THE
"THEOLOGICAL'
tri-lemma:

THE THREEFOLD QUESTION OK
ENDLESS MISERY,
UNIVERSAL SALVATION,
OR
CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY.
{i.e., THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST,)
CONSIDERED IN THE LIGHT OF
REASON, NATURE AND REVELATION,
BY
Rev. T. H. Pettingell, M.A.
J . ¦ i

The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea, and gathered
of every kind; which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat
down, and gathered ike good into vessels, but cast the bad
away. — Matt. 13: 47-48.

NEW YORK:
SHERWOOD & CO., PUBLISHERS,
76 East- Ninth Street.
1878.

Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1878, by Sherwoqd & Co.,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D.C.

-Mp

THE THEOLOGICAL TIjI-LEMMA.
Single Copies, by Mail, postage paid, . . $1 .00
Three Copies, to one address, postage paid, . 2.00
One Dozen, or more, by Express, 7.25
AGENTS WANTED.
ADDRESS :
Sherwood & Co., Publishers,
76 East Ninth St., New York.

PREFACE.

This volume, entitled the "Theological Tri-lemma,
was undertaken while the writer was residing abroad,
and, with the exception of the Introduction, which has
just been written, was ready for the press seven years
ago. If the way had been open for its publication, it
would have been issued at that time.
But unexpected obstacles were encountered. Little
interest was then felt by the Christian public, especially
in this country, in the subject which it discusses. But
the time was evidently near at hand, when it would re
ceive attention. Of this he was quite sure. The man
uscript was laid aside till that time should come. That
it has come, the discussions now going on in public and
in private, in the pulpit and through the press, give
abundant evidence.
Accordingly, the manuscript has been taken up, and
again made ready for publication, and is now offered by
the author to his brethren in the ministry, and to the laity
of the Church, with the earnest hope and prayer, that it
may please the Master to own and bless it, as the best
contribution which he can make to the cause of truth,
and to the glory of God, which, above all things else, he
desires to promote.

IV PREFACE.
The work was originally written under such circum
stances of isolation, as prevented all access to the vol
umes of his own, or of any other library. He had few
books, at hand, but his Bible and Lexicon, which he could
consult. Perhaps this was well, as it led him to study
more thoroughly the Scriptures, and to depend on their
testimony, rather than that of human authorities, on which
we are all too much inclined to rely, in matters of
Christian doctrine.
While writing, he received from a friend in America,
Dr. Bartlett's volume entitled, " Life and Death Eternal,"
then just issued. It was very timely. Nothing seemed
better calculated to confirm his mind in the views to
which he had come, after many months of anxious, care
ful and prayerful study, than the reading of this book, in
opposition to them. If there had been any lingering doubts
as regards the character of this stupendous traditional
error, which the learned Doctor so earnestly labors to
defend, this volume, in the arguments employed, the
method pursued, the spirit manifested, and in the whole
warp and woof of its composition, would have dispelled
them. Some allusions to this volume will be found in
the body of this work, and several foot notes referring to
it, and to some of Dr. Bartlett's subsequent writings on
the same topic, have been added, as this work is going
through the press.
The author had not then seen any of the writings of
Messrs. Hudson, Hastings, Storrs, Blain, Ellis, Read and
others, which are reviewed and criticised in Dr. Bartlett's

PREFACE. V
book, nor has he since been able to read them. Of course,
he cannot say, to what extent he may agree or disagree
with them. He has attempted simply to express his own
sentiments, not those of other men. While one may, no
doubt, often receive valuable aid from intelligent thinkers,
whose minds are tending in the same direction with his
own, it is generally better to listen to what men may have
to say in the other direction.
During the past few months in which this earnest dis
cussion, with respect to the future state, has been going on,
he has read all that has come to hand, on all three sides of
the question — for there are, in reality, but three sides. This
has, however, been mostly on the popular side, for there
are but few of our religious periodicals, that have a repu
tation for orthodoxy to maintain, and subscribers to ~i
hold, that have ventured hitherto, to allow more than one '
side, and that the popular side, to be heard on this ques
tion. But the tide is fast turning, and it will not be long
before we shall see them all, very charitable and accom
modating to " heretics " of this sort, and gradually " chang
ing their base," as the percentage shall indicate the drift
of popular opinion. We have in foot notes referred to
some of these various recent publications, but we have
seen nothing which requires us to modify the views,
which we held when these chapters were first written.
Human opinions are so largely traditional that we
have learned to make very little account of the names*
and authorities that may be cited on one side or the
other of any doctrine, and especially, in behalf of this

Vi PREFACE.
dogma, which, with Plato's philosophy, so early found its
way into the Christian Church, and has been handed
down from generation to generation almost unques
tioned, as the orthodox doctrine ; but in the breaking
up of old systems of error, and in the more independent
investigation to. which intelligent men are now giving
themselves, it is a source of satisfaction to see how this
popular error is losing its hold upon not a few of our
best and ablest men, and how, in increasing numbers,
they are taking *the ground, to which our own inquiries
have led us, and which we have endeavored to set forth
in this volume.
We have just noticed in one of our religious papers
a resume of the views of the learned theologian Richard
Rothe, as given in the third volume of his Dogmatik, by
Professor J. P. Lacroix, of Ohio Wesleyan University,
from which we make the following extract :
' " The human soul is not an" absolutely simple abstract
entity ; but it is a concrete thing. As such it is subject to
the law of dissolution. Sin is per se' destructive. It
ruins, it destroys the soul that practices it. The punish
ment of Hell consists in the sinner's being left a prey to
the process of destruction, which is already preying upon
his very being. The completion of this process is abso
lute death — that is, it is the completed destruction of
that concrete reality which constitutes the human per
sonality. The dissolution of material organisms is a
species of combustion. This holds also true of the de
struction of the soul. As the dissolution of material
organisms is their combustion, so the corrosive, the dis
organizing action of sin upon the soul is the soul's com
bustion. In this sense the biblical figure of hell-fire is
strictly grounded in reality. The wages of sin is ruin,

PREFACE. Vll
destruction, death. As the flame feeds upon the consum
ing candle until its whole substance is dissipated and
exhausted, so the wasting disease of sin feeds upon the
substance of the soul until the personal organism is
entirely broken down and destroyed."
L; J ctt. j; ;u;-. Irvdkr '- 7 r- 0, -i\ ¦.uvV.'^i'>.^
Rev. R. ^V. Dale, D.D., of Birmingham, England,
recent lecturer to the Theological Students of Yale Col
lege, in a series of letters to the Christian Union, March
6-13, 1878, says:
" For it would be impossible for me to say any
thing on this subject without avowing that I had my
self rejected the traditional belief of evangelical
Churches, and for some years I had openly maintained,
that while those who have persistently revolted against
the authority of Christ, and persistently rejected his love
are menaced in the next world with indignation and
wrath, tribulation and anguish, there seems to me to be
no authority in Holy Scriptures for the doctrine that
those who die impenitent will be doomed to endless tor
ment. Eternal life, as I believe, is the inheritance of
those who are in Christ. Those who are not in Him will
die the ' Second death,' from which there will be no res
urrection. The chaff will be burned up in the fire which
cannot be quenched. The dead soul will be consumed
by the worm that dieth not. Those that 'obey not the
gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ,' will be punished with
everlasting destruction." * * * *
"We believe that 'eternal life' is given to men in
regeneration, that although the unregenerate have a life
which does not perish with the death of the body, this
life not being rooted in God, will come to an end : that
tribulation, wrath, indignation and anguish are- the des
tiny of those who refuse to obey the divine light which
comes to them, and that they are destined to eternal
destruction. We think that our position rests not on the
mere literal teaching of a large number of texts, though
we contend that the literal teaching of Scripture is deci-

Vlll PREFACE.
sively in our favor, but on the general contents of Reve
lation ; and we further contend that our doctrine throws
additional light on some of the central articles of the
evangelical creed. We regard our doctrine, not as a spe
cial theory on the future of the impenitent, but as a sub
stantial part of the general teaching of Holy Scriptures
concerning the relation of Christ to the human race, and
the salvation he has come to confer on mankind."
An eminent Baptist clergymen at the south, whose
attention had been arrested by an article or two, which
the writer had kindly been permitted to publish in the
Christian Union, over the signature of "clericus," writes
to express his cordial sympathy with the views expressed,
and in the course of a correspondence thus opened, says:
" Your past experience has been somewhat similar to
my own. 1 was raised up in the strictest Orthodoxy on
Eschatological questions, and preached them fervently
and honestly for many years. I took their truthfulness
for granted, and taught them without examination. *
* *¦ I was led to careful and critical examination of
the Scriptures, which resulted in the conviction that the
Word of God, from Genesis to Revelation, is utterly silent
on the natural immortality of man : and the silence of the
Scriptures corresponds to the silence of nature on this
point. The usual arguments from nature or reason are
untenable and prove nothing. The argument from
analogy will not bear examination : the worm that forms
the butterfly is not dead, but living: the change is a
process of life, not of death.
• " Natural immortality is the foundation stone of the
modern theological structure. Remove this and the
whole building will crumble to ruins: there is no place
for endless misery or universal restorationism. Put Jesus
Christ, the Life-giver, in the foundation, and " the whole
building fitly joined together groweth into a holy temple,"
symmetrical and beautiful It solves, those terrible prob-

PREFACE. IX
blems that have " tormented men day and night " from
the days of Augustine till now. It vindicates the justice,
mercy and majesty of God ; for righteousness and judg
ment are the habitation of His throne. The vast multi
tudes of earth who are unfit to live in a holy place
" perish in their own corruption, and " are as though they
had not been." And those who through grace believe in
Jesus Christ, receive the gift of eternal life and are raised
up in the last day.
"Christ is wonderfully magnified in His atoning work
and redemptive power. He is the source of immortality
to all who receive Him. This view greatly exalts the
power and grace of the Lord Jesus and harmonizes the
Scriptures on the sin and redemption of the race. The
penalty of sin is death ; the removal of the penalty is
life. Genesis and Romans are alike : the Old and the
New Testaments agree.
" The Orthodoxy of the day assumes that man is im
mortal, and, therefore, if impenitent, must be miserable
through all eternity, or else pass through a second pro
bation, and by God's mercy be restored to holiness and
happiness after ages of suffering. Bartlett and Beecher,
though differing so much, build their theories on the
same foundation of natural immortality. Both are blind
leaders and both will fall into a common ditch."
A clerical friend writes to express his concurrence in our
views, and in reply to an inquiry whether he was allowed
to preach the "heresy" of conditional ism in the region
where he was laboring, says :
" You ask if I preach Eternal Life in Christ ? Yes, I
can preach nothing else. But it requires prudence. I
never preach controversially. I never use unscriptural
terms, as 'the immortal' soul,' 'the death that never dies.'
I use Scriptural phraseology. Everything relating to
Death, and Life, and Immortality, is spoken of as the
Scriptures speak. I emphasize them as to their meaning.
I preach much on the Resurrection as Paul did. The

X PREFACE.
resurrection time is the period of reward. I do not, of
course, always harp on these things, but they have
their place naturally in my pulpit ministrations. I have
no difficulty, for my denomination generally are sticklers
for the Bible, and a ' Thus saith the Lord ' settles all
questions." Another believer, an aged layman, writes to express
his gratitude to the writer of the articles in the Christian
Union, above, alluded to, and, after* giving an interesting
account of the manner in which he was led by the Spirit
of God to a knowledge of the truth, he says :
" The glorious doctrine of conditional immortality is
so satisfactory to me, and so clearly set forth in God's
Word, and is, to my mind, so clearly in accordance with
the principles of love and justice, that I praise His name
that it was revealed to me as truth by His Spirit. Since
the fall, men are born into the world as flesh, God hav
ing withdrawn Spiritual communion with them, as Pres
ident Edwards says in his work, pp. 532-538. And as it
seems to me, they remain flesh until ttorn of God, and
unless so born of God, remain flesh, till they die a natu^
ral death, and if raised, are raised as flesh, and. finally
consumed as flesh, in the lake of fire and brimstone
which is the second death, and final end of all not born
of God." Other extracts might be given if it were necessary.
But the above will serve to show the drift in the public
mind at the present day, and the great relief and com
fort this view brings to the minds of those, who have
been trying to see God's justice and goodness through
the gloom, which this old dogma throws around His
character. The writer of this volume has written with the earn-

PREFACE. XI
estness of true conviction. He could not do otherwise.
He has sometimes used strong and emphatic language.
The subject requires it. Error thrives under gentle
treatment. But he has endeavored to write as one
" speaking the truth in love." He is sure he has noth
ing but love in his heart for his Christian brethren, who
are earnestly inquiring after the truth. He knows the
power of early habits of thought in religious matters. He
has the deepest sympathy for those who are struggling to
free themselves from the influence of time-honored, but
unchristian dogmas, and deeply rooted beliefs, that are
seen to have no real foundation in truth. He would fain
help them to the extent of His ability. For such, this
work has been written.
No one can be more sensible of its imperfections
than himself. Would that it weje more worthy of the
cause it advocates. But he would fain hope and pray, that
He who often chooses things that are weak, and despised
to bring to naught things which are mighty, will be pleased
to use it, to aid in overturning this mighty error.
Those who take up the book to criticise and oppose,
will, no doubt, find enough to gratify their desires.
But if they must oppose, he begs that they will at least,
read what he has written, that they may know just what
they are opposing. " Strike, but Hear." And he also,
most earnestly requests, that they will not charge upon him
sentiments that he has not expressed, because forsooth, some
body else, who has written on this subject, may have held
them.

