Full text of "Debt and grace : as related to the doctrine of a future life"

T-FRl

DEBT AND GRACE

AS RELATEP TO

THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.

V / —

BY C. rl HUDSON.

"The wages of siu is death; l)ut the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ
our Lord." — Rom. vi. 23.

"Evil things are not entities; but good things are entities, since thej^ are of God,
who truly is,'' — Athanasius.

" Here, at least, [i. e. respecting the view here offered,] let us hesitate, and suspend
our judgment." — Witsius.

"Even now. after eighteen centuries of Christianity, we may be involved in some
enormous error, of which the Christianity of the future will make us ashamed." — Tinet.

3 *^* 3« »

SECOND EDITION-, 'o / i^ ,

BOSTON;

PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY.

CLEVELAND, OHIO: H, P. B. JEWETT.

1858.^

PUHlIC UHKAKY

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by

C. F. HUDSON,

In the Clerk's Ofi&ce of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

rfOTVi*TiI< BY COWLES AND COMPANY,

At the Office of the American Stereotype Company,
PHCENIX BUILDING, BOSTON.

PRESS OF GEO. C RAND & AVERT, BOSTON.

PREFACE.

Three opinions respecting the ultimate destiny of bad men,
differing from each other by one or tAvo alleged measures of
infinitude, yet each held by confessedly good men, must be held
with a common modesty and command a degree of common
respect. So wide a divergence of honest belief reminds all
that they belong to an erring race. In the minds of some
the fact encourages a general scepticism respecting the future
destiny of man ; and the same persons tell us that the Scrip-
tures, whence so opposite views are supposed to be derived,
must give little information and be of little value. Of those
who prize the Scriptures as a Revelation, some doubt whether
clear light on the perplexed subject was designed for man ; it
is better for us, they say, not to know precisely that with
which duty does not concern us; others are solicitous that
the import of the Revelation here should be better under-
stood; and all, that it should be more deeply felt, and also
that the occasion for scepticism should be somehow done
away.

In a question of so transcendent importance, neither of the
contested opinions can by a sober mind be easily exchanged
J for another. Such change can rarely be the result of a merely
logical process; it will generally be attended with change or
development of the moral feelings, and will meet friendly grat-
ulations or fears. Yet because such chanj]:es often do not

IV PREFACE.

involve new states of feeling, it is a fair question wlietLer the
opinions themselves do not differ more as forms of thought
than as expressions of sentiment; and whether beneath the
apparent diversity there may not often be a substantial har-
mony. A discussion of the subject should elicit whatever truth
lies in this direction.

In the inquiry for the true one of the three opinions, that
which lies intermediate between the others, — which asserts
neither the eternal happiness nor the eternal misery of those
who may be worthy of neither, — claims its share of consider-
ation. Can it be a just mean between two extremes ? Is it
apparently supported by manifold passages of Scripture ? Can
it reconcile apparently conflicting texts ; or can it vindicate the
peculiar doctrines of Christianity against opposite objections ?
Has it a respectable place in the history of Christian doctrine ?
Can it have been both held and lost by the Church ? And if
so, how is the grand error involved in its loss to be accounted
for without impairing all confidence not only in man but in
Providence itself?

It is easy to suggest such considerations respecting the view
offered in the following pages. Whether such as make in its
favor have had undue influence with the writer, he leaves for
others to decide. He will only plead in behalf of certain fea-
tures of his book, that his experience persuades him a treatise
on the subject should be — even more than it is argumentative
— one of suggestions and helps to the reader's own thinking and
investigation.

To various friends he is under many obligations for the sug-
gestion of facts and thoughts, for aid in the prosecution of his
inquiries, in securing a favorable publication of the book, and
in revising the sheets for the press. He is sure that any
resulting development of Christian truth will be to them, as it
should be to himself, the best reward.

CONTENTS

CmVTTER I.

THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE.

^ 1. The Rationalist Theory. — 2. The Christian Theory.— 3. Influence
of the two Theories. — 4. Combination of the tAvo Theories. — 5. Eflccts of
cf the Combination. — 6. The Dignity of Wickedness Page 1

CHAPTER II.

EVIL AND GOD.
^1. Natural Evil. — 2. Sin. Its Mystery. — 3. The Origin, Economy,
and End of E^il. — 4. The Idea of God and the Conception of God. —
5. The Four Theologies. — 6. The Notion of Evil as an Eternal Necessity
is Dualistic. — 7. The Analytic Argument. — 8. Historical Illustration. —
9. The Reaction. Agony of Faith. — 10. Absolutism. — 11. The Reac-
tion. Prostitution and Prostration of Faith. — 12. Pantheism. The
Eclipse of Faith 19

CHAPTER in.

THE THEODICIES.
§ 1. Theodicy a Duty. Absolutism. — 2. Sin against God as an Infi-
nite Being. — 3. Sin against God as Infinite Love. — 4. Sin as against
the Divine Government. — 5. Universal Distrust. — 6. Sin as against
the Universal Welfare. — 7. In suo Infinite. — 8. The Imperative Nature
of Duty. — 9. Historical Eternity of Sin. — 10. Sin as the Greatest Evil. —
11. Scientia Media Dei. — 12. Free Will. — 13. The Choice of two Infin-
ities. — 14. Choice of Penalties. — 15. Infinite Motives. — 16. The Re-
demption. — 17. Preexistence. — 18. Eternal Sinfulness. — 19. A Law of
Nature. — 20. Phreusy. — 21 . Restraint. —22. Twilight 67

CHAPTER IV.

EVIL TEMPORARY.
§ 1. Evil not Needful — 2. The Frailty of Evil.— 3. The Permission of
Evil. Theism. — 4. Is Evil only Now? — 5. The Tritimph of Faith. 129
1*

Vi CONTENTS.

CIIArTER V.

THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.
§ 1. Is the Immortality of the Soul assumed m the Bible "^ — 2. Is the
Immortality of the Soul implied in the Language of the Scriptures ' —
3. The General Tenor of Scriptural Language respecting Man's Destiny.
— 4. Passages supposed to prove the Immortality of the Lost. — 5. Cir-
cumstantial Evidence IGO

CHAPTER VI.

THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT.
§ 1 . The Metaphysical Argument. — 2. The Psychological Argument. —

3. The Moral Argument. — 4. The Analogical Argument 227

CHAPTER VIL
SOUL AND BODY.
§1. Matter and Mind. — 2. The Detention. — 3. Psychopannycby. —

4. Resurrection of the Unjust 243

CHAPTER VIII.
THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT.
§1. Eastern and Ancient Doctrine. — 2. The Grecian Schools. — 3. The
Popular Faith. The Pious Fraud. — 4. Fourfold Doctrine of the Immor-
tality of a Class. — 5. Early Christian Doctrine. — 6. Man's Intermediate
Nature. — 7. The Origin of the Conflict. — 8. Results in the Eastern
Church. — 9. Results in the Western Church. — 10. Jewish and Medieval
Doctrine. — 11. Modern History 2G5

CHAPTER IX.
PHILOSOPHY OF ERROR.
§ 1. The Reflex Influence of Theodicy. — 2. Faith in Second Causes. —
3. The Temporal and the Etenial. — 4. The Unseen World. — 5. The
Mystery of Sin. — 6. The Advantages of Evil over Good. — 7- Theory of
Satisfaction for Sin. — 8. Theology of the Feelings. — 9. Exegetical
Causes. — 10. The Sense of Human Depravity. — 11. Lack of Faith in
the PoAver of Goodness. — 12. Draco. — 13. The Notion of Punishment
as specially Moral. — 14. Negative and Positive Evil. — 15. Anchorite Con-
ceptions of the Heavenly State. — 16. Self-suspicion 357

CHAPTER X.
HARMONY OP CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
§ 1. Of Providence. — 2. Of Grace. —3. Of Death. — 4. Of Original
Sin. — 5. Of Punishment. — 6. Of Pardon. — 7. The Redeemer 377

CONTENTS. vii

CILzVPTEU XI

PARADOXES OF PENALTY.
4 1. Fear and Shame. — 2. Severity and Certainty. — 3. Mystery and
Conviction. — 4. Eternal Death i.s Eternal Punishment. — 5. The Second
Death. — 6. Far and Near. — 7. Wrath and Love 405

CHAPTER XII.
THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT.
§ L Vicarious Immortality. — 2. The Maternal Character of the Church.

3. The Missionary Motive. — 4. The Campaigning Spirit. — 5. A Test of
Christian Character. — G. Gospel for the Heathen 430

CHAPTER XIII.

THF HIGHEST GOOD.
§1. Life the True Good. — 2. Sensation and Motion. — 3. Thought. —

4. Free Will. — 5. The Election. — 6. Virtue. — 7. The Atonement. —
8. Faith. — 9. Love '. 446

Prixcipal Passages of Scriptures referred to viii

Index of Citatioxs 469

PASSAGES or SCRIPTURE REFERRED TO.

GENESIS.

i.2 208

26, 27 166

ii. 7 166,250,252

17.. 167-171, 306-311,
387

iii. 15 215

22 170, 242

vi. 6 77, 427

xvii.l4 179

DEUTERONOMY.

XXX. 15, 19. . 107, 172, 452

JOSHUA.

xxxiv. 18. 19 417, 458

I. S.UIUEL.

XX. 3 166

JOB.

X. 21, 22 209

xxii. 4,5 76,400

xsxv. 6 76, 400

PS-ALMS.

i. 5 287

viii. 4, 5 6

ix. 17 '. 206

cxij. 10 209

PROVERBS.

xxiv. 14, 20 ISO, 209

ECCLESIASTES.

ix. 5, 6, 10 2G2

isAun.

xiv. 9-20 193, 215

XXX. 33 45, 199

xxxiii. 14 204

xl. 7 58

Iv. 9 70

Ixv. 6 198

Ixvi. 24 186, 198, 317

DANIEL.

Tii. 11, 12 216

xii. 2 186, 288

3 209

AMOS.

iii. 6 57

MATTHEW.

iii. 12 197, 808

V. 22 211

viii. 12 209

22 177, 231

29 361

X. 28 146,182,211,252

xiii. 3-23 239

42,50 209

xviii. 8 201

xxiv. 51 210

XXV. 41 201

46 187-194

MARK.

iii. 29 194

ix. 43, 45 197, 211

44,46, 48 198

49 200, 201

LUKE.

iii. 17 197

iv. 34 361

xii. 5 252

XV. 7 133

xvi. 19-21... 210,253-260

XX. 35, 36. . 161, 176, 254

xxiii.43 257,258

JOHN.

i. 11-13 287

iii. 36 206

V. 29 263

vi. 63 173

viii. 21 177

xvii. 3. . 173, 242, 304, 306
xviii. 38 58, 279,376

ROMANS.

ii. 7 236

iv. 25 403

v. 7 457

12-21 389,390

vi. 7 178

8-11 176

23 385,418^20,424

viii. 6 174

i.x. 17-19 58

22 150, 428

I. CORINTHIANS.

i. 24 463

V. 5 183

vii.l4 390

XV. 17 170

22 176

3t>44. 247,248

, xvi. 22 180, 181

II. CORINTHUNS.

V. 8 256

11 405, 410

EPHESIANS.

i. 11 58

ii. 1 175

iii. 16-19 468

PniLIPPLiNS.

i. 21-23 256,257

COLOSSIANS.

ii.l3 175

II. THESSALONIANS.

i. 9 187

HEBREWS.

ii.6, 7 6

Ti. 2 194

JAMES.

iii. 6 211

n. PETER.

A 4 231

ii 12 231

17 208

I. JOHN-

V. 16 197

20 174,242,304,306

JUDE.

6 210

7 201

12 179,295

13 208

19 230

REVELATION.

ii. 11 178

ix. 6 212

xiv.ll 211

xix. 3 211

XX. 6,14 178

10 213

15 146

xxi. 8 178

xxii. 11 117,207

15 210

APOCRYPHAL BOOKS.

WISDOM.

ii.23 166

25 214

iii. 1-4 191

xi. 5, 6 190

xiv. 8-10 100

ECCLESLiSTICOS.

vii.l9 198

xix. 3 183

xxi. 10, 11 215

JUDITH.

xvi. 17 219,220

ENOCH.

X. 6-9, 17 210

15 195

XV. 4, 6 218

xix. 2 195

xxii. 12, 14 217

xxiv. 9 195

xxxix. 2 217

xlvi. 4 217

Ivi. 3 218

Ix. 7 218

Ixxxix. 35 218

xc. 11, 13, 17... 195,218

xci.8 209

xcii. 16 195

ciii.5 217

7 218

cv. 21, 27 217

DEBT AND GRACE

CHAPTER I.

THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE.

" "What is Man, that Thou art mindful of him ? "

What is man in his essential nature ? and what is his relation
to God, to his government, and to an eternal world ? What
principles, of justice and honor, of goodness and grace, determine
the relations of God to man ? What does God owe to man,
and w^hat does man owe to God ? What claim of human char-
acter entitles man, or what demand of divine law appoints him, to
existence without end ? Is immortality God's debt, or his gift ?
Or may it be either ? And if a debt, is it due to man's nature,
or to his conduct, good or bad? Whence does eternity become
man's own ?

What is man ? Respecting his nature and constitution there
are various questions, not essential, yet ver}^ important, to be
answered. Is the human personality simple, or complex ? What
are the mutual relations of soul and body ? Is immortality a
native vigor of man's being, or a life to be sustained by adven-
titious aids ? What is the divine image in which man was cre-
ated ? Is it still retained, or was it lost in the Fall ? Man was
made a little lower than the angels ; what is now the rank and
order of his being ? What is the dignity of man, either in his
proper nature, or in the character he may form ? Does it com-
pel him to become either angel or fiend, or is it peculiar to him-
self as man ?

2 THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE.

These qaestions are all asked in one other : Is man's immor
tality contingent, or absolute ? Was man created strictly immor-
tal, or as a candidate for immortality? Is this his destiny, or
his privilege ? Is it the stamp of his very being, or is it the
sign of his maturity ? Is it the retribution, either of holiness or
of sin, or is it the gift of divine favor? Is it of law, in the
economy either of natural or moral government? or is it of
grace, and never to be charged as debt, though the offered
boon should be refused and come to naught? And if it be of
grace, and be so regarded by men, is Eternal Life more likely
to be rejected and scorned, or Redeeming Love to be abused, or
are the ranks of the blessed likely to be less full, or later filled,
or God's plans to be frustrated, and the harmony of the world
to be deranged ?

Postponing the discussion of these fears until the truth shall
be determined, we propose first to show that the dignity of man
is not impaired, but enhanced, when we regard him as invited,
not compelled, to be immortal.

§ 1. THE RATIONALIST THEORY.

We here reckon as Rationalists not only those modern Neolo-
gists who reject an alleged revelation of immortality, but all who
rest the soul's immortality upon metaphysical or logic^ll proofs,
as if they were sufficient without a revelation. The rationalist
theory seeks a general laAV of human immortality, — a necessity
or nature of things, as distinct from the free methods of divine
action. It subordinates the moral argument for an after life to
the ontological. It regards the former as valid only to show the
condition of the individual, in the immortality which he shares
with the race. It infers the after life from an essence or a
nature rather than from a character.

This theory, preferring the laws of nature to the assurances
of its Author, consistently seeks man's dignity in what he must
be; that is, in a destiny. The adornments of virtue and holiness,
and the attainment of heavenly glory, may enhance this dignity ;
but they do not constitute it. It may be tarnished by vice and

THE CHRISTIAN THEORY. 5

it had not become philosophy and theology. But such it has
become, and still remains. An able writer says of Synesius :
" The old aristocratic intellectualism of the heathen world reigns
in him to the last ; but a kind heart often gets the better of
philosophic pride, and he has much more of the Christian in him
than the name." ^

§ 2. THE CHRISTIAN THEORY.

But even Synesius seems to confess, for once, the paramount
importance of the Kedemption, and, in one of his letters, to
assert this as the ground of man's dignity. " Man is a creature
of high worth ; and he is such because Christ was crucified for
him."^ And here we are bold to say that throughout the
Scriptures the dignity of man is based on the work of Christ,
and nothing else. It was lost, from the moment of the Fall.
Man's glory then departed. The race became culprit, under
sentence of death. The common opinion that in the absence of
a Redemption the race would have utterly perished in Adam,
is a concession that man's whole being and all its glory is due to
Christ ; and it is simply consistent to say that his immortality
was from the first contingent and not absolute, and that out of
Christ he still has no immortality.

The characteristic of this theory is that it finds man's dignity
in what he may be. His immortal life is not a destiny, but a
privilege. It may have been also a birth-right ; but, once for
felted, it is due to Him by whom it is recovered. Whatever
the " divine image " may have signified, it claimed the attention
and regard of God, no longer than it was cherished by man.
Did it denote holiness ? it was lost in the. act of sin. Was it a
capacity for holiness, — a moral and responsible nature ? it was

1 Brit. Quar. Review, 1853, Art. Neo-Platonism; Hrpatia. (Eclectic Mag.,
Nov. 1853.) Compare Neander, Memorials of Christian Life, Part II. c. 1,
v/hence our account is mainly derived.

2 So Neander takes the words, Tlfitov ^uov 6 uvdpcoKOQ' tlhiov yup, el 6l'
av-bv laravpuOi] Xpcarog (Ep. 57). Yet they will bear another sense, making
the actual dignity of man the reason of Christ's death; which is the rationalist
theory.

6 THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE.

worthless, Avhen man became immoral and sinful. Was it lord-
ship and dominion over the earth ? every child of Adam has
come into the world to suffer because this dominion was im-
paired, or but partly regained.

With respect to our lost condition, the Psalmist might, then,
well ask : " What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? or the
son of man, that Thou visitest him ? " The answer seems hardly
to agree with the fact. " Thou hast made him a little lower
than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands.
Thou hast put all things under his feet." The passage can only
be explained as a prophecy of Christ. This is required by the
true sense of one important word, and is so understood by the
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. As if he had said :
" Thou hast reduced him (the Son of Man) to be lower than
the angels,* and him hast thou crowned with glory and honor,
he is born king of the Jews ; he is King over all. Under
his feet, and in him, under the feet of Mankind, dost thou put
all things. The subjection is not yet complete ; but we see the
One who was made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus,
crowned, for his suffering of death, with glory and honor, that,
as a free gift of God, he might taste death for all men. It is
the right of those who receive him to become the sons of God.
He is the Captain of their salvation, leading them on to their
proper dignity and final glory; sharing their nature that he
might call them brethren ; destroying him that had the power
of death, the fear of which was a life-long bondage ; triumphing
over the grave, that he might show them the path of life ; and
opening the gates of the Heavenly City to all who should prove
worthy of its citizenship, and its crown of righteousness."

And whenever the Bible speaks of the Kedemption, it finds
the occasion of it in no high quality of man ; he is never de-
scribed as a lost child of wealth, or as a captive prince ; but ever
as beggarly poor, and vile. His only star of destiny was the
sentence of death. Not destiny, but deliverance from it, giyes

I'Hlarrwaaf avrbv dpaxv tl nap' uyyD^xwg.

INFLOENCE OF THE TWO THEORIES. 7

him dignity. The Gospel offers him everything, and invites —
with all the earnestness of divine love it urges — his acceptance.
But it obtrudes upon him nothing ; it compels no other choice
than that which denotes the highest freedom, — the choice of
all things or of nothing, and of the attendant glory or shame.

And this idea of privilege is the peculiar glory of all free
states, and of every condition of freedom. In the Grecian
games, it was a high honor to be a competitor, though there was
but one fading crown. In our own country, it is an honor to
every citizen that he may aspire to any office in the gift of the
people, though thousands, in a true or false ambition, should
signally fail. In the same view it is the highest dignity of man,
that, though he has once lost all, he may now, by a free adoption
and a new birth, come to a boundless estate, a heavenly inher-
itance ; where the good fortune of one shall not dispossess
another, but each one may be joint heir with the First-born,
the heir of all.

§ 3. INFLUENCE OF THE TWO THEORIES.

"Heroes," said Varro, "should believe themselves the off-
spring of the gods, whether they be so or not ; that by this
means, the mind, confiding in its divine original, may aspire to
nobler things." ^ This intimation of an immortality inherent,
superhuman, yet doubtful, illustrates, we think, the real nature
and influence of the rationalist theory. It is partly illustrated in
the doctrine of the Stoics, who sought the proof of immortality
in a certain heroism of human nature, an invincible energy
which should raise the soul above the power of circumstances
and of fate. But as the man of fortitude was alone worthy of
immortality, he alone might expect to attain it. Yet this faith
failed ; and the " wise man " of the Stoic school, scorning the
weakness of other men, became himself weak. In his doctrine
of suicide, he in fact sought to escape the ills of life by fleeing —
he knew not whither.

The Platonists sought the proof of immortality in man's intel-

1 Angustine, De Civ. Dei, I. 3, c. 4.

8 THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE.

lectual nature. It was not the stern heroism of virtue, but
rather mind and reason, that allied man to Deity ; the capacity
of knowledge was a divine thing. Not to say that this was the
original error of mankind, desiring to "be as gods, knowing
good and evil," it is certain that, with the later Platonists, the
argument became an occasion for haughty and supercilious pride.
He was most assuredly divine who gave most evident proofs of
intellect, and the common herd of men were simple and brutish.
They were of no account, in the estimate of humanity. The
philosophic were of high caste ; and philosophy knew of no
redemption for the unthinking.^ But the Platonic argument itself
was as unsatisfying as it was flattering. No one could have
prized it more than Cicero ; but he says : " I have read Plato's
book (the Phaedo) over again and again ; but, I know not how
it comes to pass, so long as I am reading, I agree with it ; but
no sooner is the book out of my hands, than I begin to doubt
whether man is immortal." ^

The language used by Paul in comparing knowledge (yvuoic,
hnoivingness,) that puffeth up, with charity that buildeth up,
brings us to the Gnostic view of human dignity. Of Gnostic
doctrine there were several varieties, combining in various
measure the Greek, Persian, and Hindoo systems of philosophy,
with Christianity. It is worthy of notice that the Gnostics, in
their account of man's nature and constitution, used the terms
miJid (yovc^ and spirit (rrvevfio^^ taken the one from the philoso-
phers and the other from the Scriptures, as equivalent. Thus
the Valentinians spoke of themselves as spiritual, and therefore
immortal, by nature. What the Christians called a grace,
or gift, they regarded as something of their own, pertaining to
their very being, and produced at the same time with them-
selves. They would certainly be saved ; not by reason of their
acts and conduct, but because they were naturally spiritual.
Others they regarded as psychical (fyxcKol), having soul without
spirit, whose salvation was yet to be effected, and whose being
was therefore of less account. ^

1 The character of Hypatia, as given by Kingsley, is an example.

2 QuEcst. Tusc, 1. 1, c. 5. Compare Seneca, Ep. 102.
8 Irenajus, Contra Ilsereses, 1. 1, c. 6, § 2.

INFLUENCE OF THE TWO THEORIES. 9

The practical eflfect of this persuasion of an absolute immor-
tality was such as might be expected. As gold is not tarnished
with filth, so the soul is not corrupted with vice.-^ And if this
Gnostic sentiment did not suggest, it at least encouraged the
fanatical delusion that the child of God might do the same things
wliich would be sinful in other men, and yet be free from guilt
by the magic power of faith. The most learned of the early
defenders of Christianity, whose writings show an intimate ac-
quaintance with the corruptions of philosophy, asks what man
has to fear, or what urgent reason can deter him from all man-
ner of vices, if he possesses a divine immortality ? ^

But wlien immortality is sought in a nature of things, and
not either as a gift of divine goodness, or by assimilation to the
divine character, the false faith brings its own retribution.
There may be an immortality of things, as well as of persons ;
the honor of living for ever may be shared by man, not only
•with the gods, but with the brutes. The Hindoo philosophy,
which immortalizes all life, guards against this degradation by
its doctrine of metempsychosis, in which the beasts are raised
to human rank and are men in transitu. But what the Hindoo
saves for human dignity in one way, he loses in another. The
soul's liability to inhabit a brutish form is in itself a humilia-
tion, and it destroys the dominion of man over the lower orders
of being. It not only becomes murder to kill an insect or an
animalcule, but all brutes must be respectfully treated, and men
must share all their work and bear all their burdens. What is
lost here is, perhaps, sought to be made good in the degradation
of woman, and in the distinctions of caste.

The anthropology of western nations has escaped this doc-
trine of equality with the brutes. But acute men have dis-
covered that the common arguments for immortality are as good
for the^brute soul as for the human, -and have found the dignity
of man no longer in the bare notion of his immortahty, but in
the peculiar nature of it. And one eminent philosopher has
endeavored to save the dignity of man by saying that the souls

1 Irenffius, Contra H^ereoes. 1. 1, c. 6 § 2. 2 Ai-nobius, Adv. Gentes, 1. 2, c. 29.
Comp. ^scliylus, Prometheus : " What should I fear, by fate exempt from
death?"

10 THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE.

of animals are " imperishable," those of men, " immortal." ^
And he regards the faikire of the Sclioolmen to make this
distinction as having brought "great prejudice to the immor-
tality of the human soul."

Between the reaction of gloomy doubts of an after life, and
the depreciated value of an immortality common to persons and
to things, we need not wonder that the heathen world grew
careless of human life. As suicide became the necessitous vir-
tue of the Stoic, infanticide was so prevalent a custom that it
alone would justify the charge made by Paul, that the Gentiles
were " without natural affection." It was never thought of as
a crime ; insomuch that the poet Terence puts into the mouth
of the same man who said, " I am a man — whatever concerns
man concerns me," the command to his wife to destroy her
child.-^ The same direction is given in Ovid, by a man, of
exemplary piety and unblemished integrity.^ And in the same
place, the prohibition of infanticide by the Egyptians is re-
marked as singular : " Egypt has opposed very wise and
humane laws to the practice of infanticide, now become gen-
eral, and continuing unchecked by all other institutions." And
Tacitus speaks in like manner of the Jewish regard for infant
life.*

Such, we believe, are the natural fruits of the philosophic
persuasion of human immortality. The influences of the Chris-
tian doctrine will be stated more fully hereafter. We may here
name the remai^kable fact, that as soon as the Gospel was
preached among the nations, humanity, in every condition and
stage of life, acquired a new value, and a peculiar sacredness.
The life of man was no longer a common thing, but a peculiar
gift of God. Its price was that of the ransom that saved it
from dieath. Man's dignity was that of the Prince of Life ; yet

1 Leibnitz, Tlidodicee, Part. I. § 89.

2 Heautontimor. act.l, sc. 1; act. 4, sc. 1.

3 " Vita fidesque
Inculpata fuit." — Metamorph. 1. 9.
4 " AugendJB mi;ltitudini consulitur ; nam et necare qxicmqiiam ex gnatis,
nefas."— Hist. 1. 5, c. 5.

THE TIIEOJIIES CONJOINED. H

a dignity not imposed, but to be received by the personal union
to Christ. Hence the sentiment, " Destroy it not, for a blessing
is in it," gave to man, from the first moment of his being, an
inestimable worth, in prospect of that which he might yet be.
Thus TertuUian, animadverting on the frequency of homicide
among the heathen, boasts of the Christian regard for life in
embryo : " It is a hastening of homicide to prohibit the birtli ;
nor does it signify whether one snatch away the life that is born,
or strangle it unborn. He is already a human being, Avho is to
be one ; for the fruit is contained in the seed." ^

§ 4. COMBINATION OF THE TAVO THEORIES.

T\niat was wanting in the doctrine of immortality by nature,
could certainly be supplied by the Gospel. And the doctrine of
immortal life as a gratuity to be accepted, seemed capable of
philosophic improvement. Hence it was natural that some
views of the early Christians and of the philosophers of their
day should be interchanged. In the spirit of a patronizing eclec-
ticism, the latter, admiring the virtues and embracing the hopes
of Christianity, were ready to defend it by their own modes of
argument. And they were willing that man's supposed inherent
worth should be enhanced by a closer union with the incarnate
Divine Word. The Christians, in their turn, were pleased with
the weapons offered them to parry the assaults of the sceptic ;
too often, perhaps, they hesitated to venture man's entire dignity
on the work of a crucified Nazarene. The philosopher could
welcome the assurance of an immortality which he had deemed
rational ; the Christian could accept a rational defence of what
might otherwise appear an implicit and blind faith. The
union of the two doctrines would be assisted by the proneness of
man to rest in second causes, and to derive the weightiest results
from some "nature of things." Why should not all created
powers, — all laws of being, contribute to so great a work as the
endless life of a human soul? Why need this depend, either in
fact or in argument, upon the resurrection of a human form in

1 Apol. c. 9. Comp. Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis, c. 35 (al. 30)

12 THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE.

Palestine, or upon the attestation of that fact, and of the promise
that He who had risen from the dead should, at the last day,
appear as Judge of both the quick and the dead ?

By a process so gradual that it is marked only by an occa-
sional shudder at the remote consequences, and an occasional
sigh at the beclouded glory of Christ, immortality, and eternal
life, came to mean two different things. The former became a
natural endowment, — the birth-right of every human soul. The
latter denoted rather an eternal happiness, and this alone was
the especial gift of God through Christ. The one was a law
of nature ; the other was a superadded grace. The Christian
scheme of man's dignity, instead of supplanting the rationalist,
was built upon it. The new wine was put into the old bottles ;
the new cloth was put upon the old garment.

§ 5. EFFECTS OF THE COMBINATION.

Besides the supposed gain to man's dignity, it was believed
that the doctrine of an immortal nature was now secure from
the presumptuous pride by which the philosopher had dishonored
it. Immortality and salvation were very different things. The
godless life and the godlike destiny, which had been joined in
wedlock, were now thought to be divided.

But the new idea — of an immortal soul to be saved or lost
for ever — had a terrible import. Was the doctrine made up
of compatible elements ? or, was a new conflict, within the
Christian soul and the Christian Church, and destined to be a
" Conflict of Ages," now begun ?

There had been heretofore two problems, as old as the Fall
of Man : Whence came evil ? and. Is there an after life ? The
former was not, and was not to be, solved. The latter was now
answered by saying : We are all immortal. But this doctrine,
in its new connection, created a new problem of immortal evil.
For the old philosophic theories of future evil, as we shall see,
were never so frightful as this. The evils which had been
feared were either confined to the domain of matter, or they
were intermitted, — an eternal vicissitude, as in the fancy of the

EFFECTS OF THE COMBINATION. 13

Platonic year, or the Stoic notion of successive dissolutions of
the Avorld by fire. But now an evil absolutely endless and
uninterrupted, changed only in a transition from earth to hell,
from a mixed to an unmitigated form, and, perhaps, growing
ever more horrible and intolerable, — such a world of evil was
now to be feared, and to be accounted for. How should it be
explained ? how justified, either as due to the sins of men, or as
necessary, — subserving or overriding the power of God ? AYas
it sufiitjiently attested, either in the revealed TYord of God, or
in the constitution of man or of the world ?

Waiving, for the present, the debates and doubts, the struggles
to vindicate God's power and justice, and to support the Chris-
tian's faith, that have marked the history of the compound doc-
trine, we may here show that it has not enhanced the value of
man's being, nor promoted the dignity of his nature.

Arguments to show that the doctrine does this, are often
advanced. Besides the current exhortations to repentance in
the name of an immortal destiny, this has been assumed in a late
discussion,^ and it is ably stated by another writer thus : " The
spiritual life, or the first stage of the life eternal, is a recogni-
tion of the immutable Law of purity, rectitude, and love, not
merely as abstractedly good, but as good to be applied to man,
how disastrous soever the consequences of that application to
him in his now actual condition. Better were it for him to be
condemned by such a law, than to find himself villainously dis-
charged from court on the ground that his nature does not admit
of the application of a rule so high. Better that he should be
condemned as guilty, than vilified as pitiable. Better for man
to endure his doom among beings that have fallen, than that he
should take his place among the most unfortunate of the mam-
malia." ^

And the same sentiment appears in common expressions of
an insuperable repugnance to the idea of a soul ceasing to be,

1 J. H. Hinton, Athanasia, p. 161. Eclectic Review, Aug. 1845.

2 1. Taylor, Restoration of Belief, pp. 333, 334. Compare Athenagoras,
Legatio pro Christianis, c. 31(al. 27); Baxter, as cited below, p. 103; R. Wil-
liams, Christianity and Hinduism, pp. 447, 448.

14 THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE.

which makes the doctrine of the immortality of the good alone,
distasteful to multitudes even of Christian men.

But if we go behind the supposed terrible necessity of choos-
ing eternal good or evil, the worth and dignity it confers on
man's being vanishes. "With the oflPer of eternal life, who would
prefer the alternative of endless pain, to an end of being ? Is
the mortgage by which an estate may be for ever lost, deemed
an incumbrance upon it, an abatement of its value ? What,
then, if, without mortgage, it were liable to be overgrown with
endless thorns and thistles, and shut up as the escapeless prison
of its possessor, — would it be of more "v^orth ? ^ Would a par-
adise of delights be desirable, if it might, for the misconduct of
a day or a year, be turned into a burning desert for one's eter-
nal home ? The sentiment which shudders at the thought of
such a choice is immensely different from the dislike of all re-
sponsibility, with which it is so often confounded. It is a senti-
ment of our common nature, abiding ever, from youth to age.
" I wish," said a child to its mother, when first told of an im-
mortality for weal or woe, " I wish I had never been born."
Must the child's reason, or even its faith, be satisfied, when
the mother can only answer, "But you are born?" And as
it grows up, shall it be better satisfied when the theologian says :
" Thus a double necessity, natural and judicial, binds the guilty
soul upon the wheel of eternal death ? " He must himself ex-
claim : " At this fearful aspect of destiny, human nature pauses,
and feels that, alas ! Immortality is not Life ! Her ravish-
ment with the hope of an immortal existence disappears ; she
stops, and, in anxious misgivings for the race, inquires : ' What
must be the eternity of spiritual destinies already here begun ? '
From the presages of Nature she starts back with fear, and is
almost ready to let fall from her lips the cup God has proffered
of immortal existence." ^ And the hazard of such a destiny is

I'Tor who would choose existence attended with a danger that so very
much over balances it ? He is not a wise man that exposes all his estate to
hazard, nor a good man that obliges any one to do it." — Abp. King, Origin of
Evil, Appendix, § 2.

2 T. M. Post, Bib. Repos. Oct. 1844. Compare the New Englander, Feb.
1856, pp. 117 — 120.

EFFECTS OF THE COMBINATION. 15

" a mortal poison," says an eloquent preacher, " which difFuses
itself into every period of my life, rendering society tiresome,
and life itself a cruel bitter. I cease to wonder that a fear of
hell has made some melancholy and others mad ; that it has
inclined some to expose themselves to a living martyrdom by
fleeing from all commerce with the rest of mankind ; and others
to suffer the most violent and terrible torments." ^ Well may
we say in view of such a destiny : " If Christianity be true, it is
tremendoushj true." ^

But the moral dignity of man's being can only keep pace
with its value. If the necessity of choosing between infinite
good and evil makes it poor, in the economy of happiness and
misery, it is also worthless, in the estimate of virtue and vice,
holiness and sin. For if man needs such a dire choice of
motives to ensure a right choice, he is either infinitely weak or
infinitely wricked. If the former, his dignity is nothing ; if the
latter, his dignity is purely monstrous. Each supposition should
be considered.

(1.) Man is reduced to a dead thing, if he is so indifferent to
his own well-being, or so insensible to the motives of virtue, that
no gospel of eternal holiness or blessedness can quicken him
into life. It is no compliment to human nature, to suppose that
the affrightment of eternal whips and scorpions may impel man
heavenward, though infinite attractions could Mot draw him
thither. If there be such a man, he has no faculty of self-love,
and no moral sense. His being lies in altogether another
sphere. He is not human. He is no fit candidate for eternal
life ; why an heir of eternal being ? He is an abortive work of
nature, and the rank of his dignity cannot be assigned.

There is a hymn expressing the sentiment of modern times,
when men are supposed to be, through fear tiot of death, all
their life-time subject to bondage :

" Lo ! on a narrow neck of land,
Between two boundless seas I stand, —

1 Sauriu, Eternal Misery of Hell. Am. T. Society. Tract No. 277.

2 " A modern writer," cited bv Watson, Tlieol. Inst., Part I, c. 20.

16 THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE.

Yet how insensible !
A point of time, a moment's space
Removes me to yon heavenly place,

Or shuts me up in hell ! "

This wonder at man's stupidity contains a reproach of him,
as unworthy of his dignity. It ought to suggest a doubt. If
man was once exalted above these terrors, they were needless ;
if he is so fallen as to be unmoved by them, they are useless.
But without asking if they are true, those who employ them,
are ready, sometimes, in impatient despair, to contemn the un-
moved as not worth saving. At other times, the riddle is refer-
red to the infinite wickedness of men, which brings us to the
second supposition, involving the doctrine of

§ 6. THE DIGNITY OF WICKEDNESS.

Guilt ceases to be degrading when it becomes immortal.
The conception of a wickedness thoroughly consistent, ever
persistent, and eternally subsistent, is intrinsically admirable
and sublime. Endless guilt implies the power to sin and rebel
for ever ; and endless woe implies the capacity to suffer for
ever. It is a godlike faculty, if one can say to evil, " be thou
my good," with a purpose that can not be broken through the
lapse of eternal ages. It used to be said that a divine nature
can not suffer ; ^ but it is more true that only a divine nature can
suffer for ever ; and by such invincible endurance the sinner is
armed for eternal warfare against Ileaven. A mightier divine
power may imprison and restrain him ; but if an unconquer-
able will can still revolt, the power of eternal anguish sustains
the dignity. The dignity is enhanced, if one may contend for
ever with justice, and tantalize retribution, by adding sin to
sin ; and still more, if one may ever grow in fiendish capacity
and malignity. If there be such rebels, they may certainly
glory in the prerogative of imposing burdens, if not cares, upon

1 " Who does not see that what is immortal, or uucompoundod, can feel no
pain? and that which feels pain can not possess immortality?" Arnobius,
Adv. Gentes, 1. 2, c. 14.

THE DIGNITY OF WICKEDNESS. 17

the diviue administration. Well might one of those fallen angels,
who are " angels still," say :

" Or if our substance be indeed divine,
And cannot cease to be, we are at worst
On this side nothing ; and by proof we feel
Our i)ower sufficient to disturb His lieavcn,
And by perpetual inroads to alarm,
Though inaccessible. His fatal throne ;
Which, if not victory, is yet revenge."

And the sublime fortitude had been described by an earlier

poet :

" Let Him then work his horrible pleasure on me ;
Wreathe his black curling flames, tempest the air
With volleyed thunders and wild warring winds,
Rend from its roots the firm earth's solid base.
Heave from the roaring main the boisterous Avaves,
And dash them to the stars ; me let Him hurl,
Caught in the fiery tempest, to the gloom
Of deepest Tartarus ; not all his power
Can quench the ethereal breath of life in me." i

This sentiment of the dignity of eternal rebellion, of course
belongs properly to the old gentile conception of a divine
nature without a divine goodness. It has been reproduced in
the modern literature of the so-called " Satanic School." - But,
while it is too natural to the human heart, as we see in those
bold and desperate souls who, abandoning all hopes of heaven,
scorn the thought of moderate punishments in hell, — it is still
a fair question whether it has not been encouraged by a false
theology, and a doctrine of human dignity that talks much about
Christ, yet is essentially unchristian.

This question is made more pertinent by the very common
notion that the eternal destiny of the lost is of great use in the
economy of the divine government ; that in immortal wickedness
may be illustrated the nature and desert of sin, for the warning
of new created beings, or for the security and higher instruction

1 The Prometheus of ^schylus, Potter's translation.

2 See Byron's Cain and Don Juan, and Goethe's Faust.

18 THE DIGNITY OP HUMAN NATURE.

of the saved. Evil " may be permitted to subsist as furnishing
the requisite antagonism and occasion to virtue." ^ But useful-
ness brings dignity ; and if the lost are fit to be conserved as
chosen instruments of the general welfare, their- immortality
can not be without its honors. And though we may conceive of
them as useful in spite of themselves, and therefore justly pun-
ished, yet we must also regard them either as demented, —
objects of pity and contempt, — or as knowing themselves to be
overruled and employed for good, and perhaps claiming, with
complacent shrewdness, that they do evil that good may come,
and suffer, not for their sins alone, but

"For the advantage of the Universe."

Which accords with the dialogue between God and Satan
respecting one devoting himself to the latter :

" The Lord. Knowest thou Faust ?
Mephistopheles. The Doctor 1
21ie Lord. Ay, my servant !
Meph. He!
Forsooth ! he serves you in a famous fashion." 2

Men are ready enough to say that the means is sanctified by
the end ; why not also that evil is dignified thereby, if God
himself employs it for ever ?

1 T. M. Post, New Euglander, Feb. 1856, p. 131.

2 Goethe's Faust.

CHAPTER 11.

EVIL AND GOD.

" It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than sixch an opinion a^
is unworthy of Him." — Bacox.

§ 1. NATURAL EVIL.

Because all natural evil is transient, a theodicy respecting it
is little demanded by human faith. Yet the problem is specially
difficult, because that evil is not at once derived from moral con-
siderations. The sufiferings and death of animals are calamity,
but not penalty. And though there may be compensation for
them in the system, in an enhanced variety and measure of ani-
mal life, yet to the individual that suffers unduly, we know of no
compensation. All that natural theology has done, or, perhaps,
can do, is to reduce the sufferings of the brute creation to a mini-
mum ; and to show, if possible, that the brute, with no capacity
for borrowing trouble, and all its pains reducing the term of its
life, can not suffer more than it can enjoy.

A theodicy respecting man's temporal sufferings is easier.
Not to say that the most of them are tlie result of a fall, — either
directly penal, or an admonition to seek a lost estate of good, —
every case of unmerited calamity admits compensation in an
after life. Sin and punishment aside, man may be no loser in
the balancing of his pleasures and his pains ; much that he does
suffer is the fault of a querulous and ungrateful temper, aggra-
vating the sorrows and overlooking the blessings of life.

The natural evils which man suffers are also disciplinary.
Virtue demands a sphere of effort ; and the ordeal has a specific
value if it come in tiie form of hardship or pain. Yet, we ought
not to say that the worst system is the best system ; for the

20 EVIL AND GOD.

highest virtues would be so far imperfect, if they were impossible
without miseries that appear abnormal. Special virtues derived
from the endurance of special evils, may, at least in part, justify
the permission of them ; but they cannot be the final cause or
proper occasion of human woe.

§ 2. SIN. ITS MYSTERY.

We must admit an essential difference between Pain and Sin,
or natural and moral evil, unless conscience be a delusion, and
the author of it, God or Fate, an impostor. The power that
rules the world has added insult to injury, if man is only unfor-
tunate, and not guilty. The theory which makes conscience a
false accuser would prove too much. Man must have fallen very
strangely, to conceive of right and wrong as things more signifi-
cant than pleasure and pain ; and of character as something more
than an effect of circumstances or an accident of temper. The
invention of virtue and vice, merit and demerit, praise and blame,
if they be fictions, must rank as the highest poetic creations.
Have men indeed " become as gods, knowing good and evil ? "

In the old question of the origin of evil, we must carefully dis-
tinguish guilt from the facts with which it has been too often
confounded. All the supposed solutions are only proximate to
the real mystery. Sin is not mere imperfection ; it is produced
by no limitation of human faculties. It is not a corrupting taint
of matter ; the flesh cannot impose guilt upon the reluctant will.
Nor is it the necessary effect of trial or discipline ; when that is
severe past endurance, it is no crime to be crushed by it. Nor
is it accounted for by any temptation of the Adversary, nor by
any notion of a divided empire of the world ; he who chooses the
wrong side in a contest between God and Satan, must have some
other reason than that he finds two parties inviting his allegiance.
Nor can it be a needful lesson or demonstration of the nature of
good ; it is not wrong, if it is the only path from inexperience to
virtue.

We only know sin as a perverse act of the free will ; a doing
of what we know we ought not to do; a neglect to do what

THE TRIPLE PROBLEM. 21

seems in itself riglit, and which must therefore, in its final result,
be for the best. It is a revolt of the will against an authority
w^hich cannot be gainsaid, — the conscience. It follows from the
very nature of sin, that the method of its origination is a mystery.
It may be referred to its true producing cause, but never to a
proper final cause, as a valid reason. It is essentially without
reason, — an act of un-reason. To assign a good reason for it,
would be to justify it as a thing reasonable, which is contrary to
its nature. It knows no rational or logical connection. It knows
no law ; it is pure anomaly. It is the surd quantity which no
theologic algebra can determine. It can be reduced to no intel-
ligible principle; it bafiles explanation. As a causeless diver-
sion from light to darkness, it has its only analogies in the sub-
stitution of brute force for reason, or of the direct falsehood for
such craft as may be deemed honorable in certain contests of
human skill. But these analogies are only species of a common
genus, and no solution of the mystery.'^

§ 3. THE ORIGIN, ECONOMY, AND END OF EVIL.

The first question of this complex problem, the famous Unde
Malum, has been regarded as one of speculative philosophy.
But we find that speculation can furnish only proximate solu-
tions of it. We can show how sin is 2>ossihle ; we can name the
power and describe the circumstances in which it can originate.
In a calculation of chances we may raise a probability of its

1 " According to my conviction," says Neander, " the origin of evil can only
be understood as a fa^t — a fact possible by virtue of the freedom belonging to
a created being, but not to be otherwise deduced or explained. It lies in the
idea of evil that is an utterly inexplicable thing, and whoever would explain it
nullifies the very idea of it. It is not the limits of our knowledge which make
the origin of sin something inexplicable to ws, but it follows from the essential
nature of sin as an act of free will that it must remain to all eternity an inex-
plicable fact. It can only be understood empirically by means of the moral
self-consciousness." — Planting and Training of the Church, bk. 6, ch. 1, note.
Compare Plato, Ep. 2, cited by Neander; — Laurentius Valla (see Leibnitz, The-
odicdc, § 412) : " We must, then, seek another cause of evil ; and I doubt if the
angels themselves know it ; " — Miiller, Christian Doctrine of Sin, II., 187 - 191,
Pulsford's translation, and Kant, as there cited; — J. TuUoch, Theism, pp. 385-
387; — J. Young, The Mystery, pp. 181, 215.

22 EVIL AND GOD.

occurrence, as a contingency in the trial of countless free agents.
But though a probable event, it can never seem approvable. Its
becoming actual is an enigma beyond all speculation, which man
can only solve by the plea of guilty.

The Economy of Evil is the theologian's question. Unlike
the sin of the individual, that of the multitude or of the whole
race seems to suggest a solution in some general law, or in
God's own plan. A single trespass of his command might be
unworthy of his notice ; not so the long ages of a world's rebel-
lion. Does He permit, and yet abhor, so immense an evil ? Is
it all against his will ? Here we easily forget that of the poet :

" If not so frequent, would not sin be strange 1
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still."

The sinfulness of every man is in fact as unaccountable as
that of a7iy man. The mystery is not solved by simple multi-
plication. The extended fact may prove coextensive influences,
circumstances, disabilities ; but never a necessity of guilt, either
in man's act or God's plan.

The End of Evil is preeminently the Christian's question.
" Lord, what shall the end of these things be ? " " Oh, let the
wickedness of the wicked come to an end." Shall it be tempo-
rary, or eternal? Shall it be conserved, and its conservation
sanctified by reasons of God's necessity or justice ? or may it
cease from the universe, as equally worthless and needless in
the fair work of creation ?

The triple problem we have proposed has been the trial of
the skill, the moral integrity, and the faith, of the respective
classes we have named. In every aspect it affects also our
views of God's character, not to say of His power and His
nature.

§ 4. THE IDEA OF GOD, AND THE CONCEPTION OF GOD.

That men should believe there is a God, the Maker and Ruler
of the world, and that they should be agreed respecting His
attributes, are two very different things. The idea of a God

THE IDEA AND THE CONCEPTION OF GOD. 23

seems a part of our mental constitution, and, as the rudimentary
principle of religion, is the same in all minds. A self-subsistent,
mightiest, wisest, and best Being is of course God, and claims
the homage of ail His creatures. But how shall His Power,
Wisdom, and Goodness appear? — is a question to which there
are as many replies as there are kinds of religion among men.
The true answer gives the true conception of God, and the true
religion. But between this true conception, and conceptions so
false or so dim as to fade away in atheism, there are endless gra-
dations. Men are not agreed respecting God's natural attributes.
Some regard Him as a formless Spirit ; others, as having essen-
tially a form, a body with its relations to space. With some,
He is omnipresent by extension, — part here and part there;
and eternal by succession of moments, — older now than He was
then. Others discard such notions as gross and unworthy of a
divine nature. And the moral attributes of God, even to godly
men, appear as different as their views of what is wise, and just,
and good. They conceive of God as variously as they do of his
justice, wisdom, and goodness, and they worship Him accord-
ingly. They differ as to the highest good ; Avith some it is more
intellectual, with others more spiritual, with others more social.
And of all these men and their varying conceptions, we may
say : " Like worshippers, like God."

In one of the dialogues of Plato this distinction is finely illus-
trated. .It is agreed that the sacred (to oolov) is that which is
dear to the gods. But it happens that the gods themselves
differ, so that what is dear to one is hateful to another ; and
almost every concrete thing is pleasing to some one of them.'^
The great question remains, — what is the truly sacred, just,
noble, and good, v*'hich all profess to regard, and which ought to
be really dear to all ?

The distinction between the idea and the conception of God is
easily abused. We are sometimes told that all except those
who have the absolutely true conception of God are idolaters.
But we are not so easily hushed into modesty, when we compare

1 The Euthyphron.

24 EVIL AND GOD.

ourselves with tlie worshippers of Moloch. We ask, would their
god be worthy of divine honor, if he were real ? or would our
God be unworthy of divine honor, if he were real ? On the
other hand we are told that the idolater is a true worshipper,
because his conception is that of a God. We answer, all wor-
ship " in spirit and in truth " is with reverent inquiry after the
truest knowledge of God ; false worship seeks to corrupt, or to
ignore, a conception of God already too pure and holy. The
one yearns after light ; the other turns toward darkness. The
God of the one is Deity obscured by the dimness of human
thought ; that of the other is Deity corrupted and un-deified by
man's passions.

The idea of God may be compared to the idea of a circle ;
the child can apprehend it. The true conception of God answers
to the doctrine of the properties of the circle, which human learn-
ing has not yet exhausted. In a study of geometry, the circle
may be so overlaid with illustrative figures, that the careless eye
shall not regard it ; a subordinate or contrasted figure shall usurp
its place. So men have deified some power of temporal good, or
some dire evil. Thus the ancients had a whole Olympus of gods
to their liking, while the " unknown God," as a barren idea, was
neglected. The God of the affections will ever fill the thoughts.

The distinction we have made will be respected by those who
employ the a priori argument for the being of God. They tell
us there must be a self-existent One, the Archetype and Source
of all good, because all men have an idea of such a Being. They
certainly do not mean that there is just such a being as each
man conceives God to be.

The distinction is vastly important. Freed from the abuse
that confounds true and false worship, it still contains a caution
to the true worshippers of God. They may dishonor Him by
unworthy views and false conceptions. Fancying that they copy
from Him, they may regard Him as altogether such an one as
themselves, projecting their frail humanities as the models of
infinite perfection. Theology may grow infallible and intolerant,
mistaking a very false doctrine about God for a genuine doctrine
of God. Or, when it is suggested that His character is maligned,

THE FOUR THEOLOGIES. 25

we are told that He is of course infinitely perfect, — all men
know that, — and he needs no vindication. This easy refuo-e
from the conception to the idea of God, however, will betray
itself. Agreed in the true idea of God, and developing it as
best we can, by the help of the revelation in His works and His
word, we may yet join issue to see if a prevalent conception of
His character accords with that idea.

§ 5. THE FOUR THEOLOGIES.

The unworthy opinions of God which denote a wrong solu-
tion of the problem of Evil arc various, but may be reduced
to three classes ; which, along with the true solution, we may
style the four Theologies.

1. The first regards Evil as existing or subsisting in defiance
not only of God's prohibition, but of His power. Either He
could not prevent it, or He could not dispense with it. It is
necessary, either as a fate, or as means to an end. It may be
reduced to vassalage, but it cannot be eliminated or destroyed,
without danger of greater evil. This theology, which makes
Evil a power coordinate with Good, we shall call Dualism.

2. The second confesses the omnipotence of God, but employs
it in the introduction and maintenance of Evil in the world.
Evil is a part of God's plan, expressly designed as occasion for
display of His attributes. Sin is committed, no less than it is
forgiven or punished, of His sovereign purpose. In one form
of the theory, the distinctions of right and wrong are themselves
a decree of God's pure will, and might be reversed at His
pleasure. This is the theology of a divine Absolutism, or Des
potism.

3^. The third is a natural reaction from the second. It rejects
altogether the moral distinctions which had been rested in a
pure arbitrament, and resolves all events into a course of Na-
ture. In its higher forms it opposes to the dominion of fate
only a divine indiscriminate goodness, or instinct of good nature.
This is Naturalism, Pantheism, or Atheism.

4. The fourth seeks to reconcile all Evil that has been or
3

26 EVIL AND GOD.

shall be with the Omnipotence of God, without sacrificing either
His Justice or His Love, — His moral or His natural goodness.
It must answer the question: Why does perfect Power and Wis-
dom permit that which perfect Holiness abhors? The solution
of this problem will be the true .Theism.

In a word, Evil is either God's necessity, — or His choice, — or
of Nature, and sin does not exist, — or it is simply permitted.

These four theologies will appear in their effects in the hearts
of men. The first, creating an eternal conflict in the heavens, —
difficulties of divine government past all relief, — produces an
Agony of Faith.

The second, affirming that might makes right, and that the
end will sanctify the means, encourages in these who possess
power, the Prostitution of Faith. To the victims of its reason-
less omnipotence it leaves only a Prostration of Faith.

The third, blotting out this baleful light from the heavens as
worse than darkness, bequeaths to mankind an Eclipse of Faith.

The fourth, recognizing Evil as actual, yet hateful, lea-^s for
man a Trial of Faith ; by which, however, he need not be over-
come, looking for some " restitution of all things ; " in which
hope the trial may end in a Triumpli.

§ 6. THE NOTION OF EVIL AS AN ETERNAL NECESSITY
IS DUALISTIC.

The most gross and bald Dualism is that which asserts two
personal, self-subsistent Gods, one good and the other evil, war-
ring against each other. But there are various forms of Dual-
ism aside from the notion of an evil God ; and we shall define
it to be the doctrine of evil as an eternal principle,
whether this principle be taken as a Person, or as a Law of
Nature. And with this definition we affirm

1. That the doctrine of evil as an eternal necessity is only a
refined form of the doctrine of evil as an eternal principle, and
is essentially dualistic.

2. That the doctrine of eternal sin or misery, as the result
of an event in time, logically involves the eternal necessity of
evil, and is dualistic.

DUALISM. ANALYSIS. 27

These propositions may be supported both by analytical argu-
ment and by a historical induction of facts.

§ 7. THE A^'ALTTIC ARGUMENT.

The fact that sin is a result of freedom, may seem to bar all
argument respecting it as a necessity. But it should be remem-
bered that two parties are concerned with the entrance of sin
in the world, and the freedom of one may be the necessity of
the other. The doctrine of future punishment sometimes takes
this form, — that because man has freely sinned, God must of
necessity expose him to eternal suffering, lest sin should be too
free, and the welfare of all beings be put in jeopardy.

