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EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT.

A SERMON
PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY
IN THE
CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF CHRIST, IN OXFORD,
THE TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY,
BY THE
REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D.
in
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, AND CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH.

SOLD BY
JOHN HENRY AND JAMES PARKER, OXFORD,
AND 377, STRAND, LONDON;
J. AND F. H. RIVINGTON, LONDON,
41, HIGH STREET, OXFORD, AND 19, TRINITY STREET, CAMBRIDGE.
1864.

PLYMOUTH:
PRINTED AT THE PRINTING FRESS OF THE DEVONPORT SOCIETY.
1864.

EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT.

S. Matt. xxv. 46.
And these shall go away into everlasting punishment but
the righteous into life everlasting.
Who is God ? What am I ? If you answer this
question honestly to yourself, you have subdued
every difficulty which men raise against the faith.
Is God then our Maker, or do we make our god?
Are we His creatures, the works of His hands, abso
lutely at His disposal, to whom He gives laws, which,
at our great peril, we must obey ? Or is our god,
like the idols of old, which we have unlearnt in name,
which we ridicule, " the work of our hands, which,"
not "our fingers" but, our own minds "have made,"
the conception of our intellect, whose being and cha
racter we are to regulate, who is not to act otherwise
than according to the laws which we assign to him,
what commends itself to our — we will not use the old
Theological terms, Omniscience or Omnipotence, they
have associations inconveniently grand for us ; nor
must we say our highly gifted, highly endowed na
ture, for this implies an Author Who endowed it —
well, we will be modest and say, what approves itself
to our moral nature ? Does our God reveal Himself
b 2

to us, and unfold to us His Greatness, His Majesty,
His Holiness, His Justice ? or do we discover him,
as we might some new planet, only that this magnifi
cent world around us has its fixed laws without us,
which we cannot contradict, but our god, since he is
invisible, is to be formed ad libitum, the transcript of
our own excellences, such as we could imagine them
to be, if multiplied a thousand-fold ? Is He then
only just as we are just, holy as we, His Archetypes,
are holy, good as we are good ; yet so that none of
these qualities in our god are to exceed the balance
and proportion, which we can discover in our best-
ordered natural selves ? I say, " our natural selves,"
for when we come to grace, we know that millions
upon millions have had other conceptions of God's
aweful holiness and justice, than it is proposed now
to tolerate.
We are told, that human reason is prepared to ca
pitulate as to all the old difficulties which it used to
be so busy in parading, the doctrine of the All-Holy
Trinity or the Incarnation3. It will own the past ge-
a ' ' But if the wants and yearnings of the human heart, if a sense
of perfect harmony with every moral perception (whether implant
ed or acquired, ) are leading and will lead men to a belief in the
Incarnation, the Trinity in Unity, or any other truth flowing out
of these ; there are other dogmas from which these same wants and
yearnings, the same perceptions of the essential agreement between
divine and human goodness, will altogether repel them. The
strong arm of ecclesiastical authority, or the dictates of temporal
interest, or a dread of public opinion, may lead men to profess
belief in them ; but if the doctrine of endless punishment were
suffered to rest on the grounds which have led some, who denied
it before, to believe that Jesus Christ is God and man, no one can
doubt that the great mass of Englishmen would thankfully and
indignantly reject it." National review vol. 16. p. 93.

5

neration to have been wrong in disputing about the
Being of God, and will make a Concordat, allowing
Almighty God to exist henceforth, as He wills. It
will even admit the mystery of the Incarnation, and
allow of that ineffable mystery of God become Man,
that God did not disdain the Virgin's womb, God was
born, was nourished at the breast, was carried to and
fro, was obedient to His Mother and His foster-father,
hungered, was weary, thirsted, slept, was scourged,
spat upon, mocked, nailed to the Cross, diedb. For
the concession of the Incarnation, if it means any
thing, means all this ; that He Who, as Man, bare all
these sinless infirmities of our nature and all these
sufferings, was Almighty God. The last and newest
turn of our poor human reason is to accept all the
main facts of the Gospel, even the Godhead and Man
hood of our Divine Lord : only not their Divine mean
ing. People will even exalt the doctrine of the Incar
nation, in order to overshadow the doctrine of the
Cross, in which its humiliation found its deepest
depth. Or they will admire, extol, the doctrine of the
Cross, as " "the greatest moral act ever done in this
world," if only they may admire it as something pure
ly imitable. What they shrink from is, to own its
fullest adequate end, the light which it casts on the
holiness of God and on His aweful justice.
And yet we, who take these liberties with the at
tributes of God, who are we but the criminals ? We
criticise or limit the justice of God, whose name, in
the language of Holy Scripture, is "dthe unjust?"
b See S. Athanasius against the Ar. Tr. p. 443. note h. 444. n. i.
445. n. m. c Jowett on the Atonement. St. Paul's Epp.
ii. p. 481. d aSocos.

