B. Punishment after death excludes new probation and ultimate restoration of the wicked.Some have maintained the ultimate restoration of all human beings, by appeal to such passages as the following: Mat. 19:28; Acts 3:21; Eph. 1:9, 10.Mat. 19:28—“in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory”;Acts 3:21—Jesus,“whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things”;1 Cor. 15:26—“The last enemy that shall be abolished is death”;Eph. 1:9, 10—“according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”;2 Pet. 3:9, 13—“not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance ... But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”Robert Browning:“That God, by God's own ways occult, May—doth, I will believe—bring back All wanderers to a single track.”B. W. Lockhart:“I must believe that evil is essentially transient and mortal, or alter my predicates of God. And I must believe in the ultimate extinction of that personality whom the power of God cannot sometime win to goodness. The only alternative is the termination of a wicked life either through redemption or through extinction.”Mulford, Republic of God, claims that the soul's state cannot be fixed by any event, such as death, outside of itself. If it could, the soul would exist, not under a moral government, but under fate, and God himself would be only another name for fate. The soul carries its fate, under God, in its power of choice; and who dares to say that this power to choose the good ceases at death?For advocacy of a second probation for those who have not consciously rejected Christ in this life, see Newman Smyth's edition of Dorner's Eschatology. For the theory of restoration, see Farrar, Eternal Hope; Birks, Victory of Divine Goodness; Jukes, Restitution of All Things; Delitzsch, Bib. Psychologie, 469-476; Robert Browning, Apparent Failure; Tennyson, In Memoriam, § liv.Per contra, see Hovey, Bib. Eschatology, 95-144. See also, Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 406-440.(a) These passages, as obscure, are to be interpreted in the light of those plainer ones which we have already cited. Thus interpreted, they foretell only the absolute triumph of the divine kingdom, and the subjection of all evil to God.The true interpretation of the passages above mentioned is indicated in Meyer's note onEph. 1:9, 10—this namely, that“the allusion is not to the restoration offallen individuals, but to the restoration ofuniversal harmony, implying that the wicked are to be excluded from the kingdom of God.”That there is no allusion to a probation after this life, is clear fromLuke 16:19-31—the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Here penalty is inflicted for the sins done“in thy lifetime”(v. 25); this penalty is unchangeable—“there is a great gulf fixed”(v. 26); the rich man asks favors for his brethren who still live on the earth, but none for himself (v. 27, 28).John 5:25-29—“The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself: and he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, until the resurrection of judgment”—here it is declared that, while for those who have done good there is a resurrection of life, there is for those who have done ill only a resurrection of judgment.John 8:21, 24—“shall die in your sin: whither I go, ye cannot come ... except ye believe that I am he, ye shall die in your sins”—sayings which indicate finality in the decisions of this life.Orr, Christian View of God and the World, 243—“Scripture invariably represents the judgment as proceeding on the data of this life, and it concentrates every ray of appeal into the present.”John 9:4—“We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh[pg 1040]when no man can work”—intimates that there is no opportunity to secure salvation after death. The Christian hymn writer has caught the meaning of Scripture, when he says of those who have passed through the gate of death:“Fixed in an eternal state, They have done with all below; We a little longer wait; But how little, none can know.”(b) A second probation is not needed to vindicate the justice or the love of God, since Christ, the immanent God, is already in this world present with every human soul, quickening the conscience, giving to each man his opportunity, and making every decision between right and wrong a true probation. In choosing evil against their better judgment even the heathen unconsciously reject Christ. Infants and idiots, as they have not consciously sinned, are, as we may believe, saved at death by having Christ revealed to them and by the regenerating influence of his Spirit.Rom. 1:18-28—there is probation under the light of nature as well as under the gospel, and under the law of nature as well as under the gospel men may be given up“unto a reprobate mind”;2:6-16—Gentiles shall be judged, not by the gospel, but by the law of nature, and shall“perish without the law ... in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men.”2 Cor. 5:10—“For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; [not that each may have a new opportunity to secure salvation, but]that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad”;Heb. 6:8—“whose end is to be burned”—not to be quickened again;9:27—“And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh[not a second probation, but]judgment.”Luckock, Intermediate State, 22—“InHeb. 9:27, the word‘judgment’has no article. The judgment alluded to is not the final or general judgment, but only that by which the place of the soul is determined in the Intermediate State.”Denney, Studies in Theology, 243—“InMat. 25, our Lord gives a pictorial representation of the judgment of the heathen. All nations—all the Gentiles—are gathered before the King; and their destiny is determined, not by their conscious acceptance or rejection of the historical Savior, but by their unconscious acceptance or rejection of him in the persons of those who needed services of love.... This does not square with the idea of a future probation. It rather tells us plainly that men may do things of final and decisive import in this life, even if Christ is unknown to them.... The real argument against future probation is that it depreciates the present life, and denies the infinite significance that, under all conditions, essentially and inevitably belongs to the actions of a self-conscious moral being. A type of will may be in process of formation, even in a heathen man, on which eternal issues depend.... Second probation lowers the moral tone of the spirit. The present life acquires a relative unimportance. I dare not say that if I forfeit the opportunity the present life gives me I shall ever have another, and therefore I dare not say so to another man.”For an able review of the Scripture testimony against a second probation, see G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation, iv. Emerson, the most recent advocate of restorationism, in his Doctrine of Probation Examined, 42, is able to evade these latter passages only by assuming that they are to be spiritually interpreted, and that there is to be no literal outward day of judgment—an error which we have previously discussed and refuted,—see pages1024,1025.(c) The advocates of universal restoration are commonly the most strenuous defenders of the inalienable freedom of the human will to make choices contrary to its past character and to all the motives which are or can be brought to bear upon it. As a matter of fact, we find in this world that men choose sin in spite of infinite motives to the contrary. Upon the theory of human freedom just mentioned, no motives which God can use will certainly accomplish the salvation of all moral creatures. The soul which resists Christ here may resist him forever.Emerson, in the book just referred to, says:“The truth that sin is in its permanent essence a free choice, however for a time it may be held in mechanical combination with the notion of moral opportunity arbitrarily closed, can never mingle with it, and must in the logical outcome permanently cast it off. Scripture presumes and teaches[pg 1041]the constant capability of souls to obey as well as to be disobedient.”Emerson is correct. If the doctrine of the unlimited ability of the human will be a true one, then restoration in the future world is possible. Clement and Origen founded on this theory of will their denial of future punishment. If will be essentially the power of contrary choice, and if will may act independently of all character and motive, there can be no objective certainty that the lost will remain sinful. In short, there can be no finality, even to God's allotments, nor is anylastjudgment possible. Upon this view, regeneration and conversion are as possible at any time in the future as they are to-day.But those who hold to this defective philosophy of the will should remember that unlimited freedom is unlimited freedom to sin, as well as unlimited freedom to turn to God. If restoration is possible, endless persistence in evil is possible also; and this last the Scripture predicts. Whittier:“What if thine eye refuse to see, Thine ear of heaven's free welcome fail, And thou a willing captive be, Thyself thine own dark jail?”Swedenborg says that the man who obstinately refuses the inheritance of the sons of God is allowed the pleasures of the beast, and enjoys in his own low way the hell to which he has confined himself. Every occupant of hell prefers it to heaven. Dante, Hell, iv—“All here together come from every clime, And to o'erpass the river are not loth, For so heaven's justice goads them on, that fear Is turned into desire. Hence never passed good spirit.”The lost areHeautoutimoroumenoi, or self-tormentors, to adopt the title of Terence's play. See Whedon, in Meth. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1884; Robbins, in Bib. Sac., 1881:460-507.Denney, Studies in Theology, 255—“The very conception of human freedom involves the possibility of its permanent misuse, or of what our Lord himself calls‘eternal sin’(Mark 3:29).”Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:699—“Origen's restorationism grew naturally out of his view of human liberty”—the liberty of indifference—“endless alternations of falls and recoveries, of hells and heavens; so that practically he taught nothing but a hell.”J. C. Adams, The Leisure of God:“It is lame logic to maintain the inviolable freedom of the will, and at the same time insist that God can, through his ample power, through protracted punishment, bring the soul into a disposition which it does not wish to feel. There is no compulsory holiness possible. In our Civil War there was some talk of‘compelling men to volunteer,’but the idea was soon seen to involve a self-contradiction.”(d) Upon the more correct view of the will which we have advocated, the case is more hopeless still. Upon this view, the sinful soul, in its very sinning, gives to itself a sinful bent of intellect, affection, and will; in other words, makes for itself a character, which, though it does not render necessary, yet does render certain, apart from divine grace, the continuance of sinful action. In itself it finds a self-formed motive to evil strong enough to prevail over all inducements to holiness which God sees it wise to bring to bear. It is in the next world, indeed, subjected to suffering. But suffering has in itself no reforming power. Unless accompanied by special renewing influences of the Holy Spirit, it only hardens and embitters the soul. We have no Scripture evidence that such influences of the Spirit are exerted, after death, upon the still impenitent; but abundant evidence, on the contrary, that the moral condition in which death finds men is their condition forever.See Bushnell's“One Trial Better than Many,”in Sermons on Living Subjects; also see his Forgiveness and Law, 146, 147. Bushnell argues that God would give us fifty trials, if that would do us good. But there is no possibility of such result. The first decision adverse to God renders it more difficult to make a right decision upon the next opportunity. Character tends to fixity, and each new opportunity may only harden the heart and increase its guilt and condemnation. We should have no better chance of salvation if our lives were lengthened to the term of the sinners before the flood. Mere suffering does not convert the soul; see Martineau, Study, 2:100. A life of pain did not make Blanco White a believer; see Mozley, Hist. and Theol. Essays, vol. 2, essay 1.[pg 1042]Edward A. Lawrence, Does Everlasting Punishment Last Forever?—“If the deeds of the law do not justify here, how can the penalties of the law hereafter? The pain from a broken limb does nothing to mend the break, and the suffering from disease does nothing to cure it. Penalty pays no debts,—it only shows the outstanding and unsettled accounts.”If the will does not act without motive, then it is certain that without motives men will never repent. To an impenitent and rebellious sinner the motive must come, not from within, but from without. Such motives God presents by his Spirit in this life; but when this life ends and God's Spirit is withdrawn, no motives to repentance will be presented. The soul's dislike for God will issue only in complaint and resistance. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:4—“Try what repentance can? what can it not? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?”Marlowe, Faustus:“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is, there we must ever be.”The pressure of the atmosphere without is counteracted by the resistance of the atmosphere within the body. So God's life within is the only thing that can enable us to bear God's afflictive dispensations without. Without God's Spirit to inspire repentance the wicked man in this world never feels sorrow for his deeds, except as he realizes their evil consequences. Physical anguish and punishment inspire hatred, not of sin, but of the effects of sin. The remorse of Judas induced confession, but not true repentance. So in the next world punishment will secure recognition of God and of his justice, on the part of the transgressor, but it will not regenerate or save. The penalties of the future life will be no more effectual to reform the sinner than were the invitations of Christ and the strivings of the Holy Spirit in the present life. The transientness of good resolves which are forced out of us by suffering is illustrated by the old couplet:“The devil was sick,—the devil a monk would be; The devil got well,—the devil a monk was he.”Charles G. Sewall:“Paul Lester Ford, the novelist, was murdered by his brother Malcolm, because the father of the two brothers had disinherited the one who committed the crime. Has God the right to disinherit any one of his children? We answer that God disinherits no one. Each man decides for himself whether he will accept the inheritance. It is a matter of character. A father cannot give his son an education. The son may play truant and throw away his opportunity. The prodigal son disinherited himself. Heaven is not a place,—it is a way of living, a condition of being. If you have a musical ear, I will admit you to a lovely concert. If you have not a musical ear, I may give you a reserved seat and you will hear no melody. Some men fail of salvation because they have no taste for it and will not have it.”The laws of God's universe are closing in upon the impenitent sinner, as the iron walls of the mediæval prison closed in night by night upon the victim,—each morning there was one window less, and the dungeon came to be a coffin. In Jean Ingelow's poem“Divided,”two friends, parted by a little rivulet across which they could clasp hands, walk on in the direction in which the stream is flowing, till the rivulet becomes a brook, and the brook a river, and the river an arm of the sea across which no voice can be heard and there is no passing. By constant neglect to use our opportunity, we lose the power to cross from sin to righteousness, until between the soul and God“there is a great gulf fixed”(Luke 16:26).John G. Whittier wrote within a twelvemonth of his death:“I do believe that we take with us into the next world the same freedom of will we have here, and thatthere, ashere, he that turns to the Lord will find mercy; that God never ceases to follow his creatures with love, and is always ready to hear the prayer of the penitent. But I also believe thatnowis the accepted time, and that he who dallies with sin may find the chains of evil habit too strong to break in this world or the other.”And the following is the Quaker poet's verse:“Though God be good and free be heaven, Not force divine can love compel; And though the song of sins forgiven Might sound through lowest hell, The sweet persuasion of his voice Respects the sanctity of will. He giveth day; thou hast thy choice To walk in darkness still.”Longfellow, Masque of Pandora:“Never by lapse of time The soul defaced by crime Into its former self returns again; For every guilty deed Holds in itself the seed Of retribution and undying pain. Never shall be the loss Restored, till Helios Hath purified them with his heavenly fires; Then what was lost is won, And the new life begun, Kindled with nobler passions and desires.”Seth, Freedom as Ethical Postulate, 42—“Faust's selling his soul to Mephistopheles, and signing the contract with his life's blood, is no single transaction, done deliberately, on one occasion; rather, that is[pg 1043]the lurid meaning of a life which consists of innumerable individual acts,—the life of evil means that.”See John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 2:88; Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 315.(e) The declaration as to Judas, in Mat. 26:24, could not be true upon the hypothesis of a final restoration. If at any time, even after the lapse of ages, Judas be redeemed, his subsequent infinite duration of blessedness must outweigh all the finite suffering through which he has passed. The Scripture statement that“good were it for that man if he had not been born”must be regarded as a refutation of the theory of universal restoration.Mat. 26:24—“The Son of man goeth, even as it is written of him: but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had not been born.”G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation:“As Christ of old healed only those who came or were brought to him, so now he waits for the coöperation of human agency. God has limited himself to an orderly method in human salvation. The consuming missionary zeal of the apostles and the early church shows that they believed the decisions of this life to be final decisions. The early church not only thought the heathen world would perish without the gospel, but they found a conscience in the heathen answering to this belief. The solicitude drawn out by this responsibility for our fellows may be one means of securing the moral stability of the future. What is bound on earth is bound in heaven; else why not pray for the wicked dead?”It is certainly a remarkable fact, if this theory be true, that we have in Scripture not a single instance of prayer for the dead.The apocryphal 2 Maccabees 12:39sq.gives an instance of Jewish prayer for the dead. Certain who were slain had concealed under their coats things consecrated to idols. Judas and his host therefore prayed that this sin might be forgiven to the slain, and they contributed 2,000 drachmas of silver to send a sin offering for them to Jerusalem. So modern Jews pray for the dead; see Luckock, After Death, 54-66—an argument for such prayer. John Wesley, Works, 9:55, maintains the legality of prayer for the dead. Still it is true that we have no instance of such prayer in canonical Scriptures.Ps. 132:1—“Jehovah, remember for David All his affliction”—is not a prayer for the dead, but signifies:“Remember for David”, so as to fulfil thy promise to him,“all his anxious cares”—with regard to the building of the temple; the psalm having been composed, in all probability, for the temple dedication. Paul prays that God will“grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus”(2 Tim. 1:16), from which it has been unwarrantably inferred that Onesiphorus was dead at the time of the apostle's writing; but Paul's further prayer inverse 18—“the Lord grant unto him to find mercy of the Lord in that day”—seems rather to point to the death of Onesiphorus as yet in the future.Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:715 note—“Many of the arguments constructed against the doctrine of endless punishment proceed upon the supposition that original sin, or man's evil inclination, is the work of God: that because man isbornin sin (Ps. 51:5), he wascreatedin sin. All the strength and plausibility of John Foster's celebrated letter lies in the assumption that the moral corruption and impotence of the sinner, whereby it is impossible to save himself from eternal death, is not self-originated and self-determined, but infused by his Maker.‘If,’says he,‘the very nature of man, ascreatedby the Sovereign Power, be in such desperate disorder that there is no possibility of conversion or salvation except in instances where that Power interposes with a special and redeeming efficacy, how can we conceive that the main portion of the race, thus morally impotent (that is, really and absolutely impotent), will be eternally punished for the inevitable result of this moral impotence?’If this assumption of concreated depravity and impotence is correct, Foster's objection to eternal retribution is conclusive and fatal.... Endless punishment supposes the freedom of the human will, and is impossible without it. Self-determination runs parallel with hell.”The theory of a second probation, as recently advocated, is not only a logical result of that defective view of the will already mentioned, but it is also in part a consequence of denying the old orthodox and Pauline doctrine of the organic unity of the race in Adam's first transgression. New School Theology has been inclined to deride the notion of a fair probation of humanity in our first father, and of a common sin and guilt of mankind in him. It cannot find what it regards as a fair probation for each individual since that first sin; and the conclusion is easy that there must be such a fair probation for each individual in the world to come. But we may advise those who take this view[pg 1044]to return to the old theology. Grant a fair probation for the whole race already passed, and the condition of mankind is no longer that of mere unfortunates unjustly circumstanced, but rather that of beings guilty and condemned, to whom present opportunity, and even present existence, is a matter of pure grace,—much more the general provision of a salvation, and the offer of it to any human soul. This world is already a place of second probation; and since the second probation is due wholly to God's mercy, no probation after death is needed to vindicate either the justice or the goodness of God. See Kellogg, in Presb. Rev., April, 1885:226-256; Cremer, Beyond the Grave, preface by A. A. Hodge, xxxvisq.; E. D. Morris, Is There Salvation After Death? A. H. Strong, on The New Theology, in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1888,—reprinted in Philosophy and Religion, 164-179.