Xll PREFACE.
He had originally proposed, and intended up to the
last moment of going to press, to publish the work anony
mously, under the pseudonym of "Clericus;" not
however from fear, or from modesty, but simply that his
arguments might have their own proper influence —
neither more nor less. But it has seemed better, on the
whole, to hold himself personally responsible for what he
has written ; and if any one should wish to communi
cate with him with reference to the book, or its subject
matter, to give him the opportunity. He is just on the
point of removing from New York, and may, after this
date, be addressed as follows :
J. H. PETTINGELL,
n. w. cor. broad and pine sts.,
Philadelphia, Pa.
New York. March 30, 1878.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION  "15
PART FIRST,
Preliminary. chapter i.
• The Common Belief ; Its Consequences. The Gospel a mes
sage of Eternal Life  ' . 45
CHAPTER II.
The Real question at issue ; Misuse of language ; Scriptural
terms perverted. . . . . . . , . 58 ¦
PART SECOND,
Teachings of Reason and Nature.
chapter iii.
Reason enlightened by Revelation teaches that immortality is
the peculiar attribute of Deity. Deductions of logic irre
sistible. The Dilemma. ...,,. 68
CHAPTER IV.
Teachings of Nature enlightened by Revelation. Nature of
the soul ; its two-fold life. Words used in a double and
contradictory sense. Destruction not necessarily annihil
ation. .......... 77
CHAPTER V.
Analogies, Vegetables. The Chrysalis. Successive creations
and destructions. Survival of th» Fittest. Everything
must preserve its normal condition or premature ruin en
sues. Nobility of Man's nature. ... 86
CHAPTER VI.
The instinct of immortality ; what it shows. The belief pop
ular, and why ? The Papal Church. The Reformation.
Skepticism.  g4
PART THIRD,
Argument from Revelation.
chapter vii.
Successive steps in Creation. Different orders. Psyche and
Pneuma ; the Soul and the Spirit, the one perishable and
the other imperishable. . . . . . . . 104
CHAPTER VIII.
The Fall of Man. The Penalty. How Adam must have
understood it. The Tree of Life. Why he was forbidden
to eat of it. The Natural comes before the Spiritual. . 114
xiii

XIV CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IX. page
Natural life from Adam transitory. Spiritual life from Christ
eternal. Life and Death actual, not metaphorical terms.
Hell ; Sheol •; Hades ; Gehenna  .125
CHAPTER X.
Five classes of Scripture Passages bearing on this question to
be considered. The law, like the nature of Man, two-fold.
Its temporal application under Moses ; its spiritual appli
cation under Christ. First class of passages. Death and
Destruction  ;.-... 137
CHAPTER XI.
Second class of passages. Eternal life given to the righteous
through Christ. The New Testament a new Revelation.
The New Life, another Life, and not the same old Life
restored. It is Eternal because it is Spiritual — the life of
Christ in us, ..... 151
CHAPTER XII.
Third class of Scripture passages. Death and Eternal Life
contrasted. Adam and Christ compared. . . . 164
CHAPTER XIII.
The old dogma supported by two props, viz. : Assumption and
the double use of words. Specious reasoning. What con
stitutes orthodoxy and what is heresy on this question.
Natural immortality not hinted at in the Scriptures. . . 180
CHAPTER XIV.
Fourth class of passages and mis-interpreted texts of Scrip
ture examined. Everlasting ; Eternal ; Punishment ; its
nature and end ; unquenchable fire. ..... 194
CHAPTER XV.
The doctrine that especially needs to be proved is, by its advo
cates, assumed. Reasoningin a circle. Texts in the Apo
calypse examined. ........ 213
CHAPTER XVI.
Fifth class of passages. The complete and final victory. The
Old and New Testaments contrasted. Two different
ideas of God. Truth gradually revealed. The last enemy
destroyed. Glorious consummation. . . . 227
CHAPTER XVII.
Recapitulation. Incidental evidence to corroborate our posi
tion. Solution of many doctrinal difficulties. . . . 242
CHAPTER XVIII.
Two principal objections considered. Conclusion. , . . 257
SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY.
Will Satan live Forever ?  269

INTRODUCTION.

Not to notice minor differences, Three general views
prevail with respect to the Future State ; and those who
entertain them may be separated into'three classes. First:
Those who believe that all men are immortal, the good
and the bad alike, and that the existence of the former
will be.perpetuated in endless bliss, and that of the latter
in endless sin and misery. Those holding these views
are usually called Orthodox. Second: Those who be
lieve that the bad will, some how, and at some time more
or less remote, be restored to the favor of God and
enjoy equally with the good a pure and blessed immor
tality. Those who belong to this class are usually called
Universalists. The number who entertain this view in
some form — not all of them, perhaps, as a doctrine that
can be proved, or which they would be willing openly to
avow, but, as a sentiment or hope, it is believed, is large,
and rapidly increasing. Third : Those who believe that
the good only will live forever ; that immortality is not
the natural inheritance of all men from Adam, but the
gift of God's grace throughjesus Christ, and that those
who^kTnot seek^ it or receive it from Him, cannot have
Eternal life, but must, like the bad fish that were gath
ered in the net, with the good, be cast away at the final
separation and perish forever. This is the doctrine of
the survival of the fittest, md those who hold it may be
called Conditionalists. 15

[6 INTRODUCTION.
These three alternatives are so distinct from each
other, that no man can hold any two of them at the same
time ; and they are so general and comprehensive, that
every man who receives the Scriptures as the Word of .
God, and believes in any future State — and we are speak
ing to fio others — must be included in one of these three
classes. This, then, is the Tri-lemma that is offered to the
Christian World for their solution — Endless Misery, Uni
versal Salvation or the Survival of the Fittest. It would
seem that the truth on this question must lie somewhere
within the limits of this triangle, and that one of these
three terms must substantially express it. Which is it?
It is to the solution of this tri-lemma, or rather, to the
demonstration that the third alternative is the only one
that solves the question, and that its truth is attested by
Reason, Nature and Revelation, that the author addresses
himself in the following pages.
It will be observed in this tri-alternative controversy,
that the. first and second classes, that is, the orthodox and
universalists agree in ascribing immortality to all men as
their natural and inalienable inheritance, and that they
differ from each other, only in respect to the eternal mis
ery of the bad. So they are united in opposing the con-
ditionalists of the third party, who believe in their final
destruction. But the orthodox and the cOnditionalists of the first
and third parties agree in respect to the salvation of the
good only, and unite in opposing the views of the univer
salists of the w<?;z</party, who hold to the ultimate" salvation
of all men ; while they differ from each other, not as to
the fact, that the wicked " shall go away into everlasting
punishment and the righteous into life Eternal," but as
to what and how much these terms mean. The former

INTRODUCTION.

17

believe, that, as eternal life, or eternal existence, as they
prefer to call it, is common to both the good and the bad,
and that the eternal life especially promised to the one, and
denied to the other, is a certain, pure and blissful condition
of existence, which will endure forever, and that the ever
lasting punishment threatened to the bad, will consist in the
infliction of positive suffering, to which they are doomed
throughout the whole period of their endless existence ;
while the latter class believe that all men since the fall,
are mortal and transitory, and in no sense whatever im
mortal ; that the Eternal life promised to those who seek
it and are found worthy, means literally eternal life,
tojjej^jjy^with all the bliss that flows from the favor of
God forever ; and that the " everlasting punishment of the
wicked means, as Paul says, (1 Thes. 1 :g) everlasting
destruction, witjojachjokens^ of severity and wrath in its
infliction as every individual sinner shall deserve — no
more, no less — at the bands of a just and holy God. So
far then as the question of punishment is concerned, the
former believes that the penalty for sin under the gov
ernment of God is not death in any literal sense of the
word, but imprisonment for life, under torture, which
they have agreed to call death, and that this torture will
never cease because their miserable existence will never
come to an end ; the latter believe that it is actually the
penalty of death, or what is commonly called under
human governments, "Capital Punishment."
The main reason for this difference of opinion among
those calling themselves Christians, all of whom accept
the Scriptures as their guide in matters of faith and doc
trine, is not because these Oracles make no declaration
on this subject, nor because their utterance is vague and
ambiguous — for there is no subject upon which they are
raore full and explicit, than in regard to the eternal life

T8 INTRODUCTION.
of the righteous, and the death and everlasting destruc
tion of the wicked — but it is evidently due to the differ
ent notions which men entertain concerning the soul, and
which they bring with them to the interpretation of the
Scriptures. Those who hold to the indestructible nature of the
human soul, and to its natural and necessary immortality
under all circumstances and conditions, as one of the fun
damental principles of their philosophy, will, of course,
interpret whatever is said in the Scriptures concerning
the Eternal life of the righteous and the death (there is
no such phrase as " Eternal death " in the Bible, death
is final, unless life is again given), and the everlasting dis
tinction that will be made between them in the future
world, in such a way as not to conflict with their theory
of the endless existence of both classes alike. So they
construe all those many passages which promise "life,"
" immortality," " Eternal life," etc., to those who seek
it and are found worthy, not to mean life itself; for
this is understood to be the common inheritance of
all men from Adam; but a certain holy and blissful con-
dition of existence, such as the wicked cannot enjoy: and
in- iiTce'Triaiiner, they construe all those many passages
which threaten the wicked with death and destruction,
and which depict their disappointment, grief, chagrin and
anguish when these threatenings shall be executed, not in
the literal and ordinary sense of the word, as implying
actual death and destruction, but in some figurative sense,
as implying that they will be doomed to sin and suffer
forevei. This is the dreadful conclusion to which the
Word of God, interpreted according to their psychological
notions, inevitably leads them.
But there are many, who are of this school of phil
osophy because they have been educated into it, who can-

INTRODUCTION. 1 9
not rest in this terrible conclusion. It appals them. It
shocks their moral sense. They cannot reconcile it with
their ideas of the wisdom, goodness and justice of God,
who calls Himself Our Heavenly Father, and who invites
all men to love and trust Him as infinitely better than
any earthly parent — that He should be willing to consign
any number of His children — much less so many of them
as must be supposed, considering how few are represented
as saved — to a hopeless eternity of sin and suffering. But
if, according to their philosophy, all human souls alike,
irrespective of their character or condition, are destined
to an unending existence, they must of necessity exist
somewhere, and if they are not pure and happy, they
must be sinful and miserable forever. But they cannot
accept the doctrine of eternal sin and suffering, therefore
guided by their philosophy, on the one hand, and by
their instincts on the other, they endeavor so to construe
the Word of God as to relieve their apprehensions, and to
save the character of their Heavenly Father from the
cruel aspersion cast upon it by their orthodox brethren.
They persuade themselves in spite of the apparent teach
ings of the Scriptures to the contrary, that all who die
without the knowledge of Christ the Saviour — and this
includes the great majority of those who have lived and
died thus far — will hereafter have another opportunity of
embracing Him as their Saviour, and that even the re
jecters of proffered mercy here, and the worst of offend
ers will, somehow, and by some means through His infi
nite wisdom and mercy, be purified and restored to favor,
and be gathered with the righteous into the Kingdom of
heaven. Hence the controversy between these two parties, who
are both of the same school of philosophy. They both
assume as the common ground of their argument, the