What criminal ere, by nature, owned the justice of
the human law, which condemned him ? If he ad
mit that he was in the wrong, yet what punishment
does not seem to him too severe ? What means this
never-ceasing din of murmurings, which in ever- vary
ing accents, petulant, sullen, clamorous, sharp, defi
ant, blaspheming, rolls up discordantly to heaven
against our God, accusing His Justice or Mercy in
punishing at all or disproportionately ? Every mur
mur from every human heart accuses knowingly or
unknowingly the justice and love of God, punishing,
as it thinks, unduly, relentlessly, for sin.
And now men systematize this. Reformation of
the individual offender is proposed as the exclusive
end of human punishment. Plainly it is not the ob
ject of Divine. And so men say, that human legis
lation "ahas already risen to a higher idea than, ac
cording to the popular theology, is exhibited in the
justice of an all-Merciful God." Only it is not the
popular theology only ; they are equally the facts of
nature. Punishment, but for the accepted grace of
God, hardens, not softens, the offender. Punishments,
which end in the excision of the offender, which cut
him off in his guilt, have plainly nothing remedial,
that we know of. And yet what is this whole wide
world full of, to the sight of the simple unspoilt soul ?
What is it but one multiplying mirror of the words,
" Man is full of misery? " What is this Nemesis, of
which, since faith has been chilled, men's writings
are so full ? What is it, but a heathen confession
of an unerring Hand, which guides the sin back upon
the sinner's head? The book of God's works to
a National Eeview. lb.

which men are so fond of appealing now, is a book
like the Prophet's, " b written within and without,
and there was written therein lamentations and
mourning and woe." Earth is as full of punishment
as of guilt, filled to overflowing with guilt and mi
sery. And, in all this, man's conscience sees but
punishment; faith only can discern that it is but
chastisement, if, by the grace of God, man wills.
Man's conscience, until he deadens it, and most, when
the uncompromising reality of thoughts of death si
lences all voices of self-deceit, speaks out clearly, that
punishment is "c the due reward of our deeds." The
belief in Tartarus, and the unending woe there, was
not, as oned, with a double paradox, maintained, the
result of the teaching of law-givers. It was antece
dent to law-givers, whether it was the traditional
memory of the words, " e thou shalt surely die," or
the voice of man's natural conscience, which, we know
from the deepest of their philosophers f, was quick-
b Ezek. ii. 10. c S. Lukexxiii. 41. d "Warburton, Divine
Legation, maintaining that future punishment was taught by
human lawgivers, and was not believed by Israel.
e Gen. ii. 17. f Plato de Eep. i. 5. "EJiow well, he said,
0 Socrates, that, when any one is, or thinks he is, near dying, there
cntereth into him fear and anxiety as to things, in regard to which
they never before came into his mind. For those myths too, which
are told about those in Hades, that he who has been guilty of in
justice here must pay the penalty to justice there, which had been
laughed at thus far, then torture his soul lest they should be true ;
and he himself, either through the weakness of old age or as being
now nearer to the things there, perceives them somewhat more clearly.
He becomes then full of imaginings and fear, and considers with
himself and looks whether he has injured any one. He then, who
discovers many wrongs which he has done in life, ofttimes starting
out of his sleep too, like children, is in a state of terror and lives
iiiuid evil anticipations. "

8
ened in the near sight of death, and was tormented,
lest the belief in judgment to be undergone there,
which a man had heretofore ridiculed as fables, should
indeed be true. The word "ill-deserving," Butler
reminds usg, is the verdict of human nature against
us. The superstitious and erring belief of heathen
ism, the awe at death, the gnawing worm of con
science, the oppressiveness of guilt, the fruitlessness
of efforts to bribe or beguile or assuage its relentless
voice, are so many million echoes of God's judgments
which fall around, and speak a heaven-implanted con
viction in man's soul ; ' Punishment awaits sin.'
But of what duration ? All knowledge as to eter
nity must come from the Eternal, Whose it is. We,
of ourselves, with no experience but of time, know,
of course, nothing of it, it's being, it's conditions, ex
cept what Almighty God reveals to us. Our nearest
idea of it is, "hboundless life, all existing at once,"
"an everlasting now " of bliss or misery1. But then
reason ought not to raise & priori objections, on the
ground of that, of whose laws, rules, and mode of be
ing, we know nothing. It is a common formula of
those who venture to object any thing to God's reve
lation; "it is inconceiveable that God should visit
passing acts of sin with an eternity of misery." True,
that all Scripture says, that our state hereafter will
be determined by what we have been and have done
here. On this fleeting being hangs our eternity.
"k We must all appear before the judgment-seat of
Christ, that every one may receive the things done
in the body according to that he hath done, whether
e Anal. P. i. c. 6. h S. Anselm Monol. c. 24. » " An ever
lasting now of misery." Sonthey, Thalaba. t 2 Cor. v. 10.

9
good or bad." But who revealed to us, that sin ceases
in the evil, when life ceases ? Who told us that it
is passing sin, which God so visits ? The pleasures
of sin are passing enough, yea, if men could prolong
them to the years of man's life before the flood. Sin
ners themselves pall at them, and seek for fresh con
diments of their sins. But sin itself ceases not, even
with satiety of sin. Men sin, in renewing the me
mory of their fresher sins, which had more zest and
life in them. They sin, when they can no more sin
themselves, in taking pleasure in those who do them,
as St. Paul says1. They sin in memory, imagination,
diseased pleasure in histories of sin, real or fictitious.
Or they exchange the sin for some other, adapted to
their years. But never do men abandon sin, except
by willingly receiving God's converting grace. To
sin on is nature. Of itself, and unless interfered
with by the overwhelming grace of God, sin con
tinues, encrusted, indurated, congealed, like the eter
nal ice ; its surface thawed for a moment under the
heat of God's love shining on it from above, but the
cold mass itself, unpenetrated, unchanged. It grows,
deepens, hardens, becomes more malignant, more in
grained, more a part of man's self until the hour of
death. Why, unless changed even then by the grace
of God, should it change in eternity ?
Look at the Christian's sin. What more could
God do for us, that He has not done for us ? God
became Man for love of us. God gave His own Co
equal Son for love of us. God the Son, made Man,
died for us, suffered the Father's displeasure at our
sins, the Innocent for the guilty ; made us members
' Eom. i. 32.

