Footnotes

Footnotes1.The following passage, from an article in the“Independent,”by Henry Ward Beecher, is valuable, perhaps, as the testimony of one who has“summered it and wintered it”with Orthodoxy:—“Does anybody inquire why, if so thinking, we occasionally give such sharp articles upon the great religious newspapers,‘The Observer,’‘The Intelligencer,’and the like? O, pray do not think it from any ill will. It is all kindness! We only do it to keep our voice in practice. We have made Orthodoxy a study. And by an attentive examination of‘The Presbyterian,’‘The Observer,’‘The Puritan Recorder,’and such like unblemished confessors, we have perceived that no man is truly sound who does not pitch into somebody that is not sound; and that a real modern orthodox man, like a nervous watch dog, must sit on the door-stone of his system, and bark incessantly at everything that comes in sight along the highway. And when there is nothing to bark at, either he must growl and gnaw his reserved bones, or bark at the moon to keep up the sonorousness of his voice. And so, for fear that the sweetness of our temper may lead men to think that we have no theologic zeal, we lift up in objurgation now and then—as much as to say,‘Here we are, fierce and orthodox; ready to growl when we cannot bite.’”2.Thus Theodore Parker (“Experience as a Minister”) speaks of a review of his“Discourse on Religion”in a Trinitarian work, which did it no injustice.3.According to the“Chart of Religious Belief”in Johnston's Physical Atlas, there are in the world 140,000,000 of Catholics, 70,000,000 of Protestants, 68,000,000 of the Greek Church, and 14,000,000 of minor creeds.About, in his“Question Romaine,”gives the Roman Church 139,000,000. He says,“The Roman Catholic Church, which I sincerely respect, is composed of 139,000,000 of individuals, not including the little Mortara.”4.Mr. Taylor shows that the Church, A.D. 300, was essentially corrupt in doctrine and practice; that the Romish Church was rather an improvement on it; that Jerome, Ambrose, Gregory, and Athanasius are full of false doctrine; and that a Gnostic theology, a Pagan asceticism, and a corrupt morality prevailed in the Church in those early centuries.5.Of course we do not mean to charge our Orthodox friends with believing in persecution. We only show thatif Orthodoxy is in the letter, theyought, consequentially, to believe in persecution. No doubt Protestantism has put an end to persecution. When Luther came, all believed in persecution; now, no one does. This is because the Reformation contained a double principle: first, that we are saved by faith, not by sacraments, and that faith is the belief of doctrines; second, that to see them aright, we must use our own minds, and consequently seek for truth as the paramount duty of life. But in order to seek effectually, we must seek freely—hence the right of private judgment as against authority in Church and State. The last principle is that of toleration; the first is the principle of intolerance. The last has proved the stronger, because it rests on the logic of things, the other only on the logic of words.6.Heb. 11:1.7.Jacobi—whose words have been said to let the thoughts shine through, as wet clothes around the limbs allow the form to be seen—says that all knowledge begins with faith. Faith is, according to Jacobi, (1) a knowledge proceeding from immediate revelation; (2) knowledge which does not need, and cannot have, proofs; (3) much more certain knowledge than any derived from demonstration; (4) a perception of the super-sensual world; (5) A well-grounded and reliable prepossession in favor of certain truths; (6) a faith which sees, and a sight which believes; (7) a vision, an impenetrable mystery, a perception of the thing in itself.8.See“Broken Lights,”p. 207, note.9.A story is told of a clock, on one of the high cathedral towers of the older world, so constructed that at the close of a century it strikes the years as it ordinarily strikes the hours. As a hundred years come to a close, suddenly, in the immense mass of complicated mechanism, a little wheel turns, a pin slides into the appointed place, and in the shadows of the night the bell tolls arequiemover the generations which during a century have lived, and labored, and been buried around it. One of these generations might live and die, and witness nothing peculiar. The clock would have what we call an established order of its own; but what should we say when, at the midnight which brought the century to a close, it sounded over the sleeping city, rousing all to listen to the world's age? Would it be a violation of law? No; only a variation of the accustomed order, produced by the intervention of a force always existing, but never appearing in this way till the appointed moment had arrived. The tolling of the century would be a variation from the observed order of the clock; but to an artist, in constructing it, it would have formed a part of that order. So a miracle is a variation of the order of nature as it has appeared to us; but to the Author of nature it was a part of that predestined order—a part of that order of which he is at all times the immediate Author and Sustainer; miraculous to us, seen from our human point of view, but no miracle to God; to our circumscribed vision a violation of law, but to God only a part in the great plan and progress of the law of the universe.—Ephraim Peabody.10.Trench,“Notes on the Miracles of our Lord.”11.We use the term“plenary inspiration”rather than“literal inspiration,”or“verbal inspiration,”for“literal inspiration”is a contradiction in terms, like“bodily spirit.”12.Tholuck, in his Essay on the Doctrine of Inspiration, ascribes the origin of the belief in the infallibility of Scripture to this supposed need of an authoritative outward rule of faith among Protestants. He says,“In proportion as controversy, sharpened by Jesuitism, made the Protestant party sensible of the necessity of an externally fortified ground of combat, in that same proportion did Protestantism seek, by the exaltation of the outward authoritative character of the Sacred Writings, to recover that infallible authority which it had lost through its rejection of inspired councils and the infallible authority of the pope. In this manner arose, not earlier than the seventeenth century, those sentiments which regarded the Holy Scripture as the infallible production of the Divine Spirit,—in its entire contents and its very form,—so that not only the sense, but also the words, the letters, the Hebrew vowel points, and the very punctuation were regarded as proceeding from the Spirit of God.”—Tholuck's Essay—Noyes's“Collection.”13.The doctrine of the Roman Catholics, as stated by Moehler, a distinguished Roman Catholic, is as follows:—“The doctrine of the Catholic Church on original sin is extremely simple, and may be reduced to the following propositions: Adam, by sin, lost his original justice and holiness, drew down on himself, by his disobedience, the displeasure and judgments of the Almighty, incurred the penalty of death, and thus, in all his parts,—in his body as well as soul,—became strangely deteriorated. Thus his sinful condition is transmitted to all his posterity as descended from him, entailing the consequence that man is, of himself, incapable—even with the aid of the most perfect ethical law offered to him from without (not excepting even the one in the Old Covenant)—to act in a manner agreeable to God, or in any other way to be justified before him, save only by the merits of Jesus Christ.”The doctrine of the Church of England concerning original sin and free will is in its ninth and tenth articles, and declares that,—“Original sin is ... the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is, of his own nature, inclined to evil, ... and therefore in every person born into the world it deserveth God's wrath and damnation....“The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works to faith and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will.”The early Fathers took different views of the origin of sin. Tertullian ascribed it to humanimpatience.“Nunc ut compendio dictum sit, omne peccatum impatientiæ adscribendum.”(Tertul.De Patien.5.) Origen thinkslazinessthe cause of sin; sin is a negation—notdoing right. Justin Martyr ascribes the origin of sin tosensuality. Origen (after Philo) considered the story of the fall as an allegory, and a type of what takes place in all men.14.See, in the Appendix, an examination of Professor Shedd's article.15.Ovid. Metam. 7:18.“Si possem, sanior essem.Sed trahit invitam nova vis; aliudque cupido,Mens aliud suadet, video meliora, proboque,Deteriora sequor.”See, also, the story, in the Cyropædia, of Araspes and his two souls.16.See Dr. Cox's Sermon on Regeneration, reviewed by Dr. Hodge, in“Essays and Reviews.”17.Luther, in his“Table-talk,”says of his preaching against the pope, and the enormous labors it entailed,“If I had known then what I now know of the difficulty of the task, ten horses should not have drawn me to it.”“At that time Dr. Jerome withstood me, and said,‘What will you do? They will not endure it.’But said I,‘What if theymustendure it?’”18.See Raumer,“Geschichte Europas,”zweiter Band.19.God in Christ, by Horace Bushnell, p. 193, &c.20.Heb. 2:9, 17, 18. 4:15. 5:8, 9.21.No sooner was Socrates dead than he rose to be the chief figure in Greek history. What are Miltiades, Pericles, or Alcibiades to him? Twenty years after Joan of Arc was burned by a decree of the Roman Catholic Church, the same Church called a council to reconsider and reverse her sentence. Twenty years after the death of Savonarola, Rafaelle painted his portrait among the great doctors, fathers, and saints in the halls of the Vatican. Within a few years after John Brown was hanged, half a million of soldiers marched through the South chanting his name in their songs. Abraham Lincoln was killed, and he is now the most influential figure in our history.22.