20 INTRODUCTION.
necessary immortality of the human soul: and while
the one party attempts to show from the Word of God,
to which they both appeal, that a portion only of the
human family will be recovered from the ruin of the fall,
and that the remainder must inevitably drag out a mis
erable existence in sin and sorrow that will never end ;
the other party attempts to show from the same Word,
or from reason, that no portion of our fallen race will be
doomed by a just and merciful God to such interminable
misery ; but that it must be, that all will eventually attain
to everlasting happiness. They each see the untenable-
ness of the others' position, and not a few of them, the
weakness of their own. But what can they do ? They
have by their philosophy shut themselves up to this di
lemma and must of necessity choose one horn or the
other : and so the controversy goes on without coming
any nearer to an end. And how can it, when both are
right and both are wrong ? Are not the Orthodox right
in upholding the sanctions of God's holy law, and in op
posing the doctrine of universal salvation as demora
lizing in its tendency, and in flat contradiction of the
Scriptures ? Are they not right in insisting upon the finality
of our present state of trial, and the irreversible separation
of the righteous and the wicked at the day of judgment ?
Are not their antagonists also right in defending the
character of Our Heavenly Father against the ciuel
aspersions to which the doctrine of endless misery
exposes it ? Are they not right in believing and assert
ing that the victory of Christ over all his enemies will be
universal and complete ; that He shall see of the travail
of His soul and be satisfied?
And are they not both wrong in assuming, without
proof, and as we hope to show, without any reasonable
evidence, and in spite of evidence to the contrary, the

INTRODUCTION. 21
indefeasible immortality of the human soul? — the very
thing that needs first to be established, the real previous
question, which carries all these other questions with it ?
which, if maintained against them, leaves them little or
nothing to contend for ? Is there anything in the teach
ings of Reason, or Nature, or Revelation, that justifies
the belief that God has given to fallen man an immor
tality like His own, subject to no condition or contin
gency whatever ? Must we believe that all the inhabi
tants of the old world that were swept away by the flood;
the countless multitudes that have swarmed upon the
earth since that day, generation after generation, living
and dying in ignorance and darkness, with no heavenward
aspirations, controlled by their animal instincts- and pas
sions, scarcely raised above the level of the brutes they
have worshiped ; that infants of a brief hour and hoary
headed savages, have all been garnered into a wretched
harvest of sin and woe in the world beyond, where they
are even now suffering, and must suffer without hope
forever and ever, excepting, perhaps, the few — rari nantes
in gurgite vasto — that have been snatched by the grace of
God from the terrible abyss and made fit for an inher
itance among the sons of light ? * Or shall we in the
* As we write, Pres. Bartlett's second serial article on " Endless
Punishment" in the Christian Union of Feb. 13th, 1878, comes to
hand. In this, ignoring this third alternative, and assuming, as most
writers on this question do, that all men are necessarily immortal, he
kindly allows that instances may " occasionally" be found among the
myriads of millions, who have lived and died without the Gospel, who
were fit to be saved, because they possessed a " potential or germinal
faith ; " but as for all the rest, they are doomed to endless punish
ment. To confirm this view, he quotes, or rather professes to quote,
the following passage : Rom. 2 : 12. — " As many as have sinned with
out law shall also perish without law." But he quotes it thus :
"shall be punished without law." This can hardly be the printer's

22 INTRODUCTION.
largeness of our faith in the goodness and mercy of God,
think of them all — blood-thirsty warriors falling like
leaves upon the battle-field, brutal savages dying in the
death grapple with each other, countless barbarian
hordes with scarcely more intelligence than the beasts
around them, and with no higher aspirations — predatory
nomads, stolid boors, cannibal man-eaters, the devourers
and the devoured alike, as transformed at death into
pure spirits, and taken to glory ? If not, where else shall
they go ? That these poor creatures were born with a
capacity for a higher and better life, is not to be ques
tioned, but were they born with the principle already
begun in their souls? Was their immortality already
assured to them ? Or rather does not their want of it
constitute their great need of the gospel? The Bible
surely tells us that dying unfit for heaven, they must
perish ; but does that mean that they must be confined
in the prison house of despair and tormented forever
and ever ? If it does — well — we will try to believe it — for
the Bible is the Word of God — but it will need to be
mistake — the very cardinal word — the hinge on which the verse
turns is changed in a way to give support to his view. It is
impossible to believe, that this was intentional ; it must have been
through ignorance or carelessness, but it is in keeping with another
misquotation of a cardinal word in the same direction — in his " Life
and Death Eternal" — which we have noticed in a subsequent chapter.
Indeed, they must "perish" (apohuntai), "be destroyed," "be lost,"
"fadeaway," " go to decay," as the word means; but as for being
punished with endless suffering, that is another question. That the
whole race of Adam are mortal and must die or perish, however little
or much they may sin, unless they receive eternal life through Christ,
is a Scripture doctrine ; but that any man is punished for Adam's sin,
or any body's sins but his own, or, in other words, the doctrine of the
imputation of sin and of consequent punishment, is too monstrous to
be tolerated any longer in any system of theology.

INTRODUCTION. 23
made very plain. What does the Bible mean when it
says " The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was cast
into the sea, and gathered of every kind ; which when it
was full, they drew to shore, and set down and gathered
the good into vessels, but cast the bad away ? " or, " He
will gather His wheat into the garner ; but He will burn
up the chaff with unquenchable fire ? " and a thousand
other similar passages, but that the fit, or fittest only are
preserved, and all the rest are destroyed — not kept in
another garner to be tormented forever — but utterly de
stroyed as by a fire that shall not be quenched or arrested
till it has completely accomplished its object ?
The writer's attention was first called particularly to
this question, by noticing how constantly and emphati
cally the distinction between the saved and the lost was
declared throughout the Scriptures to be one of life, and
death — eternal preservation, and utter destruction. Al
though happiness and joy were represented as the accom
paniments of that life, and misery and sorrow the pre-
curses and accompaniments of that death and destruction,
yet prominent above these accompaniments, were the life
and the death of which they spoke, as the especial and
peculiar portion of each. In reading the Gospel of John,
he was struck with the manner in which our Lord con
stantly emphasized these words, life — eternal life,
as the portion of His people, and how repeatedly He de
clared that unless they received this life from Him, they
had no eternal life abiding in them ; they must die,
must perish, must be cast away. Turning to his Greek
Testament he noticed, what he had never particularly
observed before, and what is not apparent to the English
reader, that there are two words in the Original, both of
which have been rendered by the same word " life," viz :

24 INTRODUCTION.
psyche and zoe. By carefully collating the passages in which
they occur, he observed that the former is used when
mere animal life is denoted ; that it is identified with that
which is material and earthly, and never with that which
is immaterial and heavenly : that it is not only applied
to man, but to beasts and to all things which have vol
untary motion. It is represented by the Hebrew word
Nephesh and the Latin word Anima. From this comes
the word Animal. It is that which man possesses in
common with all animals. But the latter word, zoe, seems
to have a higher and more spiritual signification. It is
constantly used to designate that higher and better life
which is imparted by the Spirit of God to His children.
It is used by Our Lord repeatedly in connection with the
word aionios signifying eternal. It is then, the eternal life
which is the peculiar portion of the soul that has been
born again. It is that other, higher life, which if not
received, eternal life is impossible. This word aionios is
never in one single instance used in, connection with the
word psyche denoting the natural life of man. Here, then,
appeared a broad #nd palpable distinction between the
natural man and the renewed man, which is not brought
out in our English version for the want of another word
to express it ; but both the psyche and the zoe are trans
lated by one word, life.
When the writer was led still further to inquire into
the use of this Greek word psyche and its equivalent
Hebrew word nephesh, he observed that they were some
times rendered by our translators, " life " and sometimes
" soul " without any apparent rule or reason, excepting that
the use mi the word soul where mere animals were spoken ¦
of, was avoided as much as possible by them, and the
word " life," or " creature," or " animal," or " beast," was
used, so that the fact that this nephesh ox psyche was some-

INTRODUCTION. 25
thing which man possessed in common with them, was con
cealed from the English reader, and even when man was
spoken of, the same word was translated sometimes life
and sometimes soul, and even in the same connection, as
for instance Matt. 16: 25-26, "Whosoever will save his
{psychen) life shall lose it ; and whosoever will lose his
(psychen) life for my sake shall find it. For what is a
man profited if he gain the whole world and lose his
own (psychen life) soul ? or what shall he give in ex
change for his (psyches, life) soul." Again, John 12 : 25.
" He that loveth his (psychen) life shall lose it, and he
that hateth his (psychen) life in this world shall keep__ii_
unto (Zoe aionios) life eternal." Here then there would
appear to be a distinction between the words life and soul
in the first passage where there is none in the original ;
and in the second passage the real distinction observed
between the psyche life and the Zoe life in the original, is
lost in our translation, for the want of the words to bring
it out ; numerous other passages of the same character
were noticed.*

* " Our study of the Word of God discovers to us, that in the
English version of the Bible, there has been a^ieliberale and persistent
effort to cover up the truth on this question, of the soul, from the ordi
nary English reader, unacquainted with the original language in which
the Bible was written. In the first, second, and ninth chapters of
Genesis, nine times is the Hebrew for ' living soul ' applied to lower
animals. Not once does it so appear in the English text. * * *
So, too, our translators of the Bible have largely concealed from us
the mortal nature of the real soul, by practically expurgating such
passages as bring the natural death of a soul prominent before the
mind. Where the Hebrew speaks of the death of a soul by violence,
they, as a rule, substitute some other English word. * * * The
design of this concealment of the meaning of the Hebrew is most ap
parent. And it furnishes a most convincing proof, if such were
needed, of the' radical difference between the doctrines of the Bible

26 INTRODUCTION.
The writer's attention was then directed to the use of
the word Spirit (pneuma) as distinguished from the word
soul. The distinction had always been very vague in his
own mind, and he believes it is, in the minds of most
persons who have been educated to believe that the soul
is the immortal principle in man. Indeed, the definitions
given of both in our dictionaries are very nearly identi
cal, and often interchangeable. But there seems to be a
radical distinction between the two in the Word of God.
That it is distinct from the soul, and superior to it, is
apparent from such passages as these, Heb. 4:12,
" For the Word of God is quick and powerful and
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the
dividing asunder of soul and spirit." 1 Thes. 5 : 23,
"And I pray God, your whole spirit, and soul, and body
be preserved blameless," etc. Soul denotes the mind, as
connected with the vital principle of Adam. It is what
man has in common with other animals. It is cosmical
in its relations. It looks downward towards the earth.
It. is natural and transitory like all earthly things. But
Spirit denotes the mind or superior and supernatural vital
and the doctrines of modern theology, in reference to the soul. Our
translators recognized the fact, that if they translated the Bible into
its equivalent English, Jhis radical difference were made apparent to
every mind. And so the question came up ; they could not evade it.
Must we put into the hands of the common people a book which will
stultify our own doctrines ? In translating from the original languages
in which the Bible was given to man, shall the Bible doctrine, or our
own doctrine, of the nature of the soul give way ? The result we
have before us. On this question, Bible truth went to the wall ; it
was crushed out of sight ! " — Bible Doctrine of the Soul, IVES, pp.
101, 102. While we are hardly willing to impeach, so severely, the
motives of King James' translators, we are free to say, that if the
Revision Committee do not correct these  mistakes (?) in the
new edition they are preparing, they will be entirely inexcusable.

INTRODUCTION. 27
principle of Jesus Christ. It is from above. It tends
heavenward, and is indestructible. It is the spirit (JVe-
shammah) of life, the breath of God Himself, so to speak,
which He only can communicate to man. The soul, he
receives by ordinary generation, but the Spirit only by a
new birth. John 3:3, " That which is born of the flesh
is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit."
The possession of body and soul constitutes a natural
,man ; but it needs the spirit to constitute him a spiritual
man, and an heir of Eternal life. The one may be
destroyed or lost forever ; the other is indestructible and
eternal. Our Lord possessed both. He laid down his
{psyche) life but not his (Zoe life, nor his) spirit. " He
was put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the
spirit : " and by the same spirit are all His people quick
ened. This distinction is more apparent in the use of
the adjective by which the two classes of men are
brought into contrast. 1 Cor. 15: 45, "The first man
Adam was made a living soul (els psuchen zosan) the last
Adam a quickening spirit '' (Fis pneuma Zoopoioun).
1 Cor. 2 : 14. " The natural man (soul-ical man) receiv-
eth not the things of the Spirit of God because they are
spiritually discerned." 1 Cor. 15 : 44. There is a natu
ral (or soul-ical) body, and there is a spiritual (pneumati-
kon) body.
When the writer came to apprehend the distinction
between the Soul and Spirit : the souli-cal man and
the (pneuma-tikos) spiritual man, as set forth in the
Scriptures, and the earthly and transitory nature of
the (psuchikos) natural life, and the permanent nature
of the (pneumatikos) spiritual life — the Zoe aionios life,
the whole subject opened as by magic with surprising
fulness and beauty. The clouds that had hung over it,
all vanished, and the Gospel scheme which, with all the