B. Punishment after death excludes new probation and ultimate restoration of the wicked.Some have maintained the ultimate restoration of all human beings, by appeal to such passages as the following: Mat. 19:28; Acts 3:21; Eph. 1:9, 10.Mat. 19:28—“in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory”;Acts 3:21—Jesus,“whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things”;1 Cor. 15:26—“The last enemy that shall be abolished is death”;Eph. 1:9, 10—“according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”;2 Pet. 3:9, 13—“not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance ... But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”Robert Browning:“That God, by God's own ways occult, May—doth, I will believe—bring back All wanderers to a single track.”B. W. Lockhart:“I must believe that evil is essentially transient and mortal, or alter my predicates of God. And I must believe in the ultimate extinction of that personality whom the power of God cannot sometime win to goodness. The only alternative is the termination of a wicked life either through redemption or through extinction.”Mulford, Republic of God, claims that the soul's state cannot be fixed by any event, such as death, outside of itself. If it could, the soul would exist, not under a moral government, but under fate, and God himself would be only another name for fate. The soul carries its fate, under God, in its power of choice; and who dares to say that this power to choose the good ceases at death?For advocacy of a second probation for those who have not consciously rejected Christ in this life, see Newman Smyth's edition of Dorner's Eschatology. For the theory of restoration, see Farrar, Eternal Hope; Birks, Victory of Divine Goodness; Jukes, Restitution of All Things; Delitzsch, Bib. Psychologie, 469-476; Robert Browning, Apparent Failure; Tennyson, In Memoriam, § liv.Per contra, see Hovey, Bib. Eschatology, 95-144. See also, Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 406-440.(a) These passages, as obscure, are to be interpreted in the light of those plainer ones which we have already cited. Thus interpreted, they foretell only the absolute triumph of the divine kingdom, and the subjection of all evil to God.The true interpretation of the passages above mentioned is indicated in Meyer's note onEph. 1:9, 10—this namely, that“the allusion is not to the restoration offallen individuals, but to the restoration ofuniversal harmony, implying that the wicked are to be excluded from the kingdom of God.”That there is no allusion to a probation after this life, is clear fromLuke 16:19-31—the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Here penalty is inflicted for the sins done“in thy lifetime”(v. 25); this penalty is unchangeable—“there is a great gulf fixed”(v. 26); the rich man asks favors for his brethren who still live on the earth, but none for himself (v. 27, 28).John 5:25-29—“The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself: and he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, until the resurrection of judgment”—here it is declared that, while for those who have done good there is a resurrection of life, there is for those who have done ill only a resurrection of judgment.John 8:21, 24—“shall die in your sin: whither I go, ye cannot come ... except ye believe that I am he, ye shall die in your sins”—sayings which indicate finality in the decisions of this life.Orr, Christian View of God and the World, 243—“Scripture invariably represents the judgment as proceeding on the data of this life, and it concentrates every ray of appeal into the present.”John 9:4—“We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh[pg 1040]when no man can work”—intimates that there is no opportunity to secure salvation after death. The Christian hymn writer has caught the meaning of Scripture, when he says of those who have passed through the gate of death:“Fixed in an eternal state, They have done with all below; We a little longer wait; But how little, none can know.”(b) A second probation is not needed to vindicate the justice or the love of God, since Christ, the immanent God, is already in this world present with every human soul, quickening the conscience, giving to each man his opportunity, and making every decision between right and wrong a true probation. In choosing evil against their better judgment even the heathen unconsciously reject Christ. Infants and idiots, as they have not consciously sinned, are, as we may believe, saved at death by having Christ revealed to them and by the regenerating influence of his Spirit.Rom. 1:18-28—there is probation under the light of nature as well as under the gospel, and under the law of nature as well as under the gospel men may be given up“unto a reprobate mind”;2:6-16—Gentiles shall be judged, not by the gospel, but by the law of nature, and shall“perish without the law ... in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men.”2 Cor. 5:10—“For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; [not that each may have a new opportunity to secure salvation, but]that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad”;Heb. 6:8—“whose end is to be burned”—not to be quickened again;9:27—“And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh[not a second probation, but]judgment.”Luckock, Intermediate State, 22—“InHeb. 9:27, the word‘judgment’has no article. The judgment alluded to is not the final or general judgment, but only that by which the place of the soul is determined in the Intermediate State.”Denney, Studies in Theology, 243—“InMat. 25, our Lord gives a pictorial representation of the judgment of the heathen. All nations—all the Gentiles—are gathered before the King; and their destiny is determined, not by their conscious acceptance or rejection of the historical Savior, but by their unconscious acceptance or rejection of him in the persons of those who needed services of love.... This does not square with the idea of a future probation. It rather tells us plainly that men may do things of final and decisive import in this life, even if Christ is unknown to them.... The real argument against future probation is that it depreciates the present life, and denies the infinite significance that, under all conditions, essentially and inevitably belongs to the actions of a self-conscious moral being. A type of will may be in process of formation, even in a heathen man, on which eternal issues depend.... Second probation lowers the moral tone of the spirit. The present life acquires a relative unimportance. I dare not say that if I forfeit the opportunity the present life gives me I shall ever have another, and therefore I dare not say so to another man.”For an able review of the Scripture testimony against a second probation, see G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation, iv. Emerson, the most recent advocate of restorationism, in his Doctrine of Probation Examined, 42, is able to evade these latter passages only by assuming that they are to be spiritually interpreted, and that there is to be no literal outward day of judgment—an error which we have previously discussed and refuted,—see pages1024,1025.(c) The advocates of universal restoration are commonly the most strenuous defenders of the inalienable freedom of the human will to make choices contrary to its past character and to all the motives which are or can be brought to bear upon it. As a matter of fact, we find in this world that men choose sin in spite of infinite motives to the contrary. Upon the theory of human freedom just mentioned, no motives which God can use will certainly accomplish the salvation of all moral creatures. The soul which resists Christ here may resist him forever.Emerson, in the book just referred to, says:“The truth that sin is in its permanent essence a free choice, however for a time it may be held in mechanical combination with the notion of moral opportunity arbitrarily closed, can never mingle with it, and must in the logical outcome permanently cast it off. Scripture presumes and teaches[pg 1041]the constant capability of souls to obey as well as to be disobedient.”Emerson is correct. If the doctrine of the unlimited ability of the human will be a true one, then restoration in the future world is possible. Clement and Origen founded on this theory of will their denial of future punishment. If will be essentially the power of contrary choice, and if will may act independently of all character and motive, there can be no objective certainty that the lost will remain sinful. In short, there can be no finality, even to God's allotments, nor is anylastjudgment possible. Upon this view, regeneration and conversion are as possible at any time in the future as they are to-day.But those who hold to this defective philosophy of the will should remember that unlimited freedom is unlimited freedom to sin, as well as unlimited freedom to turn to God. If restoration is possible, endless persistence in evil is possible also; and this last the Scripture predicts. Whittier:“What if thine eye refuse to see, Thine ear of heaven's free welcome fail, And thou a willing captive be, Thyself thine own dark jail?”Swedenborg says that the man who obstinately refuses the inheritance of the sons of God is allowed the pleasures of the beast, and enjoys in his own low way the hell to which he has confined himself. Every occupant of hell prefers it to heaven. Dante, Hell, iv—“All here together come from every clime, And to o'erpass the river are not loth, For so heaven's justice goads them on, that fear Is turned into desire. Hence never passed good spirit.”The lost areHeautoutimoroumenoi, or self-tormentors, to adopt the title of Terence's play. See Whedon, in Meth. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1884; Robbins, in Bib. Sac., 1881:460-507.Denney, Studies in Theology, 255—“The very conception of human freedom involves the possibility of its permanent misuse, or of what our Lord himself calls‘eternal sin’(Mark 3:29).”Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:699—“Origen's restorationism grew naturally out of his view of human liberty”—the liberty of indifference—“endless alternations of falls and recoveries, of hells and heavens; so that practically he taught nothing but a hell.”J. C. Adams, The Leisure of God:“It is lame logic to maintain the inviolable freedom of the will, and at the same time insist that God can, through his ample power, through protracted punishment, bring the soul into a disposition which it does not wish to feel. There is no compulsory holiness possible. In our Civil War there was some talk of‘compelling men to volunteer,’but the idea was soon seen to involve a self-contradiction.”(d) Upon the more correct view of the will which we have advocated, the case is more hopeless still. Upon this view, the sinful soul, in its very sinning, gives to itself a sinful bent of intellect, affection, and will; in other words, makes for itself a character, which, though it does not render necessary, yet does render certain, apart from divine grace, the continuance of sinful action. In itself it finds a self-formed motive to evil strong enough to prevail over all inducements to holiness which God sees it wise to bring to bear. It is in the next world, indeed, subjected to suffering. But suffering has in itself no reforming power. Unless accompanied by special renewing influences of the Holy Spirit, it only hardens and embitters the soul. We have no Scripture evidence that such influences of the Spirit are exerted, after death, upon the still impenitent; but abundant evidence, on the contrary, that the moral condition in which death finds men is their condition forever.See Bushnell's“One Trial Better than Many,”in Sermons on Living Subjects; also see his Forgiveness and Law, 146, 147. Bushnell argues that God would give us fifty trials, if that would do us good. But there is no possibility of such result. The first decision adverse to God renders it more difficult to make a right decision upon the next opportunity. Character tends to fixity, and each new opportunity may only harden the heart and increase its guilt and condemnation. We should have no better chance of salvation if our lives were lengthened to the term of the sinners before the flood. Mere suffering does not convert the soul; see Martineau, Study, 2:100. A life of pain did not make Blanco White a believer; see Mozley, Hist. and Theol. Essays, vol. 2, essay 1.[pg 1042]Edward A. Lawrence, Does Everlasting Punishment Last Forever?—“If the deeds of the law do not justify here, how can the penalties of the law hereafter? The pain from a broken limb does nothing to mend the break, and the suffering from disease does nothing to cure it. Penalty pays no debts,—it only shows the outstanding and unsettled accounts.”If the will does not act without motive, then it is certain that without motives men will never repent. To an impenitent and rebellious sinner the motive must come, not from within, but from without. Such motives God presents by his Spirit in this life; but when this life ends and God's Spirit is withdrawn, no motives to repentance will be presented. The soul's dislike for God will issue only in complaint and resistance. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:4—“Try what repentance can? what can it not? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?”Marlowe, Faustus:“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is, there we must ever be.”The pressure of the atmosphere without is counteracted by the resistance of the atmosphere within the body. So God's life within is the only thing that can enable us to bear God's afflictive dispensations without. Without God's Spirit to inspire repentance the wicked man in this world never feels sorrow for his deeds, except as he realizes their evil consequences. Physical anguish and punishment inspire hatred, not of sin, but of the effects of sin. The remorse of Judas induced confession, but not true repentance. So in the next world punishment will secure recognition of God and of his justice, on the part of the transgressor, but it will not regenerate or save. The penalties of the future life will be no more effectual to reform the sinner than were the invitations of Christ and the strivings of the Holy Spirit in the present life. The transientness of good resolves which are forced out of us by suffering is illustrated by the old couplet:“The devil was sick,—the devil a monk would be; The devil got well,—the devil a monk was he.”Charles G. Sewall:“Paul Lester Ford, the novelist, was murdered by his brother Malcolm, because the father of the two brothers had disinherited the one who committed the crime. Has God the right to disinherit any one of his children? We answer that God disinherits no one. Each man decides for himself whether he will accept the inheritance. It is a matter of character. A father cannot give his son an education. The son may play truant and throw away his opportunity. The prodigal son disinherited himself. Heaven is not a place,—it is a way of living, a condition of being. If you have a musical ear, I will admit you to a lovely concert. If you have not a musical ear, I may give you a reserved seat and you will hear no melody. Some men fail of salvation because they have no taste for it and will not have it.”The laws of God's universe are closing in upon the impenitent sinner, as the iron walls of the mediæval prison closed in night by night upon the victim,—each morning there was one window less, and the dungeon came to be a coffin. In Jean Ingelow's poem“Divided,”two friends, parted by a little rivulet across which they could clasp hands, walk on in the direction in which the stream is flowing, till the rivulet becomes a brook, and the brook a river, and the river an arm of the sea across which no voice can be heard and there is no passing. By constant neglect to use our opportunity, we lose the power to cross from sin to righteousness, until between the soul and God“there is a great gulf fixed”(Luke 16:26).John G. Whittier wrote within a twelvemonth of his death:“I do believe that we take with us into the next world the same freedom of will we have here, and thatthere, ashere, he that turns to the Lord will find mercy; that God never ceases to follow his creatures with love, and is always ready to hear the prayer of the penitent. But I also believe thatnowis the accepted time, and that he who dallies with sin may find the chains of evil habit too strong to break in this world or the other.”And the following is the Quaker poet's verse:“Though God be good and free be heaven, Not force divine can love compel; And though the song of sins forgiven Might sound through lowest hell, The sweet persuasion of his voice Respects the sanctity of will. He giveth day; thou hast thy choice To walk in darkness still.”Longfellow, Masque of Pandora:“Never by lapse of time The soul defaced by crime Into its former self returns again; For every guilty deed Holds in itself the seed Of retribution and undying pain. Never shall be the loss Restored, till Helios Hath purified them with his heavenly fires; Then what was lost is won, And the new life begun, Kindled with nobler passions and desires.”Seth, Freedom as Ethical Postulate, 42—“Faust's selling his soul to Mephistopheles, and signing the contract with his life's blood, is no single transaction, done deliberately, on one occasion; rather, that is[pg 1043]the lurid meaning of a life which consists of innumerable individual acts,—the life of evil means that.”See John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 2:88; Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 315.(e) The declaration as to Judas, in Mat. 26:24, could not be true upon the hypothesis of a final restoration. If at any time, even after the lapse of ages, Judas be redeemed, his subsequent infinite duration of blessedness must outweigh all the finite suffering through which he has passed. The Scripture statement that“good were it for that man if he had not been born”must be regarded as a refutation of the theory of universal restoration.Mat. 26:24—“The Son of man goeth, even as it is written of him: but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had not been born.”G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation:“As Christ of old healed only those who came or were brought to him, so now he waits for the coöperation of human agency. God has limited himself to an orderly method in human salvation. The consuming missionary zeal of the apostles and the early church shows that they believed the decisions of this life to be final decisions. The early church not only thought the heathen world would perish without the gospel, but they found a conscience in the heathen answering to this belief. The solicitude drawn out by this responsibility for our fellows may be one means of securing the moral stability of the future. What is bound on earth is bound in heaven; else why not pray for the wicked dead?”It is certainly a remarkable fact, if this theory be true, that we have in Scripture not a single instance of prayer for the dead.The apocryphal 2 Maccabees 12:39sq.gives an instance of Jewish prayer for the dead. Certain who were slain had concealed under their coats things consecrated to idols. Judas and his host therefore prayed that this sin might be forgiven to the slain, and they contributed 2,000 drachmas of silver to send a sin offering for them to Jerusalem. So modern Jews pray for the dead; see Luckock, After Death, 54-66—an argument for such prayer. John Wesley, Works, 9:55, maintains the legality of prayer for the dead. Still it is true that we have no instance of such prayer in canonical Scriptures.Ps. 132:1—“Jehovah, remember for David All his affliction”—is not a prayer for the dead, but signifies:“Remember for David”, so as to fulfil thy promise to him,“all his anxious cares”—with regard to the building of the temple; the psalm having been composed, in all probability, for the temple dedication. Paul prays that God will“grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus”(2 Tim. 1:16), from which it has been unwarrantably inferred that Onesiphorus was dead at the time of the apostle's writing; but Paul's further prayer inverse 18—“the Lord grant unto him to find mercy of the Lord in that day”—seems rather to point to the death of Onesiphorus as yet in the future.Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:715 note—“Many of the arguments constructed against the doctrine of endless punishment proceed upon the supposition that original sin, or man's evil inclination, is the work of God: that because man isbornin sin (Ps. 51:5), he wascreatedin sin. All the strength and plausibility of John Foster's celebrated letter lies in the assumption that the moral corruption and impotence of the sinner, whereby it is impossible to save himself from eternal death, is not self-originated and self-determined, but infused by his Maker.‘If,’says he,‘the very nature of man, ascreatedby the Sovereign Power, be in such desperate disorder that there is no possibility of conversion or salvation except in instances where that Power interposes with a special and redeeming efficacy, how can we conceive that the main portion of the race, thus morally impotent (that is, really and absolutely impotent), will be eternally punished for the inevitable result of this moral impotence?’If this assumption of concreated depravity and impotence is correct, Foster's objection to eternal retribution is conclusive and fatal.... Endless punishment supposes the freedom of the human will, and is impossible without it. Self-determination runs parallel with hell.”The theory of a second probation, as recently advocated, is not only a logical result of that defective view of the will already mentioned, but it is also in part a consequence of denying the old orthodox and Pauline doctrine of the organic unity of the race in Adam's first transgression. New School Theology has been inclined to deride the notion of a fair probation of humanity in our first father, and of a common sin and guilt of mankind in him. It cannot find what it regards as a fair probation for each individual since that first sin; and the conclusion is easy that there must be such a fair probation for each individual in the world to come. But we may advise those who take this view[pg 1044]to return to the old theology. Grant a fair probation for the whole race already passed, and the condition of mankind is no longer that of mere unfortunates unjustly circumstanced, but rather that of beings guilty and condemned, to whom present opportunity, and even present existence, is a matter of pure grace,—much more the general provision of a salvation, and the offer of it to any human soul. This world is already a place of second probation; and since the second probation is due wholly to God's mercy, no probation after death is needed to vindicate either the justice or the goodness of God. See Kellogg, in Presb. Rev., April, 1885:226-256; Cremer, Beyond the Grave, preface by A. A. Hodge, xxxvisq.; E. D. Morris, Is There Salvation After Death? A. H. Strong, on The New Theology, in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1888,—reprinted in Philosophy and Religion, 164-179.