10
of Himself; joined us as closely to Him as He could ;
gave us His Spirit to rule our wills ; antedated reason
by His grace ; pleaded with us in our consciences ;
shone on us with His glowing love, whenever we 'did,
by His grace, any thing to please Him ; forgave us,
whenever we asked Him, as soon as we asked Him ;
promised to forgive us whenever we should ask Him ;
pledged His word to us that in His service we should
have peace and rest, the blessings of this life and of'
the life to come ; surrounded us with such a pro
digality of His bountifulness, to make our salvation
easy to us ; helped us whenever we asked Him or
without our asking Him ; forecame us, surrounded us,
immersed us in the ever-present Ocean of His Grace.
What could He have done more for us which He has
not done ? what has the profusion of His love kept
back or kept in store, that it should win our free-will
there if His Love have not won us here ?
But, apart even from this, unchangeableness may
be, for what we know, one of the laws of eternity.
We know that it shall be of the blessed. Heaven
could not be Heaven, unless they were fixed in good.-
Oh what a piercing pang of agony were it, what a
death-throe of misery, if the thought of the possibility
of failure could overshadow with the thinnest vapoury
cloud the Beatific Vision of their God ! What ? See
God, face to Face, love Him with that transforming
ever-inflowing love, be ever with Jesus, thank Him,
feel through and through, " What Jesus 'tis to love,"
and think it possible that one could again be ungrate
ful to His love, again sin against Him, again cru
cify Him ? No, the impossibility of sinning must
underlie all the bliss of Heaven. The ever-present

11
eternal Love of God must bring with it a conscious
ness, that it is eternal. For this cause saints have
longed to die, that they might never again, in the
faintest thought of their minds, displease God.
But it may be an equal law of our moral nature,
that they who reject God in time, even to the end,
will, by a continuance of that same fixed will, reject
Him everlastingly.
Six thousand years have not changed, (except in
perfecting his inventiveness of evil,) that dreadful
spirit, which beheld God face to Face, and would not
be of the second Order of beatified Intelligences,
but chose to be first in Hell. We see before us, in
that other spiritual world, for which God made us and
to which we are hastening, a being, gifted with
most intense intelligence, once "afull of wisdom and
perfect in beauty," now fixed in intensest hatred of
our race ; yet one to whom men, in their evil, gain
such a terrible likeness, that we speak of certain ma
lice as " Satanic," of some extreme wickedness as
" devilish." He was created in grace. Enabled by
God, he beheld God. He saw in God what, gifted
by God, his wondrous intelligence could see of
that which it will be the bliss of eternity to behold,
the Infinite Wisdom, Greatness, Goodness, Love,
Blissfulness of God. He saw it ; and, it is thought,
because there were others higher than he, he rejected
it. Any how, we know the fact, that, having rejected
it, he now unchangeably hates it. And now, with the
memory of What God Is, with that undying sight
before him, with the knowledge too of his own in
tolerable misery, he has, for these six thousand years,
"Ezek. xxviii. 12.

12
envied to man the bliss which he himself refused, and
has, with a malice of which again we see a likeness in
extreme human wickedness, sought to involve us in
his own guilt and misery. Look at the picture of
him, throughout the revelation of God to us. I
begin with our Lord's own words. "bA murderer
from the beginning," who " abode not in the truth
because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh
a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the
father of it." Of him our Lord speaks as the great
opponent of His kingdom, as desiring to shake through
and through the faithfulness of His Apostles0, but as
himself falling from heaven d. Of him our Lord's
Apostles bid us beware, as our especial adversary,
longing to destroy usc, devising evil, crafty, tempt
ing, deceiving, and then accusing "f before God day
and night ; " entering into the wicked8, and filling the
heart with evilh- His being is one continual sin. St.
John saith, he " ^inneth, from the beginning." Into
his power the evil world falls ; he is its prince k, its
god '. The evil, our Lord says, come into a relation
of terrific nearness to him ! They have him for their
father, instead of God. " mYe are of your father the
devil ; and the lusts of your father ye will do." Six
thousand years, nay, the whole course of this world,
does not exhaust his malice ; the shorter the time,
the greater his wrath, because, the time ended, there
will be no added souls for him to destroy. Holy
Scripture says again, "n Having great wrath, because
i> St. John viii. 44. <= S. Luke xxii. 31.
a lb. x. 18. c 1 S. Peter v. 8. * Eev.xii. 10.
s S. John xiii. 27. h S. Luke xxii. 3, Acts v. 3.
i 1 S. Johniii. 8. k S. John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11.
1 2 Cor. iv. 4. m S. John viii. 44. " Eev. xii. 12.

13
he knoweth that he hath but a short time." And, in
the end, he will be allowed to put forth " "all power
and signs and lying wonders, with all deceivableness
of unrighteousness; " to stamp his own likeness p on
all who will receive it, that, having borne his image
here, they may be cast with him into the lake of fire.
We are bribed in our own case to disbelieve or to
shrink from owning the possibility of that terrible
fixedness in misery and evil. So God has exhibited
it to us in our dreadful enemy. Malice more horri
ble we cannot imagine, than that of one, with that
wonderful wide-embracing intelligence, himself, in
eternity, beholding in its unendurable hopelessness of
misery, yet employing all his marvellous skill in evil
and his knowledge of man, in one unceasing toil to
make the race of man like to himself, in suffering.
We have no reason, then, from experience, but the
contrary, to think that the mere fact of passing out
of this life, will change the bad into good. We see,
even in this life, that mere suffering does not. It is
a terribly vivid description, which has continually
been verified ; " qthey gnawed their tongues for pain
and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their
pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds."
We see, in Satan, that no knowledge, no experience
of the consequences of sin, no sight of God, no pre
sence of eternity, converts the soul to God. We know
in our own selves, that more love could not be shewn
us, than God has shewn us. What, as being yet in
our probation, as being still capable of change, as not
being fixed in evil, as being the objects of the love
• 2 Thess. ii. 9, 10. p Eev. xiii. 16, 17, xiv. 9, 11, xv. 2,
xvi. 2, xix. 20. <i Eev. xvi. 10, 11.