28 INTRODUCTION.
mists surrounding it, he had long trusted in, and loved,
and preached, and tried to explain, was clothed with new
beauty and power. The lost and hopeless condition of
man by nature, seemed more sure and dreadful than
before, because he could now fully believe the doom that
awaited him, and the great salvation provided by Christ
appeared infinitely greater than ever, for it was seen to
be a salvation, not simply from sin and suffering, but from
death, to life eternal.
The difficulties and perplexities which the old dogma
of the unconditional immortality of man had brought
round the doctrines of revelation, and sqme special
portions of God's Word, all vanished. These doctrines
were not disproved, but established upon a firmer basis:
the truths which were before but dimly apprehended,
stood out more fully and clearly than it is possible to
describe. He then began to recognize the "power of
Christ's resurrection," of which the apostle Paul and the
early disciples made so much : for on this, all our hopes
of another life are suspended. "For if Christ be not
raised, then they also which are fallen asleep are perished."
. The same law and the same Gospel were left, but they
were invested with a new power — the language of Scrip
ture needed no change, it became vastly more expres
sive. Death meant death, Destruction meant destruction,
and Life meant life, really and truly. They were no
longer metaphorical expressions, that needed to be ex
plained away, or invested with a new meaning before they
could be received.
The writer most fully sympathizes with his Christian
brethren in the anxiety and alarm they feel at the rapid
progress of universalism in its various forms at the
present day. The arguments that have recently appeared

INTRODUCTION. 29
and are yet appearing in quick succession, as he now
writes, intended to demonstrate the majesty and holiness
of God's law : the immutable distinction between sin
and holiness : the absolute necessity of the new birth ;
the finality of our present state of trial ; the certainty of a
future judgment, and the irrevocable doom of those who
die in their sins, he can most fully endorse, and empha
size even more earnestly than those who-use them. The
third serial article of Dr. Bartlett in the Christian Union
{Feb. 20, 1878) on "Endless Punishment," which now lies
before him, he regards as an able statement of the truth
in regard to the necessity of a fitness for the Kingdom of
heaven, and of the eternal exclusion of the wicked. He
could most heartily accept it as an argument against the
doctrine of Universal Salvation, were it not for the quiet
assumption that underlies the whole, that.saints-and sinners
are alike immortal, the very thing that needs most to be
proved, and the insinuation — nay, the declaration, at the
outset, that all that do not receive this dogma are infidels
and "Atheists." *
* A distinguished clerical friend says, in a private note just re
ceived, " I have read Dr. Bartlett's articles in the Chtistian Union
with care. He establishes' firmly the doctrine of eternal punishment,
but signally fails to establish endless misery. And yet, all through
his articles, he uses the two expressions as equivalents. Is it possible
he cannot discriminate ?
" He does gross injustice to such writers as Hudson, Dobney,
Hastings, and others, on future punishment, professing to give the
page and volume. He charges these writers with saying, that the
doctrine of future punishment is most dishonoring to the character of
God, etc., etc. And yet, the great burden of these writers is to show,
that the punishment is eternal. I had the curiosity to turn to the
pages specified, and I find not a word about future punishment ; but
what they condemn as unscriptural, is endless, conscious misery. Dr.
Bartlett can see no punishment, excepting where there is conscious,"

30 INTRODUCTION.
Nothing seems more astonishing, than the manner in
which theologians, philosophers, physiologists and meta
physicians treat this great fundamental question, and the
scorn, contempt, and not unfrequently, the abuse they
bestow upon those who cannot accept this dogma, with
out at least some show of reason or Scripture in support
of it. Many of them assume it as a self-evident truth that
requires ho proof.*
unending pain. To me it seems a most extraordinary blindness." Is
there nothing in the punishment of death, by hanging, but the
momentary pain that is inflicted? etc., etc.
' * In the profound and scholarly work of Dr. Noah Porter, on the
Human Intellect, where we should expect to find the question of the
immortality of the soul discussed, we find scarcely any reference to it.
He alludes to it in his introductory treatise upon Psychology and the
Soul, but somewhat incidentally, and in such terms that it is impossi
ble to draw any inference as to what the author believes or would
teach on the question. In his argument, to show that the vital and
psychical or spiritual forces in man are not two distinct agents or prin
ciples, but one and the same, he says : § 25. "It might be objected,
that this view is incompatible with the doctrine of the natural and
necessary immortality of the soul. The immortality of the soul has,
ever since the time of Plato, been often, not to say generally, taught
-as a necessary consequence of its etheriar essence, which, in its turn,
involved an essential superiority to, and non-conformity with, gross
matter. Plato taught the preexistence of the spirit, and regarded its
connection with matter as an imprisonment of its energies and a soil
ing of its purity, and the remnants of these doctrines have survived
till the present time, and have been supposed, in a certain sense, to
be sanctioned by, or, at least, to be more consistent with the Christian
doctrine of immortality. Whatever is important (?) in the Platonic or
the Christian view of the spirituality and immortality of the human
spirit, is not at all diminished by the doctrine of its unity with the
vital force  Whatever may be our speculations in re
spect to a preexistent eternity of the soul, the evidence of observation
and of facts, is decisive that it begins its existence as a vital agency,

INTRODUCTION. 3 1
Other writers, and perhaps the majority, consider our
unconditional immortality as sufficiently proved by the
common assent of the world. If this were a question of
fact, to be established by the testimony of witnesses, then
the greater the number of witnesses, the stronger the evi
dence ; but on a question of mere opinion, especially
when that opinion has been handed down from one
generation to another, it is no evidence at all. A thousand
men can no more stand together upon nothing than can
one man alone. All the time-pieces in Christendom, if
set by one that is disordered, or in error, cannot establish
the true time, against one that registers the time on the
great dial plate which .God has fixed in the heavens.
How often has the whole world been proved to be in
error by the discoveries of science ? Yea, how continu
ally do their opinions need to be modified by our advance
in knowledge ? Philosophers indeed may make new dis
coveries and advance new views, but let a man beware
how he ventures to call in question any theological
dogma of the past ! *
and emerges by a gradual waking into the conscious activities of its
higher nature. These facts it is the duty of the philosopher to adjust
to the conception which he may form (?) of its more exalted nature
and its immortal destiny."
* There once sprang up within the Church of God a ' ' sect," which
was " everywhere spoken against," and that, not by the heathen, but
by the Church itself. It appealed to the Oracles of God, but the
people to whom these Oracles were committed, and especially those
who sat in Moses' seat, as its authorized expounders, rejected the
appeal and pronounced the appellants guilty of heresy. Priests and
Levites, Scribes and Pharisees, Sadducees and Herodians, Doctors
and Lawyers, though differing on almost everything else, cordially
agreed in condemning the new sect, root and branch. It was a tre
mendous primd facie presumption against it, no doubt ; but the sect
was right and the Church was wrong, notwithstanding. — Minton,

32 INTRODUCTION.
There are others who have attempted to prove it by
the use of such arguments as would surely prove, if they
proved anything, the deathless nature of aU animal souls.
And then they would take back all their arguments, ex
cepting as they related to the soul of man. Others would
establish it by those analogies of nature which suggest the
possibility of another life, but have no bearing whatever
upon the endlessness of that life, which is the very thing
to be shown, and which at best, indicate not the survival
of all, but the survival of the fittest only ; which is just the
ground we have taken, but directly opposed to their own
doctrine of the survival of all.
Others argue that it is so agreeable to the natural in
stincts of man, that it must be true. All of these reason
as if man were still in his normal condition of holiness,
and had never lost or forfeited anything by sin. They
do not stop to consider, that these instincts and desires
may remain after the boon has been lost, and linger to
show man into what ruin he has fallen by sin, and to
urge him to lay hold of the hope of Eternal life set before
him in the Gospel.
Others still attempt to prove it by the negative pro
cess. They set up as its antagonist a man of straw, and
call it Annihilation, and then, when they have annihilated
this, they think they have established their own dogma.
The writer is admonished to be charitable towards those
who pursue this line of argument, and to be very modest
by the remembrance of his own former practice, when he
thought he was doing God service by stoutly insisting on
the indestructible nature of the human soul, and by trying
to prove it by this same process. The argument he used
and which is very common, may be reduced to the fol
lowing syllogism :
Nothing is ever annihilated.

INTRODUCTION. 33
The soul cannot be destroyed except by annihilation.
Therefore the soul will not be destroyed, but will live
forever. It did not occur to him, that the major premise was a
mere assumption or guess, without any proof whatever.
It may be so ; and it may not. But nescience is no good
foundation for a positive argument. As for the minor
premise ; it was not only assumed without evidence, but
contrary to all the evidence that is possible on the sub
ject. For what becomes of the psyche of animals when
they are destroyed ? They lose their individual exist
ence, but are they annihilated ? if so, what becomes of
the proposition ? if not, then why may not the same be
true of men ? And as for the conclusion ; it is a com
plete non sequitur, having no logical connection with the
premises. And here we must, in passing, protest as we have
done more at length, in another place, against the prac
tice of characterizing the doctrine of conditional immor
tality as the doctrine of annihilation. Because,
1. The word expresses too much. It is more than
we affirm or believe ; and it is just this excess of mean
ing that is used against us. Loosely speaking all men
who believe in any kind of destruction, believe in anni
hilation ; but in the strict sense of the word we no more
believe in it than those who accuse us of it.
. 2. The term is not found in the Scriptures, and the
implication is, that we believe in an unscriptural doc
trine, when on the contrary, it is just the Scriptural doc
trine for which we-are contending — the Scriptures terms
"to die," "to perish," " to be lost," " to be destroyed,"
" to be blotted out of the book of life," etc., are just the
very terms that express our belief. We want no stronger

34 INTRODUCTION.
language. We object to being driven out of the Bible
to find words to express our belief to accommodate our
antagonists, who wish to appropriate these terms to their
own peculiar use as meaning something less than they
were intended to mean. Dr. Bartlett in the Preface to his
"Life and Death Eternal " notices our protest, but says
he shall use the term because it is " convenient," "indeed
indispensable." He may find it so, but what a confes
sion ! Is it indispensable to a successful argument against
our belief, first to mistate it, and then to attack that
statement ? What must be thought of the cause when
its ablest defender confesses that it is " indispensable "
to support it by such means ?
3. It is an adroit way of shifting the onus probandi from
the affirmative to the negative side. Our opponents af
firm the endless existence of the wicked. We deny it, or
at least, call it in question, and demand the proof. But
instead of proving their doctrine, they charge upon us the
doctrine of annihilation, that is, they postulate for us a
doctrine which we repudiate, and expect us to try to make
it good, as though we had affirmed it ; and all that de
volves upon them is to show its. absurdity. Amid the
confusion created by this question, which no one has raised
but themselves, they would escape the responsibility of
sustaining their own dogma.
4. It distorts the real doctrine and presents it in a
wrong light. It makes that prominent which is subordi
nate. It assumes that it is the destruction — that is the
annihilation — of the wicked for which we are principally
contending, and that, as men are naturally immortal, it
can only be effected by Almighty power, when we con
tend that men, by nature, are mortal and transitory 
that death, since the fajl is _a natural process, and that
immortality and Eternal life are only offered them in the

INTRODUCTION. 35
Gospel.* It is a gospel of Life, and not of death that we
preach, and if they would only consent to look at this
doctrine in front, rather than in the rear, they would see
how glorious it is, and say with us, " Thanks be unto
God for His unspeakable gift."
But most men are willing to admit, that this doctrine
of unconditional immortality cannot be proved ; but they
say it ought to be true, and so they assume it as an axiom,
and build their system upon it. The old theological dis
putants dispose of this third alternative, if they condescend
to notice it at all, in the most summary manner possible.
Pres. Dwight attempts to show, that the soul is not
material, and having done this, he seems to have supposed
its immortality to be sufficiently established. He appears
to make little or no distinction between Soul and Spirit,
but quotes texts referring to the latter as equally applica
ble to the former. In his sermon (Vol. I.) on " The sen
tence pronounced upon man," he disposes of the main
question in this summary and oracular way :
" Adam was plainly threatened with the loss of immortal
life. Whatever else was contained in the threatening, this
must be allowed to be a part of it. It follows, therefore,
that either Eternal death was threatened ; or, Annihilation;
or, temporal death followed by eternal happiness. This last
will not be pretended. The second, viz., Annihilation,
could not be threatened, because it certainly was no part
of the design of God in the creation of man (! !). It
seems evident, therefore, that the first is the true and only
scheme of this part of the Scriptures."
And by " Eternal death," in the first supposition, he
* Principal Tulloch truly says, in his Religion and Life,'" Hope
in death can only spring from the principle of personal immortality,
and this principle has no root save in Christ."

