2. Of the wicked.

2. Of the wicked.The final state of the wicked is described under the figures of eternal fire (Mat. 25:41); the pit of the abyss (Rev. 9:2, 11); outer darkness (Mat. 8:12); torment (Rev. 14:10, 11); eternal punishment (Mat. 25:46); wrath of God (Rom. 2:5); second death (Rev. 21:8); eternal destruction from the face of the Lord (2 Thess. 1:9); eternal sin (Mark 3:29).[pg 1034]Mat. 25:41—“Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels”;Rev. 9:2, 11—“And he opened the pit of the abyss; and there went up a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace.... They have over them as king the angel of the abyss: his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in the Greek tongue he hath the name Apollyon”;Mat. 8:12—“but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth”;Rev. 14:10, 11—“he also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of his anger; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment goeth up for ever and ever”;Mat. 25:46—“And these shall go away into eternal punishment.”Rom. 2:5—“after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God”;Rev. 21:8—“But for the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death”:2 Thess. 1:9—“who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might”—here ἀπό, from, = not separation, but“proceeding from,”and indicates that the everlasting presence of Christ, once realized, ensures everlasting destruction;Mark 3:29—“whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—a text which implies that (1) some will never cease to sin; (2) this eternal sinning will involve eternal misery; (3) this eternal misery, as the appointed vindication of the law, will be eternal punishment. As Uzziah, when smitten with leprosy, did not need to be thrust out of the temple, but“himself hasted also to go out”(2 Chron. 26:20), so Judas is said to go“to his own place”(Acts 1:25;cf.4:23—where Peter and John,“being let go, they came to their own company”).Cf.John 8:35—“the bondservant abideth not in the house forever”= whatever be his outward connection with God, it can be only for a time;15:2—“Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away”—at death; the history of Abraham showed that one might have outward connection with God that was only temporary: Ishmael was cast out; the promise belonged only to Isaac.Wrightnour:“Gehenna was the place into which all the offal of the city of Jerusalem was swept. So hell is the penitentiary of the moral universe. The profligate is not happy in the prayer meeting, but in the saloon; the swine is not at home in the parlor, but in the sty. Hell is the sinner's own place; he had rather be there than in heaven; he will not come to the house of God, the nearest thing to heaven; why should we expect him to enter heaven itself?”Summing up all, we may say that it is the loss of all good, whether physical or spiritual, and the misery of an evil conscience banished from God and from the society of the holy, and dwelling under God's positive curse forever. Here we are to remember, as in the case of the final state of the righteous, that the decisive and controlling element is not the outward, but the inward. If hell be a place, it is only that the outward may correspond to the inward. If there be outward torments, it is only because these will be fit, though subordinate, accompaniments of the inward state of the soul.Every living creature will have an environment suited to its character—“its own place.”“I know of the future judgment, How dreadful so e'er it be, That to sit alone with my conscience Will be judgment enough for me.”Calvin:“The wicked have the seeds of hell in their own hearts.”Chrysostom, commenting on the words“Depart, ye cursed,”says:“Their own works brought the punishment on them; the fire was not prepared for them, but for Satan; yet, since they cast themselves into it,‘Impute it to yourselves,’he says,‘that you are there.’”Milton, Par. Lost, 4:75—Satan:“Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.”Byron:“There is no power in holy men, Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast, Nor agony, nor, greater than all these, The innate torture of that deep despair Would make a hell of heaven, can exorcise From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense Of its own sins.”Phelps, English Style, 228, speaks of“a law of the divine government, by which the body symbolizes, in its experience, the moral condition of its spiritual inhabitant. The drift of sin is to physical suffering. Moral depravity tends always to a corrupt and tortured body. Certain diseases are the product of certain crimes. The whole catalogue of human pains, from a toothache to theangina pectoris, is but a witness to a state of sin expressed by an experience of suffering. Carry this law into the experience of eternal sin. The bodies of the wicked live again as well as those of the righteous. You have therefore a spiritual body, inhabited and used, and therefore tortured, by a[pg 1035]guilty soul,—a body, perfected in its sensibilities, inclosing and expressing a soul matured in its depravity.”Augustine, Confessions, 25—“Each man's sin is the instrument of his punishment, and his iniquity is turned into his torment.”Lord Bacon:“Being, without well-being, is a curse, and the greater the being, the greater the curse.”In our treatment of the subject of eternal punishment we must remember that false doctrine is often a reaction from the unscriptural and repulsive over-statements of Christian apologists. We freely concede: 1. that future punishment does not necessarily consist of physical torments,—it may be wholly internal and spiritual; 2. that the pain and suffering of the future are not necessarily due to positive inflictions of God,—they may result entirely from the soul's sense of loss, and from the accusations of conscience; and 3. that eternal punishment does not necessarily involve endless successions of suffering,—as God's eternity is not mere endlessness, so we may not be forever subject to the law of time.An over-literal interpretation of the Scripture symbols has had much to do with such utterances as that of Savage, Life after Death, 101—“If the doctrine of eternal punishment was clearly and unmistakably taught in every leaf of the Bible, and on every leaf of all the Bibles of all the world, I could not believe a word of it. I should appeal from these misconceptions of even the seers and the great men to the infinite and eternal Good, who only is God, and who only on such terms could be worshiped.”The figurative language of Scripture is a miniature representation of what cannot be fully described in words. The symbol is a symbol; yet it is less, not greater, than the thing symbolized. It is sometimes fancied that Jonathan Edwards, when, in his sermon on“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,”he represented the sinner as a worm shriveling in the eternal fire, supposed that hell consists mainly of such physical torments. But this is a misinterpretation of Edwards. As he did not fancy heaven essentially to consist in streets of gold or pearly gates, but rather in holiness and communion with Christ, of which these are the symbols, so he did not regard hell as consisting in fire and brimstone, but rather in the unholiness and separation from God of a guilty and accusing conscience, of which the fire and brimstone are symbols. He used the material imagery, because he thought that this best answered to the methods of Scripture. He probably went beyond the simplicity of the Scripture statements, and did not sufficiently explain the spiritual meaning of the symbols he used; but we are persuaded that he neither understood them literally himself, nor meant them to be so understood by others.Sin is self-isolating, unsocial, selfish. By virtue of natural laws the sinner reaps as he has sown, and sooner or later is repaid by desertion or contempt. Then the selfishness of one sinner is punished by the selfishness of another, the ambition of one by the ambition of another, the cruelty of one by the cruelty of another. The misery of the wicked hereafter will doubtless be due in part to the spirit of their companions. They dislike the good, whose presence and example is a continual reproof and reminder of the height from which they have fallen, and they shut themselves out of their company. The judgment will bring about a complete cessation of intercourse between the good and the bad. Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:239—“Beings whose relations to God are diametrically opposite, and persistently so, differ so greatly from each other that other ties of relationship became as nothing in comparison.”In order, however, to meet opposing views, and to forestall the common objections, we proceed to state the doctrine of future punishment in greater detail:A. The future punishment of the wicked is not annihilation.In our discussion of Physical Death, we have shown that, by virtue of its original creation in the image of God, the human soul is naturally immortal; that neither for the righteous nor the wicked is death a cessation of being; that on the contrary, the wicked enter at death upon a state of conscious suffering which the resurrection and the judgment only augment and render[pg 1036]permanent. It is plain, moreover, that if annihilation took place at death, there could be no degrees in future punishment,—a conclusion itself at variance with express statements of Scripture.The old annihilationism is represented by Hudson, Debt and Grace, and Christ our Life; also by Dobney, Future Punishment. It maintains that κόλασις,“punishment”(inMat. 25:46—“eternal punishment”), means etymologically an everlasting“cutting-off.”But we reply that the word had to a great degree lost its etymological significance, as is evident from the only other passage where it occurs in the New Testament, namely,1 John 4:18—“fear hath punishment”(A. V.:“fear hath torment”). For full answer to the old statements of the annihilation-theory, see under Physical Death, pages 991-998.That there are degrees of punishment in God's administration is evident fromLuke 12:47, 48—“And that servant, who knew his Lord's will, and made not ready, nor did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes”;Rom. 2:5, 6—“after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his works”;2 Cor. 5:10—“For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad”;11:15—“whose end shall be according to their works”;2 Tim. 4:14—“Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord will render to him according to his works”;Rev. 2:23—“I will give unto each one of you according to your works”;18:5, 6—“her sins have reached even unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. Render unto her even as she rendered, and double unto her the double according to her works: in the cup which she mingled, mingle unto her double.”A French Christian replied to the argument of his deistical friend:“Probably you are right; probably you are not immortal; but I am.”This was the doctrine of conditional immortality, the doctrine that only the good survive. We grant that the measure of our faith in immortality is the measure of ourfitnessfor its blessings; but it is not the measure of ourpossessionof immortality. We are immortal beings, whether we believe it or not. The acorn is potentially an oak, but it may never come to its full development. There is a saltless salt, which, though it does not cease to exist, is cast out and trodden under foot of men. Denney, Studies in Theology, 256—“Conditional immortality denies that man can exist after death without being united to Christ by faith. But the immortality of man cannot be something accidental, something appended to his nature, after he believes in Christ. It must be something, at the very lowest, for which his nature is constituted, even if apart from Christ it can never realize itself as it ought.”Broadus, Com. onMat. 