“Doctrinal Attitude of Old School Presbyterians.”By Lyman B. Atwater, Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy in Princeton College. Bibliotheca Sacra, January, 1864.23.“The Old School in New England Theology.”By Professor Lawrence, of East Windsor. Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1863.24.“Doctrines of the New School Presbyterians.”By Rev. George Duffield, D. D., of Detroit. Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1863.25.“Hopkinsianism.”By Rev. Enoch Pond, D. D., Professor in Bangor Theological Seminary. Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1862.26.“Doctrines of Methodism.”By Rev. Dr. Whedon. Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1862.27.“Theologische Zeitscrift.”Herausgegeben von Dr. Friedr. Schleiermacher, Dr. W. M. L. DeWette, und Dr. Friedr. Lücke. Erstes Heft, Berlin, 1819.Ueber die Lehre von der Erwählung.28.Rom. 11:29.“The gifts and callings of God are without repentance.”By this we understand the apostle to mean the same thing as is implied in Ecclesiastes (3:14):“I know that what God doeth, it is forever.”God, having chosen the Jews for a work, will continue to them the gifts, and will see that somehow or other, some time or other, the work is done.29.A person who never had an intellectual doubt concerning a future life may be so poorly provided with an inward sense of immortality that he may never feel quite willing to die, or confident in view of death. Such a man was Dr. Johnson, who had not the least scepticism; who was a dogmatic believer, and hated a heretic; who, yet, never attained to any sort of comfort in view of death, and was always afraid to die. So there may be another person who may have no intellectual belief in a future life, but who will have the instinct of immortality so strong as to be quite easy and happy in looking forward to death. Such a person is Miss Martineau, who, in consequence of a poor philosophy ofmaterialismwhich she was taught in her childhood, and has always held, has been brought very logically at last to disbelieve immortality, and even the existence of God, and yet is very contented about it, and quite happy.30.“Nescio, quomodo, dum lego, assentior; cum posui librum, et mecum ipse de immortalitate animorum cœpi cogitare, assensio omnis illa illabitur.”31.Thus it is said,“In Christ shall all be made alive.”The meaning is, that when we live in reference to God, to immortal truth, to the infinite law of right,—when we really love anything out of ourselves,—we lose all fear of death.“Perfect love casts out fear;”that is, pure love. The love of a mother for a child casts out fear. She is not afraid of death; she will run the risk of death twenty times over to save her child. The immortal element is aroused in her. The soldier is roused by the general's fiery speech to a thrill of patriotism, and thinks it sweet and beautiful to die for his country. Love of his country has cast out his fear. This is something more than any mere insensibility. Men can harden themselves against danger and death; they can think of something else. But that insensibility is merely a thick shell put round it—a sevenfold shield perhaps; but the mortal fear lies hidden all the same within. True life is very different.32.The word here renderedabolishedis elsewhere translated“destroyed,”“made void,”“made of none effect,”“brought to nothing,”“vanished away,”“done away,”“put down.”The meaning is, that all its force, importance, value, is taken out of it.33.“The State of the Impenitent Dead. By Alvah Hovey, D. D.”Boston, 1859.34.For ἵνα before a defining clause, see John 6:29; 4:34; 1 John 3:11, 23; 4:21; 2 John 6.35.Die Bestimmung des Menschen. Berlin, 1800.36.In addition to the extracts from Professor Hovey, Meyer, Lücke, and De Wette, the following passages from F. D. Maurice (“Theological Essays”) are interesting, as showing a concurrence of testimony from yet another quarter to the thesis of this section:—“When any one ventures to say to an English audience, that eternity is not a mere negation of time, that it denotes something real, substantial, before all time, he is told at once that he is departing from the simple, intelligible meaning of words; that he is introducing novelties; that he is talking abstractions. This language is perfectly honest in the mouths of those who use it. But they do not know where they learned it. They did not get it from peasants, or women, or children. They did not get it from the Bible. They got it from Locke. And if I find that I cannot interpret the language and thoughts of peasants, and women, and children, and that I cannot interpret the plainest passages of the Bible, or the whole context of it, while I look through the Locke spectacles, I must cast them aside....“Suppose, instead of taking this method of asserting the truth of all God's words, the most blessed and the most tremendous, we reject the wisdom of our forefathers, and enact an article declaring that all are heretics, and deniers of the truth, who do not hold that eternal means endless, and that there cannot be a deliverance from eternal punishment. What is the consequence? Simply this, I believe: the whole gospel of God is set aside. The state of eternal life and eternal death is not one we can refer only to the future, or that we can in any wise identify with the future. Every man who knows what it is to have been in a state of sin, knows what it is to have been in a state of death. He cannot connect that death with time; he must say that Christ has brought him out of the bonds ofeternaldeath. Throw that idea into the future and you deprive it of all its reality, of all its power. I know what it means all too well while you let me connect it with my present and personal being, with the pangs of conscience which I suffer now. It becomes a mere vague dream and shadow to me when you project it into a distant world. And if you take from me the belief that God is always righteous, always maintaining a fight with evil, always seeking to bring his creatures out of it, you take everything from me—all hope now, all hope in the world to come. Atonement, redemption, satisfaction, regeneration, become mere words, to which there is no counterpart in reality.”37.In the German Bible we have the true word—“Auferstehung.”38.So De Wette, Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum N. T., ad locum.39.So Schleusner, Lexicon in LXX.40.So Usteri (Paulinischen Lehrbegriff) says that σάλπινξ appears to denote partly the startling power of the truth, and partly its power of calling men together from all the regions of the earth.41.Christ only comes when he comes to reign. His first coming was as Jesus, not as Christ. The human life is“the life of Jesus.”Christian history is“the life of Christ.”In his earthly life he was Prophet; in his death he was Priest; in his resurrection, or risen state, he was King.42.The book of the Revelation of John is the account of Christ's coming; and the true interpretation of that book depends on the proper understanding of his coming. If Christ's coming began at the destruction of Jerusalem, and has continued in all the developments of human history, then the key to“the Revelation”is to be found in the progress of Christian principles and ideas in the world. Bertholdt (Christologia Judæorum Jesu Apostolorumque ætate), note to § 11, quotes from the Sepher Ikkarim this passage—“The future age will comegraduallyto men after the day of the great judgment, which will take place after the resurrection.”Resurrection and judgment both come with Jesus, and his were“the last days.”43.1 Thess. 4:17.“We, who are alive, and remain, shall be caught up together with them, in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.”Usteri (Paul. Lehrbeg.) says that“this εἰς ἀέρα has no analogy in any other passage of the Epistles, or indeed of the New Testament.”But Paul outgrew this literalism, and in his later Epistles speaks of sitting already with Christ in“heavenly places.”44.Olshausen, an Orthodox commentator, speaks thus in regard to Christ's predictions concerning his coming, in Matt. ch. 24, 25:—“One of the most striking examples of the binding of the present and future in one narrative, and one which presents many difficulties, is to be found in these passages. Plain descriptions of the impending destruction of Jerusalem and of the Jewish state blend with no less apparent descriptions of the coming of Christ in his kingdom. It cannot be denied that the Orthodox interpreters are far less natural and unforced than the others, in their treatment of this passage. Their dogmatic views lead them to put apart from each other elements which are blended together by Matthew and by the other evangelists. For example, Schott says, that the description of Christ's coming begins (Matt. 24:29) immediately after‘the tribulation,’&c., and that all before that belongs to the destruction of Jerusalem. But apart from the impossibility of regarding the 29th verse as the beginning of something entirely new, there are also in the passages which follow distinct references to the present generation (verse 34), and in the first part as distinct references to‘the last time.’We do not, therefore scruple (says Olshausen) to accept the simple explanation which alone suits the text, that Christ speaks of his coming as coincident with the destruction of Jerusalem, and with the downfall of the Jewish state.”The most interesting question, perhaps, is as to the opinions of Jesushimselfabout his coming. That he forsaw the overthrow of Jerusalem and the Temple is certain. Everything indicates that he possessed a marvellous power of reading the future in the present, and saw in the condition of the Jewish mind the inevitable overthrow of their state. He also saw that through his death all men should be brought to him, and that he should become King in the way in which he described to Pilate his royalty, i.e., King of the truth. All who love the truth shall, sooner or later, obey his voice. In what way, then, did he expect to come? In the way he himself indicates the coming of his kingdom—like leaven, working secretly in the dough; like seed, sprouting mysteriously in the ground; like lightning, seen everywhere at once. By these images alone could he convey to his disciples his ideas. He longed to tell them many things more, but they were not able; to bear them.45.The difficulties (of which Olshausen and other candid Orthodox interpreters speak) in harmonizing the different parts of Matthew's two chapters (24 and 25) about Christ's coming and judgment, may perhaps be relieved in some such way as this. (1.) The end of the Mosaic age and the beginning of the Messianic age are fixed at the destruction of Jerusalem. (2.) Christ's coming begins there, and continues through Christian history, till all mankind are Christians. His coming, therefore, verifies what Schiller says of truth, that it“nimmer ist, immer wird.”