But, it W'ill be said, justice is certainly good and salutary;
and if the justice of eternal suffering can be made out, it should
not be accounted an eviL

In reply we ask : Is punished sin an evil ? It is made up
of three things, — guilt, pain, and the justice which connects
them. Now the guilt is certainly an evil in itself, and so is the
pain ; the justice is doubtless good, or it would not be just.
But what is it good for? Punitive justice denotes simply
this, — that guilt and pain are good for each other. The ex-
ample of punishment may happen also to be good for other
beings ; but this is an added consideration, extrinsic, and can
never create the justice itself. Eather, the need of exemplary
punishment, Avhether to restrain the vicious or to encourage the
virtuous, indicates just so much imperfection and evil. Even
though the eternal miseries of hell should multiply the eternal
joys of heaven, it still remains a dire necessity if those joys can
be procured only at such expense. And if the best results of
punished sin cannot make it an intrinsic good, much less can
the abundance of it. From the thought of its being extended
through immensity, and continued through eternity, even those
wlio think it useful in its place w^ould shrink back with horror.
Good as guilt and pain may be for each other, they do not form
a compound of any intrinsic value. They do not, like the fiery
oxygen and the poisonous hydrogen, which the just chemistry

28 EVIL AND GOD.

of nature converts into a liquid blessing, — they do not add to
the proper moral wealth of the v/orld. On earth or in hell, the
compound is no better than its elements, — evil, and only evil,
and therefore it has no home in heaven.

Even granting, then, for argument's sake, that justice should
give sin and pain immortal wedlock, forbidding their mutual
death-grapple, as when

" The snaky sorceress that sat
Fast by hell-gate, and kept the fatal key,
Eose, and with hideous outcry rushed between "

Satan and Death, and each are eternized, the inquiry remains:
Can sin and pain be an eternal fact, without an eternal necessity ?
If not necessary, then why actual ? If it is said that man, abso-
lutely immortal, shall sin for ever maugre God's efforts to change
his evil purpose, then he imposes an immortal necessity upon
God ; and this becomes an eternal necessity, in the eternal reason
for such immortality. The inverted pyramid, which grows up
by occasion of a creature's act, expanding into immensity, and
whose limit is beyond the zenith, must rest upon another equally
infinite, whose base reaches farther down than the nadir. The
irreducible Evil was already latent in the eternal past, with god-
like omnipotence defying the power of God. If He could not
create free beings for an eternal good, without the contingency
of eternal evil, then the contingency developing as fact, betrays
an eternal necessity and fate.

Again, if this limitation of divine power is from the divine
justice, then this attribute itself is enslaved to the sinful creature.
The law, which was "holy, just, and good," becomes a carte
hlanclie which frail man may fill out as a sentence of infinite evil
in the world. The norm of endless blessing, lie may convert
into the instrument of an endless curse. And if the germ of a
world's welfare shall develop into a towering Upas tree, which
no stroke of divine justice can fell, it is but an aggravation of
the dire case to say that it is rooted in the depths of Infinite
Goodness.

Again, if eternal sin or suffering is supposed needful, to dis-

DUALISM. — ANALYSIS. 29

play the divine character, to secure saints in perpetual holiness,
or to give zest to the joys of their redemption, — such a contrast
of Good and Evil is precisely the old philosophic Dualism.
Goodness is not sufScient for its own uses. Evil must form the
background in the picture of the Universe, to render the Beau-
tiful, the True, the Just, and the Good, prominent and vivid.
The destruction of all evil would be the suicide of all good. A
restitution of all things that should leave no trace of the Adver-
sary's kingdom, would be a fatal victory — a signal defeat.

In this view, though good, in its very idea, ought to be univer-
sal, it must ever be in fact sectional. Its incursions into the do-
main of Evil must be limited by certain bounds and conditions.
" Two kingdoms, one of Christ and the other of Satan, will have
their respective limits." ^ Goodness can never fijl all worlds.
The law that curbs the raging sea becomes its law : " Hitherto
shalt thou come, and no farther." The wave {'? blessing must
be stayed. God cannot be all in all. Angels and men, and we
know not wliat other races of God's own creatures, must be
shared by him v/itli the Power which Pie abhors. His advan-
tage is in numbers only ; the contest is a drawn battle in many a
struggle. And we are often told that the immortal children of
the Wicked One make ceaseless progress in their wickedness
and woe ; in its dreadful way. Evil thus keeps pace with Good,
eternally.

Now whether this dominion of Evil be maintained by a per-
sonal God, or by an eternal necessity of things, it signifies little.
And whether it be immovably fixed, or ever shifting, or ever re-
curring, as an eternal vicissitude, — makes no difference. In
either case the power of God is for ever inhibited. His dominion
for ever limited. Wide regions of the universe can never be
His own ; and whether he is dispossessed by a foreign Power, or
by an adverse necessity, the empire of eternity is a divided do-
minion ; and the true doctrine of that empii-e is Dualism.-

1 Augustine, Enchir. ad Laurent, c. 3.
2 Our definition of Dualism is sanctioned by Kant (Das Ende aller Dinge),
wlio regards Restorationisra as better in theory, but tlie received doctrine as
better in practice, securing tlic sense of accountabilit}'. The following state-
s'

31} EVIL AND GOD.

§ 8. IIISTORICAL ILLUSTRATION.

The Persian doctrine of Ormuzd and Aliriman is too well
known to require extended notice. It is the most perfect exam-
ple of a personal Dualism, with which it would be instructive to
compare various systems of polytheism, and to show their simi-
larity in the personification of one or more powers of evil. But
our historic argument will be to show that the notion of evil as
an eternal necessity leads naturally to the notion of a personal
evil Deity.

Parsism was itself polytheistic. Ormuzd and Ahriman were
not self-existent ; they were the progeny of one who was called
the Absolute, the Zerwan, " Time without beginning and without
end," Eternal. They were the active forces of the universe,
appointed by a higher Power, for reasons disputed in Magian
debates about the Origin of Evil. There were various opinions
also respecting these gods themselves. Was Ahriman the eldest
born fallen, like Satan, through pride, and was Ormuzd called to
vanquish him and take his kingdom ? "Which was the mightier ?
Was Ahriman to be at all worshipped or feared, while he had
power ? We will not decide points which the Magi left unsettled.
Zoroaster, who is popularly regarded as a rank Dualist, seems
to have been a reformer, perhaps a martyr, opposing the preva-

ments in an able defence of the received doctrine will farther warrant our use
of terms : " Either sin is for God altogether unconquerable, and then itself can
never be God's choice, and there would be an irreducible power in the world,
opposed to God. This is precise and express JManichaism ; for there i-emains
only to give this power a Principle, to which a godlike power is due. Whether
now this Principle be called Devil or Ahriman, it makes no difference." He
proceeds: "If this resort is forbidden for him who would be no Manichsean,
then there remains only this, — that sin is indeed conquerable by the power of
God, but that it is, nevertheless, not actually I'educed at the end of the world.
Every one sees the conti'adiction involved in this ; for then we may suppose, in-
stead of the world with sin, another condition of it without sin, and every way
more perfect ; so that there should be after the end of the world a higher form
of its development ; that is, the end is not the end. Thus it lies in the idea of
the world, so far as it is to be an expression of the divine nature, that at the end
all sin must be entirely and thoroughly done away; and this is, indispu-
tably, the truth in the doctrine of Restoration which has obtained for it, over
against a comfortless IManichaiism, ever and again, adherents." Heinrich Erb-
kam. Studienund Kritiken^ 1838, No. II., p. 409.

DUALISM. ITS HISTORY. 31

lent fear of Ahriman as a superstition. Ormnzd, Le knew, ought
to prevail, and therefore men might safely confide in him.^ It
was agreed, however, that though Ahriman might be reduced or
destroyed, he was the cause of all evil ; and the Greek historian
gives us some glimpses of an anthropology corresponding to this
Dualism, in the strong expressions of a Persian who in an hour
of severe temptation was quite certain that he had two souls.^

The Hindoo Siva, or Destroyer, is too unlike the evil God of
the Persians to be regarded as a counterpart. He is not malig-
nant ; what he destroys he reproduces. Still the triad of
Brahma, Vishnu and Siva is akin to the Persian Dualism, as
showing the Oriental proneness to attribute personal being to the
j^rimary and contrasted powers of the world.

The Greeks knew better how to think abstractly; and the
early philosophers could explain the origin of evil without im-
peaching any divine being as its cause. It was the work of Fate.
And though some atheists made Fate or Chance the cause of all
things, good and bad, yet, in the more religious opinion. Fate
(Mofpa) or Necessity ('Avay/c?/) was especially the cause of Evil.
Hence the Stoics made virtue itself to consist in patiently endur-
ing what even the gods could not avert. And the chief interest
of the ancient tragedy is in the foct that even justice and right
are powerless before a relentless Destiny. '' Man conquered by
circumstances," is the ancient idea, in contrast with the modern,
— ''Man conquering circumstances." This power was in due
time personified in the beautiful myth of the Parcfe, — Clotho,
Lachesis, and Atropos, presiding over the destinies of men.

But even for fated evil, the human mind must seek a reason.
And the effort to find this produced the oldest system of philo-
sophic Dualism, the essential features of which may be found in
almost every subsequent theology, and with frequent relapse into
the notion of a personal evil God. This was the Pythagorean
doctrine of opposite qualities as necessary to each other. There
can be no even number without an odd number. Day and night,
light and darkness, heat and cold, seem to rest each in the bosom

1 Maurice, Anc. Phil., c. 5. 2 Xenophon, Cyi'opccdia, 1. 6, c. 1, § 41.

32 EVIL AND GOD.

of the other. There can be nothing straight, but in contrast with
the crooked. Such contrasts meet us continually ; and the con-
ception of any thing seems most vivid and complete, when
coupled with the conception of its opposite. By a sort of a priori
reasoning it was argued that nothing can exist without its oppo-
site. Hence were inferred good and evil principles of all things,
which might be named from any pair of opposite qualities, as one
and many, right and left, straight and crooked, symmetrical and
shapeless, composed and restless, light and dark.-^ In the meta-
physics of Aristotle these principles were distinguished, as form
{[lop^TJ) and privation (oTiprjoLg). In the theology of Plato this
contrast of good and evil appears as a Battle of the Universe, an
" immortal conflict, greater than all other conflicts, and requiring
a most wonderful care and vigilance." "All nature and all
worlds rise into deeply interested parties in this immortal strife.
Order is everywhere struggling with disorder. Light is contend-
ing with darkness ; truth with error ; knowledge with ignorance.
The science of medicine is fighting wnth disease; agriculture
with the hostile stubbornness of the earth ; art and science of
every kind with rude and savage life. On a higher scale, the
virtues are personified as in conflict with our sins Righteous-
ness is engaged in a strife which knows no compromise with
unrighteousness. Temperance maintains an unintermitting strug-
gle with her most powerful and unyielding antagonist. To
crown all, God himself and the celestial powers are represented
as everywhere contending with the evil soul, and with the dark,
mindless, disorderly spirit of Matter." ^

To the Persian doctrine it is w^ell known that Isaiah alludes,
when he speaks of Jehovah as having called Cyrus to his work,
unmoved by any rivalry of adverse powers. " I am Jehovah,
and none else ; beside me there is no God ; I will gird thee,
though thou hast not known me. ... I am Jehovah, and
none else ; forming light, and creating darkness ; making peace,

1 The Pythagoreans added such distinctions as finite and infinite, one and two,
square and oblong. See Cudworth, Intell. System, b. 1, c. 4, § 2J.

2 Tayler Lewis, Plato against the Atheists. Excursus Ixvi.

DUALISM. ITS HISTORY. 33

and creating evil : I Jehovah am the author of all these things."^
Homer had approached the doctrine of the divine supremacy,
where he speaks of Jupiter as permitting and controlling evil as
well as good.- For this he is censured by Plato, as implicating
the divine goodness. " God," says he, " doeth nothing evil, nor
could He be the cause of anything evil. The Good, therefore,
cannot be the author of all things, but only of those that are good,
while He is never the author of the bad. God, therefore, cannot
be the author of all things, as the many say, but only of few
things is He the cause to man ; for our good things are much
fewer in number than our evil things. Of evil things, then, we
must seek some other cause, and not the Deity." ^ Of this other
cause Plato elsewhere speaks thus : " For God, wishing that all
things should be good, and that there should be nothing bad,
thus taking in hand the visible (or material), never at rest, but
ever moving about in a strange and disorderly manner, reduced it
as far as He could from disorder to order. For it is morally
impossible for the best Being to do anything else but the best." ^
And in another passage this disorderly spirit of matter appears
as a personal evil soul in the world : " The soul is the cause of
all things good and evil, honorable and base, just and unjust, and
of all contraries, if it is the cause of all things. The soul, then,
that rules all things in their diverse ways, is not one, but mani-
fold. We must suppose no less than two, — the one beneficent,
and the other able to do the contrary." ^

Such is the Platonic solution of the Pythagorean solution of
the origin of evil. The law of contraries must be executed by
opposing gods.

Four hundred years later, the philosophic doctrine is asserted
again by Philo. Having defined the phrase, " They died before
the Lord," ^ to mean " they lived," he proceeds to speak of the
punishment of Cain. " We find," he says, " no account in the
Lav/ of the death of Cain, the wicked fratricide, but this declara-
tion : ' The Lord God put a mark upon Cain, lest any one find-

1 Ch. xlv. 5-7. Lowth's Trans. 2 Hiad, xxiv. 527 - 530.

3 Republic, b. 2. 4 Timteus, p. 379, c. d. 30, a.

5 Laws, b. 10, p. 896, d. e. 6 Lev. x. 2 ; Num. iii. 4.

34 EVIL AND GOD.

ing liim should slay liim.' And why ? It was, I think, because
impiety is an interminable evil, which, once kindled, can
never be extinguished. With which agrees that of the Poet :

'H di rot ov 6vr]T7], aTJJ aOavarov nanov kcnv.

' Evil is an immortal thing, no death can efface it.'

Immortal in the present life, though before God it be a lifeless
and dead thing, and, as a certain one says, like a dung-clod.
But it behoved that diverse spheres should be assigned to things
diverse; heaven to the good; to evil, the confines of earth.
Therefore, the good tends upward, though sometimes it descends
to us (for the Father thereof is bountiful), but it desires natur-
ally to return home again. But evil abides here, removed as
far as possible from the heavenly choir, flitting about this mor-
tal life, and unable, by any death of its own, to leave mortal
kind. Of which we have an eloquent witness among the wise
men, in Thea^tetus, thus : ' Evil cannot be utterly rooted out and
destroyed ; for there must ever be something opposite to the
good. But as it can have no place among the heavenly beings,
it is forced to sojourn with mortal nature, and in these earthly
abodes. Wherefore we should strive to flee- heavenward as soon
as we may ; and we do thus flee, if we do our utmost to become
like God.' ^ Cain, then, does not die ; which signifies that evil
will ever live, in a deadly sort, with men. Wherefore it was
fitly said that the manslayer should die the death, [in the sense
and] for the reasons just given." ^

In Plutarch we find the utilitarian defence of the dualistic
system, for which Plato seems to have cared nothing. " It is
impossible," says he, " that all created things should be produced
by one only cause, whether good or bad ; for God is not the cause
of any evil. But the harmony of this world is made up of con-
traries, as a lyre is compounded of base and treble.

* Good never is from evil separate ;
One with the other is for ever mixed,
For the advantage of the universe.'

1 Plato, Thcjetetus, p. 176. 2 De Profugis. 0pp. L, 555 (al. 459).

DUALISM. — ITS HISTORY. 35

This is the sentiment of the greatest poet (Euripides), and of
the wisest of the ancients ; for some of them believed there
were two gods, who pursued opposite ends ; one the author of
all good, the other of all evil. Some call the author of good,
God ; and the other, Dismon." ^

In the passage just cited from Philo, the reader will have
discovered the sentiment that matter is inherently corrupt.
This was the Gnostic doctrine, so notorious in the early history
of Christianity. It was the heresy which so often led to the
denial of Christ's real incarnation. The most eminent assertors
of this doctrine were Saturninus, Basilides, Valentinus, and
Marcion, who all regarded matter, in its brute resistance and
blind hostility to the divine power, as the evil principle. Gnos-
tic speculations were not repressed, but rather promoted, by the
persecutions of that age. " Deeper systems," says Bunsen,
" stirred up the religious and thoughtful mind of the times. It
was, in particular, the old Oriental Dualism, that child both of
a deep sense of the cause of sin, and of the wickedness and
oppression of the ruling powers on earth, which now tried to
establish itself as a Christian element." ^

We have met with the suggestion that the phrase, " opposi-
tions of science (yvuoic) falsely so called" (1 Tim. vi. 20), is an
allusion to the Gnostic theory of contrasted good and evil ; but
we are not prepared to adopt it. Conybeare and Howson refer
the expression to the vain babblings and logomachies before
named. But, declining a reference to the contrasts between
Law and Gospel affirmed by Marcion, they say : " If there be
an allusion to any Gnostic doctrines at all, it is more probable
that it is to the dualistic opposition betv/een the principles of
good and evil in the world, which was an Oriental element in
the philosophy of some of the early Gnostics."

To this age belongs Tatian, who first asserted a penal immor-
tality, and who afterwards led the sect of Encratites. And not
long after lived Tertullian, who embraced and defended Mon-
tanism, an ascetic doctrine, " which, if it had generally prevailed,

1 Isis and Osiris, cc, 45, 46. 2 Hippolytus and his Age, 2d ed. T. 127.

36 EVIL AND GOD.

would either have destroyed the Church or the nature of man." ^
His character was " severe, gloomy, and fiery." ^ He was " a
foe to speculation, yet could not resist the impulses of a pro-
found speculative intellect." ^ The following expression of his
views is pertinent to our present argument. The Divine Rea-
son, he says, " composed the universe of diverse elements, that
all things might subsist by the union of opposing principles ; of
vacuum and matter, the animate and the inanimate, the compre-
hensible and the incomprehensible, light and darkness, even life
and death. The same Reason has also given Time an appointed
and marked limitation, so that the first beginning thereof in
which we live, should after a season come to an end ; while that
which follows, and for which we wait, should continue into a
boundless eternity. When the interval shall have expired, and
the fashion of the world itself, which is also temporal, like a
vestibule to that eternal scheme, — then the whole human race
shall be raised up, to answer for the good or evil deeds of this
life, and shall be consigned over to a vast and endless eter-
nity. There will not then be successive deaths and resurrections,
but we shall be the same persons as now, and no other there-
after ; the worshippers of God, ever with God, clothed with a
substance proper for endless duration ; but the corrupt and un-
godly in a punishment of mountains of fire, that has in its own
nature a divine ministration of immortality." ^

This passage is one of a class. It states evil as an eternal
fact, with a philosophic necessity, but without a corresponding
theology ; for the age of theodicy was not yet. In this state of
things appeared Manes, a Persian of the Magusaean sect, who
held an absolute Dualism, and with whom, in the changes of
contending parties, he was now banished from the kingdom.
The formation of his system is thus indicated by Hase : " Hav-
ing discovered many points of agreement between the doctrines
of Mithraism, of Buddhism, and of Gnostic Christianity, and

1 Hase, Church Hist, §67. Compare Neander, Church Hist. I, 520 — 524,
614, Torrey's trans. But Jeremy Taylor excuses Montanus as having enjoined
abstinence, not for conscience' sake, but for discipline. — Liberty of Pi-ophesy-
ing, § 2.

2 Hase, ibid, § 83. s Neander, ibid, p. 509. 4 Apol. c. 48 ; comp. c. 18.

DUALISM. — ITS HISTORY. 37

the principles of his own paternal faith, he believed himself
called to combine these popular religions, especially Parsism
and Christianity, into one universal religion." ^ To this task he
was already invited by the Dualism for which Christians were
even now reproached by their heathen opponents. Celsus
charged them with holding that " there is an execrable god, con-
trary to the great God." ^ And Plotinus wrote a book against
those Christians who asserted that this world was made by an
evil god.^ The complaint of Athanasius, that " some heretics,
forsaking the ecclesiastical doctrine, and making shipwreck of
of the faith, have falsely attributed a real nature and essence
to evil," ^ also indicates that this doctrine was troublesome to
the churches. This is most manifest from the lively account
we have of a debate, real or fictitious, supposed to have been
held between Manes and Archelaus, and which betrays an
intense interest, on the part of the audience, in the question
whether the doctrine of an evil god was true, or was to pre-
vail.

One passage of this debate is most important, as showing that
the eternity of evil was really the main question, and that the
orthodox argument was apparently sustained, only when this
dire eternity was given up. " If the human race should at
length perish from the face of the earth, in such a way that they
can sin no more, the substance of this evil tree, bearing no more
fruit, would perish." " And when," asks Manes, " will that thing
happen, that you tell of?" "I am only a man," replied Arche-
laus, " and do not know what will come ; nevertheless I shall
not leave that point without saying something upon it." He
afterwards says : " Therefore it [death] has an end, because it
began in time ; and that is true which was spoken : ' Death is
swallowed up in victory.' For it was not unbegotten, but is
shown to have both beginning and end." Archelaus's doctrine
of the End of Evil is, indeed, restorationist ; but the applause of

1 Hase, Church Hist., § 82. 2 Qrigen, con. Cels. 1. 6, p. 303. 3 Ennead. ii. 1. 9.
4 Contra Gentes. 0pp. I. 6, ed. Bcned, 1698.
4

38 EVIL AND GOD.

the audience at the discomforture of Manes, when the dispute
ends, is none the less significant." ^

The history of the Manicha^ans is interesting for their crude
opinions, their ascetic virtues and vices, and their sufferings.
Persecuted, first as a Persian sect and then as Gnostic Chris-
tians, they still flourished and made proselytes every where.
Augustine was for nine years of their persuasion, and after em-
bracing Christianity spared no pains to convince them of their
error. They were the first to suffer death as heretics, though
not without remonstrance from such men as Ambrose. Under
various names, among which was the title of ho7ii homines, they
survived until the eleventh century, when they were universally
punished with death ; and thereafter as a lingering sect, prevail-
ing in some districts, as late as A. D. 1442. ^

Shortly after the time of Manes, Dualism recovered its philo-
sophic form, in the writings of Lactantius, " the Christian Cicero."
He often speaks of evil as essential to the existence of good, by a
law of contraries or a polarity of forces of which neither can sub-
sist without the other. ^ Evil is necessary to illustrate the nature
of good, and therefore is made part of the original plan of the
world. ^ But even with Lactantius, who is most eloquent in the
philosophic defence of the doctrine, it became in its development
a personal Dualism. Christ and Satan are respectively the
right hand and the left hand of God. And Satan is an anti-
God, the rival of the true God. ^ The Manichasan character of
his theology was however so manifest, that one most objectiona-
ble passage was omitted from later manuscripts and earlier

1 Routh's Reliqq. Sacrre, IV. 182, 183, 205, 280. Archelaus explains Matt,
xiii. 13, and 2 Cor. iv. 3, 4, of evil men ceasing to be, by conversion ; with the
remark: " As some interpret, whose discom-se is not to be disesteemed."

2 Gieseler, Church Hist. Period I. § 61, Period III. § 46. The history of Mani-
chceism is the subject of two bulky volumes, by Beausobre.

3 De Ira Dei, c. 15.

• 4 " Malum nihil aliud est quam boni interpretatio. Sublato igitur malo, etiam
bonum toUi necess est." — Inst. Div. 1. 7. c. 5. " Cur [Deus] ipsi Satfioi laoxv^
a principio fecit, ut esset, qui cuncta corrumperet, cuncta disperdcret '? Dicam
breviter, cur liunc talem esse voluerit." — Inst. Epitome, c. 29.
5 Inst. Div. 1. 2, CO. 8,9.

DUALISM. — ITS HISTORY. 39

editions of his works, " probably to save his reputation.^ " It is
admitted by Hase, with the remark that "his belief in a principle
of evil appointed by God, and of equal rank with Christ, and in
a millenial kingdom, may be regarded as a lingering shadow of
the preceding century." -

It is here worthy of notice that Ritter reckons Synesius as
incontestably a Dualist. Besides his opinions already noted, he
gives as reasons for this judgment the following: ''The world
appeared to him to be a hai'mony composed of diverse elements.
There are two principles, one of light, the other of darkness
striving to wrest from the divine law its authority. How often
does he speak of matter as the second principle ! The material
and the immaterial are coeternal. He denied the future destruc-
tion of the world, and the resurrection, regarding the body as
the source of evil." ^

The Lactantian form of Dualism appears in the writings of
two eminent Mohammedans."^ Among the Schoolmen the prob-

1 Hageubach, Hist, of Doc. § 133.

2 Chui-ch Hist. § 88. The editors of the Paris ed. 1748, admit^the style of the
passage to be that of Lactantius ; but they say : " It teaches the eiTor of the
Manichceans," and " it is false, that good and evil are so connected that if you
remove the one j'ou destroy the other; for in heaven this does not obtain.''^

3 Hist, of Chr. Phil. 1. 2, c. 2, § 4. He refers to De Insomn. Praf. ; pp. 134,
141, 142; De Provid. § 1, pj9; Ep. 105, ed. Petav.

4Pococke quotes from ^uulfeda (A.D. 1360) the supposed declaration of
Zoroaster, that " good and evil arose from the mingling of light and darkness,
without which the world would never have been." And Tholuck from the
deep-minded mystic, Dschelaleddin :

" Never does the power of medicine appear,
Without a poor sick one full of disease.
Thus in the low is ever miiTored the high ;
Thus want is ever the point whence fullness gleams forth.
Ever by contrast is contrast revealed.
Only by the sour is the sweetness of honey made known."
And again :

" If God appear in conflict with God,
Believe — that in this way an Eden will bloom ;
Since in conflict and peace, God, the Unity, is.
Whose self-conflict is not injurious to self."

Cited by Muller, Chr. Doc. of Sin, I. 398. Compare Thohick's remark on the
Shalmaganians in his Guido and Julius, p. 61.

40 EVIL AND GOD.

lem of Evil was thus solved by Dims Scotus ; ^ and Aquinas
was, perhaps, once perplexed to refute this philosophy ; if we
may infer any thing from his exclaiming in a fit of abstraction,
in the presence of the king, striking the table with his hand,
that " the argument was now conclusive against the Manichoe-
ans." ^ The devout mystic Jacob Boehme is thought by some
to derive evil by the same method.^

The fictitious character of poetry exempts it from theological
censure until it becomes the expression of a theology. Such is
the fact in the case of the two great epics of Christendom, —
the " Divina Commedia " and the " Paradise Lost." In the
former, the woes of lost men, however wicked or contemptible,
honored with immortal song, would move the stones to pity. In
the latter, fallen angels are " angels still ; " and the high rank
and eternal power assigned to the Adversary justify the remark
of one who says : " I have many times thought that it was owing
to the lofty and grandiose descriptions given in the Paradise
Lost, that men, since the time when that poem came to be popu-
lar, have invested Satan with a kind of attributes never before
assigned to him ; and, as was natural to the increasing spirit-
uality of religion, have more and more divested him of the
notion of locality and form, till the Evil One of this age is
become, in effect and conceit of men, the Evil Principle of the
Magians." ^

Abp. King, in his work on the Origin of Evil, finds what we
may call a Dualism in the divine nature. He concludes thus :
"From a competition, or, if \ve may allow the expression, a
conflict of tvv^o infinities, i. e. Omnipotence and Goodness, evils
necessarily arise. These attributes amicably conspire together,
and yet restrain and limit each other. There is a kind of strug-
gle and opposition between them, whereof the evils in nature
bear the shadow and resemblance. Here, then, and nowhere
else, may we find the primary and most certain rule and origin

1 De Divis. Natur. 1. 5, cc. 35, 36, 38. 2 Hampden, Schol. Phil. § 16.

3 Milller, Chr. Doc. of Sin, I. 389. 4 Vulgar Errors; Small Books on Great
Subjects, No. VIII. See a recent argmnent to show that Satan is uncreated,
by J. H. Noyes, The Berean.^ 14.

DUALISM. ITS HISTORY. 41

of evils, and liere only must we look for that celebrated prin-
cii^le of the ancients, —

Nei/cof ovAofievov Kal fijjptg alfiaroeaoa.^
The Pestilential Strife and Bloody Fight."

The eternity of evil follows logically from this statement of
the case, though it contains an element of truth which we hope
to bring out in its place. Kindred to this is the very prevalent
view, that the various attributes of God could not be known
except by occasion of evil ; especially that His justice and His
mercy would be veiled glories, if they were not displayed in the
punishment or the pardon of guilty creatures. The key-note
of this necessitous optimism was struck in the saying of one of
the Fathers respecting the glory revealed in Christ : " Happy
the sin which brought us such a Redeemer."

Another form of the doctrine of God's necessities, touching
the execution of His justice, is sometimes stated in so palpable
a dualism, that the Manich^ean notion would be almost a relief
from it. Thus we have been told that " God was reduced to
the unavoidable dilemma," of either contending with men for
ever by threatenings and punishments here on the earth, or
else destroying them utterly, so far as it respects this world,
and removing the scene of their torments to a future state.^

Deferring for a moment a few modern dualistic passages, we
should here consider the Manichasan relief from these difficul-
ties that was offered by Bayle, at the beginning of the last
century. His hypothesis was not only suited to his peculiar
genius, his very acuteness causing him to waver between oppos-
ing plausibilities, but it was adapted to the age in which he
lived. The startling paradox was needed to expose the shal-
lowness of many a dogmatic solution of the deepest and most
fearful problem. He was indeed a sceptic, but in the ancient

1 Empedocles.

2J. Maud, The Tremendous Sanction, 1. 1, § 6; compare 1.3, § 6. This
work was the "most considerable publication" which appeared in reply to
Hartley's " Observations on Man."
4-*

4-2 EVIL AND GOD.

and honorable sense of the term. Denying the fact of moral
evil, he was properly a fatalist. But his general integrity is
well attested.'^

He regarded as "inexplicable and incom^^rehensible " the
origin of any evil, more or less. But he inveighs most ear-
nestly, not to say ably, against the derivation of eternal evil
from any form of monotheism, pf the Calvinist, exalting the
divine power, he demands why a Being, freely creating the
materials of a universe for Plis own glory, must allow so much
evil. Of the Arminian, extolling the divine goodness, he asks
why created free agents must be ever miserable in spite of that
goodness. Of the Origenist, who subjected the freely acting
creature, and through him the Creator, to an eternal vicissitude
of evil, he asks if an alone supreme God must permit even this.
" See, then," he says, " how reason is com23elled to acknowledge
that two opposite causes, the one benign, the other malign, have
determined the condition of created beings." "This is the way,
the Manichosan would conclude, that we exculpate the Good
Principle ; He has been crossed by the Evil Principle. Who-
ever has a companion, has a master." ^

Confessing the intrinsic absurdity of Manichceism, and yet
affirming that it was, as a hypothesis, preferable to any existing
theology, Bayle found opponents on every side. Of the replies
which were made to his argument, seven are here worthy of
notice. Le Clerc, like Archelaus in debate with Manes, dis-
tinctly abandoned the defence of the eternity of evil, and for
argument's sake assumed that all men might finally be saved ;

1 "Pierre Bayle appears," says Tennemaiin, "not to have been so intimately
convinced as Glanville, of the possibility of a true philosophy, although he
contributed more to open a way to the discovery of it, by his ingenious attacks
on the Dogmatic Systems, and by showing that Scepticism can not be the
ultimate end of Eeason. This great scholar and honorable man possessed not
so much a profound spirit of philosophic research, as a quick sagacity and

critical judgment Ke was a firm and sincere friend of Truth, and

succeeded in combating the prejudices, the errors, the follies, and especially the
superstitions of intolerance, with the arms of reasoning, of erudition, and of a
lively wit." Hist, of Phil. \ 352. Compare Hase, Church Hist. \\ 307, 411.

2 K^ponse aux Questions d'un Provincial, Part I. c 77.

DUALISM. ITS HISTORY. 43

adding in a way not designedly cool : " If such an one can silence
the Manichasan, what could not they do who should reason
infinitely better than the disciples of Origen ? " ^ But why,
Bayle retorts, is the Origenist chosen for this argument ? How
is the orthodox opinion served by opposing one false scheme to
another ? Why not bring forward one of those who could rea-
son infinitely better ? ^

The most famous reply was that of Leibnitz, which has ren-
dered classic the name he gave it — "Theodicy." After the
manner of Lactantius, he makes evil a condition of the highest
good. " There are some disorders in the parts (of the universe)
which marvelously heighten the beauty of the whole ; as certain
discords, skilfully employed, render the harmony more exqui-
site." ^ Yet he will not say that evil is either a divine object or
a divine method. " Evil has come par concomitance. This is
illustrated in our system; for we have shown that_^the evil which
God has permitted was not an object of His will as end or as
means, but only as condition, since it must be enveloped in the
best system." ^ And of an infinite number of possible systems
conceived by the divine mind, Leibnitz regards the world as it is,
of which evil is an essential part, to be the best. This view is
the optimism with which it is so difficult, if not impossible, to
reconcile the notion of guilt.

Leibnitz's system was perhaps too ingenious. His earnestness
has been doubted by able critics. These doubts, which were en-
entertained by Des Maizeaux, Le Clerc, and Poiret, are supported
by a letter of the chancellor PfafF, a friend of Leibnitz, of whom
he had inquired what he thought of his book. Pfaff suggested
that as Le Clerc had endeavored simply to silence the Manicha3an
by an assumed argument, so Leibnitz had attempted a plausible
reply which should offend no party. Leibnitz answered : " You
have hit the nail on the head. And I wonder that no one here-
tofore has discovered my art. For it is not the part of philoso-
phers to be ever in earnest ; for as you well suggest, they try

1 Parrhasiana, I. 303.

2 Rc'ponse aux Questions d'un Provincial, Part II. c. 172.

3 Abrt'o-e de la Controvcrsic, c. 5. 4 Tli(;odlcdc, Part III. k 336.

44 EVIL AND GOD.

their skill in making hypotheses. You, who are a theologian,
will act the theologian in refuting errors." And the chancellor
expresses his doubts whether Leibnitz did much respect the or-
thodox theology.-^ Werdermann, discussing the question of
Leibnitz's seriousness, claims for him the absence of dogmatism,
and the benefit of the mental reservations : " with all respect to
what is better," and " if any one understands more correctly." ^

The real opinion of Leibnitz respecting future punishment is
not easily determined. The following passage indicates a doc-
trine of purgatory : " The time of purgation," he says, " is as
long as the soul needs, to understand properly the evil of its
original sin ; wherefore that pain consists in the vision of sin,
evil, and the Devil, as the joy of heaven consists in the vision of
God and of good." He held a theory of infinite guilt, of which
hereafter. He held that the heathen who die not in mortal sin
are sent neither to heaven nor hell, but by the grace of Christ
are changed from enemies to friends of God. " It is not Pela-
gian to say that they escape hell by their own powers, but only
to say that they gain heaven thus." ^ The remarkable essay of
Lessing entitled : " Leibnitz on eternal punishments," * gives a
view of the subject not unlike that of Swedenborg, which was
perhaps Leibnitz's own.

Second in fame of the replies to Bayle is that of William
King, Archbishop of Dublin. His views of eternal misery ap-
pear in the following passage : " The matter is yet in debate
whether it were better to be miserable than not to be at all, and

1 Acta Emditorum, 1728, pp. 126, 127.

2 Theodicee, Theil III. § 39. We should state that Mv. Eymery, in his edition
of Leibnitz's Systema Tlieologicum, Pai-is 1819, gives a letter of the author to
Thomas Burnet explaining the occasion of his Theodicee, with the remark:
"As I have meditated on this subject from my youth, I believe that I have dis-
cussed it thoroughly; " and also a passage from a letter to Toland, which says:
" I examine all the diiFiculties of M. Bayle, and try to resolve them at the same
time that I do justice to his merit." The reader must judge if the letters decide
any thing.

3 Leibnitiana, Ixxix, Ixxxviii ; 0pp. VI. 310, 311.

4 Occasioned by the discovery of his preface to Soner's " Demonstratio theol.
et philos., quod geterna impiorum supplicia nou arguunt Dei justitiam, sed
injustitiam."

DUALISM. — ITS HISTORY. 45

tliere are arguments on both sides. It is manifest that .
those evils which overbalance the desire and happiness of life put
an end to life itself, and that such objects as are hurtful to the
sense at length destroy it. The same seems to hold good in
thinking substances, viz : these things which affect the mind to a
higher degree than it is able to bear, may in like manner put an
end to it. For they may be supposed either to drive us to mad-
ness, or so far disorder the thinking faculty as to make us think
of nothing at all." He goes on to speak of the lost as, perhaps,
in a kind of plii'ensy, being in fact miserable, yet refusing to give
up the cause of their woe, '• being still wise in their own opinion,
and as it were pleasing themselves in their misery." ^

The most elaborate reply was that of Crousaz. ' He was a
statesman as well as a philosopher, and his work shows, along
with high moral feeling, more of good sense than most replies,
if we except his approval of Le Clerc's method. He insists
much upon the utter unreasonableness and wickedness of the
sinner, in preferring evil to infinite good. He says nothing of
any use or advantage to accrue to the saints, from the woes of
the lost. " God makes no account of them or of their evils."
And their sufferings are not inflicted, but they consist mainly of
self-reproach in view of their eternal loss. But he reduces the
number of the lost far below the common estimate ; censuring
as pitiless those doctors who reckon among them " an infinity
of persons who would be such more by their misfortune than
their fault ;" and, replying to Bayle's argument that Satan had a
great victory in the deluge, he deems that the temporal evils
and destructions of the antediluvians, and of the Hebrews who
perished in the wilderness, are their punishment. They are not
of Satan's host. ^

In the Boyle Lecture, allusion is made to Bayle by Dr. John
Clarke. He leaves the way clear for those v/ho think tlierc is no
immortality in the second death. ^

1 Origin of Evil, Appendix, § 2.

2 Examen du Pyniionisme, 1733. pp. 553, 554, 558, 572, 57-1.

3 '-To this place (Tophet) is that hell which is prepared for those degenerate
sinners, who arc beyond all means of conviction and reformation, compared.-

46 EVIL AND GOD.

Returning to Bayle's own time, we find Jacqnelot, who had
been a Calvinist, pressed with the special difRciiUies of the fore-
ordination of eternal evil, suspected of favoring Arminianism.
He confesses that the thought of eternal punishments appals the
imagination ; and that one is not only embarrassed, but frightened
by it. He supposes the lost will be the cause of their own tor-
ment, subsisting eternally deprived of the glory of the blessed.^

And of all who replied to Bayle, so far as we know, Jurieu,
" the Goliath of the Protestants," alone stood firm ; and he stood
up more than straight. His absolutist views are most boldly
stated in his " Judgment of the rigid and the lax methods of
explaining Providence and Grace." He says : " The idea of
sovereign perfection excludes what are called velleities, — imper-
fect volitions, which are expressed by an : 'I would.' . . .
I should put creatures in a sovereign dependence on God. But,
it is said, you thus put the creature in a state of great imperfec-
tion. I confess it. But the idea of the infinitely perfect Being
obliges me to make a sacrifice of all creatures." As shadow
depends upon substance, so the creature upon God. " It is He
who made Absalom lay with his fother's concubines. . . .
He commanded Shimei to curse David." "Man is only an
instrument in His hands." " God is the only being properly so
called. . . . God has over His creatures a power without
bounds, and unlimited right, to make of them whatever seems to
Him good. ... If God had not permitted sin. He would
have manifested neither the infinite hatred which He has for sin,
nor His justice, nor His mercy. There w^ould have been in the
world neither laws, nor penalties, nor rewards, nor Paradise,
nor Hell. And it is certain that these things enter into the idea
of a perfect world, which should contribute most to the glory of

Which, as it agrees in other circumstances, so does it likewise in this, that
it will be eternal. Which word we find used in Scripture in various senses,
but especially in these two ; either to signify the whole duration of the ex-
istence of any being or thing, in any particular state ; or else to signify the
whole state itself, in which that person or thing exists. Each of which may
be applied to that punishment which is threatened to the wicked in a future
state." — Cause and Origin of Moral Evil, Boyle Lecture Sermons, III. 274
1 Conformity de la Raison avec la Foi, pp. 205, 215, 220.

DUALIS3I. ITS HISTORY. 47

its Author." By an argument which would make God the
creator of nothing, Jurieu exculpates Him from the guilt of sin.
'* Since God has an infinite hatred for sin, and sin is not properly
a being, but a nothing and a privation of being, God can not be
the author of it, nor commit it." (§§ 3, 4, 13, 15).

Such were the methods of argument against Bayle. The
doctrine of the final destruction of the wicked, which Clarke
allowed with a perhaps, and which then bore the name of So-
cinianism, Bayle treats with his usual objections. Yet he says :
"Annihilation is of all kinds of punishment that which seems
most in accordance with the ideas of the wisdom of God. They
give reasons for it which M. Jacquelot leaves without reply." ^

The remark of Buddeus, a learned and able writer, conclud-
ing an account of the controversy, is significant. He says : "No
one can deny that the very great difficulties which press the
doctrine of the origin of evil and its reconciliation with the jus-
tice and goodness of God, could be more easily overcome if an
end of hell-punishments is supposed, and not their eternity." ^
To which we may here add the later expression of Miiller : " A
purely theoretic solution of the problem of the world were possi-
ble, if the evil were not ; — the evil, which does not resolve itself
as a passing moment in the process of the development of the
world, but is capable of being maintained, by the will of the per-
sonal creature persistently hardening itself, through endless
ages." ^

We are well aM^are that the history and inherent difficulties
of a bald Manichia?ism make it apparently unworthy of notice at
this day. We are told that " the world is not likely to see a
revival of it." ^ But history has given at least a very large suf-
frage in its favor ; and its difficulties as a theodicy, in which
most important view it is the strongest, may yet be j^referred
when the difficulties of other systems are more deeply felt.

1 Entrctiens de Maxime et de Themiste, Part II. c. 3-1 ; comp. Hist, and Crit.
Diet., Origen, R.

2 Inst. Theol. Dogm. 1. 2, c. 3, § 17; comp. 1. 3, c. 2, § 35.

3 Chr. Doc, of Sin, II. 489, Conclusion.

4 Thompson, Chi-istian Theism, p. 298.

48 EVIL AND GOD.

These difficulties are even now pressing multitudes of the most
thoughtful divines to Origenism. This well known tendency of
Tholuck arises, we are told, " from peculiar objections which he
has, in common with his evangelical countrymen, against a per-
petual division, dissension (Zwiespalt) in the moral universe."^
And Olshausen, speaking of the unprecedented extent of Uni-
V ersalism, says : " Although this may often be owing to a sickly
and torpid state of the moral feelings, yet it is without doubt
deeply rooted in noble minds ; it is the longing of the soul after
complete harmony in the universe." ^

The reaction now is from an apparent Dualism to the error
just named. But when this way of escape is cut off by appeal
to the Scriptures, we know not how easily the tide may set the
other way, and the philosophic become a personal Dualism, in
the exaltation of the power of Satan or some other evil agency.
We are advised by a most profound writer, in allusion to the
speculations of a past age, that " the theological and philosophical
character of the present time can only furnish us with a poor
guarantee that perhaps the inclination to a dualistic consideration
of the world will not extend itself in a similar manner as a few
decennaries ago." ^ The more subtle and bold speculation, which
inquires into the mode of divine existence, along with not a little
Pantheism, has even now carried the philosophic Dualism to its
utmost limit, and the world must subsist by contrasts.^ As if the
Fall had made men subtle and ingenious, they are too fond of
weaving evil and good as warp and woof for the intricate texture
of the universe. Religious and devout men allow expressions
that can mean scarcely less. Thus a late writer, opposing the
doctrine of the extinction of the wicked, says: "An 'eternal
redemption' we regard as involving an equally eternal enslave-
ment. Heaven is only heaven while there exists a hell ! " ^ In

1 German Selections, by Edwards and Tark, p. 215. For the actual opinion
of Tholuck, sec "Earnest Appeal to the Am. Tract Soc," pp. 48-50.

2 Comm. on Matt. xii. 31, 32.

- Miiller, Chr. Doc. of Sin, I. 441.

4 See Miiller's remarks on Blasche, and also on Schleiermacher, Schelliug,
Hegel, and Daub.

5 R. W. Hamilton, Rewards and Punisliments, p. 503.

DUALISM. — ITS HISTORY. 49

a most able recent critique upon the same doctrine, the Lactan-
tian argument of the economy and eternity of evil largely enters.^
The Lactantian result —

"Evil and good are God's right hand and left,"

graces the introduction of a very popular epic, which, however,
confers on all the instruments of evil the final blessedness which
they subserve.^ The French philosopher whose " Modern Sys-
tems of Theodicy" has received the prize of the Academy of
Moral and Political Sciences, appears to optimize in the style of
Leibnitz, making evil " not absolute, since it contributes to the
order of the universe." ^ In one form of reaction from such an
economy of evil, sin appears as having gained a victory over God,
existing with no manner of permission from Him.^ In some
parts of our own country a doctrine of " Two Seeds," not unlike
the Persian notion of " two souls," related by Xenophon, and
very similar to the Manichaean derivation of the human race,
— is even now extensively prevalent, s And a very popular,
because very eloquent, style of theology, aggrandizes the power
of evil thus : —

*'The power of an endless death! Amazing and infinitely
dreadful expression ! Yet thus hath eternal life its infinite
and opposite extreme. . . . Death ! Its shadow covers
the world, darkens it, and fills all hearts with gloomy fears
and forebodings. All their lifetime, through fear of death,
men are subject unto bondage. Its shadow is here, but its
substance and its power are the power of an endless life,
life in death, and death in life, conflicting for ever.
There is a tremendous emphasis in the declaration that sin,
when it is finished, bringcth forth death. When sin is finished,
the whole being is alive with it, in a living, positive, active
death, perfect, unmingled, unalleviated. It is absolute evil,
unbalanced, unmodified, unmitigated. Perfection in sin is the

IT. M. Post, New Englander, Feb., 1856, pp. 122-131.

2 Bailey's Festus.

3 Saisset, Theodicde, Manuel de Philosophie, p. 494. His Prize Essay is not
yet published. ^ See below, c. 4, § 3. 5 See J. II. Noyes, The Berean.

50 EVIL AND GOD.

negation of all good, and the active despotism of all evil. Neither
of these can be without the other. ... As the happiness of
heaven consists in the knowledge of good, so the misery of hell
consists in the knowledge of evil. In bolli directions the measure
is infinite. Approximation towards God, in his knowledge,
likeness and love, is the rule in heaven ; distance from Him,
and enmity against Him, is the rule in hell. And there is no
half-way, but a perfection in both extremes. . . . There
are tremendous images. The shock of furious armies, the crash
of falling avalanches, mountains overw^ielming cities, volcanoes
in action, herds of Vv'ild beasts confined and roaring in the dun-
geons of the Coliseum, making the whole structure quake with
their bellowing?, then all at once let loose, and with a fierce
conflict of hunger and rage grappling with one another; the
elements in wild affright and uproar; earthquakes, conflagra-
tions, floods, pestilences, wars; — all these are dire images of
terror, ruin, desolation, destruction. But all these, and even the
stars dropping from heaven, as when a fig-tree casteth her un-
timely figs, and the whole universe beaten together in chaos, or
shriveling as a parched scroll, — all these come short of any
representation of an eternal death ; they all fail, they are mere
transitory syllables. The moral death is unapproachable by
any such representation." ^

What more than this could the Adversary do or desire, if he
were a God?

§ 9. THE EEACTION. — AGONY OP FAITH.

The acquired sense of the term " Manichaean," as denoting an
inherent corruption of matter and the propriety of an ascetic
life, is significant of the moral result of Duahsm. It carries the
conflict of the universe into the bosom of every man who would
be saved, and makes the struggle between the flesh and the
spirit an internecine warfare, in which the body is no longer
regarded as a wayward servant, to be first subdued and then
cherished, until it shall give place to a better ; but as a natural

1 G. B. Cheever, Powers of the World to Come, pp. 258, sq.

DUALISM. THE REACTION. 51

enemy, under whose tyranny we are born, and from whom we
must escape as best we may. The history of this form of Dual-
ism would be not only the external history of asceticism, but
the account of a thousand questionings, misgiving, and doubts,
respecting the empire of God and the reason of this terrible
necessity imposed upon the children of His kingdom.

We have noted a probable connection between the ascetic life,
and the notion of a penal immortality, in the case of Tatian.
And in our first chapter we have observed some trying results
of the notion of an absolute immortality. We may now note a
few instances of burdened and agonized faith, among those who
accept the doctrine of eternal evil, regarding it as no part of
God's plan, and from whose theology we have deduced the prin-
ciple of Dualism.

Our first example contains, if we mistake not, the very princi-
ple of asceticism ; the sentiment, at least, would be so applied,
in the monastery. " If," says Moses Stuart, "parents, husbands,
wives, brothers, sisters, must see those dear as their own life
perish at last, while they themselves are saved, heaven in mercy
will either extinguish their social susceptibilities, or else give
them such a sweet and overpowering sense of the justice and
goodness of God, as shall not permit the joys of the blessed to
be marred, nor the songs of the redeemed to be interrupted with
sighs of sympathetic sorrow. Hoio this will or can be done, we
may never know in the present world ; nay, we may have many
a distressing hour, while inquiring how it can be done, unless
our very nature itself is wholly changed." ^

Another example is found in a late discussion of the Arminian
scheme. To the objection that God " is liable to be defeated in
all His designs, and to be as miserable as He is benevolent,"
and that " this is infinitely the gloomiest idea that was ever
thrown upon the world ; it is gloomier than hell itself ;"^ it is
replied: "True, there might be a gloomier spectacle in the
universe than hell itself; and for this very reason it is, as we

1 Bib. Repository, July, 1840, pp. 34, 35.

2 Old and New Theology, p. 38.

62 EVIL AND GOD.

have seen, that God has ordained hell itself, that such gloomier
spectacle may never appear in the universe to darken its tran-
scendent and eternal glories. It is on this principle that we
reconcile the goodness of God with the awful spectacle of a
world lying in ruins, and with the still more awful spectacle of
an eternal hell beyond the grave." Again: "We need not
frighten ourselves with ' gloomy ideas.' There are gloomy facts
enough in the universe to call forth all our fears. Indeed, if
we should permit our minds to be directed, not by the reality of
things, but by the relative gloominess of ideas, we .should alto-
gether deny the eternity of future torments, and rejoice in the
contemplation of the bright prospects of the universal holiness
and happiness of created beings." ^

The experience of John Foster has been very aptly employed
in the arguments of the " Conflict of Ages." We shall cite his
language with some reluctance, on account of a prevalent notion
that he was of a gloomy temper. If this were true, it should be
considered that he might well be gloomy, whether himself per-
suaded, or surrounded by fellow creatures who were persuaded,
that sin and woe must be eternal. But Foster, though pensive
as men of genius are wont to be, was not gloomy ; he was, in
society and in his familiar letters, cheerful; and the growing
appreciation of this fact will, we think, give full value to his
sentiments on the problem of Evil.

Writing to Dr. Harris on receipt of a copy of his " Great
Commission," he says : " I hope, indeed may assume, that you
are a man of cheerful temperament ; but are you not sometimes
invaded by the darkest visions and reflections while casting your
view over the scene of human existence, from the beginning to
this hour? To me it appears a most mysterious and awful
economy, overspread by a lurid and dreadful shade. I pray
for the piety to maintain a humble submission of thought and
feelingto the wise and righteous Disposer of all existence. . . .
And it would be a transcendently direful [contemplation] if I
believed the doctrine of the eternity of future misery. It amazes

1 Bledsoe, Theodicy, pp. 216, 217.

DUALISM. THE REACTION. 53

me to imagine liow thoughtful and benevolent men, believing
that doctrine, can endure the sight of the present world and the
history of the past. . . I am, without pretending to any extra-
ordinary depth of feeling, amazed to conceive what they do
with their sensibility, and in what manner they maintain a firm
assurance of the Divine goodness and justice." And in another
letter, he says : " Under the light (or the darkness) of this doc-
trine, how inconceivably mysterious and awful is the whole econ-
omy of this human world ! The immensely greater number of
the race hitherto, through all ages and regions, passing a short
life under no illuminating, transforming influence of their Crea-
tor ; ninety-nine in a hundred of them, perhaps, having never
even received any authenticated message from Heaven ; passing
off the world in a state unfit for a spiritual, heavenly and happy
kingdom elsewhere; and all destined to everlasting misery.
The thoughtful spirit has a question silently suggested to it of
a far more emphatic import thaa that of him who exclaimed,
^ Hast thou made all men in vain ? ' " ^

The experience of the author of the " Conflict of Ages " is
most fully stated under the view of God as sovereign, but ma-
levolent, and more aptly illustrates another part of our argu-
ment. But the following expressions may be cited here. He
says : " For a time the system of this world rose before my
mind, in the same manner, as far I can judge, as it did before
the minds of Channing and Foster. I can, therefore, more
fully appreciate their expression of their trials a^d emotions.
But I was entirely unable to find relief as they did. The de-
pravity of man, neither Christian experience, the Bible, nor
histor}'-, would permit me to deny. Nor did reason or Scripture
afford me any satisfactory grounds whatever for anticipating the

1 Life and Corresp., Let. 226, Sept. 1841. In this letter, Foster speaks of the
scriptural argument in support of the common vie^v as " formidably strong,"
but confesses slight acquaintance with the "literal intei-pretation of the threat-
ened destruction" of the wicked. The person whose difficulties were the
occcasion of the letter (Rev. Edward White) has subsequently published an
able defence of this view, in his " Life in Christ."
5*

54 EVIL AND GOD.

restoration of the lost to holiness in a future state. Hence, for
a time, all was dark as night." ^

One other instance of anguished faith will be specially appo-
site, as the subject of it is known not to cherish any of the
doubts, or to accept any of the theories, of the persons hereto-
fore named. He does not tell us what would he his feelings if
ke believed thus, nor of any escape from past conflict. Of
marked strength and symmetry of character as a man and as a
Christian divine, he stands as erect as the most implicit faith
will sustain him, under the fairest pressure of the burden.
And he says :

" That the immortal mind should be allowed to jeopard its
infinite welfare, and that trifles should be allowed to draw it
away from God, and virtue, and heaven; that any should
suffer for ever, — lingering on in hopeless despair, and rolling
amidst infinite torments without the possibility of alleviation,
and without end ; that since God can save men, and ivill save a
part, he has not purposed to save all ; that, on the supposition
that the atonement is ample, and that the blood of Christ can
cleanse from all and every sin, it is not in fact applied to all ;
that, in a word, a God who claims to be worthy of the confidence
of the universe, and to be a being of infinite benevolence, should
make such a world as this, full of sinners and sufferers ; and
that when an atonement had been made. He did not save all
the race, and put an end to sin and woe for ever ; —

"These, and kindred difliculties, meet the mind when we
think on this'great subject ; and they meet us when we endeavor
to urge our fellow sinners to be reconciled to God, and to put
confidence in Him. On this ground they hesitate. These are
real, not imaginary difficulties. They are probably felt by every
mind that has ever reflected on the subject ; and they are unex-
plained, unmitigated, unremoved. I confess, for one, that I feel
them, and feel them more sensibly and powerfully the more I
look at them, and the longer I live. I do not understand these
facts ; and I make no advances towards understandmg them. I

1 p. 189.