36 INTRODUCTION.
means Eternal sin and misery. And the reason he gives
to show why the death threatened cannot mean what it
says, is, " because it certainly was no part of the design of
God in the creation of man ! ! "
Pres. Edwards pursues very much the same method.
In his long argument with Dr. John Taylor, " concerning
the kind of death threatened to our first parents," and'
indeed, in all his writings, he assumes that it. " is a state
• of total, confirmed wickedness, and perfect hopeless misery,
under the divine displeasure and. curse ; not excluding
temporal death or the destruction of the body, as an in- .
troduction to it."
The same is true of later theologians. They all follow
in nearly the same track. They all seem to suppose, that
when they have demonstrated the doctrine of a future
retribution, it cannot possibly mean anything else than
the doom of endless sin and misery.
Others treat all those many passages in the Scriptures
that speak of the future life, and promise it to the saints,
as so many proof texts of the certain immortality of all
men. They ignore the real and radical distinction be
tween saints and sinners. They argue against the doctrine
of " Eternal life only in Christ," as though it were the old
doctrine of the Sadducees, who denied a future life to all
men, and seem to suppose, that when they have confuted
this heresy, and proved the future life of the good from
the Scriptures, they have proved the future endless life of
the bad also, and that the only difference between the
two consists in the opposite states and conditions of that
future life.
It is astonishing how men have contrived to ignore,
misunderstand, misstate, and evade, the real question that
lies at the bottom of this whole subject, viz : Is immor
tality conditional or unconditional ? Is it the common

INTRODUCTION. 37
inheritance of all men from Adam, or is it the special gift
of God through Christ the Saviour ?
It is wonderful how sophistically, inconclusively, and
unfairly, they have treated it, when it has been forced
upon their consideration. ' It is especially surprising that
those who really love the truth, and desire to honor their
Lord and Saviour should be willing to concede to His
enemies their own highest prerogative, as heirs of eternal
life, and content themselves- by urging the claims of the
Gospel upon lower grounds, and refuse to see how they
are making it of none effect through their tradition, and
"making the heart of the righteous sad, whom He hath
not made sad, and strengthening the hands of the wicked,
that he should not return from his wicked. way by prom
ising him life." — (Ezek. 13 : 22.)
" Is it not time that this lie of Satan, this conceit of
Plato's brain, this figment of the school-men, this popish
dogma, were expunged from the creed of the Christian
Church ? Is is not full time that this glorious Gospel,
bringing life and immortality to light, which has been so
long hidden, or greatly obscured, by the blinding power
of this stupendous error,- were again uncovered and
preached in all its fulness and simplicity as a message of
Life to perishing mortals ; and that Christ were again
offered as the only Saviour from death ? not from sin and
misery merely, but from Death ? Alas ! that the God of
this world should so long have blinded the minds of those
which believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of
Christ, Who is the image of God, should shine unto them ! "
— (2. Cor. 4: 4.)
My dear brethren in the ministry : suffer one who un
derstands the perplexities of your position, who knows
your anxieties and cares, and who fully sympathizes

38 INTRODUCTION.
with you in your work and would gladly aid you in every
possible way, to address you — not as an antagonist, but
as a Christian brother — not in words of reproof, but of
suggestion and entreaty.
You have received your religious notions in the first
instance, as all men do, by inheritance and tuition ; as
students of theology, you have accepted your systems of
philosophy and of doctrine, with more or less-confidence,
from your instructors, as they did from theirs. Indeed,
your professors were required to bind themselves by a
solemn obligation, when they accepted their office, to
teach a specific traditional creed and system of doctrine,
and they are not allowed to call it in question. Among
the various conflicting systems that are so taught, you
have honestly believed, that the one they have taught you,
is the one that is true; you have taken the texts" of
Scripture that your teachers, and commentators have given
you, and the interpretation they have .put upon them to
sustain your system, and have, perhaps, found other texts
to go with them ; you have learned how to meet the
various objections that were urged against your belief.
You have taken this system to your different fields of labor,
and have moulded your discourses into conformity with
it. In doing this, you have done what you were expected
to do, and what you were employed to do.
But as ambassadors for Christ have you felt that your
responsibility in regard to the truth to be preached was
here at an end ? That you had no need to examine the
foundations on which you are resting, or to inquire with
docility of spirit of the Master Himself, What is truth ?
When by His spirit He has said, as to his Apostles, " Go
stand and speak in the temple to the people all the
words of this life " (Acts 5 : 20.) And when, as His
appointed watchman, you have heard the command to

INTRODUCTION.

39

warn the sinner and say " O wicked man, thou shalt surely
die." (Ezk. 33:8) have you gone to Him or to human
authorities to know what " This Life " is, and what
" The Death " is, you were called to preach ?
Has it never occurred to you that these words Death
and Life were something more than metaphors, denoting
depraved and holy states of existence ? that they
expressed realities, and were pregnant with a deeper and
higher meaning than you have been wont to give them ?
that the ruin of sin was more complete, and the great
salvation infinitely greater than you have been educated
to believe ? that Christ is entitled to higher honor, and
His gospel more necessary and more precious than
your philosophy allows ? Or, have you suppressed your
rising convictions and feared to follow them out, lest you
should fall under the suspicion of your brethren, and be
found preaching after " the way they call heresy." (Acts
24 : 14) ? Are you willing to knowjwhat is the truth on
this great question of immortality which is beginning to
agitate the minds of all men at the present day as never
before ; and which will yet more thoroughly agitate the
world till the truth is fully established and acknowledged ?
Irifidels and scoffers of every name are rallying to assert
and defend their most cherished doctrine ; they care but
little for the threat of endless misery, which Christians
are so reluctant to believe and so unwilling to preach, if
their own indefeasible immortality is allowed to them.
They deny to Christ who has died to give them Life — the
credit, the honor, the glory of this gift, and claim it as
their own by inheritance. And alas ! His own people
join hands with them and encourage them in their oppo
sition to the truth. We weep as we write, to see how
Christ, the Saviour, is wounded in the house of His
friends; how He is«denied and rejected as the chief

40 INTRODUCTION.
corner-stone elect and precious — the only foundation of
hope for eternal life, and men are encouraged to build
their hopes on the nobility of their nature and the gen
eral mercy of God.
O my brethren wait not to see whether " any of the
Rulers or Pharisees have believed it," nor till this doc
trine of Eternal Life in Christ alone, shall become more
generally popular. It never will be popular with the
world. Natural men will oppose it with all their might,
and the Church will no doubt, surrender the long cher
ished dogma with reluctance, and frown upon those who
do not consent to be bound by her decretals. You have
a higher Master. You have His Word. You can read it
for yourselves. Notwithstanding the veil that has been
thrown over its teachings on this question by our trans
lators, and the false construction put upon them by com
mentators, yet the truth stands out so plainly that it
would seem to be impossible for it to be hid from any
honest, earnest inquirer. Are you willing in the simplic
ity of your hearts to ask after the truth, with the deter
mination to follow the guidance of the Divine Spirit to
whatever result He may lead you ? Are you willing to
brave the consequences of such an independent inquiry ?
Are you able to bear the scorn, the pity, the censures
which your more self-complacent brethren will bestow on
those who shall embrace so unpopular a doctrine ?
We know that there are many, honest, earnest Chris
tian ministers and laymen, who are in great doubt and
perplexity, on this question of the future state. They
are confronted by a dilemma, neither horn of which they
can accept, and yet they have been educated to believe
that there could be no other. They have great respect
for the piety and wisdom of their fathers, and would
gladly confide in the learned men of the present day.

INTRODUCTION.

41

They are cautious, as they should be, about adopting
new views, however plausible they may seem, until they
can be shown to be in harmony with sound philosophy
and the teachings of God's Word, and yet, they are not
so presumptious as to believe that the farthest goal of
truth, has been reached, and that there is nothing more
for them to learn or inquire after.*
To such, the writer hopes he may, by the blessing of
God, be of some service. For such he has written. He
has no fondness for discussion. He loves and honors
his Christian brethren in the ministry, and out of it.
Nothing grieves him more than to seem to differ from
them in any respect. But he must be true to his convic
tions. He must utter the truth that is burning in his
heart. But he rejoices to know, that it is not to other sources
of light and knowledge that he invites them : but only to
a more careful searching of God's Word, and a more im
plicit reliance on its teachings. _ It is not to another Gos
pel or another Saviour that he has been led, and to which
he would now lead others, but to higher, fuller, richer views
of that Gospel, and to more exalted thoughts of Him ac
our Life. " Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His
Name." There are various incidental questions which are fre
quently brought into this discussion, upon which he has
*" Deliver me from the narrowing influence of human lessons,
from human systems of theology ; teach me directly out of the fulness
and freeness of Thine own Word. Hasten the time, when unfittered
by sectarian intolerance and unawed by the authority of men, the
Bible shall make its rightful impression upon all : the simple and
obedient readers thereof, calling no man Master, but Christ only." —
T. Chalmers

42 INTRODUCTION.
not expressed an opinion. This is not because they are
unimportant, but simply because their decision is not
necessary to the main question under consideration ; and
he would not have the mind diverted from that. It is
the custom with wary critics, when unable to controvert
an author's main position, to nibble at such various inci
dental matters as seem most open to their attacks.
The author does not rest his argument upon any
special . interpretation of disputed texts, nor upon the
particular meaning that may be given . to certain words
and phrases, but rather upon the uniform teaching of
God's Word, and upon the sense which every man would
give to its utterances, if he had no -opposing theory of his
own to maintain.
What may "be the real flature and constitution of the
human soul, and whether it can live at all, after its
natural and Spiritual life are both gone, and if so, for
how long a time, and under what conditions, are questions
to which the author has attempted to give no decisive
answer. At any rate, he founds no argument upon any
particular theory of the soul.*
It is sufficient for him to know that He who gave it
* For an able and full discussion of this question on psychological
grounds, and a learned criticism of Scripture passages bearing on it,
the writer takes great pleasure in referring his readers to the learned
and candid work of his friend, Prof. C L. Ives, entitled, " The Bible
Doctrine of the Soul; or, Man's Nature and Destiny as Revealed."
Published by Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger : Philadelphia, 1878.
Whatever the critics may think of the extreme ground he takes in re
gard to the soul, and of the new interpretation he puts upon some
disputed passages of Scripture, they will find it very difficult to answer
his arguments. They must concede the ability and candor with which
he has argued his points. The general conclusion to which he comes
though by a different method from that pursued by the writer, would
seem to be most conclusively established.

INTRODUCTION.

43

all the life it has, of whatever kind, can take it away, and
that He will take it, as He Himself declares, from all who
will not submit to His law and government.
What agonies the soul may suffer, in the process of the
second death ; how long they may be protracted ; what
tribulations and anguish may be visited upon the sinner
hereafter, by a just and holy God, we forbear to predict.
Every unrepenting sinner, and especially every rejector of
offered mercy, has reason to fear and tremble in view of
the wrath to come, " It is a fearful thing to fall into the
hands of the living God," for " He is a consuming fire."
But we cannot believe, that this means that He is a fire
that torments ceaselessly and forever the objects of His
wrath, without "consuming " them.
Whether the souls of the righteous, or of the wicked,
of either, sor both, are conscious between death, and the
resurrection and final judgment, is a disputed point, which
he has not attempted to settle. He has no theory, which
is vital to the main issue, to establish on this question.
With respect to the Second Advent of Our Lord, His
personal reign on the earth, and the order and manner in
which the great events of the future are to take place,
neither the advocates nor the opposers of the doctrines of
this book are united among themselves, and he sees no
occasion for bringing his own private views on these
questions into this controversy.
He desires to.hold the mind of the- reader steadily to,
this one inquiry. Do w.e become" immortal through Adam
or through Christ ? Is eternal life a gift of Nature or
of Grace ?
He pauses at the threshold of the argument, to see
what enlightened Reason and Nature may have to say,
and though of themselves alone, they can give us no
certain answer, they are found to prepare us by many

44 INTRODUCTION.
hints, to receive with strong confidence the declaration of
God's Word, that " The wages of sin is death ; but the
gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ Our Lord ; "
which declaration, we understand, not as meaning that
" The wages of sin is endless misery, but the gift of God
is eternal happiness," but as meaning just what it says.
This we believe, and attempt to show ; with what success,
every reader must decide for himself. It harmonizes with
all the utterances of Scriptures from Genesis to Revela
tion. To these divine oracles we make our appeal. " To
the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according
to this Word, it is because there is no light in them."

THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
PART FIRST.

PRELIMINARY.