B. Punishment after death excludes new probation and ultimate restoration of the wicked.Some have maintained the ultimate restoration of all human beings, by appeal to such passages as the following: Mat. 19:28; Acts 3:21; Eph. 1:9, 10.Mat. 19:28—“in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory”;Acts 3:21—Jesus,“whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things”;1 Cor. 15:26—“The last enemy that shall be abolished is death”;Eph. 1:9, 10—“according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”;2 Pet. 3:9, 13—“not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance ... But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”Robert Browning:“That God, by God's own ways occult, May—doth, I will believe—bring back All wanderers to a single track.”B. W. Lockhart:“I must believe that evil is essentially transient and mortal, or alter my predicates of God. And I must believe in the ultimate extinction of that personality whom the power of God cannot sometime win to goodness. The only alternative is the termination of a wicked life either through redemption or through extinction.”Mulford, Republic of God, claims that the soul's state cannot be fixed by any event, such as death, outside of itself. If it could, the soul would exist, not under a moral government, but under fate, and God himself would be only another name for fate. The soul carries its fate, under God, in its power of choice; and who dares to say that this power to choose the good ceases at death?For advocacy of a second probation for those who have not consciously rejected Christ in this life, see Newman Smyth's edition of Dorner's Eschatology. For the theory of restoration, see Farrar, Eternal Hope; Birks, Victory of Divine Goodness; Jukes, Restitution of All Things; Delitzsch, Bib. Psychologie, 469-476; Robert Browning, Apparent Failure; Tennyson, In Memoriam, § liv.Per contra, see Hovey, Bib. Eschatology, 95-144. See also, Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 406-440.(a) These passages, as obscure, are to be interpreted in the light of those plainer ones which we have already cited. Thus interpreted, they foretell only the absolute triumph of the divine kingdom, and the subjection of all evil to God.The true interpretation of the passages above mentioned is indicated in Meyer's note onEph. 1:9, 10—this namely, that“the allusion is not to the restoration offallen individuals, but to the restoration ofuniversal harmony, implying that the wicked are to be excluded from the kingdom of God.”That there is no allusion to a probation after this life, is clear fromLuke 16:19-31—the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Here penalty is inflicted for the sins done“in thy lifetime”(v. 25); this penalty is unchangeable—“there is a great gulf fixed”(v. 26); the rich man asks favors for his brethren who still live on the earth, but none for himself (v. 27, 28).John 5:25-29—“The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself: and he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, until the resurrection of judgment”—here it is declared that, while for those who have done good there is a resurrection of life, there is for those who have done ill only a resurrection of judgment.John 8:21, 24—“shall die in your sin: whither I go, ye cannot come ... except ye believe that I am he, ye shall die in your sins”—sayings which indicate finality in the decisions of this life.Orr, Christian View of God and the World, 243—“Scripture invariably represents the judgment as proceeding on the data of this life, and it concentrates every ray of appeal into the present.”John 9:4—“We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh[pg 1040]when no man can work”—intimates that there is no opportunity to secure salvation after death. The Christian hymn writer has caught the meaning of Scripture, when he says of those who have passed through the gate of death:“Fixed in an eternal state, They have done with all below; We a little longer wait; But how little, none can know.”(b) A second probation is not needed to vindicate the justice or the love of God, since Christ, the immanent God, is already in this world present with every human soul, quickening the conscience, giving to each man his opportunity, and making every decision between right and wrong a true probation. In choosing evil against their better judgment even the heathen unconsciously reject Christ. Infants and idiots, as they have not consciously sinned, are, as we may believe, saved at death by having Christ revealed to them and by the regenerating influence of his Spirit.Rom. 1:18-28—there is probation under the light of nature as well as under the gospel, and under the law of nature as well as under the gospel men may be given up“unto a reprobate mind”;2:6-16—Gentiles shall be judged, not by the gospel, but by the law of nature, and shall“perish without the law ... in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men.”2 Cor. 5:10—“For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; [not that each may have a new opportunity to secure salvation, but]that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad”;Heb. 6:8—“whose end is to be burned”—not to be quickened again;9:27—“And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh[not a second probation, but]judgment.”Luckock, Intermediate State, 22—“InHeb. 9:27, the word‘judgment’has no article. The judgment alluded to is not the final or general judgment, but only that by which the place of the soul is determined in the Intermediate State.”Denney, Studies in Theology, 243—“InMat. 25, our Lord gives a pictorial representation of the judgment of the heathen. All nations—all the Gentiles—are gathered before the King; and their destiny is determined, not by their conscious acceptance or rejection of the historical Savior, but by their unconscious acceptance or rejection of him in the persons of those who needed services of love.... This does not square with the idea of a future probation. It rather tells us plainly that men may do things of final and decisive import in this life, even if Christ is unknown to them.... The real argument against future probation is that it depreciates the present life, and denies the infinite significance that, under all conditions, essentially and inevitably belongs to the actions of a self-conscious moral being. A type of will may be in process of formation, even in a heathen man, on which eternal issues depend.... Second probation lowers the moral tone of the spirit. The present life acquires a relative unimportance. I dare not say that if I forfeit the opportunity the present life gives me I shall ever have another, and therefore I dare not say so to another man.”For an able review of the Scripture testimony against a second probation, see G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation, iv. Emerson, the most recent advocate of restorationism, in his Doctrine of Probation Examined, 42, is able to evade these latter passages only by assuming that they are to be spiritually interpreted, and that there is to be no literal outward day of judgment—an error which we have previously discussed and refuted,—see pages1024,1025.(c) The advocates of universal restoration are commonly the most strenuous defenders of the inalienable freedom of the human will to make choices contrary to its past character and to all the motives which are or can be brought to bear upon it. As a matter of fact, we find in this world that men choose sin in spite of infinite motives to the contrary. Upon the theory of human freedom just mentioned, no motives which God can use will certainly accomplish the salvation of all moral creatures. The soul which resists Christ here may resist him forever.Emerson, in the book just referred to, says:“The truth that sin is in its permanent essence a free choice, however for a time it may be held in mechanical combination with the notion of moral opportunity arbitrarily closed, can never mingle with it, and must in the logical outcome permanently cast it off. Scripture presumes and teaches[pg 1041]the constant capability of souls to obey as well as to be disobedient.”Emerson is correct. If the doctrine of the unlimited ability of the human will be a true one, then restoration in the future world is possible. Clement and Origen founded on this theory of will their denial of future punishment. If will be essentially the power of contrary choice, and if will may act independently of all character and motive, there can be no objective certainty that the lost will remain sinful. In short, there can be no finality, even to God's allotments, nor is anylastjudgment possible. Upon this view, regeneration and conversion are as possible at any time in the future as they are to-day.But those who hold to this defective philosophy of the will should remember that unlimited freedom is unlimited freedom to sin, as well as unlimited freedom to turn to God. If restoration is possible, endless persistence in evil is possible also; and this last the Scripture predicts. Whittier:“What if thine eye refuse to see, Thine ear of heaven's free welcome fail, And thou a willing captive be, Thyself thine own dark jail?”Swedenborg says that the man who obstinately refuses the inheritance of the sons of God is allowed the pleasures of the beast, and enjoys in his own low way the hell to which he has confined himself. Every occupant of hell prefers it to heaven. Dante, Hell, iv—“All here together come from every clime, And to o'erpass the river are not loth, For so heaven's justice goads them on, that fear Is turned into desire. Hence never passed good spirit.”The lost areHeautoutimoroumenoi, or self-tormentors, to adopt the title of Terence's play. See Whedon, in Meth. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1884; Robbins, in Bib. Sac., 1881:460-507.Denney, Studies in Theology, 255—“The very conception of human freedom involves the possibility of its permanent misuse, or of what our Lord himself calls‘eternal sin’(Mark 3:29).”Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:699—“Origen's restorationism grew naturally out of his view of human liberty”—the liberty of indifference—“endless alternations of falls and recoveries, of hells and heavens; so that practically he taught nothing but a hell.”J. C. Adams, The Leisure of God:“It is lame logic to maintain the inviolable freedom of the will, and at the same time insist that God can, through his ample power, through protracted punishment, bring the soul into a disposition which it does not wish to feel. There is no compulsory holiness possible. In our Civil War there was some talk of‘compelling men to volunteer,’but the idea was soon seen to involve a self-contradiction.”(d) Upon the more correct view of the will which we have advocated, the case is more hopeless still. Upon this view, the sinful soul, in its very sinning, gives to itself a sinful bent of intellect, affection, and will; in other words, makes for itself a character, which, though it does not render necessary, yet does render certain, apart from divine grace, the continuance of sinful action. In itself it finds a self-formed motive to evil strong enough to prevail over all inducements to holiness which God sees it wise to bring to bear. It is in the next world, indeed, subjected to suffering. But suffering has in itself no reforming power. Unless accompanied by special renewing influences of the Holy Spirit, it only hardens and embitters the soul. We have no Scripture evidence that such influences of the Spirit are exerted, after death, upon the still impenitent; but abundant evidence, on the contrary, that the moral condition in which death finds men is their condition forever.See Bushnell's“One Trial Better than Many,”in Sermons on Living Subjects; also see his Forgiveness and Law, 146, 147. Bushnell argues that God would give us fifty trials, if that would do us good. But there is no possibility of such result. The first decision adverse to God renders it more difficult to make a right decision upon the next opportunity. Character tends to fixity, and each new opportunity may only harden the heart and increase its guilt and condemnation. We should have no better chance of salvation if our lives were lengthened to the term of the sinners before the flood. Mere suffering does not convert the soul; see Martineau, Study, 2:100. A life of pain did not make Blanco White a believer; see Mozley, Hist. and Theol. Essays, vol. 2, essay 1.[pg 1042]Edward A. Lawrence, Does Everlasting Punishment Last Forever?—“If the deeds of the law do not justify here, how can the penalties of the law hereafter? The pain from a broken limb does nothing to mend the break, and the suffering from disease does nothing to cure it. Penalty pays no debts,—it only shows the outstanding and unsettled accounts.”If the will does not act without motive, then it is certain that without motives men will never repent. To an impenitent and rebellious sinner the motive must come, not from within, but from without. Such motives God presents by his Spirit in this life; but when this life ends and God's Spirit is withdrawn, no motives to repentance will be presented. The soul's dislike for God will issue only in complaint and resistance. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:4—“Try what repentance can? what can it not? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?”Marlowe, Faustus:“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is, there we must ever be.”The pressure of the atmosphere without is counteracted by the resistance of the atmosphere within the body. So God's life within is the only thing that can enable us to bear God's afflictive dispensations without. Without God's Spirit to inspire repentance the wicked man in this world never feels sorrow for his deeds, except as he realizes their evil consequences. Physical anguish and punishment inspire hatred, not of sin, but of the effects of sin. The remorse of Judas induced confession, but not true repentance. So in the next world punishment will secure recognition of God and of his justice, on the part of the transgressor, but it will not regenerate or save. The penalties of the future life will be no more effectual to reform the sinner than were the invitations of Christ and the strivings of the Holy Spirit in the present life. The transientness of good resolves which are forced out of us by suffering is illustrated by the old couplet:“The devil was sick,—the devil a monk would be; The devil got well,—the devil a monk was he.”Charles G. Sewall:“Paul Lester Ford, the novelist, was murdered by his brother Malcolm, because the father of the two brothers had disinherited the one who committed the crime. Has God the right to disinherit any one of his children? We answer that God disinherits no one. Each man decides for himself whether he will accept the inheritance. It is a matter of character. A father cannot give his son an education. The son may play truant and throw away his opportunity. The prodigal son disinherited himself. Heaven is not a place,—it is a way of living, a condition of being. If you have a musical ear, I will admit you to a lovely concert. If you have not a musical ear, I may give you a reserved seat and you will hear no melody. Some men fail of salvation because they have no taste for it and will not have it.”The laws of God's universe are closing in upon the impenitent sinner, as the iron walls of the mediæval prison closed in night by night upon the victim,—each morning there was one window less, and the dungeon came to be a coffin. In Jean Ingelow's poem“Divided,”two friends, parted by a little rivulet across which they could clasp hands, walk on in the direction in which the stream is flowing, till the rivulet becomes a brook, and the brook a river, and the river an arm of the sea across which no voice can be heard and there is no passing. By constant neglect to use our opportunity, we lose the power to cross from sin to righteousness, until between the soul and God“there is a great gulf fixed”(Luke 16:26).John G. Whittier wrote within a twelvemonth of his death:“I do believe that we take with us into the next world the same freedom of will we have here, and thatthere, ashere, he that turns to the Lord will find mercy; that God never ceases to follow his creatures with love, and is always ready to hear the prayer of the penitent. But I also believe thatnowis the accepted time, and that he who dallies with sin may find the chains of evil habit too strong to break in this world or the other.”And the following is the Quaker poet's verse:“Though God be good and free be heaven, Not force divine can love compel; And though the song of sins forgiven Might sound through lowest hell, The sweet persuasion of his voice Respects the sanctity of will. He giveth day; thou hast thy choice To walk in darkness still.”Longfellow, Masque of Pandora:“Never by lapse of time The soul defaced by crime Into its former self returns again; For every guilty deed Holds in itself the seed Of retribution and undying pain. Never shall be the loss Restored, till Helios Hath purified them with his heavenly fires; Then what was lost is won, And the new life begun, Kindled with nobler passions and desires.”Seth, Freedom as Ethical Postulate, 42—“Faust's selling his soul to Mephistopheles, and signing the contract with his life's blood, is no single transaction, done deliberately, on one occasion; rather, that is[pg 1043]the lurid meaning of a life which consists of innumerable individual acts,—the life of evil means that.”See John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 2:88; Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 315.(e) The declaration as to Judas, in Mat. 26:24, could not be true upon the hypothesis of a final restoration. If at any time, even after the lapse of ages, Judas be redeemed, his subsequent infinite duration of blessedness must outweigh all the finite suffering through which he has passed. The Scripture statement that“good were it for that man if he had not been born”must be regarded as a refutation of the theory of universal restoration.Mat. 26:24—“The Son of man goeth, even as it is written of him: but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had not been born.”G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation:“As Christ of old healed only those who came or were brought to him, so now he waits for the coöperation of human agency. God has limited himself to an orderly method in human salvation. The consuming missionary zeal of the apostles and the early church shows that they believed the decisions of this life to be final decisions. The early church not only thought the heathen world would perish without the gospel, but they found a conscience in the heathen answering to this belief. The solicitude drawn out by this responsibility for our fellows may be one means of securing the moral stability of the future. What is bound on earth is bound in heaven; else why not pray for the wicked dead?”It is certainly a remarkable fact, if this theory be true, that we have in Scripture not a single instance of prayer for the dead.The apocryphal 2 Maccabees 12:39sq.gives an instance of Jewish prayer for the dead. Certain who were slain had concealed under their coats things consecrated to idols. Judas and his host therefore prayed that this sin might be forgiven to the slain, and they contributed 2,000 drachmas of silver to send a sin offering for them to Jerusalem. So modern Jews pray for the dead; see Luckock, After Death, 54-66—an argument for such prayer. John Wesley, Works, 9:55, maintains the legality of prayer for the dead. Still it is true that we have no instance of such prayer in canonical Scriptures.Ps. 132:1—“Jehovah, remember for David All his affliction”—is not a prayer for the dead, but signifies:“Remember for David”, so as to fulfil thy promise to him,“all his anxious cares”—with regard to the building of the temple; the psalm having been composed, in all probability, for the temple dedication. Paul prays that God will“grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus”(2 Tim. 1:16), from which it has been unwarrantably inferred that Onesiphorus was dead at the time of the apostle's writing; but Paul's further prayer inverse 18—“the Lord grant unto him to find mercy of the Lord in that day”—seems rather to point to the death of Onesiphorus as yet in the future.Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:715 note—“Many of the arguments constructed against the doctrine of endless punishment proceed upon the supposition that original sin, or man's evil inclination, is the work of God: that because man isbornin sin (Ps. 51:5), he wascreatedin sin. All the strength and plausibility of John Foster's celebrated letter lies in the assumption that the moral corruption and impotence of the sinner, whereby it is impossible to save himself from eternal death, is not self-originated and self-determined, but infused by his Maker.‘If,’says he,‘the very nature of man, ascreatedby the Sovereign Power, be in such desperate disorder that there is no possibility of conversion or salvation except in instances where that Power interposes with a special and redeeming efficacy, how can we conceive that the main portion of the race, thus morally impotent (that is, really and absolutely impotent), will be eternally punished for the inevitable result of this moral impotence?’If this assumption of concreated depravity and impotence is correct, Foster's objection to eternal retribution is conclusive and fatal.... Endless punishment supposes the freedom of the human will, and is impossible without it. Self-determination runs parallel with hell.”The theory of a second probation, as recently advocated, is not only a logical result of that defective view of the will already mentioned, but it is also in part a consequence of denying the old orthodox and Pauline doctrine of the organic unity of the race in Adam's first transgression. New School Theology has been inclined to deride the notion of a fair probation of humanity in our first father, and of a common sin and guilt of mankind in him. It cannot find what it regards as a fair probation for each individual since that first sin; and the conclusion is easy that there must be such a fair probation for each individual in the world to come. But we may advise those who take this view[pg 1044]to return to the old theology. Grant a fair probation for the whole race already passed, and the condition of mankind is no longer that of mere unfortunates unjustly circumstanced, but rather that of beings guilty and condemned, to whom present opportunity, and even present existence, is a matter of pure grace,—much more the general provision of a salvation, and the offer of it to any human soul. This world is already a place of second probation; and since the second probation is due wholly to God's mercy, no probation after death is needed to vindicate either the justice or the goodness of God. See Kellogg, in Presb. Rev., April, 1885:226-256; Cremer, Beyond the Grave, preface by A. A. Hodge, xxxvisq.; E. D. Morris, Is There Salvation After Death? A. H. Strong, on The New Theology, in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1888,—reprinted in Philosophy and Religion, 164-179.
