian teachers who tried to amalgamate Christianity with Greek philosophy-St. Justin and

Tatian-have no belief in the eternity of the soul.

For them the soul is essentially mortal. God makes it immortal as a favour, by a sort of miracle. It should be noted that Justin and Tatian were both Syrians.1

On this question the erudite freethinker is in accord with the unflinching promoter of Plymouth Brethrenism. In his book entitled Hopes of the Church, Mr. J. N. Darby says :

I would express the conviction that the idea of the immortality of the soul is not in general a gospel topic ; that it comes, on the contrary, from the Platonists ; and that it was just when the coming of Christ was denied in the Church, or at least began to be lost sight of, that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul came in to replace that of the resurrection. This was about the time of Origen.2

Some writers have erred through confounding the Talmud with the Kabbalah, as though these two records were but one, or as though they both were of equal value. This confusion

1 L'Ecclésiaste, 29 ; Paris, 1882 .

2 Works, Prophetic, vol. i., p. 463. London : Geo. Morrish, 24, Warwick Lane, 1866. See also the letters of J. Salvador, published in Le Temps newspaper ( Union chrétienne, June, 1882) . 3 This word might be spelt Qabbalah , in accordance with the reasonable system of transcription adopted by Prof. Reuss ; the original comes from the verb gâbal, pihel qibbel, to receive by transmission, speaking of a doctrine. The Kabbalah was a traditional doctrine, which was received under the seal of secrecy.

By enveloping themselves in mystery the exists, for example, in the Judaism Unveiled of Eisenmenger,¹ and it reappears in an article by M. George Godet on The

Chastisement to Come.2

Eisenmenger being an anti- Semite, all was fish that came to his net. He found in the Kabbalah arms wherewith to oppose Judaism, and did not care to enter into a distinction which would have weakened the force of his attacks.

M. George

Godet, being an anti- Conditionalist, and ascribing his own point of view to the great majority of Rabbis, has faithfully followed in the steps of his guide, without noticing that the majority of the quotations that he borrows from Eisenmenger have very little value. The Kabbalah, in fact, is not acknowledged as an authority in the Synagogue. As the learned Munk says :

The whole system could only arise under the influence of the Jewish schools of Alexandria, where the doctrine of Pythagoras and that of Plato were combined with oriental philosophical modes of reasoning. The speculative Kabbalah presents to us a complete mythology

• it departs altogether from the Mosaic doctrine and results in pantheism.3

So also M. Ad. Franck.

He says :

It is not

Let us not be deceived ; the Kabbalah is pantheistic. only by their psychology, but also by their whole system, that the authors of the Zohar often remind us of Plato's philosophy.4

M. Franck thinks that the materials of the Kabbalah were taken from the theology of the ancient Parsees ; other

Kabbalist doctors attained a double object : they stimulated the curiosity of their scholars, and they protected themselves against the persecution which might have affected them even in the bosom of the Synagogue, their system being in its essence a pantheistic heresy and a true gnosticism.

M. Ad. Franck has devoted to this obscure subject a remarkable volume : La Kabbale, Paris, 1843. A second edition has just been issued.-See also : Dissertation sur la Kabbale, by A. F. Petavel, Neuchâtel, 1848. A page of this work is quoted in the Supplement No. VIII . , under the title : Pretensions of the Kabbalists.

1 Entdecktes Judenthum, Frankfort, 1700. 2 Chrétien évangélique, 20 Dec. , 1882. 3 La Palestine, p. 519, sq.; and Dictionnaire de la conversation, at the word Cabale.

4 Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques, at the word Kabbale.

scholars believe that the system is of neo- Platonic origin ; but all are agreed as to the pantheistic character of the Kabbalah.

It is not in the Talmud, but in the Kabbalistic writings, that are to be found the heterodox assertions concerning the human soul : that, being itself a part of the divinity, a divine substance or spark, it must for ever exist, etc.¹

From the standpoint of the Kabbalah, the soul is not a creation, but an emanation of the Divinity ; therefore every human soul is both pre- existent and imperishable by nature. The doctrine of eternal torments flowed naturally from this à priori. The same principle might equally lead to the doctrine of universal salvation ; that depends upon the disposition of the doctor, optimist or pessimist. Both these consequences have been maintained by Kabbalists. Thus the book of the Zohar developes the hypothesis of metempsychosis, or transmigration of ouls, which are supposed eventually all to return into and torm part of the universal soul .

Some celebrated rabbis have been reckoned among the

Kabbalists. It is none the less true, however, that to confound and quote indiscriminately Talmud and Kabbalah is very much ke reckoning the gnostics Marcion and Valentinian among the Fathers of the Church .