CHAPTER I.
The Common Belief : its Consequences. The Gospel a
Message of Eternal Life.
The immortality of the righteous is most positively
affirmed in the Word of God. No Christian will for one
moment call this in question. Have we equal assurance
that the wicked will also live forever ? Is every individ
ual soul, without respect to its character here, or its con
dition hereafter, endowed with the same deathless nature ?
This is the common belief — with the exception of a very
small class of Atheistic Materialists, who, like the Sadu-
cees of old, deny all spiritual and future existence, to the
good and bad alike — men of all creeds, and of no creed,
have very generally everywhere united in calling them
selves immortal, and have held to this belief with great
tenacity ? /
It early became one of the most cherished and popu
lar doctrines of the Papal Church. Protestant Christians
have received it by inheritance and handed it down to us
as an almost self-evident truth as one of the fundamen
tal doctrines of the Christian religion. It is true, that
our Lord and His immediate disciples taught with extra-
45

46 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
ordinary emphasis and constant reiteration that eternal
life is the peculiar portion of the children of God, and
that all His irreclaimable enemies are doomed to inevi
table death and destruction. But, giving to these terms
no literal but only a metaphorical signification, Christians
of all denominations very generally hold, in common with
unbelievers and the world at large, that there is no differ
ence between saints and sinners in respect to the death
less nature of their souls. It is held that every child of
Adam that is born into the world, is born to a life that is
absolutely endless. That the life which God gives to every
soul in its creation is an unconditional gift, depending
upon no contingencies whatever ; that the creature can
neither lose nor forfeit, nor extinguish it by any act of
his own, and that the Creator will never, for any cause
whatever, destroy it or take it from him, how much soever
he may despise or abuse the gift, or fail of the end for
which he was created ; that the flame of life once kindled
in the infant soul will burn on so long as God Himself
endures ; that there is no power in sin, which bringeth
forth death, to put an end to it ; that the waters of Lethe
cannot quench it, nor the blasts of God's anger at the
judgment extinguish it, nor the gnawing worm, nor the
devouring fire of hell consume it, nor the agonies of the
second death destroy it. It will survive the wreck of
nature and the crash of worlds, and throughout all the
revolving cycles of an unending future hold on its way
unextinguished and inextinguishable like the life of the
self-existent God who gave it being.
Thus far most believers and unbelievers in Revelation
are agreed. But when the inquiry is raised as to the con
ditions of that unending existence, there is a very wide
divergence of belief. The Word of God evidently teaches,
and that portion of tfye Christian Church usually denomi-

THE COMMON BELIEF. 47
nated evangelical holds, that man has fallen from the
condition of purity in which he was originally created,
and that by sin the whole human race have forfeited their
right to an eternal life of blessedness, and have fallen
under the penalty of God's holy law that condemns them
to death and destruction ; — that is to say, when interpreted
to harmonize with the doctrine of the deathless and inde
structible nature of the soul, to the literal death of the
mortal body and the unending wretchedness and misery
of the " immortal soul."
But, by the great mercy of God, a ransom has been
provided in Christ, Who has died in the place,of the sin
ner, by which sinners may be, and many will be, rescued
from this fearful doom ; but as for the rest — alas that any
should fail of salvation ; but the Scriptures give no en
couragement to hope for the salvation of all men — eternal
wretchedness and despair are the inevitable portion of
their " undying " souls.
This doctrine, which is set forth more or less distinctly
in our various Church creeds and systems of theology,
finds expression in the Westminster Assembly's Catechism
in these words : " All mankind by their fall lost commu
nion with God, are under His wrath, and so made liable
to all the miseries in this life, to death itself and to the
pains of hell forever." "God having out of His mere
good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlast
ing life, did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them
out of the estate of sin and misery and to bring them into
an estate of salvation by a Redeemer."
Christians may differ with respect to the terms of this
formula, and with respect to o'ther points of doctrine, and
also with respect to the number of the saved and of the
lost ; but they agree in this : that the final doom of the
unsaved, whether the number 01 such be proportionally

48 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
great or small, is one of unending wretchedness and de
spair. It follows as a necessary deduction from this belief,
that this once holy and happy universe will never be re
stored to its original perfection ; that sin bringing death
and misery in its train having once gained a lodgment
here, whether with or without divine permission, it is not
necessary now to inquire, will never be exterminated or
expelled. It may, like a raging fire, be localized and cir
cumscribed within certain limits, but it will never like that
fire exhaust itself and die out, nor will it ever be ex
tinguished by God Himself, but will rage on without ever
coming to an end. And so long as Jehovah lives and reigns,
holiness and sin, happiness and misery, praises and curses,
life and death, will also continue and run parallel with each
other to all eternity. Heaven will resound with the songs
of the redeemed, and hell with the curses of the damned
throughout the ceaseless flow of eternal ages ; and the
time will never, never come when Infinite Love, Divine
Wisdom, or Almighty Power will have so successfully
triumphed over the works of the devil as to have utterly
destroyed them, nor over death and hell as to have de
stroyed them, nor when His justice will have so vindicated
itself by the sufferings of the unsaved that they can be
permitted to expire, nor when the foundations of His
government will be secure, and the loyalty of His obedient
subjects assured without this terrible exhibition of His
infinite wrath, like the smoke of a furnace, rolling up for
ever before their eyes.
These are the views that have long been commonly
held, by what is called, the Orthodox branch of the
Christian Church. It is the doctrine of our " Confessions
of Faith" of our Scripture Commentaries, and of our
Theological Schools. It pervades our Christian Literature.

SOMETHING MUST GIVE- WAY.

49

It is sung in the songs of the Sanctuary. It is taught in
our Sunday-schools, and around the fireside by faithful
parents. It is reiterated in the exhortations and prayers
of the conference room, and proclaimed with more or less
earnestness and confidence from ten thousand pulpits, by
the ministers of the gospel of Christ.
But it must be admitted that the doctrine of endless
sin and endless misery is not as boldly preached as in for
mer times ; nor is it as cheerfully accepted. The main
premise upon which this doctrine depends, viz. : that the
human soul irrespective of its character and condition is
immortal, may be as popular as ever ; but thinking men
shrink more and more from the terrible conclusion to which
it leads them. When they stop to consider what is
involved in the idea of suffering that is absolutely endless ;
what it is for conscious, sensitive creatures like themselves
to writhe in the agonies of hell forever and ever, without
the least possible hope of relief ; when they consider what
countless myriads of the human race, even with the most
liberal construction of the testimony of the Scriptures con
cerning the number of the saved, must already have sunk
into this abyss of woe, and. what multitudes are daily fol
lowing them there ; when they come to apply this doc
trine, not to sinners in the abstract and in general, but to
the case of their own neighbors and friends, and, it may be,
to their own children and bosom companions who die,
giving no evidence whatever of piety, they are appalled at
the conclusion to which their creed and their logic lead
them. Their faith cannot endure the strain that is put
upon it. Something must give way. Holding to the idea
of the endless, conscious existence of all men, beyond this
life as a doctrine that is not for one moment to be
doubted, they begin in their hearts to charge God fool
ishly with the cruelty and injustice which their creed attrib-

50 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
utes to Him, or to doubt the testimony of His Word
as to the danger of losing the soul, and the necessity of
laying hold of eternal life, or. to deny the existence of
the God of the Bible, or to take refuge in some other form
of unbelief, or, else, still clinging to their faith in God,
and to the Scriptures as His Truth, they earnestly set
themselves to find, and, perhaps, think they do find in
these oracles, in spite of their most positive declara
tions to the contrary, the assurance of the ultimate salva
tion of all men. And even those who cannot relieve their
burdened minds by doing such evident violence to the
letter of the Scriptures, still hope, because they will, that
possibly a second probation or some other way of escape
will yet be found from the awful doom of endless misery
which seems to be so surely threatened against all who die
in their sins. They may not dare to deny explicitly a
doctrine that has been held by so many of the wise and
good who have gone before them, though they cannot
reconcile it with their own sense of justice. They may
not, perhaps, be willing to admit to themselves that they
disbelieve it, lest they should seem to be sliding away from
the true foundation ; but they-cannot but hope it is not
true. They accept it, if at all, under a kind of mental
protest. It is that dark, dark mysterious doctrine upon
which they cannot trust themselves to meditate, lest they
should have hard thoughts of Him whom they wish to
love and trust. Indeed they do love and trust Him not
withstanding the cruel aspersion which their false theology
or rather psychology, casts upon His name, but it is only
as they include themselves among the saved; and — as
for the rest, — they comfort their hearts by saying, and
wisely saying, with faithful Abraham : " Shall not the
Judge of all the earth do right ? "
In the rude and unfeeling ages of the past, when the

CRUELTY OF THE DARK AGES. 5 1
severest penalties were inflicted for trivial offences, and
when the chief object of punishment was torment, and the
executioners of the law were called "tormentors," when
human governments vied with each other in the severity
of the tortures they inflicted upon the unhappy victims of
their displeasure and even the death penalty was made
as cruel and protracted as possible to those who suffered it,
and medical aid was invoked to prolong their forfeited
lives, that still more enduring agonies might be inflicted
upon them while dying, in those days, not so very long
since past, but now happily passed never to return, when
Church officers exercised the function of inquisitors under
the pretense of doing the will of God, this doctrine of
endless torment, so consonant with the spirit and practice
of those ages of darkness and cruelty, might easily find
and hold its place unchallenged in the creed of the Church.
But, in these " last days," under the softening influences
of the gospel, when so much is done to assuage human
sorrow and even brute suffering, and to relieve the dis
tresses of even the most undeserving, and mercy is mingled
with justice in the punishment of the worst of criminals.
and even the death penalty is made as humane and sum
mary as possible, men cannot but ask whether the
majesty of the Divine government to which all human
governments must look, both for their authority to punish
and for an example of the manner and spirit in which it
is to be administered, can only be vindicated by the in
flictions of tortures too horrible to think of, and protracted
without end ? Is there no such thing_as_jleath, actual
death under the government of heaven ? Has the Almighty
Creator no alternative but to imprison the helpless
victims of His displeasure and to pour out upon them
forever and ever the vials of His wrath ? Has He no
way of putting an end to their miserable existence; or

52 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
does He choose to prolong their forfeited lives, that they
may never cease to suffer ?
And when they are told that this is the inevitable doom,
not only of the rejectors of the gospel and irreclaimable
sinners in Christian lands, but of countless multitudes
who were born in sin and to whom no Saviour was ever
offered — of creatures who owe both their existence and
the conditions of their existence to the sovereign will of
Him who saw and predetermined all things from the be
ginning, they cannot but feel that there is a flaw some
where in the chain of reasoning that leads to such mon
strous conclusions, though they may not be able to detect it. .
The great divines of a former generation could school
their severe and-logical minds to accept all the terrible
conclusions involved in the dogma of the deathless
nature of the human soul, which they had received from
their fathers. They could in their zeal for the glory of
God's justice believe and teach to their docile hearers that
the perpetual spectacle of the agonies of lost souls in hell
would serve to augment the joys of the redeemed in
heaven, and that " should eternal punishment cease and
the fire be extinguished, it would put an end to a great
part of the happiness and glory of the blessed." (See
sermons of Dr. Hopkins, Pres. Edwards, etc.*)

*Pres. Edwards in his sermon on Rev. 18 : 20, entitled " The end
of the wicked contemplated by the righteous ; or the wicked in hell, no
occasion of grief to the righteous," (Vol. 4), after showing how "the
two worlds of happiness and misery will be in view of each other,"
remarks, " The saints in glory will be far more sensible of it than
now, we can possibly be. They will be far more sensible how dread
ful the wrath of God is, and will better understand how terrible the
sufferings of the damned are ; yet this will be no occasion of grief to
them. They will not be sorry for the damned ; it will cause no
Uneasiness or dissatisfaction to them, but on the contrary, when they

THE GOSPEL MADE OF NONE EFFECT. 53
It is taxing too heavily the faith of the men of the
present day to insist upon their believing doctrines, how
ever hoary with age and fortified by hum in authority,
that are abhorrent, at once to their reasons and their
moral sense. Men will no longer be held to those views
of God and His government that prevailed when all
sovereigns were tyrants and justice was but another name
for vengeance. They will not be terrified by thre'aten-
ings they do not and cannot believe will be executed,
nor persuaded to flee to a refuge of which they have
ceased to feel the need. They cannot be aroused to
seek for animmortality which they have been made to
believe is fully assured to them. If an alternative is
threatened which to their minds is truly incredible, the
truth which it is meant to enforce will soon lose its power
to move them. In this way the glorious gospel is made
of none effect through the tradition of the elders, and
men in increasing numbers are seen turning away their
ears from the truth mixed as it is with human dogmas,
and turned unto fables. They forsake the altars at which
their fathers worshipped, and betake themselves to other
forms of belief or of unbelief that have, at least, the merit
have this sight, it will excite them to joyful praises.'' * * * *
However the saints in heaven may have loved the damned, while
here, especially those of them who were near and dear to them, in
this world, they will have no love to them hereafter." * * * It
will occasion rejoicing in them as they will have the greater sense of
their own happiness (the italics are his) by seeing the contrary misery,"
* * When they shall see how miserable others of their fellow-
creatures are who were naturally in the same circumstances with
themselves ; when they shall see the smoke of their torment, and the
raging of the flames of their burning, and hear their dolorous shrieks
and cries, and consider that they in the mean time, are in the most
blissful state and shall surely be in it to all eternity ; how will they
rejoice !"