25:46(page 514)—“He who caused to exist could keep in existence.Mark 9:49—‘Every one shall be salted with fire’—has probably this meaning. Fire is usually destructive; but this unquenchable fire will act like salt, preserving instead of destroying. So Keble, Christian Year, 5th Sunday in Lent, says of the Jews in their present condition:‘Salted with fire, they seem to show How spirits lost in endless woe May undecaying live. Oh, sickening thought! Yet hold it fast Long as this glittering world shall last, Or sin at heart survive.’”There are two forms of the annihilation theory which are more plausible, and which in recent times find a larger number of advocates, namely:(a) That the powers of the wicked are gradually weakened, as the natural result of sin, so that they finally cease to be.—We reply, first, that moral evil does not, in this present life, seem to be incompatible with a constant growth of the intellectual powers, at least in certain directions, and we have no reason to believe the fact to be different in the world to come; secondly, that if this theory were true, the greater the sin, the speedier would be the relief from punishment.This form of the annihilation theory is suggested by Bushnell, in his Forgiveness and Law, 146, 147, and by Martineau, Study, 2:107-8. Dorner also, in his Eschatology, seems to favor it as one of the possible methods of future punishment. He says:“To the ethical also pertains ontological significance. The 'second death' may be the dissolving of the soul itself into nothing. Estrangement from God, the source of life, ends in extinction of life. The orthodox talk about demented beings, raging in impotent fury, amounts to the same—annihilation of their human character. Evil is never the substance of the soul,—this remains metaphysically good.”It is argued that even for[pg 1037]saved sinners there is a loss. The prodigal regained his father's favor, but he could not regain his lost patrimony. We cannot get back the lost time, nor the lost growth. Much more, then, in the case of the wicked, will there be perpetual loss. Draper:“At every return to the sun, comets lose a portion of their size and brightness, stretching out until the nucleus loses control, the mass breaks up, and the greater portion navigates the sky, in the shape of disconnected meteorites.”To this argument it is often replied that certain minds grow in their powers, at least in certain directions, in spite of their sin. Napoleon's military genius, during all his early years, grew with experience. Sloane, in his Life of Napoleon, however, seems to show that the Emperor lost his grip as he went on. Success unbalanced his judgment; he gave way to physical indulgence; his body was not equal to the strain he put upon it; at Waterloo he lost precious moments of opportunity by vacillation and inability to keep awake. There was physical, mental, and moral deterioration. But may this not be the result of the soul's connection with a body? Satan's cunning and daring seem to be on the increase from the first mention of him in Scripture to its end. See Princeton Review, 1882:673-694. Will not this very cunning and daring, however, work its own ruin, and lead Satan to his final and complete destruction? Does not sin blunt the intellect, unsettle one's sober standards of decision, lead one to prefer a trifling present triumph or pleasure to a permanent good?Gladden, What is Left? 104, 105—“Evil is benumbing and deadening. Selfishness weakens a man's mental grasp, and narrows his range of vision. The schemer becomes less astute as he grows older; he is morally sure, before he dies, to make some stupendous blunder which even a tyro would have avoided.... The devil, who has sinned longest, must be the greatest fool in the universe, and we need not be at all afraid of him.”To the view that this weakening of powers leads to absolute extinction of being, we oppose the consideration that its award of retribution is glaringly unjust in making the greatest sinner the least sufferer; since to him relief, in the way of annihilation, comes the soonest.(b) That there is for the wicked, certainly after death, and possibly between death and the judgment, a positive punishment proportioned to their deeds, but that this punishment issues in, or is followed by, annihilation.—We reply first, that upon this view, as upon any theory of annihilation, future punishment is a matter of grace as well as of justice—a notion for which Scripture affords no warrant; secondly, that Scripture not only gives no hint of the cessation of this punishment, but declares in the strongest terms its endlessness.The second form of the annihilation theory seems to have been held by Justin Martyr (Trypho, Edinb. transl.)—“Some, who have appeared worthy of God, never die; but others are punished so long as God wills them to exist and be punished.”The soul exists because God wills, and no longer than he wills.“Whenever it is necessary that the soul should cease to exist, the spirit of life is removed from it, and there is no more soul, but it goes back to the place from which it was taken.”Schaff, Hist. Christ. Church, 2:608, 609—“Justin Martyr teaches that the wicked or hopelessly impenitent will be raised at the judgment to receive an eternal punishment. He speaks of it in twelve passages:‘We believe that all who live wickedly and do not repent will be punished in eternal fire.’Such language is inconsistent with the annihilation theory for which Justin Martyr has been claimed. He does indeed reject the idea of the independent immortality of the soul, and hints at thepossiblefinal destruction of the wicked; but he puts that possibility countless ages beyond the final judgment, so that it loses all practical significance.”A modern advocate of this view is White, in his Life in Christ. He favors a conditional immortality, belonging only to those who are joined to Christ by faith; but he makes a retributive punishment and pain fall upon the godless, before their annihilation. The roots of this view lie in a false conception of holiness as a form or manifestation of benevolence, and of punishment as deterrent and preventive instead of vindicative of righteousness. To the minds of its advocates, extinction of being is a comparative blessing; and they, for this reason, prefer it to the common view. See Whiton, Is Eternal Punishment Endless?[pg 1038]A view similar to that which we are opposing is found in Henry Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World. Evil is punished by its own increase. Drummond, however, leaves no room for future life or for future judgment in the case of the unregenerate. See reviews of Drummond, in Watts, New Apologetic, 332; and in Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 19-21, 77-124. While Drummond is an annihilationist, Murphy is a restorationist. More rational and Scriptural than either of these is the saying of Tower:“Sin is God's foe. He does not annihilate it, but he makes it the means of displaying his holiness; as the Romans did not slay their captured enemies, but made them their servants.”The terms αἰών and αἰώνιος, which we have still to consider, afford additional Scripture testimony against annihilation. See also the argument from the divine justice, pages 1046-1051; article on the Doctrine of Extinction, in New Englander, March, 1879:201-224; Hovey, Manual of Theology and Ethics, 153-168; J. S. Barlow, Endless Being; W. H. Robinson, on Conditional Immortality, in Report of Baptist Congress for 1886.Since neither one of these two forms of the annihilation theory is Scriptural or rational, we avail ourselves of the evolutionary hypothesis as throwing light upon the problem. Death is not degeneracy ending in extinction, nor punishment ending in extinction,—it is atavism that returns, or tends to return, to the animal type. As moral development is from the brute to man, so abnormal development is from man to the brute.Lord Byron:“All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed.”This is true, not of man's being, but of his well being. Ribot, Diseases of the Will, 115—“Dissolution pursues a regressive course from the more voluntary and more complex to the less voluntary and more simple, that is to say, toward the automatic. One of the first signs of mental impairment is incapacity for sustained attention. Unity, stability, power, have ceased, and the end is extinction of the will.”We prefer to say, loss of the freedom of the will. On the principle of evolution, abuse of freedom may result in reversion to the brute, annihilation not of existence but of higher manhood, punishment from within rather than from without, eternal penalty in the shape of eternal loss.Mat. 24:13—“he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved”—has for its parallel passageLuke 21:19—“In your patience ye shall win your souls,”i. e., shall by free will get possession of your own being. Losing one's soul is just the opposite, namely, losing one's free will, by disuse renouncing freedom, becoming a victim of habit, nature, circumstance, and this is the cutting off and annihilation of true manhood.“To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer”(Bernard Shaw).InJohn 15:2Christ says of all men—the natural branches of the vine—“Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away”;Ps. 49:20—“Man that is in honor, and understandeth not, Is like the beasts that perish”;Rev. 22:15—“Without are the dogs.”In heathen fable men were turned into beasts, and even into trees. The story of Circe is a parable of human fate,—men may become apes, tigers, or swine. They may lose their higher powers of consciousness and will. By perpetual degradation they may suffer eternal punishment. All life that is worthy of the name may cease, while still existence of a low animal type is prolonged. We see precisely these results of sin in this world. We have reason to believe that the same laws of development will operate in the world to come.McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 85-95, 99, 124, 180—“Immortality, or survival after death, depends upon man's freeing himself from the law which sweeps away the many, and becoming an individual (indivisible) that is fit to survive. The individual must become stronger than the species. By using will aright, he lays hold of the infinite Life, and becomes one who, like Christ, has‘life in himself’(John 5:26). Gravitation and chemical affinity had their way in the universe until they were arrested and turned about in the interest of life. Overproduction, death, and the survival of the fittest, had their ruthless sway until they were reversed in the interest of affection. The supremacy of the race at the expense of the individual we may expect to continue until something in the individual comes to be of more importance than that law, and no longer.... Goodness can arrest and turn back for nations the primal law of growth, vigor, and decline. Is it too much to believe that it may do the same for an individual man?... Life is a thing to be achieved. At every step there are a thousand candidates who fail, for one that attains.... Until moral sensibility becomes self-conscious, all question of personal immortality becomes irrelevant, because there is, accurately speaking, no personality to be immortal. Up to that point the individual living creature, whether in human form or not, falls short of that essential personality for which eternal life can[pg 1039]have any meaning.”But how about children who never come to moral consciousness? McConnell appeals to heredity. The child of one who has himself achieved immortality may also prove to be immortal. But is there no chance for the children of sinners? The doctrine of McConnell leans toward the true solution, but it is vitiated by the belief that individuality is a transient gift which only goodness can make permanent. We hold on the other hand that this gift of God is“without repentance”(Rom. 11:29), and that no human being can lose life, except in the sense of losing all that makes life desirable.