DUALISM. THE REACTION. 55

do not know that I have a ray of light on this subject, which I
had not when the subject first flashed across my souL I have
read, to some extent, what wise and good men have written. I
have looked at their theories and explanations. I have endeav-
ored to weigh their arguments ; for my whole soul pants for
light and relief on these questions. But I get neither ; and in
the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I see
no light whatever. I see not one ray to disclose to me the rea-
son why sin came into the world ; why the earth is strewed with
the dying and the dead ; and why man must suffer to all eter-
nity.

" I have never seen a j^article of light thrown on these sub-
jects, that has given a moment's ease to my tortured mind ; nor
have I an explanation to offer, or a thought to suggest, that
would be of relief to you. I trust other men — as they profess
to do — understand this better than I do, and that they have
not the anguish of spirit which I have ; but I confess, when I
look on a world of sinners and of sufferers ; upon death-beds
and grave-yards ; upon the world of woe, filled with hosts to
suffer for ever ; when I see my friends, my parents, my family,
my people, my fellow citizens ; when I look upon a whole race,
all involved in this sin and danger, and when I see the great
mass of them wholly unconcerned, and when 1 feel that God
only can save them, and yet He does not do it, — I am struck
dumb. It is all dark, dark, dark to my soul, and I* can not dis-
guise it." ^

It is a subhme spectacle — that of such a man, and many
such men, thus burdened, and yet confident in God that the
light of another world will dispel the gloom, if it does not trans-
mute the burden into a joy. The infinity may dwindle into
insignificance, in that ever brightening day. "The Deity is
infinitely greater than all duration, as He is infinitely greater
than time." Why not trustfully submit infinite problems, for
His solution? We admire the faith that conceives of Ilim as
so surpassingly infinite and glorious, that eternal Evil become?

1 Albert Barnes, Practical Sermons, pp. 123-125.

56 EVIL AND GOD.

a mote, like the spots upon the sun, invisible in His superlative
brightness.

We cannot, however, admire the faith, if it seeks the infinite
problem, like the knight-errant in quest of adventures ; for it
then becomes romantic. Much less, if it would impose the doc-
trine of eternal Evil, as a term of Christian faith, upon other
minds ; it then becomes arrogant and despotic. And we tremble,
as we gaze upon the lofty flight even of the sincere and earnest
faith. The strong wing falters. The fervor is succeeded by
the chill ; the ecstasy subsides into pain. The faith is not joy-
ous ; many will ask if it is normal and healthy. Many more
will ask if the burden must be borne ; if the Evil is indeed to
be eternal ; and if so, is it real ? ^

We may here cite the words of a deservedly popular writer,
as justifying the doubts of one person already named, and sug-
gesting a fact less known respecting another person. " If John
Foster, or any man, deliberately and honestly conceive it irrec-
oncilable with infinite love that God should condemn the
wicked to everlasting punishment, we see not how he can
accept the fact without blasphemy. If a man's reason, gazing
earnestly and reverently with lively consciousness of its own
faint and glimmering vision, and full thought of the compass
and weight of infinite love guiding infinite power, is yet unable,
we say not to justify, but to believe in the possible justice of
eternal torments, we see not how he can accept the doctrine. It
is not lawful for any man, taking the sentence, ' God is love,' to
use it as a fiery rod, though it were of celestial gold, where v/itli
to sear the eyeballs of his reason. One man, considering long,

1 '' The real, though often unavowed, ground of the doubts which are thus
overclouding the spirits of so many of the nominal disciples of Christ, is the
hopeless dejection with which they contemplate that part of the Christian
scheme which is supposed to consign the vast majority of our race to a future
state, in which woe, indescribable in amount, is also eternal in duration. From
this doctrine the hearts of most men turn aside, not only with an instinctive
horror, but with an invincible incredulity; and of those who believe that it
really proceeded from the lips of Christ himself, many are sorely tempted by it
either to doubt the divine authority of His words, or to destroj^ their meaning
by conjectural evasions of their force." — Sir James Stephen, Essays in Eccl.
Biog., II. 495, Epilogue.

ABSOLUTISM. 57

and searching Scripture, can, with no outrage on his moral
being, embrace in one view the courts of eternal joy and the
prison of eternal darkness, and believe unconstrainedly that
the King who sits over both is love ; such an one, we believe,
was Jonathan Edwards. But another man can not do so ; and
if he is as honest and reverent as the last, who is there on earth
that can accuse him ? " ^

Jonathan Edwards doubtless " believed unconstrainedly " as
a divine ; as almost any one may do in the way of speculation,
saying that the Judge of all the earth will certainly do right,
even if some of His creatures should suffer for ever. But as a
man, Edwards suffered intensely, under the burden of his faith ;
often walking his room for hours together with tears of grief,
in view of the supposed destiny that awaited his fellow men yet
out of Chi'ist.^

§ 10. ABSOLUTISil.

In this theology, evil is regarded as a ^^vi of the divine
plan. Sin is opposed to God's command ; but, as a means to
an end, it accords with God's desire. Behind His revealed will,
there is a secret will designing and procuring the commission of
that which He forbids, but which is supposed needful for the
welfare of His creatures, or for display of His glory. His
sovereignty is not only exalted above all ; it is extended to all
things — even to the acts of men that seem to oppose it.

In support of this view, justly styled "that horrible theory
which asserts the double will of God," various passages of
Scripture which assert God's permission and control of evil,
are adduced as though they taught his complicity with it.
*' Shall there be evil in the city, and Jehovah hath not done it ? "

1 Bayne, Christian Life, p. 336.

2 We have, this statement from a reliable source, though Ave have noL a refer-
ence to the original authority for it. It is supported by the following resolution
in Edwards' journal, June 11, 1725: " To set apart days of meditation on par-
ticular subjects; as, a day for the consideration of the greatness of my sins;
another to consider the dreadfulness and certainty of the future misery of
urged ly men," etc. Miller's Life, Sparks' Am. Biog. VIII. 47.

58 EVIL AND GOD.

"I form the light, and create darkness ; I make peace, and create
evil ; I, Jehovah, do all these things." " Jehovah hath made
all things for Himself; yea, even the wicked for the day of
evil." " The Scripture saith of Pharaoh, Even for this same
purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shov/ ni}^ power in
thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the
earth. Therefore hath He mercy on whom He will have mercy,
and whom He will He hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto
me, 'Why doth He yet find fiult ? for who hath resisted His
will ? " " He worketh all things after the counsel of His own
will." Such expressions of a language not the most flexible,
designed to inspire confidence in Jehovah's power, and some of
them designed expressly to meet a dualistic or polytheistic ten-
dency, — are taken as accurate exponents of a theological sys-
tem. Sin is no longer the mystery, for it is God's work ; the diffi-
culty is shifted from its origin to the justice of its punishment.

For the external history of this doctrine, which makes Might
the fountain of Right, we naturally look to the old empires in
which a despotic will was law. A decree issued by the king
of Babylon was presumed to be just, because it was backed
with power. And for the same reason, perhaps, the laws of
the Medes and Persians were assumed to be infallible, and
made changeless. By some Greek philosophers the true idea
of right was timidly asserted ; but so little was it understood at
Kome, that her governor of a Judaean province, hearing from
the Saviour of men respecting his own righteous kingdom,
could ask in sheer ignorance of his meaning, "What is Truth?"

The notion of Power was thus deified. What man might do
in a subordinate sphere, God might do in the most absolute man-
ner. The perversion was complete, when secular and spiritual
power were combined in the head of a corrupt Church, who
might, in the name of God, oppose and exalt himself above all
that is called God, or that is worshipped. The corruption of
theology was an inevitable result. We need not trace this in
its early stages ; but in the time of Abelard we find it boldly
asserted : " God commits no injustice towards His creature, in
whatever way He treats him, whether he assigns him to

ABSOLUTISM. 59

punisiiment or to life. ... In whatever way God may
wish to treat His creature, He can be accused of no injustice ;
nor can any thing be called evil in any w^ay, if it is done accord-
ing to His will. 'Nov can we, in any other way, distinguish
good from evil, except by noticing what is agreeable to His will.
Wherefore even those things wiiich in themselves appear most
improper and therefore blameworthy, no one can censure when
they are done by command of the Lord." ^ The same doctrine
is more explicitly taught by Ockham : " There is no act evil but
as it is prohibited by God, and which can not be made good
if commanded by God. . . . If - God had commanded
His creatures to hate Himself, the hatred of God would ever be
the duty of man." - Of this deplorable theology we see traces
in the assertion of the great Reformer, that " it is the highest
degree of faith to believe that He is merciful who saves so few
and reprobates so many ; to believe Him just who of His own
will makes us necessarily damnable ; so that He should seem, as
Erasmus says, to delight in the torments of the lost, and more
worthy to be hated than to be loved." Which Luther endeavors
to justify by saying : " If j'ou are pleased when God crowns the
undeserving, you ought not to be displeased though He should
damn those who deserve it not."^ The Jansenists, opposing the
errors of the Jesuits, and affirming the irresistible grace of God,
were condemned partly on the charge of similar views of God's
power. And, without citing further examples here, it may be
safely said that a proneness to justify the divine acts simply in
the divine sovereignty, still remains as an extreme opinion in
the church of Christ.

That the Jesuits should oppose this view accords well with
their doctrine of the human free-will, but not so clearly with

1 Abelard, Comm. in Ep. ad Eom., 1. 2. 0pp. p. 595, Paris, 161G.

2 See Macliintosh, Progi'e?s of Etli. Phil. § 3, where Gerson is cited to the
same purpose. Compai'e Rutherford, cited by Leibnitz, Theodicee, §§ 176, 178;
Beza and Jurieu as cited by Bossuet, Variations, b. 2, c. 17 ; b. 14, cc. 1-4, and
by Sloehler, Symbolism, c. 3, § 16; — other like opinions, especially that of
Hobbes, cited by Cudworth, Immutable Morality, b. 1, c. 1; — Paley, Mor.
Phil.b. 2, 0.3.

3 Dc Servo Arbitrio, 0pp. II. fol. 434, sq., ed. Wittemb. 1562.

60 EVIL AND GOD.

their characteristic doctrine that the end sanctifies the means,
and may transmute evil into good. The paradox is perhaps ex
plained by the fact that the^Augustinians have ever exalted the
divine will and authority; the Jesuits, the human will and
authority. The former have often gone too far ; yet in reducing
all men to littleness before God, they have found a basis of
human equality and civil liberty. The latter have put man in
the place of God, in the papal prerogative. The dispute was in
fact respecting the higher and the lower law ; the rights of con-
science can be opposed only by the vox populi, vox .Dei, whicli
matures in the one-man power, and the common subversion of
morality and liberty.

The doctrine of the despot is the most frequent example of
Absolutism. The same view is prevalent among the defenders
of slavery. Thus it has been lately said : " I am ready to deny
the great doctrine of eternal right and wrong. My 'eternal
right ' is eternal conformity to what God says ; and my ' eternal
wrong ' is non-conformity. But I deny, absolutely, that there is
an eternal right and wrong in the nature of things. This doc-
trine is atheism."^

We have spoken of Absolutism as a relief sought from the
burden of Dualism. The reason is obvious ; it is hard to think
of God as pressed by necessity ; very hard indeed, if the neces-
sity is to be eternal. May He not make a virtue of it ? May
it not be His choice ? May not the Adversary be a desirable
servant of the Divine Majesty ? The philosophic form of Du-
alism, as stated by Lactantius, was scarcely less than this. And
even the Manichteans sometimes regarded the temptation and
the transgression of our first parents as legitimate steps of hu-
man progress, well pleasing to God.^ The same view, which
seems to make vice the school of virtue, and sin the lesson of
holiness, appears in conjunction with the denial of man's free
will, in various inquiries into the origin of evil.^ It is can-led

1 Dr. F. A. Eoss, Speech in Presb. Gen. Assembly, May, 1857.

2 Titus of Bostra, Contra Manich. 1. 3, cited by Eitter, Ohr Phil. Part I,
c. 2, § 3.

3 S. Jenyns, Origin of Evil; — Yillaume, Ursprung and Absichte des Uebels;

ABSOLUTISM. THE REACTION. 61

to a consistent result, we think, when the eternal suffering of the
lost is sought to be justified as contributing to the eternal happi-
ness of the saved.

§ 11. THE REACTION. PROSTITUTION AND PROSTRATION OF

FAITH.

The strong expression cited from Luther, may be taken as an
instance of the Prostitution of Faith ; but in his case formal and
not real, vindicating as he did the distinctions of right and wrong
against the indulgences and other corruptions of his age. The
sovereignty which he strove to affirm, was that of God's grace
and power against man's claim and arbitrament. The corrup-
tion of faith was more real in the views of those whom he op-
posed. But the corruption is repeated whenever power is adored
for no other reason than because it is power, — the very vice
which Zoroaster censured in the worshippers of Ahriman.
" Faith without reason," says Dr. Arnold, " is not properly faith,
but mere power worship ; and power worship may be devil wor-
ship ; for it is reason which entertains the idea of God, — an idea
essentially made up of truth and goodness, no less than of power." ^

To accept the doctrine of reprobation to eternal suffering, as
an awful mystery, is one thing. To think one has solved the
mystery and reconciled it with the divine goodness, is a very
different thing. Here is the danger to man's faith. When the
endless v.'oe of myriads is apprehended as good for the universe,
the moral sense may suffer in two ways : 1st, by a palsying of
the sensibilities, — a well-being largely diluted with evil, being
taken as the highest good ; 2d, by an ethical perversion, — evil
being taken as the proper means of the highest good. One may

— Lovett, Cause of Evil ;— T. S. Smith, Illustrations of the Div. Gov. This view
is carried to its last result by Blasche (Ueber das Uebel), who regards Evil as
in unison with the plan of the world, in such a way that it becomes the condition
of all reality, and the stepping stone of all that is good. Thus, says ^lUller,
" the fall from God is in truth more powerful than God himself, and the theory
threatens not so much to run out into Pantheism or Dualism, as much rather
into Pansatanism." Chr. Doc. of Sin, I, 400. Compare Hagenbach, Hist, of
Doc. §§ 293, 295. The view given by Dr. N. Strong ( Doctrine of Eternal Misery,
pp. 169-176) that the Fall was needful for man's instnaction, and that the lie
of Satan contained important truth, is only too similar to the above.
1 The Christian Life, Note H.
6

62 - EVIL AND GOD.

put evil for good, or he may do evil that good may come. In
either case our faith in God and our love to man will be corrupted.
" When," says "Watts, " I hear men talk of the doctrine of
reprobation with a special gust and relish, as a favorite article, I
can not but suspect their good temper, and question whether they
love their neighbors as themselves." ^ But by the quality of our
love to man will the nature of our theology and of our worship
be largely determined.

The Prostitution of Faith is incident either to the possession
of power, or to the enjoyment of its favors. And it is confined
to no species of power, secular or spiritual. The king, who " can
do no wrong," and the courtier v^ho can do no wrong in his be-
half, the oppressor and the extortioner, rejoicing in the fruit of
other's toil, the Jesuit of whatever name, " lying for God,"
and the persecutor, who " thinks he is doing God service," the
deluded man who deems himself "elect" and a favorite of
Heaven, while he is careless of other's salvation, — are all ex-
amples of this corrupted faith. And they are so numerous, and
so closely allied to some pretence of religion, that it has become
a proverb that no monstrous wrong was ever committed but it
was " for the glory of God."

The victim of abused power, on the other hand, can hardly
know what faith is. To him, there is no " open vision," no mani-
fest Providence. He knows no divine Goodness or Justice, if
the evils he endures are to be unredressed. He may conceive a
future retribution in which the tyrant and the slave shall change
places ; but the morbid, vengeful feeling would not be faith.
Tell him of an eternity, in which men of the most opposite con-
ditions in this life, may in various degrees suffer together, and
that will not give him faith. As for himself, he feels sure that
his present sufferings cannot be the beginning of endless pains.

1 Ruin and Recovery of Mankind, q. 13, § 6. Compare Dwiglit, Theology,
Serm. 167. Calvin himself, speaking of the Fall of Adam as involving so many
nations with their infant children in eternal death, alloAvs the expression : "A
horrible decree, I confess " (decretum quidem horrible, fateor. Instit. 1. 3, c.
23, §7; comp. Twisse below, p. 67). He can only say that "such was the
will of God," and thinks those who are "so loquacious on every other point
must here be struck dumb."

PANTHEISM. THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH. 63

Persuade him thus, and however good you may say that God is,
your theology will be to him a divine Despotism, and his faith is
prostrate.

We need hardly say that all prayer offered to God under a
mere persuasion of infinite danger, might with equal propriety,
often with the same feelings, be offered to a God of absolute
power, but of no recognized goodness or justice.

§ 12. PANTHEISM. THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.

Better no God, than an evil God. Hence every theology
which imposes evil as an eternal necessity, or introduces it ^s a
divine plan, tends to the denial of the moral quality of sin, and
of a personal Divine Being. Total darkness is preferred to the
baleful light. Better no sun, frowning with lurid glare, than
that the green earth, with myriads of people, should be scorched
with deathless heat. A law of Nature, — an impersonal and un-
thinking God inextricably enveloped in the folds of matter, and
only to be discovered as a no- God, would be the most grateful
religion to such a woe-worn world.

But men are not wont to rest in the doctrine of eternal evil,
until it is proven past all gainsaying ; and the belief of a personal
God is almost as natural as the disbehef of eternal Evil. Hence
the assertion of eternal suffering as a revealed doctrine, tends
not so directly to Atheism as to a rejection of the Bible for some
form of Deism. Of this the scepticism of the Earl of Shaftes-
bury, the friend and patron of Locke, is an example. " There
is a tradition," says Dr. Kippis, " that amongst other difficulties
which occurred to him in regard to the truth of the Christian
Revelation, he was startled at the idea of its containing the doc-
trine of the eternity of hell-torments ; that he consulted some
eminent churchmen whether the New Testament positively as-
serted that doctrine ; and that, upon being assured that it did, he
declared himself incapable of assenting to a system of religion
which maintained a tenet so repugnant to all his veiws of the
great Government of the Universe." ^

1 Biog. Britan., Lond. 1789. •

64 EVIL AND GOD.

It will not do here to say that sceptics are bad men, rejecting
the Scriptures not so much because they are supposed to reveal
an eternal punishment, as because they do teach a future retri-
bution. True it is that fallen man dislikes a God of justice.
But when Christians overlook the difference between finite and
infinite punishment, or rather, between infinite loss and endless
pain, they may, instead of removing a stumbling block, only give
new occasion of offence. Thinking men are loth to hear of a
God who can not punish at all but He must punish eternally.
And so long as the doctrine of endless suffering is commonly
regarded as essential to the Christian system, we must not wholly
ignore it. If the sceptic need not believe it, let us frankly tell
him so.-^

Deism, as a negative religion, is the most natural form of
scepticism. But it does not solve the problem of Evil. That
still remains, after the curtain has dropped between God and the
world. Moral evil is then hkely to be resolved into mere natu-
ral evil. For if the principles of moral duty are not only not
created, but are not administered, by a divine Ruler of the world,
they soon become a mere law of nature. The highest duty then
is " to live according to nature ;" a phrase that means much or
little, according as one has learned to cherish spiritual or mate-
rial interests. The delights of virtue, as inherently attractive
and self-rewarding, may be extolled for a time, even to the just
shame of those who regard duty as the creature of law, an

1 The Evangelical Alliance lias published its Prize Essay on the causes and
cure of Infidelity ; but the reader could not infer whether the doctrine in ques-
tion was ever beheved or doubted. The same is true of the work entitled
" Theism," one of the late Burnet Prize Essays. The author, however, has per-
haps intimated an opinion in the expressions : " The kingdom of divine order, we
are assured, shall yet prevail throughout the whole moral, as now throughout the
whole physical world" (p. 421); and, "He (Christ) alone has made all who
believe in Him to feel v/ith an unconquerable conviction that they shall never
die" (p. 415, where he cites John xi. 25,26). The author of the "Eclipse of
Faith" has in his " Defence" simply remarked that God is " not willing to punish
any, and when He does finally punish, {that at least is the declaration of the
Bible, however we may dispute about some texts,) punishing only according to
demerit in this life." (p. 59.)

PANTHEISM. — THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH. 65

appointed method of enjoyment, a means and not an end. But
if Virtue lias no divine Protector, and suffers many insults, she
may all too soon submit to the customs of a rude and fatherless
world ; vice and its punishment shall then mean only imprudence
and consequent suffering. Then all things are resolved into a
blind course of Nature, and " by the magic-lantern of Pantheism
all the colors of good and evil" are "mingled^ and both one and
the other softened down into a dull grey." ^

In many minds, this process will be arrested by retaining the
notion of God as Goodness and Providence, after he has been
dismissed as Ruler and Judge. The principle that all punish-
ment is reformatory, love in disguise, not at all retributive,
is pushed to a suicidal extreme. Justice never kills. The pains
of guilt are the .symptoms of returning health. All will be saved.
The All-Providence will bring every moral being to its proper
course, and its final welfare. Sin is not hazardous. Here the
old logic is reapplied. Sin is not sinful. Man is not free. Evil
is only natural, — a part of the system of things, — an imperfect
good, — a first lesson in the divine life, — a heritage which the
All-Father has bequeathed. With Him, it was either a neces-
sity or a plan, — fate or choice. Thus the popular theology of
universal salvation comes round to the old problems, to contrib-
ute in its turn to the forces of scepticism.

"We cannot better close this argument than with the words of
an eminent writer before cited, who offers " the consideration that
the generally received opinion regarding the endless duration of
the state of punishment, is among the most effective of all the
causes which are at present inducing amongst us that virtual
abandonment of Christianity, which assigns a mythic sense to
almost every part of the sacred oracles. Learnedly and wisely
as that fallacy has been combated by many, their yet more seri-
ous attention might, perhaps, be advantageously given to the
inquiry whether that opinion, which is to so large a number
an insuperable rock of offence, might not be either retracted or

1 Tholuck, Guido and Julius, p. 47.
6*

66 EVIL AND GOD.

qualified without any sacrifice of truth ; and whether, if so, they
would not contribute by such an acknowledgment, to reclaim the
deserters to the camp much more effectually than by any assault
on the positions in which they have openly entrenched them-
selves." ^

1 Stephen, Essays iii Eccl. Biog, II. 504, Epilogue.

CHAPTER III.

THE THEODICIES.i

"Let justice be clone, though the heavens Aill."
§ 1. THEODICY A DUTY. ABSOLUTISM.

While the doctrine of eternal suffering appears to give a
choice of three unsatisfactory theories of the divine nature, it
may. yet be asked if it is not a method or a necessity of the
divine justice. For if endless penal evil can be shown to be
just, however hard it may seem to God or man, the vindication
of the common theology is complete, and the difficulties we have
set forth must vanish in the light of a clearer day. However
greatly our faith may be burdened now, such a settlement of the
question must be final ; for the rigid application of a principle
of justice can never be so disastrous as that there should be no
justice in the world. ^^ Fiat justitia, ruat coelum.''

We not only admit the appeal, but we welcome it as a renun-
ciation of the absolutist theology we have just examined. But
as we prosecute the appeal to the higher court of Theodicy, we
should tarry for a moment to show that an absolutist theodicy is
self-contradictory and impossible, and that the distinctions of
right and v/rong can not be created by the pure arbitrament of
God.

Dr. Twisse, Prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly, says of
the punishments of the lost : " These judgments of God are tre-
mendous, 1 confess ; but they arc not to be brought before the
tribunal of human wisdom and justice, nor examined and dis-
cussed by the rules of our reason and equity. Especially as it

1 The woi-d Theodicy signifies a vindication of Divine Justice.

68 THE THEODICIES.

is lawful for God the Creator to treat a creature, however inno-
cent, in whatever manner He pleases, whether it seem good to
God to annihilate him, or to inflict upon him any torture what-
ever."^ And, making a distinction between justice ordained
and justice absolute, he says : " There is no such thing in God
as justice properly so called, in respect to his creatures ; that is,
by which He is bound to them. But that which is called the
justice of God in respect to creatures is only His fidelity, which
supposes a promise. ... I acknowledge no other justice in
God than that by which He wisely orders all things to effect his
own purposes." ^

This statement implies and almost expresses the higher argu-
• ment, that God has a right to do what He will because He is
the Creator of all. But this is to appeal to a principle of jus-
tice in the nature of things ; a principle older than any act of
creation, and without which God could have no eternal right to
reign. And what is called God's " ordained justice," and his
obligation to fidelity, presupposes an uncreated and undecreed
rule of justice, without which God could not be bound by his
promise, but might break his oath as freely as he made it. God
is bound to keep his covenant, not only because He makes it, but
because the principles of truthfulness and justice are eternal.
And we shall entertain the most exalted views of God, not by
supposing that He is above character, and too great to be just,
but by regarding Him as most truly representing and realizing
all that is great and just and good. It is his perfection to love
the right, not because it is his handiwork, but because it is indeed
right. " He doth not fondly love himself because He is himself,
but because He is the highest and most absolute goodness ; so
that if there could be anything in the world better than God,
he would love that better than himself. But because He is
essentially the most perfect good, therefore He can not but love
his own goodness infinitely above all other things." ^ To sup-

1 Vindicise, 1. 3, err. 6, § 1, p. 21, eel. 1632. 2 ib. 1. 2, pars 1, § 5, pp. 15, 16.

8 Cudworth, Sermon before the House of Commons. Compare Plato's
Euthyphro; — Theologia Germanica, c. 32; — Jona'n Edwards, End in Creation,
c. 1. § 1 ; On the Affections, Works, III. 114 : " Holiness is the beauty of the

THEODICY A DUTY. — ABSOLUTISM. 69

pose that the qualities of justice and holiness are created by-
God's pure will is not only to leave the faith and worship of
man without reason, but it blots out the sun behind the cloud,
and leaves God himself without a reason for any of his
doings.

But Ave should not overlook a plausible side of the argument
from God's sovereignty. Are not all things His by right of
creation ? and may He not do what He will with his own ?
Does not Paul silence an objector by saying : " Who art thou
that repliest against God ? Shall the thing formed say to Him
that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus ? Hath not the
potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one ves-
sel unto honor, and another to dishonor ? " Very true ; but
Paul here appeals to the divine sovereignty to vindicate, not
the justice of God's punishments, but his right of election
among his creatures to give eternal life to whom He will. They
could establish no right to be created or to posess immortality.
Their existence was from the first a gift ; its continuance is a
special grace. God may appoint to the dishonor of death —
which even the heathen know to be the just judgment of the
law — whom He will. He may assign the means and opportu-
nities of salvation to whom he will. And though He does and
must respect the characters they form, and give his final judg-
ments accordingly, the rule of his original election may be not
only a mystery to our reason, but as dependent on his pure will
as the location or relative position of stars and systems of worlds
in absolute space. God's pimishments must be just; but his
gifts may be as free in respect to the subjects of them as the
universe is large.

Eut if there are principles of justice, by virtue of which we
are able to say that God is just, it follows that justice is one
and uniform, the same in heaven and on earth. As the law of
attraction is the same for atoms and for worlds, so justice changes

Godhead, the diviuity of the Divinity, the good of the infinite Founttiin of good;
without which God himself would be an infinite evil, and there woixld better
have been no being."

70 THE THEODICIES.

not, whether applied to the relations of the finite or of the Infi-
nite. We have no more occasion to say with the ancients that
" the gods have a justice of their own," ^ or to interpret the
prophet's appeal from man's distrust to God's pardoning love
as if it had been said ; " As the heavens are above the earth, so
his ways are not our ways, nor his principles our principles."

And as the appeal to mystery is not sustained by the use which
Paul makes of the divine sovereignty, so neither is it often relied
on by those who make it. A very few eminent theologians
have accepted the doctrine of eternal suffering with no theory
whatever to reconcile it with the justice of God ; but while they
accept it with most implicit confidence, their faith is most bur-
dened by it. By far the greater number of those who have
written on the subject have striven to vindicate the divine jus-
tice, and to transfer the dire problem from the domain of mys-
tery to that of reason. Their theories are offered more or less
confidently, either as triumphant vindications or as possible ex-
planations that may silence objection ; but they are arguments
to support a trembling faith. And while the great number of
different and even opposite theodicies indicates the doubtfulness
of the doctrine itself, the prevailing resort to theodicy, and the
distress of those who can find no theodicy, show that the doctrine
was not designed for a mystery.

We might, then, at the outset, infer that the doctrine of eter-
nal suffering is probably false, and that another doctrine of
eternal punishment is both revealed and can be vindicated before
the bar of man's reason and conscience. But not to anticipate
our argument, we may here affirm that Theodicy is a duty.
We must not only believe that God is just, but in the funda-
mental principles of His government, we may know how He is
just. The conviction that God is just would be a barren ab-
straction — an empty, though sublime, first truth of conscience —
if we understood not some things which His justice requires.
Conscience is other and better than superstitious fear, just be-
cause it apprehends a reason for duty, and a reason for penalty.

1 " Sunt superis sua jura."

SIN AGAINST GOD AS AN INFINITE BEING. 71

Sovereignty and mystery may hide countless and fathomless
details of the divine administration, where Faith shall have
ample sphere and endless scope ; but the eternal progress of the
" sons of God " is in a " reasonable service," where filial love
and an enlightened moral sense are ever assimilating their feel-
ings and thoughts to His own. In order to this progress, the
many principles of common yet absolute and universal justice
(which even bad men confess and understand, because they are
men made after the likeness of God), must be our familiar
thoughts ; so that we may devoutly admire how completely God
has fitted us to bear his image, and that the rational conviction
of our many errors may lead us on from them to Him. It is
only by knowing what is right, just, true, and good, that we can
know what is God himself.

The appeal from mystery to reason and conscience is not only
required by the consideration of our moral nature, and of the
nature of justice, but it is sanctioned by the words of Christ :
" Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right ? "
And these words may preclude the objection to man's judgment
respecting the penalty of sin, that he is an interested party, and
may be swayed by a partial self-love. True, man does fondly
love himself; but this love, more than almost anything else,
gives him the most lively fears respecting the future ; we shall
find it devising and urging several arguments for the doctrine
of eternal suffering. And if the objection is pressed beyond
the purpose of a caveat, it would prove too much, and we
should have to accept the worst conceivable future punishment
as just, since anything less might be a fond delusion of hope.
But happily, conscience, as if it were the voice of God in the
soul, is not silenced by the clamors of interested fear or hope.
If that voice is ever hushed, the soul is lost, and all other appeal
is for ever in vain. If it is God's appointed umpire, let us
make our appeal, confident of the truest verdict.

§ 2. SIN AGAINST GOD AS AN INFINITE BEING.

Since the mere supremacy or sovereignty of God fails to
yield a Theodicy, this has been sought in His nature as an

72 ' THE THEODICIES.

infinite Being, perfect in all divine attributes. The distinction
here is not strictly between the natural and the moral attributes
of God, but between His rank and His greatness. The last
theory regards God as above all control; the present theory
regards Him as beyond all limitation. It is thus stated by
Hooker : " Sin hath two measures whereby the greatness
thereof is judged, — the object, God against whom; and the
subject, the creature in whom sin is. By the one measure all
sin is infinite, because He is infinite whom sin offendeth ; for
which cause there is one eternal punishment due in justice unto
all sinners. In so much that if it were possible for any crea-
ture to have been eternally with God, and co-eternally sinful, it
standeth with justice by this measure to have punished that
creature from eternity past, no less than to punish it unto future
eternity. And therefore the time which cometh between the
birth and death of such as are to endure this punishment, is
granted them by dispensation as it were, and toleration, at God's
hand. From that other measure, which is according to the sub-
ject of sin, there are in that eternity of punishment varieties,
whereby may be gathered a rule much built upon in holy Scrip-
ture, — that degrees in wickedness have answerable degrees in
the weight of their endless punishment." -^

This statement guards against the common objection that in-
finity admits no differences of degree. This point is also finely
illustrated by the elder Edwards, by the three dimensions of
space, of which in a supposed case one may be infinite and the

1 Eccl. Polity, h. 5, app. 1. Compare Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 1. 1, c. 15; —
Aquinas, Summa Theol. pars 3, q. 99, art. 1 : " Secundum Philosophum [Aris-
totle, Ethic. 1. 5, c. 5, where >Ye find the slenderest support of the argument]
poena taxatur secundum dignitatem ejus in quem peccatur; " — Spinoza, Eth-
ices, pars 1, prop. 21, and Tennemann's remark, Hist, of Phil., § 339 ; — Calvin,
Inst. Chr. Eel. 1. 3, c. 25, § 5 ; — Cornelius a Lapide, Comm. in Matt. xxv. 46 ; —
Lucas, in Matt, xxv, 46: " OfFenditur Deus asternus et infinite magistatis; " —
Mosheim, Ewigkeit der Hollenstrafen, p. 356; — Poole, Synopsis Crit., in Matt.
xxv. 46; — Owen, Person of Christ, c. 16; — Bates, Immort. of Soul, c. 12; —
. Watts, World to Come, Disc. 13, § 1;— A. FiiUer, Works, HI. 828;— John Rob-
inson, Works I. 213 ; — Edwards, Sermon on Rom. iii, 19 ; — Bellamy, Works, I.
50, 70, 244; — Hopkins, Works, U. 340, sq. ; — J. Huntington (Restorationist),
Calvinism Improved, pp. 44, 45 ; — J. Pye Smith, First Lines of Clu'istian The-
ology ;— Lacoudre (Catholic), Theodicea, Inst. Phil., II. 314; and many others.

SIN AGAINST GOD AS AN INFINITE BEING. 73

others finite and variable quantities. He likewise expands the
argument very fully.

The argument admits four replies : 1. That the loss of eter-
nal life is an infinite punishment. 2. That by parity of reason-
ing any punishment coming from God is infinite. 3. That by
parity of reasoning obedience to God has infinite merit. 4.
That the argument itself is faulty, as it deduces infinite quali-
ties from the relations of finite things.

The first of these replies belongs to a subsequent argument.
The second also, with the brief statement of it here in the words
of Tillotson : " By the same reason that the least sin committed
against God may be said to be infinite because of its Object, the
least punishment that is inflicted by God may be said to be in-
finite because of its Author." ^ This reply is in keeping with the
lofty tone of the argument as a meditation of the greatness of God,
which is its real merit, if it does not degenerate into a mathematical
recreation, and lose its moral character. In this form it appears
in the reply of Socrates, to a sophist arguing that if God is
too great lo be profited by human worship, we need not praise
or serve Him, — so mucli the more reason why we should
adore Him. But obviously the greater majesty of God makes
his frown the more terrible.

To the third reply it will be objected that the greatness of
God enhances our obligation to obey, and thus at once diminishes
the merit of obedience, and increases the guilt of sin. But if so,
then toward God obedience has no merit whatever, and virtue
is no longer a rewardable thing in the world ; for all duties are
due, directly or indirectly, to God. Now in truth virtue consists
in love to a being, either as worthy or as needy ; and the greater
the love the greater the virtue. If God be its object, the effort
of the virtuous man to comprehend and know God — by faith
embracing Him — is his merit. And whatever be the object of
holy love, God is as infinitely pleased with it as He can be dis-
pleased with any guilt or sin which is a feeling equally strong in
the mind of the creature.

And this leads us to what we regard as the true refutation of

'1 Sermon on Matt. xxv. 46.

74 THE THEODICIES.

the argument from God's infinite nature. Infinity is something
which can not be imparted to any creature or to any of the
creature's acts. Man's relation to God gives him no infinite
quality, simply because he can not comprehend and take in the
whole of God. Man's capacity is his measure, and the full
measure, of his mightiest acts. His conscious relation to God,
his conception of the idea of God perfect in all divine attributes,
does indeed enlarge his capacity ; but he does not therefore con-
tain God, or become a god. " Canst thou by searching find out
God ? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? It is
as high as heaven ; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what
canst thou know ? The measure thereof is longer than the earth,
and broader than the sea." Man's relation to God is like that
of the atom to the world ; it is attracted by every other atom in
the universe, but their united force does not give it infinite
weight. And if there were but one created intelligence, upon
whom all the thoughts of God's heart were bestowed, he would
be only as the little weight which might, by infinite contrivance,
'be made to balance the world, — none the weightier for all the
mechanism. Man is still a light thing, before God. His like-
ness to God, his power to love God, only resembles him to the
needle that is drawn by the magnet ; he acquires a new power,
and a growing, but never an infinite life.

And here we may answer an argument from the comparison
of various objects of duty. If to a created sovereign man is
bound by a finite obligation, why not infinitely, to the sovereign
King ? We reply, all duty is imperative ; yet the ride of duty,
and the measure of duty, are different things. Objectively, it is
regulated and determined by the relations we sustain. Our
obligations maybe lower or higher, — one overruled by another;
they may be temporary or permanent, relative or absolute. But
subjectively, all duty is measured by the capacity of the moral
agent. This is the first principle of the divine law, — love to
the supreme object of duty, with all the heart, soul, mind, and
strength. The law forbears to demand infinite love, not because
God is unworthy, but because we are finite. He claims our
hearts away from the bondage of earthly affections, as the

SIN AGAINST GOD AS AN INFINITE BEING. 75

stronger magnet draws away from the weaker ; but His suprem-
acy gives us no infinity.

For, in truth, the idea of infinity is, in a finite mind, simply
negative. It is the denial of all bound and limit. Let the fancy
exhaust itself in its largest conceptions, — there is ever something
beyond; and this infinite beyond is just what man can never
conceive. Pie knows it only as that which he can never know.

The argument from God's infinity is sometimes urged with
special reference to one or other of His attributes, particularly
His holiness and justice. But what, we ask, is meant by infinite
holiness ? We can understand infinite power, as that which is
not diminished by the creation of unnumbered worlds; and infi-
nite Vv'isdom as that which is perplexed by no difficulty, but can
devise all possible things ; and infinite goodness and love as that
which is unexhausted making a universe blessed. But holiness
refers to a standard. It is the purity, the glorious perfection of
God. In its very nature it can not be infinite because it can not
be more or less than perfect. The same is true of God's justice.
To do justly is to do that which is strictly right and correct.
Justice is straightness, uprightness. It is the same thing in
God, only in the administration of his government it has an infi-
nite range of application. In each single application it refers
necessarily to the finite. In its very nature it seeks out the
limitations of things. To speak of infinite justice, or justness, is
as absurd as to speak of a line as infinitely straight ; of a circle
as infinitely round ; of a certain triangle as infinitely equiangu-
lar ; or of a certain number as infinitely twenty op thirty. The
plausibility of the argument from God's infinity is, however, easily
explained ; the indiscriminate use of the term " infinite " gives
it a vague atmosphere of indefiniteness that bewilders the mind.
The mist is dispelled when one asks the proper meaning of the word.

It is obvious that this theodicy does not escape the charge of
Dualism. Rather, it makes the very greatness of God the
source of his weakness. His infinite being empowers the slight-
est evil to do Him infinite injury. His infinite dignity subjects
Hira to infinite insults without number. His infinity is trans-

76 THE THEODICIES.

ferred to every puny arm of finite creature, and becomes in
every guilty hand a sceptre of dominion, demanding an eternity
of vindictive concern in answer to an idle word of profane lips.
The argument utterly perverts the sublime sentiment of Scrip-
ture : " If thou sinnest, what doest thou against Him ? or if thy
transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto Him?" "Will
He reprove thee for fear of thee ? Will He enter with thee into
judgment ? Is not thy wickedness great, and thine iniquities
numberless ? " (Job xxxv. -6 ; xxii. 4, 5.) Where the sense
seems to be : Your sins must have been exceedingly grievous or
long continued, thus to provoke the notice of high Heaven.^

§ 3. SIN AGAINST GOD AS INFINITE LOVE?

But the language of Eliphaz to Job, just cited, is only half
of the truth. God is not the impassible being of the Epicu-
rean and the Hindoo philosophy, wrapt ujd in a dignified, heart-
less indifference respecting the world. As a God of love He
must delight in those who obey Him, and He is equally grieved
with those who sin against Him. '' Behold," says one, " sin is
so hateful to God, and grieveth Him so sore, that He would
willingly suffer agony and death, if one man's sins thereby might
be washed out. And if He were asked whether He would
rather live and that sin should remain, or die and destroy sin
by his death. He would answer that He would a thousand times
rather die. For to God one man's sin is more hateful, and
grieveth Him worse than His own agony and death. Now if
one man's sin grieveth God so sore, what must the sins of all
men do ? Hereby ye may consider, how greatly man grieveth
God with his sins." ^

1 The theodicy is rejected as ]\Ianichsean by Duns Scotns, 0pp. VII, 412, 418,
422, ed. Lugd. 1639, cited by Strauss, Glaubenslehre, § 69. It is censured by
Warburton, Divine Legation, b. 9, c. 1: — Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen
der blossen Vernunft, b. 2, § c; — Doederlein, Inst. Theol. Chr., § 223, obs. 3; —
Magee, On the Atonement, Diss, xiii; — John Foster, Life and Corresp., Let.
226 ; — Henry Rogers, Essay on the Genius and Writings of Edwards, p. I : " In
reasoning on the infinite nature of all sin, Edwards appears to fall into his
besetting vice, — verbal reasoning, which he is very apt to do when treating of
iBfinitude;" — R. W. Hamilton, Rewards and Punishments, pp. 406, 407.

2 Theologia Germanica, c. 37.

SIN AGAINST GOD AS INFINITE LOVE. 77

This attribute of God as a being of feelings and emotions,
is wrought into a theodicy by the author of the " Conflict of
Ages." " If any thing," says he, " is prominent and uncon-
tradicted in the Bible, it is the great doctrine that the entrance
of evil has involved a period of long-continued suffering to God.
Indeed it is the grand characteristic of the present system, that
all the glorious results to which God is conducting the universal
system have been purchased at the expense of his own long-
continued and patiently-endured sufferings. In this He gives
to the universe the highest possible proof of pure, disinterested,
self-sacrificing love." And afterwards, summing up the results
of his theory, he says : " It alone leads to such an understanding
of the doctrine of future eternal punishments as, connected with
the previous suffering of God, shall properly throw the moral
sympathies of all holy minds on the side of God, and put an
end to that reaction which tends so fatally to destroy the true
and indispensable power of that doctrine." ■'•

It is not sufficient to reply to this, that the language is anthro-
popathic ; for this is a scriptural mode of representation,^ as it
is a necessity of all human thought and speech respecting God.
Man can conceive of the infinite and the eternal only under
limitations. He can not apprehend God as a personal Being,
except as also finite. All human theology is of necessity an-
thropomorphic. " I speak as a man," said Paul, describing the
feelings of God respecting the conduct of men. And such
words as "repentance," "grief," "anger," and "jealousy,"
though they tell the wrong feelings as well as the right feel-
ings of men, may, nevertheless, indicate divine truth that could
not otherwise be told. And Dr. B. properly asks : " Does it
exalt our ideas of God, and show the infinite difference between
Him and a creature, to assert that He can put himself and all

1 Pp. 487, 490, 491. For statements which we hope to show are equivalent,
see Cliarnock, Discourse on Practical Atheism : " The soul of man deserves an
infinite punishment for despising an infinite good;" — Lacoudre, Theodicea,
Instt. Phil., II. 816: " Quid mirum igitur si portea implacabili odio Deus vice
sua contemptum amorem ulciscitur?" — Crousaz, Examen du Pyrrhonisme,
Part III. c. 13, § 52.

2 See Gen. vi. 6 ; ITos. xi. 8 ; Nahum i. 2.

78 THE THEODICIES.

his plans fully into the mind of that creature ? Or does it, on
the other hand, most exalt God to say that He is so vast that
no created mind can fully comprehend Him or his plans, and
that it is beyond his power to destroy the infinite chasm that
separates Creator and creature ? " (p. 476.)

But is God indeed made infinitely unhappy by the sins ot
men ? No one believes this, and for various reasons.

1. The moral perfection of God is not impaired by the exist-
ence of sin in the world. He is no party to its introduction ;
behind His abhorrence of it there was no secret purpose that it
should exist; His relations to wrong are all right. If they
were not, then might He suffer unmeasured sorrow. But His
integrity is unsullied ; the divine conscience is not concerned
with human guilt ; and thus far, at least. His blessedness is un-
disturbed.^

2. The limitations of human capacity are no cause of grief
to God. "We are told indeed of " the necessary liability of
finite minds to unbelief and distrust of God, when exposed to
the inevitable trials which pertain to an infinite system, such as
befits God ; " and of " finite capacities, and a consequent liability
in the first generations of creatures to unbelief, distrust, and sin,
involving a season of suffering in God." ^ But in itself, this
finite nature is God's work, with which He was well pleased,
pronouncing it " very good." It is not the cause of evil, but
only renders sin possible. It gives one of the proximate solutions
of the old problem. In one view, it makes the mystery of sin
more profound. For the conscious weakness of the creature
is the weightiest reason for trust and confidence in the Creator.
The theodicy last considered sometimes takes just this form, —
that the sin of creatures is infinitely heinous, because they, with-
out having comprehended God, or weighed the Infinite in bal-
ances, have rejected and condemned Him as unworthy of their
confidence. In fact, men are guilty, not because they under-
stand so little of God, but because they know so much of Him.
" If ye were blind, ye should have no sin ; but now ye say, We

1 M. P. Squier, The Problem Solved, or Sin not of God, p. 55.
* Conflict of Ages, p. 475.

. SIN AGAINST GOD AS INFINITE LOVE. 79

see ; therefore your sin remaineth." There is indeed the sin of
ignorance or of passion, and of presumption, — the pardonable
and the unpardonable, — whence the problem of the origin of
evil is two-fold ; to explain the transition from faith to distrust,
and from distrust to malignity. But in either form, man's guilt
cannot injure God ; it is simply a rejection of his love. In so
far as sin comes of weakness, God cannot be grieved, as the
sage is not grieved with unlettered simplicity, though he may
pity it. In so far as sin matures in hatred of God, it may, in
the dramatic language of the Bible, provoke His indignation,
or the smile that says He is infinitely beyond the reach of
malice. His plans are not disconcerted, or his peace disturbed
by the rebellion of mighty ones. " He that sitteth in the
heavens shall laugh ; the Lord shall have them in derision."
If He deigns to notice them it is not his necessity but his
choice.

o. God's love for all his creatures is free. It is a gift of His
favor. The very pain and grief which it does occasion to
God is disinterested; it is the earnestness, the fullness, the
bounty of love. Disappointed, or unrequited, the divine love
appears in the form of anger, like that of the parent toward
the undutiful child. The very grief is an emotion of love, and
cannot outlive it. The execution of divine justice is a painful
thing to God, His " strange work," because " God is Love ;" and
in this He differs from heartless Nature and relentless Fate.

The divine grief, then, is a gift. But whatever is truly given,
cannot afterwards be charged as a debt. And here is the radi-
cal and enormous error of this theodicy. It represents Infi-
nite Goodness as not only ceasing to love the creature, but
revokino; the lon2:-tried affection in the form of an account that
can never through eternity be liquidated. What is generously
given (and it must be generously or not at all) is given. But
according to this theodicy, God's own love is only granted as a
loan, at an infinite rate of interest, the payment of which will
be demanded through endless ages if the original love be not
reciprocated. This vindication of divine justice consists in a
ruinous draft upon the divine grace. The proper character of

80 THE THEODICIES.

each is destroyed. The grace is no more gi'ace, and the justice
is no longer just.

The logical results of this theodicy are thus even fearful, as
will further appear in subsequent discussions. We shall also
meet with similar perversions of the idea of grace, and attempt,
in the proper place, to give an explanation of them, as phenom-
ena of man's fallen estate.

The Dualism of the theodicy is also manifest. While it offers
to restore the gift of divine love, as a lost treasure to its owner,
it nevertheless exposes the divine heart, as a tender nerve, an
open wound, to the smiting of every careless hand. It puts
infinite blessedness at the mercy of every trustless son of man,
and makes infinite goodness the victim of millions of evil crea-
tures. And the returned gift itself becomes a debt burdensome
for collection by tlie eternal justice.

§ 4. SIN AS AGAINST THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT.

The theodicies already examined are based upon various attri-
butes of the divine nature. But with respect to God as a Ruler
it is said that " If temporal punishments are justified on the
ground that they are necessary to meet the exigencies and uphold
the interests of temporal governments, surely eternal punish-
ments may be justified on the same ground in relation to an
eternal government." ^ And sin, " as tending to infinite anarchy
and mischief, must be infinite. All that is meant by calling sin
infinite evil is, that it is deserving of endless punishment ; and
this can never be fairly objected to as an absurdity. If there be
no absurdity in the immortahty of a sinner's existence, there is
none in supposing him to deserve a punishment, be it in what
degree it may, that shall run commensurate with it." ^

1 Bledsoe, Theodicy, p. 307.

2 A. Fuller, Veneration for the Scriptures. Compare various representations
of sin as Treason ; — Dodwell, Letter on the Soul, Pref. § 5 : " This perpetuatmg
of human nature for punishment could not be justly inflicted till a publication
of God's pleasure, that he judged the Devil a public enemy, and that all who did
not join the body instituted by himself, should be taken for associates of the
Devil; " — Lacoudre, Theodicea, p. 315: " Sapiens legislator suflicientem debet

SIN AS AGAINST THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 81

Upon the face of it this argument is not so mucli a vindication
of God's justice as an assertion of his necessity. It is not claimed
that sin is inherently deserving of endless v^'oe, but that such a
penalty is infinitely needful. The notion that the penalty is
intrinsically just is formally abandoned by one of the assertors
of it, thus : " What proportion ought to be appointed betwixt
crimes and penalties is not so properly a consideration of justice
as of prudence in the lawgiver." Hence, " whatever the dispro-
portion may be between temporary sins and eternal punishments,
justice cannot be said to be concerned in it." ^ This is really an
inversion of the old maxim, and we are now told, perhaps, that
" injustice must be done, lest the heavens fall." Evil is allowed,
to triumph, as a thing expedient. The theodicy is not only
dualistic ; it compels the Judge of all to be the author of eternal
wrong. In a supposed emergency, it substitutes a police regu-
lation for a principle of justice. But it is forgotten that the
policy itself is suicidal ; for punishment can have no restraining
power, it can not be exemplary, unless it is just. To suppose it
just because exemplary, is, in the literal sense, preposterous.

The theory might be dismissed here. But it is in fact an
expression of panic fear, which is not allayed by any considera-
tions of justice. We must inquire into the supposed danger.

1. It cannot be the eternal sufferings of the lost, for that is
the very thing to be proved. And such a punishment would be
only another form of the danger.

2. It cannot be the defection of holy angels and glorified
saints. For that is to charge them not only with imperfection,
but wdth radical defect. It is to say that they serve God only in.
terror ; that they have no sincere love of God or of holiness ;
that their allegiance is either a hypocrisy or a delusion ; that
there is no moral perfection even among the blessed ; and that
the principles of virtue, even after having been once installed in
a nominal kingdom of righteousness, can not stand without the
support of an eternal evil.

legibus suis sanctionem tribuerc ; atqui, nisi vindicta reterna pcccatum plectatur,
non erit sanctio sufficiens."

1 Tillotson, Serni. on I\Iatt. xxv. 46.

82 THE THEODICIES.

3. It can not be the failure of all future races of probationary
beings. For among the human race, with all the disadvantages
of a fallen state, and ere the supposed exemplary punishment
begins to be witnessed, multitudes are converted and saved;
many of them, past ail doubt, unmoved by the terror of eternal
suffering. Much more may it be expected that new orders of
probationary beings will furnish hosts of perfected ones, without
the aid of such a terror.

The argument, it should here be noted, often assumes either
that the creation is yet in its early stages, or that sin has recently
entered the universe. These are questions to be elsewhere con-
sidered.

4. If it is feared that, without the terror of eternal suifering,
too many either of the human race or of future races will fail of
eternal life, then, justice aside, the problem becomes one of sim-
ple arithmetic and" calculation. Which is the greater evil, —
that a great number should utterly perish, or that a small num-
ber should endure endless torment ? that myriads should incur
what some have pronounced to be hardly a punishment, or that
hundreds should endure infinite evil ? The question is not, how
many beings shall be finally saved? For creative power is
exhaustless and unwearied. He who can raise up from the
stones children unto Abraham, is not impoverished by the loss
of ten thousand worlds, or burdened in replacing them. Whether
is better, then, — that a small fraction of a large number should
be savedfrom death, and evil be temporary, or that a large frac-
tion of a small number should be saved from sin and woe, which
shall be the eternal portion of the remainder ?

The theodicy, we have remarked, ignores the principle of jus-
tice. But this is not at all ; it makes a draft upon the grace of
God. For He is not bound to furnish the restraining terror
which is claimed. It is due neither to Himself nor to those who
are to be saved. Granting that they need it, they cannot de-
mand it as a right. It would be, rather, the token of their
moral bankruptcy. If vacancies in heaven must be filled from
bankrupt worlds, it is God's right to keep them vacant to all
^ternitv, and no court in the universe will recognize a counter

UNIVERSAL DISTRUST. 83

claim. If the terror supposed to be needful is granted at all, it
must be a free gift, an undeserved gratuity.

§ 0. UNIVERSAL DISTRUST.

A friend has furnished the following ; "The first act of rebel-
lion in the universe, when it became known, produced a univer-
sal shock. Every one became alarmed, felt insecure, and became
suspicious and afraid of every other. The perfect quiet and
peace of the world was gone, and gone for ever, unless by some
means a recurrence of the sin could be prevented, and confidence
be restored. Eternal wrong had been done to every moral be-
ing in the universe. Eternal pain and displeasure would be felt
by all who knew and remembered the fact, and a sense of fear
and insecurity would be universal and eternal unless prevented
by governmental interference.

*'' What penalty would be just and adequate is the question.
That endless suffering, provided it were severe enough in degree,
would be sufficient, all will admit. It would also appear the
natural and appropriate penalty ; since the injury done is end-
less."

This theodicy might be derived by some minds from the na-
ture of sin as utterly inexplicable and an essential mystery. If
it originates causelessly, like a planet " rushing madly from its
sphere," it may be repeated — here — there — any where — and
no one is safe. Panic terror must be quieted by a salutary fear.

But the theory makes no distinction between probationary and
perfected beings. In respect to the proximate solutions of the
origin of evil, it assumes that they apply to the highest orders
of being as well as the lowest — the oldest equally with the
youngest. It would be a consistent result of the argument, we
think, if it should be feared that God himself might sin, and the
moral universe crumble with the fall of its Ruler.

But if, as we believe, no perfected being, or '•' partaker of the
divine nature," ever has fallen, the occasion of this panic must
be sought in the failure of creatures while on probation, and sub-
ject to ordeal. But such failure need not alarm the universe.
The fiill of our first parents might be a sad event for man, when

84 THE THEODICIES.

" Earth felt the shock ; and Nature from her seat
Sighing, through all her works, gave signs of woe
That all was lost."

But the event, though sad for man, and perplexing to angels, need
not alarm them ; for the frailty of all new created moral agency,
the powers of untried free will, made it not only possible, but in a
slight degree probable. The wonder would have been, if, in
myriads of new worlds weakness and ignorance should never -re-
sult in sin. Yet, even if jjie greater part should give way under
temptation, and a remnant only be saved, that need not disturb
the security of the glorified, or even of the saints militant. For
" we know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not ; but he
that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one
toucheth him not."