B. Punishment after death excludes new probation and ultimate restoration of the wicked.Some have maintained the ultimate restoration of all human beings, by appeal to such passages as the following: Mat. 19:28; Acts 3:21; Eph. 1:9, 10.Mat. 19:28—“in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory”;Acts 3:21—Jesus,“whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things”;1 Cor. 15:26—“The last enemy that shall be abolished is death”;Eph. 1:9, 10—“according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”;2 Pet. 3:9, 13—“not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance ... But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”Robert Browning:“That God, by God's own ways occult, May—doth, I will believe—bring back All wanderers to a single track.”B. W. Lockhart:“I must believe that evil is essentially transient and mortal, or alter my predicates of God. And I must believe in the ultimate extinction of that personality whom the power of God cannot sometime win to goodness. The only alternative is the termination of a wicked life either through redemption or through extinction.”Mulford, Republic of God, claims that the soul's state cannot be fixed by any event, such as death, outside of itself. If it could, the soul would exist, not under a moral government, but under fate, and God himself would be only another name for fate. The soul carries its fate, under God, in its power of choice; and who dares to say that this power to choose the good ceases at death?For advocacy of a second probation for those who have not consciously rejected Christ in this life, see Newman Smyth's edition of Dorner's Eschatology. For the theory of restoration, see Farrar, Eternal Hope; Birks, Victory of Divine Goodness; Jukes, Restitution of All Things; Delitzsch, Bib. Psychologie, 469-476; Robert Browning, Apparent Failure; Tennyson, In Memoriam, § liv.Per contra, see Hovey, Bib. Eschatology, 95-144. See also, Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 406-440.(a) These passages, as obscure, are to be interpreted in the light of those plainer ones which we have already cited. Thus interpreted, they foretell only the absolute triumph of the divine kingdom, and the subjection of all evil to God.The true interpretation of the passages above mentioned is indicated in Meyer's note onEph. 1:9, 10—this namely, that“the allusion is not to the restoration offallen individuals, but to the restoration ofuniversal harmony, implying that the wicked are to be excluded from the kingdom of God.”That there is no allusion to a probation after this life, is clear fromLuke 16:19-31—the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Here penalty is inflicted for the sins done“in thy lifetime”(v. 25); this penalty is unchangeable—“there is a great gulf fixed”(v. 26); the rich man asks favors for his brethren who still live on the earth, but none for himself (v. 27, 28).John 5:25-29—“The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself: and he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, until the resurrection of judgment”—here it is declared that, while for those who have done good there is a resurrection of life, there is for those who have done ill only a resurrection of judgment.John 8:21, 24—“shall die in your sin: whither I go, ye cannot come ... except ye believe that I am he, ye shall die in your sins”—sayings which indicate finality in the decisions of this life.Orr, Christian View of God and the World, 243—“Scripture invariably represents the judgment as proceeding on the data of this life, and it concentrates every ray of appeal into the present.”John 9:4—“We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh[pg 1040]when no man can work”—intimates that there is no opportunity to secure salvation after death. The Christian hymn writer has caught the meaning of Scripture, when he says of those who have passed through the gate of death:“Fixed in an eternal state, They have done with all below; We a little longer wait; But how little, none can know.”(b) A second probation is not needed to vindicate the justice or the love of God, since Christ, the immanent God, is already in this world present with every human soul, quickening the conscience, giving to each man his opportunity, and making every decision between right and wrong a true probation. In choosing evil against their better judgment even the heathen unconsciously reject Christ. Infants and idiots, as they have not consciously sinned, are, as we may believe, saved at death by having Christ revealed to them and by the regenerating influence of his Spirit.Rom. 1:18-28—there is probation under the light of nature as well as under the gospel, and under the law of nature as well as under the gospel men may be given up“unto a reprobate mind”;2:6-16—Gentiles shall be judged, not by the gospel, but by the law of nature, and shall“perish without the law ... in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men.”2 Cor. 5:10—“For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; [not that each may have a new opportunity to secure salvation, but]that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad”;Heb. 6:8—“whose end is to be burned”—not to be quickened again;9:27—“And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh[not a second probation, but]judgment.”Luckock, Intermediate State, 22—“InHeb. 9:27, the word‘judgment’has no article. The judgment alluded to is not the final or general judgment, but only that by which the place of the soul is determined in the Intermediate State.”Denney, Studies in Theology, 243—“InMat. 25, our Lord gives a pictorial representation of the judgment of the heathen. All nations—all the Gentiles—are gathered before the King; and their destiny is determined, not by their conscious acceptance or rejection of the historical Savior, but by their unconscious acceptance or rejection of him in the persons of those who needed services of love.... This does not square with the idea of a future probation. It rather tells us plainly that men may do things of final and decisive import in this life, even if Christ is unknown to them.... The real argument against future probation is that it depreciates the present life, and denies the infinite significance that, under all conditions, essentially and inevitably belongs to the actions of a self-conscious moral being. A type of will may be in process of formation, even in a heathen man, on which eternal issues depend.... Second probation lowers the moral tone of the spirit. The present life acquires a relative unimportance. I dare not say that if I forfeit the opportunity the present life gives me I shall ever have another, and therefore I dare not say so to another man.”For an able review of the Scripture testimony against a second probation, see G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation, iv. Emerson, the most recent advocate of restorationism, in his Doctrine of Probation Examined, 42, is able to evade these latter passages only by assuming that they are to be spiritually interpreted, and that there is to be no literal outward day of judgment—an error which we have previously discussed and refuted,—see pages1024,1025.(c) The advocates of universal restoration are commonly the most strenuous defenders of the inalienable freedom of the human will to make choices contrary to its past character and to all the motives which are or can be brought to bear upon it. As a matter of fact, we find in this world that men choose sin in spite of infinite motives to the contrary. Upon the theory of human freedom just mentioned, no motives which God can use will certainly accomplish the salvation of all moral creatures. The soul which resists Christ here may resist him forever.Emerson, in the book just referred to, says:“The truth that sin is in its permanent essence a free choice, however for a time it may be held in mechanical combination with the notion of moral opportunity arbitrarily closed, can never mingle with it, and must in the logical outcome permanently cast it off. Scripture presumes and teaches[pg 1041]the constant capability of souls to obey as well as to be disobedient.”Emerson is correct. If the doctrine of the unlimited ability of the human will be a true one, then restoration in the future world is possible. Clement and Origen founded on this theory of will their denial of future punishment. If will be essentially the power of contrary choice, and if will may act independently of all character and motive, there can be no objective certainty that the lost will remain sinful. In short, there can be no finality, even to God's allotments, nor is anylastjudgment possible. Upon this view, regeneration and conversion are as possible at any time in the future as they are to-day.But those who hold to this defective philosophy of the will should remember that unlimited freedom is unlimited freedom to sin, as well as unlimited freedom to turn to God. If restoration is possible, endless persistence in evil is possible also; and this last the Scripture predicts. Whittier:“What if thine eye refuse to see, Thine ear of heaven's free welcome fail, And thou a willing captive be, Thyself thine own dark jail?”Swedenborg says that the man who obstinately refuses the inheritance of the sons of God is allowed the pleasures of the beast, and enjoys in his own low way the hell to which he has confined himself. Every occupant of hell prefers it to heaven. Dante, Hell, iv—“All here together come from every clime, And to o'erpass the river are not loth, For so heaven's justice goads them on, that fear Is turned into desire. Hence never passed good spirit.”The lost areHeautoutimoroumenoi, or self-tormentors, to adopt the title of Terence's play. See Whedon, in Meth. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1884; Robbins, in Bib. Sac., 1881:460-507.Denney, Studies in Theology, 255—“The very conception of human freedom involves the possibility of its permanent misuse, or of what our Lord himself calls‘eternal sin’(Mark 3:29).”Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:699—“Origen's restorationism grew naturally out of his view of human liberty”—the liberty of indifference—“endless alternations of falls and recoveries, of hells and heavens; so that practically he taught nothing but a hell.”J. C. Adams, The Leisure of God:“It is lame logic to maintain the inviolable freedom of the will, and at the same time insist that God can, through his ample power, through protracted punishment, bring the soul into a disposition which it does not wish to feel. There is no compulsory holiness possible. In our Civil War there was some talk of‘compelling men to volunteer,’but the idea was soon seen to involve a self-contradiction.”(d) Upon the more correct view of the will which we have advocated, the case is more hopeless still. Upon this view, the sinful soul, in its very sinning, gives to itself a sinful bent of intellect, affection, and will; in other words, makes for itself a character, which, though it does not render necessary, yet does render certain, apart from divine grace, the continuance of sinful action. In itself it finds a self-formed motive to evil strong enough to prevail over all inducements to holiness which God sees it wise to bring to bear. It is in the next world, indeed, subjected to suffering. But suffering has in itself no reforming power. Unless accompanied by special renewing influences of the Holy Spirit, it only hardens and embitters the soul. We have no Scripture evidence that such influences of the Spirit are exerted, after death, upon the still impenitent; but abundant evidence, on the contrary, that the moral condition in which death finds men is their condition forever.See Bushnell's“One Trial Better than Many,”in Sermons on Living Subjects; also see his Forgiveness and Law, 146, 147. Bushnell argues that God would give us fifty trials, if that would do us good. But there is no possibility of such result. The first decision adverse to God renders it more difficult to make a right decision upon the next opportunity. Character tends to fixity, and each new opportunity may only harden the heart and increase its guilt and condemnation. We should have no better chance of salvation if our lives were lengthened to the term of the sinners before the flood. Mere suffering does not convert the soul; see Martineau, Study, 2:100. A life of pain did not make Blanco White a believer; see Mozley, Hist. and Theol. Essays, vol. 2, essay 1.[pg 1042]Edward A. Lawrence, Does Everlasting Punishment Last Forever?—“If the deeds of the law do not justify here, how can the penalties of the law hereafter? The pain from a broken limb does nothing to mend the break, and the suffering from disease does nothing to cure it. Penalty pays no debts,—it only shows the outstanding and unsettled accounts.”If the will does not act without motive, then it is certain that without motives men will never repent. To an impenitent and rebellious sinner the motive must come, not from within, but from without. Such motives God presents by his Spirit in this life; but when this life ends and God's Spirit is withdrawn, no motives to repentance will be presented. The soul's dislike for God will issue only in complaint and resistance. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:4—“Try what repentance can? what can it not? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?”Marlowe, Faustus:“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is, there we must ever be.”The pressure of the atmosphere without is counteracted by the resistance of the atmosphere within the body. So God's life within is the only thing that can enable us to bear God's afflictive dispensations without. Without God's Spirit to inspire repentance the wicked man in this world never feels sorrow for his deeds, except as he realizes their evil consequences. Physical anguish and punishment inspire hatred, not of sin, but of the effects of sin. The remorse of Judas induced confession, but not true repentance. So in the next world punishment will secure recognition of God and of his justice, on the part of the transgressor, but it will not regenerate or save. The penalties of the future life will be no more effectual to reform the sinner than were the invitations of Christ and the strivings of the Holy Spirit in the present life. The transientness of good resolves which are forced out of us by suffering is illustrated by the old couplet:“The devil was sick,—the devil a monk would be; The devil got well,—the devil a monk was he.”Charles G. Sewall:“Paul Lester Ford, the novelist, was murdered by his brother Malcolm, because the father of the two brothers had disinherited the one who committed the crime. Has God the right to disinherit any one of his children? We answer that God disinherits no one. Each man decides for himself whether he will accept the inheritance. It is a matter of character. A father cannot give his son an education. The son may play truant and throw away his opportunity. The prodigal son disinherited himself. Heaven is not a place,—it is a way of living, a condition of being. If you have a musical ear, I will admit you to a lovely concert. If you have not a musical ear, I may give you a reserved seat and you will hear no melody. Some men fail of salvation because they have no taste for it and will not have it.”The laws of God's universe are closing in upon the impenitent sinner, as the iron walls of the mediæval prison closed in night by night upon the victim,—each morning there was one window less, and the dungeon came to be a coffin. In Jean Ingelow's poem“Divided,”two friends, parted by a little rivulet across which they could clasp hands, walk on in the direction in which the stream is flowing, till the rivulet becomes a brook, and the brook a river, and the river an arm of the sea across which no voice can be heard and there is no passing. By constant neglect to use our opportunity, we lose the power to cross from sin to righteousness, until between the soul and God“there is a great gulf fixed”(Luke 16:26).John G. Whittier wrote within a twelvemonth of his death:“I do believe that we take with us into the next world the same freedom of will we have here, and thatthere, ashere, he that turns to the Lord will find mercy; that God never ceases to follow his creatures with love, and is always ready to hear the prayer of the penitent. But I also believe thatnowis the accepted time, and that he who dallies with sin may find the chains of evil habit too strong to break in this world or the other.”And the following is the Quaker poet's verse:“Though God be good and free be heaven, Not force divine can love compel; And though the song of sins forgiven Might sound through lowest hell, The sweet persuasion of his voice Respects the sanctity of will. He giveth day; thou hast thy choice To walk in darkness still.”Longfellow, Masque of Pandora:“Never by lapse of time The soul defaced by crime Into its former self returns again; For every guilty deed Holds in itself the seed Of retribution and undying pain. Never shall be the loss Restored, till Helios Hath purified them with his heavenly fires; Then what was lost is won, And the new life begun, Kindled with nobler passions and desires.”Seth, Freedom as Ethical Postulate, 42—“Faust's selling his soul to Mephistopheles, and signing the contract with his life's blood, is no single transaction, done deliberately, on one occasion; rather, that is[pg 1043]the lurid meaning of a life which consists of innumerable individual acts,—the life of evil means that.”See John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 2:88; Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 315.(e) The declaration as to Judas, in Mat. 26:24, could not be true upon the hypothesis of a final restoration. If at any time, even after the lapse of ages, Judas be redeemed, his subsequent infinite duration of blessedness must outweigh all the finite suffering through which he has passed. The Scripture statement that“good were it for that man if he had not been born”must be regarded as a refutation of the theory of universal restoration.Mat. 26:24—“The Son of man goeth, even as it is written of him: but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had not been born.”G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation:“As Christ of old healed only those who came or were brought to him, so now he waits for the coöperation of human agency. God has limited himself to an orderly method in human salvation. The consuming missionary zeal of the apostles and the early church shows that they believed the decisions of this life to be final decisions. The early church not only thought the heathen world would perish without the gospel, but they found a conscience in the heathen answering to this belief. The solicitude drawn out by this responsibility for our fellows may be one means of securing the moral stability of the future. What is bound on earth is bound in heaven; else why not pray for the wicked dead?”It is certainly a remarkable fact, if this theory be true, that we have in Scripture not a single instance of prayer for the dead.The apocryphal 2 Maccabees 12:39sq.gives an instance of Jewish prayer for the dead. Certain who were slain had concealed under their coats things consecrated to idols. Judas and his host therefore prayed that this sin might be forgiven to the slain, and they contributed 2,000 drachmas of silver to send a sin offering for them to Jerusalem. So modern Jews pray for the dead; see Luckock, After Death, 54-66—an argument for such prayer. John Wesley, Works, 9:55, maintains the legality of prayer for the dead. Still it is true that we have no instance of such prayer in canonical Scriptures.Ps. 132:1—“Jehovah, remember for David All his affliction”—is not a prayer for the dead, but signifies:“Remember for David”, so as to fulfil thy promise to him,“all his anxious cares”—with regard to the building of the temple; the psalm having been composed, in all probability, for the temple dedication. Paul prays that God will“grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus”(2 Tim. 1:16), from which it has been unwarrantably inferred that Onesiphorus was dead at the time of the apostle's writing; but Paul's further prayer inverse 18—“the Lord grant unto him to find mercy of the Lord in that day”—seems rather to point to the death of Onesiphorus as yet in the future.Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:715 note—“Many of the arguments constructed against the doctrine of endless punishment proceed upon the supposition that original sin, or man's evil inclination, is the work of God: that because man isbornin sin (Ps. 51:5), he wascreatedin sin. All the strength and plausibility of John Foster's celebrated letter lies in the assumption that the moral corruption and impotence of the sinner, whereby it is impossible to save himself from eternal death, is not self-originated and self-determined, but infused by his Maker.‘If,’says he,‘the very nature of man, ascreatedby the Sovereign Power, be in such desperate disorder that there is no possibility of conversion or salvation except in instances where that Power interposes with a special and redeeming efficacy, how can we conceive that the main portion of the race, thus morally impotent (that is, really and absolutely impotent), will be eternally punished for the inevitable result of this moral impotence?’If this assumption of concreated depravity and impotence is correct, Foster's objection to eternal retribution is conclusive and fatal.... Endless punishment supposes the freedom of the human will, and is impossible without it. Self-determination runs parallel with hell.”The theory of a second probation, as recently advocated, is not only a logical result of that defective view of the will already mentioned, but it is also in part a consequence of denying the old orthodox and Pauline doctrine of the organic unity of the race in Adam's first transgression. New School Theology has been inclined to deride the notion of a fair probation of humanity in our first father, and of a common sin and guilt of mankind in him. It cannot find what it regards as a fair probation for each individual since that first sin; and the conclusion is easy that there must be such a fair probation for each individual in the world to come. But we may advise those who take this view[pg 1044]to return to the old theology. Grant a fair probation for the whole race already passed, and the condition of mankind is no longer that of mere unfortunates unjustly circumstanced, but rather that of beings guilty and condemned, to whom present opportunity, and even present existence, is a matter of pure grace,—much more the general provision of a salvation, and the offer of it to any human soul. This world is already a place of second probation; and since the second probation is due wholly to God's mercy, no probation after death is needed to vindicate either the justice or the goodness of God. See Kellogg, in Presb. Rev., April, 1885:226-256; Cremer, Beyond the Grave, preface by A. A. Hodge, xxxvisq.; E. D. Morris, Is There Salvation After Death? A. H. Strong, on The New Theology, in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1888,—reprinted in Philosophy and Religion, 164-179.