(3.) Whenever he comes, he judges men according to the state of mind in which they are. (4.) The three parables (virgins, talents, king on his throne) represent the judgment of three different classes. The first class (of wise and foolish virgins) are those whoare not yet converted, and have not become disciples of Christ. When he comes, those of them who have oil in their lamps—or who receive truth into an honest heart (Luke 8:15)—are ready to receive him, and to become Christians; those who have no oil reject him. The second class (in the talents) are Christians, who receive more or less of power and of good, according to past fidelity. The third class (the“nations ”) are the heathen, and others, who have never known of Christ at all, but are Christians outside of Christianity.46.The latest illustration of Orthodox ideas on this subject we have met with is contained in a little tract which has fallen in our way, containing“extracts from a sermon addressed to the students in the United Presbyterian Theological Seminary of Xenia, Ohio, by Rev. William Davidson.”It begins in this somewhat enigmatical way:—“It is an unspeakably terrible thing for any one—for even a youth or a heathen—to belost.”Why this limiting particle“even”is introduced is not explained. It seems to be implied either that a youth and a heathen have not as much to lose as others, or else that we are not bound to feel so much for their loss as for that of others. After a little poetry (which we omit, as it is altogether too stern a matter for any sentimental ornament), Mr. Davidson proceeds:—“Nor is this all to those who sufferleast. It is not only the loss of all, and a horrible lake of ever-burning fire, but there arehorrible objects, filling every sense and every faculty; and there arehorrible engines and instruments of torture. There are the‘chains of darkness,’thick, heavy, hard, and smothering as the gloom of blank and black despair—chains strong as the cords of omnipotence, hot as the crisping flames of vengeance, indestructible and eternal as justice. With chains like these, every iron link burning into the throbbing heart, is bound each doomed, damned soul, on a bed of burning marl, under an iron roof, riven with tempests, and dripping with torrents of unquenchable fire.”The object of the preacher being to make as terrific a picture as possible, he accumulates these material images of bodily torment in order to excite the imagination to the utmost. We can conceive of his writing these sentences carefully in his comfortable study, in an easy chair, by the side of a cheerful fire, with a smile of self-complacency, as he selects each striking expression. Then he proceeds:—“Nor is this all. Unmortified appetites, hungry as death, insatiable as the grave, torture it. Every passion burning, an unsealed volcano in the heart. Every base lust a tiger unchained—a worm undying, let loose to prey on soul and body. Pride, vanity, envy, shame, treachery, deceit, falsehood, fell revenge, and black despair, malice, and every unholy emotion, are so many springs of excruciating and ever-increasing agonies, are so many hot and stifling winds, tossing the swooning, sweltering soul on waves of fire. And there will be deadly hunger, but no food; parching thirst, but no water; eternal fatigue, but no rest; eternal lust of sensuous and intellectual pleasures, but no gratification. And there will beterrible companions, or ratherfoes, there. Eternal longings after society, but no companion, no love, and no sympathy there. Every one utterly selfish, hateful, and hating. Every one cunning, false, malignant, fierce, fell, and devilish. All commingle in the confusion and the carnage of one wide-spread, pitiless, truceless, desperate strife. And there will be terrible sights and sounds there. Fathers and sons, pastors and people, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, with swollen veins and bloodshot eyes, straining towards each other's throats and hearts, reprobate men, and devils in form and features, hideous to as great a degree as are the beauties of the blest in heaven beautiful. And there are groans and curses, and everlasting wailings, as harsh and horrible as heaven's songs, shouts, and anthems are sweet, joyous, and enrapturing. And there will be terrible displays of the divine power and skill, and infinitely awful displays of merciless and omnipotent justice, in the punishment of that rebel crew, that generation of moral vipers full grown, that congregation of moral monsters.”All this, however, is not enough. It is necessary to go further, and represent God in the character of the devil, in order to complete the picture.“Upon such an assembly, God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, cannot look but with utter detestation. His wrath shall come up in his face. His face shall be red in his anger. He will whet his glittering sword, and his hand shall take hold on vengeance; and he shall recompense. He shall launch forth his lightnings, and shoot abroad his arrows. He shall unseal all his fountains, and pour out his tumbling cataracts of vengeance. He shall build his batteries aloft, and thunder upon them from the heavens. His eye shall not pity them, nor shall his soul spare for their crying. The day of vengeance is in his heart, and it is what he has his heart set on. He will delight in it. He will show his wrath, andmake his power known. That infinite power has never been fully made known yet; but it will be then. It is but a little that we see of it in creation and providence; but we shall see it, fully revealed, in the destruction of that rebel crew. He will tread them in his anger, and trample them in his fury, and will stain his raiment with their blood. The cup of the wine of his fierce wrath shall contain no mixture of mercy at all. And they will not be able to resist that wrath, nor will they be able to endure it; but they shall, in soul and body, sink wholly down into thesecond death. The iron heel of omnipotent and triumphing justice, pitiless and rejoicing, shall tread them down, and crush them lower still, and lower ever, in that burning pit which knows no bottom. All this, and more and worse, do the Scriptures declare; and that preacher who hesitates to proclaim it has forsworn his soul, and is a traitor to his trust.”Now, it is simple truth to say that the blasphemer and profane swearer who spends fifty years in cursing God and Christ is not so blasphemous as the man who writes such sentences as these about the Almighty, and utters them to young men as a preparation for their work in the ministry. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah shall rise up in the day of judgment against those who speak thus of God, and shall condemn them. The Pagans, who represent their gods as horrid idols, pleased with blood and slaughter, have an excuse, which Mr. Davidson has not, for they do not have the gospel of the Lord Jesus in their hands. Thus he continues:—“Andall this shall be forever. It shall never, never end. (Matt. ch. 25.) The wicked go away into everlasting torments. This is a bitter ingredient in their cup of wormwood, a more terrible thing in their terrible doom. If after enduring it all for twice ten thousand times ten thousand years, they might have a deliverance, or at least some abatement, it were less terrible. But this may never, never be. Their estate is remediless. There is a great gulf fixed, and they cannot pass from thence. Or, if after suffering all this as many years as there are aqueous particles in air and ocean, they might then be delivered, or if, after repeating that amazing period as many times as there are sand-grains in the globe, they might then be delivered, there would besomehope. Or, if you multiply this latter sum—too infinite to be expressed by figures, and too limitless to be comprehended by angels—by the number of atoms that compose the universe, and there might be deliverance when they had passed those amazing, abysmal gulfs of duration, then there would besomehope. But no! when all is suffered and all is past, still all beyond is eternity.”47.To show how someRoman Catholicswrite in the middle of the nineteenth century, we quote the following from a Roman Catholic book, published in England, by Rev. J. Furniss, being especially“a book for children.”Wishing to spare our readers such horrors, we put it here, advising no one of weak nerves to read its atrocious descriptions.“The fourth dungeon is‘the boiling kettle.’Listen: there is a sound like that of a kettle boiling. Is it really a kettle which is boiling? No. Then what is it? Hear what it is. The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy; the brain is boiling and bubbling in his head; the marrow is boiling in his bones. The fifth dungeon is the‘red-hot oven,’in which is alittle child. Hear how it screams to come out; see how it turns and twists itself about in the fire; it beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor of the oven. To this child God was very good. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punishedmuch morein hell.So God in his mercy called it out of the world in its early childhood.”48.We take the following from the“Monthly Religious Magazine:”—“The‘Country Parson,’in his late work, the‘Autumn Holidays,’contends that the fear of future punishment in another world has little influence in deterring from crime. He ought to have added, that the reason may be, that there is so little belief in any spiritual world whatever, among men of grosser sensuality; and that future punishment, as it is preached in the old theology, is so arbitrary as to seem unreal, and is losing its power over all thinking minds. The following case is cited from the experience of a Scotch minister. No ministers, let it be remembered, preach the literal flames of a local hell in tones more awful than they.“His parishioners were sadly addicted to drinking to excess. Men and women were given alike to this degrading vice. He did all he could to repress it, but in vain. For many years he warned the drunkards, in the most solemn manner, of the doom they might expect in another world; but, so far as he knew, not a pot of ale or glass of spirits the less was drunk in the parish in consequence of his denunciations. Future woe melted into mist in the presence of a replenished jug or a market-day. A happy thought struck the clergyman. In the neighboring town, there was a clever medical man, a vehement teetotaler; him he summoned to his aid. The doctor came, and delivered a lecture on thephysicalconsequences of drunkenness, illustrating his lecture with large diagrams, which gave shocking representations of the stomach, lungs, heart, and other vital organs as affected by alcohol. These things came home to the drunkards, who had not cared a rush for final perdition. The effect produced was tremendous. Almost all the men and women of the parish took the total abstinence pledge; and since that day drunkenness has nearly ceased in that parish. Nor was the improvement evanescent; it has lasted two or three years.”49.So Erigena (quoted by Strauss),De Divis Nat.“Vera ratio docet, nullum contrarium divinæ bonitati vitæque ac beatitudini posse esse coeternum; divina siquidem bonitas consumet malitiam, æterna vita absorbet mortem, beatitudo miseriam.”50.The name given to them by Augustine (“Civ. Dei,”lib. 21, c. 17):“Denique hujus sententiæ Patronos S. Augustinus appellat titulo non incongruo,‘Doctores Misericordes’tractatque non inhumaniter.”Thomas Burnet,“De Statu Mortuum et Resurgentium.”Chap. XI.51.See Bretschneider,“Dogmatik,”and Strauss,“Christliche Glaubenslehre.”52.“Nos et angelos futuros dæmones si egerimus negligenter; et rursum dæmones, si voluerint capere virtutes, pervenire ad angelicam dignitatem.”Origen, quoted by Jerome.53.“Nihil enim omnipotenti impossibile est, nec insanabile aliquid est factori suo.”54.“Quod tamen non ad subitum fieri, sed paulatim et per partes intelligen dum est, infinitis et immensis labentibus sæculis, cum sensim per singulos emendatio fuerit et correctio prosecuta, præcurrentibus aliis, aliis insequentibus.”See these quotations in Strauss, Hase, &c.55.Matt. 25:46. The Greek word translated in the English as“everlasting”punishment in the beginning of the verse, and as life“eternal”at the end, is the same word (ἀιώνιος) in both places, and should be translated“eternal”in both.56.Remorse—frommordeo, to gnaw. So St. Thomas (Summa, Pars III. 2, 97):“Vermis non debet esse intelligi corporalis sed spiritualis, qui est con scientiæ remorsus.”57.“Pauci res ipsas, sed rerum imagines, tanquam in speculo, intuentur: at res ipsas, facie ad faciem, ut dicitur, et ablato velo, visuri sumus tandem si Deo placuerit, partim sub occasu hujusee mundi, plenius autem in futuro.”—Thomas Burnet, De Statu Mortuorum et Resurgentium Tractatus. Londini. Typis et impensis J. Hooke, in vico vulgò dictoFleet Street, 1737.—No one has spoken more powerfully and eloquently than he against everlasting punishment, particularly in the passage beginning“Nobis difficile est omnem exuere humanitatem.”p. 309.58.Is it not remarkable (as showing how little the New Testament has as yet been really studied) that there should be so many discussions as to the future doom ofthe heathen, when Jesus himself here distinctly tells us what it will be. The word ἔθνη is the only word in the New Testament which is ever translatedheathen: wherever the wordheathenoccurs in our Bible, it is always this. Jesus teaches that the heathen (inside and outside of Christendom) will be judgedaccording to their humanity, their obedience to the law written in their hearts; and he shows that this is coincident with the law of Christianity. So, when the Church of England says (in its 18th article) that“they also are to be had accursed that presume to say that every man shall be saved by the law or sect he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that law and the light of nature;”it denounces this curse on Christ himself, and thus proves conclusively that it is not speaking by the Spirit of God, since“no man, speaking by the Spirit of God, calleth Jesus accursed.”(1 Cor. 12:3) This comes of the habit (happily less common now than formerly) of throwing about curses at random, against those who differ from our opinions. Some of them may thus, accidentally, hit the Master himself. It is, perhaps, of less consequence that this anathema also touches the apostle Paul, who declares that the heathen who have not the law are a law to themselves when they do right, and are absolved by their conscience. (Rom. 2:14.)59.Origen, Homil. in Levit. 7:2.“Salvator meus luget etiam nunc peccata mea; Salvator meus lætari non potest, donec ego in iniquitate permaneo. Non vult solus in regno Dei bibere vinum lætitiæ—nos expectat.”60.Guericke, Christ. Symbolik, § 70.61.“Ecclesia enim est cœtus hominum ita visibilis et palpabilis ut est cœtus populi Romani, vel regnum Galliæ, aut respublica Venetorum.”Bellarmin. Eccles. Milit. c. 2.62.Moehler, Symbolism, § 36.63.“Bonos et malos ad ecclesiam pertinere Catholica fides vere et constante affirmat.”Cat. Rom.64.The chief passage in proof of this, as is well known, is Matt. 16:18, 19“Thou art Peter,”&c. But even Augustine, the great light of the Latin Church, says that“Peter was not the Rock, but Christ was the Rock.”(Neander, vol. ii. p. 168.) The same power was given to the other apostles. Matt. 18:18. John 20:23. Rev. 21:14.65.Le Protestantisme Libéral par le Pasteur Bost. Paris, Baillière, 1865.66.“Il est de fait que le Catholicisme, qui est essentiellement un principe d'authorité, ne sait pas dire où reside cette authorité.”67.“Thirty-nine Articles, art. xix.”So Augs. Conf. art. 7:“Congregatio sanctorum, in qua evangelium recte docetur, et recte administrantur sacramenta.”But it may be asked, Who is to decide on the“recte”?68.In the remarkable work“Ecce Homo”.69.Tholuck, in his charming work on the Sermon on the Mount, speaks thus (“Bergpredigt Christ. von A. Tholuck.”)“Two principal defects are found in the usual treatment of this doctrine: first, the different aspects and relations of the kingdom of God are by many considered as differentmeaningsof the word, and are left standing side by side, without any attempt to ground their unity in some fundamental idea. Or, secondly, and still worse, a single aspect of the term is taken up, and the rest are wholly neglected. Examples of the first defect are to be found in Zwingle, in his note to John 3:3. (Here the kingdom of God is considered as divine doctrine and preaching of the gospel, as in Luke 18; sometimes it is taken for eternal life, Matt. 25; Luke 14; sometimes for the church and congregation of the faithful, as Matt. 13:24.) The later lexicographers, as Schleusner and Bretschneider, have not avoided these vague statements; and the last of them is particularly defective in his article on this phrase. Trahl more correctly sums up all these significations of the word thus:‘Happiness, present and future, obtained through Christ.’But in this definition the notion of‘a kingdom’is omitted. The opposite defect of taking only one of the meanings of the matter, to the neglect of the rest, is to be found, for example, in Koppe and Keil, according to whom the expression relates merely to the future reign of the Messiah one day to be established.“Our own explanation of this expression starts from the phrase‘kingdom of God,’which explains the others,‘kingdom of heaven’and‘kingdom of Christ.’We think that the fundamental idea has been grasped by none more correctly than by Origen among the ancients, and by Calvin among the reformers. The phase of the idea principally dwelt upon by the Church Fathers may be seen in their explanation of the third petition of the Lord's Prayer, which Augustine especially examines profoundly. Most of them understand by it the realm of glory, the future revelation of Christ. Origen alone, in his book on Prayer, taken a more exact view of the subject. In like manner Calvin, in his Commentary on the Harmony. So Luther, in his fine Sermon on the Kingdom of God. Our own fundamental view we express thus:‘A community in which God reigns, not by force, but by being obeyed freely from love, and which is therefore necessarily united in itself by mutual love.’The Saviour came upon the earth to found such a community, and since it can only be completely established after he has conquered all his enemies, this kingdom of Christ belongs in its perfection to the other world.”70.An eminent and learned gentleman told me of this conversation which he had with a Roman priest:“When the wine of the Eucharist is consecrated, it becomes the real blood of Christ—does it not?”Priest,“It does.”