Whether God is under necessity of creating beings so frail as
man ; or whether this is the bounty of His goodness and wisdom,
— to raise out of dust heirs of glory, — is a question. If the
latter be true, then the sins we deplore are indirectly a token of
God's power. The case of the fallen angels may seem more per-
plexing. But the Scriptures do not inform us that they were
ever morally perfect ; and their higher rank at their creation,
probably subject to severer ordeal than man, might be only a
slight elevation in the scale of creation, they sinking to motes in
comparison with higher orders, and all to nothingness before the
infinite God.

The destroyed confidence, fear, and pain, supposed in our
theodicy, we infer, were no proper effect of sin. But if they
were, the argument is still liable to objection. Must eternal evil
be installed, to restore the lost confidence ? Must the eternal
peace and happiness of all beings depend on the co-eternal
anguish of those who have begun to sin ? Are the delights of
Paradise and the " fulness of joy " not suflficient to restrain the
world from plunging into the abyss of annihilation ? So far as
human beings have lost confidence in God or creature, is it not
more restored by the renewal of a single heart in the image of
Christ, than by the supposed exposure of millions to eternal
woe ? How do earthly rulers restore the lost confidence of their

SIN AS AC.AIXST THE UNIVERSAL WELFARE. 85

subjects? Which is tlie stronger human government, — that in
which the most dreadful punishments are inflicted, or that in
which the mere loss of place or favor is so dire that infliction is
not needed ? And must God for ever afllict the guilty, that the
innocent may learn to trust in Him ? Admitting the gloomy fact
which the theory assumes, it provides no remedy, but is

" An argument
Of weakness, not of power."

§ G. SIN AS AGAINST THE UNIVERSAL WELFARE.

Most of the preceding theories, or at least the more usual
statements of them, are defective in that they build upon an in-
finity beyond the mind of the transgressor, an infinity beyond
his power either to injure or to comprehend. An attempt is
made to supply this defect, and to anchor infinity, as it were,
within the reason and conscience, as a measure of guilt, in the
following argument: " 1. Moral obligation is founded in the in-
trinsic value of those interests which moral agents are bound to
seek as an end. 2. The obligation is conditional upon the
knowledge of this end. 3. The degree of obligation is just
equal to the apprehended intrinsic value of those interests which
they are bound to choose. 4. The guilt of refusal to will those
interests is in proportion, or is equal, to the amount of the obli-
gation ; and 5 : Consequently the mind's apprehension or judg-
ment of the value of those interests which it refuses to will, is,
and must be, the rule by which the degree of guilt involved in
that refusal ought to be measured." These interests are "the
highest well being of God and the universe. This end the
reason of every moral agent must affirm to be of infinite value,
in the sense that its value is unlimited. ... If the idea of
God and of the good of universal being be developed, which is
implied in moral agency, there must be in the mind the idea or
first truth, that the good of God and of the universe is infinitely

86 THE THEODICIES.

valuable. . . . Every refusal to will the liighest well being
of God and the universe involves infinite guilt." ^

The consistency of different degrees of gui]t with its infinity
is illustrated in the same way as by Edwards. But it is founded
in a distinction of modern psychology, between conceptions of
the understanding, and ideas of the reason. " The ideas of the
infinite, the eternal, the perfect, are ideas of the pure reason."

It is not essential to this theodicy that man should have infi-
nite power, so as to be responsible for the universal welfare or
qualified to be its guardian. The argument j)uts the will for the
deed; which is proper in judging of character. And it is said,
though man can neither achieve nor destroy a happiness of all
beings, he may desire and will the welfare of all ; and if he does
not, it is the same to him, and in the reckoning of his guilt, as if
ihere were no universal welfare.

We will admit for argument's sake that when a man is indif-
ferent or hostile to the good of being, he is as guilty as though
the heavens did actually fall. In this view, the prevalent theory
of eternal punishment is insufficient. An immortality, even of
ever augmented woe, will not punish the sinner. For he would
have destroyed the eternal welfare, not of a single creature, but
of innumerable beings. For an equal punishment he should not
have mere immortality, but an expansion of his being, to an im-
mensity equaling the created moral universe. And justice is
but mocked if one of these things is done and not the other.

But this is not all. The sinner is guilty, not only of a single
malevolent wish or traitorous thought, but of this cherished and
repeated continually through long years of life. According to
the argument, if he had had his wish the endless welfare of
countless beings would have been destroyed over and over again
a myriad times. For the purposes of retribution, his immortal

1 Finney, Systematic Theology, Lond. ed., pp. 312, 313. Compare Minucius
Felix, Octavius, c. 35 : " That they Avho know not God are deservedly tor-
mented as impious and unjust, none but the profane man doubts; since to ignore
the Parent and Lord of all is no less wicked than to injure Him." Leibnitz,
0pp. VL 310 : " Qui enim vocere vult, non id tantum voluit quod nocuit, sed et
ea omnia quae, cum non posset, intermisit, quce sunt inftnita."

SIN AS AGAINST THE UNIVERSAL WELFARE. 87

immensity would not suffice. He must also suffer in ten thousand
coordinate eternities.

Kor is this all ; for it respects only the hostility of the sinner
to created beings. But God, whose blessedness is also concerned
in this argument, is at each moment infinitely greater than all
His creation, and He alone is eternal. Here are demanded yet
two other infinite factors of the punishment of a single guilty
soul.

The necessities of justice are not yet told. They are multi-
plied anew by the immense number of all the guilty. And if
the common notion of their eternal wickedness is true, they are
yet to be augmented by a new and most formidable factor, an
infinite and ever expanding series.

Here, in the measure of human guilt, are as many infinite
factors as all the dimensions of space and time united, and two
immensities besides ; guilt which all infinity and all eternity
combined can not begin to contain. Hence, if justice were done,
so far from God ever becoming All and in all, every vestige of
his kingdom must be swept far away from being, and the universe
be filled to copious overflowing, with eternal remorse and woe.
Thus the glorious perfections of God are transmuted, by the
mighty attributes of certain "ideas of the pure reason," to a
deplorable omnimpotence ; and the designs of infinite goodness,
radiating througli the perverse minds of men, are, as by an
awful magic lantern, thrown upon the sky in a lurid picture
of triumphant Evil.

It is confessed by those who hold this theory, that retribution
never can be executed. And it might be urged that since it
must fail in so many infinite factors, it might as well fail in all,
and the universe be at some day rid of sin and woe. But the
frightful results of the theory indicate that it may be radically
defective, and v/e ought to show wherein.

All ideas of the pure reason are simply laws of thought. They
pertain to the form of human thinking, not at all to its objects.
Hence these ideas contain nothing. They may all be employed
in the formulas of pure mathematics, where no actual substance
or thing is conceived, but only the relations of things. Several

88 THE THEODICIES.

of them are negative, or are stated and most clearly apprehended
in the form of negations. Thus we have already remarked the
idea of the infinite is that of no limit. The idea does not em-
brace the limitless, but draws a line and says : Thus far is the
finite ; the infinite is ever beyond. In no way and in no sense
can the infinite itself ever be in the grasp of finite mind, or in
the power of finite wish or will.

What, then, is the measure of human guilt? It must be
sought, evidently, in the conceptions of the understanding. The
more one comprehends or even suspects, of the greatness of the
world and of God, the greater is his guilt if he does not fill up
his conception with the feeling of benevolence. The heart must
go as far as the intellect can reach, in prayer for the creature
and adoration of the Creator. Further than this it can neither
go nor be guilty. And this statement agrees with the fact that
guilt may be greater or less, without respect to the real magni-
tude of its object, because the conceptions of that object r^ay be
endlessly varied. The child, for example, knowing more of its
parents than of God, may be more guilty, and may justly feel
more guilty, in disobeying them, than in disregarding what it
knows of the Infinite Father.

But granting what the theodicy assumes, it may also, as an
argument for eternal suffering, be employed to refute itself. The
whole problem of the measure of penalty is to be solved by
finding a connecting link between sin and suffering; and this
link is the faculty of conscience. Conscience is the seat of re-
morse, and remorse is the only true punishment ; there the
" hiding of its power." Pain does not become penalty until it
reaches the conscience. Physical suffering is the outward form
of punishment, its body; conscience, the sense of merited displea-
sure, is its soul. And the most dreadful punishment may be
felt when the infliction is least. A reproving glance, that enters
the conscience directly, is often the most terrible infliction.

Kow conscience pertains to the pure reason as well as to the
understanding. It recognizes Duty, not as a question of gain or
loss, of more or less, or as a measure of expediency ; but as
something right and proper ; imperative ; absolute ; not over-

IN SUOINFINITO. 89

ruled by any possible consideration of interest; and, so to speak,
infinite. And in the conscience the pure reason can impart
infinity to punishment, no less than to sin. One can feel infinite
ill-desert just as much as one can he infinitely ill-deserving; and
when such a feeling takes the form of remorse, it is infinite
punishment, if any infinity is possible within the human mind.
Eternity is no more requisite for punishment than for guilt.
God has not, in the constitution of the rational creature, given
power to commit a sin which He can not also punish.

§ 7. IN SUO INFINITO.

In judging of character, as before remarked, the will is good
for the deed. The sinner is to be condemned, not for the evil
he has accomplished, but for what he has wished to do, and would
have been glad to do if he could. As he is not to be thanked,
so neither is he to be acquitted, on the ground that God has pre-
vented the evil he intended, or has overruled it for good.

Hence a theodicy similar to the last, and yet distinct fi-om it.
It is commonly stated so as to embrace the tendencies of sin
toward infinite evil. We give it in the words of Hopkins :
" The sinner does all he can to dethrone his Maker and render
Him infinitely miserable, and ruin his kingdom for ever. Every
sin has a strong and mighty tendency to this, and no thanks to
the sinner that this infinite evil has not been effected by his re-
bellion ; and is his crime not so great because the evil is pre-
vented by the infinite power and wisdom of God ? He who will
assert this must renounce all reason and common sense. David,
inspired to imprecate punishment on the wicked, says : ' Give
them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness
of their endeavors ; give them after the work of their hands ;
render to thein their desert.' (Psalms xxviii. 4.) . . . And
God, in punishing the wicked for ever, will do no more to them
than they would have done to Him, had it been in their power ;
surely this is a just and equitable punishment, which they fully
deserve if they deserve any at all." ^

1 Works, II. 433, 434. Compare Ansclm, Cur Deus Homo, 1.7. c. 15 ;— Witsius,
8*

90 THE THEODICIES.

All that has been said in our examination of the previous
theodicy, will apply to this. Whatever is peculiar here, is built
upon an if. Infinite evil lies in the direction of the sinner's
thoughts ; it is his aim, the tendency of his doings ; he would
accomplish it, if he could. But his very conceptions fall infinitely
short of his aim. The infinity with which he has to do is a name
and not a thing. The suum infinitum is altogether sui generis,
a mere fragment and figment of infinity. The fallacy lies in the
illusion of the name.

The argument, we said, is built on a supposition; and this is
apparent when it is stated in another equivalent form, thus : The
sinner would abuse infinite power, if he possessed it. In this
form the argument may be answered either by a doubt, or by an
extension of it. Are we sure that the sinner would abuse in-
finite power, and infinite sagacity, without which the power
would be a brute nothing ? Might he not be also wiser? Could
he be so much of God without a divine goodness ? Is a monster
Deity conceivable ? For argument's sake, grant it. Then we
have only to make all the wildest possible suppositions to prove
the sinner actually guilty of the four-fold infinity of evil we de-
duced from the last theodicy. If he were an eternal god, filling
all the spheres he would not leave a point of space Avithout its
curse ; therefore he is guilty of this. For, by the argument,
he tends that way, power alone is wanting, and weakness is not
innocence.

To measure the world's guilt now, we should need new factors
of infinite arithmetic ; which we trust the actual limitation of
man's moral capacity will dispense with. The theodicy has a
single element of truth. It expresses a just abhorrence of evil,
and a corresponding horror of it as a mad fatuity that knows
no law and brooks no restraint. But this only indicates its des-
tiny. It is an old saying, " Whom the gods design to destroy,
they first infatuate."

Economy of the Covenants, 1. 1, c. 5, § 40; Poole, Annotations, Matt. xxv. 46:
*' Every sinner hath sinned in suo injlnito^ ... for be had a will to have
sinned infinitely; " Charnock, On the Eternity of God.

THE IMPERATIVE NATURE OF DUTY. 91

§ 8. THE IMPERATIVE NATURE OF DUTY.

We have found, we tliink, a common measure of guilt and
punishment in the conscience, as a faculty of remorse. It thus
becomes possible that sin should be punished strictly according
to its ill-desert ; or that there should be a final retribution ac-
cording to the things done in the body. But this statement gives
us only half of the truth. If it were the whole, it would follow
that when equal punishment has been inflicted, the sinner is
released from further claim of justice ; his debt is paid; punish-
ment is atonement and expiation ; he is virtually innocent, and
should be acquitted accordingly. But this we know is not true ;
and the error is corrected by a consideration which may be
wrought into a theodicy.

Duty is imperative. Its language is not that of mere counsel
and advice, but of command. Man is not told simply that it is
for his interest to do right, but he ought to do right. His obliga-
tion is not to himself alone ; if he has any right to forego his
own pleasure or interest, he has no right to omit a single duty ;
and no amount of enjoyment to be secured, or of pain to be
avoided, can give him such right. No possible consideration of
expediency can make wrong right. No compromise is possible
between duty and the neglect of it. Moral law holds no parley,
makes no bargain, forms no treaty stipulations, with him who
refuses to obey. It sets no price on transgression. Obedience
is better ihan any sacrifice, however great. Though one should
offer thousands of rams, or ten thousands of rivers of oil, or ten
thousand worlds, — of wealth or of suffering, — the claim of
duty would not be done away. No finite measure of penance
can abrogate it. Above all bartering calculation of reward and
penalty, conscience sits infinitely supreme, as the voice of God
h'mself, telling us we have no right to lose the one, or to incur
the other. Still less have we right to complain, if an undutiful
curiosity respecting the measure of penalty has not been gratified,
and we find it, at the last, greater than we can bear. What if
it should be infinite ? ^

1 This -was for a time the writer's own theodicy. It is perhaps impHed in the

92 THE TIIEODICIES.

Such is the theodicy. In reply it is granted that if moral law
proposed so much suffering for so much guilt, and nothing more,
the penalty would not be a sanction ; law v/ould be no longer
binding ; the very words " law " and " duty," would lose their
meaning. But this would be equally true, if the penalty were
infinite. Thus, if man could be made into an infinite being, so
that he could endure an infinite penalty in a moment of time,
that would not restore him to innocence, or meet the demand of
the law. Infinite penalty is no more a satisfaction than finite
penalty. Hence we observe that the doctrine which makes
Christ's sufferings an infinite satisfaction paid to God for the
sins of men, does not meet the difficulty which it proposes. It
is still demanded that the hearts of men should be changed;
otherwise they must themselves pa}^ the penalty of God's law
over again. The reason is, penalty is not. satisfaction in kind;
and it can not be made so by being increased i7i degree, even
infinitely. Penalty is sanction. Measured suffering is the mulct
or fine which law imposes, which may also be warning and ad-
monition ; but it is not of the nature of payment, so that it
should be any better infinite than finite. Nor does its character
as a restraint of sin, constitute its proper nature ; for neither the
fear of eternal suffering, nor eternal suffering itself, are supposed
always to restrain sin. And since suffering does not meet the
ends of sanction, either as payment or as restraint, we can regard
penal suffering only as an adjunct of something else which is the
true penalty of law, and which, as a sanction, makes ft strictly
imperative. Suffering may be the interest of a debt ; accruing
with the long forbearance of an indulgent Creditor.

The fallacy of the theodicy lies in the confusion of the abso-
lute with the infinite. Duty is absolute ; once determined, it
can be annulled by no other consideration, for it belongs to
another sphere. But it is not infinite ; hence it is no more
girded and supported by infinite iienalty, than by finite.

This is not all. As an argument for eternal suffering, the

expressions of Crousaz, Exaraen du Fyrrhonisme, Part II. c. 13, § 5; and of
Bliiller, Chr. Doc. of Sin, II. 455.

niSTORICAL ETERNITY OF SIN. 93

theodicy involves the very difficuhy which it seeks to avoid.
For duty is not imperative, if in a state of punishment it may
be eternally violated. Its language then is: "Obey and be
happy, or — disobey and suffer." Penalty is thus reduced to a
tax upon sin, and is no longer a prohibition of it. It is so meas-
ured, too, according to the degree of guiU, that it does not exhaust
endurance. Hence it may be, and often is, thought of, as con-
sisting with a measure of happiness. By some it is doubted
whether the " eternal punishment " i.. not a mere diminution of
eternal joy, in a state of salvation. And with this agrees the
"ethical theology" now so prevalent, of which hereafter. Whereas,
the real mandate of Duty, — " Obey and live," — in making death
the penalty of sin, finds a sanction agreeing with its proper na-
ture, cuts off* the power of persistent transgression, and secures
itself from eternal outrage.

§ 9. HISTORICAL ETERNITY OF SIN.

The unchangeable nature of right has been wrought into vari-
ous forms of theodicy. The divine Law is eternal. Human
guilt is eternal, — historically, at least, if not in the evil effects
of it. Hence we are told ; " The criminality and the guilt of a
crime must continue as long as the crime continues, or till it
ceases to be a crime, or becomes an innocent action. But can
murder, for instance, wdiich is a crime in the very nature of
things, ever become a virtue ? Can time, or obedience, or suffer-
ings, or even a divine declaration, alter its nature, and render it
an innocent action? Virtue and vice, sin and holiness, are
founded in the nature of things, and so must remain for ever
immutable. Hence that which was once virtuous will for ever
be virtuous ; that wliich was once vicious will for ever be vicious;
. . . . and that which once deserved punishment will for
ever deserve punishment. Now if neither the nature of sin can
be changed, nor the guiit of it be taken away, tlien the damned,
who have once deserved punishment, will for ever des(?rve it,
and consequently God may, in point of justice, punish them to

94 THE THEODICIES.

all eternity."^ And again ; " The extinction of the sinner would
not be the extinction of his sin ; that would live on, in some of
its effects, for ever, — an inextinguishable protest against the
perfection of the divine government ; while yet the sinner him-
self, who first uttered the protest, is supposed to be placed for
ever, by an act of that government, beyond the reach of punish-
ment. For, further, the extinction of being is an escape from
punishment ; so that here would be the singular anomaly, that
while the dread of punishment is punishment, the infliction itself
is the termination of all punishment." ^

This theory should not be confounded with that of sinfulness
as ever actual and persistent. So far as it contains truth, it is
very similar to the theodicy just examined. It asserts the very
principles which, as we have remarked, make a theodicy possible,
against the notion that justice is a product of divine might. But
the fallacy of its deductions is manifest : For

1. By parity of reasoning, a single act of virtue should be
eternally rewarded. It never changes its nature, — never ceases
to be a virtuous act. It remains through all eternity a tribute
of praise to God. Its benign influences and effects may also be
eternal. Hence he who has done a single right act, or cherished
a right feeling, should be for ever happy.

2. It follows that the pardon of guilt is unjust, or rather
impossible. Not only does the bare remission of penalty not
change the character of the sinner, but his actual change from
sin to holiness does not annul the character of his past acts.

1 Emmons, Wks, V. 561, 562 ; comp. VI. ISO.

2 Harris, Man Primeval, p. J77. Compare with tlie last expression, Gregory
the Great, ]\Ioralia, 1. 15, c. 17 : " Quia si consuraeretur vita morientis, cum vita
etiam poena finiretur: " — and with the argument, T. M. Post, Bib. Kepos. Oct.
1844, pp.313, 315: "It could hardly seem possible that moral distinctions,
themselves, should they not be annihilated, could not fail at least to lose their
authority, when the soul in which they inhere might, at any moment, utterly
perish alike from all retribution and all consciousness." And he speaks of
" the impcrishableness of moral acts, and the everlasting continuance of the
present moral laws of our being;" — Willard, Lectures on the Assembly's
Catechism, q. 19 ; — Bates, Immort. of Soul, c. 12 ; — Nitzsch, System of Christ-
ian Doctrine, § 219, n. 3; — Lacoudre, Theodicea, pp. 314, 315; — J. H. Hinton,
Harmony of Religious Truth, pp. 204, 205.

HISTORICAL ETERNITY OF SIN. 05

They survive Lis conversion, just as much as they would survive
liis destruction. No act of reformation, nor of reparation, no
work of atonement, nor suffering of punishment tliough thrice
infinite, no return of God's favor, nor effort of Omnipotence,
can ever expunge his sins from the history of llic universe.
They are graven there as with a pen of adamant, and along with
their effects they must abide for ever. According to the theory,
repentance and sanctification must be for ever nugatory; the
forgiveness of sin is a disregard of the eternal record, and an
eternal wrong.

3. When it is said that to be stricken from being would be an
end of punishment, v/e reply that if this Avere true, then no
penalty, of whatever kind, should ever begin to be inflicted.
For the beginning of punishment is the infliction of a part
thereof; and though that may have been punishment beforehand,
in the dread of it, now that it is past it ceases to be punishment,
and is lost. Whence all punishment should for ever remain
future, and should never begin. But with a strange forgetful-
ness the theory is here inconsistent with itself. Punishment
once inflicted can never be un-inflicted. It can never be revoked
or blotted out from the history of things. Once done, it becomes
eternal. And this is preeminently true of that penalty which
blots the sinner out from being.

So much for the results of the theodicy. It originates in a
confounding of the abstract with the concrete. As if one should
say : Vice can not become virtue ; therefore the vicious man can
never become virtuous. Guilt can never become innocence;
therefore the guilty man must ever be abhorrent to God, and
must ever subsist, too, lest the abomination should subside into a
negative principle, — the loathsome substance into a shadow,
eluding God's indignation, and divine justice be defrauded by
the abatement of a nuisance. Here is the beginning of that
worst form of Dualism, that demands an object for God's detest-
ation, so that His attributes may be known.

The tlieory illustrates the fatuity of error. Setting out with
the principle that sin is essentially wrong, and no divine decree

96 THE TIIEODICIES.

or conjury or history can change its hateful nature, but taking a
false direction, it concludes that sin must be for ever incarnate
and enshrined. That which ought not to be, must be for ever.
Departing from the true sense of the Scriptural anathema, the
theodicy rejects what was true in the Roman conception of
justice, and adopts all that was false in the Greek. It retains
the rods of the ancient fasces, and immortalizes the criminal ; it
spares the axe, as striking too fatally, and depleting the govern-
ment of its strength. It revives the Erynnis of the old myth-
ology, pursuing her victim with torment, but without power to
destroy. The sword drops from the hand of Justice, as though
its employ were suicidal.

§ 10. SIN AS THE GREATEST EVIL.

It is often said that sin is the greatest possible evil, and there-
fore deserves the greatest possible punishment.^ This theodicy
may be interpreted in three different ways.

1. If it is taken without explanation or comment, it is too
rhetorical and indefinite to be of any value. Sins differ in the
degree of their heinousness, as is admitted even by those who
regard all sin as infinitely heinous. The greatest punishment is
due to the greatest sin, and to no other.

But the greatest actual sin is not of course the greatest pos-
sihle. The greatest possible punishment has not yet, perhaps,
been deserved by any creature. And we do not know that it
ever will be. For, to omnipotence, infinite punishment is pos-

1 It is refreshing to find this theodicy stated with its consistent results. Thus
Lebnitz tells us, Thdodicee, § 11: " The Cardinal (Sfondrate) appears to prefer
the state of infants dying without baptism, even to the kingdom of heaven, be-
cause sin is the greatest of evils, and they have died innocent of all actual sin;"
— Twisse, Vindiciffi, 1. 2, pars 1, § 5, digressio 1. p. 17 : " To be a sinner is worse
than to be condemned to the punishments of hell, according to Arminius; be-
cause, he says, 'that is opposed to a divine good, this to a human.' "Wherefore
it is better to be pious, and at the same time to be damned, than to be without
piety and without penalty;" — Bayle, Eeponse aux Questions, Part. I. c. S2:
" Toutes les bons casuistes se recrioront contre M. Kmg, qui croit que le mal
physique est un plus grand mal que le p^ch^."

SIN AS THE GREATEST EVIL. 97

sible ; and the theory thus appears as an indefinite re-statement
of the infinite ill-desert of sin.

2. If it is meant that sin is the icorst hind of evil, we grant
it. But what follows ? Simply this, that it should be treated
with the worst kind of pain, — that is, it should be punished.
For punishment is the worst kind of pain. Many natural evils,
such as the wayward temper of brutes and of children, must be
corrected with pain that is not punishment. Chastening is
tinged with penalty, as a correction of moral defect in those who
are radically good. But retribution is incomparably worse. It
is infliction matuved in remorse. Pain assumes its most intoler-
able form, when it smites the conscience. " The spirit of a man
sustaineth his infirmity ; but a wounded spirit who can bear ? "

The argument turns on the comparison between natural and
moral evil, and assumes that moral evil is the greater. We cer-
tainly do not believe that it is the less. But whether it is the
greater, or whether the two kinds of evil are at all commensur-
able, is a question. The subversion of Lisbon by an earthquake,
with the crushing out of 60,000 lives, was a natural evil ; the
malice of a child toward a playmate, is a moral evil ; which is
the greater ? Doubtless the malice would be wrong, though it
should prevent the earthquake. And the seeming paradox may
be explained by the fact that sin and pain are not to be compared
in magnitude ; as a pound is not really heavier than a league,
for the same reason that the league is not longer than the pound.
Even in the conscience they are, perhaps, not comparable as sin
and pain ; for literal or physical pain is not remorse, and there
is remorse without infliction. On the other hand, our moral phi-
losophy has not yet explained the relation of happiness to duty ;
whence not a few are ready to say that moral evil is such only
because it produces or threatens natural evil.

3. If the theodicy contemplates the loss of the soul and of
eternal life, as the greatest evil, then the inference of endless
misery as the punishment of sin involves certain difl[iculties that
are easily made apparent.

(1.) Endless misery can not be that the incurring of which
first makes sin the greatest evil ; for that would be an assump-
9

98 THE THEODICIES.

tion of the thing to be proved.-^ The argument must begin on
lower ground ; i. e., it must take the loss of eternal life in the
literal sense, as the greatest evil to which man was originally
exposed.

But sin as against one's own soul would then be punished with
an infinite loss ; that which makes sin the greatest evil being in
itself the greatest punishment.

(2.) If it be said that those who lead others to destruction are
not fully punished in their own loss of eternal happiness, but
they should also suffer eternal misery, — then we have the lost
divided into two classes, and only a part of them should be im-
mortalized for punishment. But by parity of reasoning, if eternal
misery were the original penalty, those who lead others to sin
should suffer a two-fold, or a manifold eternal misery. And
since many may be guilty in common of the ruin of one soul,
that should be avenged with as many eternities of woe. Hence
we see that the difficulty is not that of our view alone, but of
every case of aggravated wickedness. The only solution of the
difficulty is found in the principle already stated, that guilt is
measured, not by the amount of good destroyed or evil done, but
by the capacity and malignity of the transgressor.

It is proper here to remark, that, in any view of the divine
penalty, the division of the lost into the two classes of murderers
and murdered, and the punishment of the former by multiples of
the original penalty, would extol the power of Evil. For the
multiples of guilt would outnumber the souls destroyed, ten
thousand fold, or rather infinitely, if we consider how closely
each human being is bound to millions of others ; how every
man is a brother's keeper to he knows not how many ; and if
we then apply the law of geometrical progression which is in-
volved, the principle of retribution in question would burden the
divine side of the equation between sin and penalty, and give to

1 This petitio principii is thus made by Crousaz, forgetting his iisual good
sense, Examen du Pyrrhonisme, p. 569: "It would be further necessary [in
order to determine the proper penalty of sin] to be able to know the whole
chain of its consequences, the great number of evils whicli it causes in life, and
the dangers to which it exposes others after death."

SCIENTIA MEDIA DEI. 99

the Adversary a kingdom extended beyond measure, like the
magic range of figures in the kaleidoscope.

§ 11. SCIENTIA MEDIA DEI.

The hypothetical knowledge of God, or His fore-knowledge
of what the sinner would do in a certain case, has been employed
in a theodicy analogous to the in suo infinito, and which might
be called the in sua ceternitate. It is thus stated by a famous
divine of the sixth century : " It belongs to the Divine Justice
that they should never be without punishment who in this life
wished never to be without sin."^ "It is objected that a sin
that has had an end should not be punished endlessly. The
omnipotent God is just, forsooth, and what was not of eternal
perpetration should not be punished with eternal torment. It.
might be so, if the just and rigorous Judge, at his coming, should
weigh the deeds of men, and not their hearts. But the w'orkers
of iniquity have ceased to sin, simply because they have ceased
to live ; since they would have been glad to live for ever that
they might for ever sin. For they desire more to sin than to
live, and wish to live alway, just in order that they may sin
alway. Therefore, as God is just, they should never w^ant for
penalty, in whose heart it was in this life never to want for sin ;
and no limit of retribution is due to him who desired no limit of
his guilt. ^

In other words, the sinner devotes an eternal existence to sin

1 Gregory the Great, Dialogi, 1. 4, c. 44.

2 Idem, Moralla, 1. 34, c. 19. Compare Aquinas, Snmma Theol. Pars TIT.
q. 99, prop. 1; — Drexel, De Jiternitate, 1. 2, c. 15: — Fulgcntius, Dc Eemiss.
Feccat., 1. 2, c. 21 ; — Pellicanus, Comm. in 2 Tlies. i. 9; — Poole, Annot. 2 Xhes.
1. 9, and Synopsis Grit. Matt. xxv. 46: " They sinned iu their eteiniity, and
will be pmiished in God's eternity;" — Lucas Brugensis, in Matt. xxv. 46: "Ea
est peccatoris voluntas, ut jsternum peccaret si posset ,-"-Trosche], Demonstratio
seter. peccat. damnat., Hal. 1757 : — Maud, The Tremendous Sanction, p. 417, note.
May not the theory be also deduced from the expression of D. N. Lord, Theol.
and Lit. Journal, July 1854, p. 65: "If they [those who die j'oung] continue
in revolt, it is essential, in order to the vindication of God's justice in their ever-
lasting punishment, that they should display the most decisive proofs that they
are his enemies?"

100 THE THEODICIES.

in reversion, and is gruilty infinitely by anticipation. It is not
essential to this theodicy that the sinner should be naturally im-
mortal. If destruction vfere the original penalty of sin, it is
overruled by the necessity of eternal being, in which to punish
the desire of immortal guilt. The theory also assumes that the
sinner would not, through eternity, change his purpose, though
he had the power to do so. We reply :

1. This assumption, by which man arrogates to himself the
divine knowledge of what the sinner would do, must be proven.
Otherwise the theory is reduced to the consideration of the guilt
of the sinner in this life, in hazarding an eternal sinfulness, and
is the same with the in suo injinito already answered.

2. But this eternal sinfulness supposes an absolute immortality,
an infinitum which is the sinner's own ; which is the thing to be
proved. Or if it is said his guilt consists in the forfeiture of
immortality, then eternal suffering includes the recovery of the
forfeit, which is absurd. ^

8. The eternal suffering is either attended with eternal sinful-
ness, or it is not. In the one case, the sinner overreaches God,
acquiring the power to sin against Him for ever, because he has
been willing to do so. In the other case, there is eternal pun-
ishment for sin never committed.

The theory is, happily, nearly out of date. Its atrocity be-
longs to the mind of Hildebrand who matured it, and to the
darkening age in which he lived. But besides its mournful his-
toric value, it is only too similar to theodicies still in vogue.
And even in modern times it is applied to the race of man as
fallen in Adam, and we are told that each human being is
involved in the consequences of the first sin because God foresaw
that,lie would have committed the same if he had stood in Adam's
place. But it follows even from the representations of some who
hold this view, that the Redemption was due to the condemned
race. ^

1 Yet Augustine npproaclies such a statement, De Civ. Dei, 1. 21, c. 12:
" Quanto enim niagis homo fruebatur Deo, tanto majore impietate dereliquit
Deum, et factus est malo clignus asterno, qui hoc in se peremit bonum, quod
fsse posset a^ternum." Here also the rejected gift of God is charged as a debt.

2 See Miiller, Chr. Doc. of Sin, II. 374, 375.

FREE WILL. 101

§ 12. FREE WILL.

The free agency of man, one of the essential conditions of all
theodicy, is sometimes relied on as constituting a theodicy in
itself Thus the greatest of the Fathers says of eternal suffering :
*' Whoever thinks such a condemnation either unduly severe, or
unjust, surely has not estimated the guilt of sinning Vv^hen it was so
easy not to sin. For, as a signal merit of obedience is ascribed to
Abraham because so hard a duty was laid upon him as the slay-
ing of his son, — so in Paradise the disobedience was as much
greater as the duty required was less difficult. And as the obe-
dience of the second Adam was the worthier because it was unto
death, so the disobedience of the first Adam was more detestable
because it was unto death. For when the threatened penalty of
disobedience is great, and the requirement of our Maker is easy,
who can tell how great a sin it is not to obey in so easy a matter,
and in awe of so high an authority and so dreadful a doom ? " ^

We think the theory thus stated merits the name we have
given it, because the facility of obedience is the perfection of
freedom. So far as the theory relies on the vastness of the
motive to obedience, it becomes another theodicy, to be examined
presently.

This theory is refuted by its consequences. By parity of
reasoning the least sin might be visited with the heaviest penalty,
because the sin was voluntary. The child need not steal a pin ;
the petty theft may require more effort than to. desist from it.
Why should the child complain of penalty at all ? And if not at
all, why complain of any penalty, though it be infinite ? Indeed
the theodicy sometimes takes this form, — the more trivial the

1 Augustine, De Civ. Dei, 1. 14, c. 15. Compare Willard, Lectures on the
Catechism, q. 19 ; " There is a covenant merit. It is the wages for sin accord-
ing to the indentures which were made between God and man. Eom. vi. 23:
' The wages of sin is death.' The word signifies a stipend, or something that is
agreed for. . . . The sinner hath no cause to complain, because he knew
what he had to stand to;" — J. Scott, Cliristian Life, Part IIL c. 9; — Crousaz,
Examcn du Pyrrlionisme, Part IIL c. 2, § 22 ; c. 13, §§7, 25, 34, 38, 52 ;— Bledsoe,
Theodicy, p. 302 ; — Hinton, Harmony of Eeligious Truth, pp. 208, 209.
9# •

102 THE TIIEODICIES.

duty God requires, the more excuseless the refusal to perform it,
and the greater may be the penalty.

The fallacy is that which we liave already indicated : a mis-
take of the condition of guilt for the producing cause of guilt.
It is as if one should say an infinite penalty of law is just because
the subject hnoics it to be the penalty. The knowledge of law
and its penalty is an essential condition of its binding force ; but
the publication of a law assuredly does not 7nal:e it just. Neither
does the most perfect power to obey it, or to escape its penalty.

§ 13. THE CHOICE OF TWO INFINITIES.

The theory just considered is often supplemented by the con-
sideration of eternal happiness and misery as offset against each
other, and offered to man's choice. Thus a living writer, speak-
ing of man as free, and a necessary holiness as impossible : " It
was the bright and cheering light which this truth seemed to cast
upon the dark places of the universe, that first inspired us with
the thought and determination to produce a theodicy. And it is
in the light of this truth, if we mistake not, that the infinite love
of God may be seen beaming from the eye of hell, as well as
from the bright regions of eternal blessedness. . . . All that
could be done in such a case was, for God to set life and death
before us, accompanied by the greatest of all conceivable motives
to pursue the one, and to fly from the other ; and then say
* choose ye ;' and all this God has actually done for the salvation
of all men. Hence, though some should be finally lost, His infi-
nite goodness will be clear." ^

1 Bledsoe, Theodicy, pp. 302, 303. Compare J. Clarke, Origin of Moral Evil,
Boyle Lecture Sermons, III., 275 ; — Baxter, Unreasonableness of Infidelity,
4 31; — Bp. Newton, Dissertations, No. 60: " You cannot complain of injustice,
for the rewards and punishments are equal; " — Bates, Immort. of Soul, c. 12:
*' Eternal life and death are set befoi-e them. ... So that none dies but for
■wilful disobedience ;"" — Harris, Man Primeval, p. 177: " Now the same consti-
tution which rendei's man capable of hoping, renders him capable of fearing to
the same extent. But if it was never intended that such fear should be realized
in the event of disobedience, here is the anomaly of a part of the human consti-
tution to which there is nothing whatever in^he objective and the future to
correspond."

CHOICE OF PENALTIES. 103

This theodicy is closely connected with the common notion of
human dignity ; and in this view it is, we think, already refuted.
As an argument for the divine justice, we may reply to it in the
words of Tillotson. After dismissing several theories, he says :
" Here are two things which seem to bid fairly towards an
answer. First, that the reward which God promiseth to our
obedience is equal to the punishment which he threatens to our
disobedience. But yet this, I doubt, will not reach the business ;
because though it be not contrary to justice to exceed in rewards,
that being matter of mere favor, yet it may be so, to exceed in
punishments. Secondly, it is further said, that the sinner in this
case hath nothing to complain of, since he hath his own choice.
This I confess is enough to silence the sinner, and to make him
acknowledge that his destruction is of himself; but yet for all
that it does not seem so clearly to satisfy the objection from the
disproportion between the fault and the punishment." ^

The theodicy fails, besides being dualistic in its very form.
When it is asked why God should propose to man the choice of
two infinities, the answer brings us to another form of the theory.

§ 14. CHOICE OF PENALTIES.

Meanwhile we may notice a theodicy similar to the last, which
seems to have been that of Baxter. He says : " I would ask
you, do you not know that you and all men must die ? and would
you not be contented to suffer a terrible degree of misery ever-
lastingly, rather than die ? Whatsoever men may say, it is
certain they would. Though not to live to us is better than to
live in hell, yet men would live in very gi-eat misery, rather than
not live at all, if they had their choice. We see men that have
lived, some in extreme poverty, some in great pain, for many
years, that yet had rather continue in it than die. If, then, it be
so great a misery to be turned again into nothing, that you would
rather suffer everlasting pain in some measure, methinks you can
discover a probability that God's word should be true, which

1 Sermon on Matt. xxv. 46.

104 THE THEODICIES.

threatens yet a greater pain ; for is it not likely that the judge
will inflict more than the prisoner will choose or submit to ? " ^

The statement is, doubtless, too general ; only the nobler sort
of men have spoken of eternal pain as better than the loss of
being ; and that inconsiderately, though sincerely.

The argument divides the eternal misery of the lost into two
portions, — that highest measure which they would prefer to non-
existence, and the overplus which they would not prefer, but
which justice may inflict. It will readily appear that this over-
plus alone can be penalty ; the rest can hardly be vindicated as
just — much less as penal.

For, why would so great a degree of eternal misery be pre-
ferred to annihilation ? Certainly because immortality would be
an honor and a blessing, in the pleasures of intellect at least,
though not in the enjoyments of sense.

" For who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
These thoughts that wander through eternity ? '*

They would be the solace and comfort that are to make the
suffering preferable to annihilation. "Without them who would
not lose his being? But they would be a gift of God's eternal
goodness. And the attendant suffering which they are supposed
to vindicate, would be a charge made for the gratuity. The
pleasure would be no longer a grace of God, and the pain no
longer of his justice.

§ 15. INFINITE MOTIVES.

Salvation is too valuable to be exposed to any hazard of loss.
Hence a very prevalent sentiment which has been expressed as

1 The Unreasonableness of Infidelity, Part I. Works, xx. 31, Lend. 1830.
Compare Twisse, Vindicife, 1. 2, pars 1, \ 5, p. 17: "Not oxAy according to the
Schoolmen, but to Augustine also [De Lib. Arbit. 1. 3, cc. 6-8], even accord-
ing to the truth itself, it is more desirable to be, though in any pain whatever,
• than not to be at all ; " — Dr. Gordon, Hall's Memoir, p. 95, ed. Pres. Board:
" So dreadful do I think annihilation, that I would rather live in pain than not
live at all; " — Athenagoras, I. Taylor, and E. Williams, as above, p. 13; — Wal-
ker, Philosophy of Scepticism, pp. 151-153, states the common view that hell is
appointed "in mercy" to the lost, because heaven would be less congenial.

INFINITE MOTIVES. 105

follows : " There can be no kindness felt for the impenitent, in
wishing any less influence to come upon them in their sins, to
urge them to enter immediately upon that course in which their
highest happiness lies, than what arises from the existence of an
endless penalty. Nor can any kindness be felt for the penitent
and pious on earth, in wishing any less influence to come upon
them to bind them firmly and immovably to their Saviour, than
what arises from the threatening of an endless penalty in case
they apostatize. The desire of Universalists cannot be to have
any motives addressed to men for carrying on the work of refor-
mation on earth, higher and stronger than what arise from the
doctrine they reject. . . . And as to God, they must ac-
knowledge that He regards the holiness of his subjects as involv-
ing their highest good; and that He is pursuing this object in
the demands and threatenings of his government. Consequently
there can be no kindness and respect felt for his character, in
wishing any motive lessened which is to secure the obedience
and veneration of his subjects." ^ "With this should be compared
a translation of one of the early Fathers : " Allowing our tenets
to be as false and groundless presumptions as you would have
them, yet I must tell you they are presumptions the world can-
not well be without. If they are follies, they are follies of great
use, because the believers of them, what under the dread of
eternal pain, and the hope of everlasting pleasure, are under the
strongest obligations to become the best of men." ^

It is a frequent cavil of the sceptic that the Christian practices
virtue for the hope of an eternal reward, for the fear of an
eternal pain, or for both reasons ; not at all for the love of virtue.

1 Fitcli, Keview of Tyler on Fut. Pun., Chr. Spectator, Dec. 1829.

2Tertulliau, Apology, c. 49, Eeeves' translation. (But the context makes
the argument to be this, that the utility of a doctrine is j^rhna facie evidence of
its truth.) Compare Bp. Burnet, Demonstr. of True Religion, Boyle Lecture
Sermons, III. 494, 495: "Therefore the right and just proportion of punishment
to be annexed to laws is not to be measured by the nature of sin; " — Bates,
Immort. of the Soul, c. 12; — Maud, The Tremendous Sanction, c. 3, § 6; —
Watson, Theol. Instt. Part II. c. 19 ; — Hinton, Ilannony of Religious Truth, pp.
203, sq. 206 ;— Walker, Philosophy of Scepticism, pp. 147, 148.

106 THE THEODICIES.

The cavil is certainly not silenced by this theodicy. In one of
the above statements its principle is identical with that of the
pious fraud ; and we need not wonder that an eminent writer,
after having said that penalty is a matter of prudence in the law-
giver, in which justice is not concerned, should add, that " after
all, He that threatens hath still the power of execution in his own
hands ; " and should intimate that the threatening may be de-
signed for effect and not for execution.-^

And too consistently. For the argument sets out from the
divine goodness, and deduces eternal suffering in behalf of
human salvation. But for whose benefit, and when for their
benefit ? Certainly not for the lost ; it can do them no good.
Nor for the saved ; the threatening is supposed to have accom-
plished its work for them. It is good only for the living ; its
blessing ceases with death. Its justice must then be made out,
no longer from the goodness of God, but from his veracity.

In the last resort, then, the theodicy fails, since even the
veracity of God can not bind him to what is not intrinsically
just. But it fails primarily, for another reason. The threaten-
ing itself is not due to the welfare of men. They have no claim
on God for an infinite inducement to be saved. Even the
glorious attractions of eternal bliss are a gift of His goodness.
Much more would be a second infinite motive, in the terror of an
endless misery. That new encouragement would be an unmerited
favor, an undeserved blessing, a free donative of God. Hence,
perhaps, we may understand why it has been granted to some
nations of men, and not to others ; and hence the missionary
appeal in behalf of this gospel. But if the threatening is itself
a gratuity, the execution of it is also a gratuity ; and we must
conclude that damnation, no less than salvation, is of divine
grace.

The weakness and poverty of man, which appears in his in-
sensibility to the motive of eternal happiness, of course gives
him no claim to the other motive. If he needs it, this is his guilt

1 Tillotson, Sermon on Matt. xxv. 46. Compare Less, Dogmatik, p. 587.

THE REDEMPTION. 107

and not his merit. And if it were not the token of man's ill
desert, it would be an imjoeachment of God's power or wisdom,
and an argument of his infinite necessity.

§ IG. THE REDEMPTION.

To vindicate God's justice, the heaviest drafts have been made
upon His grace in that most signal act which should be most
sacredly guarded from such violation. The subsidizing of the
Redemption as something due to the human race, is found in its
mildest form in Watson. Speaking of an objection against the
imputation of Adam's sin, he says, it '' springs from regarding
the legal part of the whole transaction which affected our first
parents and their posterity separately from the evangelical 'pro-
vision of mercy which was concurrent with it, and which included,
in like manner, both them and their whole race. . . . The
redemption of men by Christ was not certainly an after-thought,
brought in upon man's apostasy ; it was a provision, and when
man fell, he found justice hand-in-hand with mercy." Again :
" Had no method of forgiveness and restoration been established
with respect to human offenders, the penalty of deatli must have
been forthwith executed upon them ; . . . and with them,
and in them, the human race must have utterly perished." ••

We call this a mild statement of the theodicy, because it was
connected with the question respecting the case of those dying
in infancy ; and in itself it includes an optimist consideration,
which is foreign to the point at issue. It seems to concede,
however, that without a Redemption, the sin of our first parents
would have involved no eternal misery. A later statement is
more significant. " We are not told," says Bledsoe, " and we
do not know, what it would have been consistent with the justice
of God to do in relation to the world, if there had been no remedy
provided for its restoration. Perhaps it might never have been
created at all. . . . We do not know that even the justice
of God would have created man, and permitted him to fall, wan-

1 Thcol. Instit. Part II. cc. 18, 19.

108 THE THEODICIES.

dering everlastingly amid the horrors of death, without hope and
without remedy. We find nothing of the kind in the word of
God, and in our nature it meets with no response except a wail
of unutterable horror." ^

We reply, this is the precise question of all theodicy, — What
is the just penalty of God's law, without respect to His grace ?
and of course we must ask what " would have been,'* and what
" might be ; " it is not enough to know " what is." Is the im-
pending penalty incurred simply by transgression of the Law, or
by rejection of the Grace ? To say that it is incurred, but that we
do not know' if it was due without the grace, is to say that we
do not know justice from injustice, and that a theodicy is im-
possible.

The Kedemption is so intimately connected with the other
doctrines of the Christian system, that it is easy to miss the
point on which the draft thereupon turns. Let us grant, then,
that the human race was continued, after the sin of Adam,
because salvation was still possible by a method of grace ; that
the sin of Adam was not imputed as guilt to his posterity, but
that the final displeasure of God is incurred only by personal
disobedience ; i. e. by actual sin, and not by birth sin. The
question still remains : Would Adam, or any other human being,
suffer eternal misery, if there were no forgiveness in the name
of a Redeemer ? And the theodicy in hand consists in offering
the work of Christ as a vindication of God's justice, if any at
last suffer for ever. The complexion of it appears in the follow-
ing remark upon the difiiculties set forth in the " Conflict of
Ages." " Must the great compensatory fact which shall har-
monize these conflicting elements be sought in either a past or a
future state of being? May it not be in the present? Is it
not furnished in the great fact of Redemption, or an economy
of grace and recovery co-extensive with the facts of sin and
depravity ? . . . Not that all men will infallibly be saved,
but that salvation is for all, and possible to all ; that the plan of
Redemption is designed for and includes the whole race in its

1 Theodicy, p. 254.

THE REDEMP' ION. 109

design and end and provisions ; and that none will now be lost
but those who ivill not be saved. ^

This theodicy is very prominent in the history of Theology.
It is not confined to Arminian divines, to whom it has been
most attributed in the defense of Calvinism as trul} asserting
the doctrines of grace; but many who decline the Arminian
system have embraced it. It is also involved in the opinion
so often avowed, that the immortality of all men is the gift of
Christ, without w^hom the being of man would have utterly
perished.

Its absurdity is easily illustrated. It is as if a person charged
with crime and condemned for it, should be offered a pardon ;
refusing which, his sentence is executed, not on the ground of
his original guilt, but for the new crime of rejecting the pardon.
Or as if a prisoner should be permitted to escape if he wished,
and then be told his condemnation would be unjust if he had no
such opportunity. Eternal life is offered a second time to those
who have once proved unworthy of it ; and they are then told
that for their original rebellion they did not deserve death ; but
if they now choose to die, they merit endless woe. In this view
the theory is identical with that which gives man the choice of
injQnite good and evil, with this difference : the one condemns
for the first wrong choice, the other for a second wrong choice.
In either case the free gift is charged as an infinite debt.

In another view the theodicy is unspeakably dreadful. It
follows, that it would have been infinitely better for fallen man
if justice had taken its course. He might then have only died;
but the offer of rescue exposes him to the danger of eternal
misery. In other words, he is punished infinitely worse by the
grace of God than he would have been by his justice !

But it is asked : Is not man's guilt aggravated by the rejection

1 Compare Jer. Taylor, On Original Sin ; — Abp. King, On the Fall of Man ;
— Le Clerc, Bibliot. Choisie, VII., 340, 341; (see Bayle, Edponse aux Questions,
Part II. c. 173); — Schaff, Die Siinde wider d. h. Geist, p. 159: " Tlieir absolute
impotence and unhappiness gives the most striking proof tliat there is no otlier
way to blessedness than that offered through faith in Chx-ist;" — Hinton, Har-
mony of Religious Truth, p. 208 ; — Geo. Payne, LL.D., Congregational Lecture,
Of Original Sin, pp. 109, 110.
10

110 THE THEODICIES.

of an offered Savior? Undoubtedly. Man can not despise
divine goodness and long-suffering without treasuring up wrath
against the day of wrath. But this is something infinitely differ-
ent from the free grace of God justifying endless penal suffering.
If that is not merited by man's original guilt, it can not be
merited by ten thousand aggravations of it. In no period less
than eternity can finite guilt be heaped up to infinity.

The practical bearings of the theodicy should be noted. The
gratuitous natui-e of the Redemption lies at the foundation of the
religion of a fallen race. It may have been " provided " in the
counsels of eternity, — it is still gratuitous ; the advancing ages
have not made it fall due. It may be true that God would not
be just to himself, if He were not more than just to us ; still
his infinite goodness is nothing that we can claim. ^ And there
can be no " compensation " for severe penalties incurred in the
administration of Him who is eternally just. But if the Re-
demption was a vindication of his justice, man may withhold his
confession of moral bankruptcy, and forbear thanksgiving for
divine mercy and grace.

Hence a living writer, equally profound and devout, has
truly remarked, " how cautiously the remark often heard in our
time, — the true Theodicee is the Redemption, — is to be con-
ceived of, if it is not to lead to a great error, radically perverting
the Christian scheme of salvation. If the plan of Redemption
is essentially an act of the righteousness of God, it had been
unjust, and a violation of a claim justifiable on the part of man,
to leave him without redemption. But it can only so appear to
him who denies that man is himself guilty in his sins and their
consequences."^

1 Compare Crousaz, Examen du Pyrrhonisme, Part III. c. 13, § 6.

2 Miiller, Chr. Doc. of Sin, I. 269. The theodicy is canvassed by Coleridge
at length, in the following passage, which is equally pertinent and eloquent:
" Whatever else the descendants of Adam might have been without the inter-
cession of Christ, yet (this intercession having been effectually made), they are
now endowed with souls that are not extinguished together with the material
body. Now unless these divines teach likewise the Eomish figment of Purga-
tory, and to an extent in which the Church of Pome herself would denounce
the doctrine as an impious heresy ; unless they hold that a punishment tempo-

fRE-EXISTENCE. HI

§ 17. PRE-EXISTENCE.

We need not press any of the objections which have been so
rife against the tlieodicy offered in the " Conflict of Ages." The
doctrine of man's preexistence has a history which may yet com-
mand respect,^ though we think it has not been relied upon as a
vindication of the eternity of future suffering until recently. As
an ancient theodicy it had reference simply to the evils of man's
present state.

raiy and remedial is the loorst evil that the impenitent have to apprehend in a
future state ; and that the spiritual death declared and foretold by Christ, ' the
death eternal where the worm never dies,' is neither death nor eternal, but a
certain quantum of suffering in a state of faith, hope, and progi-essive amend-
ment, — unless they go these lengths, (and the divines here intended are orthodox
Churchmen, men who would not knowingly advance even a step on the road
towards them) — then I fear, that any advantage their theory might possess
over the Calvinistic scheme in the article of Original Sin, would be dearly pur-
chased by increased difficulties and an ultra-Calvinistic narrovvness in the article
of Redemption. I at least find it impossible, with my present human feelings,
not to imagine otherwise, than that even in heaven it would be a fearful thing
to know, that in order to my elevation to a lot infiniteh more desirable than by
nature it would have been, the lot of so vast a multitude had been rendered
infinitely more calamitous ; and that my felicity had been purchased by the
everlasting misery of the majority of my fellow-men, who, if no Redemption
had been provided, after inheriting the pains and pleasures of earthly existence
during the numbered- hoiu-s, and the few and evil — evil \et few — days of the
years of their mortal life, would have fallen asleep to wake no more, would
have sunk into the dreamless sleep of the grave, and have been as the murmur,
and the plaint, and the exulting swell, and the sharp scream, which the unequal
gust of yesterday snatched from the strings of a wind-harp ! " — Aids to Reflec-
tion, 1st Am. ed. p. 332.

1 Aside from its eastern and more ancient history it has been held by Philo
Judaeus, 0pp. I. 416; II. 37, ed. Mangey; — Plotinus, Ennead. 4, 11.7,8; —
Origen, Com. in Joh. t. 2, cc. 24, 25 ; 1. 13, c. 43 ; — Nemesius, De Nat. Hom. c. 2 ; -
Synesius, De Providentia, § 1; De Insomniis, Ep. 67; — Augustine, doubtingly,
De Lib. Arb. 1. 3, cc. 20, 21; — De Genes, ad. lit. 1. 7, c. 24; — Jerome, Epp. ad
Marcell., Anapsych. et Demetriad. ; — Basil, In Hexaemeron, Homil. 8, c. 2 ; —
Cardan, Theognoston, 1. 3, De Animi Immort. cc. 3, 29, 58 ; — Heniy More, who
cites Galen, Hippocrates, and many others. Immortality of the Soul, b. 2, cc.
12, 13;— The author of "Two Hundred Queries," Lond. 1684 (see Bayle,
(Euvres, I. 55) ; — Jenyns, Origin of Evil, Pref. and Let. 3 ; — Sir H. Dav}', Con-
solations of Travel, Dialog. 4; — Lessing, Education of the Human Race (see
Hedge's German Prose Writers, p. 95); — Beneke, Brief an die RiJmer (see
Moh'ler, Symbolism, b. 1, c. 3, § 15); — Miiller, Chi\ Doc. of Sin, II. 77, 166,
400, 440, a "timeless" preexistence.