B. Punishment after death excludes new probation and ultimate restoration of the wicked.Some have maintained the ultimate restoration of all human beings, by appeal to such passages as the following: Mat. 19:28; Acts 3:21; Eph. 1:9, 10.Mat. 19:28—“in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory”;Acts 3:21—Jesus,“whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things”;1 Cor. 15:26—“The last enemy that shall be abolished is death”;Eph. 1:9, 10—“according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”;2 Pet. 3:9, 13—“not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance ... But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”Robert Browning:“That God, by God's own ways occult, May—doth, I will believe—bring back All wanderers to a single track.”B. W. Lockhart:“I must believe that evil is essentially transient and mortal, or alter my predicates of God. And I must believe in the ultimate extinction of that personality whom the power of God cannot sometime win to goodness. The only alternative is the termination of a wicked life either through redemption or through extinction.”Mulford, Republic of God, claims that the soul's state cannot be fixed by any event, such as death, outside of itself. If it could, the soul would exist, not under a moral government, but under fate, and God himself would be only another name for fate. The soul carries its fate, under God, in its power of choice; and who dares to say that this power to choose the good ceases at death?For advocacy of a second probation for those who have not consciously rejected Christ in this life, see Newman Smyth's edition of Dorner's Eschatology. For the theory of restoration, see Farrar, Eternal Hope; Birks, Victory of Divine Goodness; Jukes, Restitution of All Things; Delitzsch, Bib. Psychologie, 469-476; Robert Browning, Apparent Failure; Tennyson, In Memoriam, § liv.Per contra, see Hovey, Bib. Eschatology, 95-144. See also, Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 406-440.(a) These passages, as obscure, are to be interpreted in the light of those plainer ones which we have already cited. Thus interpreted, they foretell only the absolute triumph of the divine kingdom, and the subjection of all evil to God.The true interpretation of the passages above mentioned is indicated in Meyer's note onEph. 1:9, 10—this namely, that“the allusion is not to the restoration offallen individuals, but to the restoration ofuniversal harmony, implying that the wicked are to be excluded from the kingdom of God.”That there is no allusion to a probation after this life, is clear fromLuke 16:19-31—the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Here penalty is inflicted for the sins done“in thy lifetime”(v. 25); this penalty is unchangeable—“there is a great gulf fixed”(v. 26); the rich man asks favors for his brethren who still live on the earth, but none for himself (v. 27, 28).John 5:25-29—“The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself: and he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, until the resurrection of judgment”—here it is declared that, while for those who have done good there is a resurrection of life, there is for those who have done ill only a resurrection of judgment.John 8:21, 24—“shall die in your sin: whither I go, ye cannot come ... except ye believe that I am he, ye shall die in your sins”—sayings which indicate finality in the decisions of this life.Orr, Christian View of God and the World, 243—“Scripture invariably represents the judgment as proceeding on the data of this life, and it concentrates every ray of appeal into the present.”John 9:4—“We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh[pg 1040]when no man can work”—intimates that there is no opportunity to secure salvation after death. The Christian hymn writer has caught the meaning of Scripture, when he says of those who have passed through the gate of death:“Fixed in an eternal state, They have done with all below; We a little longer wait; But how little, none can know.”(b) A second probation is not needed to vindicate the justice or the love of God, since Christ, the immanent God, is already in this world present with every human soul, quickening the conscience, giving to each man his opportunity, and making every decision between right and wrong a true probation. In choosing evil against their better judgment even the heathen unconsciously reject Christ. Infants and idiots, as they have not consciously sinned, are, as we may believe, saved at death by having Christ revealed to them and by the regenerating influence of his Spirit.Rom. 1:18-28—there is probation under the light of nature as well as under the gospel, and under the law of nature as well as under the gospel men may be given up“unto a reprobate mind”;2:6-16—Gentiles shall be judged, not by the gospel, but by the law of nature, and shall“perish without the law ... in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men.”2 Cor. 5:10—“For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; [not that each may have a new opportunity to secure salvation, but]that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad”;Heb. 6:8—“whose end is to be burned”—not to be quickened again;9:27—“And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh[not a second probation, but]judgment.”Luckock, Intermediate State, 22—“InHeb. 9:27, the word‘judgment’has no article. The judgment alluded to is not the final or general judgment, but only that by which the place of the soul is determined in the Intermediate State.”Denney, Studies in Theology, 243—“InMat. 25, our Lord gives a pictorial representation of the judgment of the heathen. All nations—all the Gentiles—are gathered before the King; and their destiny is determined, not by their conscious acceptance or rejection of the historical Savior, but by their unconscious acceptance or rejection of him in the persons of those who needed services of love.... This does not square with the idea of a future probation. It rather tells us plainly that men may do things of final and decisive import in this life, even if Christ is unknown to them.... The real argument against future probation is that it depreciates the present life, and denies the infinite significance that, under all conditions, essentially and inevitably belongs to the actions of a self-conscious moral being. A type of will may be in process of formation, even in a heathen man, on which eternal issues depend.... Second probation lowers the moral tone of the spirit. The present life acquires a relative unimportance. I dare not say that if I forfeit the opportunity the present life gives me I shall ever have another, and therefore I dare not say so to another man.”For an able review of the Scripture testimony against a second probation, see G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation, iv. Emerson, the most recent advocate of restorationism, in his Doctrine of Probation Examined, 42, is able to evade these latter passages only by assuming that they are to be spiritually interpreted, and that there is to be no literal outward day of judgment—an error which we have previously discussed and refuted,—see pages1024,1025.(c) The advocates of universal restoration are commonly the most strenuous defenders of the inalienable freedom of the human will to make choices contrary to its past character and to all the motives which are or can be brought to bear upon it. As a matter of fact, we find in this world that men choose sin in spite of infinite motives to the contrary. Upon the theory of human freedom just mentioned, no motives which God can use will certainly accomplish the salvation of all moral creatures. The soul which resists Christ here may resist him forever.Emerson, in the book just referred to, says:“The truth that sin is in its permanent essence a free choice, however for a time it may be held in mechanical combination with the notion of moral opportunity arbitrarily closed, can never mingle with it, and must in the logical outcome permanently cast it off. Scripture presumes and teaches[pg 1041]the constant capability of souls to obey as well as to be disobedient.”Emerson is correct. If the doctrine of the unlimited ability of the human will be a true one, then restoration in the future world is possible. Clement and Origen founded on this theory of will their denial of future punishment. If will be essentially the power of contrary choice, and if will may act independently of all character and motive, there can be no objective certainty that the lost will remain sinful. In short, there can be no finality, even to God's allotments, nor is anylastjudgment possible. Upon this view, regeneration and conversion are as possible at any time in the future as they are to-day.But those who hold to this defective philosophy of the will should remember that unlimited freedom is unlimited freedom to sin, as well as unlimited freedom to turn to God. If restoration is possible, endless persistence in evil is possible also; and this last the Scripture predicts. Whittier:“What if thine eye refuse to see, Thine ear of heaven's free welcome fail, And thou a willing captive be, Thyself thine own dark jail?”Swedenborg says that the man who obstinately refuses the inheritance of the sons of God is allowed the pleasures of the beast, and enjoys in his own low way the hell to which he has confined himself. Every occupant of hell prefers it to heaven. Dante, Hell, iv—“All here together come from every clime, And to o'erpass the river are not loth, For so heaven's justice goads them on, that fear Is turned into desire. Hence never passed good spirit.”The lost areHeautoutimoroumenoi, or self-tormentors, to adopt the title of Terence's play. See Whedon, in Meth. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1884; Robbins, in Bib. Sac., 1881:460-507.Denney, Studies in Theology, 255—“The very conception of human freedom involves the possibility of its permanent misuse, or of what our Lord himself calls‘eternal sin’(Mark 3:29).”Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:699—“Origen's restorationism grew naturally out of his view of human liberty”—the liberty of indifference—“endless alternations of falls and recoveries, of hells and heavens; so that practically he taught nothing but a hell.”J. C. Adams, The Leisure of God:“It is lame logic to maintain the inviolable freedom of the will, and at the same time insist that God can, through his ample power, through protracted punishment, bring the soul into a disposition which it does not wish to feel. There is no compulsory holiness possible. In our Civil War there was some talk of‘compelling men to volunteer,’but the idea was soon seen to involve a self-contradiction.”(d) Upon the more correct view of the will which we have advocated, the case is more hopeless still. Upon this view, the sinful soul, in its very sinning, gives to itself a sinful bent of intellect, affection, and will; in other words, makes for itself a character, which, though it does not render necessary, yet does render certain, apart from divine grace, the continuance of sinful action. In itself it finds a self-formed motive to evil strong enough to prevail over all inducements to holiness which God sees it wise to bring to bear. It is in the next world, indeed, subjected to suffering. But suffering has in itself no reforming power. Unless accompanied by special renewing influences of the Holy Spirit, it only hardens and embitters the soul. We have no Scripture evidence that such influences of the Spirit are exerted, after death, upon the still impenitent; but abundant evidence, on the contrary, that the moral condition in which death finds men is their condition forever.See Bushnell's“One Trial Better than Many,”in Sermons on Living Subjects; also see his Forgiveness and Law, 146, 147. Bushnell argues that God would give us fifty trials, if that would do us good. But there is no possibility of such result. The first decision adverse to God renders it more difficult to make a right decision upon the next opportunity. Character tends to fixity, and each new opportunity may only harden the heart and increase its guilt and condemnation. We should have no better chance of salvation if our lives were lengthened to the term of the sinners before the flood. Mere suffering does not convert the soul; see Martineau, Study, 2:100. A life of pain did not make Blanco White a believer; see Mozley, Hist. and Theol. Essays, vol. 2, essay 1.[pg 1042]Edward A. Lawrence, Does Everlasting Punishment Last Forever?—“If the deeds of the law do not justify here, how can the penalties of the law hereafter? The pain from a broken limb does nothing to mend the break, and the suffering from disease does nothing to cure it. Penalty pays no debts,—it only shows the outstanding and unsettled accounts.”If the will does not act without motive, then it is certain that without motives men will never repent. To an impenitent and rebellious sinner the motive must come, not from within, but from without. Such motives God presents by his Spirit in this life; but when this life ends and God's Spirit is withdrawn, no motives to repentance will be presented. The soul's dislike for God will issue only in complaint and resistance. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:4—“Try what repentance can? what can it not? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?”Marlowe, Faustus:“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is, there we must ever be.”The pressure of the atmosphere without is counteracted by the resistance of the atmosphere within the body. So God's life within is the only thing that can enable us to bear God's afflictive dispensations without. Without God's Spirit to inspire repentance the wicked man in this world never feels sorrow for his deeds, except as he realizes their evil consequences. Physical anguish and punishment inspire hatred, not of sin, but of the effects of sin. The remorse of Judas induced confession, but not true repentance. So in the next world punishment will secure recognition of God and of his justice, on the part of the transgressor, but it will not regenerate or save. The penalties of the future life will be no more effectual to reform the sinner than were the invitations of Christ and the strivings of the Holy Spirit in the present life. The transientness of good resolves which are forced out of us by suffering is illustrated by the old couplet:“The devil was sick,—the devil a monk would be; The devil got well,—the devil a monk was he.”Charles G. Sewall:“Paul Lester Ford, the novelist, was murdered by his brother Malcolm, because the father of the two brothers had disinherited the one who committed the crime. Has God the right to disinherit any one of his children? We answer that God disinherits no one. Each man decides for himself whether he will accept the inheritance. It is a matter of character. A father cannot give his son an education. The son may play truant and throw away his opportunity. The prodigal son disinherited himself. Heaven is not a place,—it is a way of living, a condition of being. If you have a musical ear, I will admit you to a lovely concert. If you have not a musical ear, I may give you a reserved seat and you will hear no melody. Some men fail of salvation because they have no taste for it and will not have it.”The laws of God's universe are closing in upon the impenitent sinner, as the iron walls of the mediæval prison closed in night by night upon the victim,—each morning there was one window less, and the dungeon came to be a coffin. In Jean Ingelow's poem“Divided,”two friends, parted by a little rivulet across which they could clasp hands, walk on in the direction in which the stream is flowing, till the rivulet becomes a brook, and the brook a river, and the river an arm of the sea across which no voice can be heard and there is no passing. By constant neglect to use our opportunity, we lose the power to cross from sin to righteousness, until between the soul and God“there is a great gulf fixed”(Luke 16:26).John G. Whittier wrote within a twelvemonth of his death:“I do believe that we take with us into the next world the same freedom of will we have here, and thatthere, ashere, he that turns to the Lord will find mercy; that God never ceases to follow his creatures with love, and is always ready to hear the prayer of the penitent. But I also believe thatnowis the accepted time, and that he who dallies with sin may find the chains of evil habit too strong to break in this world or the other.”And the following is the Quaker poet's verse:“Though God be good and free be heaven, Not force divine can love compel; And though the song of sins forgiven Might sound through lowest hell, The sweet persuasion of his voice Respects the sanctity of will. He giveth day; thou hast thy choice To walk in darkness still.”Longfellow, Masque of Pandora:“Never by lapse of time The soul defaced by crime Into its former self returns again; For every guilty deed Holds in itself the seed Of retribution and undying pain. Never shall be the loss Restored, till Helios Hath purified them with his heavenly fires; Then what was lost is won, And the new life begun, Kindled with nobler passions and desires.”Seth, Freedom as Ethical Postulate, 42—“Faust's selling his soul to Mephistopheles, and signing the contract with his life's blood, is no single transaction, done deliberately, on one occasion; rather, that is[pg 1043]the lurid meaning of a life which consists of innumerable individual acts,—the life of evil means that.”See John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 2:88; Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 315.(e) The declaration as to Judas, in Mat. 26:24, could not be true upon the hypothesis of a final restoration. If at any time, even after the lapse of ages, Judas be redeemed, his subsequent infinite duration of blessedness must outweigh all the finite suffering through which he has passed. The Scripture statement that“good were it for that man if he had not been born”must be regarded as a refutation of the theory of universal restoration.Mat. 26:24—“The Son of man goeth, even as it is written of him: but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had not been born.”G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation:“As Christ of old healed only those who came or were brought to him, so now he waits for the coöperation of human agency. God has limited himself to an orderly method in human salvation. The consuming missionary zeal of the apostles and the early church shows that they believed the decisions of this life to be final decisions. The early church not only thought the heathen world would perish without the gospel, but they found a conscience in the heathen answering to this belief. The solicitude drawn out by this responsibility for our fellows may be one means of securing the moral stability of the future. What is bound on earth is bound in heaven; else why not pray for the wicked dead?”It is certainly a remarkable fact, if this theory be true, that we have in Scripture not a single instance of prayer for the dead.The apocryphal 2 Maccabees 12:39sq.gives an instance of Jewish prayer for the dead. Certain who were slain had concealed under their coats things consecrated to idols. Judas and his host therefore prayed that this sin might be forgiven to the slain, and they contributed 2,000 drachmas of silver to send a sin offering for them to Jerusalem. So modern Jews pray for the dead; see Luckock, After Death, 54-66—an argument for such prayer. John Wesley, Works, 9:55, maintains the legality of prayer for the dead. Still it is true that we have no instance of such prayer in canonical Scriptures.Ps. 132:1—“Jehovah, remember for David All his affliction”—is not a prayer for the dead, but signifies:“Remember for David”, so as to fulfil thy promise to him,“all his anxious cares”—with regard to the building of the temple; the psalm having been composed, in all probability, for the temple dedication. Paul prays that God will“grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus”(2 Tim. 1:16), from which it has been unwarrantably inferred that Onesiphorus was dead at the time of the apostle's writing; but Paul's further prayer inverse 18—“the Lord grant unto him to find mercy of the Lord in that day”—seems rather to point to the death of Onesiphorus as yet in the future.Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:715 note—“Many of the arguments constructed against the doctrine of endless punishment proceed upon the supposition that original sin, or man's evil inclination, is the work of God: that because man isbornin sin (Ps. 51:5), he wascreatedin sin. All the strength and plausibility of John Foster's celebrated letter lies in the assumption that the moral corruption and impotence of the sinner, whereby it is impossible to save himself from eternal death, is not self-originated and self-determined, but infused by his Maker.‘If,’says he,‘the very nature of man, ascreatedby the Sovereign Power, be in such desperate disorder that there is no possibility of conversion or salvation except in instances where that Power interposes with a special and redeeming efficacy, how can we conceive that the main portion of the race, thus morally impotent (that is, really and absolutely impotent), will be eternally punished for the inevitable result of this moral impotence?’If this assumption of concreated depravity and impotence is correct, Foster's objection to eternal retribution is conclusive and fatal.... Endless punishment supposes the freedom of the human will, and is impossible without it. Self-determination runs parallel with hell.”The theory of a second probation, as recently advocated, is not only a logical result of that defective view of the will already mentioned, but it is also in part a consequence of denying the old orthodox and Pauline doctrine of the organic unity of the race in Adam's first transgression. New School Theology has been inclined to deride the notion of a fair probation of humanity in our first father, and of a common sin and guilt of mankind in him. It cannot find what it regards as a fair probation for each individual since that first sin; and the conclusion is easy that there must be such a fair probation for each individual in the world to come. But we may advise those who take this view[pg 1044]to return to the old theology. Grant a fair probation for the whole race already passed, and the condition of mankind is no longer that of mere unfortunates unjustly circumstanced, but rather that of beings guilty and condemned, to whom present opportunity, and even present existence, is a matter of pure grace,—much more the general provision of a salvation, and the offer of it to any human soul. This world is already a place of second probation; and since the second probation is due wholly to God's mercy, no probation after death is needed to vindicate either the justice or the goodness of God. See Kellogg, in Presb. Rev., April, 1885:226-256; Cremer, Beyond the Grave, preface by A. A. Hodge, xxxvisq.; E. D. Morris, Is There Salvation After Death? A. H. Strong, on The New Theology, in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1888,—reprinted in Philosophy and Religion, 164-179.