The final state of the wicked is described under the figures of eternal fire (Mat. 25:41); the pit of the abyss (Rev. 9:2, 11); outer darkness (Mat. 8:12); torment (Rev. 14:10, 11); eternal punishment (Mat. 25:46); wrath of God (Rom. 2:5); second death (Rev. 21:8); eternal destruction from the face of the Lord (2 Thess. 1:9); eternal sin (Mark 3:29).

Mat. 25:41—“Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels”;Rev. 9:2, 11—“And he opened the pit of the abyss; and there went up a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace.... They have over them as king the angel of the abyss: his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in the Greek tongue he hath the name Apollyon”;Mat. 8:12—“but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth”;Rev. 14:10, 11—“he also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of his anger; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment goeth up for ever and ever”;Mat. 25:46—“And these shall go away into eternal punishment.”Rom. 2:5—“after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God”;Rev. 21:8—“But for the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death”:2 Thess. 1:9—“who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might”—here ἀπό, from, = not separation, but“proceeding from,”and indicates that the everlasting presence of Christ, once realized, ensures everlasting destruction;Mark 3:29—“whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—a text which implies that (1) some will never cease to sin; (2) this eternal sinning will involve eternal misery; (3) this eternal misery, as the appointed vindication of the law, will be eternal punishment. As Uzziah, when smitten with leprosy, did not need to be thrust out of the temple, but“himself hasted also to go out”(2 Chron. 26:20), so Judas is said to go“to his own place”(Acts 1:25;cf.4:23—where Peter and John,“being let go, they came to their own company”).Cf.John 8:35—“the bondservant abideth not in the house forever”= whatever be his outward connection with God, it can be only for a time;15:2—“Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away”—at death; the history of Abraham showed that one might have outward connection with God that was only temporary: Ishmael was cast out; the promise belonged only to Isaac.Wrightnour:“Gehenna was the place into which all the offal of the city of Jerusalem was swept. So hell is the penitentiary of the moral universe. The profligate is not happy in the prayer meeting, but in the saloon; the swine is not at home in the parlor, but in the sty. Hell is the sinner's own place; he had rather be there than in heaven; he will not come to the house of God, the nearest thing to heaven; why should we expect him to enter heaven itself?”

Rom. 2:5—“after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God”;Rev. 21:8—“But for the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death”:2 Thess. 1:9—“who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might”—here ἀπό, from, = not separation, but“proceeding from,”and indicates that the everlasting presence of Christ, once realized, ensures everlasting destruction;Mark 3:29—“whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—a text which implies that (1) some will never cease to sin; (2) this eternal sinning will involve eternal misery; (3) this eternal misery, as the appointed vindication of the law, will be eternal punishment. As Uzziah, when smitten with leprosy, did not need to be thrust out of the temple, but“himself hasted also to go out”(2 Chron. 26:20), so Judas is said to go“to his own place”(Acts 1:25;cf.4:23—where Peter and John,“being let go, they came to their own company”).Cf.John 8:35—“the bondservant abideth not in the house forever”= whatever be his outward connection with God, it can be only for a time;15:2—“Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away”—at death; the history of Abraham showed that one might have outward connection with God that was only temporary: Ishmael was cast out; the promise belonged only to Isaac.

Wrightnour:“Gehenna was the place into which all the offal of the city of Jerusalem was swept. So hell is the penitentiary of the moral universe. The profligate is not happy in the prayer meeting, but in the saloon; the swine is not at home in the parlor, but in the sty. Hell is the sinner's own place; he had rather be there than in heaven; he will not come to the house of God, the nearest thing to heaven; why should we expect him to enter heaven itself?”

Summing up all, we may say that it is the loss of all good, whether physical or spiritual, and the misery of an evil conscience banished from God and from the society of the holy, and dwelling under God's positive curse forever. Here we are to remember, as in the case of the final state of the righteous, that the decisive and controlling element is not the outward, but the inward. If hell be a place, it is only that the outward may correspond to the inward. If there be outward torments, it is only because these will be fit, though subordinate, accompaniments of the inward state of the soul.