14
not of the wrath of God, we cannot, (thanks be to
God!) yet know, God has supplied to us in the know
ledge of the Archfiend. What does there yet remain,
which God could do, and which we do not see to be
fruitless, unless we yield ourselves to His grace and
love here, that we may be His, He our's, for ever ?
Place alone does not make Heaven or Hell. Hell,
with the love of God, were as heaven ; without the
love of God, it may be, it seems even probable, that
Heaven would be the worse Hell. Hell may be
the less misery to the damned. For to be in heaven
and yet to be as a devil, to see the mutual bliss of crea
tures such as we once were, yet from our own hate
ful passions to be incapable of it, to see their joy in
God and God's beatific unfolding of His Essence to
their transported gaze, and ourselves, being such as
we had unmade ourselves, incapable of any love or
joy — the contrast of such bliss and such misery, such
love and such hate, seems the worse hell. Think you,
it were impossible to see God and to hate Him ? God
forbid, that we should be able to conceive it ! Yet
we see it in Satan. There is no middle line in the
end between loving God and hating Him. " Haters
of Godr" is one of habitual characters of human na
ture, left to itself. When God took flesh and dwelt
among us "sfull of grace and truth," this was the wit
ness which the Truth bore of us. " * The world hateth
Me, because I testify of it, that the works thereof
are evil ; " " u He that hateth Me, hateth My Father
also. Now have they both seen and hated both
Me and My Father." But hatred of God were in
r Eom. i. 30, Ps. lxxxi. 15, lxxxiii. 2, cxxxix. 21.
» S. John i. 14. * lb. vii. 7. u tD- xv. 23; 34.

15
itself Hell. We were created for love, the love of
our God, and of each other in God. To exist with
out love, without loving, without being loved, would
in itself be unendurable misery. It were an unna
tural existence, which must be restless and miserable
because unnatural and missing that for which it was
created. Not to love, is to hate. " We ourselves,"
says St. Paul31 of unregenerate nature, "were some
time foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers
lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hate
ful and hating one another." Apart from the central
misery, the endless loss of the end of our being, of
Him Who is still our God ; apart from all those terrific
physical miseries, of which our Lord speaks, the in
extinguishable fire, the never-dying worm of each, —
the society of the damned were misery unutterable.
Conceive this alone, to which St. Paul says human
nature of itself went, hatred of God, intrinsic hate-
fulness, hatred of one another. Gather in one in
your mind an assembly of all those men or women,
from whom, whether in history or in fiction, your
memory most shrinks, (no fiction can reach the rea
lity of human sin ; ) gather in mind all which is most
loathsome, most revolting, the most treacherous, mali
cious, coarse, brutal, inventive, fiendish cruelty, un-
softened by any remains of human feeling ; such as
thou couldst not endure for a single hour ; conceive
the fierce fiery eyes of hate, spite, phrenzied rage,
ever fixed on thee, glaring on thee, looking thee
through and through with hate ; sleepless in their
horrible gaze ; felt, if not seen ; never turning from
thee, never to be turned from, except to quail under
* Tit. iii. 3.

16
the like piercing sight of hate ; hear those yells of
blaspheming concentrated hate, as they echo along
the lurid vault of hell ; every one hating everyone, and
venting that hate unceasingly with every inconceiv
able expression of malignity ; conceive all this, multi
plied, intensified, reflected all around, on every side;
and, amid it, the especial hatred of any one, whose
sins thou sharedst, whom thou didst thoughtlessly
encourage in sin, or teach some sin before unknown
— a deathlessness of hate were in itself everlasting
misery. Yet a fixedness in that state, in which the
hardened, malignant, sinner dies, involves, without
any further retribution of God, this endless misery.
Thus far, then, the objection against God's justice
in annexing eternal misery to the rejection of Himself
in this short life, must take a new form. As we see
in Satan, the sinner, even apart from God's judg
ments on sin, carries about within him his own Hell.
So then men must question, not God's justice, in
that sin, persevered in to the end of this life, must
involve misery, coextensive with the being of the
sinner ; rather, if he question at all, he will have to
question the wisdom and love of God, in that He
created beings, capable of that aweful choice, whe
ther they would of their own free-will accept or re
ject Himself, and that for ever. And so we come
back to the primal insoluble mystery, the origin of
evil, which yet, unless we would be Atheists, we
must admit to be compatible with the Existence of
an All-good, All-loving, All-wise, Almighty God.
We may, with reverence, rejoice in that aweful gift
of our liberty and free-agency ; we may rejoice in it,
because it is the gift of God. But it is the key of