54 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
of seeming to be reasonable, however far they may be
from the faith once delivered to the saints.
This is just the result we have to deplore at the
present day. Everywhere throughout Christendom the
people are casting off the restraints of religion and for
saking the Sanctuary. Scepticism among all classes,
especially among the educated, is becoming very general.
Even among those who professedly hold to those forms
of belief usually termed evangelical, there is a scepticism
more or less latent as to the final and irreversible doom
of those who die in their sins, a kind of half-doubting
hope of their ultimate salvation, which greatly- weakens
the power of the gospel.
Earnest Christians look with anxiety and concern upon
the scepticism and irreligion of the present day. They
are enquiring earnestly after the cause and the remedy.
They ask, Why is it as knowledge and the spirit of inquiry
increase and philanthropic efforts are multiplied, that
infidelity, religious error and indifference increase ? Why
do not the masses frequent the house of God and listen
to the ordinary preaching of the gospel as they once did ?
What shall bring them back to the sanctuary and to the
faith of their fathers ? What modifications in the services
of God's house and in the method of presenting the truth
are needed to accomplish this end ? They do well to
inquire. These are questions of vital importance. But
does it not occur to any of them that their creed may re
quire some modification : that the results they so much de
plore are due quite as much to the nature of the dogmas
that are preached, as to the manner in which they are pre
sented, quite as much to the false light in which the great .
object of their worship is held up before them, as to the pre
cise forms in which they are invited to worship Him ? Not
that the gospel needs any modification; but is it not

HOPE OF FUTURE MERCY. 55
time to inquire whether all the human philosophy that
is preached with it is also from God and a necessary
part of that gospel ? Whether all the errors, per
versions, false interpretations, foolish conceits, and tra
ditions by which it was confessedly overlaid in its transit
through the dark ages, were fully exposed and rejected
in the Reformation, so that none of them remain to
weaken its power, or dim its lustre, or check its progress,
in these last days ? However practicable it might once
have been, it is no longer possible to hold men to doc
trines that contradict their intelligence, or to views of
God and His government that are repugnant to their
sense of justice.
This apparent falling away is not an evidence that
the truth is losing its hold upon the hearts and con
sciences of meti, but that they are becoming more critical
in their inquiry, What is Truth ? and less under the
control of traditions that have no foundation in sound
reason. The simple gospel has lost none of its virtue or
power. It is as really adapted to the wants of the soul as
when it was first preached by Christ and His apostles.
It is now as ever the only hope of a lost world. It is the
wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation to
every one that believeth and there is no salvation in any
other name. But so long as men are assured of their
indefeasible claim to an immortality without Christ, they
will have but little sense of their need of Him as their
Saviour, or but little fear but that God in His great mercy
will find a way to save them from the consequences of
their sins, in the life beyond, if not in this life.
But it is not from suffering chiefly, that the gospel
offers to save men, but from Death. This is what pre
eminently constitutes it Good News to perishing men.
Christ died not primarily to save us from suffering, but

56 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
from dying, He is the Author of Eternal Life to all who
receive Him as their Saviour. So long as the minds of
men are occupied by the delusive hope of an jmmortality
already assured, the light of the glorious gospel cannot
shine unto them in all its fulness and power. Christ,
though robbed of His chief glory, may still receive the
praise and admiration of men as the kind suffering Lamb
of God. But it is only as they are made to see and feel
that without His life in their souls they must perish
forever, that they will seek Him in earnest as their
Saviour. The real gospel message is a proclamation of Life —
Eternal Life through Jesus Christ to dying men — not to
immortals, but to mortal men. The grand feature which
distinguishes the saint from the sinner is not that the one
is so much better in his moral character than the other
that he may expect to be rewarded with eternal bliss,
while the other will be punished with eternal misery.
The world cannot see any such difference nor can they be
made to believe that any such distinction will be made be
tween them. But they can be made to believe and feel that
they are by nature destitute.of that principle of life without
which, however moral they may be, they must perish forever.
That this is the Life — the Eternal Life which is offered
them in the gospel of Christ. That it begins in the new
birth, that it is already begun in the soul of the saint, and
though feeble as the natural life of the infant, it tends
upward toward its source and will never be extinguished
because it is the life of Christ within him, while the
natural life turns inevitably to death and dissolution.
The Church of Christ by encouraging nat' ral men as
well as Christians, to expect immortality, have obscured the
main distinctiqnjbetween the regenerate and the unregen
erate ; they have dimmed the lustre of the gospel and

CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY CREDIBLE. 57
greatly weakened its power. And this, we believe, is
the chief cause of their want of success in urging it upon
the world.
The doctrine of immortality only in Christ would, no
doubt, meet with the bitterest opposition from men, who
pride themselves on the deathless nature of their souls.
But it has the merit of being credible as well as true. It
is the doctrine of the Bible. It is the doctrine that Christ
and His early disciples taught. When the Christian
Church again receives it, as she will, there will be no dif
ficulty in making men believe it, and believing it, they
will cry out with an earnestness now rarely exhibited,
" What must we do to be saved ? " The Sanctuaries will
again be^rowded to hear the words of this life. Christians
will labor with a zeal a"nd faithfulness to save perishing
men, which can only be awakened and kept alive by a
hearty belief, that they are actually going down to death,
and, unless rescued and brought to Christ before they
pass away from earth, they must be lost forever. Then,
and not till then, may we hope for the speedy triumph of
the gospel through the world.

CHAPTER II.
The Real Question at Issue : Misuse of Language.
Scripture Terms Perverted.
The doctrine "Thou shalt not surely die," or, in
other words, the certain immortality of the sinning soul,
is a very old doctrine, as the Scriptures inform us
(Gen. 3: 4.) But the assurance of its first promulgator,
" who was a liar from the beginning," when in flat contra
diction of the word of God Himself, -is hardly sufficient
authority for its truth. It is a very specious doctrine, as
is evident from the readiness with which it was first
received, and the currency it has always enjoyed in the
world. It is a very delusive doctrine, as we hope to
make apparent to any candid and unprejudiced inquirer
after the truth. It is a very popular doctrine, as is
manifest from the way in which it has insinuated itself
into the literature of all ages, and into the theology of
the Christian Church, and from the hold it has upon the
popular mind. It could not be otherwise than popular.
There is something so ennobling, so inspiriting, so flat
tering to the pride of •man in the idea of living, like God,
forever, ("Ye shall be as Gods") — something so re
sponsive to the instincts of his nature — instincts which
were implanted in his pure soul as a motive to perse
verance in the way of holiness, and which sin has never
eradicated; something so degrading and horrible in the
thought of extinction that it is not surprising that man
should seize hold of the hope of protracting his life for
ever beyond the grave, and cling to it as he clings to his
natural life.

DELUSIVE HOPE OF RESTORATION. 59
And when we still further consider how, on the one
hand, this notion of perpetual existence ministers to the
hope of final happiness, (for "where there is life there
is hope,") as in the case of the criminal under sentence
of death ; if he can by any means escape the execution
of that penalty, which is absolutely final, he hopes to be
able eventually. to escape altogether; or, on the other
hand, how the threat of eternal torments naturally fails
of its end by the very incredible magnitude of the penalty
threatened, and so, how, under either alternative, the law
of God is brought into contempt, His wisdom, goodness,
justice and truth are called in question, and His char
acter is aspersed, and how the work of Christ is belittled
and misconstrued, and how the progress of the gospel
is hindered by this doctrine of life everlasting for the
saint and sinner alike, we cannot wonder that the arch
deceiver should exert all his cunning to perpetuate the
delusion as long as possible. Surely the gospel must be
possessed of a divine energy which nothing can destroy,
or it could never have carried the burden of reproach
which this dogma has brought upon it, and yet gather its
trophies in the world. But its glory has been dimmed
and its career impeded and its motives weakened ; nor
will it ever win its early triumphs again, until it is re
stored to its primitive simplicity, and Christ is preached
once more, as the only Saviour of man from Death,
complete, inevitable and final Death — the only hope of
Life and Immortality for them that believe on His name.
We are aware of the difficulty and hazard of attempt
ing to controvert a sentiment that is so deeply rooted in
the human heart, and that has so thoroughly imbued the
language, the literature, the philosophy and the religion
of the world ; we are aware how like foolish presumption
it will seem to differ from so many of the -wise and the

66 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
good in the Church and out of it. We know something
, of the power of religious prejudice, and how intolerant
many worthy men are of those who disagree with them
in matters of religious faith, and how hopeless it is
to attempt (as Dean Swift says) " to reason a man out of
an opinion he was never reasoned into," or to argue with
those who have no argumentative faculty, or who, if
they have, insist on using their prejudices in the place of
arguments. We know also that there are many who have no taste
for discussions of this sort, and who prefer to follow their
trusted leaders ; and that the leaders themselves too often
find it more convenient and safe to take their systems at
second hand, than to form them by independent investi
gation, and so they hand down their stock in theology
from one generation to another. It is no easy thing for
those who have a reputation for sound orthodoxy to
maintain, to brave the suspicions of their brethren, by
calling in question any popular doctrine ; and then the
fear of the heresy-hunting dogs of the herd that are ever
on the alert to worry back any who may wander from the
beaten path, or else to drive them far away into the wil
derness, constrains many to stifle their rising convictions
that the whole truth may not lie in the pasture where
they are feeding. And so they prefer to chew the cud
of contentment and be quiet.
But we are confident there are also many earnest
Christians who are ill at ease in their present position on
this subject, and are looking for light, and who would
welcome any honest discussion of this question, and give
it their candid attention. It is for such that we write.
We boast of no superior intelligence, or learning or
zeal for the cause of Christ. It is supposed to be equally
dear to all our brethren. We were brought up " after the

CHANGE OF VIEWS! 6l
most straitest sect of our religion," and educated to believe
in the inevitable immortality of the wicked, and the con
sequent eternal perpetuity of sin and misery. We faithfully
preached it for a quarter of a century, relying implicitly
on the commentators and our theological teachers. May
God forgive us, for we did it ignorantly — but, led gradu
ally by the Spirit of God through earnest and prayerful
study of His Word, we have come — even contrary to our
own expectation and purpose to find our error, and to see
a meaning and beauty in both the law and the gospel,
of which we had before only the faintest conception, and
now, while we preach the same law and the same gospel,
it is with inexpressibly greater satisfaction and delight.
We would fain do what we can to bring others who may
be involved in this error to the same point of view. We
are not unmindful of the obloquy, the pity, and scorn
which those who dwell complacently in their error will
bestow upon us ; but we must be true to our convictions
of duty and utter the truth that is stirring our hearts. It
is but little, though all we can do, to give the remnant of
life to the work of dispelling this delusion, so derogatory
to the character of God, and so obstructive to the pro
gress of the gospel, and of preaching Christ, "Who only
hath immortality, dwelling in the light, which no man can
approach unto," as our sure and only hope of eternal
life. It is important, before we go further, to have a clear
understanding of the real point in question. It is quite
common for those who advocate the eternal existence of
the wicked to confuse their own minds, and the minds of
those who follow their lead, by introducing a great deal
of irrelevant matter into their discussion — to insist on
the importance of adhering to the testimony of God's
Word, and on the necessity of a general judgment and a

62 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
future retribution and so forth ; all of which is very good
and true, but it is quite one side of the point at issue.
This is not a question of the truth of the Scriptures,
but what the Scriptures teach. It is not a matter of
faith, but of opinion. It is not how much those who
agree in denying the immortality of the wicked may
disagree in other respects. It is a favorite method of
some in their endeavors to support the affirmative of
this question — to show how their opponents have disa
greed among themselves. *It is specious, but it has
no argumentative force. The Papist may endeavor to
strengthen himself in upholding the doctrine of Pur-
gator}', which we as Protestants all deny, by showing
how we differ among ourselves, but this is really nothing
in support of his dogma, nor does it make anything in
behalf of that other greater Popish dogma, of a place of
perpetual and eternal torment, from which the Protestant
Church failed to free itself in the Reformation, for those"
who still cling to it, to show how they who have cast it
off may yet disagree upon other points.
This is not a question of the immortality of the soul,
as a Christian doctrine ; for, so far from denying this doc
trine, we are most especially endeavoring to affirm it.
But it is a question concerning the source or foundation
of this immortality : whether it is received by all men as
an inheritance from Adam, or by the Christian alone
as a free gift from Christ.
It is not a question as to how generally the idea of a
future state prevailed among the Jews at the coming of
Christ, but what He taught when He came. It is not
as to how early Plato's doctrine of the essential immor-
* See " Life and Death Eternal," by Prof. Bartlett, also New
Englander, Oct., 1 87 1.