Every living creature will have an environment suited to its character—“its own place.”“I know of the future judgment, How dreadful so e'er it be, That to sit alone with my conscience Will be judgment enough for me.”Calvin:“The wicked have the seeds of hell in their own hearts.”Chrysostom, commenting on the words“Depart, ye cursed,”says:“Their own works brought the punishment on them; the fire was not prepared for them, but for Satan; yet, since they cast themselves into it,‘Impute it to yourselves,’he says,‘that you are there.’”Milton, Par. Lost, 4:75—Satan:“Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.”Byron:“There is no power in holy men, Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast, Nor agony, nor, greater than all these, The innate torture of that deep despair Would make a hell of heaven, can exorcise From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense Of its own sins.”Phelps, English Style, 228, speaks of“a law of the divine government, by which the body symbolizes, in its experience, the moral condition of its spiritual inhabitant. The drift of sin is to physical suffering. Moral depravity tends always to a corrupt and tortured body. Certain diseases are the product of certain crimes. The whole catalogue of human pains, from a toothache to theangina pectoris, is but a witness to a state of sin expressed by an experience of suffering. Carry this law into the experience of eternal sin. The bodies of the wicked live again as well as those of the righteous. You have therefore a spiritual body, inhabited and used, and therefore tortured, by a[pg 1035]guilty soul,—a body, perfected in its sensibilities, inclosing and expressing a soul matured in its depravity.”Augustine, Confessions, 25—“Each man's sin is the instrument of his punishment, and his iniquity is turned into his torment.”Lord Bacon:“Being, without well-being, is a curse, and the greater the being, the greater the curse.”

Phelps, English Style, 228, speaks of“a law of the divine government, by which the body symbolizes, in its experience, the moral condition of its spiritual inhabitant. The drift of sin is to physical suffering. Moral depravity tends always to a corrupt and tortured body. Certain diseases are the product of certain crimes. The whole catalogue of human pains, from a toothache to theangina pectoris, is but a witness to a state of sin expressed by an experience of suffering. Carry this law into the experience of eternal sin. The bodies of the wicked live again as well as those of the righteous. You have therefore a spiritual body, inhabited and used, and therefore tortured, by a[pg 1035]guilty soul,—a body, perfected in its sensibilities, inclosing and expressing a soul matured in its depravity.”Augustine, Confessions, 25—“Each man's sin is the instrument of his punishment, and his iniquity is turned into his torment.”Lord Bacon:“Being, without well-being, is a curse, and the greater the being, the greater the curse.”

In our treatment of the subject of eternal punishment we must remember that false doctrine is often a reaction from the unscriptural and repulsive over-statements of Christian apologists. We freely concede: 1. that future punishment does not necessarily consist of physical torments,—it may be wholly internal and spiritual; 2. that the pain and suffering of the future are not necessarily due to positive inflictions of God,—they may result entirely from the soul's sense of loss, and from the accusations of conscience; and 3. that eternal punishment does not necessarily involve endless successions of suffering,—as God's eternity is not mere endlessness, so we may not be forever subject to the law of time.

An over-literal interpretation of the Scripture symbols has had much to do with such utterances as that of Savage, Life after Death, 101—“If the doctrine of eternal punishment was clearly and unmistakably taught in every leaf of the Bible, and on every leaf of all the Bibles of all the world, I could not believe a word of it. I should appeal from these misconceptions of even the seers and the great men to the infinite and eternal Good, who only is God, and who only on such terms could be worshiped.”The figurative language of Scripture is a miniature representation of what cannot be fully described in words. The symbol is a symbol; yet it is less, not greater, than the thing symbolized. It is sometimes fancied that Jonathan Edwards, when, in his sermon on“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,”he represented the sinner as a worm shriveling in the eternal fire, supposed that hell consists mainly of such physical torments. But this is a misinterpretation of Edwards. As he did not fancy heaven essentially to consist in streets of gold or pearly gates, but rather in holiness and communion with Christ, of which these are the symbols, so he did not regard hell as consisting in fire and brimstone, but rather in the unholiness and separation from God of a guilty and accusing conscience, of which the fire and brimstone are symbols. He used the material imagery, because he thought that this best answered to the methods of Scripture. He probably went beyond the simplicity of the Scripture statements, and did not sufficiently explain the spiritual meaning of the symbols he used; but we are persuaded that he neither understood them literally himself, nor meant them to be so understood by others.Sin is self-isolating, unsocial, selfish. By virtue of natural laws the sinner reaps as he has sown, and sooner or later is repaid by desertion or contempt. Then the selfishness of one sinner is punished by the selfishness of another, the ambition of one by the ambition of another, the cruelty of one by the cruelty of another. The misery of the wicked hereafter will doubtless be due in part to the spirit of their companions. They dislike the good, whose presence and example is a continual reproof and reminder of the height from which they have fallen, and they shut themselves out of their company. The judgment will bring about a complete cessation of intercourse between the good and the bad. Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:239—“Beings whose relations to God are diametrically opposite, and persistently so, differ so greatly from each other that other ties of relationship became as nothing in comparison.”

The figurative language of Scripture is a miniature representation of what cannot be fully described in words. The symbol is a symbol; yet it is less, not greater, than the thing symbolized. It is sometimes fancied that Jonathan Edwards, when, in his sermon on“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,”he represented the sinner as a worm shriveling in the eternal fire, supposed that hell consists mainly of such physical torments. But this is a misinterpretation of Edwards. As he did not fancy heaven essentially to consist in streets of gold or pearly gates, but rather in holiness and communion with Christ, of which these are the symbols, so he did not regard hell as consisting in fire and brimstone, but rather in the unholiness and separation from God of a guilty and accusing conscience, of which the fire and brimstone are symbols. He used the material imagery, because he thought that this best answered to the methods of Scripture. He probably went beyond the simplicity of the Scripture statements, and did not sufficiently explain the spiritual meaning of the symbols he used; but we are persuaded that he neither understood them literally himself, nor meant them to be so understood by others.

Sin is self-isolating, unsocial, selfish. By virtue of natural laws the sinner reaps as he has sown, and sooner or later is repaid by desertion or contempt. Then the selfishness of one sinner is punished by the selfishness of another, the ambition of one by the ambition of another, the cruelty of one by the cruelty of another. The misery of the wicked hereafter will doubtless be due in part to the spirit of their companions. They dislike the good, whose presence and example is a continual reproof and reminder of the height from which they have fallen, and they shut themselves out of their company. The judgment will bring about a complete cessation of intercourse between the good and the bad. Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:239—“Beings whose relations to God are diametrically opposite, and persistently so, differ so greatly from each other that other ties of relationship became as nothing in comparison.”