17
heaven and hell. Sanctified by the grace of God, we
have that jubilant joy, above all joys, freely to love
Him Wlio loved us and created us for His love, and
gave us ourselves, that, by the might of His grace,
we might, with the whole power of our natural and
supernatural being, love Him. But the gift of im
mortal life, and the power of immortal love, involves
also the power of rejecting the infinite love and the
choice of the deathless death. God says, " a why will
ye die ? I have no pleasure in the death of him that
dieth. Wherefore turn and live ye." But it may
be, and seems to be, a contradiction, that an intelli
gent creature should not be endowed with a power
of choice, (our word 'intelligent' primarily involves
choice,) or that any being should have a really free
inherent power to choose, and not be able to choose
amiss and to abide perseveringly in that choice ; or
that that choice should not extend to That which is,
above all, the Object of choice, the Supreme Good,
God. Thoughtful men have held it to be a contra
diction, that any created being should have the free
power, freely to choose God, without the fearful cor
responding power of refusing Him. Certainly, it
seems so. Grace, which should not only bear us on
with a mighty tide over every obstacle to choose our
God, but which should be absolutely, physically, irre
sistible, would, of course, destroy free-will. With
whatever preponderance of grace God might create
any being, yet, if free-will is left at all, it must be
free to reject God, and, if free to reject Him, then
free also to reject Him perseveringly. And so, al
though both angels and man were created in a state
a Ezek. xviii. 31, 2.
C

18
of grace, and were empowered, yea, were impelled by
that grace, freely themselves to choose God, it would
be a contradiction that there should be those created,
whose bliss should be the perpetual inflow of the love
of God and the vision of Himself, without there be
ing those who, being created and endowed for the
everlasting love of and communion with God, did,
by a misuse of their free-will, shut themselves out
eternally from it. This would in itself involve the
eternal existence of the self-hating, each-other-hating,
God-hating, hideous and miserable society of Hell.
Wherein the misery of Hell should consist, we can,
of course, know from God only.
"b Christ on Himself, considerate Master, took
The utterance of that doctrine's fearful sound.
The Fount of Love His servants sends to tell
Love's deeds ; Himself reveals the sinner's Hell."
He Himself has warned us, while we can escape
them, and that we may escape them, what those suf
ferings are, and that they are eternal. 0 they seem
to fall so heavily from His Human Soul ! It must
have been the deepest grief of that God-united Soul,
above every thing passing, above His own unuttera
ble Sufferings, above that temporary forsaking by the
"b "When first God stirred me, and the Church's word
Came as a theme of reverent search and fear
It little cost to own the lustre clear
O'er rule she taught, and rite, and doctrine poured ;
For conscience craved, and reason did accord.
Yet one there was that wore a mien austere,
And I did doubt, and, troubled, asked to hear
Whose mouth had force to edge so sharp a sword.
My mother oped her trust, the Holy Book ;
And healed my pang. She pointed, and I found
Christ, &c. Lyra Apostolica No 82 (Dr Newman's) p. 97.

19
Father, and the bearing of our sins and His Father's
wrath on sin, that there would be those, who would
not be redeemed, who would still not love God, Who
so loved them as to give His own Son for them, and
so, who must eternally hate Him, and the wrath of
God abide on them °. How heavily they sound !
They are not words of rebuke, but of solemn warn
ing as to an evil choice. Part, He says, with any
thing which causes thee to offend God, although it
should be dear to thee, as right eye or hand or foot d,
and the parting as painful, as, thyself, to pluck them
out or cut them off. " It is better for thee to enter
into life, maimed, than having two hands, to go into
Hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where
their worm (their own individual worm) dieth not,
and the fire is not quenched."
Or, after that description of the merciful and the
unmerciful, of those who fed, housed, clothed, visited,
Christ in the poor, and of those who, in their selfish
neglect of the poor, despised Christ, " e these shall go
away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous
into life everlasting." " Depart, ye cursed, into ever
lasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."
How mournfully tender are the words over the
traitor, if they might yet scare him from his treason !
" Good were it for that man, if he had never been
born ! " Yet good were it for us to have been born,
if, after countless ages of any suffering1, we were, at
the end of them, to be restored and to behold God !
c S.John iii. 36. d S. Mark ix. 43-48. « S. Matt. xxv. 46, 41.
' " A hope that after the day of Judgement God's Mercy may; in
the lapse of infinite ages, find some mode of restoring the lost, con
sistently with the maintenance ofHis purity and justice." Bp.Tait,
The word of God and the ground of faith, Part II. Pref. p. vi.
C2

20
God has made our salvation to cost Him so dear a
price, and us so little, that men do not let themselves
think, what is to them the value of salvation. All
but eternity passes away ; what has passed away is
as if it had never been. Countless myriads of years
of suffering would come to an end, and if, when they
had come to an end, the soul were then admitted to
the beatific vision of God and the bliss in His Infi
nite love, all the past myriads of years of suffering
would be but a speck, and would absolutely disap
pear, in that eternity of love. Good, eternally good
would it be for that soul to have been born ; for it
would, through whatever period of suffering in time,
have attained to the one only End of the creature,
eternal bliss in the Bliss of God.
"sWhat doth it profit a man to gain the whole
world," our Lord again appeals to us, " and lose his
own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for
his soul?" Yet, if souls in the end were restored,
they would not be lost. A person might lose a pass
ing period of bliss, but even this would only be a
loss which would then be utterly effaced. He might
lose, (and even many of those who are saved do lose
for ever,) a portion of the capacity of containing God
and His infinite love. A stunted soul, although full
according to its measure, has still not the same capa
city of knowing or loving God, or containing the ever-
filling Ocean of His Love. So far he is subject to
great irreparable loss. But so great is the least por
tion of the love of God, so great the bliss of loving
Him and being loved by Him, even if one were the
narrowest soul which God had created, that, being
s S. Matt. xvi. 26