112 THE THEODICIES.

The sentiment which underlies the argument of the " Conflict
of Ages," appears in the following expression: "In this wide
universe no thought is so affecting as to exist for eternity, and to
be called on, in a relatively brief space of time, to decide the
character of that eternity" (p. 481). This life, so short and so
full of weakness and ignorance and trouble, seems an unequal
probation for an immortal destiny ; and it is held that each mem-
ber of the human race has deserved eternal suffering, by deliber-
ate transgression, in a probation with the best advantages, con-
tinued for we know not how long a period. Men are supposed
to have been not unlike the angels in their first estate, but more
favored than the fallen angels in the grant of a new trial for the
eternal state.

The value of the theodicy turns on the value of the supposed
original probation. Were its advantages such that it might justly
decide and fix a character for eternity ? Now the very idea of
a new trial suggests that those advantages were not such as to
determine an unalterable character ; or at least, that if the for-
mation of an immutable character was then possible, it did not
become /«c^ in the case of the present human beings. For if so,
why are we here? Just as a new trial of one charged with
crime supposes a remaining doubt in the question of his guilt, so
a new probation of beings once fallen assumes that they were
not fallen beyond hope of recovery. They were not utterly des-
perate and callous against all good influences. They were not
immutably wicked. Their sin had not the quality of eternal
endurance. The abused privileges of the previous state might,
indeed, advance one far towards a just condemnation as hope-
lessly and helplessly depraved, as certain to sin on eternally in
spite of all that God could do to change his purpose. But pro-
gress toward this state, and the actual attainment of it, are differ-
ent things, and they may be infinitely different.

The theodicy fails, therefore, upon the face of it, to vindicate
eternal suffering for the immutability of a preexistent sinfulness ;
it assumes the contrary. Can it rely, then, upon the heinousness
of the sins of a previous state ? This would be a resort to one
or other of the theories already examined ; and it is plain no

ETERNAL SINFULNESS. 113

theory of infinite beinousness is tenable, until it appears tbat the
sinner is an infinite and divine being.

Is the supposed condemnation justified, then, by the numher,
or the long continuance, of sins in the previous state? The
answer is, no finite or temporary sinfulness can merit eternal
suffering. An indefinite, unmeasured, immense duration of guilt
still falls infinitely 'short of infinity. If the sins of one year, or
of three score years and ten, deserve not eternal misery, then no
multiple of them, and no mere aggravation of them, can justify it.
The sins of an eternal preexistence alone can justify it.

The theory may be illustrated architecturally. It is proposed
to support an inflexible beam, projecting infinitely. For this, it
must have limitless strength of material. No brace work is
allowed ; but it is either inserted in a mortice work of eternal
adamant ; or it is balanced by an infinite superincumbent weight;
or by a projection infinitely in the opposite direction. Either of
these things, changeless character, infinite guilt, or guilt from
eternity, are supposable only

" If our substance be indeed divine,
And cannot cease to be."

§ 18. ETERNAL SINFULNESS.

But the notion of a sinful character that shall never in fact be
changed is a distinct theodicy ; or rather it gives rise to two,
according as the character is supposed to be ever voluntary, or
to become a destiny. The first is thus stated by D wight : "God
may punish sin so long as it exists. He who sins through this
life may evidently sin through another such period ; and another,
and another, without end. That, while we continue to sin, God
may justly punish us, if he can justly punish at all, is equally
evident. . . . The Scriptures teach us that sinners who die
in impenitence will not cease to sin throughout eternity. The
supposition that their sufferings in the future world will be com-
plete, involves in it as a consequence, that they will continue to
sin. If they were to become penitent and virtuous, they would
of course possess many enjoyments, and those of a very impor-
10*

114 THE THEODICIES.

tant nature." ^ The element of freedom is more distinctly stated
by Olshausen : " The punishment here spoken of is not arbitrary
or positive ; the punishment of lovelessness is association with
the loveless alone, in that state of discord in the external as well
as the internal life, which constantly proceeds from the absence
of love." ^ And by Nitzsch : " The idea of eternal damnation
and punishment is so far a necessary one, inasmuch as there can
not be in eternity any forced holiness of the personal being, or
any blessed unholiness." ^ Its advantages are urged by Chalm-
ers : "We hold that it Avould purge theology of many of its
errors, and that it would guide and enlighten the practical Chris-
tianity of many honest enquirers, if the moral character both of
heaven and hell were more distinctly recognized, and held a
more prominent place in the regards and contemplations of
men."*

This theodicy is founded on the distinction between natural
inability and moral inability, as it is made by theologian^ of
the new school. When the unconverted sinner pleads that he
can not repent, it is held, and we think truly, that his supposed
disability is a deep-seated disinclination, a will not, for which he
is at the moment accountable ; and his utter dependence on God
for help leaves it still his duty to help himself. And it is now
argued that this moral inability will form the eternal character
of the lost, without passing into a natural inability. Consistently

1 Theology, Sermon clxvii. 2 Comm. on Matt. xxv. 46.

3 Christian Doctrine, § 219.

4 Sermon, Heaven a character and not a locality, Rev. xxii. 11. Compare
Lactantius, De Ira Dei, c. 21 : " Ira divina in reternnm manet adversus eos, qui
peccant in ajternnm." He presently says: "Qui peccare desinit, iram dei
mortalem facit;" but the sentiment seems limited to this life, and the theodicy
may be the "in sua rBternitate ; " — Leibnitz, Tlieodicee, §§ 133, 2G6, 269:
" Apres cettc vie, . . . il y'a toujours dans Thomme qui peche, lors meme
qu'il est damn6, une liberte qui le rend coupable, et une puissance, mais eloi-
gnee, de se relever;" — Werdermann(Restor.), Theodicee, I. 163-165 ; — Secre-
tan (Restor.), La Philosophic de la Libert^, p. 330: " L' enfer et le paradis
reposent sur la liberte; " — Gerhard, Loci TheoL, de Infer. § 60; — Charnock,
Disc, on Providence; — Watts, World to Come, Disc. XIII. § 1 ; — Edwards the
Younger, Wks. I. 112; — Woods, Works, IIL 285-288; — Lacoudre, Theodicea,
II. 314; — Coquerel (Restor.), Christianity, p. 413, tr. by Davidson; Hamilton,
Rewards and Punishments, pp. 426, 427, 429.

ETERNAL SINFULNESS. 115

with this view, the " eternal condemnation " is sometimes repre-
sented as being not " thetical " or positive and absokite, but
hypothetical or conditional ; actual, not by virtue of any irrevo-
cable sentence, but by reason of a persistent wickedness ; i. e.
the lost suffer for ever, not because they must, but because they
will.

The apparent advantages of this theory are the following: 1.
It aims to address the conscience, as well as the fears of men ;
and to a right-minded man the thought of eternal sinfulness is
more horrible than of eternal suffering. 2. It seeks to relieve
the doctrine of an eternal infliction. 3. It is sufficient as a vin-
dication of God's justice, if the fact it assumes be admitted. No
one doubts that a man should be miserable as long as he is sinful,
though it be for ever.

But these advantages, if we mistake not, are purchased at a
ruinous cost. For, (1.) the appeal to the conscience is singularly
ineffective. Men are not apt to be afraid of becoming wicked ;
much less of becoming fiends. If they have not lost integrity,
they think that is impossible. And utter, eternal abandonment
seems to them the more incredible, if they are to retain an eter-
nal freedom. If on the other hand they are already corrupt,
an eternal career of wickedness has lost its terror. It acquires
a certain dignity, as we have already shown, and they glory in
their future shame.

We speak of eternal freedom, because that is essential to the
theory. To deny it, is to shift the ground of the argument. But
this freedom is admitted, not only in numerous statements of
the theodicy, but in the Restorationism which appears in all his-
tory as its natural result. If through eternity the lost soul is
not compelled to cherish its guilt, the suffering of penalty may
effect its reform. It was just this notion of an inalienable power
of amendment, that was carried to its consistent result by Origen,
in the belief that the lost might repent and be saved, and that
the saved might sin again and fall. Thus, instead of an eternal
necessity, evil appeared as an eternal vicissitude, which no divine
wisdom or creature perfection could prevent. And though this
early causeway between heaven and hell is now broken up from

116 THE THEODICIES.

its place in theology, we shall see that a broader platform, so
wide that it is not often measured, has taken its place.

(2.) The supposed advantage respecting the mode of divine
punishment is only apparent. The notion of remorse of con-
science, instead of literal fire and physical torture, is an advan-
tage so far as it suggests that the penalty is self-inflicted or may
be inherently just. But this is an indirect argument of the
hazardous freedom we have just named ; and, while it pleases a
philosophic taste, its tendency is to remove the hand of God
away from future punishment, so it shall no longer appear as His
judgment. It is then an easy thing to deny His right to inflict
penalty, and in a kmd of Naturalism He is theorized away from
the scene of final judgment.

(3.) Though the theodicy would suffice, it is unproven. It is
undermined by the element of freedom which it assumes. For
while a perfect holiness may be ever maintained without destroy-
ing freedom, the blessed being supposed to meet with every sup-
port and encouragement of virtue, — eternally persistent sin in
suffering is hardly to be looked for, if it be not a necessity fatal
to the idea of sin. Hence it is significant of the weakness of
the argument, when Dr. SchafF, perhaps its ablest defender,
reduces the freedom of the lost to a minimum, thus : " The ele-
ment oi freedom must here indeed be very limited. For the
habitual sinner is already the slave of sin (John viii. 34), and
incapable, unless by the divine redeeming grace still present to
him, to escape from its dominion. Accordingly, the thraldom of
the blasphemer must be of the highest degree, and he can have
only that seeming-freedom (Scheinfreiheit), that almost flicker-
ing spark of freedom which is quite necessary to the conception
of personality, which he still retains even in his most hideous
deformity." -^

We have remarked that the theory makes no account of in-
flicted punishments. But if we allow the slightest pressure from
such a source, the least trace of the freedom assumed will prove
fatal to the theory. Bellarmine was of opinion that one glimpse '

1 Die Siinde wider den heiligen Geist, pp. 101, 102.

ETERNAL SINFULNESS. 117

of hell- fire were sufficient to make the most flagitious sinner turn
Christian ; nay, live as an hermit, a most strict mortified life.
Would not the sense of pain, along with a rational freedom, drive
the anguished soul at once to a God who is regarded as not
implacable, — to a heaven which is left open by the supposition
that the lost might " possess many advantages, and these of a
very important nature ? "

But in fact the freedom of the lost seems to be denied, not
only by Augustine, when he says : " The first death drives the
reluctant soul out of the body ; the second death holds the reluc-
tant soul in the body ; they are alike in this, that the soul suffers
from the body what it wills not ; " ^ but also by the numerous
passages of Scripture which represent the lost as driven away to
their punishment, willing to be saved but it is too late, and the
very possibility of salvation finally cut off. And the only passage
supposed to suggest an eternal sinfulness (Rev. xxii. 11) will be
shown, in the proper place, to apply not to a future state of pun-
ishment, but to the scenes of time.

But this is not all. The principle of this theodicy is that of
the " ethical theology" now so prevalent, which so utterly ignores
all that is peculiar to the religion of Christ. According to this
theology, reward and punishment are not only just, but natural
and inevitable ; they are dispensed by the proper and indestructi-
ble faculties of man's being. Virtue is the highest health of the
soul ; sin is hardly a disease ; it is only irregular or perverse
action, and its penalty, unrest. There is no crisis, of Fall or of
Redemption, as there is to be none of life or death. The judg-
ment is not a crisis ; for it decides nothing for the future. It
fixes no destiny beyond the omnipotence of immortal free agency.
And as there is no judgment, there can be no grace. Christ is
not a Savior. He may be a helper ; but he delivers from no
evil which the undying vigor of the soul might not, in the light
of eternity, discover and repair. There is no forgiveness ; what
we call by that blessed name is only the remission of sins after
they have been put away. The mind is its own place; and,

iDe Civ. Dei, 1.21, c. 3.

118 THE THEODICIES.

creating its own character, it can break the strongest bonds of
sin, and make the prison of despair radiant with heavenly light.
Thus, with an unimpaired immortality, man becomes his own
savior, and the Gospel of Christ an offence.

As the theodicy has been stated thus far, there has been no
denial of God's power or right to put an end to the supposed on-
going sinfulness by the extinction of the sinner. But this denial
is made frequently, and recently. Thus it is said : " If in his
impenitent state the punished offender is adding perpetually to
his sin, does not each moment of that penal woe claim the mo-
ment next following, also, as due to retribution ? And this must
be the case immortally with a soul immortally sinning. Ever
persisting guilt will require ever persisting punishment; and
thus justice may for ever forbid its escape into naught. The
only escape from this eternal necessity of justice binding it to
existence, would seem to be in making justice contemporary
with crime, or in inflicting it on souls bereft of moral conscious-
ness, and thus incapable of continued sin ; both of which expedi-
ents would seem to be foreign to the idea of punishment, and
certainly unsupported by the analogies of the present life."-^

Arc there no analogies in nature, or in human governments,
to support God's right of release from an endless struggle with
those who rebel against Him ? Must the officer of justice not
disarm or restrain the culprit, in order to enforce the law that
condemns him ? Must he hazard the murderous stroke of the
bowie knife, or death by the revolver, for some scruple respect-
ing the right to disarm a man ? May human justice employ
prisons and strait-jackets ? and may not divine justice withdraw
one, andlaiot another, of the abused faculties which divine good-
ness gapn ? May not God, with a touch or a glance, palsy the
rebelliouy.will, leaving the conscience with full power of remorse,
but pow(^viess to sin ? Is the human soul, though it has made
itself accursed, still so sacred a thing that God does wrong to
impair it ? Or, to waive this prescription of methods to God,

1 T. M. Post, New Englander, Feb. 1856, p. 133. The denial of actual sin on
the part of the lost, made by many divines, is here significant, though it pertains
more strictly to another theodicy. See below, p. 123, note.

A LAW OF NATURE. 119

can his swift and nnimpaired justice in no way overtake the
puny culprit, or strike him down in death ? Is not the restraint
of guilt a primary object of punishment ; insomuch that these
two things were both denoted by the same word {x6?MGig) in the
classic Greek ? And are we now told that the punished sinner,
in his inmost power of guilt, must not be restrained at all?
Shall we thus reduce Omnipotent Wisdom to the predicament of
the unskilful conjurer, who has evoked an evil spirit not knowing
by what spell he is put down again, and who must contend with
him henceforth as best he can !

We have remarked that the doctrine of eternal sinfulness
finds no support in the Bible. The theodicy is given up, in a
significant manner, by Hopkins, as neither scriptural nor rational.
Having said that unless sin is an infinite evil, " it must be ac-
knowledged that no reason can be ojffered why God should
punish the sinner for ever," he adds : " The Scripture represents
sinners to be sentenced to this punishment . . . for the sins
which they did commit when in the body, in this world." And
" there does not appear to be any justice in sentencing a sinner
to a punishment which he does not already deserve for what he
has done." ^

Here it is easy to see that the theodicy (which as stated by
some of its adherents makes the future judgment " hyjDotheticar')
is equivalent and very similar to that of the scientia media Dei,
Thus the most popular theory is most closely allied to that
which none will now acknowledge, though we have seen it almost
expressed by a living writer. The difference between them is
made by the latent sentiment we have noticed, that the final
judgment is not a crisis, and may not be a finality.

§ 19. A LAW or NATURE.

Besides the inseparable connection between all sin and misery,
a law of nature is sometimes asserted for the eternity of future
misery. Thus Abp. King : " Wliatever is perpetual must have
a natural and perpetual cause ; for a j)erpetual miracle is not to

1 Inquiry into the Future State, Works, II. 439, 440, note. -

120 THE THEODICIES.

be expected. If therefore the punishment of the wicked be eter
nal, it seems necessary for these punishments to arise from the
laws and constitution of nature. For it is scarce conceivable
how a state of violence should be perpetual." ^ And Bp. Bur-
net : " If any difficulty arises in our minds that this punishment
is said to be everlasting, as seeming inconsistent with the good-
ness and justice of God to punish finite sins with everlasting
sufferings, we may consider, First, That this suffering is founded
in the nature of things, and is not properly an act of God, but
the natural effect of a natural cause. And when this suffering is
threatened by God as a punishment, it is really nothing more
than a forewarning of sinners of what will be the consequence of
their folly, and what their sins will naturally bring upon them."'
And Dr. J.Young: " In the world beyond the grave shall there be
found perished minds ! lost spirits ! in w^hich intellect, conscience,
soul, have become dead ? Immortal wrecks ! Fires gone out,
that might have glowed with undying brightness ! Lights that
might have sparkled for ever in the glorious firmament, quenched
in the blackness of everlasting night ? In all the horror of this
conception, and should it ever be realized, at least we are sure
that it is no doing of the Holy One, no ordination of his, no
punishment wliich He has appointed, and which his hand inflicts.
It ]ies in the nature of things, and is the proper, necessary work-
ing out of crime itself; and crime, with all its tremendous conse-
quences, is that which the Almighty only hates eternally, which
He is for ever resisting, and which it is the design of every
department of his Providence, and of the entire plan of Provi-
dence, to exterminate." ^

This theodicy is sometimes illustrated by the case of a man
who maims and disables himself; and we are asked if his evil
case, beginning in guilt, can end in innocence ?

In reply to the whole argument we remark that the freedom

1 Origin of Evil, Appendix, § 2.

2 Demonstration of True Religion, Boyle Lecture Sermons, III. 494, 495.

3 The INIystery, pp. 226, 227. Compare J. Scott, Christian Life, Preface; —
Buchanan, Modern Atheism, p. 421; — Thompson, Christian Theism, pp. 160,
161, 426;— Hamilton, Kewards and Punishments, pp. 308-312, 404, 428.

PHRENSY. 121

of will, which in the last theodicy was reduced to a minimum,
here disappears altogether. That which began in freedom, ends
in fate ; for a law of nature is essentially a chain of causes and
effects, whose links can be sundered only by being destroyed.
The man who is really disabled, by whatever guilt of his own,
incurs no new guilt for continuing disabled. He can not be
blamed for not doing what he can not do. If then he suffers
eternally, this will be either for an infinite guilt of his original
sin, or by a fatality which God himself can neither prevent or
overrule. The former supposition implies theories which we
have found untenable. The latter makes Fate stronger than
God. And ^t the best, the theodicy is an attempt to erect a
rampart between God and eternal woe, under a fair name that
shall seem to save His character. We have only to ask, Is not
He the Author of Nature?

§ 20. PHRENSY.

There are certain forms of the last theodicy in which the
notion of freedom is explicitly abandoned. Thus Coleridge
remarks, by way of supposition : " Why need we talk of a fiery
hell? If the will, which is the law of our nature, were with-
drawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no
other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then
feel, from the anarchy of our powers. It would be a conscious
madness — a horrid thought ! " ^ And Martineau : " In many a
hospital of mental disease (as it is called) you have doubtless
seen a melancholy being pacing to and fro with rapid strides,
and lost to every thing around, wringing his hands in incom-
municable suffering, and letting fall a low mutter, rising quickly
into a shrill cry; his features cut with the graver of sharp
anguish ; his eyelids drooping, (for he never sleeps,) and show-
ering ever scalding tears. It is the maniac of remorse, possibly
indeed made wretched by merely imaginary crimes ; but just as
possibly maddened by too true a recollection, and what the world
would esteem too scrupulous a conscience. Listen to him and

1^ 1 Table Talk, Sept. 28 1830

122 THE THEODICIES.

you will often be surprised into fresh pity, to find how seemingly
slight are the offences, injuries perhaps of mere unripened
thought, which feed the fires, find whirl the lash of this incipient
woe. He is the dread type of Hell." -^

The following fearful picture is drawn by McCosh : " Tied,
like Mazeppa, on a courser over which he has no control, he
would feel a kind of ecstasy in the very wildness of his career-
ing. Not only so, but acquiring courage from despair, he may
proceed the length of making war with the judge. Since he
can not flee from him, he will perhaps affect to condemn him, or
impugn the authority of his law.

* Souls who dare look the omnipotent tyrant in
His everlasting face, and tell him that
His evil is not good.' — Byron's Cain.

" But this is by no means so easy a work, for meanwhile God
has a witness in every man's bosom. There must be some way
of deluding this witness before so bold a step can be taken. The
spirit will now try to make the conscience condemn the judge as
being harsh and relentless. Strange and paradoxical as it may
appear, it will, to some extent, be successful. It will picture to
the conscience condemnation as a dark deed of tyranny and
revenge committed by God ; and believing, or trying to believe,
that God IS malignant, it will view Him with the feelings which
malignity should inspire. And now the soul will not only be
angry with God, but will feel as if it did right to be angry, and
the war which it carries on will not only be that of the passions,
but of an evil conscience. . . The war, too, will now be incessant.
If it were merely that of the passions, there might be cessations,
and gaps, and intervals ; but being that of a troubled conscience,
as well as of a disordered heart, it becomes a constant and ever-
lasting warfare, without respite and without end." ^

If we consider this theory simply as making the condition of
the lost a destiny, the criticism of John Foster is pertinent and

1 Endeavors after the Christian Life, pp. 216, 217; cited in " Human Nature."

2 Divine Gov., 1st Am. ed., pp. 403, 404.

PHRENSY. 123

adequate : " The allegation (of eternal sinfulness) is of no avail
in vindication of the doctrine, because the first consignment to
the dreadful state necessitates a continuance of the criminality ;
the doctrine teaching that it is of the essence, and is an awful
aggravation, of the original consignment, — that it dooms the
condemned to maintain the criminal spirit unchanged for ever.
The doom to siii as well as to suffer, and, according to the argu-
ment, to sin in order to suffer, is inflicted as the punishment of
the sin committed in the mortal state. Virtually, therefore, the
eternal punishment is the punishment of the sins of time."

But, we may add, in each of these representations the " law
of nature " which underlies the argument, and which is supposed
to be a law of human nature, appears as undermining and
deranging that nature. The beings here described have ceased
not only to be responsible, but to be human. They are maniacs.
And in whatever faculty of the soul the " law of nature '" is sup-
posed to work eternal retribution, it will be found to have
changed humanity into a monstrosity. According to this view
the door of mercy is shut against the lost, absolutely and for ever.
The final judgment is strictly an irrevocable sentence against
them. If they should repent, they would still be utterly and
hopelessly lost. The theory thus avoids the difficulties that
encounter the doctrine of eternal voluntary sinfulness. But it
shifts the burden without removing it. For with freedom, char-
acter also ceases ; since voluntary purpose — no less voluntary
because it may be a cherished and settled habit — is the soul of
character. And the subject of the eternal punishment here
described is no longer a responsible being ; is not a person, but a
thing. And if the justice of the doom can not be made out by
some infinitude of guilt in this life, then the blasphemy of the
terrible epic just quoted, is not blasphemy. If on the other hand
the guilt of a creature which does not end in innocence, can not
end in death, then we have a necessity which God himself must
ever deplore, and the wail of the world of despair is echoed back
from the dweUing-place of the Most Iligh.^

1 Here belong the expressions of numerous divines who deny that there is sin

124 THE THEODICIES.

§ 21. RESTRAINT.

A theory has been recently stated, and supported by the fol-
lowing passages from Swedenborg: "They [the unrepentant]
are cast into hell, where they are compelled by punishments not
to do evil ; but punishments do not take away the will, the inten-
tion, and consequent thought of evil ; they only take away the
act." ^ Again : " Those who had punished and tormented others
are in their turn punished and tormented by others ; and this
continues until at length their desire abates from the fear of pun-
ishment."^ Again: "He, after death, will be chastised and
punished ; which will be continued until, through fear of punish-
ment, he commit evil no longer, although even then he can never
be induced to do good from the love of good." '"

Tne theory offered " is simply the reduction of the hells to
to such external order as amounts to universal and particular
obedience ; or such obedience as is final and eternal, never more
to break out into open rebellion. But this obedience is from a
selfish motive, viz: — the tiresomeness of sin from its conse-
quences, and the love of happiness from such outward obedience."
" In this sense sin is finished, and all enemies subdued. But, in
the heavens, the internals are cleansed, as well as the externals

among the lost. Thus Augustine, speaking of the two kingdoms of the blessed
and the damned, Enchir. ad Laurent, c. Ill: " The former can have no will to
Bin, and the latter no power." Aquinas, asserting the day of judgment to be a
final consummation of good and evil, Summa, pars. 3, q. 98, part 6 : " Good will
among the blessed will not be merit, but reward; and evil will among the
damned will not be demerit, but punishment only." Lombard, Sentent. 1. 4.
dist. 50, tells us that others confess this evil will to be sin, but they hold that
it deserves no punishment; for among the lost there is no scope for desert. And
he concludes that their evil will is an aggravation of their penalty ; by which,
however, they merit nothing, because no one acquires merit save in this life.
Abp. King, Origin of Evil, App. § 2, says of future punishments: " Sin will be
at an end, and the very possibility of sinning, before they shall be inflicted."
Dr. Willard, Assembly's Catechism, q. 19, notices the dispute whether the lost
contract new guilt, with the remark: "There is much pleaded on both sides;
but 1 shall leave it in medio.'"' Compare Erbkam, Stud, und Krit. 1838, No. L
pp. 401,409.

1 Apocalypse Explained, 1165. 2 Arcana Ccelestia, 8232.

3 True Christian Religion, 531.

RESTRAINl. 125

reduced to order ; they are hence obedient from the love of God
and truth itself. In one reigns the love of the Lord and the
neighbor ; in the other the love of self and the world. Out-
wardly, they may, in a very advanced state of progression, far
off in the depths of eternity, look somewhat alike. They will
all be engaged in the performance of uses. But as their motives
are different, even opposite, they would, if seen by a spiritual
eye in their respective forms, appear directly opposite to each
other ; ' Like two men treading against each other, feet to feet.'
And this opposite relation they may retain for ever. Thus,
Heaven and Hell are both eternal ; and at the same time uni-
versal obedience is rendered to the Lord of Hosts, from all
worlds and all dominions."^

The chief merit of this theory is the broad distinction it makes
betv/een the outward and the inward — the deed and the will —
the acting of virtue and the hearty love of it. This distinction
is made to explain an eternal difference between heaven and
hell, while it is remarked that in an eternal progression,, as the
constant law of the universe, "to what a height, in the^far dis-
tant eternity, may the hells eventually attain ! . . . They may,
in some far off stage of their progress, get to exceed, in mere
external quietness and peace, many good people's present idea
of heaven ; " tliough " to the heavens they would for ever look
black and ugly" (p. IG). It is also a signal merit of this view,
that it conceives a state of blessedness so exalted — a heaven so
high — that a seeming heaven may be a hell beside it.

But, can the theodicy be consistently maintained ? Does it not,
on the one hand, annex the outward reward of virtue to the love
of vice ? Beneath a superimposed happiness, may not the dis-
tinctions of good and evil, right and wrong, be concealed from
the view of the lost ? For ever acting virtue, as in a stage play,
would they not be hypocrites at first, to be self-deceived at last,
seeing the curtain never drops ? And, in an eternal restraint,
what becomes of their practical freedom ? Is it not lost ? And
if they suspect or feel themselves restrained, then, on the other

1 W. ^l. Fernald, Eternity of Heaven and Hell; A renunciation of Universal-
ism, pp. 12, 16.

126 THE THEODICIES.

hand, is not even their poor and empty happiness at an end ?
And thus is it not a refutation beforehand of the theory, when it
is said that " the evil are happier, when reduced to a state of
ejitire conformity with their ruling love, than while they are liv-
ing in a hypocritical, assumed appearance of goods and truths
which they have not interiorly. . . . From those who are in
evils, goods will be taken away ; and from those who are in falses,
truths will be taken away. All will be reduced to speak. as they
think, and to act as they will ; and not, as they do in this world,
to speak one thing and think another, and will one thing and act
another" (p. 9).

§ 22. TWILIGHT.

Between the two last named theories lies a field of confused
speculation respecting the state of the lost. Confused, we call
it, because it asserts no active malignity, nor intense suffering
— neither hazardous freedom nor terrible bondage of the lost
soul ; yet interesting, as betraying the unrest of the human mind
on this subject, and as sometimes leaning toward what we regard
as the true theodicy.

1. It is often said that to be banished from the presence ot
God, with no other suffering than the sense of an eternal loss,
will be a sufficient woe ; and a merciful God will condemn to
nothing worse. This is a common sentiment among Christians
who have lost impenitent friends. It was perhaps also what
Bunyan conceived when he said that if he should lose heaven at
last, he could still adore God in the world of despair ; this per-
suasion was the assurance of his hope. And, as is well known,
a similar religious experience has often been asked of those first
making profession of their faith.

2. Religious melancholy often depicts a lost condition with a
certain mixture of pious feeling. Many who have deemed them-
selves reprobate, have thought of their future selves as among
fiends, but not of them. They would fain dissuade them from
cursing and blasphemy, and engage them at least in prayer,
though praise be too high for them. ^

1 Bradwardine, cited by R. Williams, Christianity and Hinduism, p. 518.

TWILIGHT. 127

3. The fatuity of the lost often takes the form of pleasure in
evil, or of happy delusion. In uneasy and unenviable joys, their
condition may be hideous and detestable, but not otherwise fear-
ful. To low and vulgar minds this is the same that an eternal
career of splendid wickedness is to minds of a loftier make. In
the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg this view of the condition
of the lost is somewhat prominent. It is stated by an earlier
writer thus : " The divine goodness is not to be charged wdth cru-
elty for letting them continue in that existence, though it be very
miserable, when they themselves will not have it removed ; or
for not altering their condition, which they utterly refuse to have
altered. It is better for them, indeed, not to be than to be ; but
only in the opinion of wise men, to which they do not assent."^

4. It is sometimes thought that the inflicted sufferings of the
future state may be at times remitted, or ever moderate and
endurable. Augustine himself once allowed the expression that
*' the punishments of the damned are mitigated, at certain inter-
vals ; since the wrath of God might still be said to abide upon
them."^ And a form of theodicy sometimes mooted is this —
that the sufferings of the lost are so reduced in degree, that,
though eternal in duration, they are still finite in their sum.^

5. The eternal progress of the lost in knowledge and capacity
is sometimes denied. Thus we are told : "An assumption which
adds nothing to the plain scriptural doctrine of retribution, is that
the wicked will go on indefinitely increasing in capacities and in
degrees of suffering, on a scale not unlike that of the righteous.
The Scriptures do not expressly teach such doctrine. Sin does
not, like holiness, enlarge the capacities of the soul. It has no
tendencies that way, — punishment has none."*

To all this indistinct theodicy, we need not reply in detail.

1 King, Origin of Evil, App. § 2. " Enchir. ad Laurent, c. 112.

3 Asa Shinn, On tlie Supreme Being.

4 Review of T. S. Smith's Illustrations of the Div. Gov., Chr. Spec. March,
1836, pp. 98, 99. Compare, Augustine and Pelagius, (below, p. 331, sq.); —
Lombard, Sentent. 1. 4, dist. 46: " Non incongrue dici potest, Deum, etsi juste
id possit, non omnino tantum punire malos iu futuro, quantum meruerant. sed
eis aliquid, tantumcunque mali sint, de poena relaxare; " — Malebranche, ]\Iedi-
tations Clu'Ctiennes, vii, supposes the sufierings of the lost to bo partly x-emitted,

128 THE THEODICIES.

In some of its statements the lost appear as half dead ; showing
few signs of immortal vigor. In others, their deportment is un-
worthy of an immortal existence. And in all, the Jinal retribu-
tion makes slow progress. The conceptions are all in twilight,
both as they picture a condition between the glaring light of
God's eternal frown, and the blackness of darkness for ever ;
and as they indicate the feeble hold the human mind has on the
ideas of the Eternal and the Infinite.

This mixed theodicy of life and death fs, we think, untenable.
The living human soul can not be stationary. Nothing else
than a habit of unceasing oblivion could subject it to eternal
illusions ; and an eternal power of thinking must give it increase
of knowledge ; and knowledge, experience ; and the notion of
experience is fatal to each form of the argument. The prisoners
whom it would hold must either come out into the light of day,
or sink in eternal night. In a word, they must either live or
die.

Beside being in itself an unrest of the Christian intellect, and
a burden to the Christian faith, the argument, we think, encum-
bers the divine administration with a sloth of justice, and the
universe with a mass of useless being.

for satisfaction made by Christ. Arminius, Eesp. ad xxxi Articul. 14, cites
opinions that infants dying unbaptized will be in the mildest condemnation ;
that they will suffer without remorse of conscience; and that they will suffer
penalty of loss, but not of sense. The last named is the docti-ine of the Limbus
Infantum, as professed by Leibnitz, Systema Theolog. p. 334, Paris, 1819. See
also Lombard, Sentent. 1. 2, dist. 33. The second is adopted by Ridgely, who
alludes, Body of Divinity, q. 47, to an opinion that those dying in infancy ever
remain in an infantile state. Leibnitz, Th^odic(5e, Part. L § 19; Abng^ de la
Controv., thought there might be incomparably more of happiness in the glory
of the saved, though less numerous, than of misery in the damned. Saurin,
Sei'mon on Hell, thinks the doctrine of degrees in future punishments " may
serve to solve the difficulty of the doctrine of their eternity." Niemeyer, Popul.
Theol. § 305, and Morus, Epitome, p. 302, allow the improvement of the lost,
with happiness ever imperfect. Swedenboi-g, Spiritual Diary, 4038, says that
some " sit like dead stocks, and afterwards serve as a class of subjects that
have scarcely any life." See also Paley, IMor. Phil. b. 1, c. 7 ; — Harris, note
on Foster's Letter. Appeal to Am. Tract Society, pp. 40-42.

CHAPTER IV.

EVIL TEMPORARY.

" What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power
known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath, fitted to
destruction 1 "

We have now shown that the doctrine of eternal evil resulting
from an event in time is dualistic, and that Theodicy does not
relieve this limitation of the divine power. Before we proceed
to the scriptural argument, we will offer some reasons to show
that evil is temporary, and thus consists with a true Theism.

§ 1. EVIL NOT NEEDFUL.

Besides the theodicies we have examined, various arguments
are adduced to show either an eternal necessity or an eternal
economy of evil. These may be classified as the epidictic, eu-
daimonic, and disciplinary theories.

I. The epidictic theory supposes evil needful in order to
display some divine attribute. E. g. :

1. The Divine Power. — Thus we are often told that the
destruction of revolted subjects could only be a dernier ressort of
the vSovereign Ruler, and proof of His weakness. " "Why," it is
asked, " should God strike them from existence, unless because
it is impossible to uphold and rule them for ever in revolt, in a
manner worthy of his perfections, and compatibly with the safety
of his government over his other subjects ? But an inability to
reign over them in such a manner would be an imperfection; and
to annihilate a vast crowd of creatures because of such an
inability would be a public acknowledgment and demonstration
of that imperfection. It would form an indisputable proof that
He was unequal to his station ; that He had called beings into

130 EVIL TEMPORARY.

existence whom lie was unable to uphold and rule conformably
to their character, in such a manner as not to defeat the ends for
which He created them." Such a destruction, we are told,
w^ould furnish Satan with an excuse for rebellion, and a boast of
triumpli over God.^

The reply is two-fold. (1.) What are " the ends for which
God created" his rebellious subjects? Certainly the end of
government is obedience, and not the mere display of statesman-
ship. Hence it may be doubted v.diether God ccm rule rebels
" for ever in ; revolt, in a manner worthy of his perfections."
But, waiving ijhis limitation of the divine power, the transparent
fallacy of the argument is (2.) an assumption that what God can
do, He must do. Who ever doubted that the Omnipotent can
manage his creatures, in some way, so long as He keeps them in
being ? He can do this eternally, if any sceptic should ask such
proof of his power. But He is able also not to do this. As true
courage fears not the cry of cowardice, so God may contemn the
charge of weakness, though in so doing He should remind us of
his power to create by un-creating the worthless. But, by the
argument in hand, God's capacities are made divine necessities.
If He can conserve the rebellious. He must do so, lest Satan
should deride Him, and all the people distrust Him. He is
therefore bound hand and foot, by the green withes of our the-
ology, until the trumpet shall sound : " The Eternities be upon
thee, O Lord!" Until then, the bands, we doubt not, will
strengthen some sort of faith.

2. The display of Divine Justice. — We have already shown
that eternal suffering is not to be claimed as the right of God's
justice. But it is urged that such endless punishment is ivanted,
to exhibit this eternal attribute of God. " Sin and its power in
the world could not be missing, because that contrast of the two
divine attributes, of punitive justice on the one hand, and mercy
on the other, quite dualistically exhibited, required objects in
which to reveal itself." ^

1 D. N. Lord, Theol. and Lit. Journal, Jan. 1851, p. 401.

2 Miiller, (stating the view of Beza,) Clir. Doc. of Sin, L 421. — See also the
critique of Leibnitz, Th^odicee, Part. U. §238; and of Bayle, Expense aux

EVIL NOT NEEDFUL. 131

Here the reply is also two-fold. (1.) If this divine attribute
needed an eternal suffering not strictly its due, the deplorable
want might be supplied from an eternal succession of the sinning
and perishing. But (2.) we deny the impoverishing need. The
law of God asks obedience, to be rewarded with blessing. The
recompense of reward is the display of justice which God desires.
He needs nothing which He forbids. All penal suffering is the
necessity not of God's infinite fulness, but of man's wickedness
and weakness.

3. The display of God's Holiness. — "May not divine wis-
dom," it is asked, " find a fittmg end in keeping the wicked in
endless existence as an endless and requisite expression of the
divine displeasure and abhorrence toward sin ? Such a living
and actual expression may alone be adequate to bring out the
mind of God before His creatures." ^

This is to suppose that the holiness of God, of which the
Sliekinah was the sacred symbol, can not shine brightly enough
by its own light, but needs the hideous deformity and blackness
of sin for its illustration. God needs that which it is his yery
nature to detest, — and it must be a feature of the eternal world
if not a part of his plan, — that his abhorrence of it may appear!
The whole theory is a contradiction, which reminds one of the
supposed wisdom of keej)ing up the fire upon the altar of the
temple of Ephesus, by digging down the coal foundations on
which it rested. It justifies the remark of Mohler upon the
theory of Beza just named : " It was thus the part of the Deity
to call forth somehow an evil sentiment, in order to attain his
ends ; that is to say. He must annihilate his sanctity, in order on
its ruins to attain to compassion and justice." ^

4. The display of God's Mercy. — This theory is suggested in
some of the passages already cited. By one writer it is stated
as the Church doctrine, as contained in the old expression :

Questions, Part. II. c. 152. Compare Jurieu, Jugement sur les LIdtliodes, § 13 ; —
Emmons, Serm. on Rev. xix. 3.

1 T. i\I. Post, New Englander, Feb., 1856, p. 131. Compare Jvirieu, De Pace
ineunda, p. 188; — Hopkins, Works, II. 459.

2 Symbolism, b. 1, part 1, § 4.

132 EVIL TEMPORARY.

" Happy the guilt, which did invite
Such a Kedeemer and so great ! " i

It is specially favored by a supralapsarigin theology, which sup-
poses the work of Redemption, as the richest possible display of
divine love, to be an essential if not the main feature of the plan
of creation. In this view, man's failure was the necessary pre-
lude of God's success. That is, the creation would have been a
failure if man had not fallen !

Besides a few passages of Scripture that seem to represent
the plan of g^race as the choice work of God, and the subjects of
it as special favorites of Heaven, this theory finds an apparent
support in the devout gratitude which becomes the redeemed.
All the blessings we receive are a pure mercy and gratuity ; the
wealth of divine goodness to man is a grant of God's compassion.
And all the genuine goodness or love which man has toward
God, is wrought by His undeserved love and pity in the gift of
his Son as our Savior. And since Redemption is every thing
to man, and the work of salvation is crowned with shoutings of
Grace! Grace! unto it, — it is easy for man to think of grace as
the best of all possible things, and that the universe would be
poor if sin had not given occasion for display of its riches.

But while the tender and blessed sense of sins forgiven, of
pangs relieved, of sorrows assuaged, and of poverty enriched,
suggest the thought that guilt is a happy thing in the world, —
the moral sense, the conscience, remonstrates. What parent,
shedding tears of joy over a wayward child, subdued and im-
proved by chastening or sickness, would not experience a strange
revulsion of feeling, if the child should congratulate its past
waywardness as the occasion of its amendment, and repeat the
saying : Felix culpa ! As sin is in its very idea that which
ought not to be, so it is implied in sorrow for it that the penitent
shall ever wish he had not sinned. The most wondrous display
of God's undeserved love can only inspire the more ardent wish
that one had not abused that love. It has been well said, by

1 " ! felix culpa, qu£B talem ac tantum

Meruit habere Kedemptorem ! " — Werdermann, Theodicee, I. 156.

EVIL NOT NEEDFUL. 133

one who even holds that infinite evil may be for infinite good :
" Throughout eternity man's state must imply and refer to his
past disobedience, and his corrupt state of sin and death, and the
suffering of Christ himself, which no redeemed soul can for an
instant forget, or remember without sorrow." ^

And the passages of Scripture that may seem to support this
notion of the economy of evil, will hardly sustain it. When we
are told of the "joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,
more than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repent-
ance," allusion is made, probably, not to those who were truly
righteous, but to the self-righteous. ^ The style of thought is the
same as when Christ says : " The whole have no need of a phy-
sician, but they that are sick." Heaven rejoices more in the
humble publican, than in the proud Pharisee. And though
Paul shows that where sin did abound, grace did superabound,
yet, to the suggestion that men should sin that grace may abound,
he instantly replies, as though it were a blasphemy : " whose
condemnation is just."

The whole theory of sin as the happy occasion of mercy also
forgets that God's infinite love might have bestowed perhaps
greater blessings on men than they can now receive, with their
faculties impaired by the Fall. And when we are told of the
condescension of Christ, in humbling himself to suffering and
death for our sake, it is forgotten that Christ might have been
incarnate, as our Elder Brother, leading us on more rapidly in
an eternal progress, if our guilt had not crowned him with thorns,
and bidden him to enter the grave for our rescue.

But it is asked, did not God from eternity provide a Redemp-

1 Ruskin, Modem Painters, II. 117. But in his " Stones of Venice," III. 138,
139, he says : " The good succeeds to the evil as day succeeds the night, but so
also the evil to the good. Gerizim and Ebal, birth and death, light and dark-
ness, heaven and hell, divide the existence of man, and his futurity. The love
of God is, however, always shown by the predominance or gi-eater sum of good,
in the end ; but never by the annihilation of evil. The modern doubts of eternal
punishment are not so much the consequence of benevolence, as of feeble powers
of reasoning. Every one admits that God brings finite good out of finite evil.
Why not, therefore, infinite good out of infinite evil?" Compare Thompson,
Christian Theism, pp. 421, 422. Here again, we think, is the Komance of Faith-

2 Alford, Comm. on Luke xt. 7.

134 EVIL TEMPORARY.

tion for man ? Doubtless. Yet it by no means follows that our
need of Redemption was his choice ; for then we might ask :
"Who hath resisted his w^ill?" It pertains to the divine integ-
rity that all God's plans should be against evil, and not for it.
The remedy of evils is the most active desire that they had not
been, whether in the heart of God or man. " Who will call
^neas pious," says Seneca, "if he wished the city of Troy
might be taken, that he might rescue his father out of captivity?
or the young Sicilians, if, in order to set their children a good
example, tliey wished that ^tna would throw out an uncommon
torrent of fire, to give them opportunity of showing their filial
duty by snatching their parents out of the fire? Rome owes
nothing to Scipio, if he prolonged the Carthaginian war to have
the honor of putting an end to it ; nor to the Decii for dying to
save tlieir country, if they had first wished that an extreme
necessity of affairs might give them an opportunity of bravely
devoting themselves. Nothing can be more infamous in a physi-
cian tlian to make himself work."^ And may the Great Physi-
cian, or the King who indeed can not do wrong, desire the lep-
rosy of sin and the abomination of guilt as occasions for display-
ing any of His attributes ?

11. By the cudaimonic theory we mean that which supposes
suffering to be useful by increasing the sense of happiness. It
gives zest, we are told, to human delights. It is the seasoning
of our enjoyments. The last theory regards evil as a means of
revealing God ; the present regards evil as quickening the per-
ceptions of man. There are two forms of it, according as suffer-
ing is supposed to be remembered in one's own experience, or
witnessed in the experience of others.

1. It is a common remark that we know not the value of our
blessings until we have lost them. Health is most prized and
enjoyed after sickness. Whence the sentiment in the beautiful,
though amorous poem of Gresset :

1 De Beneficiis, 1. 6, c. 36 ; compare c. 37, and an able article in the Christian
Spectator, Dec. 1832, pp. 614-660, showing that God " has not rejected a holy
universe, and preferred before it a universe marred, for healing."

EVIL NOT NEEDFUL. 135

" O the bliss of convalescence ! "

And yet who desires sickness for the sake of the happy recovery
from it ? Who pants (or pain, in order to enjoy the release from
it ? AVho desires any complex experience of pangs and rescues
to be repeated ? Who can reconcile the paradox that evil is
"ever mournful and wrong when Wis to happen, but often good
when it has happened"?^ And what Christian, tried by suffer-
ing and loss, does not reproach himself as naturally too insensible
of, and ungrateful for, God's constant blessings ? What may we
infer from this dread of anguish and this conviction that w^e ought
not to need it, but that it is not needful for perfect beings, and
may be a token of our fallen state?

And an analysis of the theory may lead us to the same con-
clusion. Admitting the fact that blessings brighten by the side
of curses, it does not follow that they derive value from them.
It is not the contrast between joy and sorrow that creates joy.
If it were so, then the intenser anguish, piercing to the depths
of one's own soul, would produce the higher joy. Cold does not
create heat ; nor death, life. It is not the Avinter that quickens
the growing fruits of summer. • The highest forms of vegetable
life are those tliat know^ no winter, but jneld budding blossom
and ripening fruit together through the year. So the Tree of
Life, bearing twelve-fold fruits, from month to month. Darkness
does not enlighten the day ; in the Heavenly Jerusalem there is
no night. Is not the evil of suffering that we need now, the
scourge of indifference and dulness ?

2. There can not be a greater occasion of scandal to religion,
than the notion that the bliss of the saved is enhanced by con-
sideration of the woes of the damned. The doctrine appears in
its boldest form, among the Schoolmen. Thus Aquinas : " Tiiat
the bliss of the saved may please them more, and they render
moi-e abundant thanks to God for it, they are permitted to gaze
upon the punishment of the wicked."^ And Peter Lombard:

1 Immcr ist cs traurig unci luu-cclit zu fallen, iiber oft gut gcfallen zu seyn."
— Werdcmiann, Theodicee, I, 159.

2 " Unumquodquc ex comparatione contrarii niagis cognoscitur, quia contra-

136 EVIL TEMPORARY.

" The elect will come forth to behold the torments of the un-
godly, and at this spectacle they will not be smitten with sorrow ;
on the contrary, while they see the unspeakable sufferings of the
ungodly, they, intoxicated with joy, will thank God for their
own salvation." ^ All sympathy with the lost is denied by Quen-
stedt. The difficulties on this score are admitted by another
writer, who says : " Yet under another, a nearer, and much
more affecting consideration, viz: that all this is the misery
which they themselves were exposed to, and were in imminent
danger of incurring, — in this view why may not the sense of
their own escape so far overcome the sense of another's ruin, as
quite to extinguish the pain that usually attends the idea of it,
and even render it productive of some real happiness?"^ The
same view is combined with the previous theories by Hopkins,
thus : " The smoke of their torment shall ascend up in the sight
of the blessed for ever and ever, and serve, as a most clear glass
always before their eyes, to give them a constant, bright, and
most affecting view. . . . This display of the divine character
and glory will be in favor of the redeemed, and most entertain-
ing, and give the highest pleasure to those who love God, and
raise their happiness to ineffable ^leights." Should this eternal
punishment " cease, and this fire be extinguished, it would in a
great measure obscure the light of heaven, and put an end to a
great part of the happiness and glory of the blessed."^

ria juxta se posita magis elucescuut. Et ideo ut beatitudo sanctorum eis magis
complaceat, et de ea uberiores gratias Deo agant, datur eis ut poenas impionim
perfecte videant." Summa, Pars III. Suppl. q. 94, prop. 1.

1 Sentent. 1.-4, dist. 50, g. Cited by Feuerbach (Essence of Christianity,
c. 26) with the remark: " This position is . . . a characteristic expression of
Cliristian, of believing love."

2 King's Origin of Evil, c. 5, § 5, Law's note. He adds: "To this purpose
apply that of [the Epicurean poet] Lucretius :

" ' Suave mari magno turbantibus JBquora ventis
E terra alterius magnum spectare laborem ;
Non quia vexari quenquam est jucunda voluptas,
Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere sixave est.' "

3 Works, II, 457, 458; Park's Llemoir, pp. 201, 202. Compare Gregory the
Great, Moralia, 1. 34, c. 19; In Evangelia, 1. 2, Homil. 40, c.S; In JobTl. 33, c,
14 ;— Baxter, Saints' Eest^ Part I. c. 7, Practical Works, IIL 38, 39, Lond. 1707 ;—

EVIL NOT NEEDFUL. 137

To this theory we need not reply with analytic argument. It
may be safely left to die under the pity of a humane theology.
Even the Rabbles, who interpret the last verse of Isaiah's
prophecy of temporary suJ0fering in Gehenna, speak of the right-
eous as saying : " It is enough." We admire the amiable Lava-
ter even for his unwarranted prayer, when he says : " I embraced
in my heart all that is called man; past, present, and future times
and nations, the dead, the damned, even Satan. I presented
them to God with the warmest wishes that He would have
mercy upon all." The notion of heavenly joy in the eternal
sufferings of the lost is indeed too consistent with that doctrine ;
but it has no place in the heart of many who hold it ; and with a
hopeful inconsistency many now suppose the blessed ignore the
woes of the lost ;^ hence they seem useless, and might as well
not be. We trust the theory may not revive, now that the author
of a Prize Essay dares commend the strong reprobation of it.^

HI. By the disciplinary theory we mean that which supposes
evil needful as a trial and exercise of virtue. Thus Lactantius
tells us : " Virtue is firm and unyielding patience in enduring
evils ; whence it follows that where an adversary is wanting,
there is no virtue."^ And according to a modern writer there
must be an adversary within the heart, or there can be no virtue.
" Virtue rests simply and only upon moral corruption." In sup-
port of which startling paradox we are asked what virtue in
temperance, without the appetite that makes a drunkard ? or in
self-possession, without strong desire, anger, impatience ? or in

Edwards, End iu Creation, c. 2, § 5; Sennon on Matt. xxv. 46; — vStrong,
Doc. of Eter. ^lisery, pp. 172-174; — Erbkam, Studien und Kritiken, 1838, No.
I. p. 410 ; " We who would maintain the eternity of hell-torments in the strictest
sense, can only see therein an admonition that we have not so to think of it as
if there were but a minimum of actual sin. In other words, Hell, as the place
of the damned, must be an expression of the divine nature no less than Heaven
as the place of the blessed. Paradoxical as this may seem at first view, every
one will readily see that it is the only condition on which, from our funda-
mental principle, an eternal damnation can be maintained."

1 Schaflf, Die Silnde wider den heiligen Geist, p. 158.

2 Thompson, Christian Theism, p. 301.
8 Inst. Div. 1. 3, c. 29.

12*

138 EVIL TEMPORARY.

love, placableness, pity, if all men were good, upright, happy ?
What virtue in loving those who love us ?^

Is the same writer consistent in concluding that evil is unripe
good, the work of God, and therefore good ? AVe think he is ;
though we should then conclude with the ancients that necessity,
which so mingles the cup of virtue and bliss, is the only evil.

Let no one suppose that we deny or undervalue the patient
virtues, which are the glory of Christianity. The redemption
of a fallen race must begin with them ; and, in contrast with the
sins of men and in their power to overcome evil with good, they
are peculiarly resplendent. God himself has exemplified them
in his own long-suffering, pity, and condescension ; visiting sick
humanity; watching beside our bed of pain; assuaging our dis-
tress ; ministering to our comfort ; enduring much from our fret-
fulness ; trying many a grievous conflict with our madness and
rage ; rewarded with much ingratitude ; yet freely foi'giving all.
Having given such an example in our behalf, He may well ask
us to exercise these virtues in behalf of one another.

But, must the possible virtues have been lacking in number,
or inferior in quality, without these sad occasions ? What is
virtue, if it be not the free action of our powers according to
their proper laws ? The struggle with evil is only one exercise
of these powers, — life, wrestling with disease and death, gaining
strength, if not victory. Yet in all this our faculties are diverted
from their legitimate use. It is like the sympathy of the body
with an injured limb, turning aside its energies to repair the
lesion. It is the painful effort to remove obstructions that ought
not to be. And every virtue thus developed, so far as it is pecu-
liar, is a special unfitness for the original duties of our being.
The strength thus gained must be re-instructed, ere it can be
applied in the creation of positive good. The bravery of the
warrior must be disciplined anew for the hardy enterprises of
peace. The special skill of the physician is almost useless when
health prevails. The habits formed in opposing evils must be
changed when evils cease. And how many bad habits are

1 Villaume, Ursprung und Absichte des Uebels, III. 136, sq.

EVIL NOT NEEDFUL. 139

formed and bad feelings engendered in man's best warfare
against the powers of darkness, how much he must first unlearn
in the higher disciphne of heaven, — none but the Master can
tell. And if the universe were absolutely without evil, what
right have we to assume that it might not furnish fit and ample
material for the exercise of all created faculties, so their sharp-
ness need not be turned to their own destruction ? or that Infinite
Wisdom could not find for immortal beings duties sufficiently
hard and manifold, for the most perfect tempering, and for the
richest luxuriance, of virtue ?

But virtue is emotional as well as energetic. And we are told
that man can learn a lively abhorrence of evil and an earnest
cleaving to that which is good, only by conflict with suffering and
wiong; that experience, though a severe, is a needful instructor.
If so, we reply, then God has not endowed man with faculties
for knowing that which most concerns him ; or if man has them,
they can be developed only by that which should not be. But
is man made so poor that evil must be part of his goods ? To
say nothing of the perceptive faculties, that reveal to him all
this fair world, and that may in due time explore the heavens
where God dwells, what is Imagination, that tells us in myriad
ways what and how things might be ? and Conscience, telling us
what we and all men should be? The minds of men are teeming
with fairy visions, beautiful day-dreams which it seems cruel to
disturb. The world can hardly contain the books of fiction that
are written; and boundless space could not contain the air-
castles that are built, — realms of delight which it is sad to think
are unreal. And what countless evils do men shudder at, what
vices do they detest, what crimes abhor, that exist only as things
conceived? Must they, then, confront the hideous visage of
actual sin, to know how fair is virtue? Even granting that
fallen men, half dead, need to be rudely shocked into physical
and moral sensibility, dare we say that perfected saints and holy
angels need such stimulus to their ecstacies of sacred bliss?
For them, might not the remotest thought of the sins we commit,
and of the pains we feel, be terrible enough to clench their hold
on good ? Or, if worse fancies were needed for their virtue,

140 EVIL TEMPOKAEY.

shall we try to guess what frightful horrors they might not paint
before their minds, to startle paradise with a salutary shudder ?