In order, however, to meet opposing views, and to forestall the common objections, we proceed to state the doctrine of future punishment in greater detail:

A. The future punishment of the wicked is not annihilation.In our discussion of Physical Death, we have shown that, by virtue of its original creation in the image of God, the human soul is naturally immortal; that neither for the righteous nor the wicked is death a cessation of being; that on the contrary, the wicked enter at death upon a state of conscious suffering which the resurrection and the judgment only augment and render[pg 1036]permanent. It is plain, moreover, that if annihilation took place at death, there could be no degrees in future punishment,—a conclusion itself at variance with express statements of Scripture.The old annihilationism is represented by Hudson, Debt and Grace, and Christ our Life; also by Dobney, Future Punishment. It maintains that κόλασις,“punishment”(inMat. 25:46—“eternal punishment”), means etymologically an everlasting“cutting-off.”But we reply that the word had to a great degree lost its etymological significance, as is evident from the only other passage where it occurs in the New Testament, namely,1 John 4:18—“fear hath punishment”(A. V.:“fear hath torment”). For full answer to the old statements of the annihilation-theory, see under Physical Death, pages 991-998.That there are degrees of punishment in God's administration is evident fromLuke 12:47, 48—“And that servant, who knew his Lord's will, and made not ready, nor did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes”;Rom. 2:5, 6—“after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his works”;2 Cor. 5:10—“For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad”;11:15—“whose end shall be according to their works”;2 Tim. 4:14—“Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord will render to him according to his works”;Rev. 2:23—“I will give unto each one of you according to your works”;18:5, 6—“her sins have reached even unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. Render unto her even as she rendered, and double unto her the double according to her works: in the cup which she mingled, mingle unto her double.”A French Christian replied to the argument of his deistical friend:“Probably you are right; probably you are not immortal; but I am.”This was the doctrine of conditional immortality, the doctrine that only the good survive. We grant that the measure of our faith in immortality is the measure of ourfitnessfor its blessings; but it is not the measure of ourpossessionof immortality. We are immortal beings, whether we believe it or not. The acorn is potentially an oak, but it may never come to its full development. There is a saltless salt, which, though it does not cease to exist, is cast out and trodden under foot of men. Denney, Studies in Theology, 256—“Conditional immortality denies that man can exist after death without being united to Christ by faith. But the immortality of man cannot be something accidental, something appended to his nature, after he believes in Christ. It must be something, at the very lowest, for which his nature is constituted, even if apart from Christ it can never realize itself as it ought.”Broadus, Com. onMat. 25:46(page 514)—“He who caused to exist could keep in existence.Mark 9:49—‘Every one shall be salted with fire’—has probably this meaning. Fire is usually destructive; but this unquenchable fire will act like salt, preserving instead of destroying. So Keble, Christian Year, 5th Sunday in Lent, says of the Jews in their present condition:‘Salted with fire, they seem to show How spirits lost in endless woe May undecaying live. Oh, sickening thought! Yet hold it fast Long as this glittering world shall last, Or sin at heart survive.’”There are two forms of the annihilation theory which are more plausible, and which in recent times find a larger number of advocates, namely:(a) That the powers of the wicked are gradually weakened, as the natural result of sin, so that they finally cease to be.—We reply, first, that moral evil does not, in this present life, seem to be incompatible with a constant growth of the intellectual powers, at least in certain directions, and we have no reason to believe the fact to be different in the world to come; secondly, that if this theory were true, the greater the sin, the speedier would be the relief from punishment.This form of the annihilation theory is suggested by Bushnell, in his Forgiveness and Law, 146, 147, and by Martineau, Study, 2:107-8. Dorner also, in his Eschatology, seems to favor it as one of the possible methods of future punishment. He says:“To the ethical also pertains ontological significance. The 'second death' may be the dissolving of the soul itself into nothing. Estrangement from God, the source of life, ends in extinction of life. The orthodox talk about demented beings, raging in impotent fury, amounts to the same—annihilation of their human character. Evil is never the substance of the soul,—this remains metaphysically good.”It is argued that even for[pg 1037]saved sinners there is a loss. The prodigal regained his father's favor, but he could not regain his lost patrimony. We cannot get back the lost time, nor the lost growth. Much more, then, in the case of the wicked, will there be perpetual loss. Draper:“At every return to the sun, comets lose a portion of their size and brightness, stretching out until the nucleus loses control, the mass breaks up, and the greater portion navigates the sky, in the shape of disconnected meteorites.”To this argument it is often replied that certain minds grow in their powers, at least in certain directions, in spite of their sin. Napoleon's military genius, during all his early years, grew with experience. Sloane, in his Life of Napoleon, however, seems to show that the Emperor lost his grip as he went on. Success unbalanced his judgment; he gave way to physical indulgence; his body was not equal to the strain he put upon it; at Waterloo he lost precious moments of opportunity by vacillation and inability to keep awake. There was physical, mental, and moral deterioration. But may this not be the result of the soul's connection with a body? Satan's cunning and daring seem to be on the increase from the first mention of him in Scripture to its end. See Princeton Review, 1882:673-694. Will not this very cunning and daring, however, work its own ruin, and lead Satan to his final and complete destruction? Does not sin blunt the intellect, unsettle one's sober standards of decision, lead one to prefer a trifling present triumph or pleasure to a permanent good?Gladden, What is Left? 104, 105—“Evil is benumbing and deadening. Selfishness weakens a man's mental grasp, and narrows his range of vision. The schemer becomes less astute as he grows older; he is morally sure, before he dies, to make some stupendous blunder which even a tyro would have avoided.... The devil, who has sinned longest, must be the greatest fool in the universe, and we need not be at all afraid of him.”To the view that this weakening of powers leads to absolute extinction of being, we oppose the consideration that its award of retribution is glaringly unjust in making the greatest sinner the least sufferer; since to him relief, in the way of annihilation, comes the soonest.(b) That there is for the wicked, certainly after death, and possibly between death and the judgment, a positive punishment proportioned to their deeds, but that this punishment issues in, or is followed by, annihilation.—We reply first, that upon this view, as upon any theory of annihilation, future punishment is a matter of grace as well as of justice—a notion for which Scripture affords no warrant; secondly, that Scripture not only gives no hint of the cessation of this punishment, but declares in the strongest terms its endlessness.The second form of the annihilation theory seems to have been held by Justin Martyr (Trypho, Edinb. transl.)—“Some, who have appeared worthy of God, never die; but others are punished so long as God wills them to exist and be punished.”The soul exists because God wills, and no longer than he wills.“Whenever it is necessary that the soul should cease to exist, the spirit of life is removed from it, and there is no more soul, but it goes back to the place from which it was taken.”Schaff, Hist. Christ. Church, 2:608, 609—“Justin Martyr teaches that the wicked or hopelessly impenitent will be raised at the judgment to receive an eternal punishment. He speaks of it in twelve passages:‘We believe that all who live wickedly and do not repent will be punished in eternal fire.’Such language is inconsistent with the annihilation theory for which Justin Martyr has been claimed. He does indeed reject the idea of the independent immortality of the soul, and hints at thepossiblefinal destruction of the wicked; but he puts that possibility countless ages beyond the final judgment, so that it loses all practical significance.”A modern advocate of this view is White, in his Life in Christ. He favors a conditional immortality, belonging only to those who are joined to Christ by faith; but he makes a retributive punishment and pain fall upon the godless, before their annihilation. The roots of this view lie in a false conception of holiness as a form or manifestation of benevolence, and of punishment as deterrent and preventive instead of vindicative of righteousness. To the minds of its advocates, extinction of being is a comparative blessing; and they, for this reason, prefer it to the common view. See Whiton, Is Eternal Punishment Endless?[pg 1038]A view similar to that which we are opposing is found in Henry Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World. Evil is punished by its own increase. Drummond, however, leaves no room for future life or for future judgment in the case of the unregenerate. See reviews of Drummond, in Watts, New Apologetic, 332; and in Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 19-21, 77-124. While Drummond is an annihilationist, Murphy is a restorationist. More rational and Scriptural than either of these is the saying of Tower:“Sin is God's foe. He does not annihilate it, but he makes it the means of displaying his holiness; as the Romans did not slay their captured enemies, but made them their servants.”The terms αἰών and αἰώνιος, which we have still to consider, afford additional Scripture testimony against annihilation. See also the argument from the divine justice, pages 1046-1051; article on the Doctrine of Extinction, in New Englander, March, 1879:201-224; Hovey, Manual of Theology and Ethics, 153-168; J. S. Barlow, Endless Being; W. H. Robinson, on Conditional Immortality, in Report of Baptist Congress for 1886.Since neither one of these two forms of the annihilation theory is Scriptural or rational, we avail ourselves of the evolutionary hypothesis as throwing light upon the problem. Death is not degeneracy ending in extinction, nor punishment ending in extinction,—it is atavism that returns, or tends to return, to the animal type. As moral development is from the brute to man, so abnormal development is from man to the brute.Lord Byron:“All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed.”This is true, not of man's being, but of his well being. Ribot, Diseases of the Will, 115—“Dissolution pursues a regressive course from the more voluntary and more complex to the less voluntary and more simple, that is to say, toward the automatic. One of the first signs of mental impairment is incapacity for sustained attention. Unity, stability, power, have ceased, and the end is extinction of the will.”We prefer to say, loss of the freedom of the will. On the principle of evolution, abuse of freedom may result in reversion to the brute, annihilation not of existence but of higher manhood, punishment from within rather than from without, eternal penalty in the shape of eternal loss.Mat. 24:13—“he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved”—has for its parallel passageLuke 21:19—“In your patience ye shall win your souls,”i. e., shall by free will get possession of your own being. Losing one's soul is just the opposite, namely, losing one's free will, by disuse renouncing freedom, becoming a victim of habit, nature, circumstance, and this is the cutting off and annihilation of true manhood.“To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer”(Bernard Shaw).InJohn 15:2Christ says of all men—the natural branches of the vine—“Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away”;Ps. 49:20—“Man that is in honor, and understandeth not, Is like the beasts that perish”;Rev. 22:15—“Without are the dogs.”In heathen fable men were turned into beasts, and even into trees. The story of Circe is a parable of human fate,—men may become apes, tigers, or swine. They may lose their higher powers of consciousness and will. By perpetual degradation they may suffer eternal punishment. All life that is worthy of the name may cease, while still existence of a low animal type is prolonged. We see precisely these results of sin in this world. We have reason to believe that the same laws of development will operate in the world to come.McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 85-95, 99, 124, 180—“Immortality, or survival after death, depends upon man's freeing himself from the law which sweeps away the many, and becoming an individual (indivisible) that is fit to survive. The individual must become stronger than the species. By using will aright, he lays hold of the infinite Life, and becomes one who, like Christ, has‘life in himself’(John 5:26). Gravitation and chemical affinity had their way in the universe until they were arrested and turned about in the interest of life. Overproduction, death, and the survival of the fittest, had their ruthless sway until they were reversed in the interest of affection. The supremacy of the race at the expense of the individual we may expect to continue until something in the individual comes to be of more importance than that law, and no longer.... Goodness can arrest and turn back for nations the primal law of growth, vigor, and decline. Is it too much to believe that it may do the same for an individual man?... Life is a thing to be achieved. At every step there are a thousand candidates who fail, for one that attains.... Until moral sensibility becomes self-conscious, all question of personal immortality becomes irrelevant, because there is, accurately speaking, no personality to be immortal. Up to that point the individual living creature, whether in human form or not, falls short of that essential personality for which eternal life can[pg 1039]have any meaning.”But how about children who never come to moral consciousness? McConnell appeals to heredity. The child of one who has himself achieved immortality may also prove to be immortal. But is there no chance for the children of sinners? The doctrine of McConnell leans toward the true solution, but it is vitiated by the belief that individuality is a transient gift which only goodness can make permanent. We hold on the other hand that this gift of God is“without repentance”(Rom. 11:29), and that no human being can lose life, except in the sense of losing all that makes life desirable.