“What, then, do you do with that which remains in the cup, after communion?”Priest,“We drink it.”“Does not some adhere to the glass?”Priest,“Yes; but we wash the glass.”“What do you do with the water?”Priest,“We drink it.”“But must there not yet remain, on the napkin, with which you wipe the glass, some portion of the blood of Christ, even though it be an infinitesimal portion?”Priest,“Yes.”“Then, might it not happen that when the napkin is washed, this portion of Christ's blood may go into the water, and be poured on the ground, and be taken up by the root of a plant—say a cabbage. Would, then, the flesh of that cabbage contain, or would it not a portion of the blood of Christ?”71.See, in the New York“Independent,”June 9, 1866, the account of the“Recognition of Congregational Churches in Philadelphia,”where the existence of this principle is admitted and defended by some eminent Congregational ministers; admitted and deplored by others.72.Twesten,“Vorlesungen,”&c., vol ii., p. 216. He adds to this definition its Latin form, in which the words“certain characteristics”stand“certis characteribus hypostaticis.”73.Quoted by Schleiermacher,“Glaubenslehre,”§ 170.74.See the full discussions of these terms in Twesten (as above), Hase,“Christl. Glaubenslehre,”§ 56. Strauss,“Christl. Glaubenslehre,”vol. i. Hase,“Dogmatik,”&c.75.Dogmatik, § 239.76.Augustine (de Trinit.), says,“One life in man, but three faculties—memory, intelligence, will.”But how if this is bad psychology?77.Erigena,“The Father in the soul, the Son in the reason, the Spirit in the sense—this makes the most luminous illustration.”78.Abelard (quoted by Strauss).79.Richard St. Victor (quoted by Hase),“There can be no possible communion of affection between a less number than three persons.”So Augustine,“Cum aliquid amo, tria sunt—ego, etquodamo, et ipseamor.”Such illustrations are hardly satisfactory at the present day. Poiret says the Father is“Deus a se,”the Son is“Deus ex se,”the Holy Spirit“Deus ad se refluens.”Angelus Silecius makes the Trinity a divine kiss.“God kisses himself—the Father kisses, the Son is kissed, the Spirit is the kiss.”80.Translated from the Latin in Hagenbach (Compend of the History of Doctrines, vol. i. p. 289). We agree with Strauss, who says,“Fürwahr, wer dasSymbolum Quidcunquebeschworen hatte, der hatte die Gesetze des menschlichen Denkens abgeschworen.”So the Pastor Bost (Le Protestantisme Liberal), after giving the Creed, in a somewhat different form, adds,“ubi insana faciunt, mysterium appellant.”81.“Incomprehensible,”Church of England Liturgy.82.Or“each person by himself.”The word in the Latin is“sigillatim,”a word not in most of the dictionaries, but in some of them made equivalent to“singulatim.”83.Tertullian said, we can call Christ“God”when we speak of him alone; but if we mention him with the Father, then we must call the Father“God,”and call Christ only“Lord.”“For a ray of light shining into a room, we may call the sun shining there; but if we speak of the sun at the same time, then we must distinguish the ray, and call it not sun, but sunbeam.”84.The decrees of the Council of Nice inclined to Sabellianism. The term ὁμοούσιος (of the same essence) was a Sabellian term. Sabellianism could, in fact, stand most of the tests of modern Orthodoxy, since it maintainsthree persons and one essence, μίαν ὑπόστασιν and τρία πρόσωπα; and Schleiermacher, in one of his most elaborate treatises (Ueber den Gegensatz zwischen der Sabellianischen und der Athanasianischen Vorstellung von der Trinitat. Theolog. Zeitschrift. Berlin, 1822), has sought to rehabilitate Sabellianism. Moses Stuart translated this treatise, and plainly advocated a similar view. Hase (Kirchengeschichte, § 91) defines the view of Sabellius as making“Father, Son, and Spirit the different forms of revelation of the Supreme Unity unfolding itself in the world history as the Triad.”Perhaps (see Baur) the chief peculiarity of Sabellius is in making the Triad begin and end with the process of revelation. The Monad is God in himself: the Triad is God in the process of self-revelation (Baur,“Christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit,”and“Lehrbuch der Christlichen Dogmengeschichte”).85.“Dictum est tamen tres personæ, non ut illud diceretur, sed ut ne taceretur.”Aug. de. Trin., quoted by Hase, Dog. § 238.86.John of Damascus (quoted by Twesten) made his boast of Christianity, that it united what was true in Polytheism with what was true in Judaism.“From the Jews,”he says,“we have the oneness of nature, from the Greeks the distinction in hypostases.”87.The substance of what follows in this section, appeared in the“Christian Examiner.”88.Thenatureby which the heathen“do the things contained in the law,”i.e., obey God, which is here (Rom. 2:15) called“the law written in the heart,”is in Rom. 7:23 called the“law of the mind.”Olshausen (a sufficiently Orthodox commentator), says,“It is wholly false to understand ὅταν ποιῆ of a mere idealpossibility; the apostle speaks evidently of a real and actual obedience. Paul infers that, because there are actually pious heathen, they must have a law which they obey.”Ad locum.89.We have no room to enter into an examination of this question at this time, and can only give a general statement on this subject from one of the authorities which happens to be at hand:—“Allthe Fathers”(before Augustine, fourth and fifth century)“differed from Augustine in attributing freedom of will to man in his present state. Thus Justin:‘Every created being is so constituted as to be capable of vice or virtue.’Cyril of Jerusalem:‘Know that thou hast a soul possessed of free will; for thou dost not sin by birth (κατὰ γένεσιν), nor by fortune, but we sin by free choice.’Allthe Latin Fathers also maintained that free will was not lost after the fall. The Fathers also denied in part, that man is born infected with Adam's sin. Thus Athenagoras says in his Apology,‘Man is in a good state, not only in respect to his Creator, but also in respect to his natural generation.’”—Wiggers,Augustinism and Pelagianism. Translated by Rev. Ralph Emerson, Professor in the Theological Seminary, Andover, Mass.90.“Abi ad Jordonum, et Trinitatem disce,”was on early notion.91.Dr. Horace Bushnell, a favorite authority with Dr. Huntington, whom Dr. Huntington quotes largely, and whose views he earnestly recommends, gives us his testimony to this point, thus (“God in Christ,”pp. 130, 131):—“A very large portion of Christian teachers, together with the general mass of disciples, undoubtedly hold three real living persons in the interior nature of God; that is, three consciousnesses, wills, hearts, understandings.”“A very large portion of Christian teachers”hold, then, to a belief in three Gods; and with them is joined“the general mass of the disciples.”The only Unity held by these teachers is, he goes on to say,“a social Unity.”Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are, in their view, socially united only, and preside in that way, as a kind of celestial Tritheocracy, over the world. This heresy, he says,“because of its clear opposition to Unitarianism, is counted safe, and never treated as a heresy.”That is, the Christian Church allows the belief inthree Gods, and will not discipline those who hold that opinion; but, if you believe strictly and only inone God, you cannot be saved!92.Dr. Bushnell goes on to say (p. 133),“While the Unity is thus confused and lost in the threeness, perhaps I should admit that the threeness sometimes appears to be clouded or obscured by the Unity. Thus it is sometimes protested, that in the word,‘person’nothing is meant beyond a threefold distinction; though it will always be observed, that nothing is really meant by the protestation; that the protester goes on to speak and to reason of the three, not as being only somewhats or distinctions, but as metaphysical and real persons.... Indeed, it is a somewhat curious fact in theology, that the class of teachers who protest over the word‘person,’declaring that they mean only athreefold distinction, cannot show that there is really a hair's breadth of difference between their doctrine and the doctrine asserted by many of the later Unitarians.”93.“It has often been assertedand admitted,”says Tweaten, one of the strongest of modern Trinitarians,“that even the principal notions about which the Church doctrine turns are foreign to the New Testament; as οὐσία and ὑπόστασις, τρόπος ὑπάρξεως and ἀποκαλύψεως, τριάς and ὁμοούσια.”(Twesten: Dogmatik, vol. ii. p. 281.)94.“Who will venture to say that any of the definitions heretofore given of personality in the Godhead, in Itself considered,—such definitions as have their basis in the Nicene or Athanasian Creed,—are intelligible and satisfactory to the mind? At least, I can truly say, that I have not been able to find them, if they do in fact exist; nor, so far as I know, has any one been able, by any commentary on them, to make them clear and satisfactory.”(Prof. Stuart, Biblical Repository, April, 1835. See Wilson, Trin. Test., p. 272.)95.See the creed in Hagenbach (History of Doct., vol. i. p. 208):“Θεος ἐκ Θεοῦ, φῶς ἐκ φωτὸς, Θεον ἀληθινὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ.”96.Thus speaks Dr. Bushnell on this head (“God in Christ,”p. 139):—“Besides, it is another source of mental confusion, connected with this view of three metaphysical persons, that, though they are all declared to be infinite and equal, they really are not so. The proper deity of Christ is not held in this view. He is begotten, sent, supported, directed, by the Father, in such a sense as really annihilates his deity. This has been shown in a truly searching and convincing manner by Schleiermacher, in his historical essay on the Trinity; and, indeed, you will see at it at a glance, that this view of a metaphysical Trinity of persons breaks down in the very point which is commonly regarded as its excellence—its assertion of the proper deity of Christ.”