B. Punishment after death excludes new probation and ultimate restoration of the wicked.Some have maintained the ultimate restoration of all human beings, by appeal to such passages as the following: Mat. 19:28; Acts 3:21; Eph. 1:9, 10.Mat. 19:28—“in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory”;Acts 3:21—Jesus,“whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things”;1 Cor. 15:26—“The last enemy that shall be abolished is death”;Eph. 1:9, 10—“according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”;2 Pet. 3:9, 13—“not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance ... But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”Robert Browning:“That God, by God's own ways occult, May—doth, I will believe—bring back All wanderers to a single track.”B. W. Lockhart:“I must believe that evil is essentially transient and mortal, or alter my predicates of God. And I must believe in the ultimate extinction of that personality whom the power of God cannot sometime win to goodness. The only alternative is the termination of a wicked life either through redemption or through extinction.”Mulford, Republic of God, claims that the soul's state cannot be fixed by any event, such as death, outside of itself. If it could, the soul would exist, not under a moral government, but under fate, and God himself would be only another name for fate. The soul carries its fate, under God, in its power of choice; and who dares to say that this power to choose the good ceases at death?For advocacy of a second probation for those who have not consciously rejected Christ in this life, see Newman Smyth's edition of Dorner's Eschatology. For the theory of restoration, see Farrar, Eternal Hope; Birks, Victory of Divine Goodness; Jukes, Restitution of All Things; Delitzsch, Bib. Psychologie, 469-476; Robert Browning, Apparent Failure; Tennyson, In Memoriam, § liv.Per contra, see Hovey, Bib. Eschatology, 95-144. See also, Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 406-440.(a) These passages, as obscure, are to be interpreted in the light of those plainer ones which we have already cited. Thus interpreted, they foretell only the absolute triumph of the divine kingdom, and the subjection of all evil to God.The true interpretation of the passages above mentioned is indicated in Meyer's note onEph. 1:9, 10—this namely, that“the allusion is not to the restoration offallen individuals, but to the restoration ofuniversal harmony, implying that the wicked are to be excluded from the kingdom of God.”That there is no allusion to a probation after this life, is clear fromLuke 16:19-31—the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Here penalty is inflicted for the sins done“in thy lifetime”(v. 25); this penalty is unchangeable—“there is a great gulf fixed”(v. 26); the rich man asks favors for his brethren who still live on the earth, but none for himself (v. 27, 28).John 5:25-29—“The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself: and he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, until the resurrection of judgment”—here it is declared that, while for those who have done good there is a resurrection of life, there is for those who have done ill only a resurrection of judgment.John 8:21, 24—“shall die in your sin: whither I go, ye cannot come ... except ye believe that I am he, ye shall die in your sins”—sayings which indicate finality in the decisions of this life.Orr, Christian View of God and the World, 243—“Scripture invariably represents the judgment as proceeding on the data of this life, and it concentrates every ray of appeal into the present.”John 9:4—“We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh[pg 1040]when no man can work”—intimates that there is no opportunity to secure salvation after death. The Christian hymn writer has caught the meaning of Scripture, when he says of those who have passed through the gate of death:“Fixed in an eternal state, They have done with all below; We a little longer wait; But how little, none can know.”(b) A second probation is not needed to vindicate the justice or the love of God, since Christ, the immanent God, is already in this world present with every human soul, quickening the conscience, giving to each man his opportunity, and making every decision between right and wrong a true probation. In choosing evil against their better judgment even the heathen unconsciously reject Christ. Infants and idiots, as they have not consciously sinned, are, as we may believe, saved at death by having Christ revealed to them and by the regenerating influence of his Spirit.Rom. 1:18-28—there is probation under the light of nature as well as under the gospel, and under the law of nature as well as under the gospel men may be given up“unto a reprobate mind”;2:6-16—Gentiles shall be judged, not by the gospel, but by the law of nature, and shall“perish without the law ... in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men.”2 Cor. 5:10—“For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; [not that each may have a new opportunity to secure salvation, but]that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad”;Heb. 6:8—“whose end is to be burned”—not to be quickened again;9:27—“And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh[not a second probation, but]judgment.”Luckock, Intermediate State, 22—“InHeb. 9:27, the word‘judgment’has no article. The judgment alluded to is not the final or general judgment, but only that by which the place of the soul is determined in the Intermediate State.”Denney, Studies in Theology, 243—“InMat. 25, our Lord gives a pictorial representation of the judgment of the heathen. All nations—all the Gentiles—are gathered before the King; and their destiny is determined, not by their conscious acceptance or rejection of the historical Savior, but by their unconscious acceptance or rejection of him in the persons of those who needed services of love.... This does not square with the idea of a future probation. It rather tells us plainly that men may do things of final and decisive import in this life, even if Christ is unknown to them.... The real argument against future probation is that it depreciates the present life, and denies the infinite significance that, under all conditions, essentially and inevitably belongs to the actions of a self-conscious moral being. A type of will may be in process of formation, even in a heathen man, on which eternal issues depend.... Second probation lowers the moral tone of the spirit. The present life acquires a relative unimportance. I dare not say that if I forfeit the opportunity the present life gives me I shall ever have another, and therefore I dare not say so to another man.”For an able review of the Scripture testimony against a second probation, see G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation, iv. Emerson, the most recent advocate of restorationism, in his Doctrine of Probation Examined, 42, is able to evade these latter passages only by assuming that they are to be spiritually interpreted, and that there is to be no literal outward day of judgment—an error which we have previously discussed and refuted,—see pages1024,1025.(c) The advocates of universal restoration are commonly the most strenuous defenders of the inalienable freedom of the human will to make choices contrary to its past character and to all the motives which are or can be brought to bear upon it. As a matter of fact, we find in this world that men choose sin in spite of infinite motives to the contrary. Upon the theory of human freedom just mentioned, no motives which God can use will certainly accomplish the salvation of all moral creatures. The soul which resists Christ here may resist him forever.Emerson, in the book just referred to, says:“The truth that sin is in its permanent essence a free choice, however for a time it may be held in mechanical combination with the notion of moral opportunity arbitrarily closed, can never mingle with it, and must in the logical outcome permanently cast it off. Scripture presumes and teaches[pg 1041]the constant capability of souls to obey as well as to be disobedient.”Emerson is correct. If the doctrine of the unlimited ability of the human will be a true one, then restoration in the future world is possible. Clement and Origen founded on this theory of will their denial of future punishment. If will be essentially the power of contrary choice, and if will may act independently of all character and motive, there can be no objective certainty that the lost will remain sinful. In short, there can be no finality, even to God's allotments, nor is anylastjudgment possible. Upon this view, regeneration and conversion are as possible at any time in the future as they are to-day.But those who hold to this defective philosophy of the will should remember that unlimited freedom is unlimited freedom to sin, as well as unlimited freedom to turn to God. If restoration is possible, endless persistence in evil is possible also; and this last the Scripture predicts. Whittier:“What if thine eye refuse to see, Thine ear of heaven's free welcome fail, And thou a willing captive be, Thyself thine own dark jail?”Swedenborg says that the man who obstinately refuses the inheritance of the sons of God is allowed the pleasures of the beast, and enjoys in his own low way the hell to which he has confined himself. Every occupant of hell prefers it to heaven. Dante, Hell, iv—“All here together come from every clime, And to o'erpass the river are not loth, For so heaven's justice goads them on, that fear Is turned into desire. Hence never passed good spirit.”The lost areHeautoutimoroumenoi, or self-tormentors, to adopt the title of Terence's play. See Whedon, in Meth. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1884; Robbins, in Bib. Sac., 1881:460-507.Denney, Studies in Theology, 255—“The very conception of human freedom involves the possibility of its permanent misuse, or of what our Lord himself calls‘eternal sin’(Mark 3:29).”Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:699—“Origen's restorationism grew naturally out of his view of human liberty”—the liberty of indifference—“endless alternations of falls and recoveries, of hells and heavens; so that practically he taught nothing but a hell.”J. C. Adams, The Leisure of God:“It is lame logic to maintain the inviolable freedom of the will, and at the same time insist that God can, through his ample power, through protracted punishment, bring the soul into a disposition which it does not wish to feel. There is no compulsory holiness possible. In our Civil War there was some talk of‘compelling men to volunteer,’but the idea was soon seen to involve a self-contradiction.”(d) Upon the more correct view of the will which we have advocated, the case is more hopeless still. Upon this view, the sinful soul, in its very sinning, gives to itself a sinful bent of intellect, affection, and will; in other words, makes for itself a character, which, though it does not render necessary, yet does render certain, apart from divine grace, the continuance of sinful action. In itself it finds a self-formed motive to evil strong enough to prevail over all inducements to holiness which God sees it wise to bring to bear. It is in the next world, indeed, subjected to suffering. But suffering has in itself no reforming power. Unless accompanied by special renewing influences of the Holy Spirit, it only hardens and embitters the soul. We have no Scripture evidence that such influences of the Spirit are exerted, after death, upon the still impenitent; but abundant evidence, on the contrary, that the moral condition in which death finds men is their condition forever.See Bushnell's“One Trial Better than Many,”in Sermons on Living Subjects; also see his Forgiveness and Law, 146, 147. Bushnell argues that God would give us fifty trials, if that would do us good. But there is no possibility of such result. The first decision adverse to God renders it more difficult to make a right decision upon the next opportunity. Character tends to fixity, and each new opportunity may only harden the heart and increase its guilt and condemnation. We should have no better chance of salvation if our lives were lengthened to the term of the sinners before the flood. Mere suffering does not convert the soul; see Martineau, Study, 2:100. A life of pain did not make Blanco White a believer; see Mozley, Hist. and Theol. Essays, vol. 2, essay 1.[pg 1042]Edward A. Lawrence, Does Everlasting Punishment Last Forever?—“If the deeds of the law do not justify here, how can the penalties of the law hereafter? The pain from a broken limb does nothing to mend the break, and the suffering from disease does nothing to cure it. Penalty pays no debts,—it only shows the outstanding and unsettled accounts.”If the will does not act without motive, then it is certain that without motives men will never repent. To an impenitent and rebellious sinner the motive must come, not from within, but from without. Such motives God presents by his Spirit in this life; but when this life ends and God's Spirit is withdrawn, no motives to repentance will be presented. The soul's dislike for God will issue only in complaint and resistance. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:4—“Try what repentance can? what can it not? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?”Marlowe, Faustus:“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is, there we must ever be.”The pressure of the atmosphere without is counteracted by the resistance of the atmosphere within the body. So God's life within is the only thing that can enable us to bear God's afflictive dispensations without. Without God's Spirit to inspire repentance the wicked man in this world never feels sorrow for his deeds, except as he realizes their evil consequences. Physical anguish and punishment inspire hatred, not of sin, but of the effects of sin. The remorse of Judas induced confession, but not true repentance. So in the next world punishment will secure recognition of God and of his justice, on the part of the transgressor, but it will not regenerate or save. The penalties of the future life will be no more effectual to reform the sinner than were the invitations of Christ and the strivings of the Holy Spirit in the present life. The transientness of good resolves which are forced out of us by suffering is illustrated by the old couplet:“The devil was sick,—the devil a monk would be; The devil got well,—the devil a monk was he.”Charles G. Sewall:“Paul Lester Ford, the novelist, was murdered by his brother Malcolm, because the father of the two brothers had disinherited the one who committed the crime. Has God the right to disinherit any one of his children? We answer that God disinherits no one. Each man decides for himself whether he will accept the inheritance. It is a matter of character. A father cannot give his son an education. The son may play truant and throw away his opportunity. The prodigal son disinherited himself. Heaven is not a place,—it is a way of living, a condition of being. If you have a musical ear, I will admit you to a lovely concert. If you have not a musical ear, I may give you a reserved seat and you will hear no melody. Some men fail of salvation because they have no taste for it and will not have it.”The laws of God's universe are closing in upon the impenitent sinner, as the iron walls of the mediæval prison closed in night by night upon the victim,—each morning there was one window less, and the dungeon came to be a coffin. In Jean Ingelow's poem“Divided,”two friends, parted by a little rivulet across which they could clasp hands, walk on in the direction in which the stream is flowing, till the rivulet becomes a brook, and the brook a river, and the river an arm of the sea across which no voice can be heard and there is no passing. By constant neglect to use our opportunity, we lose the power to cross from sin to righteousness, until between the soul and God“there is a great gulf fixed”(Luke 16:26).John G. Whittier wrote within a twelvemonth of his death:“I do believe that we take with us into the next world the same freedom of will we have here, and thatthere, ashere, he that turns to the Lord will find mercy; that God never ceases to follow his creatures with love, and is always ready to hear the prayer of the penitent. But I also believe thatnowis the accepted time, and that he who dallies with sin may find the chains of evil habit too strong to break in this world or the other.”And the following is the Quaker poet's verse:“Though God be good and free be heaven, Not force divine can love compel; And though the song of sins forgiven Might sound through lowest hell, The sweet persuasion of his voice Respects the sanctity of will. He giveth day; thou hast thy choice To walk in darkness still.”Longfellow, Masque of Pandora:“Never by lapse of time The soul defaced by crime Into its former self returns again; For every guilty deed Holds in itself the seed Of retribution and undying pain. Never shall be the loss Restored, till Helios Hath purified them with his heavenly fires; Then what was lost is won, And the new life begun, Kindled with nobler passions and desires.”Seth, Freedom as Ethical Postulate, 42—“Faust's selling his soul to Mephistopheles, and signing the contract with his life's blood, is no single transaction, done deliberately, on one occasion; rather, that is[pg 1043]the lurid meaning of a life which consists of innumerable individual acts,—the life of evil means that.”See John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 2:88; Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 315.(e) The declaration as to Judas, in Mat. 26:24, could not be true upon the hypothesis of a final restoration. If at any time, even after the lapse of ages, Judas be redeemed, his subsequent infinite duration of blessedness must outweigh all the finite suffering through which he has passed. The Scripture statement that“good were it for that man if he had not been born”must be regarded as a refutation of the theory of universal restoration.Mat. 26:24—“The Son of man goeth, even as it is written of him: but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had not been born.”G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation:“As Christ of old healed only those who came or were brought to him, so now he waits for the coöperation of human agency. God has limited himself to an orderly method in human salvation. The consuming missionary zeal of the apostles and the early church shows that they believed the decisions of this life to be final decisions. The early church not only thought the heathen world would perish without the gospel, but they found a conscience in the heathen answering to this belief. The solicitude drawn out by this responsibility for our fellows may be one means of securing the moral stability of the future. What is bound on earth is bound in heaven; else why not pray for the wicked dead?”It is certainly a remarkable fact, if this theory be true, that we have in Scripture not a single instance of prayer for the dead.The apocryphal 2 Maccabees 12:39sq.gives an instance of Jewish prayer for the dead. Certain who were slain had concealed under their coats things consecrated to idols. Judas and his host therefore prayed that this sin might be forgiven to the slain, and they contributed 2,000 drachmas of silver to send a sin offering for them to Jerusalem. So modern Jews pray for the dead; see Luckock, After Death, 54-66—an argument for such prayer. John Wesley, Works, 9:55, maintains the legality of prayer for the dead. Still it is true that we have no instance of such prayer in canonical Scriptures.Ps. 132:1—“Jehovah, remember for David All his affliction”—is not a prayer for the dead, but signifies:“Remember for David”, so as to fulfil thy promise to him,“all his anxious cares”—with regard to the building of the temple; the psalm having been composed, in all probability, for the temple dedication. Paul prays that God will“grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus”(2 Tim. 1:16), from which it has been unwarrantably inferred that Onesiphorus was dead at the time of the apostle's writing; but Paul's further prayer inverse 18—“the Lord grant unto him to find mercy of the Lord in that day”—seems rather to point to the death of Onesiphorus as yet in the future.Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:715 note—“Many of the arguments constructed against the doctrine of endless punishment proceed upon the supposition that original sin, or man's evil inclination, is the work of God: that because man isbornin sin (Ps. 51:5), he wascreatedin sin. All the strength and plausibility of John Foster's celebrated letter lies in the assumption that the moral corruption and impotence of the sinner, whereby it is impossible to save himself from eternal death, is not self-originated and self-determined, but infused by his Maker.‘If,’says he,‘the very nature of man, ascreatedby the Sovereign Power, be in such desperate disorder that there is no possibility of conversion or salvation except in instances where that Power interposes with a special and redeeming efficacy, how can we conceive that the main portion of the race, thus morally impotent (that is, really and absolutely impotent), will be eternally punished for the inevitable result of this moral impotence?’If this assumption of concreated depravity and impotence is correct, Foster's objection to eternal retribution is conclusive and fatal.... Endless punishment supposes the freedom of the human will, and is impossible without it. Self-determination runs parallel with hell.”The theory of a second probation, as recently advocated, is not only a logical result of that defective view of the will already mentioned, but it is also in part a consequence of denying the old orthodox and Pauline doctrine of the organic unity of the race in Adam's first transgression. New School Theology has been inclined to deride the notion of a fair probation of humanity in our first father, and of a common sin and guilt of mankind in him. It cannot find what it regards as a fair probation for each individual since that first sin; and the conclusion is easy that there must be such a fair probation for each individual in the world to come. But we may advise those who take this view[pg 1044]to return to the old theology. Grant a fair probation for the whole race already passed, and the condition of mankind is no longer that of mere unfortunates unjustly circumstanced, but rather that of beings guilty and condemned, to whom present opportunity, and even present existence, is a matter of pure grace,—much more the general provision of a salvation, and the offer of it to any human soul. This world is already a place of second probation; and since the second probation is due wholly to God's mercy, no probation after death is needed to vindicate either the justice or the goodness of God. See Kellogg, in Presb. Rev., April, 1885:226-256; Cremer, Beyond the Grave, preface by A. A. Hodge, xxxvisq.; E. D. Morris, Is There Salvation After Death? A. H. Strong, on The New Theology, in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1888,—reprinted in Philosophy and Religion, 164-179.