In our discussion of Physical Death, we have shown that, by virtue of its original creation in the image of God, the human soul is naturally immortal; that neither for the righteous nor the wicked is death a cessation of being; that on the contrary, the wicked enter at death upon a state of conscious suffering which the resurrection and the judgment only augment and render[pg 1036]permanent. It is plain, moreover, that if annihilation took place at death, there could be no degrees in future punishment,—a conclusion itself at variance with express statements of Scripture.

The old annihilationism is represented by Hudson, Debt and Grace, and Christ our Life; also by Dobney, Future Punishment. It maintains that κόλασις,“punishment”(inMat. 25:46—“eternal punishment”), means etymologically an everlasting“cutting-off.”But we reply that the word had to a great degree lost its etymological significance, as is evident from the only other passage where it occurs in the New Testament, namely,1 John 4:18—“fear hath punishment”(A. V.:“fear hath torment”). For full answer to the old statements of the annihilation-theory, see under Physical Death, pages 991-998.That there are degrees of punishment in God's administration is evident fromLuke 12:47, 48—“And that servant, who knew his Lord's will, and made not ready, nor did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes”;Rom. 2:5, 6—“after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his works”;2 Cor. 5:10—“For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad”;11:15—“whose end shall be according to their works”;2 Tim. 4:14—“Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord will render to him according to his works”;Rev. 2:23—“I will give unto each one of you according to your works”;18:5, 6—“her sins have reached even unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. Render unto her even as she rendered, and double unto her the double according to her works: in the cup which she mingled, mingle unto her double.”A French Christian replied to the argument of his deistical friend:“Probably you are right; probably you are not immortal; but I am.”This was the doctrine of conditional immortality, the doctrine that only the good survive. We grant that the measure of our faith in immortality is the measure of ourfitnessfor its blessings; but it is not the measure of ourpossessionof immortality. We are immortal beings, whether we believe it or not. The acorn is potentially an oak, but it may never come to its full development. There is a saltless salt, which, though it does not cease to exist, is cast out and trodden under foot of men. Denney, Studies in Theology, 256—“Conditional immortality denies that man can exist after death without being united to Christ by faith. But the immortality of man cannot be something accidental, something appended to his nature, after he believes in Christ. It must be something, at the very lowest, for which his nature is constituted, even if apart from Christ it can never realize itself as it ought.”Broadus, Com. onMat. 25:46(page 514)—“He who caused to exist could keep in existence.Mark 9:49—‘Every one shall be salted with fire’—has probably this meaning. Fire is usually destructive; but this unquenchable fire will act like salt, preserving instead of destroying. So Keble, Christian Year, 5th Sunday in Lent, says of the Jews in their present condition:‘Salted with fire, they seem to show How spirits lost in endless woe May undecaying live. Oh, sickening thought! Yet hold it fast Long as this glittering world shall last, Or sin at heart survive.’”

That there are degrees of punishment in God's administration is evident fromLuke 12:47, 48—“And that servant, who knew his Lord's will, and made not ready, nor did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes”;Rom. 2:5, 6—“after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his works”;2 Cor. 5:10—“For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad”;11:15—“whose end shall be according to their works”;2 Tim. 4:14—“Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord will render to him according to his works”;Rev. 2:23—“I will give unto each one of you according to your works”;18:5, 6—“her sins have reached even unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. Render unto her even as she rendered, and double unto her the double according to her works: in the cup which she mingled, mingle unto her double.”

A French Christian replied to the argument of his deistical friend:“Probably you are right; probably you are not immortal; but I am.”This was the doctrine of conditional immortality, the doctrine that only the good survive. We grant that the measure of our faith in immortality is the measure of ourfitnessfor its blessings; but it is not the measure of ourpossessionof immortality. We are immortal beings, whether we believe it or not. The acorn is potentially an oak, but it may never come to its full development. There is a saltless salt, which, though it does not cease to exist, is cast out and trodden under foot of men. Denney, Studies in Theology, 256—“Conditional immortality denies that man can exist after death without being united to Christ by faith. But the immortality of man cannot be something accidental, something appended to his nature, after he believes in Christ. It must be something, at the very lowest, for which his nature is constituted, even if apart from Christ it can never realize itself as it ought.”