The following passage, from an article in the“Independent,”by Henry Ward Beecher, is valuable, perhaps, as the testimony of one who has“summered it and wintered it”with Orthodoxy:—

“Does anybody inquire why, if so thinking, we occasionally give such sharp articles upon the great religious newspapers,‘The Observer,’‘The Intelligencer,’and the like? O, pray do not think it from any ill will. It is all kindness! We only do it to keep our voice in practice. We have made Orthodoxy a study. And by an attentive examination of‘The Presbyterian,’‘The Observer,’‘The Puritan Recorder,’and such like unblemished confessors, we have perceived that no man is truly sound who does not pitch into somebody that is not sound; and that a real modern orthodox man, like a nervous watch dog, must sit on the door-stone of his system, and bark incessantly at everything that comes in sight along the highway. And when there is nothing to bark at, either he must growl and gnaw his reserved bones, or bark at the moon to keep up the sonorousness of his voice. And so, for fear that the sweetness of our temper may lead men to think that we have no theologic zeal, we lift up in objurgation now and then—as much as to say,‘Here we are, fierce and orthodox; ready to growl when we cannot bite.’”

The doctrine of the Roman Catholics, as stated by Moehler, a distinguished Roman Catholic, is as follows:—

“The doctrine of the Catholic Church on original sin is extremely simple, and may be reduced to the following propositions: Adam, by sin, lost his original justice and holiness, drew down on himself, by his disobedience, the displeasure and judgments of the Almighty, incurred the penalty of death, and thus, in all his parts,—in his body as well as soul,—became strangely deteriorated. Thus his sinful condition is transmitted to all his posterity as descended from him, entailing the consequence that man is, of himself, incapable—even with the aid of the most perfect ethical law offered to him from without (not excepting even the one in the Old Covenant)—to act in a manner agreeable to God, or in any other way to be justified before him, save only by the merits of Jesus Christ.”

The doctrine of the Church of England concerning original sin and free will is in its ninth and tenth articles, and declares that,—

“Original sin is ... the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is, of his own nature, inclined to evil, ... and therefore in every person born into the world it deserveth God's wrath and damnation....

“The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works to faith and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will.”

The early Fathers took different views of the origin of sin. Tertullian ascribed it to humanimpatience.“Nunc ut compendio dictum sit, omne peccatum impatientiæ adscribendum.”(Tertul.De Patien.5.) Origen thinkslazinessthe cause of sin; sin is a negation—notdoing right. Justin Martyr ascribes the origin of sin tosensuality. Origen (after Philo) considered the story of the fall as an allegory, and a type of what takes place in all men.

Ovid. Metam. 7:18.

“Si possem, sanior essem.Sed trahit invitam nova vis; aliudque cupido,Mens aliud suadet, video meliora, proboque,Deteriora sequor.”

See, also, the story, in the Cyropædia, of Araspes and his two souls.

In addition to the extracts from Professor Hovey, Meyer, Lücke, and De Wette, the following passages from F. D. Maurice (“Theological Essays”) are interesting, as showing a concurrence of testimony from yet another quarter to the thesis of this section:—

“When any one ventures to say to an English audience, that eternity is not a mere negation of time, that it denotes something real, substantial, before all time, he is told at once that he is departing from the simple, intelligible meaning of words; that he is introducing novelties; that he is talking abstractions. This language is perfectly honest in the mouths of those who use it. But they do not know where they learned it. They did not get it from peasants, or women, or children. They did not get it from the Bible. They got it from Locke. And if I find that I cannot interpret the language and thoughts of peasants, and women, and children, and that I cannot interpret the plainest passages of the Bible, or the whole context of it, while I look through the Locke spectacles, I must cast them aside....