Some have maintained the ultimate restoration of all human beings, by appeal to such passages as the following: Mat. 19:28; Acts 3:21; Eph. 1:9, 10.
Mat. 19:28—“in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory”;Acts 3:21—Jesus,“whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things”;1 Cor. 15:26—“The last enemy that shall be abolished is death”;Eph. 1:9, 10—“according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”;2 Pet. 3:9, 13—“not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance ... But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”Robert Browning:“That God, by God's own ways occult, May—doth, I will believe—bring back All wanderers to a single track.”B. W. Lockhart:“I must believe that evil is essentially transient and mortal, or alter my predicates of God. And I must believe in the ultimate extinction of that personality whom the power of God cannot sometime win to goodness. The only alternative is the termination of a wicked life either through redemption or through extinction.”Mulford, Republic of God, claims that the soul's state cannot be fixed by any event, such as death, outside of itself. If it could, the soul would exist, not under a moral government, but under fate, and God himself would be only another name for fate. The soul carries its fate, under God, in its power of choice; and who dares to say that this power to choose the good ceases at death?For advocacy of a second probation for those who have not consciously rejected Christ in this life, see Newman Smyth's edition of Dorner's Eschatology. For the theory of restoration, see Farrar, Eternal Hope; Birks, Victory of Divine Goodness; Jukes, Restitution of All Things; Delitzsch, Bib. Psychologie, 469-476; Robert Browning, Apparent Failure; Tennyson, In Memoriam, § liv.Per contra, see Hovey, Bib. Eschatology, 95-144. See also, Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 406-440.
Mat. 19:28—“in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory”;Acts 3:21—Jesus,“whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things”;1 Cor. 15:26—“The last enemy that shall be abolished is death”;Eph. 1:9, 10—“according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth”;Phil. 2:10, 11—“that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”;2 Pet. 3:9, 13—“not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance ... But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”
Robert Browning:“That God, by God's own ways occult, May—doth, I will believe—bring back All wanderers to a single track.”B. W. Lockhart:“I must believe that evil is essentially transient and mortal, or alter my predicates of God. And I must believe in the ultimate extinction of that personality whom the power of God cannot sometime win to goodness. The only alternative is the termination of a wicked life either through redemption or through extinction.”Mulford, Republic of God, claims that the soul's state cannot be fixed by any event, such as death, outside of itself. If it could, the soul would exist, not under a moral government, but under fate, and God himself would be only another name for fate. The soul carries its fate, under God, in its power of choice; and who dares to say that this power to choose the good ceases at death?
For advocacy of a second probation for those who have not consciously rejected Christ in this life, see Newman Smyth's edition of Dorner's Eschatology. For the theory of restoration, see Farrar, Eternal Hope; Birks, Victory of Divine Goodness; Jukes, Restitution of All Things; Delitzsch, Bib. Psychologie, 469-476; Robert Browning, Apparent Failure; Tennyson, In Memoriam, § liv.Per contra, see Hovey, Bib. Eschatology, 95-144. See also, Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 406-440.
(a) These passages, as obscure, are to be interpreted in the light of those plainer ones which we have already cited. Thus interpreted, they foretell only the absolute triumph of the divine kingdom, and the subjection of all evil to God.
The true interpretation of the passages above mentioned is indicated in Meyer's note onEph. 1:9, 10—this namely, that“the allusion is not to the restoration offallen individuals, but to the restoration ofuniversal harmony, implying that the wicked are to be excluded from the kingdom of God.”That there is no allusion to a probation after this life, is clear fromLuke 16:19-31—the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Here penalty is inflicted for the sins done“in thy lifetime”(v. 25); this penalty is unchangeable—“there is a great gulf fixed”(v. 26); the rich man asks favors for his brethren who still live on the earth, but none for himself (v. 27, 28).John 5:25-29—“The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself: and he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, until the resurrection of judgment”—here it is declared that, while for those who have done good there is a resurrection of life, there is for those who have done ill only a resurrection of judgment.John 8:21, 24—“shall die in your sin: whither I go, ye cannot come ... except ye believe that I am he, ye shall die in your sins”—sayings which indicate finality in the decisions of this life.Orr, Christian View of God and the World, 243—“Scripture invariably represents the judgment as proceeding on the data of this life, and it concentrates every ray of appeal into the present.”John 9:4—“We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh[pg 1040]when no man can work”—intimates that there is no opportunity to secure salvation after death. The Christian hymn writer has caught the meaning of Scripture, when he says of those who have passed through the gate of death:“Fixed in an eternal state, They have done with all below; We a little longer wait; But how little, none can know.”
The true interpretation of the passages above mentioned is indicated in Meyer's note onEph. 1:9, 10—this namely, that“the allusion is not to the restoration offallen individuals, but to the restoration ofuniversal harmony, implying that the wicked are to be excluded from the kingdom of God.”That there is no allusion to a probation after this life, is clear fromLuke 16:19-31—the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Here penalty is inflicted for the sins done“in thy lifetime”(v. 25); this penalty is unchangeable—“there is a great gulf fixed”(v. 26); the rich man asks favors for his brethren who still live on the earth, but none for himself (v. 27, 28).John 5:25-29—“The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself: and he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, until the resurrection of judgment”—here it is declared that, while for those who have done good there is a resurrection of life, there is for those who have done ill only a resurrection of judgment.John 8:21, 24—“shall die in your sin: whither I go, ye cannot come ... except ye believe that I am he, ye shall die in your sins”—sayings which indicate finality in the decisions of this life.
Orr, Christian View of God and the World, 243—“Scripture invariably represents the judgment as proceeding on the data of this life, and it concentrates every ray of appeal into the present.”John 9:4—“We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh[pg 1040]when no man can work”—intimates that there is no opportunity to secure salvation after death. The Christian hymn writer has caught the meaning of Scripture, when he says of those who have passed through the gate of death:“Fixed in an eternal state, They have done with all below; We a little longer wait; But how little, none can know.”
(b) A second probation is not needed to vindicate the justice or the love of God, since Christ, the immanent God, is already in this world present with every human soul, quickening the conscience, giving to each man his opportunity, and making every decision between right and wrong a true probation. In choosing evil against their better judgment even the heathen unconsciously reject Christ. Infants and idiots, as they have not consciously sinned, are, as we may believe, saved at death by having Christ revealed to them and by the regenerating influence of his Spirit.
Rom. 1:18-28—there is probation under the light of nature as well as under the gospel, and under the law of nature as well as under the gospel men may be given up“unto a reprobate mind”;2:6-16—Gentiles shall be judged, not by the gospel, but by the law of nature, and shall“perish without the law ... in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men.”2 Cor. 5:10—“For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; [not that each may have a new opportunity to secure salvation, but]that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad”;Heb. 6:8—“whose end is to be burned”—not to be quickened again;9:27—“And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh[not a second probation, but]judgment.”Luckock, Intermediate State, 22—“InHeb. 9:27, the word‘judgment’has no article. The judgment alluded to is not the final or general judgment, but only that by which the place of the soul is determined in the Intermediate State.”Denney, Studies in Theology, 243—“InMat. 25, our Lord gives a pictorial representation of the judgment of the heathen. All nations—all the Gentiles—are gathered before the King; and their destiny is determined, not by their conscious acceptance or rejection of the historical Savior, but by their unconscious acceptance or rejection of him in the persons of those who needed services of love.... This does not square with the idea of a future probation. It rather tells us plainly that men may do things of final and decisive import in this life, even if Christ is unknown to them.... The real argument against future probation is that it depreciates the present life, and denies the infinite significance that, under all conditions, essentially and inevitably belongs to the actions of a self-conscious moral being. A type of will may be in process of formation, even in a heathen man, on which eternal issues depend.... Second probation lowers the moral tone of the spirit. The present life acquires a relative unimportance. I dare not say that if I forfeit the opportunity the present life gives me I shall ever have another, and therefore I dare not say so to another man.”For an able review of the Scripture testimony against a second probation, see G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation, iv. Emerson, the most recent advocate of restorationism, in his Doctrine of Probation Examined, 42, is able to evade these latter passages only by assuming that they are to be spiritually interpreted, and that there is to be no literal outward day of judgment—an error which we have previously discussed and refuted,—see pages1024,1025.
Rom. 1:18-28—there is probation under the light of nature as well as under the gospel, and under the law of nature as well as under the gospel men may be given up“unto a reprobate mind”;2:6-16—Gentiles shall be judged, not by the gospel, but by the law of nature, and shall“perish without the law ... in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men.”2 Cor. 5:10—“For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; [not that each may have a new opportunity to secure salvation, but]that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad”;Heb. 6:8—“whose end is to be burned”—not to be quickened again;9:27—“And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh[not a second probation, but]judgment.”Luckock, Intermediate State, 22—“InHeb. 9:27, the word‘judgment’has no article. The judgment alluded to is not the final or general judgment, but only that by which the place of the soul is determined in the Intermediate State.”
Denney, Studies in Theology, 243—“InMat. 25, our Lord gives a pictorial representation of the judgment of the heathen. All nations—all the Gentiles—are gathered before the King; and their destiny is determined, not by their conscious acceptance or rejection of the historical Savior, but by their unconscious acceptance or rejection of him in the persons of those who needed services of love.... This does not square with the idea of a future probation. It rather tells us plainly that men may do things of final and decisive import in this life, even if Christ is unknown to them.... The real argument against future probation is that it depreciates the present life, and denies the infinite significance that, under all conditions, essentially and inevitably belongs to the actions of a self-conscious moral being. A type of will may be in process of formation, even in a heathen man, on which eternal issues depend.... Second probation lowers the moral tone of the spirit. The present life acquires a relative unimportance. I dare not say that if I forfeit the opportunity the present life gives me I shall ever have another, and therefore I dare not say so to another man.”
For an able review of the Scripture testimony against a second probation, see G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation, iv. Emerson, the most recent advocate of restorationism, in his Doctrine of Probation Examined, 42, is able to evade these latter passages only by assuming that they are to be spiritually interpreted, and that there is to be no literal outward day of judgment—an error which we have previously discussed and refuted,—see pages1024,1025.
(c) The advocates of universal restoration are commonly the most strenuous defenders of the inalienable freedom of the human will to make choices contrary to its past character and to all the motives which are or can be brought to bear upon it. As a matter of fact, we find in this world that men choose sin in spite of infinite motives to the contrary. Upon the theory of human freedom just mentioned, no motives which God can use will certainly accomplish the salvation of all moral creatures. The soul which resists Christ here may resist him forever.
Emerson, in the book just referred to, says:“The truth that sin is in its permanent essence a free choice, however for a time it may be held in mechanical combination with the notion of moral opportunity arbitrarily closed, can never mingle with it, and must in the logical outcome permanently cast it off. Scripture presumes and teaches[pg 1041]the constant capability of souls to obey as well as to be disobedient.”Emerson is correct. If the doctrine of the unlimited ability of the human will be a true one, then restoration in the future world is possible. Clement and Origen founded on this theory of will their denial of future punishment. If will be essentially the power of contrary choice, and if will may act independently of all character and motive, there can be no objective certainty that the lost will remain sinful. In short, there can be no finality, even to God's allotments, nor is anylastjudgment possible. Upon this view, regeneration and conversion are as possible at any time in the future as they are to-day.But those who hold to this defective philosophy of the will should remember that unlimited freedom is unlimited freedom to sin, as well as unlimited freedom to turn to God. If restoration is possible, endless persistence in evil is possible also; and this last the Scripture predicts. Whittier:“What if thine eye refuse to see, Thine ear of heaven's free welcome fail, And thou a willing captive be, Thyself thine own dark jail?”Swedenborg says that the man who obstinately refuses the inheritance of the sons of God is allowed the pleasures of the beast, and enjoys in his own low way the hell to which he has confined himself. Every occupant of hell prefers it to heaven. Dante, Hell, iv—“All here together come from every clime, And to o'erpass the river are not loth, For so heaven's justice goads them on, that fear Is turned into desire. Hence never passed good spirit.”The lost areHeautoutimoroumenoi, or self-tormentors, to adopt the title of Terence's play. See Whedon, in Meth. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1884; Robbins, in Bib. Sac., 1881:460-507.Denney, Studies in Theology, 255—“The very conception of human freedom involves the possibility of its permanent misuse, or of what our Lord himself calls‘eternal sin’(Mark 3:29).”Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:699—“Origen's restorationism grew naturally out of his view of human liberty”—the liberty of indifference—“endless alternations of falls and recoveries, of hells and heavens; so that practically he taught nothing but a hell.”J. C. Adams, The Leisure of God:“It is lame logic to maintain the inviolable freedom of the will, and at the same time insist that God can, through his ample power, through protracted punishment, bring the soul into a disposition which it does not wish to feel. There is no compulsory holiness possible. In our Civil War there was some talk of‘compelling men to volunteer,’but the idea was soon seen to involve a self-contradiction.”
Emerson, in the book just referred to, says:“The truth that sin is in its permanent essence a free choice, however for a time it may be held in mechanical combination with the notion of moral opportunity arbitrarily closed, can never mingle with it, and must in the logical outcome permanently cast it off. Scripture presumes and teaches[pg 1041]the constant capability of souls to obey as well as to be disobedient.”Emerson is correct. If the doctrine of the unlimited ability of the human will be a true one, then restoration in the future world is possible. Clement and Origen founded on this theory of will their denial of future punishment. If will be essentially the power of contrary choice, and if will may act independently of all character and motive, there can be no objective certainty that the lost will remain sinful. In short, there can be no finality, even to God's allotments, nor is anylastjudgment possible. Upon this view, regeneration and conversion are as possible at any time in the future as they are to-day.
But those who hold to this defective philosophy of the will should remember that unlimited freedom is unlimited freedom to sin, as well as unlimited freedom to turn to God. If restoration is possible, endless persistence in evil is possible also; and this last the Scripture predicts. Whittier:“What if thine eye refuse to see, Thine ear of heaven's free welcome fail, And thou a willing captive be, Thyself thine own dark jail?”Swedenborg says that the man who obstinately refuses the inheritance of the sons of God is allowed the pleasures of the beast, and enjoys in his own low way the hell to which he has confined himself. Every occupant of hell prefers it to heaven. Dante, Hell, iv—“All here together come from every clime, And to o'erpass the river are not loth, For so heaven's justice goads them on, that fear Is turned into desire. Hence never passed good spirit.”The lost areHeautoutimoroumenoi, or self-tormentors, to adopt the title of Terence's play. See Whedon, in Meth. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1884; Robbins, in Bib. Sac., 1881:460-507.
Denney, Studies in Theology, 255—“The very conception of human freedom involves the possibility of its permanent misuse, or of what our Lord himself calls‘eternal sin’(Mark 3:29).”Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:699—“Origen's restorationism grew naturally out of his view of human liberty”—the liberty of indifference—“endless alternations of falls and recoveries, of hells and heavens; so that practically he taught nothing but a hell.”J. C. Adams, The Leisure of God:“It is lame logic to maintain the inviolable freedom of the will, and at the same time insist that God can, through his ample power, through protracted punishment, bring the soul into a disposition which it does not wish to feel. There is no compulsory holiness possible. In our Civil War there was some talk of‘compelling men to volunteer,’but the idea was soon seen to involve a self-contradiction.”
(d) Upon the more correct view of the will which we have advocated, the case is more hopeless still. Upon this view, the sinful soul, in its very sinning, gives to itself a sinful bent of intellect, affection, and will; in other words, makes for itself a character, which, though it does not render necessary, yet does render certain, apart from divine grace, the continuance of sinful action. In itself it finds a self-formed motive to evil strong enough to prevail over all inducements to holiness which God sees it wise to bring to bear. It is in the next world, indeed, subjected to suffering. But suffering has in itself no reforming power. Unless accompanied by special renewing influences of the Holy Spirit, it only hardens and embitters the soul. We have no Scripture evidence that such influences of the Spirit are exerted, after death, upon the still impenitent; but abundant evidence, on the contrary, that the moral condition in which death finds men is their condition forever.