Finally, the theory of evil as necessary to good is a denial of
the integrity and reality of virtue. A moral being must be
stronger than his necessities, in order to make them virtues.
The power to bring good out of evil is weak, if it needs the evil
for its occasion. As God, able to manage evil beings for ever,
can also dispense with them, so the virtue of a finite creature can
dispense with temporary evils, or it is worthless. If men can
never come out of that dear school, experience, they will never
be wise. Is there " no higher virtue than that which is gained
by conflict? no virtue, which, like the fruits of nature, grows by
an organic, productive energy? Are there only hearts from
which the oil is mechanically pressed ? none from which it flows
spontaneously ? " ^ So far from being pure and disinterested,
virtue is ever imperfect and false, if even in the glorified state it
must be constrained by the sight or the knowledge of evil. In
this view, Heaven itself becomes a prison, guarded round not by
the shadowy " hydras, gorgons and chimeras dire " of a fertile,
fearless fancy, but by actual grim forms that Necessity imposes
as the eternal law and limit of the kingdom of light.

We reject, then, the whole theory. Yet it may be accounted
for. The huma;i race are but little advanced beyond nothing-
ness ; the regenerate are in the infancy of their eternal life.
We have seen and felt much evil ; in relief from it, many joys.
Most of our happiness has had suffering for its precursor, or its
neighbor. What marvel, if we should mistake the common fact
for a general law, and, wondering at the power of God and of
good, should subsidize the evil they subdue as their servant for
ever ? We do not reflect that it then loses its proper nature as
fierce and malignant, and that if we strive to retain the theory,
the distinction of good and evil ceases.

But, Ave trust, when we have attained spiritual manhood, the
contrasts and alternations that occasion our childish errors will
be passed. We might then, but for our pardoned sins with which

1 Tholuck, Guido and Julius, p. 60.

THE FRAILTY OF EVIL. 141

God does not upbraid us, forget the evils from which we are
saved, in the glorious duties for which we are saved. The
antagonism between a little good and real evil will be merged in
a higher antagonism between absolute good and relative evil.
The contest against wrong Avill give place to happier struggles
with difficulties where no evil lurks, — hard problems of thought
and work which Eternal Wisdom knows how to propose. The
manna of blessing, that cloys now if it be not spiced, will be our
wonted food when we shall hunger and thirst after righteousness,

*' From seeming evil still educing good,
And better thence, and better still,
In infinite progression/'

§ 2. THE FRAILTY OF EVIL.

AYhat is sin, or moral evil, but a voluntary estrangement from
God ? As the holiness, or highest goodness, and the true welfare
of the creature are found in love toward God, and in being loved
of Him, is not evil, primarily, a turning away from God, — a
denial of Him as the true good ? And may not the manifold
forms of sin, — ingratitude, pride, selfishness, lawless desire,
envy, enmity, malignity, — be traced to a wilful alienation from
God, as their common, excuseless and inexplicable cause ?

But God cannot be rejected as the Archetype and Fountain
of all good^ without being disliked or even denied as the source
of heing. The revolted creature finds a quarrel with the sense
of his utter dependence. What was before a happy reliance is
now an unwelcome sense of weakness. He would prefer to sub-
sist by himself, and for himself He would fain be a central
being, and other forms of being must be subservient to him. All
his love is changed to selfish passion ; he cherishes other forms
of being, not for their good, or as a divine handiwork, but for his
own use and behoof. They must exist for him. That wJiich
will not serve his turn provokes his enmity ; and that which
yields to him is wasted upon him. His departure from the true
and imperishable Good makes him of necessity a consumer and
a destroyer.

142 EVIL TEMPORARY.

But his warfare with the true welfare of others, and with the
power that preserves him, is also a warfare upon himself. The
laws of his own being are as much infringed upon as the prin-
ciples of the common good. The passions he has kindled are
palled with satiety, or they prey upon and derange his own
powers and capacities. And unless we assume that all evil, or
at least all the effects of evil, are only physical, we must recog-
nize a disease of the soul ; in the way of analogy, though not of
resemblance, the weakness and the strength of the revolted soul
may be the weakness and the strength of its fever. We do not
deny any principle of the divine judgments when we say the
words of Wisdom may be strictly true : " He that sinneth against
me wrongeth his own soul ; all they that hate me love death."

So much for the nature of evil in its worst form, as sin. And
what is physical evil, or pain, but the anguish of a created life
whose law is violated or its strength impaired — the wail of mor-
tality — the cry of warning or the despairing shriek that notes
our subjection to decay and death ? It is an old saying that
what is imperishable is impassible. This is true, with a single
qualification. The divine nature suffers grief for man, freely, as
a gift of love. The pang is not a violence from without ; it is
the throbbing of the heart of God. The very affection which
moves to pity is one of the highest forms of life ; it more than
heals the wound it makes. And if saints and angels share the
divine sorrows over erring creatures, they also share the divine
nature ; for God is Love ; this emotion that " never faileth " may
be more than any thing else the sign of their exemption from
decay. But the pain that comes not from love, finds no sup-
port. It is the token of frailty, the herald of death.

But not only the nature of evil shows its weakness — it has
no substance. It subsists only by its connection with good, and
as a warfare against it. It is not an entity. It has no inde-
pendent being. And no creature was originally bad. Even the
Persians knew how to say that " evil, according to the oracle,
is more frail than non-entity." ^ And many of the old philoso-

1 Zoroaster, or the Theurgists, Anc. Fragments, p. 161, N. York, 1836.

THE FRAILTY OF EVIL. 143

pliers and of the early Fathers regarded evil and being as natu-
rally opposite. Plato speaks of God as the essential Being, who
truly is ;^ and of matter, as that which is not ;'^ chiefly, indeed,
because it is subject to change and decay, as Cicero remarks;^
but probably also because it was with him the principle of evil.
And accordingly Proclus, one of the later Platonists, says : " Evil
effects something, indeed, among beings ; but the effective power
of evil is evident from this, that it is corruptive of every thing.
For that evil is this is demonstrated by Socrates in the Republic,
who very properly says that the good of every thing is that
which is preservative of every thing, on which account all things
desire good ; for existence to all things is thence derived ; just
as non-existence and corruption are on account of the nature of
evil." And again : " It is impossible for that which does not
desire good, to rank among beings. For on account of this de-
sire all beings are produced and exist, and from this derive their
salvation [preservation]. " Again, speaking of the dependence
of evil : " All life is essentially power ; but evil, being produced
through a power which is not its own, is contrary to good, em-
ploj'ing its own power for the purpose of resisting good. And
the greater, indeed, the inherent power is, the greater are the
energies and the works of evil; but they are less when the
power is less."* To the same purpose says Epictetus : "As the
line is not drawn [in the race-course] in order that those who
run should depart from it, so evil nowhere exists as a proper
nature."^ Athanasius says : " Those things are, which are good;
those things are not, which are evil. And good things have
being, because their patterns are in God, who truly is ; but evil
things have not being, because, nothing in themselves, they are

1 To bvTDQ bv. 2 To ^?) bv.

3 Nihil Plato putat esse, quod oriatur et intereat, idque solum esse, quod sem-
per tale sit. Tuscul . Quaest. 1. 1, c. 24. Compare Diogenes Laertius, De Vitis
Pliil. 1. 3, § 69 ; — Plotinus, Ennead. III. 1. 6, c. 7, p. 310: "Matter may with
propriety be called non-existence;" — Porphyry, Senteut. ad Intell. c. 21, p.
22G: " true non-existence; " — Dionysius Arcop., and his interpreters, ]Maximu3
and Pachymeres (Cudworth, Intell. System, III. 181, 182, Moslieim's Dissert.);
— Bocithius, Quomodo substantiaj bona3 sint.

4 On the Subsistence of Evil, pp. 81, 77, 160; Taylor's translation.
6 Enchirid. c. 27.

144 EVIL TEMPORAKY.

the fictions of men." " As a substance, and in its own nature,
evil is nothing; the Creator hath made all things."^ Again:
" Evil thin^ are not entities ; but good things are entities, since
they are of God, who truly is." ^ And Basil : " Evil is no real
thing, but a mere negation."^ Gregory Nyssen uses very simi-
lar language.* And Augustine, replying to the Manichieans,
says : " Who is so blind as not to see that evil is that which is
opposed to the nature of a thing ? And by this principle is your
heresy refuted ; for evil, as opposed to nature, is not a nature.
But you say that evil is a certain nature and substance. But
what is opposed to nature, struggles against it and would destroy
it. So that which exists tends to make non-existence. For
nature itself is only what is understood, after its kind, to he some-
thing. Hence as we speak of the being (esse) of anything as
its essence and substance, so the ancients, wanting these term.?,
used the word nature. If then you will consider the matter, evil
consists in this very thing — a defection from being, and a ten-
dency to non-being." Again : " How can that which you regard
as the principle of evil (summum malum) be opposed to nature
and substance, if it be itself a nature and a substance? It could
thus only destroy its own being ; and if it should accomplish
this, it would indeed attain the supremacy of evil (perveinet ad
summum malum). But this can hardly be ; for you say it not
only is, but is eternal. But so long as it exists, it can not be the
supreme evil."^ Again: "Things are corrupted (or wasted) by
being deprived of good. But if deprived of all good, they will
not be at all. For if they shall be, and can not be corrupted,
they will be better, because they will remain incorruptible.
. . . . Hence all things that are are good. The evil, then,
of which I was seeking the origin, is not a substance ; for if it
were, it would be a good."^ And even in the terrible imagery

1 Oratio contra Gentes, cc. 4, 6, 0pp. I. 4, 6.

2 OvK ovra yap eari to. KaKo,' bvra 61 ru KaTid, tTreidrjTrep anb rov bvrog Oeov
yeyovauL. De Incar. Verbi, c. 4. 0pp. I. 51.

3 Homil., Quod Deus non est auctor malorum, c. 5 ; compare Sermo I. De
Virtute et Vitio. See also Epliraem, Adv. Hsereses, Sermo xxviii.

4 il>vaic <5e Kada^ ovk tanv. Orat. Catech. c. 28 : comp. c. 6.

5 De Moribus Manich. c. 1, ^ 2, 3. 6 Confess., l.v 7, c. 12.

THE FRAILTY OF EVIL. 145

of Gregory the Great we discover lingering the same sentiment :
" He [the lost sinner] dies, and at the same time lives ; he tends
toward nothingness, and yet subsists ; he is ever coming to an
end, yet is never extinct." ^

This notion of Evil as the antithesis not only of Good but also
of Being, is contained in the scholastic phrase : " All being is
essentially good (in ente non deficit bonum)." The notion may
indeed be easily perverted from its true application, as when it
is affirmed that evil is only negative, physical, or consists in mere
imperfection.^ It still remains true that he who says to Evil:
" Be thou my good," may find a fearful penalty of guilt in the
transition from the glorious light of being, to the eternal dark-
ness in which there is no being.

These views may be sustained by a few passages from modern
Christian writers. Says Dr. Goodwin : " The whole creation is
built upon a quagmire of nothing, and is continually ready to
sink into it and to be swallowed up by it ; which maketh the
whole, or any part of it, to shake and quiver when God is angry.
The foundation of the creature's changeability to sin (when as at
first made near to holy) is by our divines put upon this : that we
being made out of nothing, are apt to verge and sink into nothing,
and so fall towards it in sinning. And truly, sin is a great leap,
or fall rather, and tottering towards it ; and we may view our
own nothingness most by it ; and did not God, in the just act of
our reeling towards sinning, put a stop and uphold our beings,
W6 should fall to nothing." ^ And Nitzsch, on the penalty of
death, remarks : " Original principles are in themselves free from
mortality — cuTr/pioi al yeviaeig. It is only sinners who have, as it
were, invited, incited, and importuned death. However dark
these doctrines are, still it is certain that the question does not
merely concern sj)iritual death, but turns on the bias of evil for
non-being, and the desire to frustrate and violate all existence."

1 Moralia, 1. 15, c. 17.

2 Leibnitz, Th^odicee, § 29, sq. ;— Kinfr, Origin of Evil, c. 4, § 9: " Tlie crea-
ture is born of God, as the most perfect Father, and of niliility, as of a mother,
whicli is imperfection itself."

8 Of tlie Creatures, etc., b. 1, c. 3, § 2.
13

146 EVIL TEMPORARY.

Again: "If the soul, being dependent on its Creator, does not
possess absolute immortality, this at least is certain, that it has
been created and constituted to participate in eternal life ; and
if it must lose its true self-life in proportion as it is deserted by-
truth, love, and blessedness, it follows that as sin increases, the
soul faces destruction in hell or its death (Matt. x. 28 ; Rev. xx.
15J."^ '-Truly," says Dr. Miiller, "sin is nothingness (as the
Hebrew term '^155; expresses it) and misery ; but it does not im-
mediately manifest itself, as such, at every point of human exist-
ence, in its earthly development; but only in its res^ilt is this first
of all fully seen. But the divine judgment removes the result to
the end of the world's history." Again : " Evil is not merely at
variance with the good, but also with itself; if the good has one
enemy, the evil has two, the good and the evil. Tliis contradic-
tion of the evil against itself has, besides the exhibited ethical
psychological signification, still a peculiar metaphysical moment
[import]. If there belongs to the evil no existence independent
of God, of the absolute good, it nevertheless incessantly strives
after the same, and we have seen that the evil is just nothing
else than this turning away from God, this languishing after
separate independency. In the abandonment of the creature to
evil, it factually [practically] denies its being created by God ;
it will not have the ground of its existence in God, but it will
live, act, and enjoy itself as if it had existence in itself, and were
its own lord. How now if God should allow it to succeed in this
endeavor, if He should separate himself from it, just as it does
from Him? The moment of such an emancipation of the creature
from God were equally that of its sinking into non-entity; for it
is not able for a single moment otherwise to exist than in the
hand of God, than his mancipium, be its will moreover good or
bad. . . . Thus a parasitic plant strives to suck out all the
juices from the organic body, in order to draw them into its owq
perverted, poisonous process of development ; but just as it
attains the end of its endeavor, it has also found its own death." ^

1 Christian Doctrine, §§121, 122.

2 Chr. Doc. of Sin, I. 260, 451, 452.

THE PERMISSION OF EVIL. THEISM. 147

§ 3. THE PERMISSION OF EVIL.

It will here be asked : If Evil is both needless and frail, why-
does it exist at all? Various objections will be urged to the
distinction we allege, between temporary and eternal evil ; as
also between the permission and the ordination of it. Thus
Whately : " The main difficulty is not the amount of evil that
exists, but the existence of any at all. Any, even the smallest
portion of evil, is quite unaccountable, supposing the same amount
of good can be obtained without that evil ; and why it is not so
attainable, is more than we are able to explain. And if there be
some reason we can not understand why a small amount of evil
is unavoidable, there may be, for aught we know, the same
reason for a greater amount. I will undertake to explain to any
one the eternal punishment of the wicked, if he will explain to
me the existence of the wicked; — if he will explain why God
does not cause all those to die in the cradle, of whom He foresees
that when they grow up they will lead a sinful life. The thing
can not be explained; and it is better to rest satisfied with know-
ing as much as God has thought fit to teach us, than to try our
strength against mysteries which but deride our weakness."^
Another writer says : " This moment, as much as millions of
years hence, is part of the mfinite government of one and the
same God. . . . And where it can not be made evident that
a present law or fact or mode of divine government has any
thing transient or mutable about it, but it appears on the other
hand to rest on the essential nature of things, then we properly
infer perpetuity." ^

Confessing that evil is a proper mystery, we have already
endeavored to show that the notion of eternal evil throw^s a bur-
den upon human faith, which that of temporary evil does not.
And to the witnesses before cited, we may here add Lactantius
himself, who reasons thus : " Wisdom stands or falls with a
liability to evil, else there could be no ti-ace of virtue in man,
which essentially consists in bearing and overcoming the bitter-

1 Scr. Rev. of a Future State, c. 8.

"' T. M. Post, New Englander, Feb., 185C, pp. 140, 141 ; comp. pp. 148, 149

148 EVIL TEMPORARY.

ness of evil. Thus, by the removal of a small amount
(exiguum compendium) of evil, we might lose the greatest, the
true and only good."^ And in like manner the language of
Paul seems to suggest a real distinction between temporary and
eternal evil : '' For our light affliction, which is but for a moment,
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."
And when he adds that " the things which are seen are temporal,"
we may at least entertain the supposition that such is Evil.

Yet the distinction of evil as much or little, lasting or fleeting,
will be almost worthless if it can be derived from no principle.
Evil is essentially that which ought not to be. How, then, can
its actual temporary existence be wrong, and its eternal exist-
ence forbidden ? This brings us to the question whether God
permits evil ? If so, how, and why ?

The permission of it is often altogether denied. Plutarch
thinks it a thousand times better to deny the power of God than
to regard Him as permitting evil.- A late writer says that
God's creatures have chosen evil " without consent or sufferance
of His, in opposition to his nature. His will, and His express
command, infinitely in opposition to Him. He did not passively
suffer it to be so, when He could and might have prevented it."
" Moral evil is altogether and only abomination to Him. He
can not approach it, can not 'permit it, in any sense, can not
even recognize its existence, except for ever to resist and repel
it."^ And another: "It is not by His warrant, or prescription,
or permission."* And another: " God does not permit sin. He
chooses it not, and He permits it not, as an essential part of the
best possible universe. . . . God is in earnest, infinitely and
immutably in earnest, in the purpose to root out and destroy the
odious thing, that it may have no place amid the glory of Tlis
dominions." But this is supposed impossible, because " although
God is infinitely Milling to secure the existence of universal
holiness, to the exclusion of all sin, yet such a thing is not an

1 De Ira Dei, c. 13.

2 Adv. Stoicos, c. 34.

« J. Young, The Mystery, or Evil and God, pp. 216, 238.

* M. P. Sqtiier, The Problem Solved, or Sin not of God, p. 135.

THE PERMISSION OF EVIL. THEISM. 149

object of power, and therefore can not be produced by omnipo-
tence itself."^

Thus is the divine permission of sin denied on the one hand,
by those who justly repudiate it as no part of God's plan. By
others, who probably deny that sin is an intruder, the distinction
between its permission and its ordination is not allowed. Thus
Kant, in his essay on the " Failure of all the philosophical inves-
tigations in Theodicy ; " and Schleiermacher, who admits " no
distinction between the causes which belong to the sphere of
freedom and those which belong to the necessity of nature. If
now sin is an act, and as such proceeding from the highest
activity of causality in time, from freedom, it is also appointed
by the absolute producing will of God." The admission of a
finite free cause that may act counter to God's command, he
regards as Manichseism.^ But it is well known that Schleier-
macher, with all his devoutness, favored the Pantheism of
Spinoza.

These cpposit3 parties agree in declining the distinction we
have named. And if on the one side, Absolutism is consistently
avowed, we see not why Dualism should not be confessed on the
other side. It seems to us an evasion when Bledsoe tells us :
''TVe choose to impale ourselves upon neither horn of the
dilemma. We are content to leave M. Bayle upon the one and
M. Voltaire upon the other, while we bestow our company else-
where. In plain English, we neither reply [that God is] un-
wilhng nor unable [to prevent sin]."^ This plea, we think, is
vain ; for if sin exists, and long subsists, despite not only of
God's prohibition, but of His power to prevent it, it gains a
proper victory over Him. He suffers the humiliation of a defeat,
so long as evil intrudes and holds its place. Though its triumph
be little and mean, it is real, and the divine sovereignty is at an
end.

We think it better, with Werdermann, who seems a man of
sense and is bound to no system, to allow a permission of evil

1 A. T. Bledsoe, Theodicy, p. 352.

2 Glaubenslehre, § 49, cited by Miiller, Chr. Doc. of. Sin, I. 382.

3 Theodicy, p. 352.

13*

150 EVIL TEMPORARY.

which does not compromise the divine integrity ;^ a permission,
not moral and denoting God's complacence or sanction, but phys-
ical. God freely grants the power to perform what He earnestly
deprecates and absolutely forbids. The distinction is not only
commonly recognized, but often practical. An upright and kind
father, whose wayward son is fully resolved to defy his authority
and quit the paternal roof, may furnish him with means ; wliich
the boy may take as a sanction of his course, though in ftict they
betoken the father's authority no less than his concern and love.
So God's permission, without sanction, of sin, denotes His power.
Just because sin is an abandonment of the Lord of life, incurs
death, and is an essential frailty, the physical permission of it
indicates its moral prohibition. " Obey and live, sin and die,"
are equivalent expressions both of God's holiness and love.
And sin not only exists, but subsists, under delay of penalty,
strictly by divine sufferance ; not because it is mightier than
God's power, or more cunning than His wisdom, but bi/ His for-
bearance. He is neither invidious, nor fearful. His love is not
needy, that He should suffer loss by the revolt of Iiis crea-
tures ; it is earnest, yet free. He can afford that they should quit
his home, if they can afford it. His universe is wide enough, and
His eternity long enough, so He need not hasten their doom.
They may waste their strength in protracted rebeUion, receiving
God's gifts and enjoying His free sunshine, and He shall be rich
and mighty as ever. Meanwhile He can turn the evil they do
to good account, or turn them from it. Yet because he hates
them not, their sin is a grief, which His love both creates and
freely endures. Both halves of the truth are contained in Paul's
statement, " What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to
make His power known, endured with much long-suffering the
vessels of Avrath, fitted to destruction?" The penalty of death
might have been instantly executed upon sin, so it should have
had not even a temporary subsistence, but should have perished
in its very inception. Creative power might easily have replaced

1 Nur in diesem sichtman ein, dass zwischen Zulassen, Erlauben,urd Wollen,
ein ■\vahver Unterscheid sey. — Theodicee, I. 165.

THE PERMISSION OF EVIL. — THEISM. 151

all that sin thus destroyed. But power is shown no less in the
tolerance of evil ; in bringing good out of it ; in allowing- it to
come to its height, and to spread itself like a green bay-tree, to
perish in its full-blown frailty. And because God is love, and
desires not the death of any, but readily gives to the sinner a
space for repentance. He may display his power even more
signally in a method of recovery than it would appear in bare
acts of re-creation.^ A modern writer has well said: "The
highest power only becomes the more perfect, from the fact that
instead of acting with all-subduing violence, it operates in a
determinate mode, as a spirit of holiness and love. On the
other hand, this higher power may safely leave man free, for
the very reason that it is onniipotent ; for it is the character of
strength not to fear freedom ; and it is precisely because Omnip-
otence governs the world, that no infringement of universal
order is to be apprehended from the personal self-subsistence of
finite spirits." "-^

For " self-subsistence " we would say rather, as pertinent to
our argument, revolt. And the reader at once perceives that
our doctrine of the permission of sin looks to the denial of its
eternity resulting from an event in time. If it could begin only
at the hajzard of an eternal continuance, its admission must
involve the eternal counsels. It could not then exist merely by
divine sufferance. It would then be established and permanent.
It must then be invested, as a part of God's wealth, and our
theological arithmetic will be viciously employed in reckoning
the eternal interest that shall accrue therefrom. Even those
who repudiate it, as no part of God's system, and who would
fain eliminate or ignore it, will be painfully compelled to recog-
nize it, and, though at a minimum valuation, to make the best
of it. Thus Di\ Young, asking whether Eternity shall be
" begloomed with evil for ever unconquered, unconquerable ?" —

1 We hope to show hereafter (p. 426) that God's wrath, even though it destroy,
is a sign and method of His love. See also Chalmers's sermon on " Fury not
in God."

2 Bockshammer, Freedom of the Will, p. 104, Kaufmann's trans. Compare
Cudworth, Intel!. System, 1. 3, c. 37, § 4; — Muller, Chr. Doc. of Sin, II. 216.

152 EVIL TEMPOEARY.

bays : " The Universe shall contain a type of sin in its last results,
— an image of the doom which is condensed in that tremendous
word, perdition. The thought is unutterably affecting. Far, far
without — not beyond the range of celestial vision, but not obtrud-
ing upon it — there may be a dim and dark and mysterious
phantasm ; the only speck in a universe of light, and too remote
withal to cast upon it even the faintest shadow."^ Thus God's
supposed necessity is reduced to the smallest possible measure,
so it may be tolerated as part of His plan. The theology of
evil, indeed, seems to die hard. With a marvelous inconsistency
the notion is still retained, that sin, which is too hateful to exist,
insomuch that many deny its reality, must somehow exist in
order to be hated. Its character changes at once ; it ceases to
be abhorred as fit only to die ; it acquires dignity as reduced to
a divine service ; if it is evil, it is also good.

Not so if it is limited and temporary. "We may then say truly
that it inheres in no principle, and finds no sanction. It is neither
God's choice, nor His necessity. It is only an incident of His
majestic forbearance. It lingers between life and death, being
and not-being. It is transient, because transitional, and pertain-
ing to no system. It is not of the Creator, but of the creature ;
not of the Infinite, but of the finite ; not of the Eternal, — how
can it attain to eternity ? Its inception and furtherance are with
the creature. It is the scheme of finite beings ; they alone are
its sponsors ; its fortunes and destiny are with them. Let them,
in the perhaps ironical language of Scripture, receive it to their
" everlasting habitations." " Its perpetuation is not of the strat-
egy of the Eternal." " Sin and wrong are the method of other
agents than God, whom He in the best time and way will
reduce, and recover, or destroy." ^

§ 4. IS EVIL ONLY NOW?

But if Evil is strictly temporary, how does it happen that we,
poor childrenjif Adam, with a few fallen angels for sad company,

1 The Mystery, p. 335. But compare pp. 175, 176, 239 ; and see the doctrine
of a "minuTium " abandoned by Erbkam (above, p. 137, note).

2 M. P. Squier, The Problem Solved, pp. 243, 138.

IS EVIL ONLY NOW? 153

have fallen upon the evil time ? Was sin unknown in the eter-
nal past, until lately Satan became the Adversary of God and
man ? And will the eternal future be a stranger to evil, save in
the history of the now passing centuries ? Does Eternity culmi-
nate, soon, by the restitution of this world from a solitary ingress
and brief period of sin and woe ? Such questions are proposed,
and with reason. "Are w^e sure," asks one, "this relation of
evil as an efficient or incident of good is of limited date ? Are
we sure w^e are especially fallen on that cycle in eternity when
this relation is subsistent ? that a relation which has continued
from we know not what awful date in the past eternity till now,
is by some means to be within our own period of trial eternally
cut off ! " ^ And a very common conception of the Youth of the
Universe is stated thus : " The supposition is plausible, if not
probable, in the absence of all opposing evidence, that the pres-
ent time is the dawn of the moral creation ; that the great work
of peopling the material universe, if not the creation of the ma-
terial universe itself, has but just commenced ; and that God is
now laying, as it were, the foundation stones of that vast moral
structure, which, in the coming ages of eternity, shall be magnifi-
cent beyond conception." ^

If all this were true, the strangeness of our happening upon
the crisis is no argument for the eternity of evil. If it is a soli-
tary ulcer, distressing the whole creation of God, what signifies
it that it comes to a head Here and Now, not Then and There?
The common theology of evil as begun and eternized not far nor
long hence, is quite as answerable for our "bad eminence" in
the eternal record, as any doctrine of temporary evil can be.
Grant, for argument's sake, that the universe is just at the turn-

i T. l\. Post, Kew Englander, Feb. 1856, p. 148.

2 Theory of the Moral System, Hartford, 1855. To the sceptical question,
Why God so long delayed to create the world? it was once replied that He ever
had eternity before him, and needed not to be in haste. The reply was simply
as good as the objection. We can not well think of God as from eternity unoc-
cupied, and recently beginning His work. Though all worlds are created, crea-
tion itself may be from cteniity, and without beginning. Yet Arnobius answered
the cavil nobly. Adv. Gentes, 1. 2, c. 75 : " In infmitis perpetuis soeculis nihil om-
nino dicendum est sero. Ubi enim finis et initium nullum est, nihil prajmaturum
est, nihil tardum."

154 EVIL TEMrORARY.

ing period of youth ; to conserve the ills of its childhood, for the
benefit of its eternal manhood, is too obvious a Dualism to need
refutation. Or has sin, after ages of unbroken peace with God,
been thought of only just now, or attempted just here ? The
puny experiment is too successful, if it lives on as the witness of
an improved economy of the universe, of which itself shall have
been the occasion. Is our earth a hospital, or a penitentiary,
appointed to relieve the accumulating ills of a few past cycles?^
Why should the sick be immortal, if they are not healed ? or the
vicious, if they are not reformed ? The common theories here
are condemned as dualistic, by their own arithmetic, whether
political or moral. From the guilt of one age they deduce a
calamity for all ages, and startle us by their precocious aptness
in the infinitudes.

But with God for the enemy of evil, and the patron of good,
we ought not to fear injfinitudes. And, to give our own view of
the destiny of evil the least advantage, we will allow that sin has
occurred in a thousand worlds, and will recur in a thousand
worlds yet to be. "We will not confine its ravages to our own
solar system, to any nebula, or cycle of aeons. And on the other
hand we shall only ask tlie concession, that sin's ravages are
confined to creatures on probation, to those who have not attained
moral perfectness ; that only new created beings do fall, and that
from their "first estate;" never from an exalted or glorified
state. So far as the present argument is concerned, there may
have been a thousand redemptive acts, scattered through the
starry world and through the eternity in which God dwells —
wonders of divine love which the angels of other systems desire
to look into.^ Such a view wull not vitiate our doctrine of the

1 King's Origin of Evil, Law's note to c. 5, § 5.

- Before Him with whom a thousand years are as a day, the period of Christ's
incarnation dwindles to a moment. " For any thing we can tell, the redemption
proclaimed to us is not one solitary instance, or not the whole of that redemption
which is by the Son of God, — but only our part in a plan of mercy, equal in
magnificence to all that astronomy has brought within the range of human con-
templation." — Chalmers, Astronom. Discourses, Disc. II.

Modesty, perhaps, should make us more ready to believe this. The Scrip-
tures arc " above all careful, and for the best of reasons, not to make us metro-

IS EVIL ONLY NOW? 155

divine grace, if we do not generalize it into a law of nature. It
is a part of our ignorance on this whole subject, not to know how
many of the new created families of beings do fall, or how many
of those who fall are redeemed. All that we shall insist upon
here is that Evil, though it may have infected a myriad of worlds,
shall not appear to have trespassed where righteousness has been
once established ; that it shall not appear as a self-subsistent power,
an ever recurring danger in the same field of God's work, tan-
talizing the divine wisdom and love ; that it shall appear only as
incidental to the trial of new-created beings, and in every place
as an exotic, and transient. Let it appear thus, even for ever,
as a vagabond without a home in the universe, and for our argu-
ment we are content.

Is it said, then, that we have here a new doctrine of eternal
Evil ? If, in ever succeeding periods, there is no security
against it in the trial of created beings, does it not become a
necessity or a vicissitude, dogging forever the progress of the
universal welfare ? Does it not become an infinity, acc|uiring
the very attribute by which it rivals the Divine Nature ?

Let it be thus infinite. There is an infinitely infinite, to be
offset against it. If there were but one world, from which many
perished and a choice few attained eternal life, the ratio of evil
to good would be that of finite to infinite. To multiply each
term through eternity does not change the ratio. The endless
succession of temporary evils marks the endless inauguration of
eternal beatitudes. The eternity of the one is of no moment,
compared with the compound infinity of the other. Before this

poHtans, by showing that the transactions of our world are central, in their
efficacy and value, to the universal government of God. It may please the
vanity of our theology, to scheme a theory of salvation, wrought out on the
earth and for it, magnificent enough to comprehend the whole contour of being
and explain what etTects are wrought by it on the peoples of Orion or the Jlilky
Way. But if I am a little jealous of all such licentious assumptions, and
stretches of theory, if they seem to me to exceed the measure of Christian
modesty and sobriety, and, in fact, to be only theoretic figments, that withdraw
our minds from the more solid and practical conceptions of Christianity, as a
plan of grace wrought in the world and for it, and of course under the laws of
efl^ect that pei'tain to humanity itself, I hope to be excused." — BushneU, Christ
in Theology, p. 220.

156 EVIL TEMPOKART.

infinity of the second order, the evil, ever fugitive and never
advancing, dwindles to an infinitesimal, and may be disregarded
in the computations of the celestial kingdom.

And the nature of such evil shows it unworthy of the name
of eternal. It has no continuity ; it is disjointed and fragment-
ary. If it exists, it never subsists. Ever beginning, it never
abides. The Adversary may be impersonated as a lion, roaring
for hunger as much as for prowess, walking up and down the
advancing creation, seeking what he may devour ; he can touch
nothing upon which God has set His mark, — only the overplus
of His productive energy ; and as he devours, he dies. His
every weapon pierces himself. The serpent cannot bruise the
heel of the frailest creature, but he crushes his own head. liis
dominion of darkness can reach but a little way on this side
Chaos, beclouding the dawn of some new creation with misty
vapor, and cheating the faithless out of life. But the Sun of
Kighteousness shall melt the clouds away, the morning stars
sing again together, and all the sons of God shout for eternal

joy.

In such a scheme, the supposed evil would only make display
of its frailty, — never truly being, but eternally perishing.

§ 5. THE TRIUMPH OF FAITH.

It lies in the very idea of Faith, that man should be subject
to trial. An ordeal implies hardship, or, at least, effort. Virtue
that costs nothing is worth nothing. Hence, though we know
no primary reason why pain should exist, it may be well
employed as discipline, if it does exist. We may even " glory
in tribulations, knowing that tribulation w^orketh patience, and
patience experience (^oklhtjv, triedness), and experience hope."
" The trial of fiiith is much more precious than of silver and
gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, that it may be
found unto praise, and honor, and glory, at Christ's appearing."

But it equally lies in the very idea of sin, that it ought not to
exist ; though it be permitted as a mode of discipline, he who
wars against it must wish it would end. If the example of a

THE TRIUMPH OF FAITH. 157

dreadful penalty of sin is needed now, one must wish to out-
grow the sad necessity. If we are told that " to breed the
requisite horror and fear of sin, it may be that nothing else will
suifice than the spectacle of its final, complete, and everlasting
perdition — nothing less than the frightful exemplar of an im-
mortal soul in immortal ruin,'*^ — we answer: Faith can only
suffer eternal agony, if such an exhibition is indispensable.
And if we say that the saints can endure, and profit by, the ex-
hibition, that is simply a romance of faith ; true victory there is
none.

There can be no triumph of faith^ if evil is unconquerable ;
and it is unconquerable, if its extirpation would impair the wel-
fare of the world, or bedim the glory of God. Goodness may
be mighty enough, and faith may be strong enough, for an im-
mortal battle ; but the strength that needs fiternal provocation, is
weakness. And to Omnipotence alone can eternal warfare —
and only to Him a warfare with dependent creatures — be matter
of unconcern ; not even to Him, as a God of love. To all faith
of finite beings, warfare must be transient, that they may have
rest. In an immortal life, they may achieve many victories,
and celebrate many triumphs ; loftier triumphs as the conquered
evil shall be less actual, and the contest nearer the great white
throne. But each contest must be terminable, and one of the
earliest victories — perhaps the very first real one, by which one
becomes an heir of the kingdom — must ensure all that remain.
There must be such a triumph, over fightings without and fears
within, else there can be no " full assurance of faith ; " else one
can never say, " I have fought the good fight, I have finished
my course, the crown is laid up for me."

It is thus essential to the very idea of a Triumph of Faith,
that time should be measured off from eternity, as a period of its
trial. And without this there can be no Hope. These are both
transitional virtues ; there is a greater, — the bond of perfectness,
— the Love that courts not ever changing evil, but whose home
is eternity.

1 New Englander, Feb. 1856, p. 126.
14

158 EVIL TEMPORARY.

We need scarcely add that if our doctrine of Evil be true, it
gives us a valid Theism.

But are not we romancing ? The Law and the Testimony
must answer. But we may introduce that argument with the
following passage from one of our most considerate writers :

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

" Thus the future Methodism, as we assume, will feel the
need of, and will acquire for itself, under pressure of the most
urgent motives, an incontrovertible exposition of the Scripture
doctrine of the future administration of justice ; but then it will
not make this acquisition as if it could be held as an insulated
dogma ; for whatever is further ascertained on this ground, will
come to stand in its true relationship to much beside, which, in
the course of the same argument, will have started to view, as
the genuine sense of the inspired books. The doctrine of future
punishment, as a belief drawn from Scripture, and so drawn as
to dissipate prevalent illusions, and to spread on all sides a
salutary and effective alarm — such a belief will take its place
in the midst of an expanded prospect of the compass and inten-
tion of the Christian system.

" The past Methodism was far from being a message of wrath,
proclaimed by men of fierce and fanatical tempers : — it was a
message of joy, hope, and love ; and it made its conquests as

THE TRIU3IPII OF FAITH. 159

such, notwithstanding those bold and tinmeasured denunciations
against sin which it so often uttered. /And so it will be with the
future Methodism ; and although it ^mW rest itself upon a labori-
ously obtained belief concerning the 'Nwrath to corae " — a belief
that will heave the human mind Avitqi ^ deep convulsive dread,
yet, and notwithstanding this preliminl^ry, the renovation which
we look for w^ill come in as the splendor of day comes in the
tropics — it Avill be a sudden brightness that makes all things
glad ! " 1

^ Isaac Taylor, Wesley and Methodism, pp. 289, 290.

CHAPTER V.

THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT;

" Yc search the Scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal
life ; and they are they which testify of me."

It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that the question
which we raise is not respecting the duration of future punish-
ment, but respecting its nature. We are to show that exclusion
from all life is a punishment, and that this is the revealed punish-
ment of the lost. If it be so, then we may at once admit the
words " eternal," " everlasting," and similar phrases, used to
indicate the duration of the final doom, as denoting an absolute
eternity ; we shall waste no time in efforts to reduce their sig-
nificance in the least.

Nor shall we offer any new principles of interpretation. We
hold, indeed, that the obvious sense of words h prima facie their
true sense ; though the rule is worth little, since time and opinion
may change even the obvious meaning of the plainest words.
And we are far from being rigid literalists, as will appear in our
reliance upon one or two rhetorical figures — tropes that may
appear /liew to some readers because they are in fact so old and
almost forgotten. The attempt to reinstate these methods of
interpretation is part of the only system which we are willing to
profess, — that of seeking the historical sense of the inspired
words.

§ 1. IS THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL ASSUMED IN THE

BIBLE ?

What is the "everlasting life" revealed to mankind in the
Gospel ? And what is the " death," from which that life is an
eternal salvation ? Here, at the threshold of this discussion, we

IS IMMORTALITY ASSUMED IN THE BIBLE? IGl

are told that the soul's immortality is assumed in the Bible, and
that all the language of Scripture must be\mderstood accordingly.
'" The immortality of the soul," says one, r is rather supposed, or
taken for granted, than expressly revealed in the Bible." ^ The
words in question are therefore referred m man's physical des-
tiny, or they are taken to denote happiness or misery in an
immortal destiny. The literal sense is commonly allowed in
the Old Testament, and is supposed to be there exhausted in the
account of temporal deliverances and destructions. The meta-
phorical sense is supposed to predominate in the New Testament.
In either case the Word of Life is no message of eternal exist-
ence, — for man did not need that, — but simply of eternal well-
being to those who believe in Christ.

The silence of the Scriptures respecting man's natural immor-
tality is commonly admitted, and converted into an implicative
argument. The fact is denied by one late writer, who thinks it
is expressly asserted of all mankind, in aV least one passage, that
" they cannot die any more." But he ii^Lust then allow that the
lost — the children of the Wicked one — Vre in the same passage
said to " be accounted worthy to obtain th^t world, and the resur-
rection from the dead," to be " equal unto ^he angels," and to be
" the children of God." ^ This last resort to ^nd a distinct state-
ment of man's immortality in the Scriptures will only make their

1 Tillotson, Sermons 100, 166. Compare Vinet, Miscellanies, pp. 217, 223.

2 Luke, XX. 35, 36. J. H. Hinton, Athanasia, pp. 423-443. Compare B.
Whitman, Letters to a Univ., p. 308; — H. Dodwell, Discourse on the Soul.—
Mr. H. takes the expression, " to obtam that world and the resurrection from the
dead," in the common sense of entering upon a future existence, and contends
that the verb, "shall be accounted worthy" (Kara^LudivTeg), does not denote
moral fitness or worthiness, but simply the fortune or lot [ivyxo-veiv) of living
again. He cites Castalio, who offers no argument. For the non-ethical sense
of the verb he cites Schleusner, who adduces iElian, Var. Hist. 1. 12, c. 10,
Xenophon, Cyrop., 1. 2, c. 1; Diodor. Sic, 1. 19, c. 11; Heliodor, 1.1, c. 11;
Epictetus, Enchir. c. 50; 1 Tim. v. 17; Heb. iii. 3; x. 29, and 1 Thes. i. 5, as
examples. But in these passages the ethical sense, though not emphatic, is, we
think, admissible. The mistake of Schleusner might easily arise from the com-
plex sense of the verb. He is not supported by Wahl, Bretschneider, Passow,
or Robinson. The same verb, or its root d^fow, also occurs in Luke xxi. 36 ;
Acts iv. 41 ; Luke vii. 7 ; Acts xv. 38 ; xxviii. 22, and 2 Thes. i. 11.

14*

162 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

silence more obvious. For none, we think, but the Universalist,
will accept the writer's exposition.

To divest the argument of its appendages, we should here say,
the question is not respecting the after existence of the unsaved
soul until the second death ; much less does it touch the immor-
tality of the righteous. Nor has it to do with the passages sup-
posed to intimate, or to imply, the immortality of all men in
general, or of bad men in particular; but simply with the
acknowledged fact, that such immortality is nowhere in the Bible
stated, mentioned, spoken of, or alluded to, in proper terms.^ It
never appears as a plastic element, in the language of the Scrip-
tures. Neither such expressions as " to live for ever," " to exist
for ever," " never to die," " to be immortal," nor any equivalent
expressions, are ever applied to the nature of the soul, or to the
destiny of the lost. They are only applied to the destiny of the
ri"-hteous. Our business is Avith the common view, that the
immortality in question is silently assumed and taken for granted
in the volume of Revelation.

For argument's sake we will admit this ; and we will compare
the scriptural treatment of this supposed implicit doctrine, with
the scriptural treatment of another doctrine — that of the divine
existence — which is undoubtedly taken for granted in the Bible,
and with which the doctrine in question is often associated as one
of the main pillars of religious truth.

If, now, these two are the cardinal truths of religion, we should
expect them to receive similar treatment, in the Revelation of
the divine character and of human destiny. If one of these doc-
trines is stated explicitly and categorically, we should expect the
same of the other. If one of them is not directly stated, but is
explicitly assumed, with frequent mention or allusion, we should
expect the same of the other. If one is assumed implicitly and
silently, — taken for granted as a doctrine clear past all doubt and
all need of mention, we should expect the same of the other.

What are the facts ? The divine existence is, indeed, never
asserted categorically, or stated as a proposition. It is assumed

1 The T^oyoL KvpwL of the rhetoricians.

IS IMMORTALITY ASSUMED IN THE BIBLE? 163

as too clear for argument, — a first truth of the religious con-
sciousness, to i)rove which would be preposterous. The Bible
never goes into debate with the atheist. II^s error is not to be
treated with logic; he may be the fool, who ^ays in his heart:
There is no God.^ But so far from being tcoQitly assumed, the
divine existence is named, and alluded to, and involved in various
forms of speech, continually. It stands out, in bold relief, on
almost every page of the Bible. It meets the reader at every
turn. The silence of two short books respecting it has been
deemed perplexing, impeaching their inspiration, unless it can be
explained by special circumstances, and the exception prove the
rule. One of these — the book of Esther — is a historical epi-
sode ; the other — the Song of Solomon — is an allegory ; as
such, they hold their places in the sacred canon. In every other
book, the doctrine of God's existence is the apple of gold in the
picture of silver. It is the Koh-i-noor, — the Mountain of Light
that illumines the volume. It is the central truth, tliat makes
the Bible a Discourse of God — the Ay0rd of God. It is the
Shekinah that imparts sacredness to the Book, so that even scep-
tics have approached it with awe, as standing on holy ground.
And lest this one great truth should weary the devout reader
with monotony, it appears in endlessly varying forms, in manifold
names of the Divine Being and of His glorious attributes. And
to arrest the attention and invite the study of reluctant men, the
Bible yields a thousand expressions of the power, wisdom, and
goodness, of God. If we strike out from the record all those
passages which tell of His being and His works, we reduce the
dimensions of the volume almost by half, we make it a book
without sense or meaning, we exchange its radiant light for mid-
night darkness.

But if we expunge from the same book all those passages in
which the immortality of the soul is mentioned or expressly
assumed, we leave the volume unchanged ; it remains as it was.

iln one passage (Heb. xi. G) the existence of God is indirectly asserted: but
the nature of faith is there the point at issue. In a few passages the existence
of one God is asserted against the polytheist or the idolater. Our statement is,
we think, strictly correct.

164 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

It might have been written just as we have it, and the Revela-
tion would have been just as complete as it is, if the sacred
writers had conspired, with uniform consent, to avoid all refer-
ence or allusion to that form of doctrine which is sometimes
called one of the two cardinal truths of all religion.-^

Whence this contrast in the scriptural treatment of these '
ideas ? "Will it be said that the immortality of the soul is suffi-
ciently clear to man's unaided reason ? But that important truth
ought to he surp^ssinffli/ clear to human reason, luhich need not
he named in a Mevelation. And if we suppose the more obvious
truth to be named less frequently hecause more obvious, then the
soul's immortality should be a thousand fold clearer than the
existence of God, nay, clearer beyond all comparison, as any
large number is incomparably greater than zero.

That the soul's immortality is so clear past all shadow or
dream of doubt, will hardly be claimed. But granting, for argu-
ment's sake, that it is too clear to need explicit mention in the
Bible, we only e^icounter a new difficulty. The Revelation
which God should make to man, is of necessity given in man's
language, — not only in the single words of human language, but
also in the current phrases and forms of human speech, so far as
these are not false, or such as should be corrected or modified
by the Revelation. But if the soul's immortality were so mar-
velously clear a postulate of human reason, it must be a most
cherished sentiment, and must give rise to many common ex-
pressions — household words of natural theology. In fact, when-
ever and wherever this doctrine has obtained, it has created
various modes of expression that reveal the sentiment. Why,
then, are these expressions altogether avoided or ignored in the

1 We have taken the doctrine of God's existence as most apposite for our
comparison. The freedom of the will is sometimes alleged as an admitted
truth not explicitly named in the Scriptures, and thus furnishing a case parallel
with the doctrine in question. We reply, to say nothing of the liberty in Christ
so often 7ia77ied in the New Testament, that the frequent command to " choose
the good," to "refuse the evil," and the like, does name a power of choice in
the concrete. And this is the only thing respecting human freedom in which
Christians are agreed ; they are scarcely agreed in this. But the immortality
of the soul is named neither abstractly nor concretely.

IS IMMORTALITY IMPLIED IX THE BIBLE? 165

Bible? Why sliould the Holy Spirit — so ready to catch the
language of the mortals who wer,e to be taught tlie way of life —
have failed to conform to their style of thought in this most im-
portant item of their own immortal nature ? Why, if God has
told men that they must enjoy or suffer for ever, has he never
urged his invitation or his warning in the name of the immortal-
ity he has given them ? Such a gift, surely, would be preemi-
nently worthy of mention, to those who think and say so much
of their supposed possession of the boon. Did He not desire
them to be grateful for that which would so liken them to Him-
self?

Such are our difficulties, on the supposition that the soul's
immortality is too clear to need mention in a Revelation. We
meet only a new difficulty when we turn to facts, and consider
the anxious doubts of men for thousands of years on this very
subject. Because man was made /or immortality, we find in the
ruins of his fallen nature, through all history, some sentiment of
the birthright he had lost. He finds hi niself subject to death ;
but he also finds, or thinks he finds, some remnant within him
of that which is too good to die. Hence that Question of Ages,
''If a man die, shall he live again?" But when this question
came to be answered, and life and immortality were brought to
light by One who did gain a signal victory over death, there
was not a word uttered of that immortal nature respecting which
there had been so much talk. He who had " the words of eter-
nal life," never said that all men were to live, or to exist, for
ever. He never spoke«of the life which he gave, as an attribute
or quality of some other essential life which they already pos-
sessed.

It becomes, then, at least a fair question, whether the " taking
for granted " of man's immortality is not extra-scrjptural, — an
assumption out of the Bible, and foreign to it.

§ 2. IS THE IMMORTALITY OP THE SOUL IMPLIED IN THE
LANGUAGE OF THE SCRIPTURES.

The inferential argument for immortality divides itself into
two parts, — general and special: 1st, That which deduces the

166 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

immortality of all human souls, from two or three expressions of
Scripture ; 2d, That which infers the immortality of the wicked
from the passages that speak of their eternal punishment. We
now consider the first.

1. The creation of man in the divine image (Gen. i. 26, 27),
which is afterwards made the solemn sanction of the law against
murder (Gen. ix. 6), is taken to denote his exalted nature, in an
immortal destiny. So likewise the expression, " man became a
living soul " (Gen. ii. 7). This view is supported by a common
translation of the passage in one of the Apocryphal Books (Wis-
dom, ii. 23): "For God made man incorruptible, and to the
image of his own eternity made he him ; " also by the form of
the Hebrew oath : " As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul livetli "
(1 Sam. XX. 3).

To all this we reply (1.) The creation in the divine likeness
no more proves man's absolute immortality, than it proves his
eternal preexistence, his omniscience, or his possession of any
other divine attribute. And as for the value of his existence,
which makes murder the greatest of crimes, we think we have
shown that is not enhanced by the contingency of eternal sorrow.
The true sense of the passage in the book of Wisdom also favors
this view : " God made man for immortality {kn' ii^dapcia),^ and
to the image of his own nature (idtoTriTog) ^ made he him. But
by the envy of the devil death came into the world." (2.) The
phrase " a living soul " is put in express contrast with " a quick-
ening [life-giving] spirit," in 1 Cor. xv. 45. The same Hebrew
phrase also in Gen. i. 20, 30, and a still stronger phrase in Gen.
vii. 22, is applied to brute animals. It manifestly denotes simply
a "living creature." (3.) The asseveration, "As the Lord
liveth and as my soul liveth," denotes rather man's capacity and
hope of life, than his destiny thereto. It indeed ratifies a cove-
nant ; but from Genesis to Malachi, Life is the main subject of
contract between God and man ; forfeited by man in every
engagement, and at length given as a gratuity, by Him who

1 "In spem immortalitatis creavit." Grotius and Calovius, in loc.

2 The true reading, instead of uidi.6rT]T0g ; see Lambertus Bos, Breitinger,
Grabe, Mill, Holmes and Parsons, the Vulgate and other Latin versions.

IS IMMORTALITY IMPLIED IN THE BIBLE? 1G7

alone is to be trusted, or can render otliers trustworthy, in an
act of Redemption.

2. From the fact that man did not die at once when he had
incurred the threatened penahy : " In the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. ii. 17), it has been inferred
that the term " death " is not to be taken in a literal sense, and
does not forbid, but rather implies, an endless existence. For
" nothing is deadlier than death ; " and if that does not kill,
what does ? In support of this view it is thought that tlie ex-
pressions in Deuteronomy (xxx. 15, 19), where life and death
are called " good and evil," " blessing and cursing," denote that
death and pain are synonymous. It agrees with this view that
2)liysical death is now commonly regarded as a debt of nature ;
though this a plain departure from the language of nearly all
the symbols of the Church.

This argument, though derived from the threatened penalty
of sin, is of generic application, and deserves notice here ; the
more so as it involves the general tenor of scripture language on
the subject.

The turning point of the argument is that man did not literally
die on the very day of his transgression ; and God's veracity
must be saved. But the tri-partite division of death as temporal,
spiritual, and eternal, will hardly save God's veracity. For
neither temporal nor eternal death were inflicted on that day ;
and spiritual death cannot be strictly a penalty of sin. Man's
insensibility respecting his fallen condition makes him even hap-
pier in his carnal enjoyments. His continuing to sin cannot be
his punishment. And if spiritual death denote the loss of higher
good, a loss not felt, or a lost capacity for good, what is that but
the beginning of a real death ? ^

There are two interpretations of the phrase, " in the day,"
that require passing notice. (1.) It is compared with the ex-

1 The notion of spiritual death held by some mystic writers makes it hardly
different from the loss of immortality. Thus Wm. Law, Spirit of Prayer,
Part II : " Wonderful it is to a great degree, that any man should imagine that
Adam did not die on the day of his sin, because he had as good a life le^t ha
him as the beasts of the field have."

168 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

pression in 2 Pet. iii. 8, 9, and is thus extended to cover the
thousand years within which man did actually die. The chiei
merit of this view is its recognition of God's long-suffering,
whereby he delays without mlsifying his judgments. (2.) " In
the day" is supposed to mean "in the case;" q. d. " If thou
eatest, thou shalt die."^ This sense is perhaps admissible; yet
we think it not proven, nor required.

The most natural and best sustained interpretation is, we
think, that which supposes Adam to have been judicially and
virtually dead, in the day that he sinned. He was then under
sentence of death, — a subject, an heir, a son of death. Life
was forfeit. If he should live on for a day or even for an hour, it
was a respite under condemnation, a delay of the execution. If
he should live on for ever, that must be by a rescue, a redemp-
tion, an act of amnesty, a divine gratuity. Short of this, the
debt incurred must be paid ; he must, at some time, die ; whether
soul and body together, or by instalments of a first and second
death, it signified little. De minimis non curat lex. Death
loves to take usury, as well as victims ; why should he demand
instant payment, now that he was secure of his prey ?

This interpretation is no novelty. In rhetoric, it might be
called a prolepsis, an anticipation of the future as already present.
It is one of the commonest figures of speech. Thus, when one
is falling from a precipice, or has taken deadly poison, or has
provoked a morlal enemy, or has committed a capital crime, we
say : " He is a dead man ! " nor do we take back our words,
though he should happen to live on yet many days. Just so
said the affrighted Egyptians, when the angel of death had
smitten their first-born : " We be all dead men ; " and the
trembling Israelites, when the troop of Korah was destroyed :
"Behold, we die; we perish; we all perish." And God himself
employs similar language in addressing the jiresumptuous
Abimelech : " Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman
which thou hast taken."

2 tji"!^ P^'o 5*' ponitur (si ea vesceris), ut alibi s£epe. — Castalio. See Poole's
Synopsis

IS IMMORTALITY IMPLIED IN THE BIBLE? 169

And a very similar phrase occurs in two parallel passages.
Thus Pharaoh says to Moses : " Get thee from me ; take heed
to thyself, see my face no more ; for in that day thou seest my
face, thou shaltdie" (Exod. x. 28). Yet no Egyptian would
think the king faithless to his threatening, if Moses, incurring
the penalty, had, under sentence, long waited for death. Still
more in point is the passage in 1 Kings ii. 36, 37, where Solomon
gives charge to Shimei respecting the tenure of his once forfeited
life : " It shall be that on the day thou goest out, and passest
over the brook Kidron, thou shalt know for certain that thou
shalt surely die." Who supposes that Shimei, forfeiting his life
anew in pursuit of two fugitive servants, flying from Jerusalem
to Gath and from Gath to Achish, must be arrested, tried, and
executed, all on the very day of his trespass, to make good the
threat of Solomon ? His last words tell his evident meaning :
" Thy blood shall be upon thine own head." And the famous
tautology, " dying thou shalt die," which so many take to mean
" dying thou shalt not die," is here shown to signify the certainty
of death and not its vitality.^

And the early versions of the Bible, and many comments upon
it, also support this exegesis. The Greek of Symmachus renders
the phrase : " Thou shalt be mortal." ^ Likewise the Syriac,
which is approved by Jerome and Grotius.^ The Arabic
renders it : " Thou shalt deserve to die." * The Targum of
Jonathan : " Thou shalt be subject to death." ^ Others under-
stand it of immediate death, which was averted by repentance.'
And others still : " The phrase. Thou shalt die, does not signify
the fact of dying, but its necessity and desert."'^ Vatablus says :

1 The language used by Solomon is the same with that in Gen. ii. 17, except-
ing the phrase " thou shalt know for certain; " which makes no difFerence; for
Shimei knew his danger on the fatal day no more certainly than before. The
circumlocution is intensive.