“Suppose, instead of taking this method of asserting the truth of all God's words, the most blessed and the most tremendous, we reject the wisdom of our forefathers, and enact an article declaring that all are heretics, and deniers of the truth, who do not hold that eternal means endless, and that there cannot be a deliverance from eternal punishment. What is the consequence? Simply this, I believe: the whole gospel of God is set aside. The state of eternal life and eternal death is not one we can refer only to the future, or that we can in any wise identify with the future. Every man who knows what it is to have been in a state of sin, knows what it is to have been in a state of death. He cannot connect that death with time; he must say that Christ has brought him out of the bonds ofeternaldeath. Throw that idea into the future and you deprive it of all its reality, of all its power. I know what it means all too well while you let me connect it with my present and personal being, with the pangs of conscience which I suffer now. It becomes a mere vague dream and shadow to me when you project it into a distant world. And if you take from me the belief that God is always righteous, always maintaining a fight with evil, always seeking to bring his creatures out of it, you take everything from me—all hope now, all hope in the world to come. Atonement, redemption, satisfaction, regeneration, become mere words, to which there is no counterpart in reality.”

Olshausen, an Orthodox commentator, speaks thus in regard to Christ's predictions concerning his coming, in Matt. ch. 24, 25:—

“One of the most striking examples of the binding of the present and future in one narrative, and one which presents many difficulties, is to be found in these passages. Plain descriptions of the impending destruction of Jerusalem and of the Jewish state blend with no less apparent descriptions of the coming of Christ in his kingdom. It cannot be denied that the Orthodox interpreters are far less natural and unforced than the others, in their treatment of this passage. Their dogmatic views lead them to put apart from each other elements which are blended together by Matthew and by the other evangelists. For example, Schott says, that the description of Christ's coming begins (Matt. 24:29) immediately after‘the tribulation,’&c., and that all before that belongs to the destruction of Jerusalem. But apart from the impossibility of regarding the 29th verse as the beginning of something entirely new, there are also in the passages which follow distinct references to the present generation (verse 34), and in the first part as distinct references to‘the last time.’We do not, therefore scruple (says Olshausen) to accept the simple explanation which alone suits the text, that Christ speaks of his coming as coincident with the destruction of Jerusalem, and with the downfall of the Jewish state.”

The most interesting question, perhaps, is as to the opinions of Jesushimselfabout his coming. That he forsaw the overthrow of Jerusalem and the Temple is certain. Everything indicates that he possessed a marvellous power of reading the future in the present, and saw in the condition of the Jewish mind the inevitable overthrow of their state. He also saw that through his death all men should be brought to him, and that he should become King in the way in which he described to Pilate his royalty, i.e., King of the truth. All who love the truth shall, sooner or later, obey his voice. In what way, then, did he expect to come? In the way he himself indicates the coming of his kingdom—like leaven, working secretly in the dough; like seed, sprouting mysteriously in the ground; like lightning, seen everywhere at once. By these images alone could he convey to his disciples his ideas. He longed to tell them many things more, but they were not able; to bear them.

The latest illustration of Orthodox ideas on this subject we have met with is contained in a little tract which has fallen in our way, containing“extracts from a sermon addressed to the students in the United Presbyterian Theological Seminary of Xenia, Ohio, by Rev. William Davidson.”It begins in this somewhat enigmatical way:—

“It is an unspeakably terrible thing for any one—for even a youth or a heathen—to belost.”

Why this limiting particle“even”is introduced is not explained. It seems to be implied either that a youth and a heathen have not as much to lose as others, or else that we are not bound to feel so much for their loss as for that of others. After a little poetry (which we omit, as it is altogether too stern a matter for any sentimental ornament), Mr. Davidson proceeds:—

“Nor is this all to those who sufferleast. It is not only the loss of all, and a horrible lake of ever-burning fire, but there arehorrible objects, filling every sense and every faculty; and there arehorrible engines and instruments of torture. There are the‘chains of darkness,’thick, heavy, hard, and smothering as the gloom of blank and black despair—chains strong as the cords of omnipotence, hot as the crisping flames of vengeance, indestructible and eternal as justice. With chains like these, every iron link burning into the throbbing heart, is bound each doomed, damned soul, on a bed of burning marl, under an iron roof, riven with tempests, and dripping with torrents of unquenchable fire.”

The object of the preacher being to make as terrific a picture as possible, he accumulates these material images of bodily torment in order to excite the imagination to the utmost. We can conceive of his writing these sentences carefully in his comfortable study, in an easy chair, by the side of a cheerful fire, with a smile of self-complacency, as he selects each striking expression. Then he proceeds:—

“Nor is this all. Unmortified appetites, hungry as death, insatiable as the grave, torture it. Every passion burning, an unsealed volcano in the heart. Every base lust a tiger unchained—a worm undying, let loose to prey on soul and body. Pride, vanity, envy, shame, treachery, deceit, falsehood, fell revenge, and black despair, malice, and every unholy emotion, are so many springs of excruciating and ever-increasing agonies, are so many hot and stifling winds, tossing the swooning, sweltering soul on waves of fire. And there will be deadly hunger, but no food; parching thirst, but no water; eternal fatigue, but no rest; eternal lust of sensuous and intellectual pleasures, but no gratification. And there will beterrible companions, or ratherfoes, there. Eternal longings after society, but no companion, no love, and no sympathy there. Every one utterly selfish, hateful, and hating. Every one cunning, false, malignant, fierce, fell, and devilish. All commingle in the confusion and the carnage of one wide-spread, pitiless, truceless, desperate strife. And there will be terrible sights and sounds there. Fathers and sons, pastors and people, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, with swollen veins and bloodshot eyes, straining towards each other's throats and hearts, reprobate men, and devils in form and features, hideous to as great a degree as are the beauties of the blest in heaven beautiful. And there are groans and curses, and everlasting wailings, as harsh and horrible as heaven's songs, shouts, and anthems are sweet, joyous, and enrapturing. And there will be terrible displays of the divine power and skill, and infinitely awful displays of merciless and omnipotent justice, in the punishment of that rebel crew, that generation of moral vipers full grown, that congregation of moral monsters.”

All this, however, is not enough. It is necessary to go further, and represent God in the character of the devil, in order to complete the picture.

“Upon such an assembly, God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, cannot look but with utter detestation. His wrath shall come up in his face. His face shall be red in his anger. He will whet his glittering sword, and his hand shall take hold on vengeance; and he shall recompense. He shall launch forth his lightnings, and shoot abroad his arrows. He shall unseal all his fountains, and pour out his tumbling cataracts of vengeance. He shall build his batteries aloft, and thunder upon them from the heavens. His eye shall not pity them, nor shall his soul spare for their crying. The day of vengeance is in his heart, and it is what he has his heart set on. He will delight in it. He will show his wrath, andmake his power known. That infinite power has never been fully made known yet; but it will be then. It is but a little that we see of it in creation and providence; but we shall see it, fully revealed, in the destruction of that rebel crew. He will tread them in his anger, and trample them in his fury, and will stain his raiment with their blood. The cup of the wine of his fierce wrath shall contain no mixture of mercy at all. And they will not be able to resist that wrath, nor will they be able to endure it; but they shall, in soul and body, sink wholly down into thesecond death. The iron heel of omnipotent and triumphing justice, pitiless and rejoicing, shall tread them down, and crush them lower still, and lower ever, in that burning pit which knows no bottom. All this, and more and worse, do the Scriptures declare; and that preacher who hesitates to proclaim it has forsworn his soul, and is a traitor to his trust.”