See Bushnell's“One Trial Better than Many,”in Sermons on Living Subjects; also see his Forgiveness and Law, 146, 147. Bushnell argues that God would give us fifty trials, if that would do us good. But there is no possibility of such result. The first decision adverse to God renders it more difficult to make a right decision upon the next opportunity. Character tends to fixity, and each new opportunity may only harden the heart and increase its guilt and condemnation. We should have no better chance of salvation if our lives were lengthened to the term of the sinners before the flood. Mere suffering does not convert the soul; see Martineau, Study, 2:100. A life of pain did not make Blanco White a believer; see Mozley, Hist. and Theol. Essays, vol. 2, essay 1.[pg 1042]Edward A. Lawrence, Does Everlasting Punishment Last Forever?—“If the deeds of the law do not justify here, how can the penalties of the law hereafter? The pain from a broken limb does nothing to mend the break, and the suffering from disease does nothing to cure it. Penalty pays no debts,—it only shows the outstanding and unsettled accounts.”If the will does not act without motive, then it is certain that without motives men will never repent. To an impenitent and rebellious sinner the motive must come, not from within, but from without. Such motives God presents by his Spirit in this life; but when this life ends and God's Spirit is withdrawn, no motives to repentance will be presented. The soul's dislike for God will issue only in complaint and resistance. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:4—“Try what repentance can? what can it not? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?”Marlowe, Faustus:“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is, there we must ever be.”The pressure of the atmosphere without is counteracted by the resistance of the atmosphere within the body. So God's life within is the only thing that can enable us to bear God's afflictive dispensations without. Without God's Spirit to inspire repentance the wicked man in this world never feels sorrow for his deeds, except as he realizes their evil consequences. Physical anguish and punishment inspire hatred, not of sin, but of the effects of sin. The remorse of Judas induced confession, but not true repentance. So in the next world punishment will secure recognition of God and of his justice, on the part of the transgressor, but it will not regenerate or save. The penalties of the future life will be no more effectual to reform the sinner than were the invitations of Christ and the strivings of the Holy Spirit in the present life. The transientness of good resolves which are forced out of us by suffering is illustrated by the old couplet:“The devil was sick,—the devil a monk would be; The devil got well,—the devil a monk was he.”Charles G. Sewall:“Paul Lester Ford, the novelist, was murdered by his brother Malcolm, because the father of the two brothers had disinherited the one who committed the crime. Has God the right to disinherit any one of his children? We answer that God disinherits no one. Each man decides for himself whether he will accept the inheritance. It is a matter of character. A father cannot give his son an education. The son may play truant and throw away his opportunity. The prodigal son disinherited himself. Heaven is not a place,—it is a way of living, a condition of being. If you have a musical ear, I will admit you to a lovely concert. If you have not a musical ear, I may give you a reserved seat and you will hear no melody. Some men fail of salvation because they have no taste for it and will not have it.”The laws of God's universe are closing in upon the impenitent sinner, as the iron walls of the mediæval prison closed in night by night upon the victim,—each morning there was one window less, and the dungeon came to be a coffin. In Jean Ingelow's poem“Divided,”two friends, parted by a little rivulet across which they could clasp hands, walk on in the direction in which the stream is flowing, till the rivulet becomes a brook, and the brook a river, and the river an arm of the sea across which no voice can be heard and there is no passing. By constant neglect to use our opportunity, we lose the power to cross from sin to righteousness, until between the soul and God“there is a great gulf fixed”(Luke 16:26).John G. Whittier wrote within a twelvemonth of his death:“I do believe that we take with us into the next world the same freedom of will we have here, and thatthere, ashere, he that turns to the Lord will find mercy; that God never ceases to follow his creatures with love, and is always ready to hear the prayer of the penitent. But I also believe thatnowis the accepted time, and that he who dallies with sin may find the chains of evil habit too strong to break in this world or the other.”And the following is the Quaker poet's verse:“Though God be good and free be heaven, Not force divine can love compel; And though the song of sins forgiven Might sound through lowest hell, The sweet persuasion of his voice Respects the sanctity of will. He giveth day; thou hast thy choice To walk in darkness still.”Longfellow, Masque of Pandora:“Never by lapse of time The soul defaced by crime Into its former self returns again; For every guilty deed Holds in itself the seed Of retribution and undying pain. Never shall be the loss Restored, till Helios Hath purified them with his heavenly fires; Then what was lost is won, And the new life begun, Kindled with nobler passions and desires.”Seth, Freedom as Ethical Postulate, 42—“Faust's selling his soul to Mephistopheles, and signing the contract with his life's blood, is no single transaction, done deliberately, on one occasion; rather, that is[pg 1043]the lurid meaning of a life which consists of innumerable individual acts,—the life of evil means that.”See John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 2:88; Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 315.
See Bushnell's“One Trial Better than Many,”in Sermons on Living Subjects; also see his Forgiveness and Law, 146, 147. Bushnell argues that God would give us fifty trials, if that would do us good. But there is no possibility of such result. The first decision adverse to God renders it more difficult to make a right decision upon the next opportunity. Character tends to fixity, and each new opportunity may only harden the heart and increase its guilt and condemnation. We should have no better chance of salvation if our lives were lengthened to the term of the sinners before the flood. Mere suffering does not convert the soul; see Martineau, Study, 2:100. A life of pain did not make Blanco White a believer; see Mozley, Hist. and Theol. Essays, vol. 2, essay 1.
Edward A. Lawrence, Does Everlasting Punishment Last Forever?—“If the deeds of the law do not justify here, how can the penalties of the law hereafter? The pain from a broken limb does nothing to mend the break, and the suffering from disease does nothing to cure it. Penalty pays no debts,—it only shows the outstanding and unsettled accounts.”If the will does not act without motive, then it is certain that without motives men will never repent. To an impenitent and rebellious sinner the motive must come, not from within, but from without. Such motives God presents by his Spirit in this life; but when this life ends and God's Spirit is withdrawn, no motives to repentance will be presented. The soul's dislike for God will issue only in complaint and resistance. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:4—“Try what repentance can? what can it not? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?”Marlowe, Faustus:“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is, there we must ever be.”
The pressure of the atmosphere without is counteracted by the resistance of the atmosphere within the body. So God's life within is the only thing that can enable us to bear God's afflictive dispensations without. Without God's Spirit to inspire repentance the wicked man in this world never feels sorrow for his deeds, except as he realizes their evil consequences. Physical anguish and punishment inspire hatred, not of sin, but of the effects of sin. The remorse of Judas induced confession, but not true repentance. So in the next world punishment will secure recognition of God and of his justice, on the part of the transgressor, but it will not regenerate or save. The penalties of the future life will be no more effectual to reform the sinner than were the invitations of Christ and the strivings of the Holy Spirit in the present life. The transientness of good resolves which are forced out of us by suffering is illustrated by the old couplet:“The devil was sick,—the devil a monk would be; The devil got well,—the devil a monk was he.”
Charles G. Sewall:“Paul Lester Ford, the novelist, was murdered by his brother Malcolm, because the father of the two brothers had disinherited the one who committed the crime. Has God the right to disinherit any one of his children? We answer that God disinherits no one. Each man decides for himself whether he will accept the inheritance. It is a matter of character. A father cannot give his son an education. The son may play truant and throw away his opportunity. The prodigal son disinherited himself. Heaven is not a place,—it is a way of living, a condition of being. If you have a musical ear, I will admit you to a lovely concert. If you have not a musical ear, I may give you a reserved seat and you will hear no melody. Some men fail of salvation because they have no taste for it and will not have it.”
The laws of God's universe are closing in upon the impenitent sinner, as the iron walls of the mediæval prison closed in night by night upon the victim,—each morning there was one window less, and the dungeon came to be a coffin. In Jean Ingelow's poem“Divided,”two friends, parted by a little rivulet across which they could clasp hands, walk on in the direction in which the stream is flowing, till the rivulet becomes a brook, and the brook a river, and the river an arm of the sea across which no voice can be heard and there is no passing. By constant neglect to use our opportunity, we lose the power to cross from sin to righteousness, until between the soul and God“there is a great gulf fixed”(Luke 16:26).
John G. Whittier wrote within a twelvemonth of his death:“I do believe that we take with us into the next world the same freedom of will we have here, and thatthere, ashere, he that turns to the Lord will find mercy; that God never ceases to follow his creatures with love, and is always ready to hear the prayer of the penitent. But I also believe thatnowis the accepted time, and that he who dallies with sin may find the chains of evil habit too strong to break in this world or the other.”And the following is the Quaker poet's verse:“Though God be good and free be heaven, Not force divine can love compel; And though the song of sins forgiven Might sound through lowest hell, The sweet persuasion of his voice Respects the sanctity of will. He giveth day; thou hast thy choice To walk in darkness still.”
Longfellow, Masque of Pandora:“Never by lapse of time The soul defaced by crime Into its former self returns again; For every guilty deed Holds in itself the seed Of retribution and undying pain. Never shall be the loss Restored, till Helios Hath purified them with his heavenly fires; Then what was lost is won, And the new life begun, Kindled with nobler passions and desires.”Seth, Freedom as Ethical Postulate, 42—“Faust's selling his soul to Mephistopheles, and signing the contract with his life's blood, is no single transaction, done deliberately, on one occasion; rather, that is[pg 1043]the lurid meaning of a life which consists of innumerable individual acts,—the life of evil means that.”See John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 2:88; Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 315.
(e) The declaration as to Judas, in Mat. 26:24, could not be true upon the hypothesis of a final restoration. If at any time, even after the lapse of ages, Judas be redeemed, his subsequent infinite duration of blessedness must outweigh all the finite suffering through which he has passed. The Scripture statement that“good were it for that man if he had not been born”must be regarded as a refutation of the theory of universal restoration.
Mat. 26:24—“The Son of man goeth, even as it is written of him: but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had not been born.”G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation:“As Christ of old healed only those who came or were brought to him, so now he waits for the coöperation of human agency. God has limited himself to an orderly method in human salvation. The consuming missionary zeal of the apostles and the early church shows that they believed the decisions of this life to be final decisions. The early church not only thought the heathen world would perish without the gospel, but they found a conscience in the heathen answering to this belief. The solicitude drawn out by this responsibility for our fellows may be one means of securing the moral stability of the future. What is bound on earth is bound in heaven; else why not pray for the wicked dead?”It is certainly a remarkable fact, if this theory be true, that we have in Scripture not a single instance of prayer for the dead.The apocryphal 2 Maccabees 12:39sq.gives an instance of Jewish prayer for the dead. Certain who were slain had concealed under their coats things consecrated to idols. Judas and his host therefore prayed that this sin might be forgiven to the slain, and they contributed 2,000 drachmas of silver to send a sin offering for them to Jerusalem. So modern Jews pray for the dead; see Luckock, After Death, 54-66—an argument for such prayer. John Wesley, Works, 9:55, maintains the legality of prayer for the dead. Still it is true that we have no instance of such prayer in canonical Scriptures.Ps. 132:1—“Jehovah, remember for David All his affliction”—is not a prayer for the dead, but signifies:“Remember for David”, so as to fulfil thy promise to him,“all his anxious cares”—with regard to the building of the temple; the psalm having been composed, in all probability, for the temple dedication. Paul prays that God will“grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus”(2 Tim. 1:16), from which it has been unwarrantably inferred that Onesiphorus was dead at the time of the apostle's writing; but Paul's further prayer inverse 18—“the Lord grant unto him to find mercy of the Lord in that day”—seems rather to point to the death of Onesiphorus as yet in the future.Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:715 note—“Many of the arguments constructed against the doctrine of endless punishment proceed upon the supposition that original sin, or man's evil inclination, is the work of God: that because man isbornin sin (Ps. 51:5), he wascreatedin sin. All the strength and plausibility of John Foster's celebrated letter lies in the assumption that the moral corruption and impotence of the sinner, whereby it is impossible to save himself from eternal death, is not self-originated and self-determined, but infused by his Maker.‘If,’says he,‘the very nature of man, ascreatedby the Sovereign Power, be in such desperate disorder that there is no possibility of conversion or salvation except in instances where that Power interposes with a special and redeeming efficacy, how can we conceive that the main portion of the race, thus morally impotent (that is, really and absolutely impotent), will be eternally punished for the inevitable result of this moral impotence?’If this assumption of concreated depravity and impotence is correct, Foster's objection to eternal retribution is conclusive and fatal.... Endless punishment supposes the freedom of the human will, and is impossible without it. Self-determination runs parallel with hell.”The theory of a second probation, as recently advocated, is not only a logical result of that defective view of the will already mentioned, but it is also in part a consequence of denying the old orthodox and Pauline doctrine of the organic unity of the race in Adam's first transgression. New School Theology has been inclined to deride the notion of a fair probation of humanity in our first father, and of a common sin and guilt of mankind in him. It cannot find what it regards as a fair probation for each individual since that first sin; and the conclusion is easy that there must be such a fair probation for each individual in the world to come. But we may advise those who take this view[pg 1044]to return to the old theology. Grant a fair probation for the whole race already passed, and the condition of mankind is no longer that of mere unfortunates unjustly circumstanced, but rather that of beings guilty and condemned, to whom present opportunity, and even present existence, is a matter of pure grace,—much more the general provision of a salvation, and the offer of it to any human soul. This world is already a place of second probation; and since the second probation is due wholly to God's mercy, no probation after death is needed to vindicate either the justice or the goodness of God. See Kellogg, in Presb. Rev., April, 1885:226-256; Cremer, Beyond the Grave, preface by A. A. Hodge, xxxvisq.; E. D. Morris, Is There Salvation After Death? A. H. Strong, on The New Theology, in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1888,—reprinted in Philosophy and Religion, 164-179.
Mat. 26:24—“The Son of man goeth, even as it is written of him: but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had not been born.”G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation:“As Christ of old healed only those who came or were brought to him, so now he waits for the coöperation of human agency. God has limited himself to an orderly method in human salvation. The consuming missionary zeal of the apostles and the early church shows that they believed the decisions of this life to be final decisions. The early church not only thought the heathen world would perish without the gospel, but they found a conscience in the heathen answering to this belief. The solicitude drawn out by this responsibility for our fellows may be one means of securing the moral stability of the future. What is bound on earth is bound in heaven; else why not pray for the wicked dead?”It is certainly a remarkable fact, if this theory be true, that we have in Scripture not a single instance of prayer for the dead.
The apocryphal 2 Maccabees 12:39sq.gives an instance of Jewish prayer for the dead. Certain who were slain had concealed under their coats things consecrated to idols. Judas and his host therefore prayed that this sin might be forgiven to the slain, and they contributed 2,000 drachmas of silver to send a sin offering for them to Jerusalem. So modern Jews pray for the dead; see Luckock, After Death, 54-66—an argument for such prayer. John Wesley, Works, 9:55, maintains the legality of prayer for the dead. Still it is true that we have no instance of such prayer in canonical Scriptures.Ps. 132:1—“Jehovah, remember for David All his affliction”—is not a prayer for the dead, but signifies:“Remember for David”, so as to fulfil thy promise to him,“all his anxious cares”—with regard to the building of the temple; the psalm having been composed, in all probability, for the temple dedication. Paul prays that God will“grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus”(2 Tim. 1:16), from which it has been unwarrantably inferred that Onesiphorus was dead at the time of the apostle's writing; but Paul's further prayer inverse 18—“the Lord grant unto him to find mercy of the Lord in that day”—seems rather to point to the death of Onesiphorus as yet in the future.
Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:715 note—“Many of the arguments constructed against the doctrine of endless punishment proceed upon the supposition that original sin, or man's evil inclination, is the work of God: that because man isbornin sin (Ps. 51:5), he wascreatedin sin. All the strength and plausibility of John Foster's celebrated letter lies in the assumption that the moral corruption and impotence of the sinner, whereby it is impossible to save himself from eternal death, is not self-originated and self-determined, but infused by his Maker.‘If,’says he,‘the very nature of man, ascreatedby the Sovereign Power, be in such desperate disorder that there is no possibility of conversion or salvation except in instances where that Power interposes with a special and redeeming efficacy, how can we conceive that the main portion of the race, thus morally impotent (that is, really and absolutely impotent), will be eternally punished for the inevitable result of this moral impotence?’If this assumption of concreated depravity and impotence is correct, Foster's objection to eternal retribution is conclusive and fatal.... Endless punishment supposes the freedom of the human will, and is impossible without it. Self-determination runs parallel with hell.”
The theory of a second probation, as recently advocated, is not only a logical result of that defective view of the will already mentioned, but it is also in part a consequence of denying the old orthodox and Pauline doctrine of the organic unity of the race in Adam's first transgression. New School Theology has been inclined to deride the notion of a fair probation of humanity in our first father, and of a common sin and guilt of mankind in him. It cannot find what it regards as a fair probation for each individual since that first sin; and the conclusion is easy that there must be such a fair probation for each individual in the world to come. But we may advise those who take this view[pg 1044]to return to the old theology. Grant a fair probation for the whole race already passed, and the condition of mankind is no longer that of mere unfortunates unjustly circumstanced, but rather that of beings guilty and condemned, to whom present opportunity, and even present existence, is a matter of pure grace,—much more the general provision of a salvation, and the offer of it to any human soul. This world is already a place of second probation; and since the second probation is due wholly to God's mercy, no probation after death is needed to vindicate either the justice or the goodness of God. See Kellogg, in Presb. Rev., April, 1885:226-256; Cremer, Beyond the Grave, preface by A. A. Hodge, xxxvisq.; E. D. Morris, Is There Salvation After Death? A. H. Strong, on The New Theology, in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1888,—reprinted in Philosophy and Religion, 164-179.