It is like taking a parasitic plant for a branch of the vine of Israel. Every river has its back currents. Certain rabbis have Platonized ; but if in the history of the Israelite theology the central current be carefully followed, it will be evident that on the point in question the official teaching has remained generally faithful to the true biblical tradition.2

In any case, says M. Auguste Sabatier, the idea of the Catholic hell and eternal torments does not belong to Hebraism. As the Hebrews did not ascribe to the soul an essential indestructibility, but, on the contrary, regarded it as essentially mortal, there was in Hebraism no basis for the doctrine of an eternal hell, which from this point of view

1 Hamburger, Realencyklopädie für Bibel und Talmud ; Articles, Unsterblichkeit der Seele, Hölle, Kabbalah, passim.

2 In the important work before quoted, on the Theology of the Ancient

Synagogues of Palestine, Dr. Weber does not admit the Kabbalah nor the apocryphal books among his sources of information. See his Introduction.

would have no reason for existence. Jehovah restores life to the wicked in order that they may be judged and punished ; but when once the sentence is declared and the punishment endured the wicked disappear.

This appears in the peculiar doctrine of Rabbi Akibah. Was it not also the doctrine of St. Paul, who, while admitting a final judgement for all men, ¹ goes on to describe the defeat and utter destruction of all the enemies of God, even to the death of death itself, and proclaims that in the end " God will be all, in all "2 ? Is it not also to the same order of ideas that belongs the notion so strange of the " second death," the supreme death, which often reappears in the Apocalypse of St. John ? We can then affirm that the eschatological dualism of an eternal hell and an eternal paradise is entirely outside the lines of pure Hebraism. This final dualism supposes at the beginning a metaphysical dualism of two eternal and incompatible principles, which is also utterly foreign to the Hebrew intuition. A theology which derives everything from a single principle, from God alone, can only conceive of evil as an accident, and cannot possibly issue in an eternal dualism . There is a necessary correspondence between the principle of absolute creation and the complete restoration of all things. No longer, then, let Hebraism, nor even authentic Christianity, be accused of having invented an eternal hell and imposed upon the world that horrible nightmare. Hell is of Aryan origin, not Semitic ; it is a remnant of paganism, which the Church mistakenly adopted and has too long retained .

We have, then, reason for saying that, notwithstanding all infiltrations of Greek thought, Palestinian Judaism has maintained anthropological views radically different from Platonic anthropology, and has maintained them precisely in that doctrine of bodily resurrection which has been so awkwardly amalgamated by ecclesiastical theology with that of the immortality of the soul.3

1 2 Cor. v. IO.

2 1 Cor. xv. 27, 28.

3 Mémoire surla notion hébraïque de l'esprit, p. 29, sq. Paris, Fischbacher, 1879. This essay has a quasi-official value ; it forms part of a publication by the Faculty of Protestant theology of Paris, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the professorship of M. Reuss.-The Journal de Genève, of 10 Oct. in the same year, published a review of this Mémoire, which also contains an adhesion to some of our principles. It is from the pen of M. Lucien Gautier, professor of Hebrew in the theological Faculty of the Free Church in Lausanne. M. Gautier says :

" It remains for us to indicate the importance of this new theory in relation to various doctrines, that of inspiration for example, and in relation to the eschatological beliefs of the Christian Church. M. Sabatier, in fact, shows

Let us conclude.

Taken as a whole, the Synagogue has remained faithful to the eschatology of the Old Testament . The Israelites are in principle Conditionalists. Their great mistake has been in refusing to recognize in Jesus the supreme condition and the mediator of life eternal. By his resurrection the Christ has illuminated the grave ; the hope of the Israelites is but an uncertain glimmer. Many Christians salute with joy the advent of death ; sometimes their countenance is radiant even after they have breathed their last sigh. But has a Jew ever been seen impatient to leave this world in order to enter into the divine abode ?

Not possessing the earnest of the celestial inheritance, the Jews seem not to reckon much upon paradise ; hence naturally arises an exclusive attachment to the good things of this world. Judaism presents the melancholy spectacle of an unfinished temple ; its ruined walls attest the fatal lack of a covering. We shall find in the Gospel the crowning of the edifice.

that in the formation of these beliefs there was a double current, a double series of factors, one coming from Greece and the pagan world, the other from biblical sources . It is to the Greek influence that is to be assigned, amongst others, the origin of hell, the place of eternal punishments. And, more important still, while Greek psychology admitted the immortality of individual souls as a guarantee of the future life, the Hebrew psychology finds that guarantee in the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, made alive again by the gift of the divine Spirit. From the conjunction of these two incongruous conceptions has resulted a dualism, an internal contradiction, which exegesis and theological speculation ought to endeavour to replace by a simpler doctrine resting on better foundations."