Now, it is simple truth to say that the blasphemer and profane swearer who spends fifty years in cursing God and Christ is not so blasphemous as the man who writes such sentences as these about the Almighty, and utters them to young men as a preparation for their work in the ministry. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah shall rise up in the day of judgment against those who speak thus of God, and shall condemn them. The Pagans, who represent their gods as horrid idols, pleased with blood and slaughter, have an excuse, which Mr. Davidson has not, for they do not have the gospel of the Lord Jesus in their hands. Thus he continues:—

“Andall this shall be forever. It shall never, never end. (Matt. ch. 25.) The wicked go away into everlasting torments. This is a bitter ingredient in their cup of wormwood, a more terrible thing in their terrible doom. If after enduring it all for twice ten thousand times ten thousand years, they might have a deliverance, or at least some abatement, it were less terrible. But this may never, never be. Their estate is remediless. There is a great gulf fixed, and they cannot pass from thence. Or, if after suffering all this as many years as there are aqueous particles in air and ocean, they might then be delivered, or if, after repeating that amazing period as many times as there are sand-grains in the globe, they might then be delivered, there would besomehope. Or, if you multiply this latter sum—too infinite to be expressed by figures, and too limitless to be comprehended by angels—by the number of atoms that compose the universe, and there might be deliverance when they had passed those amazing, abysmal gulfs of duration, then there would besomehope. But no! when all is suffered and all is past, still all beyond is eternity.”

To show how someRoman Catholicswrite in the middle of the nineteenth century, we quote the following from a Roman Catholic book, published in England, by Rev. J. Furniss, being especially“a book for children.”Wishing to spare our readers such horrors, we put it here, advising no one of weak nerves to read its atrocious descriptions.

“The fourth dungeon is‘the boiling kettle.’Listen: there is a sound like that of a kettle boiling. Is it really a kettle which is boiling? No. Then what is it? Hear what it is. The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy; the brain is boiling and bubbling in his head; the marrow is boiling in his bones. The fifth dungeon is the‘red-hot oven,’in which is alittle child. Hear how it screams to come out; see how it turns and twists itself about in the fire; it beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor of the oven. To this child God was very good. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punishedmuch morein hell.So God in his mercy called it out of the world in its early childhood.”

We take the following from the“Monthly Religious Magazine:”—

“The‘Country Parson,’in his late work, the‘Autumn Holidays,’contends that the fear of future punishment in another world has little influence in deterring from crime. He ought to have added, that the reason may be, that there is so little belief in any spiritual world whatever, among men of grosser sensuality; and that future punishment, as it is preached in the old theology, is so arbitrary as to seem unreal, and is losing its power over all thinking minds. The following case is cited from the experience of a Scotch minister. No ministers, let it be remembered, preach the literal flames of a local hell in tones more awful than they.

“His parishioners were sadly addicted to drinking to excess. Men and women were given alike to this degrading vice. He did all he could to repress it, but in vain. For many years he warned the drunkards, in the most solemn manner, of the doom they might expect in another world; but, so far as he knew, not a pot of ale or glass of spirits the less was drunk in the parish in consequence of his denunciations. Future woe melted into mist in the presence of a replenished jug or a market-day. A happy thought struck the clergyman. In the neighboring town, there was a clever medical man, a vehement teetotaler; him he summoned to his aid. The doctor came, and delivered a lecture on thephysicalconsequences of drunkenness, illustrating his lecture with large diagrams, which gave shocking representations of the stomach, lungs, heart, and other vital organs as affected by alcohol. These things came home to the drunkards, who had not cared a rush for final perdition. The effect produced was tremendous. Almost all the men and women of the parish took the total abstinence pledge; and since that day drunkenness has nearly ceased in that parish. Nor was the improvement evanescent; it has lasted two or three years.”

Tholuck, in his charming work on the Sermon on the Mount, speaks thus (“Bergpredigt Christ. von A. Tholuck.”)“Two principal defects are found in the usual treatment of this doctrine: first, the different aspects and relations of the kingdom of God are by many considered as differentmeaningsof the word, and are left standing side by side, without any attempt to ground their unity in some fundamental idea. Or, secondly, and still worse, a single aspect of the term is taken up, and the rest are wholly neglected. Examples of the first defect are to be found in Zwingle, in his note to John 3:3. (Here the kingdom of God is considered as divine doctrine and preaching of the gospel, as in Luke 18; sometimes it is taken for eternal life, Matt. 25; Luke 14; sometimes for the church and congregation of the faithful, as Matt. 13:24.) The later lexicographers, as Schleusner and Bretschneider, have not avoided these vague statements; and the last of them is particularly defective in his article on this phrase. Trahl more correctly sums up all these significations of the word thus:‘Happiness, present and future, obtained through Christ.’But in this definition the notion of‘a kingdom’is omitted. The opposite defect of taking only one of the meanings of the matter, to the neglect of the rest, is to be found, for example, in Koppe and Keil, according to whom the expression relates merely to the future reign of the Messiah one day to be established.

“Our own explanation of this expression starts from the phrase‘kingdom of God,’which explains the others,‘kingdom of heaven’and‘kingdom of Christ.’We think that the fundamental idea has been grasped by none more correctly than by Origen among the ancients, and by Calvin among the reformers. The phase of the idea principally dwelt upon by the Church Fathers may be seen in their explanation of the third petition of the Lord's Prayer, which Augustine especially examines profoundly. Most of them understand by it the realm of glory, the future revelation of Christ. Origen alone, in his book on Prayer, taken a more exact view of the subject. In like manner Calvin, in his Commentary on the Harmony. So Luther, in his fine Sermon on the Kingdom of God. Our own fundamental view we express thus:‘A community in which God reigns, not by force, but by being obeyed freely from love, and which is therefore necessarily united in itself by mutual love.’The Saviour came upon the earth to found such a community, and since it can only be completely established after he has conquered all his enemies, this kingdom of Christ belongs in its perfection to the other world.”

We have no room to enter into an examination of this question at this time, and can only give a general statement on this subject from one of the authorities which happens to be at hand:—

“Allthe Fathers”(before Augustine, fourth and fifth century)“differed from Augustine in attributing freedom of will to man in his present state. Thus Justin:‘Every created being is so constituted as to be capable of vice or virtue.’Cyril of Jerusalem:‘Know that thou hast a soul possessed of free will; for thou dost not sin by birth (κατὰ γένεσιν), nor by fortune, but we sin by free choice.’Allthe Latin Fathers also maintained that free will was not lost after the fall. The Fathers also denied in part, that man is born infected with Adam's sin. Thus Athenagoras says in his Apology,‘Man is in a good state, not only in respect to his Creator, but also in respect to his natural generation.’”—Wiggers,Augustinism and Pelagianism. Translated by Rev. Ralph Emerson, Professor in the Theological Seminary, Andover, Mass.

Dr. Horace Bushnell, a favorite authority with Dr. Huntington, whom Dr. Huntington quotes largely, and whose views he earnestly recommends, gives us his testimony to this point, thus (“God in Christ,”pp. 130, 131):—

“A very large portion of Christian teachers, together with the general mass of disciples, undoubtedly hold three real living persons in the interior nature of God; that is, three consciousnesses, wills, hearts, understandings.”

“A very large portion of Christian teachers”hold, then, to a belief in three Gods; and with them is joined“the general mass of the disciples.”The only Unity held by these teachers is, he goes on to say,“a social Unity.”Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are, in their view, socially united only, and preside in that way, as a kind of celestial Tritheocracy, over the world. This heresy, he says,“because of its clear opposition to Unitarianism, is counted safe, and never treated as a heresy.”That is, the Christian Church allows the belief inthree Gods, and will not discipline those who hold that opinion; but, if you believe strictly and only inone God, you cannot be saved!

Thus speaks Dr. Bushnell on this head (“God in Christ,”p. 139):—

“Besides, it is another source of mental confusion, connected with this view of three metaphysical persons, that, though they are all declared to be infinite and equal, they really are not so. The proper deity of Christ is not held in this view. He is begotten, sent, supported, directed, by the Father, in such a sense as really annihilates his deity. This has been shown in a truly searching and convincing manner by Schleiermacher, in his historical essay on the Trinity; and, indeed, you will see at it at a glance, that this view of a metaphysical Trinity of persons breaks down in the very point which is commonly regarded as its excellence—its assertion of the proper deity of Christ.”

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