Broadus, Com. onMat. 25:46(page 514)—“He who caused to exist could keep in existence.Mark 9:49—‘Every one shall be salted with fire’—has probably this meaning. Fire is usually destructive; but this unquenchable fire will act like salt, preserving instead of destroying. So Keble, Christian Year, 5th Sunday in Lent, says of the Jews in their present condition:‘Salted with fire, they seem to show How spirits lost in endless woe May undecaying live. Oh, sickening thought! Yet hold it fast Long as this glittering world shall last, Or sin at heart survive.’”

There are two forms of the annihilation theory which are more plausible, and which in recent times find a larger number of advocates, namely:

(a) That the powers of the wicked are gradually weakened, as the natural result of sin, so that they finally cease to be.—We reply, first, that moral evil does not, in this present life, seem to be incompatible with a constant growth of the intellectual powers, at least in certain directions, and we have no reason to believe the fact to be different in the world to come; secondly, that if this theory were true, the greater the sin, the speedier would be the relief from punishment.

This form of the annihilation theory is suggested by Bushnell, in his Forgiveness and Law, 146, 147, and by Martineau, Study, 2:107-8. Dorner also, in his Eschatology, seems to favor it as one of the possible methods of future punishment. He says:“To the ethical also pertains ontological significance. The 'second death' may be the dissolving of the soul itself into nothing. Estrangement from God, the source of life, ends in extinction of life. The orthodox talk about demented beings, raging in impotent fury, amounts to the same—annihilation of their human character. Evil is never the substance of the soul,—this remains metaphysically good.”It is argued that even for[pg 1037]saved sinners there is a loss. The prodigal regained his father's favor, but he could not regain his lost patrimony. We cannot get back the lost time, nor the lost growth. Much more, then, in the case of the wicked, will there be perpetual loss. Draper:“At every return to the sun, comets lose a portion of their size and brightness, stretching out until the nucleus loses control, the mass breaks up, and the greater portion navigates the sky, in the shape of disconnected meteorites.”To this argument it is often replied that certain minds grow in their powers, at least in certain directions, in spite of their sin. Napoleon's military genius, during all his early years, grew with experience. Sloane, in his Life of Napoleon, however, seems to show that the Emperor lost his grip as he went on. Success unbalanced his judgment; he gave way to physical indulgence; his body was not equal to the strain he put upon it; at Waterloo he lost precious moments of opportunity by vacillation and inability to keep awake. There was physical, mental, and moral deterioration. But may this not be the result of the soul's connection with a body? Satan's cunning and daring seem to be on the increase from the first mention of him in Scripture to its end. See Princeton Review, 1882:673-694. Will not this very cunning and daring, however, work its own ruin, and lead Satan to his final and complete destruction? Does not sin blunt the intellect, unsettle one's sober standards of decision, lead one to prefer a trifling present triumph or pleasure to a permanent good?Gladden, What is Left? 104, 105—“Evil is benumbing and deadening. Selfishness weakens a man's mental grasp, and narrows his range of vision. The schemer becomes less astute as he grows older; he is morally sure, before he dies, to make some stupendous blunder which even a tyro would have avoided.... The devil, who has sinned longest, must be the greatest fool in the universe, and we need not be at all afraid of him.”To the view that this weakening of powers leads to absolute extinction of being, we oppose the consideration that its award of retribution is glaringly unjust in making the greatest sinner the least sufferer; since to him relief, in the way of annihilation, comes the soonest.

To this argument it is often replied that certain minds grow in their powers, at least in certain directions, in spite of their sin. Napoleon's military genius, during all his early years, grew with experience. Sloane, in his Life of Napoleon, however, seems to show that the Emperor lost his grip as he went on. Success unbalanced his judgment; he gave way to physical indulgence; his body was not equal to the strain he put upon it; at Waterloo he lost precious moments of opportunity by vacillation and inability to keep awake. There was physical, mental, and moral deterioration. But may this not be the result of the soul's connection with a body? Satan's cunning and daring seem to be on the increase from the first mention of him in Scripture to its end. See Princeton Review, 1882:673-694. Will not this very cunning and daring, however, work its own ruin, and lead Satan to his final and complete destruction? Does not sin blunt the intellect, unsettle one's sober standards of decision, lead one to prefer a trifling present triumph or pleasure to a permanent good?

Gladden, What is Left? 104, 105—“Evil is benumbing and deadening. Selfishness weakens a man's mental grasp, and narrows his range of vision. The schemer becomes less astute as he grows older; he is morally sure, before he dies, to make some stupendous blunder which even a tyro would have avoided.... The devil, who has sinned longest, must be the greatest fool in the universe, and we need not be at all afraid of him.”To the view that this weakening of powers leads to absolute extinction of being, we oppose the consideration that its award of retribution is glaringly unjust in making the greatest sinner the least sufferer; since to him relief, in the way of annihilation, comes the soonest.

(b) That there is for the wicked, certainly after death, and possibly between death and the judgment, a positive punishment proportioned to their deeds, but that this punishment issues in, or is followed by, annihilation.—We reply first, that upon this view, as upon any theory of annihilation, future punishment is a matter of grace as well as of justice—a notion for which Scripture affords no warrant; secondly, that Scripture not only gives no hint of the cessation of this punishment, but declares in the strongest terms its endlessness.

The second form of the annihilation theory seems to have been held by Justin Martyr (Trypho, Edinb. transl.)—“Some, who have appeared worthy of God, never die; but others are punished so long as God wills them to exist and be punished.”The soul exists because God wills, and no longer than he wills.“Whenever it is necessary that the soul should cease to exist, the spirit of life is removed from it, and there is no more soul, but it goes back to the place from which it was taken.”Schaff, Hist. Christ. Church, 2:608, 609—“Justin Martyr teaches that the wicked or hopelessly impenitent will be raised at the judgment to receive an eternal punishment. He speaks of it in twelve passages:‘We believe that all who live wickedly and do not repent will be punished in eternal fire.’Such language is inconsistent with the annihilation theory for which Justin Martyr has been claimed. He does indeed reject the idea of the independent immortality of the soul, and hints at thepossiblefinal destruction of the wicked; but he puts that possibility countless ages beyond the final judgment, so that it loses all practical significance.”A modern advocate of this view is White, in his Life in Christ. He favors a conditional immortality, belonging only to those who are joined to Christ by faith; but he makes a retributive punishment and pain fall upon the godless, before their annihilation. The roots of this view lie in a false conception of holiness as a form or manifestation of benevolence, and of punishment as deterrent and preventive instead of vindicative of righteousness. To the minds of its advocates, extinction of being is a comparative blessing; and they, for this reason, prefer it to the common view. See Whiton, Is Eternal Punishment Endless?[pg 1038]A view similar to that which we are opposing is found in Henry Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World. Evil is punished by its own increase. Drummond, however, leaves no room for future life or for future judgment in the case of the unregenerate. See reviews of Drummond, in Watts, New Apologetic, 332; and in Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 19-21, 77-124. While Drummond is an annihilationist, Murphy is a restorationist. More rational and Scriptural than either of these is the saying of Tower:“Sin is God's foe. He does not annihilate it, but he makes it the means of displaying his holiness; as the Romans did not slay their captured enemies, but made them their servants.”The terms αἰών and αἰώνιος, which we have still to consider, afford additional Scripture testimony against annihilation. See also the argument from the divine justice, pages 1046-1051; article on the Doctrine of Extinction, in New Englander, March, 1879:201-224; Hovey, Manual of Theology and Ethics, 153-168; J. S. Barlow, Endless Being; W. H. Robinson, on Conditional Immortality, in Report of Baptist Congress for 1886.