21
such, one would have gained an eternity of bliss,
such as the Precious Blood of Christ and His in
finite Merits could alone obtain for one. To " save
his soul " and to " lose it," are plainly contradictories.
Such an one would have saved his soul. It must
then mean something else, something irreparable, to
"lose" it.
So too when our Lord bids us, "hFear not them
which can kill the body, but are not able to kill the
soul ; but rather fear Him which is able to destroy
both body and soul in Hell," death is opposed to
death, destruction to destruction, a destruction, which
is but partial, of this body in this fleeting life, to a
destruction which is complete, of body and soul in
Hell. Temporary suffering is not destruction. Not
until the last torturing pang had crushed out the last
quivering remains of life, had men killed the martyr's
marred and shapeless body. What then can destruc
tion of soul and body mean but that deathless death,
from which all life is gone ?
The Apostles, speaking by the Holy Ghost, do but
say, in other words, the self- same truth. When they
say, that "Hhey who obey not the Gospel of our
Lord Jesus Christ, shall be punished with everlast
ing destruction from the Presence of the Lord,
when He shall be revealed in flaming fire," what do
they but echo those same words of our Lord, " ever
lasting punishment," "destroy body and soul in Hell"
< ' depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire ? " Or the be
loved Apostle, when he had to describe how those not
written in the book of life were cast into the lake of
fire k " and each shall be tormented in fire and brim-
'> lb. x. 28. ' 2 Thess. i. 7-9. k Eev. xx. 15.

22
stone, and the smoke of their torment goeth up for
ever and ever\
You see then, even from these few places, how lit
tle the doctrine of everlasting punishment depends up
on the meaning of the single word, di<bvw<i. Not that
there is any doubt as to that word. It is a flimsy
plea for an unbelief, not resting on such pleas but
on men's a priori conceptions of their God, when
some have said, that the Hebrew word which is used
for eternity is used also for a term less than eternity.
Strange argument this, in the mouth of those who
deny that the Hebrews knew of the immortality of
the soul. As if it were any proof that our Lord did
not mean to reveal immortality of suffering to those
who did believe in the immortality of the soul, when
He used the word which to them expressed ever
lasting, and only everlasting, because a word was
used by the Hebrews b, of eternity and also of time
less than eternity. Yet even of the Hebrew word this
at least is certain that it is not used prospectively
of any thing less than an unbroken continuity, co- ex
tensive with the existence of that of which it is
spoken. " °An everlasting covenant" or "d a statute
for ever " is a covenant or statute co-existent with the
being of the people, as God's people ; a " e servant for
ever " is a servant during his whole natural life. So
then, when used of the Being of God, it expresses
God's Eternity f; when used of the kingdom of Gode or
of Christ h, it denotes a kingdom which shall have no
- lb. xiv. 10, 11. ets aiSvas a'uovayv. * D^ty.
c Gen. xvii. 7. 13. &c. d Lev. xvi. 29. &c. Ex. xii. 14, 17.
« Deut. xv. 17, 1 Sam. xxviii. 12. * Gen. xxi. 33, Ps. xc. 2,
xciii. 2, Is. xl. 28. s Ps. ix. 8, x. 16, xxix. 10. >> Ps. xlv. 7.

23
end ; when used of man's being after the resurrection,
the "everlasting life1" or "everlasting contempt1," to
which, it is declared, men shall severally rise, describe
their mode of being, unending as themselves.
But, beyond even this, our Lord, when He declar
ed the everlasting woe of those who should reject
God unto the end, was speaking to those who already
believed never-ending punishment; and the wordk, in
which He willed that it should be handed down to
all who should believe in Him, had, to a Greek, no
other meaning. It would be a forced meaning in
itself, it would have been a forced meaning to those
to whom our Lord used it, if He had used it in any
undefined sense. "Interpret the Scripture," men
say ', " like any book." Of what then could Plato or
any Greek-speaking Heathen or Christian understand
it, save of that which is truly everlasting ? Of what
could the poor understand it, to whom the Gospel
was preached, whose special property it was and is ?
If endless duration of suffering, which Jews and Hea
then believed when Jesus came, had been an error,
what would these words be but an emphatic confir
mation of the error ? It is not a mere question of
language. The moral aspect of the use of the word
lies far deeper than any question as to its abstract
meaning. It is this which edges the force of the
familiar argument, that you must not take in two
fold and ambiguous senses the self-same word, under
which our Lord in the same sentence spoke of the un
ending life and the unending death. The unmerci
ful shall go away into everlasting punishment m, but
' Dan. xii. 2. k auuvto?.
1 Ess. and Eev. (Prof. Jowett.)p. 377. m koXjostlv aiwviov.

24
the righteous into life everlasting n. If there is any
one thing in the Gospel, which one should expect to
be declared in clear and unmistakeable language, it
would be the issue of this our state of trial here, that
in which all should end, the result in which the ac
ceptance or rejection of God's clearly -revealed will
should issue, of weal or woe. Any how our Lord de
clares it repeatedly. If He used ambiguous words in
this — I dare not, for reverence, finish the question.
But — in what could you trust any one, who should
use ambiguous language on such a subject as this ?
In what matter of this world would you trust one
who, in any matter of this world, should use the self
same word in two distinct senses in the self-same
sentence without giving any hint that he was so
doing? In none. Find any case, in which you
would trust a man, who did so in the things of men,
and then ascribe it to your God in the things of God.
I could not trust man. I could not believe it of my
God. No ! Whether any of you will hear or whe
ther you will forbear, whether you will say, that it
will drive others or yourselves into unbelief, I must
be faithful to my God. Could I think that in one
thing Jesus, the Truth, had used one ambiguous word,
had used one word, calculated to convey what is not
true, whether (God forgive the blasphemy !) as know
ing or not knowing that He did so, my whole faith
would be gone. For the word of Jesus would no
longer be certain truth. What would remain, but
an anticipated natural Hell, a sense of guilt, a sense
of deserved punishment, and no Atoner, no Redeemer;
none to pardon, none to heal ?
11 tfmpi almviov.