2 QvTjTog ec7j ; approved by Knapp, Chr. Theol. § 74. So Cahen, in loc.

3 " Mortalis eris." * " Mereberis mori." (See Walton's Polyglott.)

5 "Reus eris mortis." So Nachmanides, and Isidor. Pelusiot. 1. 3, ep. 252.

6 " Statim morieris ; dicuntque eum mox fuisse moriturum, nisi pcenitentiam
egisset." Hebrsei in Paulo Fagio. (Poole's Synopsis.)

7 Illud, morieris, nou significat actum moriendi, sed necessitatem et debitum.
Cornelius a Lapide, Bonfrerius, Tirinus. Poole's Sj-nopsis.

170 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

" Thou shalt be subject to deatli, botli of body and soul." ^ And
Fagius adds that the Hebrews deny not this two-fold death.
Tirinus remarks : " Say rather that Adam then began to die ;
that is, by a lingering death of inward wasting and decay." ^
And the sense we have given is sanctioned by Dr. Miiller, in
his able work on the Christian Doctrine of Sin, II. 319, 320.

The figure of prolepsis is of too common occurrence in the
Bible to be overlooked. It will be further considered when we
have done with the passage in hand. There are two remaining
reasons why this threat of death cannot imply man's immortality.
1. The afbiance of geological science has proved that animals
had live/e'and died for thousands of years before the creation of
man. Did Adam not know of their mortality, when he was told
that he might die ? And if he did, must he not understand by
death just such an expiring and decay as he saw among the
brutes around him ? Or even if he had learned to distinguish
between soul and body, how could he infer the immortality of
the former, when the sentence came to be pronounced upon him :
" Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return ? " Was he
fairly treated, if that was only the prelude of death, and if, with-
out a word of express warning, he was still liable to endless
woe ? May we not well say wath John Locke : " It seems a
strange way of understanding a law, which requires the plainest
and directest w^ords, that by ' death ' should be meant eternal
life in misery."^

2. The execution of the sentence indicates any thing rather
than man's immortality. " And now, lest he put forth his hand,
and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever "
(Gen. iii. 22). How can we think that this exclusion from life
is exhausted in the death of the body, when the description of
paradise regained, which forms the last chapter of Revelation,
tells us once more of the " tree of life " whose leaves are " for
the healing of the nations ? "

1 Obnoxius eris morti, turn corporis, turn animse.

2 Vel dicas eum tunc incepisse mori ; nempe longa ilia plithiseos seu internse
corruptionis morte. So Clarius.

3 Keasonableness of Christianity, § 1.

GENERAL TENOR OF BIBLE LANGUAGE. 171

We need not here enter into the controversy whetlier man
would have had physical immortality if he had not sinned. It is
all one to onr argument whether the fruit of the tree of life had
ambrosial virtue to sustain immortal life, or was only the sacra-
ment of peace between God and man. 'We prefer to believe
that the sinless man would have suffered no dissolution, but
would have exchanged the psychical for the spiritual body by a
developing process of his unimpaired nature.^

Equally good for our exegetical argument are the concessions
adduced in our examination of the theodicies, that, if there had
been no Redemption, Adam would have utterly perished. To
the same purpose also will apply the frequent remark, that " God
in compassion provided that he who was to be wretched should
not be for ever wretched."^ This is commonly said with respect
to the bodily death of Adam ; but the argument is just as good
a reason why the soul should not subsist in etei'nal misery.

§ 3. THE GENERAL TENOR OF SCRIPTURAL LANGUAGE RE-
SPECTING man's DESTINY.

Before v/e examine the special argument for the immortality
of the wicked, we shall consider the meaning of tliat whole cl^^s
of expressions which refers to the destiny of the righteous and
the wicked respectively. Are " life " and " death," and other
like terms, to be taken in a metaphorical sense whenever they
look beyond the veil that divides time from eternity, or do they
retain their common meaning ?

1 So the Church SjTnbols. And "quidam Hebraei sic: Tunc incipies esse
mortal is ; et statuunt hominem non moriturum fuisse, si non peccasset." Poole,
Synopis, in loco. And Fagius: " If Adam had not sinned, he Avould, by eating
of the tree of life, have prolonged his life for many years, until by degrees he
should be transformed into immortality."

■■2 Menochius. Fagius says: "It was the mercy of God that drove tlie man
from Paradise." And Bp. Patrick: " Many of the ancient Fathers looked upon
the expulsion of Adam from Eden as a meix-iful dispensation, that man might
not be perpetuated in a state of sin." See Theophilus, Ad Autol. 1. 2, c. 3G; —
Irenmus, Adv. Hajres, 1. 3, c. 37; — Tertullian, Adv. JIarcion, 1. 1, c. 22; —
Methodius, De Kesur. pp. 285, 286, 315; — Novatian, Ilegula Fidci, c. 1; — Fpi-
phanius, Contra Ilajres. I. 2, tom. 1, c. 23; — Piasil, Deus nou auctor malorum.
See also Abp. King, Origui of Evil, c. 4, § 9 ;— Paradise Lost, xi, 57-G2.

172 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

It is not denied that these terms are sometimes used in a trop-
ical sense ; for what human words are not ? Language would
not be a buoyant, living vehicle of thought, if its words did not
sometimes burst the bonds of their literal sense. Yet lanojuage
would be mere cloudland, a baseless fabric of visions, if its com-
monest words did not commonly hold their literal sense. This
is the very root from which words derive their life ; sundered
from it, they perish. Like the kite that soars heavenward be-
cause it is held earthward, they must confess their origin in
matter, or return to the dust whence they were taken.

At the outset of this examination w^e notice the fact that '"life"
and " degf ^^ are the terms most frequently used to represent
the refwr.dve destinies of men. Life, as the condition of all
blessing, is the greatest good ; death, as the privation of all good,
is the greatest evil. Hence in the Old Testament, and before
immortality is brought to light, long life is oftenest named as
the portion of the righteous. The fifth precept of the Decalogue,
"the first commandment with promise," enjoins filial piety, "that
thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth
thee." The book of Proverbs speaks continually of life, as
though " lengtli of days " were a material part of it. " My son,
for^-et not my law ; but let thy heart keep my commandments ;
for length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to
thee." " Happy is the man that Undeth wisdom. . . . Length
of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and
honor. > . . She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon
her." And in the most important passage of the Old Testa-
ment supposed to prove an after existence, the destiny of the
righteous is simply called "everlasting life" (Dan. xii. 2).

And in the New Testament, we find little said of eternal
" happiness " or " blessedness." That whole class of phrases by
which ancient philosophers and modern Christians have desig-
nated the destiny of the good, is almost unknown in the Gospel.
\i was enough for Christ and the Apostles to talk about life.
He who was the " Resurrection and the Life " was dangerously
literal in his style of speech, if he simply meant that he came
to give happiness to immortal beings. " I am that bread of life.

GENERAL TENOR OF BIBLE LANGUAGE. 173

Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.
This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man
may eat thereof, and not die." " Not as your fathers did eat
manna, and are dead ; he that eateth of this bread, shall live for
ever." And though Christ explained the " hard saying " so far
as to say it was the spirit and not the flesh that quickened, and
that his words were spirit and life, yet even this could hardly
encourage the notion of immortality in those who " had no life
in them." A slight obscurity in the argument here, disappears
when we turn to the original Greek, which emphasizes, not " the
words," but the name of him who uttered them. He who came
to make known the way of life here says : " The words that
/ (tyw) speak unto you are spirit and life." And this explains
what what was said by Peter, when many were offended and
Allowed no more with him ; " Lord, to whom shall we go ?
Thou hast the words of eternal life."^

Now to say that " eternal life " is the peculiar gospel phrase
for " endless felicity," is to beg the whole question. This would
be an assumption precisely like that already examined, that the
Bible " takes for granted " the immortality of the soul. But we
are aware that argument is offered to sustain this view, in a few
passages that seem to require a tropical sense of the words
" life " and " death," and we proceed to examine them.

1. "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the
only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent " (John
xvii. 3). Here the knowledge of God, or tru$ piety, is commonly
taken as meaning the same thing with eternal life ; i. e. the pas-
sage is made a definition of that in which life consists. But it
is more natural to take the language as a statement of the loay
of life. This view is supported by frequent expressions in the
book of Proverbs and by ancient and modern comment. It also
accords with the general tenor of the Gospel as a revelation of
life in Christ. " In him was life, as the life was the light of

1 May not the phrase, " Who only hath immortality " (1 Tim. vi. 16), denote,
not so much God's inlwrent immortality, as that He is the author of life ? that
all life is from Him, and with Him, so to speak, is the fund?
15*

174 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

men." Christ speaks of himself as " the Resurrection and the
Life ;" as " the Way, the Truth, and the Life." " God sent his
only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through
him." The knowledge of God through Christ is that which
leads to everlasting life.

A similar passage, somethnes adduced as containing an ethical
definition of eternal life, occurs in 1 John v. 20: "And we
know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an under-
standing, that we may know Him that is true ; and we are in
Him that is true, [even] in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the
true God, and eternal life." But the pronoun "this" (ovrog) evi-
dently refers to God, as the author or giver of life. The
meaning is : " He is the true God, and eternal life." Hence
" the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life
is in His Son. He that hath the Son, hath life ; and he that
hath not the Son, hath not life" (vv. 11, 12). With this com-
pare the parable of the Good Shepherd, where Christ, after
having spoken of life in an undeniably literal sense, — "the good
shepherd giveth his life for the sheep," " I lay down my life for
the sheep," — says: "And I give unto them eternal life; and
they shall never perish ; neither shall an}- man pluck them out
of my hand." And this safety of those who believe in Christ
manifestly refers to the Resurrection as the consummation of
their life : " This is the Father's will, that of all which He hath
given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at
the last day." ^

Another passage, — "To be carnally minded is death, but to
be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Rom. viii. 6), will
hardly be claimed as giving a definition of the terms "life" and
" death," when it is compared with the parallel passage : " He
that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but
he that sov/eth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlast-
ing" (Gah vi. 8).

2. The frequent allusion in the Scriptures to the Resurrection,

1 John vi. 39; comp. ver. 40, and cli. xi. 25; xiv. 6; Col. iii. 4.

GENERAL TENOR OF BIBLE LANGUAGE. 175

as the completing fact of eternal life, explains one or two other
expressions often supposed to define a moral or spiritual death,
and also a whole class of passages respecting man's destiny.
"And you hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and
sins " (Eph. ii. 1 ; comp. Col. ii. 13). The context, we think,
shows that, by the figure we have already named, the future life
is anticipated, as already present. Without that life which is
due to Christ's resurrection, and which is perfected in our own
resurrection, we are under sentence of death, past all hope, dead,
by reason of trespasses and sins. " But God, who is rich in
mercy, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us
together with Christ, and hath raised us up together, and made
us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." This is
certainly not accomplished yet, unless in a metaphorical sense
no more natural than the prolepsis which we assume. We shall
yet be raised up and shall sit together, in the heavenlies ; and
the inheritance which God gives us, is as surely ours as if we
already possessed it. And in the passage in Colossians, the
allusion to Christ's resurrection, and to the glorified estate which
awaits the Christian, confirms the same view : " Ye also are
risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who
hath raised him from the dead. Even you, being dead in your
sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened
together with him [Christ being the first fruits, the interval of
time making no difference] having forgiven you all trespasses.
. . If then ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which
are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. . .
, For ye are dead [certainly not now in a moral sense, but sub-
ject to Death, in that he will yet have the body], but your life
is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall
appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory."

Is it objected that the ungodly life of the unbeliever, and the
godly life of the believer, are named in the context ? Very true ;
but this by no means precludes the literal sense of the terms life
and death. The connection of the two is perfectly natural. As
if it were said : You are redeemed from death ; you are, then,
" dead with Christ " from the rudiments of the world ; mortify

176 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

therefore your members which are upon the earth. Or as it is
said in Romans, chap, vi., where the same contrast is made be-
tween death and the resurrection, and between the old man and
the new man : " Now if we be dead with Christ, we beheve that
we shall also live with him. . . . For in that he died, he
died unto sin once ; but in that he liveth, he livetli unto God.
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin,
but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

"Likewise alive unto God." This cannot denote mere life
from a spirittial death ; for Christ, the example of it, never was
spiritually dead. It is, rather, an anticipation of the completion
of life in the resurrection, and hence an argument for the resur-
rection. Just as Christ silenced the Sadducees by reminding them
that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was the God, not of
the dead, but of the living ; " for they all live unto Ilim." That
is, they shall yet live, and therefore God may be called their
God. Manifestly, if Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were then alive,
the proof of the resurrection came to naught.^

But we are forgetting the passage we set out to explain. Is
it insisted that the phrase " dead in trespasses and sins " denotes
a moral deadness ? If so, then Paul cliarges the Corinthian
Christians with being impenitent men, when he says : " If Christ
be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins.'' But
he cvidentl}^ meant, that if there were no resurrection they were
still subject to death, as the consequence of sin ; there was no
future life for them. In a similar way, if we mistake not, Christ

1 The Sjn-iac version, as translated by Dr. Murdock, renders as above: " For
they all live unto Him." This rendering is also allowable, if not requisite, in
1 Cor. XV. 22 : " For as in Adam they [i. e. those who sleep in Christ] all die,
even so in Christ shall they all be made alive."

The reasoning of Christ doubtless implies that the souls of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, were then in existence^ else their resurrection Avere impossible. But
the resurrection would be equally impossible if they were alive. Hence it was
well said by Tyndale in his Answer to More, pp. 180, 181: "And ye, in putting
them [the souls of the dead] in heaven, hell, and purgatory, destroy the argu-
ments wherewith Christ and Paul prove the Eesurrection. . . . If the souls
be in heaven, tell me why they be not in as good case as the angels be ; and
then what cause is there of the Eesurrection?" Compare Bretschneider,
Grundlage der Evang. Pictismus, pp. 237, 238.

GENERAL TENOR OF BIBLE LANGUAGE. 177

would exclude the unbelieving Jews from the eternal life : " Ye
shall seek me, and shall die in your sins." ^ And when he said
to one who wished to bury his father, ere he became his disci-
ple : " Let the dead bury their dead," he simply characterized
those wdio had no part in him as the subjects of death. They
were dead, because they had no future life. The rhetorical
figure is the same which the Hebrew doctors have allowed in
the original sentence of death, and which one of tlie most learned
Rabbies has stated thus : " The wicked in their life time are
called dead, and their soul is to be destroyed with the ignominy
of the body, and will not have immortality or eternity."^ And
if there should still remain a doubt in favor of the sense of
spiritual death, it wholly disappears when we consider that the
Greek word here rendered " dead " {vsKpovc) always denotes literal
death, and commonly signifies corjyses. If spiritual death were
intended, it would be more naturally expressed by another word
Tedvr/Koieg, since ddvarog bears the more general sense of death.

We conclude that Isaac "Watts is justified in saying: "There
is not one place of Scripture that occurs to me, where the word
death, as it was first threatened in the law of innocency, neces-
sarily signifies a certain miserable immortality of the soul, either
to Adam the actual sinner, or to his posterity." ^

If now we have shown that the literal sense of the terms
" life " and '• death " is not wanting in the scriptural use of them,
we are prepared to consider the various expressions commonly
applied to the destiny of the lost. One of the most significant
of these is

1 John, viii. 21, 24; corap. w. 51, 52: " Abraham is dead, and the prophets;
and thou sayest, "If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death."

2 Abarbanel, Summary of the Faith, c. 24. Compare John xi. 25, 26 : "I am
the resurrection, and the life; he that beheveth in me, though he were dead, yet
shall he live;" 1 Tim. v. 6: "She that liveth in pleasure, is dead while she
liveth; " John, v.24; on which Bretschneider remarks, Evang. Pietismus, p. 259:
" the perfect tense {(leraUSiiKEv) is used, because the speaker conceives of the
future as already past" (comp. Wmer's Grammar^; 1 John, iii. 14, 15; perhaps
Rom. iv. 17 : " God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which
are not [yet] as though they [already] were; " Rom. v. 15; vi. 8, 11, 13; 2 Cor.
V. 14, 15; perhaps chap. vi. 9; Ileb. xi. 1 (So Theodoret), 19; xii. 22, 23.

3 Ruin and Recovery of Mankind, q. 11, § 3.

178 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

a. The Second Death. — This phrase occurs four times, in the
Apocalypse, ii. 1 1 ; xx. 6, 14; xxi. 8. In all these instances
the contrasted " crown of life," " resurrection," " book of life,"
and "water of life." indicate a literal sense of the term "death."
But the phrase is most important historicallj. For it was cur-
rent among the Jews, and shows (1.) that they made the distinc-
tion between judgment in this world, and in the world to come,
which is not often made in the Old Testament ; and (2.) that
they understood by this death, exclusion from life.

The following examples of its use are found in the early Jew-
ish books : " Every idolater, who says that there is another God
besides me, I will slay with the second death, from wdiich no
man can come to life again." ^ "In this place (Exod. xix. 12)
two deaths are spoken of, as also in Gen. xxx. 1, that is, the
second death." ^ "Every thief, or robber of his neighbor's goods,
shall fall by his iniquities, that he may die the second death." ^
" We learn from this place, (Num. xiv. 37,) that they died the
second death." ^ " Because he [Cain] was doubly guilty, he was
slain with a two-fold death — the latter far more severe than the
former." ^ " Let Reuben live, and not die the second death, by
which the ungodly die in the world to come."^ "This hath
been decreed by the Lord, that this sin shall not be forgiven
them, until they die the second death." '^ " Behold, this is writ-
ten before me, I will not give them long life, until I have taken
vengeance for their sins ; and I will give their glory [soul] to

1 Pirke R. Elieser, c. 34. See Schoettgen, Hovjb Heb. in Apoc. xx. 14.

2 Jalkut Kubeni, fol. 93, 4. The allusion to Gen. xxx. 1, " Give me children,
or else I die," shows how abhorrent from the notion of eternal misery was th."
phrase "second death." But it might be applied to the fate of Rachel without
offspring, which constituted for the Hebrew a kind of vicarious immortality.
No less decisive against the sense of etei'nal misery is the statement of Julius
Africanus (A. D. 221), that "Adam being one hundred and thirty years old
begat Seth ; and living thereafter eight hundred years he died, to wit, the second
DEATH." Chronicon, § 6. See Routh, Reliqq. Sacrre, IT. 126.

8 Ibid. fol. 124, 1. 4 Ibid. fol. 138, 4; comp. Sota, fol. 35, 1.

5 Ibid. fol. 141, 1. G Targum Hieros. Deut. xxxiii. 6; comp. Onkelos.

7 Targum, Isa. xxii. 14; comp. Rom. vi. 7; 1. Peter iv. 1. For death was
regarded as an expiation, an oixtlawry, and, in its way, a release from guilt;
whence the phrase: " Free among the dead" (Ps. Ixxxviii. 5). Kimchi says the
Tarfrumist " understands the death of the soul m the world to come."

GENERAL TENOR OF BIBLE LANGUAGE. 179

the second death." ^ " They shall die the second death, and
shall not live in the world to come, saith the Lord." ^ " They
shall die the second death, so as not to enter into the world to
come." ^

These examples plainly warrant the remark of Hammond on
the phrase " second death," that " it seems to be taken from the
Jews, who use it proverbially for final, utter, irreversible destruc-
tion. ... It seems to denote such a death from which there
is no release. And according to this notion of it, as it reflects
fitly on the first death, (which is a destruction, but such as is
reparable by a reviving or resurrection, but this past hopes and
exclusive of that,^ so will all the several places wherein it is
used be clearly interpreted. [The doctor goes on to give an
ecclesiastical turn to this exposition : ' So ch. xxi. 8, the lake that
hurneth -withjire, etc., is called the "second death," into which
they are said to go that are never to appear in the church again;'
but he adds :] And though in these different matters some dif-
ference there must needs be in the significations, yet in all of
them the notion of utter destruction, final, irreparable excision,
may very properly be retained, and applied to each of them."

The similar phrase in Jude, ver. 12, " twice dead," if explained
by the following words, " plucked up by the roots," clearly de-
notes an utter destruction. The tree that has been cut down,
may grow again ; the tree that has been uprooted, never.

h. Excisioyi. The phrase " shall be cut off" is often used in
the Old Testament to denote the end of the wicked. Many of
the Hebrew doctors regard it as a punishment by the hand of
God. And Maimonides interprets the expression : " That soul
shall be cut off from his people " (Gen. xvii. 14), of the utter
destruction of soul and body. It was the " greater excommuni-
cation," and that could be nothing less than death. Says Gese-

1 Targum, Isa. Ixvi. 6 ; comp. ver. 15 ; Ps. xlix. 11. 2 ib. Jer. ]i. 39.

8 lb. Jei-. li. 57. There are two other instances that signify little. " Whoever
in time of famine voluntarily dies of hunger, is free from the second death." —
Taanith, fol. 11, 1. " There are two kinds of righteousness or mercy, one, which
delivers from the second death, the other, which delivers from the judgment of
hell." — Bava bathra, ^ol. 10, 1, ad Prov. xi. 4. The distinction is not clear,
but it can not prove any thing in the present question.

180 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

nius, " It is never the punisliment of exile, as supposed by J. D.
Michaelis." The familiarity of the Jews with the notion of the
second death, indicates that the meaning of this phrase can
hardly be restricted to the death of the body. The formula used
in the ratifying of covenants may favor the extended sense of
the phrase. The sacrifice of a victim was an imprecation : "• May
I thus die, if I be not faithful to this engagement." Hence the
phrase " to make a covenant," ^ might imply the penalty of which
the Jews often spoke, — the being " cut oiF from the life of the
world to come." The only instance in which the extended sense
of the phrase involves any difficulty, is in Dan. ix. 26 : "The
Messiah shall be cut off." But the difficulty here is created by
the mystery of the incarnation. The manifest exception cannot
do away the rule.

This view is confirmed by the phrase in Ps. xxxvii. 38, " The
end of the wicked shall be cut off," compared with Prov. xxiv.
14, 20. The Hebrew word fi^'in^^ here rendered "end" and
" reward," is the same which commonly denotes " after time,"
"the future," "the last days," "latter state," "final lot." It
might be not inaptly rendered hereafter, thus : " The hereafter
of the wicked shall be cut off." " Then shall there be a here-
after [to thee], and thy expectation shall not be cut off." "There
shall be no hereafter to the wicked man." But the sense is
perhaps more aptly given by a Jewish Rabbi, speaking of a
cessation of existence, thus : " There shall be no residuum to
the wicked man ; the light of the ungodly shall be extin-
guished."^

c. Anathema. This word occurs six times in the New Testa-
ment, viz: Acts xxiii. 14; Rom. ix. 3 ; 1 Cor. xii. 3; xvi. 22;
Gab i. 8, 9. It also frequently occurs in the Septuagint, as the
equivalent of the Hebrew cherem. A few examples will indi-
cate its proper sense. "No devoted thing {avadejiay shall be
redeemed, but shall surely be put to death " (Lev. xxvii. 29 ;

1 tl'n'^ln Jn^ll' '^PK-'-'^ Tiftveiv, foedus secare.

2 Ebn Latipli; see Pocock, Porta Mosis, Notce Misc. c. 6.

GENERAL TENOR OF BIBLE LANGUAGE. 181

comp. Deut. vii. 2(3; xiii. 17; Josh. vi. 17, 18; 1 Chron. ii. 7;
Zech. xiv. 11). In Jud. i. 17, some copies give, instead of
avuOsfia, e^o?i60pev(7i^, " utter destruction." In Num. xxi. 2 ; Deut.
XX. 17; Jud. xxi. 11; and Kgs. xv. 3, and other places, the
verb^ is used to denote utter subversion and destruction.

These examples clearly sustain the following definitions of
Schleusner, in his N. T. Lexicon : '"' 1. Any thing set apart from
common use ; victim, sacrifice. 2. Whatever is destined to
destruction ; what Is given to perish (perditur), is blotted out,
cut off. 3. One devoted to a miserable fate, to be sacrificed in
expiation ; one who is an abomination, to be detested and re-
moved fi'om the sight of men; an abominable thing, to be
removed from the sight of God and men." Compare Wahl,
Bretschneider, and Robinson. Was the avadsfia of the N. T. an
immortal thing, or a thing to be conserved in eternal being ?

In a single instance (1 Cor. xvi. 22) the word "maranatha"
is added. If this means " the Lord cometh," as many think, the
passage is parallel with that in 2 Thes. i. 8, 9 ; where we shall
find that the proper destruction of the wricked is foretold.

d. Destruction, or Perdition. The latter of these terms is not
used in our version of the Old Testament, though it is used in
the New Testament instead of the term " destruction," and in
rendering the same Greek word d-wAaa. This and its cognate
(YAedpoc, with the corresponding verbs, are used about ninety
times in the New Testament. This number includes the cases
in which aawZem is translated by " waste " (Matt. xxvi. 8 ; Mark
xiv. 4), "damnation," or " damnable" (2 Pet. ii. 1, 3), and the
verb u-62.?Miu by " lose," or " lost " (Matt. x. 6, 39 ; xv. 24 ; xvi.
25 ; Mark viii. 35 ; Luke ix. 24, 25 ; xvii. 33 ; John xii. 25),
and excludes those in which other Greek words are employed.^

1 'Avadenan^o). Compare the use of h^oloOpei-cj, Josh. x. 1 ; 2 Chron. xx. 24;
et alibi sapae; ep-i^iwo), Isa. xi. 15; E^eprjfioc), Jer. xxv. 9; ucpavi^a), Deut. vii. 2;
Jer. 1. 21; Ii. 3; (povevo), Josh. x. 35; d-nOAAVfiL, Isa. xxxiv. 2; xxxvii. 11; xliii.
28 ; for the same Heb. verb, tJ'^'inu-

2 The Greek (pdopu (corraption) is sometimes rendered "destruction," so
cvvrpifjfta, Rom. iii. 16. The verbs Tivu, Kaiakiu, arc rendered "destroy,"
Matt. V. 17; xxvi. Gl; xxvii. 40; Mark xiv. 58; xv. 29; Gal. ii, IS; and

182 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

A glance at tlie passages thus reduced to a class, shows that
the literal sense of the terms in question is manifestly the true
one in most instances. Two or three of them seem to forbid
any other sense. In Matt. x. 28, we read of " Him who is able
to destroy (uTvoUaaL) both soul and body in hell." If the body is
not destroyed by a deathless torment, why the soul ? In Acts iii.
23, the prediction of Moses, — "every soul which will not hear
that Prophet shall be utterly destroyed {f^o;io9p«;97(TeraO from among
the people," is cited without the remotest hint of a destruction
that does not kill. But the metaphorical sense is supposed to
hold in two or three cases which should be examined.

1. It is thought the "loss of the soul" cannot denote its
proper destruction, but is something far more terrible. But in
Matt. X. 39 ; xvi. 25 ; Mark viii. 35 ; Luke ix. 24 ; xvii. 33 ;
John xii. 25, where the term ut.oKKv^l is used in connexion with
y\)vxri, this noun is rendered, not " soul," but " life." In Matt. xvi.
26, and Mark viii. 36, where -^vxr] is rendered "soul," the verb
is 'C,'qiiioiji, which is rightly rendered " shall suffer loss " in 1 Cor.
iii. 15, where the loss of unapproved work, " hay, wood, and
stubble," is spoken of. And in Luke ix. 25, the phrase is " lose
{aixoKiaaq) himself, or be cast away (CrjfiLcodelg).''

2. In 2 Pet. iii. 6, the world which was before the flood is said
to have "perished" (uircj/ieTo) , though it was not annihilated.
May not the soul perish likewise ?

The question here raised is not one of geology. In that court
we might prove that the "new heavens and the new earth" will
be identical with those which now subsist ; or that though they
be changed as garments (Heb. i. 11, 12), they will perish
never. But to the mind of the inspired writer, the earth, purged
and changed by the deluge, was to all intents and jDurposes a
new thing ; and he might properly speak of " the world that then
was," and " the heavens and the earth which are now," as two
different things. Things are destroyed variously, by change of
form, or by loss of being, according to their nature. Hence the

IJohn iii. 8; also iropdio), Acts ix. 21; Gal. i. 13, 23; and Karapyeu, Eom. vi. 6;
1 Cor. vi. 13; xv. 26; 2 Thes. ii. 8; Heb. ii. 14.

GENERAL TENOR OF BIBLE LANGUAGE. 183

early doctrine of the last things : " The clay of the Lord cometh,
in which every thing that is seen shall be dissolved, and the
wicked shall be destroyed with it." ^

3. In 1 Cor. V. 5, Paul directs the incestuous person to be
given over to Satan " for the destruction (dledpov) of the flesh,
that' the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."
Could he mean that this person should suffer death ?

Granting that Paul simply advised excommunication, his lan-
guage may have been a Jewish formula for the " greater excom-
munication," requiring the principal witness or accuser ^ to cast
the first stone. If so, the j^^irase, and not the luord, would be the
metaphor.

But the literal sense of the passage is sanctioned by good
authority. Thus Bloomfield : " That the Apostles had the power
and were authorized to punish notorious offenders with disease
and death in a supernatural manner, few will deny. See John
XX. 23; Acts xiii. 11, and 1 Cor. xi. 20."* And Lightfoot,
remarking that the offender " deserved death, two or three times
over," says : " we are led to be of their opinion who interpret the
place of a miraculous action, namely, of the real delivery of this
person into the hands and power of Satan, to be scourged by him,
and tormented by him with diseases, tortures and affrightments."^

e. Corruption. The Greek verb (bdeipu and its derivatives,
often rendered "destroy" and "destruction," occur thirty-five
times in the New Testament. In a few instances the Avord is
used in its modern ethical sense ; e. g. 1 Cor. xv. 33 ; 2 Cor. xi.
3 ; 1 Tim. vi. 5 ; 2 Tim. iii. 8. But a comparison of passages
will show that this sense is the exception and not the rule. Thus
" He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption "
{(pQopav, Gal. vi. 8). With this compare the saying in Ecclesi-
asticus, X. 11 : " When a man shall die, he shall inherit serpents,
and beasts, and worms ;" and ch. xix. 3 : " He that joineth him-
self to harlots, will be reckless. Rottenness and worms shall

1 Apostolical Constitutions, 1j. 1, § 3.

2 Ilcb. Satan; Gk. AtuGolog ; comp. Eev. xii. 10; 1 Tim. iii. 11; 2 Tim. iii.
3; Tit. ii.3.

3 Critical Digest, ni loco. 4 Horaj Ilcbraicce, in loco.

184 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

inherit liim ; and he shall be lifted up for a greater example ;
and his soul shall be taken away out of the number/' The
comparison made in 2 Pet. ii. 12, indicates a literal destruction
of the wicked : " But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be
taken and destroyed (elg <^dopdv), shall utterly perish (KaTa(pdapT/aov-
rai) in their own corruption" (<l>6opa; comp. 1 Cor. iii. 17; Eev.
xi. 18). On the other hand " incorruption " (cKpdapola), or an
incorruptible portion, is made the inheritance of the righteous, in
1 Cor. XV. 42, 50, 53, 54; 1 Pet. i. 23.

We shall meet the literal sense of the word in the writings of
the early Christians. To assume its modern sense in the inter-
pretation of Scripture, is to read history backward. And even
granting the metaphorical sense were predominant, we should
hardly infer the immortality of the vicious ; for, in every analogy,
corruption is a method of death and not of life.

/. Other expressiojis. The wicked are often spoken of as
"consumed," "devoured," "burned." Fire is represented as
going out from before the Lord to devour his enemies, in various
passages of the O. T., Lev. x. 2 ; Num. xvi. 35 ; xxvi. 10 ; 2
Kings i. 10, 12, 14; Ps. xxi. 9, comp. 2 Sam. xxii. 9 ; Psk xviii.
8 ; and in Rev. xx. 9 (comp. Heb. x. 26, 27). The divine anger
is represented as " a consuming fire," Deut. iv. 24 ; Heb. xii. 29.
And such passages as Ps. Ixxiii. 27 ; civ. 35 ; Mai. iv. 1 ; Matt,
xiii. 30, 40-43 ; John, xv. 6 ; Heb. vi. 8, can hardly be referred to
God's temporal judgments.

If now literal fire is the most natural emblem of destruction,
we should expect that the fire of divine wrath will destroy the
soul. The passages supposed to prove the contrary will be
examined in their place.

The wicked are said to be " slain," in various passages that
most naturally indicate their final doom ; e. g. Ps. xxxiv. 21 ;
Ixii. 3 ; cxxxix. 19 ; Prov. i. 32 ; Isa. xi. 4; Ixvi. 16 ; Luke xix.
27. Compare the phrases "blot out," Ps. Ixix. 28; "grind to
powder," Matt. xxi. 44; Luke xx. 18; "dash in pieces," Ps. ii,
9; "tear in pieces," Ps. 1. 22; "put away as dross," Ps. cxix.
119 ; " shall be as nothing," Isa. xli. 11,12; " shaU not be," Ps.
xxxvii. 10 ; Prov. xii. 7.

SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 185

We might here adduce the various forms of prayer and impre-
cation respecting the wicked, which would be meaningless, or
horrible, if they must subsist for ever. That of Abigail is an
example : " The soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of
life with the Lord thy God ; and the souls of thine enemies,
them shall he sling out, as out of the middle of a sling" (1 Sam.
XXV. 29). And that of Peter: "Thy money perish with thee"
(Acts viii. 20).

§ 4. PASSAGES SUPPOSED TO PROVE THE IMMORTALITY OF
THE LOST.

"We now come to the second division of the inferential argu-
ment. The passages on which it is based may be classified, as
follows :

I. Those in which the ruin of the lost, under various names,
is spoken of as eternal. The expressions are : " everlasting con-
tempt," Dan. xii. 2 ; " everlasting destruction," 2 Thes. i. 9 ;
" everlasting punishment," Matt. xxv. 46 ; eternal damnation,"
Mark iii. 29 ; " eternal judgment," Heb. vi. 2.

II. Those in which the term " everlasting" or its equivalent
is applied to the cause of their supposed endless misery. The
expressions are: "unquenchable fire," Matt. iii. 12; Luke iii.
17 ; Mark ix. 43, 45 ; " their worm shall not die, neither shall
their fire be quenched," Isa. Ixvi. 24 ; Mark ix. 44, 46, 48 ;
" everlasting" or " eternal fire," Matt, xviii. 8 ; xxv. 41 ; Jude,
ver. 7; "everlasting burnings," Isa. xxxiii. 14; "the wrath of
God abideth on him," John iii. 36.

III. One expression supposed to denote eternal sinfulness,
Rev. xxii. 11.

IV. Those in which the concomitants of the final ruin are
supposed to indicate an eternal existence. See the phrases:
"mist of darkness for ever," 2 Pet ii. 17 ; "blackness of dark-
ness for ever," Jude, ver. 13 ; " smoke," and " smoke of torment,"
rising foe ever. Rev. xiv. 11 ; xix. 3. Here belong the ex-
pressions, " wailing," and " gnashing of teeth," Matt. viii. 12 ;
xiii. 42, 50; xxiv. 13; xxiv. 51; xxv. 30; Luke xiii. 28 ; "to

16*

186 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

be without," Rev. xxii. 15 ; also the parable of the Rich Man
and Lazaru?, Luke xvi. 19-31 ; and the phrase "everlasting
chains," Jude, ver. 6.

V. The passage in Avhich Satan, the beast and the false
prophet are said to be " tormented, day and night, for ever and
ever," Rev. xx. 10.

We might remark upon the paucity and general obscurity of
these expressions, if they alone, or as a class, must prove man's
danger of incurring eternal woe. But it will be better to inquire
respecting them, one by one, what they do mean.

T. 1. "Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake;
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." —
Dan. xii. 2.

It is thought by good critics that the prophet here speaks only
of the resurrection of the righteous, called the " first resurrec-
tion " in Rev. xx. 5 ; and that the passage should be read :
" these [who awake] to everlasting life, and those [who do not
awake] to shame and everlasting contempt." This would agree
with the Syriac version : " some to death, and the eternal con-
tempt of their companions." ^

But we are willing to take the passage as making no distinc-
tion between the first and the second resurrection. We need
then only to correct the frequent dislocation by which the
" shame " as well las the " contempt " is made everlasting.
Though even on this we need not insist ; for the word " shame "
can not refer to the feelings of the lost. The Hebrew (li'n'^l)
is used only here and in Isa. Ixvi. 24 (Eng. " an abhorring "),
where, says Dr. Wintle, it denotes " a kind of spectacle, show,
or nausea," and is translated " nausea " by Buxtorf in his Con-
cordance. The allusion seems to be to the putrefaction of death.
The "contempt," if it expresses a feeling of the righteous, is
farther described in such passages as Mai. iv. 3 ; Matt. xiii.
40-43 ; 2 Pet. ii. 9-12 ; Ps. xcii. 7 ; on which last passage

1 " Quidara verb ad interitura et opprobrium sociorum suorum jetemum." —
Walton's Polyglott. The socii may refer to those who live; or, in a dramatic
Tvay, to the companionship of death; see Isa. xiv. 9-20; Ezek. xxxii. 2i, 25, 30.

SUPrOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 187

Hengstenberg remarks, perhaps too carelessly : " The annihila-
tion of the wicked comes into notice as the basis of the deliver-
ance of the righteous, which is the proper theme of the Psalm."

2. "And to you who are troubled, rest with us; when the Lord Jesus
shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, tak-
ing vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruc-
tion, from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power." —
2 Thes. i. 7-9.

The common mistake in the interpretation of this passage is
in taking the preposition "from" to denote separation, and not
the origin or source of the destruction named. The parallel
expression in Acts iii. 19, "The times of refreshing shall come
from the presence of the Lord (arrd TrpoGunov wv Kvpiov)" and
others describing the destruction of God's enemies (Lev. x. 2 ;
Num. xvi. 35 ; 2 Kings i. 10, 12, 14 ; Eev. xx. 9), suggest the
true sense ; which is thus given by Macknight : " These wicked
men, being raised from the dead, shall suffer punishment, even
everlasting destruction, by fire issuing from the presence of the
Lord." And by Conybeare and Howson : " Then shall go forth
against them, from the presence of the Lord, and from the bright-
ness of his glorious majesty, their righteous doom, even an ever-
lasting destruction." This view is supported by Grotius, Cocce-
ius, Pellicanus, Castalio, Le Clerc, Poole, Hammond, Benson,
Henry, Bengel, Pelt, Baumgarten-Crusius, De "Wette.

The sense of the adjective "everlasting" will be given in our
discussion of Mark iii. 29, and Heb. vi. 2.

3. " These shall go away into everlasting punishment; but tlie righteous
into life eternal." — Matt. xxv. 46.

This is the most important of all the passages supposed to
affirm the eternal suffering, and to imply the immortality, of
the lost. As we have before remarked, v/e waive all argument
in behalf of a limited sense of the word " everlasting," though a
very strong case could be made out for such a sense, if the doc-
trine of human destiny were made to turn on words expressive

188 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

of duration. Not only are all the terms that denote eternity
very often in the Bible used in a modified sense, but the very
phrase here employed by our Savior to denote the doom of the
lost, is used by Philo to express an insuperable resentment in
this life. " It is better," he says, " not to promise at all, than
not to give prompt assistance. For, in the former case, no
blame follows ; but in the latter, there is dissatisfaction from the
weaker class, and a deep hatred and lasting punishment {Kolaai^
aluvLog) from such as are powerful." ^ He also speaks of an " eter-
nal (alcdVLog, perhaps meaning /ocr-reac/zn?^/) and perfect wisdom."^
And the argument to show that aluvtog signifies, not the continu-
ance, but the spiritual nature, of the future retributions, is sup-
ported by numerous examples that have been carefully collected
by a late writer.^ But, happily, the whole doctrine of a future
life was never designed, and has not been left, to depend on this
class, nor on any single class, of words. Man's hope of immor-
tality is, rather, inwrought into the very texture of the revealed
Word, and is derived from the momentous facts of the gospel
liistory.*

In discussing the passage in hand, we accept, at the outset,
the translation of Kolaai^ by the word " punishment," and inquire
(1.) Does it necessarily denote conscious pain? (2.) Did the
Jew^s of Christ's time regard eternal privation of being as an
eternal punishment ?

(1.) We are told that the word is peculiarly expressive, a
stronger word than the TLiiopla commonly used to denote punish-
ment ; a verbal noun, denoting action, and not result ; a noun
of infliction.^ And from the Syriac we have in this place, " tor-
ment ; " as also in the common v%'sion of 1 John iv. 18.

The Syriac, however, cannot be relied on in this argument, as
it does not render the word uniformly in the four places where
the noun or the verb occurs. In Acts iv. 21, it reads : "to pun-
ish ; " in 2 Peter ii. 9 : "to be tormented ; " as also in verse 4,

1 Fragm. 0pp. IT. 667, ed. I\Iangey. 2 Dq Human. II. p. 897 (al. 709).

3 E. S. Goodwin, Christian Examiner, Vols. V. IX. X. XII. XIV.

4 See I. Taylor, Endless Life, Saturday Evening, c. 27.

5 New Engiander, May, 1856, p. 171.

SUPPOSED IMMOPvTALITY OF THE LOST. 189

where some manuscripts read Ko7ML,oiihovg ri^pdv) in 1 John iv. 18:
"existeth in peril." Moreover, the Syriac word used in the
passage in hand admits a milder sense, and is rendered " suppli-
cium " (punishment) by Walton and White.^

The translation of the word by " chastisement " is, we think,
no better supported. That is indeed the classic sense of the
word, which appears in the adjective a/coAaarof (ihQ scorner), in
Prov. xxi. 11. But it is not favored by the other passages in
the New Testament ; and it is opposed by the distinction often
made between Kolaaig and rcftupla, as corrective or disciplinary,
and judicial. The former was the punishment of children and
slaves ; the latter, of enemies or criminals. Thus Aristotle :
" Ko/MGcg is inflicted for the sake of him who suffers it, but rificopla,
for the satisfaction of him who requires it."'^ And Eustathius
says : " KoAaaig is properly a certain kind of punishment ; that
is, a certain chastising and restraining of the disposition, but not
vindictive punishment."^

The translation by " restraint " is favored by the use of the
present tense in 2 Pet. ii. 9 (/coAa^o/zevoir, comp. ver. 4 ; Jude ver.
6 ; and perhaps Acts iv. 21), and by a remark of Schleusner.^
It is favored by the tenor of various passages which represent the
wicked as the troublers of the righteous, to be effectually re-
strained by God's final judgments. See Ps. xxxvii. ; Ixxiii. ;
xcii. ; Isa. Ixvi. 24 ; Dan. xii. 2, 3 ; Matt. xiii. 40-43 ; 2 Thes.
G-10; 2 Pet. ii. 4-12; Jude vv. 5-7, 13. But this idea is
not prominent in Matt, xxv., and such a rendering would be
hardly tenable.

One respectable writer accepts the translation by the word
" abscission," or " excision."^ This seems to be supported by the
cognate ko?io66co (Matt. xxiv. 22 ; Mark xiii. 20), and by the

1 Schfiaf, in his Lexicon, renders the noun by craciatns, tormentum, supph-
cium; and the verb by cruciavit, vexavit, exciticiavit, torsit, afflixit, pressit,
angustavit, angustiis affecit, submersit, suffocavit, strangulavit.

2 Rhet. 1. 1, c. 10, § 4, cited by Stephanas.

8 "Non autem ultio ct vindicta." See Favorinus Varinus, Lexicon; — Gro
tins, De Jure Belli et Pacis, 1. 2, c. 20, § 7.

4 In his Lexicon he renders in 1 John iv. 18 : " fear produces constraint.'

5 Stephen, Essays in Eccl. Biog., Epilogue.

190 THE SCRirTURAL ARGUMENT.

original sense of "pruning." But in pruning, the tree is not
"cut off" — only the branches. And though, by the laws of
language, the word might easily have acquired this sense, we
find no proof that it has done so.

The general sense of " punishment " we think is sustained by
the comparison of the twenty-eight instances in wdiich the noun
or verb occurs in the Septuagint and other Greek versions.
Most of these are found, indeed, in the Apocryphal Books. But
this volume of Hellenistic Greek is inferior to no other authority,
to determine the usus loquendi of words in the New Testament.
The following are the most important of the passages :

Ezek. xiv. 3, 4, 7 ; xhii. 11 ; xliv. 12"(marg.). Here Kolaacc occurs as
the equivalent of " stumbling-block." Schleusner explains the translation
thus : " Whatever is the cause of misfortune or punishment, is called in
Scripture a * stumbling-block.' " For the nature of the punishment in-
curred, see ch. xiv. 8-10.

Ezek. xviii. 30, " So iniquity shall not be your ruin {K6?Maig)."

2 Sam. viii. 1, " David smote the Philistines, and subdued them " (Aquila,
iKoXaoev; Sept. kxpoTTcooaTO, routed or destroijed).

Prov. xxii. 23, "For the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil (Symma-
chus, KoTMCETaL,) the soul of those that spoiled them."i

Esdras viii. 27, " And whosoever will not do the law of thy God, and the
law of the King, let judgment be executed speedily upon him {emfieAug
KoXaaOf/oovTai) , whether it be unto death, or to banishment [TLfMpla, marg.
rooting out), or to confiscation of goods, or to imprisonment."

Wisd. iii. 1-4, "But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and
torment [Sdaavog) may not touch them. In the sight of the unwise they
seemed to die, and their exit was i-eckoned a calamity, and their de-
parture from us, utter destruction {ovvipLfiim) ; but they are in peace. Eor
though in the sight of men they are punished {KoTiaodcJocv) , their hope is
full of immortality."

xi. 5, 6, "Eor by what things their enemies [the Egyptians] were pun-
ished [hKoTiaaQrjcav], by the same things they in their need were benefited."
Comp.vv. 19, 17, andc.xil. 14,15,27; xvi. 1, 2,9, 24; xviii. 11,22. Inc.xii.
27, the Vulgate renders Kolal^ofievoL by " exterminarentur " ; Calmet and
the Port-Royalists, by " tourmentez et exterminez."

xiv. 8-10, "But the idol that is made by hands is cursed, and also he
that made it ; himself, because he made it, and the corruptible thing, be-

1 The version by Aquila was made B. C. 160; that by Symmachus, about
A. D. 200. Both are regarded as valuable.

SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 191

cause it was called a god. For to God both the wicked and his wickedness
are alike hateful. And that which was made, together with him who made
it, shall be punished ( iwlaGOf^oerai) ." Comp. ver. 13: "For neither were
they from the beginning, neither shall they be for ever." i

xlv. 4, " For a fatuity of which they [the Egyptians] were worthy brought
them to this end ; and they lost the remembrance of those things which
had happened, that they might fill up the punishment (KoT^aatv) which
was wanting to their torments {6aauvoi^)."

2 Mace. iv. 38, "He put to death the sacrilegious wretch, the Lord repay-
ing him his deserved punishment (KoTiaoiv).

vi. 14, 15, "For, not as with other nations, (whom the Lord patiently
expecteth until he shall punish [K6?MGac] them in the fulness of their sins,)
doth he also deal with us, so as to suffer our sins to come to their height,
and then take vengeance on us."

The other passages are 1 Mace. vii. 7, and 3 Mace. i. 3 ; vi.
3, where the context shows that the punishment is death.

The ethical sense of " punishment," as distinct from calamity
or mere excision, is apparent in all the passages. But the word
hy no means determines the kind of punishment. It may be
torment, or it may put an end to torment (Wisd. xix. 4). It
may be banishment, confiscation of goods, or imprisonment
(3 Esdras vii. 27). In most of the passages, it is death. In one
(Wisd. iii. 1-4), it is the loss of immortality,- or utter destruc-
tion, which seems also to be regarded as a " torment." And in

1 The dramatic sentiment which conceives of brutes and things as guilty is
very common. " At the Prytaneium or government-house," says Grote, "sit-
tings were held by the four Phylo-Basileis or Tribe Kings, to try any inanimate
object (a piece of wood or stone, &c.) which had caused death to any one, Avith-
out the proved intervention of a human hand : the wood or stone, when the fact
was verified, was formally cast beyond the border." This practice " was founded
on feehngs widely diffused throughout the Grecian world (See Pausan. vi. 11,
2; and Theocritus, Idyll, xxiii. 60); analogous in prmciple to the English law
respecting deodand, and to the spirit pervading the ancient Gennanic codes
generally (see Dr. C Triimmer, Die Lehre von der Zurechnung, c. 28-38, Hamb.
1845)," Hist, of Greece, Part 2, c. 10. Compare Gen. ix. 5 ; Exod. xxi. 28-32;
and the Hebrew cherem.

- If this is doubted, it will be made more clear by a reference to the previous
context: " And they (the wicked) knew not the secrets of God, nor hoped for
the reward of righteousness, nor esteemed the honor of holy souls. For God
made man for incorruption, and to the image of his own likeness made He liim.
But by the envy of the devil death came into the world; and they follow hira
that are of his side. But," etc.

192 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

another (Wisd. xiv. 8-10), the destruction of an idol made of
wood, in token of God's displeasure, is called punishment. To
say nothing of these remarkable instances, those in which the
punishment designated is death, show that the word does not
necessarily denote torment.

The argument from the phrase "everlasting punishment" is
then reduced to this question : Can the adjective (dtovtoQ) qualify
the noun in any specific sense, as well as in its generic sense?
If in a given instance the KoXaatg is pain, is it as proper to speak
of " eternal pain," as of " eternal punishment ? " If in another
instance the Kolaatg is death, is it proper to speak of an " eternal
death ? " If the given punishment is one of loss, may that loss
be called eternal ? If so, then all argument for the specific sense
of "torment" from the general sense of "punishment," is at an
end. The proof of eternal suffering can not be made out from
the phrase " everlasting punishment," but must be derived from
other sources. And this leads us to our second inquiry :

(2.) Did the Jews of Christ's time regard eternal privation of
being as eternal punishment ? This question is already answered
so far as the two passages just cited (Wisd. iii. 1-4; xiv. 8-10)
may be taken to show their opinion. But there are passages in
the canonical Scriptures equally in point. Thus Peter, speaking
to the Jews of the resurrection of Jesus, says : " Whom God
hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death (udlvag rov davurov)
because it was not possible that he should be holden of it" (Acts
ii. 24). It was certainly not the pains of dying that Peter had
in mind ; for Jesus w^as not saved from them. Yet we do not
suppose that he actually suffered pain in the interval between
his death and resurrection. ' The phrase was proverbial, denot-
ing the state of death as one of gloom and wretchedness, com-
pared with life. This sense is supported by Lightfoot, who says :
" By the pains of death we are not to understand so much the
torments and pangs in the last moments of death, as those bands
which followed, viz. ; the continued separation of soul and body,
the putrefaction and corruption of the body in the grave." Thus
David speaks of the " sorrows of death," the " sorrows of hell,"
the "snares of death," and "the pains of hell" (Ps. xviii. 4, 5;

SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 193

cxvi. 3 ; 2 Sam. xxii. 6). And Job desires to "take comfort a
little," before entering " the land of darkness and the shadow of
death ; a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and of the shadow
of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness "
(ch. X. 21, 22). And in Ezek. xxxii. 24, 25, 30, the enemies
of Israel are spoken of as " enduring shame," while they are
described as " slain," " fallen by the sword," " gone down to
SheoJ," or to " the pit," and in their graves. The Seventy ren-
der " shame" by "torment" (daoavog), by which they evidently
mean the torment of being dead ; and in Isa. xiv. 9-20, we find
the same dramatic representation of the state of death as a sore
evil. " The worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover
thee." Babylon is " gone down to the stones of the pit ; as a
carcass trodden under foot." This natural sentiment, that it is
an evil thing to be dead, often transfers to the dead the thoughts
of the living about them. This is quite apparent in the famous
argument of Cicero, where he finds it so difficult to dispel the
illusion that the body of one actually dead may suffer in being
torn by dogs and birds of prey. And it was said by an ancient
Rabbi : " The worm is as tormenting to a dead man, as a needle
to living flesh."

We will conclude this discussion by observing — (1.) That the
contrast of the punishment with " life eternal," naturally suggests
that it consists in eternal death. Thus De Wette : " The con-
ceptions — eternal punishment (Strafe) and eternal life — are not
strictly contrasted. Zqt/ is not merely blessedness, but life in the
fullest (tiefsten) sense of the word ; and that which properly cor-
responds to it is annihilation." And (2.) we may derive a moral
argument from the full account here given of the solemn judg-
ment of the great day.-^ What is the sin and guilt for which the
final sentence is here pronounced ? For what crime are they
condemnedvto their eternal punishment ? The indictm.ent, if we
may so name the accusation, runs thus : " I was an hungered,
and ye gave me no meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no

1 The reasons for supposing that the account in Matt. xxv. 31-46, is not of the
final judgment, but pre-millennial, are given by Dr. Duffield, Lectures on the
Prophecies, c. 20.

194 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in ; naked, and^ ye
clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not."
This charge involves the lack of all true goodness, and the
basest ingratitude. But how different it is from the reasons
commonly assigned for an eternal suffering. Yet it is God's own
Theodicy. Sinful men have not loved nor regarded Him who
came to save them ; they have rejected and scorned Him who
came that they might have life. Shall an immortality that is
" not life " be their retribution ?

4. "But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never for-
giveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation." — Mark iii. 29. "The
doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the
dead, and of eternal judgment." — Heb. vi. 2.

The words "damnation" (Kplcig) and "judgment" (Kptfca) are
not essentially different. The former has indeed become a
synonym of " eternal misery ; " but this is owing to the history
of doctrine ; not at all to its etymology,-^ nor to the original Greek.
Thus Christ says : "As I hear, I judge ; and my judgment
(Kpiaig) is just." And again: "The weightier matters of the law,
judgment (Kplii^), mercy, and truth." "Judgment (Kplatv) and the
love of God ; these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the
other undone."

But instead of this milder sense, which gave to the Hebrew
champion and deliverer the name of "judge," the word has in
Mark iii. 29, the severer meaning of " condemnation." ^ The
equivalent term in Heb. vi. 2, denotes in general " sentence,"
whether favorable or unfavorable. The word yields no argu-
ment for the immortality of the lost. That must be sought in
the qualifying adjective aluviog, " eternal," and the argument is

1 The word is derived from the Latin damnum^ vfliich signifies a fine or mulct,
loss, injury; whence our word damage. The well known phrase "poena
damni " denotes the punishment of loss in distinction from that of pain. Milton
uses the expression: " That the commonwealth of learning be not damnified; •
and Locke: " The damnified person has the power; " and Barlow: " The coun-
cil of Basil damned (imposed as a mulct) the payment of amiats," See John-
son's Diet.

2 As in John iii. 18, 19 ; v. 24, 27, 29: 1 Cor. xi. 29,

SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 195

reduced to this : Can an irreversible sentence be properly called
" eternal," though it be a sentence of utter destruction ? Or, is
this adjective used to denote the eternity of effect ?