Schaff, Hist. Christ. Church, 2:608, 609—“Justin Martyr teaches that the wicked or hopelessly impenitent will be raised at the judgment to receive an eternal punishment. He speaks of it in twelve passages:‘We believe that all who live wickedly and do not repent will be punished in eternal fire.’Such language is inconsistent with the annihilation theory for which Justin Martyr has been claimed. He does indeed reject the idea of the independent immortality of the soul, and hints at thepossiblefinal destruction of the wicked; but he puts that possibility countless ages beyond the final judgment, so that it loses all practical significance.”

A modern advocate of this view is White, in his Life in Christ. He favors a conditional immortality, belonging only to those who are joined to Christ by faith; but he makes a retributive punishment and pain fall upon the godless, before their annihilation. The roots of this view lie in a false conception of holiness as a form or manifestation of benevolence, and of punishment as deterrent and preventive instead of vindicative of righteousness. To the minds of its advocates, extinction of being is a comparative blessing; and they, for this reason, prefer it to the common view. See Whiton, Is Eternal Punishment Endless?

A view similar to that which we are opposing is found in Henry Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World. Evil is punished by its own increase. Drummond, however, leaves no room for future life or for future judgment in the case of the unregenerate. See reviews of Drummond, in Watts, New Apologetic, 332; and in Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 19-21, 77-124. While Drummond is an annihilationist, Murphy is a restorationist. More rational and Scriptural than either of these is the saying of Tower:“Sin is God's foe. He does not annihilate it, but he makes it the means of displaying his holiness; as the Romans did not slay their captured enemies, but made them their servants.”The terms αἰών and αἰώνιος, which we have still to consider, afford additional Scripture testimony against annihilation. See also the argument from the divine justice, pages 1046-1051; article on the Doctrine of Extinction, in New Englander, March, 1879:201-224; Hovey, Manual of Theology and Ethics, 153-168; J. S. Barlow, Endless Being; W. H. Robinson, on Conditional Immortality, in Report of Baptist Congress for 1886.

Since neither one of these two forms of the annihilation theory is Scriptural or rational, we avail ourselves of the evolutionary hypothesis as throwing light upon the problem. Death is not degeneracy ending in extinction, nor punishment ending in extinction,—it is atavism that returns, or tends to return, to the animal type. As moral development is from the brute to man, so abnormal development is from man to the brute.

Lord Byron:“All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed.”This is true, not of man's being, but of his well being. Ribot, Diseases of the Will, 115—“Dissolution pursues a regressive course from the more voluntary and more complex to the less voluntary and more simple, that is to say, toward the automatic. One of the first signs of mental impairment is incapacity for sustained attention. Unity, stability, power, have ceased, and the end is extinction of the will.”We prefer to say, loss of the freedom of the will. On the principle of evolution, abuse of freedom may result in reversion to the brute, annihilation not of existence but of higher manhood, punishment from within rather than from without, eternal penalty in the shape of eternal loss.Mat. 24:13—“he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved”—has for its parallel passageLuke 21:19—“In your patience ye shall win your souls,”i. e., shall by free will get possession of your own being. Losing one's soul is just the opposite, namely, losing one's free will, by disuse renouncing freedom, becoming a victim of habit, nature, circumstance, and this is the cutting off and annihilation of true manhood.“To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer”(Bernard Shaw).InJohn 15:2Christ says of all men—the natural branches of the vine—“Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away”;Ps. 49:20—“Man that is in honor, and understandeth not, Is like the beasts that perish”;Rev. 22:15—“Without are the dogs.”In heathen fable men were turned into beasts, and even into trees. The story of Circe is a parable of human fate,—men may become apes, tigers, or swine. They may lose their higher powers of consciousness and will. By perpetual degradation they may suffer eternal punishment. All life that is worthy of the name may cease, while still existence of a low animal type is prolonged. We see precisely these results of sin in this world. We have reason to believe that the same laws of development will operate in the world to come.McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 85-95, 99, 124, 180—“Immortality, or survival after death, depends upon man's freeing himself from the law which sweeps away the many, and becoming an individual (indivisible) that is fit to survive. The individual must become stronger than the species. By using will aright, he lays hold of the infinite Life, and becomes one who, like Christ, has‘life in himself’(John 5:26). Gravitation and chemical affinity had their way in the universe until they were arrested and turned about in the interest of life. Overproduction, death, and the survival of the fittest, had their ruthless sway until they were reversed in the interest of affection. The supremacy of the race at the expense of the individual we may expect to continue until something in the individual comes to be of more importance than that law, and no longer.... Goodness can arrest and turn back for nations the primal law of growth, vigor, and decline. Is it too much to believe that it may do the same for an individual man?... Life is a thing to be achieved. At every step there are a thousand candidates who fail, for one that attains.... Until moral sensibility becomes self-conscious, all question of personal immortality becomes irrelevant, because there is, accurately speaking, no personality to be immortal. Up to that point the individual living creature, whether in human form or not, falls short of that essential personality for which eternal life can[pg 1039]have any meaning.”But how about children who never come to moral consciousness? McConnell appeals to heredity. The child of one who has himself achieved immortality may also prove to be immortal. But is there no chance for the children of sinners? The doctrine of McConnell leans toward the true solution, but it is vitiated by the belief that individuality is a transient gift which only goodness can make permanent. We hold on the other hand that this gift of God is“without repentance”(Rom. 11:29), and that no human being can lose life, except in the sense of losing all that makes life desirable.

InJohn 15:2Christ says of all men—the natural branches of the vine—“Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away”;Ps. 49:20—“Man that is in honor, and understandeth not, Is like the beasts that perish”;Rev. 22:15—“Without are the dogs.”In heathen fable men were turned into beasts, and even into trees. The story of Circe is a parable of human fate,—men may become apes, tigers, or swine. They may lose their higher powers of consciousness and will. By perpetual degradation they may suffer eternal punishment. All life that is worthy of the name may cease, while still existence of a low animal type is prolonged. We see precisely these results of sin in this world. We have reason to believe that the same laws of development will operate in the world to come.

McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 85-95, 99, 124, 180—“Immortality, or survival after death, depends upon man's freeing himself from the law which sweeps away the many, and becoming an individual (indivisible) that is fit to survive. The individual must become stronger than the species. By using will aright, he lays hold of the infinite Life, and becomes one who, like Christ, has‘life in himself’(John 5:26). Gravitation and chemical affinity had their way in the universe until they were arrested and turned about in the interest of life. Overproduction, death, and the survival of the fittest, had their ruthless sway until they were reversed in the interest of affection. The supremacy of the race at the expense of the individual we may expect to continue until something in the individual comes to be of more importance than that law, and no longer.... Goodness can arrest and turn back for nations the primal law of growth, vigor, and decline. Is it too much to believe that it may do the same for an individual man?... Life is a thing to be achieved. At every step there are a thousand candidates who fail, for one that attains.... Until moral sensibility becomes self-conscious, all question of personal immortality becomes irrelevant, because there is, accurately speaking, no personality to be immortal. Up to that point the individual living creature, whether in human form or not, falls short of that essential personality for which eternal life can[pg 1039]have any meaning.”But how about children who never come to moral consciousness? McConnell appeals to heredity. The child of one who has himself achieved immortality may also prove to be immortal. But is there no chance for the children of sinners? The doctrine of McConnell leans toward the true solution, but it is vitiated by the belief that individuality is a transient gift which only goodness can make permanent. We hold on the other hand that this gift of God is“without repentance”(Rom. 11:29), and that no human being can lose life, except in the sense of losing all that makes life desirable.

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