25
And who are the witnesses that our Lord meant
what He said? Not a single speculator, (however
original his genius,) but the poor, rich in faith, who
received simply what was simply said. The Gospel
is the Gospel of the poor. It was preached, " not in
words of man's wisdom," but by "unlearned and
ignorant men," by the tentmaker and the fishermen,
with the power and wisdom of the Holy Ghost, to
men like themselves. They, as our Lord appointed
them, taught the world, and the world received His
sayings. This, before Origen, was the belief of the
world ; this, it is said soon after St. John left this
earth, " a many nations of barbarians " too "believed,
* S. Iren. adv. Haeres. iii. 4. S. Irenseus, in paraphrasing the
Apostles' Creed, distinctly mentions eternal punishment as part of
the universal belief, derived from the Apostles. The whole passage
is, " There being so great evidence, we ought not to seek further
among others after the truth which we may obtain readily from
the Church, since into it, as into a wealthy depository, the Apos
tles brought together most fully all which belongs to the truth ; so
that every one, whosoever will, may take from her the water of life.
Eor this is the entrance into life ; all the rest are thieves and rob
bers. Wherefore these we ought to avoid, but choose the things
of the Church with the utmost diligence, and lay hold of the tra
dition of the truth. For what ? "Were it any small matter, which
was questioned, ought we not to have recourse to the oldest Churches
where the Apostles lived, and from these to derive, as to the pre
sent question, what is certain and clear ? Eor if the Apostles had
not even left us any Scriptures, ought we not to follow the rule of
the tradition, which they delivered to those to whom they com
mitted the Churches ?
"To which appointment many nations assent of those Barbarians
who believe in Christ, having the salvation without paper and ink
written in their hearts, and, keeping diligently the old tradition,
believe in One God, the Maker of heaven and earth, and of things
which are therein, through Jesus Christ the Son of God, Who, for
His exceeding love for His creature, endured that birth of the Vir-

26
having salvation without paper and ink written by
the Spirit in their hearts," " in speech, to the Greek,
barbarians, but in doctrine and practice and conver
sation most wise for their faith's sake, well-pleasing
to God, walking in all righteousness and purity and
wisdom." " Securus judicat orbis terrarum." The
converted world ever believed that wrath to come
from which they had fled. The unbelieving his
torian1" even assigns this as a ground of its rapid con
version, that they dreaded that wrath, forgetting that
it is not in man's power to in work into men the con
straining active conviction of the aweful justice of
God. But the martyrs, in the simplicity of their
faith, when they allowed themselves to be torn and
mangled and burnt, their flesh shredded by the iron
hooks or scorched by the red-hot iron chair, sooner
than incur, as they said, eternal death by denying
Christ, were better witnesses cto the truth which
they believed, than the erratic speculative mind,
which imagined an eternity, varying from weal to
woe, and from woe to weal, consistent only in this,
that it denied alike an eternity of ill and an eternity
of unchanging bliss d.
gin, Himself through Himself uniting man to God, and having suf
fered under Pontius Pilate, rising again, and received in glory, and
to come in glory, the Saviour of all who are saved, and the Judge
of those who are judged, and casting into eternal fire those who
pervert the truth and despise His Father and His Coming. This
faith, they who have without letters believed, are, as to our speech,
Barbarians, but in doctrine" &c, (as in the text.)
b Gibbon, Decl. and Fall. c. 16. c The evidence to the
belief in eternal punishment from the simple sayings of the Mar
tyrs, as given in Euinart, was to me the more striking, as shewing
the undoubting faith of the people.
d Origen de princip. L. iii. in St. Jerome Ep. 124. ad Avit. §11.

27
O poor, hapless, unintelligent acuteness of the na
tural man, how is it that thou seest not, that thou
palmest deceits upon thyself, and by thy evasions of
the truth condemnest thyself, that thou seekest, not
the truth, but to escape the truth ? How is it, that
thou seest it not, when, so soon as thou canst imagine
that the fire or the destruction may be everlasting,
but the sinner not abide everlastingly in that fire or
not feel that destruction, thou doubtest not, that the
fire and the destruction do last for ever ; that " ever
lasting " does mean " lasting for ever ? " Or when
again thou canst persuade thyself that it does not
mean this, but some lengthened period of time, thou
then doubtest not, that " destruction " is not " anni
hilation," or that " punishment" does not mean mere
loss or forfeiture of somewhat, but a real suffering —
how is it, that thou dost not see, that, each time,
Vail. Origen taught also the transmigration of souls into animals,
lb. In popular works he taught the eternity of punishment. Tract.
34. in S. Matt. n. 72. p. 889. in Jerem. Horn. 18. n. 1. p. 241. In
the c. Cels. vi. 26, he furnishes the ground of this. " All which
might be said on this topic, it is not suitable to explain now or to
all. Nay, neither is it without peril to entrust to writing the plain
truth as to such things. For the many need no further teaching
than that of the punishment of sinners. For it is not expedient to
go further, on account of those who scarcely, through the fear of
eternal punishment, (aitovtov /coXao-ews, our Lord's words, which he
takes literally) restrain the outpouring into any amount of wick
edness, and the sins thence resulting." The statement as to those
" scarcely restrained by fear of eternal punishment," and the ne
cessity of not speaking out, imply, of course, that the eternal pu
nishment was the belief of Christians, which he was afraid to dis
turb. This doubtless was the ground, why his error was not con
demned in early times. It had not spread, nor did he seek to gain
adherents.