The examples are numerous. Thus we read of an " eternal
salvation" (Heb. v. 9 ; comp. Isa. xlv. 17) ; of "eternal redemp-
tion" (Heb. ix. 12); of "the everlasting gospel" (Rev. xiv. 6,
see Barnes's note) ; of a "perpetual covenant" (Exod. xxxi. 16;
Jer. 1. 5) ; a "perpetual statute" (Lev. iii. 17; xxiv. 9); a
"perpetual decree" (Jer. v. 22); a "perpetual ordinance" (Ezek.
xlvi. 14) ; a "perpetual end" (Ps. ix. 6). And such instances
might be multiplied, if we take the Plebrew sbiS/'^, " for ever,"
as equivalent to the word "eternal." See Num. xviii. 19; Job
iv. 20 ; xiv. 20 ; xx. 7 ; xxiii. 7 ; xxxvi. 7 ; Ps. xliv. 23 ; xlix.
8 ; Iii. 5 ; Ixxvii. 7, 8 ; Ixxxiii. 17 ; xcii. 7 ; Obad. ver. 10 ;
Mic. ii. 9.

Like examples abound in early Jewish writings. Thus in the
Book of Enoch (Laurence's translation) : " Even to the day of
judgment, and of consummation, until the judgment [the effect
of] which shall last for ever, be completed" (x. 15). "For in
the great day there shall be a judgment, with which they shall
be judged until they are consumed " (xix. 2). "Until the period
of the great judgment ; when all shall be punished and consumed
for ever" (xxiv. 9). "They shall be cast into a judgment of
fire ; they shall perish in wrath, and by a judgment overpower-
ing them for ever" (xc. 11 ; comp. ver. 13 : "And blasphemers
shall be annihilated every where"). "An everlasting judgment
shall be executed" (xcii. 16; comp. ciii. 5 ; civ. 3).

We add a few examples from the Talmud and the Rabbies,
some of which explain the Jewish doctrine of a two-fold judg-
ment, and thus meet the apparent argument in the phrase " hath
never forgiveness." After having spoken of the power and
judgments of an earthly king as temporary (" if he should slay
me, that slaying would not be eternal ") Jochanan ben Zaccai
says : " If the King of kings shall be angry with me, his wrath
is eternal ; if he shall bind me, his bands are eternal ; if he
should slay me, his slaying is eternal." ^ Again it is said those

1 Berachoth, fol. 28, 2. See Lightfoot, Centuria Chorog. c. 15.

196 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

guilty of certain sins "shall descend into gelienna, and shall there
be judged for ever." On which Abarbanel remarks : " Such are
enormous sins and perverse deeds, which blind the eyes of the
mind, and subvert the soul, so that he who commits them shall
be cast out from the inheritance of the saints, which is the life
of the world to come." " He that denies the resurrection of the
dead, shall not have part in the resurrection of the dead ; for
God rewards him with the same measure." ^ Again he says :
" A sinner wdio is an Israelite shall be punished according to his
sin, yet shall have part in the world to come ; but if a man shall
not believe all these articles [of the Faith], he is already ex-
cluded from the lot of Israel, as a heretic and an Epicurean
[infidel]." And to the same purpose : " Now the greatest reward
is the world to come ; and the heaviest punishment is extermina-
tion."'-^ And Maimonides: "The sages say, For three trans-
gressions punishment is inflicted upon a man in this world, and
moreover he has no share in the world that is to come ; viz :
idolatry, adultery, and bloodshed ; but a bad tongue is equivalent
to all these." ^ With which agrees the Talmud: "There are
four things which are avenged of a man in this world, and yet
the capital [of the sin] is reserved for the world that is to come."^
The distinction is that of interest and principal ; the former might
be exacted, and the latter remitted. So Maimonides again:
"On all wicked [Israelites], though their sins be numerous,
judgment is pronounced according to their sins, but yet they
have a share in the world that is to come ; for all Israel have a
share in the world to come, although they have sinned ; for it is
said : ' Thy people also shall be all righteous ; they shall inherit
the land for ever ;' which means, the land of life, or the world
that is to come. Also, the pious of the Gentiles shall have a
share in the world that is to come. These, however [viz. :
heretics, they who deny the law, etc.] have no share in the world
that is to come, but they are cut off, destroyed, and condemned
for ever and ever." ^

Such were Jewish views of the "foundation of the faith"

1 De Capite Fidei, c. 24. 2 ib. c. 1.

s Yad Hachazakah, Of the Temper, c. 7, § 3. 4 Peyiah, § 1.

6 Yad Hach. Of Repentance, c. 3, §§ 11, 12.

SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 197

(Heb. vi. 1, 2). Christ recognizes the distinction between for-
giveness here and hereafter (Mark iii. 29 ; comp. 1 Cor. v. 5,
xi. 30), and makes his own application of it. The doctrine is
that of 1 John v. 10 : "There is a sin unto death ; I do not say
that ye shall pray for it."

II. 5. " "Whose fan is in liis hand, and he will thorouglily purge his floor,
and gather his wheat into the garner ; but he will burn up the chaff with
unquenchable fire." — Matt. iii. 12; comp. Luke iii. 17 ; Mark ix. 43, 45;
where the same phrase, nip uGSearov, is used.

With these passages should be also compared Ps. i. 4; Matt,
iii. 10 ; and John xv. 6. It is obvious that any mode of reason-
ing which would infer from them the immortality of the lost,
must assume the indestructibility of chaff, of felled trees, and of
the dry branches of a vine. We need hardly remark that the
word " unquenchable " denotes the fierceness of a fire, which can
not be quenched, but must burn on, consuming what it will.
Thus Wetstein ; " The irvp uGSearov denotes such a fire as can not
be extinguished before it has consumed and destroyed all." So
Kuinoel and Rosenmiiller. And Bloomfield, speaking of the
oriental custom of burning straw and stubble, adds : " The nvp
uaSeaTov completes the awful image of total destruction."

A similar phrase is found in Homer, where the scholiast ex-
plains : " that which burns down quickly, or is quenched with
difficulty." ^ And the same phrase occurs in various passages
in the classics,^ in the same sense. Eusebius employs it in two
instances in recounting the martyrdom of Christians. Cronion
and Julian were scourged and afterwards " consumed in an un-
quenchable fire ; " and " Epimachus and Alexander, who had

'^'AlcSeottj (^X6^. Iliad, xiii. 1G9, 564 (com. i. 599), xvi. 123.

2 See the Anthology, I. 19, 3: " A fire is soon put out; but a woman is an
inextinguishable fire ; " — Aclimet, c. 122 : " Burned with an unquenchable fire,
with a strong wind ;" — Plutarch, Numa, c. 19, speaks of the sacred fire, which
he also calls immortal ; — Cicero, Orat. pro Fonteio, c. 17; " Prospicite, ne Ule
ignis JEternus, noctui-nis Fonteise laboribus vigihisque servatus, sacerdotis ves-
trse lachrimis extinctus esse dicatur; " — Philo, De Temulent. 0pp. L 389; —
De Sacrific. II. 254 : — JElian, De Nat. Animal. 1. 5, c. 3 ; — Callimachus, Hymn,
in Dian. 117.

17*

198 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

continued for a long time in prison, enduring innumerable suffer
ings from the scourges and scrapers, were also destroyed in an
unquenchable fire."^

6. "And they shall go forth and look upon the carcases of the men tha*
haye transgressed against me ; for their Avorm shall not die, neither shall
their fire he quenched ; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." —
Isa. Ixvi. 24 ; comp. Mark ix. 44, 46, 48.

Here again we observe the mode of reasoning wliicli deduces
the immortality of the lost, must assume the indestructibility of
"carcases." But the parallel passages show that the "un-
quenched " fire is one which is not put out, but must consume and
destroy. Thus in Jeremiah, foretelling the destruction of Jeru-
salem, we read : " Behold, mine anger and my fury shall be
poured out upon this place, upon man, and upon beast, and upon
the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground ; and it
shall burn, and shall not be quenched" (vii. 20). Compare 2
Kings xxii. 17; Ps. cxviii. 12; Isa. i. 28, 31 ; Jer. iv. 4; xvii.
27 ; Ezek. xx. 47, 48 ; Amos v. 6.

But why is it said "their worm shall not die?" The reason
is two-fold: (1.) The word translated "abhorring," used else-
where only in Dan. xii. 2, and signifying the nauseous spectacle
of putrefying carcases, shows that the " worm" is not that of con-
science, but either literal vermin, or something else of which that
is a type. So the writer of Ecclesiasticus : " Humble thy spirit
very much ; for the vengeance on the flesh of the ungodly is fire
and worms" (vii. 19). Compare x. 11 ; xix. 3 ; cited above, p.
183 ; also the Targum of Jonathan on Isa. Ixv. 6 : " I will not
grant them long life, but I will pay them vengeance for their
sins, and deliver their carcases to the second death ; " and Light-
foot : " To be devoured by worms was reckoned an accursed
thing, and what befel none but men of the greatest impiety."^
And (2.) to the agency of the worm is added that of fire, to set

1 Eccl. Hist. b. 6, c. 40. Translated by Hanmer, Lend. 1663 : " a flashing fire,"
and a "fiery pile," without note. By Cruse: "an immense fire:" but the
original is given in a note.

2 Horse Heb. et Talm., Acts xii. 2a.

SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 199

forth, by iteration, the completeness of the destruction. What
the worm does not devour, the fire shall consume. Thus the
prophet Joel : " That which the palmer-worm hath left, hath the
locust eaten ; and that which the locust hath left, hath the
canker-worm eaten ; and that which the canker-worm hath left,
hath the caterpillar eaten" (i. 4).

The phrase has a historical allusion, respecting which there
are two opinions. One is that of Dr. Alexander, who, deriving
the figure from the fires kept up in the valley of the son of Hin-
nom, or Tophet,^ makes it an allusion to the fate of the apostate
Israel : " The central figure is Jerusalem, and its walls the
dividing line between the two contrasted objects. Within is the
true Israel, without the false." The latter is finally exhibited,
no longer living, but committed to the flames of Tophet. "To
render our conceptions more intense, the worm is added to the
fire, and both are represented as undying. That the contrast
hitherto maintained may not be forgotten even in this closing
scene, the men within the walls are seen by the light of these
funeral fires, coming forth and gazing at the ghastly scene, not
with delight as some interpreters pretend, but as the text ex-
pressly says, with horror. In its primary meaning, this is a
prophecy of ruin to the unbelieving Jews — apostate Israel."

The other opinion is that of Albert Barnes, who derives the
figure " from a scene where a people whose lands have been
desolated by mighty armies, are permitted to go forth after a
decisive battle, and to walk over the field of the slain, and to see
the dead and putrefying bodies of their once formidable enemies."
Of this, the destruction of Sennacherib's host would be a notable
example. Either derivation explains the language used. It is
not the immortality of the individual soul, but the multitude of
those who finally perish, that challenges the unquenched fire,
and the unfailing worm. They are as the sand of the sea (Rev.
XX. 8). Their number suggests an immortal feast for worms,
like the " supper of the great God " to which the fowls of heaven

1 " For Tophet is oi'dained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath
made it deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of
the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it." Isa. xxx. 33. '

200 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

are invited, in Rev. xix. 17, 18. Hence the expression in Isa.
Ixvi. 15, 16 : "Behold the Lord will come with fire, and with
his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury,
and his rebuke with flames of fire ; and the slain of the Lord
shall be many."

Thus the words in Isa. Ixvi. 24, are in two ways explained by
reference to the scenes of time ; and in one or other of these
explanations nearly all the commentators are agreed. It follows
that to extend the allusion — as many of them do — to an eternal
scene, explains nothing, and therefore proves nothing. It is an
assumption of the thing to be proved. And although the words
as quoted by our Savior can not refer so immediately to the
valley of Hinnom, or to the destruction of an army, but are
applied directly to God's final judgment, yet to suppose that they
now indicate the soul's immortality is no less an assumption of
the, thing to be proved, and it is to deduce indestructibility from
the images of utter destruction. But in the context the hypoth-
esis of entering into life halt or maimed or with one eye, as
strongly intimates the literal destruction of one's being, soul and
body, as the mention of " carcases " in the original passage.

But the explanation of these passages will be incomplete with-
out a consideration of that vexed passage in Mark ix. 49 : " For
every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be
salted with salt," in which a few commentators find the eternal
conservation of the lost. All such argument, at least, is done
away by the remarks of Hammond, who says : " The word salted
(aXiadrjaeTai) is made answerable to the Hebrew n?^? and is set
by Symmachus (Isa. li. 6) to signify consumed, in like manner
as the whole burnt offering is consumed — burnt all of it with
fire ; which is answerable to the unquenchable fire (ttvp (laeearov)
going before ; and so the meaning of this expression will be here,
that that first sort of men, the apostates, or wicked, carnal Chris-
tians, . . . shall be used as the burnt offerings are, — they
shall have fire instead of salt. But the pious minded Christian,
like the minchah, shall have the salt, the grace of God and
Christian doctrine ; and by God's help make use of it, to eat up
all his corruptions and degrees of putrefaction left in him, and

SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 201

also to be a, principle of union and peaceable-mindedness in him ;
as among other uses of salt it is said to be unitive (evuriKo^). . .
But it is not unlikely that in this place, and in that of Isaiah,
akioOTjceraL may be put for okusOrjaeraL (or uvaluOrjaerai) which signi-
fies first to he caught, then to he consumed; so aluoLg (2 Pet. ii.
12) is 'preying upon, and, joined with (^Oopd, destroying or consum-
ing. So in Isa. Ixvi., after the mention of God's pleading by
fire (ver. IG) is added: "they shall be consumed together
{avalo)OTiaovrai, ver. 17)." This view is supported by the remarks
of Whitby, which are the more significant because he has just ex-
patiated on the notion of the perpetuity of the condemned. He
says : " It is the property of salt to preserve things from corrup-
tion ; hence a covenant of salt is put for an everlasting or invio-
lable covenant. So Num. xviii. 19 : 'It is a covenant of salt
for ever (p\Jbg aluviov") before the Lord ; ' and God gave David
and his sons kings over Israel for ever by a covenant of salt (2
Chr. xiii. 5). Whence the Jews say, salt was to season all their
sacrifices, to signify that they preserved their souls from corrup-
tion, as the salt did the sacrifice ; Philo, that salt is a symbol
of the perpetuity of all things, preserving that on which it is
sprinkled.-^ And on those words : ' With every oblation you
shall offer salt,' — ' By this,' saith Philo, ' he signifies the perpet-
ual duration of them ; salt being the preservation of bodies next
to the soul itself; for as the soul is the cause that our bodies are
not corrupted, so is salt, preserving them for a long time, and
rendering them in a manner incorruptible (uvadavaniovrsg, immor-
talizing them).'"^

7. " Even as Sodom and GomoiTah, and the cities about them in hke
manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh,
are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." —
Judo ver. 7. " Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off
and cast them from thee ; for it is better for thee to enter into life halt or
maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into everlast-
ing fire." — Matt, xviii. 8. " Then shall he say unto them on the left hand,
Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his
angels." — Matt. xxv. 41.

1 De Victimis, 0pp. II. 240 (al. 837).

2 De Sacrificantibus, Opp, II. 255 (al. 851).

202 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

The phrase nvp aluvtov^ used in each of these passages, is mani-
festly equivalent to the Trip uaSecrov of Matt. iii. 12 ; Luke iii. 17,
and Mark ix. 43, 45. In two of these passages (Matt, xviii. 18,
and Mark ix. 43, 45) the phrases are used interchangeably, in
different accounts of the same discourse of our Savior. If one
of them indicates a complete destruction, the other cannot indi-
cate an immortality of the lost; and we might here rest the
argument.

But it will be better to show how the adjectives uaSearov and
aluviov should denote the same thing. This is told in a word.
The former describes the fierceness and all-consuming violence
of the fire ; the latter, its irreparable effect. The eternal fire is
that which destroys utterly and /or ever. This eternity of effect,
which we noted in Mark iii. 29 and Heb. vi. 2, has been remarked
by commentators on one of the passages in hand. Thus Witsius,
after saying that the words in Jude, v. 7, are " not to be restricted
to that fire wherewith those cities were burnt, but to be extended
to the flames of hell, with which the lewd inhabitants of those
cities are at this very day tormented," adds : " But it is true of
both, that they were burnt with fire ; which with respect to the
towns may in some measure be said to be eternal, they being so
consumed as that they never shall or can be restored." ^ And
Whitby: "I conceive that they (the inhabitants) are said to

* suffer the vengeance of eternal fire,' not because their souls are
at present punished in hell-fire, but because they and their cities
perished by that fire from heaven, which brought a perpetual and
irreparable destruction on them and their cities." And Bloom-
field: "On the TTiip aluvcov commentators (I think) require too
much. Benson explains it : a fire which burnt till it utterly con-
sumed them. See Whitby. It is not necessary to press on the
aluvLov. We need only suppose that the Apostle's meaning is,

* they are publicly set forth (TTpoKecvrat, which is a forensic term),
for an everlasting example (in their fiery destruction) of the
punishment God sometimes inflicts for sin in this world, which is
but a faint type of that which he hath reserved for the next." ^

1 Economy of the Covenants, b. 1, c. 5. 2 Critical Digest.

SUPPOSED IILMORTALITT OF THE LOST. 203

Very true ; a fire that utterly consumes, is a " faint type " of a
destruction ever going on and ever incomplete. Hammond speaks
of " the utterly irreversible destruction, such as fell on Sodom,
called aluviov TTvp, eternal fire, utterly consumptive." ^ Episcopius
takes the passage in the same sense.^ Adam Clarke takes it as
applying either to the inhabitants or to the cities, and says : " In
either case the word •rrvp aluviov signifies an eternally destructive
fire ; it has no end in the punishment of the wicked Sodomites,
. . . it has no end in the destruction of the cities ; they were
totally burnt up, and never were and never can be rebuilt. In
either of these cases the word aluvtog has its proper and gram-
matical meaning." And Rosenmiiller: "We may understand
TTvp aitjviov of a destroying fire ; that is, one which utterly wasted
and reduced to nothing. But we may also understand a fire
perpetually smoking."

Here is a shght addition to the sense of aluviog, which, how-
ever, does not all conflict with that just given. Those cities
became an eternal monument of desolation. Thus Cajetan :
They " were burned with fire from heaven, of which conflagration
the traces still remain and ever will remain to the end of the
world ; to wit, a continual desolation, a Dead Sea, constantly
smoking and exhaling pitch and sulphur wherewith it was
burned ; admitting neither fish nor any living thing ; but speedily
destroying them ; producing apples of emptiness and ashes ; so
that Sodom has the appearance of a past fire, and is a vivid
example of what will be in gehenna." Be it so ; if the antitype
is true to the type, what is the immortality of the lake of fire
and brimstone — the Dead Sea of the world to come ?

And these cities were an example (deh/fjia) in fact, as well as
intent. " Nothing was more known and celebrated among au-
thors, sacred and profane, Jewish, Christian, and heathen writers,
than ' the fire that fell down upon Pentapolis,' or the five cities
of Sodom ; they being mentioned still in Scripture as the cities
which God overthrew with a perpetual desolation ; in the Apoc-
ryphal writings, ' the waste land that yet smoketh.' " ^

1 Comm. on Rev. xx. 6. 2 Responsio ad Ixiv. Quaest., 63.

8 Whitby. Comp. Deut. xxix. 23, 24; Hos. xi. 8; Wisd. x. 7; 3 Slacc. ii. 5;

204 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

It is here Avorlhy of note that the adjective " suffering "
(vTzexovoac) in Jude, ver. 7, refers to the cities rather than to the
inhabitants. And it only remains for us to answer an objection
derived fi'om the nature of the human soul, which is supposed to
preclude the proof of an utter destruction from some of the pas-
sasres now considered. It is best stated and answered in the
words of Whately : " Supposing the soul to be immaterial, it can
not be destroyed by literal fire and worms. That is true ; but no
more can it 5?(^er from these. We all know that no fire, literally
so called, can give us any pain unless it reaches our bodies.
The ' fire/ therefore, and the ^ worm,' must at any rate, it would
seem, be figuratively so called, — something that is to a soul
what fire and worms are to a body. And as the effect of worms
or fire is, not to preserve the body that they prey upon, but to
consume, destroy, and put an end to it, it would follow, if the
correspondence hold good, that the fire figuratively so called,
which is prepared for the condemned, is something that is really
to destroy and put an end to them ; and is called ' everlasting' or
' unquenchable ' fire, to denote that they are not to be saved from
it, but that their destruction is to be final." ^

8. " The sinners in Zion are afraid ; fearfulness hath surprised the hypo-
crites. Who among us shall dwell Avith the devoui'ing fire 1 Who among
us shall dwell with everlasting burnings ? " — Isa. xxxiii. 14.

These are doubtless the words of the unbelieving Jews, who
had advised ungodly alliances with the surrounding nations, and

— Philo, Dc Vita ]\Iosis, 1. 2 : " The cinders, brimstone and smoke, and the
obscure flame as it were of a fire burning, yet appearing about Syria, are me-
morials of the perpetual evils which happened to them; " — Josephus, Antiq. 1.
1, c. 11, § 1 ; — Strabo, Gcog. 1. IG : " Many signs indicate that this is a burnt
district ; for we find burnt rocks and an ashy soil, and drops of pitch distilling
from the rocks, and bubbling streams of fetid odor; " — Tacitus, Hist. 1. 5, c. 7 :
" Not far hence are the plams which they say were formerly cities, and were
struck with a thunderbolt, and afterwards burned with fire from heaven;" —
Solinus, Polyhist. 1. 35 ;- Diod. Sic. Hist. 1.19, c.98. Well may Hengstenberg say :
" As the fire and brimstone point to the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, so
it is very natural to suppose that allusion is made to the dead sea as the earthly
image of hell." Comm. on Rev. xix. 20.
1 Script. Rev.of a Future State, c. 8.

SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 205

are now terror-stricken at the dangers that impend. Some think
the " devouring fire " refers to the presence of God, which
affrights the wicked as if it were a "consuming fire" (Deut. iv.
24). More precisely, this would be the Shekinah, threatening
to devour them, as the adherents of Dathan and Abiram were
consumed. By others it is referred to the fury of the Assyrians,
raging as a fire (Prov. xxx. IG; Isa. x. 7; xiv. 6) ; or to their
ancient and inveterate enmity (Ezek. xxv. 15) ; or to the actual
invasion and devastation of the land by them. Hence the
remark of Grotius, in the style of some of the passages adduced
under Matt. iii. 12 : "The fire that is not quenched; such they
thought to be the Assyrian power.'*

But we prefer the exegesis which refers the passage to the
destruction of the Assyrians, in which the unbelieving Jews
feared they might share. Hence the expression in verses 10-12,
where the Assyrian army is represented as awaiting a sudden
and utter destruction : " Now will I arise, saith the Lord ; now
will I be exalted ; now will I lift up myself. Ye shall conceive
chaff; ye shall bring forth stubble ; your breath, as fire, shall
devour you. And the people shall be as the burnings of lime; as
thorns cut up shall they be burned in the fire." This had been
already foretold in ch. xxvii. 4 : " Fury is not in me [i. e. I am
no longer angry with my people]. Who will set the briers and
thorns against me in battle? I would go through them; I would
burn them together."^ The prophecy appears as history in ch.
xxxvii. 36 : "Then the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote
in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred and four score and five
thousand ; and when they arose early in the morning, behold
they were all dead corpses." According to the custom of the
eastern nations, these bodies should be burned. And on the
phrase "burnings of lime" it is remarked by Dr. Alexander,
that the same word "burnings" is applied (Jer. xxxiv. 5) to the
aromatic fumigations used at ancient burials [i. e. in the funeral
pyre], to which there may be allusion here. The ideas expressed
are those of quickness and intensity. The thorns are perhaps

1 See also ver. 11, and comparG ch. x. 16-18; Joliu xv. 6.
18

206 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

described as cut up, to suggest that they are dry, and therefore
more combustible."

The effect of this display of divine power is to alarm those
who have not trusted in God, and who can not know Him as
their deliverer. " Who among us," they exclaim, " shall dwell
with (this) devouring fire ? Who among us shall dwell with
(these) perpetual burnings?" Thus Dr. Alexander renders the
passage, with whom agree Luther, Vitringa, Le Clerc, Matthew
Henry, and Lowth.

Here again, to extend the meaning of the passage to the future
world explains nothing and proves nothing. And if we allow the
extended sense, it would only prove the very doctrine we main-
tain. A parallel passage in Rev. vi. 17, is significant of any
thing but the eternal endurance of the wicked : " For the great
day of His wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand ? "
With which should be compared the expression " both soul and
body," in Isa. x. 18, and Matt. x. 28, which, if strictly taken,
would show that the first and second deaths were included, the
latter named in anticipation, or both to be actually combined in
one.

9. " He that bclieveth on the Son hath everlasting life ; and he that be-
lieveth not on the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on
him." — John iii. 36.

Plow, it is asked, can the wrath of God abide on those who
do not exist ? It is sufficient to reply that the state of death was
deemed by the Jews an evil. Death past all hope of return to
life was no less an evil. And by a natural dramatism, the sub-
tlety of thoughts ever transcending the subtlety of words, such a
destiny might be expressed in language which, grammatically
taken, implies existence. The idea is, God's wrath shuts up the
wicked in eternal non-existence. If they would escape they
" shall be turned back^ into Sheol, and all the nations that forget
God."

1 The Hebrew iViJ always denotes a return, or turning back, to a foraier
place or state. This rendering of Ps. ix. 17, may give the true distinction be-
tween the destiny of the righteous and the wicked, who all enter into Sheol.

SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 207

But there is a truer exegesis of the passage, which makes it
retrospective. See ver. 18. The world is already under con-
demnation, and in case of unbelief, the sentence continues in
force, awaiting until it be executed. This agrees with what
Calvin says: "I am not dissatisfied with the view given by
Augustine, that the word ' abideth ' is used to inform us that
from the womb we were appointed to death, because we were
all born the children of wrath (Eph. ii. 3). At least I willingly
admit an allusion of this sort, provided we hold the true and
simple meaning to be what I have stated, that death hangs over
all unbelievers, and keeps them oppressed and overwhelmed in
such a manner that they can never escape." So Erasmus,
Lightfoot, Kuinoel, Doddridge, Alford.

III. 10. "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is
filtliy, let him be filthy still ; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous
still ; and he that is holy, let him be holy still." — Rev. xxii. 11.

Even the elder Edwards, wdio adduces this passage in support
of the theodicy of eternal sinfulness, remarks upon it : " Thus
Christ takes leave of his Church till his last coming, warning
them to improve the means of grace they have, and informing
them that they are never to have any other." ^ This suggests
the true sense, which is stated by the Venerable Bede : " Evil
men are permitted to wax worse, or to reach the climax of wick-
edness, so they shall find God's judgment to be just." It is
given more fully by Lowman : " The providence of God will
indeed permit things to continue in this world, just as these
things represent the state of them. Men of evil principles and
corrupt hearts will continue in acts of injustice and oppression,
and. to promote false religion and wickedness, notwithstanding
all the cautions of religion and judgments of Providence. Yet
the cautions, directions, and encouragements of these prophecies,
and the judgments of Providence foretold in them, will have a
better effect on good minds, to their perseverance in truth, right-
eousness^ and holiness." And the more critical examination of

1 Works, I. 626.

208 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

the principal words confines their significance to the scenes of
time. Thus Daubuz : " ' He that wrongeth ' (or the unjust) de-
notes, in a peculiar manner, throughout this prophecy, the perse-
cution and murder of the saints. . . . ' He which is filthy,'
seems principally to denote those who shall be guilty of idol
worship. . . . These prophecies will be of great use, as
they shall contribute to the constancy of the righteous and the
holy, though they should not effect a general reformation in the
world, though men of evil principles and wicked hearts shall still
remain persecutors and idolaters." This view is supported by
the Syriac and Arabic versions ; by Rosenmiiller, who cites
similar expressions from the classic writers ; ^ by Cornelius a
Lapide, Eichhorn, Poole, Henry, Andrew Fuller, Bloomfield,
Hengstenberg, Jenks, and Stuart.

IV. 11. "These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a
tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever." — 2 Pet. ii.
17. "Raging Avaves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering
stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever."- Jude v. 13.

" We came into the world," says Clement of Rome "as it were
out of a sepulchre, and from darkness." ^ This expression sug-
gests that the term " darkness " was with the Jews a synonym
of chaos and non-existence. Blank nothingness, where no light
is, appears as a blackness, and is more natui'ally conceived as
a dread something than as a nothing. The concrete expression
is more lively and vigorous than the abstract, which comes as
an after thought. Hence such terms as "nothingness" and
" annihilation " were rarely used by the ancients, though they
are now common. The state of things before the world was, is
described in the oldest of books as a Tohu vau Balm — something
empty and void ; not unformed matter, but nothingness —

" Illimitable, without bound.
Without division, where length, breadth, and height,
And time, and place, are lost." 3

1 SalhTst, Fragm.: " Quando talis es, maneas in sententia; " — Arriau, IV. 19:
JloieL a TcotelQ.
2Ep. to the Corinthians, sec. 88, transl. by Abp. Wake, "outer darkness."
3 See Tayler Lewis, Six Days of Creation, c. 7.

SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 209

And upon the face of this ''deep" was Darkness. In Gentile
speech, " Chaos and old Night " were the significant Nothinf' out
of which all things were created. This was the outer limit, the
utter darkness, upon which creative Light is ever encroaching,
as the Spirit of God hovers over it to impart new being. And
His wrath is the fire that remands thither all that has no place
in His dominion.

Some have thought the phrase " outer darkness " is an allu-
sion to some dark, dreary prison in Jerusalem, where malefactors
were condemned to perish by hunger, want, and cold. ^ More
natural is the allusion to gehenna^ as a gloomy abode of death.
Thus the Targum on 1 Sam. ii. 9 : " The wicked shall be avenged
in gehenna, in darkness." (Compare on Ps. Ixxxiii. 13.) The
terror of this darkness, even aside from the notion of punish-
ment, is finely depicted in the Septuagint and Vulgate transla-
tions of Job X. 21, 22 : " Before I go and return no more, to a
land that is dark and covered with the mist of death ; a land of
misery and darkness, where is the shadow of death, and no order,
but eternal horror dwells."

The expression in the epistle of Jude is well illustrated by the
Syriac version : " Shooting stars, to whom is reserved the black-
ness of darkness for ever." With this compare the passage in
the book of Enoch : " Mercy shall be showed unto the righteous
man ; upon him shall be conferred integrity and power for ever.
In goodness and righteousness shall he exist, and shall walk in
everlasting light. But sin shall perish in eternal darkness, nor
be seen from this time forward for evermore " (xci. 3 ; comp.
Dan. xii. 3 ; Pro v. xxiv. 20).

The expressions, " wailing," and " gnashing of teeth," which
are connected with the "outer darkness" (Matt. viii. 12; xxii.
13; XXV. 30), and with the "furnace of fire" (Matt, xiii; 42,
50), are here explained by reference to Ps. cxii. 10. They de-
note, not an ever-subsisting malignity and contention, but the
rage of envy and shame, in disappointment of eternal life. " The
wicked shall see it, and shall be grieved ; he shall gnash with

i"Et ipsis tenebris," adds Wolf, Curce Philol. I\Iatt. viii. 12.
18*

210 THE SCIIIPTUEAL ARGUMENT.

his teeth, and melt away ; the desire of the wicked shall perish."
The "portion with the hypocrites" (Matt. xxiv. 51) may be an
allusion to Isa. xxxiii. 14. And the expression in Rev. xxii. 15,
" without are dogs, etc.," should be compared with Luke, xiii.
28, and Ps. cxii. 10. The radical idea is that o^ exclusion, from
the kingdom of light and life.

The expression in Jude, ver. 6, "reserved in everlasting
chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day,"
obviously denotes an imprisonment from which there is no release
for the better. A similar phrase is used by Josephus, in speak-
ing of the tyrant John as condemned by the Romans to " eternal
imprisonment (6ea/wlc aluviocg) ; " ^ and a passage still more similar
occurs in Cicero, who says that Catiline " does not hesitate to
commit Publius Lentulus to eternal darkness and chains (feternis
tenebris vinculisque)."^ It is properly illustrated by the fol-
lowing, taken from the book of Enoch : " Bind Azazyel hand
and foot ; cast him into darkness ; and opening the desert which
is in Dudael, cast him in there. Throw upon him hurled and
pointed stones, covering him with darkness ; there shall he re-
main for ever ; cover his face, that he may not see the light.
And in the great day of judgment let him be cast into the fire "
(x. 6-9). " There shall they be taken into the lowest depths
of the fire in torments, and in confinement shall they be shut up
for ever. Immediately after this shall he (Samyaza), together
with them, burn and perish" (x. 17, comp. ver. 15, above).

The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, in like manner,
simply denotes that there can be no improvement of the condi-
tion of those who die out of Christ. Aside from this, it proves
nothing beyond the judgment. It belongs to the intermediate
state ; for the torment of the rich man here described is not that
of Gehenna, but of Hades. In this view it will be considered in
a subsequent discussion. We need here only remark that the
distinction between Hades or Sheol, and Gehenna, is strictly
observed in the Bible, and is often remarked by the commen-
tators. The former is the Underworld, the place of disembodied

1 Wars, b. 6, c. 9, § 4. 2 Qrat. IV. in Catil. c. 5.

8 See Campbell, Gospels, Dissert. VI.;— Sears, Athanasia, Part III., c. 4.

SUPPOSED nniORTALITY OF THE LOST. 211

souls, or the state of the dead. The latter is the " furnace of
fire," the "lake of fire and brimstone," the unquenchable or
eternal fire which consumes utterly and destroys for ever. The
term (yeewa) occurs in twelve instances in the New Testament,
viz : Matt. v. 22, 29, 30 ; x. 28 ; xviii. 9 ; xxiii. 15, 33 ; Mark
ix. 43, 45, 47 ; Luke xii. 5 ; James iii. 6. Wetstein, in his
note on Matt. v. 22, remarks : " All the punishments of more
atrocious crimes were inflicted, either by God or men ; severe
punishments, indeed, by the judgments of twenty-three men ;
those more severe by the Sanhedrim ; but the severest of all by
God, in the excision (n^::) either of body, or of soul or of both.
Of this punishment Christ is speaking here, and in verses 29,
30, and ch. x. 28." And of the Jewish use of the term gehenna
he cites among others the following examples : From the Jeru-
salem Targum on Gen. iii. 24: " He made gehenna for the wicked,
like a two-edged sword, cutting either way ; and in the midst of
it, sparks and coals, burning up {comhurentes) the wicked."
From the Targum on Ps. xxxvii. 20 ; " And they shall be con-
sumed in the smoke of gehenna." On Eccl. viii. 10: "They
have gone to be consumed in gehenna." And on Isa. xxxi. 9^
gehenna is spoken of as " a fire which goes forth from the bodies
of the wicked and sets them on fire ; for it is said : Ye shall
conceive chaff, and bring forth stubble ; your breath, as fire,
shall devour you." This may illustrate the peculiar use of the
word in James iii. 6.

12. "And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever;
and they have no rest, day nor night, who worship the beast and his image,
and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name." — Rev. xiv. 11. "And
again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever." —
xix. 3.

The first of these passages refers properly to the scenes of
time, and not to the final judgment. The chapter contains no
allusion to the resurrection, or to the opening of the books. It
opens with a dramatic representation of heaven as a witness of
the tragic events of earth. In the mingling of mercy with judg-
ment, the " everlasting gospel " is proclaimed (ver. 6). Because

212 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

the time is one of unprecedented distress, those who die are
happy in being saved from the evil to come. " Blessed are the
dead which die in the Lord, from henceforth, that they may rest
from their labors " (ver. lo). The days of trouble will try " the
patience of the saints" (ver. 12). The chapter closes with an
account of " blood, even unto the horse-bridles, by the space of a
thousand and six hundred furlongs." And the very expression ;
" who worship the beast and his image," seems to refer to the
earthly conduct and condition of idolatrous people. The passage
proves an earthly immortality, if it proves any ; and the same
may be said of the similar passage in ch. ix. 6, sometimes adduced
in this argument : " And in those days shall men seek death,
and shall not find it ; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee
from them."

But when we look to the context of the latter passage, we
find that " Babylon," which is doubtless the same idolatrous
polity under another name, is utterly destroyed. See ch. xviii.
8-10, 15, 18, 21. " She shall be utterly burned with fire." She
" shall be found no more at all." Her desolation strikes terror
into the hearts of those who were seduced by her ; they "bewail
her, and lament for her, when they see the smoke of her burning,
standing afar off for fear of her torment." What is this but the
torment of being utterly destroyed ? The figure of " smoke
ascending " is borrowed from the destruction of the cities of the
plain (Gen. xix. 28), and was already employed by Isaiah in
describing the desolations of Edom : " The streams thereof shall
be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and
the land thereof shall become pitch. It shall not be quenched,
night nor day ; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever and ever ;
from generation to generation shall it lie waste ; none shall pass
through it for ever and ever " (xxxiv. 9, 10).

Daubuz, one of the ablest and most learned commentators on
the Apocalyse, and who states very strongly the common view
of the destiny of the lost, finds no proof of that doctrine in these
passages. He illustrates the view we have given of them by
citations from Homer (Iliad, xxi. 522), Virgil (^neid, iii. 2, 3),
and Seneca (Consol. ad Polyb. c. 1), and says : " So then, the

SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 213

smoke ascending for ever and ever, is not to signify a continual
burning ; but by a metonymy of the efficient for the effect, to
signify that it is burnt for ever, and never to be restored." This
derivation of the hxnguage is sustained by Cocceius, Eichhorn,
Newton, Fuller, Clarke, Hengstenberg, Stuart, and denied, per-
haps, by none. That one of these (Hengstenberg) should take
the language in either j^assage as " an image of the torments of
hell," in the common view, is simply to assume the point in
question ; to explain no word and to prove no thing. It strangely
deduces an immortal life from the imagery of desolation and
death.

One passage yet remains, a frequent dernier ressort to prove
the immortality of the lost :

V. 13. "And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed
the camp of tlie saints about, and the beloved city; and fire came down
from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived
them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and false
prophet are ; and [they] shall be tormented day and night for ever and
ever." — Eev. xx. 9, 10.

This passage cannot be claimed as proving directly any thing
beyond the eternal existence of Satan, the Beast, and the False
Prophet. The argument from it for the immortality of those
who worship the Beast or the False Prophet, is inferential ; and
to infer simj^ly an eternal succession of their worshippers, is quite
as good reasoning. Moreover, the .argument for the immortality
of all the wicked must be deduced from what is here supposed
to be intimated of only a part of them ; for many generations
of the heathen, and all the ancient world, are utter strangers to
the Beast and the False Prophet ; and such perhaps are " the
nations in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog," who
are here described as deceived by Satan, and devoured by fire
from God out of heaven (vv. 8, 9). Karefayev, says Stuart, is
'• intensive, to eat up, devour, so that it denotes utter excision."
The argument from Matt. xxv. 41, must also assume, that if
^' the devil and his angels " are strictly immortal, and undestroyed
by the " eternal fire," the same is true of wicked men.

214 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

The whole argument must begin, then, with proving that
Satan, the Beast, and the False Prophet, are immortal. By
parity of reasoning, Death and Hades, named in ver. 13, and
appointed to the same " lake of fire," are also immortal. But
this is not allowed. Thus Nitzsch, speaking of the second death,
remarks : " The idea of annihilation becomes more prominent
when we consider that even death and Hades (which shall abso-
lutely be no more) are cast into the lake of fire." ^ And Stuart :
" Hades and its king, edvarog, as appears by ver. 14, are to be
cast into the lake of fire, after the judgment-day ; i. e. they are
to be utterly destroyed." But he adds : " The place for disem-
bodied spirits will be of no further use, after the resurrection of
the body and its re-union with the soul. Death will then have
completed his work, and will therefore be no more."

This is remarkable. Death and Hades, symbolical person-
ages, are supposed to cease from being ; while their subjects,
"the dead," — whose names, after their resurrection, are not
found in the book of life, who are cast into the same lake of fire
(ver. 15), in which gehenna both soul and body are destroyed
(Matt. X. 28), and which is the "second death," — are supposed
to be immortal ! Who does not see, rather, that Hades and
Thanatos are only other names for the dead ; or, at least, that
the destruction of their kingdom includes that of all who were
its proper subjects ? The righteous, over whom " Death hath
no dominion," live ; but not those who loved Death. " They
follow him that are of his side " (Wisd. ii. 25).

But if Death and his own are destroyed, why not the Beast
and the False Prophet in like manner ? How are they immor-
tal without their worshipers — either singly, or in endless suc-
cession ? All are alike symbolical personages, and all must
share the fate of those who constitute them. All argument from
their nature shows that if Death and Hades cease to be, so like-
wise do the Beast and the False Prophet. Of the party of
Satan, — the Gog and Magog destroyed by fire as the prelude
of these final judgments, — it may' be even doubted whether they

1 Christian Doctrine, § 219, note 3.

SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 215

appear at all in the resurrection ; it is more natural to suppose
that after their summary judgment, that of Satan, not a sym-
bolical personage, along with that of the Beast and the False
Prophet, remained yet to be described.

But why are they said to be '• tormented, day and night, for
ever and ever?" This might be said of the Beast and the False
Prophet as impersonations, henceforth without power or wor-
shipers. Compare what is said of Babylon, ch. xviii, 7, 8, 19.
But w^e think the language describes their utter and irrevocable
destruction, in a dramatic form which is quite consistent with the
general structure of the book, and^of which dramatism we have
already found so many examples. To those before cited,^ we
will only add here the language of taunting and insult addressed
by the dead to the fallen Babylon, in Isa. xiv. 9, 10, 12 : " Hades
from beneath is moved because of thee for to meet thee at thy
coming ; he rouseth for thee the mighty dead, all the great chiefs
of the earth ; he maketh to rise up from their thrones all the
kings of the nations. All of them shall accost thee, and shall say
unto thee : Art thou, even thou too, become weak as we ? Art
thou made like unto us ? . . . How art thou fallen from
heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning ! Art cut down to the
earth thou that didst subdue the nations ! " (Lowth's translation.)
And Ecclus. xxi. 10, 11 : "The congregation of sinners is like
tow heaped together ; and the end of them is a flame of fire.
The way of sinners is made plain with stones ; and in their end
is hell, and darkness, and pains."

But will Satan actually cease from being? Is he indeed
mortal ? The prophecies all look that way. Our translators
have indeed dealt somewhat tenderly with the great Adversary,
in Gen. iii. 15, where the true sense is that the Seed of the
woman shall crush^ the head of the Serpent. The words in
Heb. ii. 14, and 1 John iii. 8, express indeed the dispossession of

1 Acts ii. 24 ; 2 Sam. xxii. 6 ; Ps. xviii. 4, 5 ; cxvi. 3 ; Job x. 21, 22 (comp. xxi.
17); Ezek. xxxii. 24, 25, 30; Wisd. iii. 1-4; xiv. 8-10; Ecclus. vi. 19; x. 13;
xix. 3; Enoch x. 6, 9, 15, 17; xix. 2; xixiv. 9; xc. 11. Those from the Apoc-
ryphal Books may be found again by means of the Index (p. viii).

2 See Gesenius' Lexicon, last ed.

216 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

Satan, rather than his final destruction. But that doom, in com-
mon with the destruction of every power hostile to God, is told in
Daniel : " I beheld then because of the voice of the great words
which the horn spake ; I beheld even till the Beast was slain,
and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame. As
concerning the rest of the Beasts, they had their dominion taken
away ; yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time "
(vii. 11, 12). See also Mat. xxv. 41, and pp. 202,-sq.

§ 5. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.

The now prevalent doctiine of immortality has been sup-
ported recently in an indirect scriptural argument. If it was a
prevalent error of the Jews in Christ's time, why, it is asked,
<lid he not expose it by direct and explicit asseveration ? Was
it not a culpable and enormous neglect, if the Great Teacher
failed to point out and condemn so fearful a delusion ? Could
he for a moment allow his hearers to indulge the persuasion, of
an absolute immortality, or to feel the terror of an eternal mis-
ery, if cither doctrine were totally false ?^

Our reply is tJiree-fold. I. The argument is convertible.
Why did not Christ give an explicit sanction to the doctrine of
man's immortality ? Why did he never speak of man as an
immortal being ? Why did not he who brought life and immor-
tality to light, and who had the words of eternal life, relieve the
silence of the Scriptures by a single direct mention or assertion of
man's immortal nature? Why did he say nothing of eternal woe?

II. We <-halienge the proof that the doctrines in question
w^ere prevalent among the Jews in Christ's time. Reserving
the later history of Jewish opinion for a subsequent discussion,
where we shall show that their Talmud has not recognized these
doctrines, and that their symbols have never asserted them, we
will here notice three arguments that have been offered to show
that they did prevail wlien Christ was on earth.

1. From the hook of Enoch. The following passages have
been cited ; " Moreover, abunditnt is their suffering until the

1 T. M. Post, New Englander, May, 1S56, p. 1C8, sq.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. 217

time of the great judgment, the castigation, and the torment of
those who eternally execrate, whose souls are punished and
bound there for ever. A receptacle of this sort has been formed
for the souls of unrighteous men and of sinners ; of those who
have committed crime, and associated with the impious whom
they resemble. Their souls shall not be annihilated in the day
of judgment, neither shall they arise from this place" (xxii. 12,
14). "Never shall they obtain mercy, saith the Lord of
spirits" (xxxix. 2). "The countenances likewise of the mighty
shall He cast down, filling them with confusion. Darkness
shall be their habitation, and worms their bed ; nor from that
bed shall they hope to be again raised, because they exalted not
the name of the Lord of spirits " (xlvi. 4). " But has it not been
shown to them, that, when to the receptacle of the dead their
souls shall be made to descend, their evil deeds shall become
their greatest torment ? Into darkness, into the snare, and into
flame which shall burn to the great judgment, shall their spirits
enter ; and the great judgment shall take effect for ever and
ever" (ciii. 5).-^

Two questions are here to be settled: 1. Do these passages
decide the doctrine of the book ? 2. If so, do they determine
the doctrine of the Jews ? We think neither. For, in the first
place, the book is as silent respecting immortality as the Scrip-
tures themselves. The citations before made also show that
some of the above expressions may denote the eternity of effect.
Moreover the style of the book is highly dramatic. Thus in the
last chapter the righteous and the wicked are set in contrast,
and it is said " sinners shall cry out, beholding them" (cv. 27J,
though it \vas said in ver. 21 : "You, who have labored, shall
w^ait in those days, until the evil doers be consumed, and the
power of the guilty be annihilated. Wait, until sin pass away ;
for their names shall be blotted out of the holy books ; their
seed shall be destroyed, and their spirits slain." And the
expression : " their souls shall not be annihilated in the day of
judgment," does not necessarily imply that they will never be

1 Dr. Davidson, in Kitto's Cyclopasdia ; M. Stuart, Bib. Eepos., July, 1840.
19

218 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

annihilated. It should be compared with the following pas-
sages : " They shall be brought from every part of the earth,
and be cast into a judgment of fire. They shall perish in wrath,
and by a judgment overpowering them for ever. Then shall the
roots of iniquity be cut off; sinners shall perish by the sword ;
and blasphemers be annihilated every where. All who walk in
the path of iniquity shall perish for ever" (xc, 11, 13, 17).
"And to this were brought the blind sheep ; which being judged,
and found guilty, were all thrust into that abyss of fire on the
earth, and burnt " (Ixxxix. 35). " When all shall be punished
and consumed for ever, this shall be bestowed on the righteous
and humble" (xxiv. 9). "Our spirits have been consumed,
lessened, and diminished" (ciii. 7 ; comp. Isai. xiv. 9, sq.). On
the other hand it is said of the righteous : " None shall perish in
the presence of the Lord of spirits, nor shall any be capable of
perishing" (Ix. 7). " The saints shall exist in the light of the
sun, and the elect in the light of everlasting life, the days of
whose life shall never terminate ; nor shall the days of the saints
be numbered, who seek for light, and obtain righteousness with
the Lord of spirits" (Ivi. 3). " These however die and perish.
But youv from the beginning were made spiritual, possessinoj a
life which is eternal, and not subject to death for ever " (xv.
4,6).

In the second place, respecting the value of the book as denot-
ing prevalent opinions, it is clearly not the work of a Christian
Jew, as has been supposed. ^ It contains no allusion whatever
to the redemptive work of Christ ; and it has been well remarked :
" The Christological portions do not possess sufficient distinctness
to imply a knowledge of the New Testament. The name Jesus
never occurs; though Son of Man, so often given to the Messiah
in the Gospels, is very frequent. Neither are the appellations
Lord, Lord Jesus, Jesus Christ, or even Christ employed. Is
there not something unaccountable here on the supposition that
the writer was instructed in Christianity ? " ^ It has, then, no
Christian authority. And, though evidently written by a Jew,

I Stuart and Lucke, 2 Dr. Davidson, as above.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. 219

the lime and place of its composition are matters of dispute. It
is doubted whether it was written during the reign of Herod, or
earlier ; but though aUuded to in the " Testaments of the Tw^elve
Patriarchs," about A. D. 100, and by several of the Fathers, it
is not noticed by Philo or Josephus. It is doubted whether its
author lived in the northern part of Palestine, in the northern
districts of the Caspian and Euxine seas, in Chaldasa, in Egypt,
or in Abyssinia ; whether it was written by one person, or com-
piled from various tracts ; whether it was quoted by Jude, or
suggested by Jude's citation of a tradition from Enoch. And
finally, if it were an index of Jewish opinions, it would indicate
no less clearly the foreign origin of any opinion that could be of
use in this discussion. One writer pronounces it the work of a
Jew because " there is so much imitation of Daniel, such an
exhibition of Jewish conceptions mixed with superstition, and
occasionally w^ith cabalistic theology or oriental theosophy."
And, debating the place of its author, the same writer says : " It
is true that there are allusions to the Oriental theosophy and the
o}/inions of Zoroaster wliich would appear to recommend a Chal-
da^an origin, at least of the astronomical part ; but the author's
predilection for the images of fire^ radiance^ light, and other
Oriental symbols, may be accounted for on some other supposi-
tion than that of his residence in Chaldsea. In what way he
became acquainted with the Zend-Avesta, or the sentiments
embodied in that book, we are not able to tell, although it is
pretty obvious that various portions of his book are tinctured
M'ith the Oriental philosophy of Middle Asia." -^

2. From the hoo\of Judith, a single passage has been cited to
prove Jewish opinions : " The Lord Almighty will take ven-
geance on them in the day of judgment, in putting fire and worms
in their flesh; they shall feel them, and weep for ever."'-^ We
welcome this argument as a last resort to show that conscious
misery is described in any book pretending to keep canonical
company. Assuredly, if such a passage is to sustain the mo-

1 Dr. Davidson, ibid. " Ch. xvi. 17. See New EngUuider, I^Iay, ISoG, p. 175.

220 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

mentous doctrine, the cliaracter of the book and the best versions
of it should share the burden. But the book is, perhaps, of less
value than any other in the Jewish Apocrypha. It is not named
by Pliilo or Josephus. Good critics differ by two centuries
respecting its date ; one assigning it to B. C. 104, and another
to about A. D. 100. It is not even a respectable fiction. " The
difficulties, historical, chronological, and geographical, comprised
in the narrative of Judith, are so numerous and serious as to be
held by many divines altogether insuperable. Events, times,
and manners are said to be confounded, and the chronology of
the times before and those after the exile, of the Persian and
Assyrian, and even of the Maccabaean period, confusedly and
unaccountably blended."^

But why should we disparage the book ? "We wish, for the
sake of our argument, that it were canonical ; that is, the book
itself, and not the modern version of it. The conjecture of Ar-
nald in his commentary, that the original Greek — for Hebrew
there is none — Klavaovrai (shall weep) has been mistaken for
Kavaovrai, is supported by the Vulgate of Jerome which reads uran-
tur (may be burned), by a still older Latin version" which reads
comburantur (may be burned up), and by the Syriac, which, it
has been remarked, indicates the inferiority of the manuscripts
now extant. The sense of the passage would then be : " that
with pain (hv aladt^cet) they may be consumed for ever."

3. The doctrines of the Pharisees are cited to show that the
Jews commonly held an immortality which Christ did not explic-
itly deny. ^ To this we reply :

(1.) The influence of the Pharisees on the opinions of the
common people was more apparent than real. It was indeed
powerful, but it was so connected with the arts of imposture and
fraud, that they often overreached themselves, and lost the
popular regard. The very conception of Pharisaism was such
as must expose its professors to frequent contempt, as they did

1 Wm. AVriglit, Kitto's Cyclopoadia, art. Judith.

2 See Sabatier, Bibliorum Sacrorum Lat. Vcrsiones Antiques.

8 New Englander, 1856, p. 169; — J. T. Walsh, Future Punisliment, lutrod.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. 221

suffer the severest denunciations of Christ. It began in the
ambition of name and influence, which is sure to grasp the
shadow and lose the substance. " They bear their chief charac-
teristics," says one, " in their name, which, from a word denoting

* to separate,' marks them out as the elite of Hebrew society, the
men of note and distinction, whose motto, in the words of Horace,
might have been :

* Odi profanum vulgus,
Et arceo ;'

or, in the accurately descriptive terms of Jesus, Uhey trusted in
themselves, and despised others' (Luke xviii. 9) ; men of whose
character notice is found in the Bible as early as the days
of Isaiah (Ixv. 5 ; Ixvi. 17). This, which was the fundamental
quality of the Pharisees, and which, setting them forth as per-
sons of extraordinary parts, superior intelHgence, possessed of a
higher knowledge, a lofty and satisfactory method of interpreting
the sacred writings, a transcendental philosophy which, despis-
ing common sense as a tame, vulgar thing, could solve all
questions, and expound hitherto unknown truths, — made them

* the observed of all observers,' the oracles of the day, the only
true interpreters of Judaism."^ "Like cunning priests and
Jesuits," says another, "they prayed with forms and phrases,
they seized a place in the hearts and consciences of men, cor-
rupted them even by means of pious instruction, led them
whither they would have them go, acquired many a fair prize,
and became rulers of an earthly kingdom of darkness."^ Jose-
phus, who was himself a Pharisee, says that they " were able to
make great opposition to kings ; a cunning sect they were, and
soon elevated to a pitch of open fighting and doing mischief." ^
And he gives instances of their frauds and pretended prophecies,
practised to compass their designs. Now when we consider their
oppressions and extortions, with the weak foundation of tradi-
tions on which they rested their authority, and their fanciful
methods of interpretation, we may suspect that the common

1 J. R. Beard, People's Diet, of the Bible.

2 Staiidlin, Sitteiilehre, i. 431. * » Antiq. 1. 17, c 2, § 4.

19*

222 THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

people yielded a deference often feigned, and more in fear than
in faith. May we not infer as much from the language of Jose-
phus: "The Sadducees are able to persuade none but the rich,
and have not the populace obsequious to them ; but the Phari-
sees have the multitude on their side"? — and of Mark, who says,
in close connection with Christ's denunciation of the scribes:
" The common people heard him gladly " ? (xii. 37.)

But we are not left to conjecture in what estimation the Phar-
isees were held. The hatred of them was proverbial. They
are thus censured by the Talmudists : " Among th