28
thou liest to thyself, admitting to thyself each time
the natural meaning of God's words, so that thou be
not compelled thereby to own the whole truth of God ?
What is this, of which I have been speaking,
brethren ? Is it a question of the schools, a matter
of opinion, about which one may harmlessly bandy
arguments to and frov an abstract speculation, on
which it is of little moment whether we take the
wrong side ? Is it a question as to the attributes of
Almighty God, which it depends upon us to decide?
One should think so from the fearless way in which
some peremptorily deny everlasting woe, on the
ground of their a priori conception of Almighty God.
When men so speak, they forget that they themselves
are sinners. In fulness of life, men can " aput far "
from them "the evil day," think lightly of sin, try
to bribe by adulation God Most High and most
Just. ' He is so loving, He will not punish ! ' Far
different is it, in youth or age, when death comes
very near ; far wiser was that old Theology, in which
men meditated daily on the four last things, Death,
Judgment, Heaven, Hell. No question of philosophy
is it, but of the death which God has pronounced on
sin ; the death which we sinners have deserved ; the
endless shutting out from the Presence of God and
from His holiness, which our sins entailed upon us :
the death from which Jesus died to redeem us ; and
now, for ever, pleads, during this our day, for each
one of us, the Merits of that Precious Death at the
Right Hand of God.
It is not the question of one article of the faith
only ; for the faith is one, and lives or dies, as one.
* Am. vi. 3.

29
Never will any one, in truth, believe the Redemp
tion by Christ, who does not believe in Hell. God
became man, to redeem, — from what? from what, ac
cording to them, is equally remedied without it. He
died, — to purchase what ? What, after a time, is to
be bestowed alike on Judas and the beloved disciple,
on Nero and St. Peter, on Messalina and the Blessed
Virgin, on Satan or Michael the Archangel b.
Never will you know any thing of the depth of sin,
or the deeper depth of the love of Christ or of God,
until you not only believe in the abstract, but accus
tom yourselves to think of that aweful doom, to which
each wilful rejection of God's voice in your conscience,
and of God in that voice, was dragging you. Fear
not to look at it. For, narrow though the bridge be
which spans its lurid flames, that bridge is sure to
those whom it upholds ; for it is the Cross of Christ,
and Christ Himself will stretch forth His Hand to lead
thee safely over it. "cHe is our Guide, leading us
gently over death." Fear notto look at it, but fear, not
b " If all rational creatures are alike, and if, out of virtues or
vices, they at their own free-will are either raised on high or sunk
in the deep, and after a long revolution and infinite ages, there
shall be a restoration of all things, and the glory of all who have
been on probation, be one, how will the virgin be removed from the
prostitute ? what difference will there be between the Mother of
the Lord and (which to name is shame) the victims of the common
lusts ? Shall Gabriel then and the devil be all one ? Apostles
and daemons, one ? Prophets and false prophets, one ? Martyrs
and persecutors, one ? Invent what thou wiliest, redouble years
and times, and throng with torments infinite ages, if the end of all
is alike, all the past is as nothing, for the whole question is, not,
what we have once been, but what we shall be for ever." St. Je
rome in Jonam iii. 6, 7. p. 419. Vallars. quoted by Huet Orige-
nian. ii. 21. comp. Ep. 84. Pammach. et Ocean. § 7. p. 524. Vail.
quoted ib. c Ps. xlviii. 14.

30
to look at it. It is almost a sacred proverb, that none
are so likely to fall into Hell, as they who think
themselves most secure of not falling into it. While
you meditate on it, you will conceive a horror of
your sins, which, step by step, were dragging you
captive thither ; you will fear to live separate from
God here, as you would not live separate and alien
from His love for ever ; you will love His mercy,
Who, being God, became Man and died in your
stead, that you might not die eternally; you will
love Him, Who was born, suffered, died, to gain our
individual love, and while we, by each sin, thrust
rudely His love from us, interceded unceasingly with
God, that we might yet love Him and be loved by
Him for ever. While we were preparing our own
place in the " everlasting fire prepared for the devil
and his angels," He was preparing for us our own
individual place in the everlasting bliss around the
Throne of God.
My son, if thou hadst a second soul to save, when
thou shouldest lose thine own ; if God had clearly re
vealed to thee, that there was a second state of pro
bation for thee, when thou hadst rejected God perse
veringly to the end in this ; if He had revealed to
thee as clearly that the wages of sin were not ever
lasting death, as He has, that they are, — then too
sin would be base miserable ingratitude for His in
finite love for each of us sinners. Would that one
need say no more ! Would that you, each and all,
so loved God, as He deserves to be loved by you, as
He, in His eternal love for you, made you to love
Him, as, whatever you are, He now too, at this hour,
loves you. But the love of God is known only by
those who love. The fear of God displeased drives

31
men to God appeased. We dare not be wiser than
God Who said by His Apostle, " d knowing the
terror of the Lord we persuade men." We dare not
be wiser than our Lord who said, " e I will forewarn
you, Whom ye shall fear ; Fear Him Which, after
He hath killed, hath power to cast into Hell. Yea,
I say unto you, Fear Him." Listen not to them, who
repeat to you the tempter's words, "fThou shalt
not surely die." Listen not to those Who would
make Jesus a deceiver ; but listen to Him Who was
crucified for you, listen to Him Who loves you ; so
shall you for ever thank Him and bless Him, that
the fear of Hell scared you back from sin, and made
you take refuge in Him who loves you more tenderly
than a mother doth, in the Bosom of your God and
His everlasting love.
a 2 Cor. v. 11. e S. Luke xii. 5. f Gen. iii. 4.

ADVERTISEMENT.

I had intended to reserve the publication of this
Sermon for a small volume of University Sermons.
Its earlier publication at the request of young
friends here prevents my adding at present fuller
critical notes.
E. B. P.
Christ Churcii.