* WHAT IS THE QUESTION? 63
tality of the soul, and the consequent necessary immor
tality of the wicked, insinuated itself into the Christian
Church, and how soon the fathers began to teach it, but
whether it was a doctrine of the Church which Christ
instituted in His time, and whether the inspired writers
of the New Testament taught it.
It is not a question whether the soul dies at the same
moment of time with the body, but whether it is so inde
pendent of the body on the one hand, and of God the
source of all spiritual life on the other, that it can main
tain a perpetual and eternal existence when entirely
severed from both.
It is not a question of an intermediate state, so-called,
but of an eternal state of conscious existence beyond and
after the dissolution of this material universe. It is not
a question concerning the resurrection of the dead and a
general judgment, nor of future punishment, nor of the
eternity of future punishment, but whether the everlasting
punishment to which the wicked shall be consigned
at the judgment, will be everlasting torture or ever
lasting destruction.
It is not a question as to whether there will be
degrees in the severity of the punishment visited upon
the wicked — some receiving "many stripes," and some
"few stripes," but whether in the case of all, these stripes,
whether many or few, will be inflicted without measure
and without end !
It is not a question as to the irreversibility of the
doom of the wicked, but as to the nature of that irre
versible doom.
It is not whether there shall be at the day of judg
ment, disappointment, chagrin and such grief and rage
on the part of God's enemies, as may well be described
as weeping and gnashing of teeth, and especially on the

64 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
part of the opposers and rejectors of Christ and His
gospel, when they shall find themselves separated from
His friends and utterly rejected from His everlasting
kingdom, but whether they shall be gathered into another
kingdom, which is also everlasting, where they shall
perpetuate their sin and misery forever.
It is not a question of annihilation, strictly speaking,
concerning which no one can assert anything positive, as
we will soon" show, though some of our adversaries insist
on calling it so in spite of all our disclaimers, that they
may travesty our position and mystify the point at issue ;
but it is a question of the utter destruction of the wicked,
soul and body — the complete extinction of their con
scious existence; as complete as "that of the brutes that
perish." It is not a question as to the general correctness of
our English version, nor of the common and classical
meaning of the Greek and Hebrew words translated
"death," "destruction," "perdition," and the like, but
whether these words, when employed to describe the fate
of the human soul are to be taken in their ordinary,
literal and natural sense, or in some extraordinary, meta
phorical and unnatural sense.
It is just here that we find our chief embarrassment
in discussing this question. It is not in the prejudices
of men in favor of the doctrine we are opposing, nor in
the pertinacity with which they cling to it, — all this were
sufficiently hard to meet — but it is in the perversion and
misappropriation of the very terms we need to express
our meaning, and which would express the true meaning
of the Scriptures, had they not been first vacated of
their legitimate signification and another sense, which
will tally with this dogma infused into them, so that now,
while the Word of God employs the strongest, expressions

SCRIPTURE LANGUAGE PERVERTED. 65
of which language is capable, under every variety of
phraseology, to declare the utter and final death and
destruction of the wicked, both soul and body, and the
absolute extinction of their conscious existence, it fails
to convey any such idea to those who hold fast to the
indestructibility of the human soul, and we cannot in our
arguments express the idea without employing new terms
less appropriate, or by the use of labored circumlocution
and wordy reiteration.
It would seem as if the scholarship of the Church and
the literature and philosophy of the world had conspired
together to perpetuate and sustain the delusion of the
tempter, "Ye shall not surely die," in spite of the most
positive declarations of God Himself, by giving another
meaning to the words of Scripture. Our Commentators
handing down their hermeneutics from one to another,
have displayed their learning and skill in showing how
it is possible to put another sense into these words
which teach a truth their own dogma forbids them to
receive, which they call the " Scriptural Sense."
Our theological system-makers, blinded by the same
delusion " ever learning and never able to come to the
knowledge of the truth," reasoning in a circle, gravely
assure us that the human soul is immortal, and there
fore it will never die ; it is indestructible, and therefore
it will never be destroyed ; it is destined to exist forever,
and therefore it will never come to an end ; and, of
course, all those many passages that seem to teach
that it will die, will be destroyed, will come to an end
unless it is restored to holiness, cannot possibly mean
any such thing ; and what else can they mean but that
it shall be miserable forever ? therefore, it will be
miserable forever. Q. E. D.
Our lexicographers and philologists are agreed in the

66 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
same cause. The authors of our standard Hebrew and
Greek lexicons, while giving us the true and literal mean
ing of such words as ahvad and shahmad; thanatos,
Apoleia, Apollumi, Katargeo, Kataluo and other words
meaning actual death and destruction, and also, of Zoe
Soteria, and others, meaning life and salvation, inform
us that they have a peculiar and unnatural sense when
applied to the soul — a "Scriptural Sense," and why so?
Simply because they have put that sense into them, and
then transferred it back to their lexicons. So when we
go to these " Scripture Helps " for light, we find the
" Word of God made of none effect through their tradi
tion" and traduction. For example: in referring to Matthew
7 : 13, 14, " Enter ye in at the strait gate ; for wide is
the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to {apoleian)
destruction, and many there be which go in thereat."
" Because strait is the gate and narrow is the way
which leadeth unto {zoen) life, and few there be that
find it," my lexicon informs me that apoleian here means
" endless misery," and zoen means " everlasting happi
ness." In Romans 6 : 23, " For the wages of sin is
{thanatos) death ; but the gift of God is {zoe aionios)
eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord," I am assured
that thanatos means " an unchanging eternal state of
wretchedness and misery," and that zoe aionios means
as before, " everlasting happiness," and so is it with
every important passage bearing on this question in the
Bible. Why are not these words allowed to have their
own usual and proper meaning ? Why is this new mean
ing put into them but that they may not conflict with the
dogma of the endless existence of all souls.
Webster's English dictionary defines the word soul
to be "the spiritual, rational and immortal principle
in man," etc., as though the author would effectually

DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS. 67
estop all inquiry as to its immortality, by making it enter
into the definition of the word itself, and then he gratu
itously informs us that " The immortality of the soul is
a fundamental article of the Christian system," * and so
he would close the door of the Church against all who
may venture to call his definition in question. But in
the name of truth, we protest against this unwarrantable
perversion of the plainest Scripture terms to sustain a
human dogma. If by the immortality of the soul he
means the immortality of the souls of those to whom
Christ gives eternal life — it is indeed a fundamental doc
trine of the Christian system ; but if he means the immor
tality of all souls as a natural inheritance from Adam,
without any regard to Christ, so far from admitting it to
be a fundamental doctrine. of the Christian system, we
demand by whose authority this heathen doctrine has
any place whatever in the Christian system ? f
* In the latest revised edition, this oracular dictum has very
properly been suppressed.
\ The author used the above paragraph not long since (Jan. 30,
1878), by anticipation in an article on " Conditional Immortality," in
one of our religious papers.

PART SECOND.
TEACHINGS OF REASON AND NATURE.

CHAPTER III.
Reason Enlightened by Revelation Teaches that Immor
tality IS AN ATTRIBUTE OF DEITY. DEDUCTIONS OF
LOGIC IRRESISTIBLE. THE DILEMMA.
It will doubtless be admitted by all theists that
absolute and essential existence, and, consequently, ab
solute and essential immortality, is the attribute of God
alone. He only hath immortality dwelling in Him. He
is the fountain of all life, of whatever kind, to the
universe. Essential being is, more than any other, the
peculiar attribute of Jehovah. He claims it as His
name. The I Am that I Am. " He that is, and was,
and ever shall be," the uncreated, self existent, and
eternal God. Strictly speaking, there is no other Being
in the universe. The highest arch angel is but a creature.
We are all creatures — not beings — -from the highest to the
lowest. The frequency with which we call ourselves
" beings " is indicative of an error which insinuates itself
into all reasoning on the question of the immortality of
man. Our existence had a definite beginning, and it
may have, or at least it might have, a definite ending, if
He who gave it to us should will to take it away. The
power to give life implies the power to take it away.
The power to create impliesthe power to destroy. God
68

GOD ONLY ABSOLUTELY IMMORTAL. 69
has made no independent self-existent creatures — that is,
He has made no beings. This term, as a personal sub
stantive, is never applied to. man or any other creature,
in the Scriptures. "In Him we live and move, and have
our being." It may well be questioned whether it were
possible for God to invest any creature with an absolute
and essential immortality like His own. It would be to
create another God independent of Himself. The very
act of creation implies a dependent existence. Plato,
who taught the essential immortality of the soul, logically
taught the eternal/r^-existence of the soul also. They are
both parts of the same doctrine, and must stand or fall to
gether. According to his philosophy, man was not a
creature, but a being, having eternal life dwelling in him
as an essential attribute of his soul-
Christian men repudiate this philosophical dogma
when stated in its entirety, as essentially Atheistic or
Pantheistic. But the greater part of them cling, to the
latter half of the dogma as though it were an undoubted
axiom. They deny the eternal existence of- the soul a
parte ante, but inconsistently affirm it a parte post. It is
so defined in our dictionaries and in our psychological
text-books, and it is thought heretical to deny it. But
this doctrine is nowhere to be found in the Word of
God. Immortality is never predicated of the human
soul. Indeed this attribute is ascribed to our Lord alone.
In 1 Tim., 6: 15, 16, He is declared to be ""The only
Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords who
only hath immortality." These terms, "immortal," "eternal,"
"never-dying," " ever-living," and so fbrth, which are so
common among men when speaking of their own souls,
are never found in the Scriptures in any such connection.
These and other terms implying endlessness, are often
used to describe the subjective state or condition of the

70 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
righteous soul as one of never-ending blessedness, and
the objective doom of the wicked as eternally final and
irreversible, but never are they used with respect to the
soul itself.
If having begun to live, we shall continue to live,
and live forever, it will not be because of any inherent
property of life within us, irrespective of our condition,
and independent of the will of our Creator ; but because
He is pleased to continue us in existence. Should He,
at any time, withdraw his sustaining power or cut us off
from Himself, the fountain of all life, we- must inevitably
cease to exist. If we continue in His favor, we may an
ticipate eternal life. He may promise it to us upon
certain conditions. But we can never have any other
assurance of it than what He shall give us. Of even a
passive body in motion, we cannot affirm that this notion
will be perpetual and eternal unless we can be assured
that nothing shall ever occur to arrest the original
impulse. Much less can we predicate immortality of the
soul which "needs, not merely the original impulse, but
the sustaining power of Him who gave it life every
moment of its existence.
Eternity is a tremendous word. It is not simply a
long time, nor a succession of long times. It is infinite
duration. It is a mode of existence peculiar to the
Deity. No period of time, however long, bears any
proportion whatever to eternity. Many of those who
talk so glibly of their own immortality do not stop to
consider what they are talking about. It were, perhaps
supposible that God might give to His creatures an un
conditional assurance of living forever, or that He might
determine within Himself, without giving us this assur
ance, that He would perpetuate eternally the life of every
intelligent creature He has made, under all conditions

IMMORTALITY CONDITIONAL. 7 1
and circumstances, whether they shall obey or disobey;
whether they shall preserve their normal state or fall
from it ; whether they shall be holy, and, consequently,
blessed, or. sinful and necessarily wretched ; whether
they shall rise to heaven or sink to hell.
But that He has given us any such assurance or has
formed any such determination within His own mind, no
one can affirm with any show of reason or Scripture. On
the contrary, Reason^ Nature - and Scripture all unite in
declaring that our life is a conditional life ; that we must
obey God if we would live ; that we must preserve our
normal state (or be restored to it) or, like everything
else in nature, come to certain ruin ; that purity and
blessedness are necessary, in the very nature of things,
to perpetuity of existence ; that there is something in the
nature of sin, which, like disease or corroding leprosy in
the body, to which it is compared in the Scriptures, will
•inevitably (unless eradicated) work the utter ruin of the
soul into which it has entered. " Sin when it is finished
bringeth forth death."
The eternal life of the heavenly hosts belongs to them
only in consequence of their union to Him, who is the
source of all life, and not as an essential attribute of their
holy souls, and if the souls of the lost, and wicked spirits
continue to live and suffer forever, it will not be because
they have eternal life inherent in their natures, but because
God wills to sustain them in being,, upholding them with
one hand, while from the other, He pours out upon them
the vials of His wrath forever. Apart from His will no
creature in heaven or hell can have any life at all.*
* The editor of Calmet's Dictionary says : " Immortality, in an
absolute sense belongs to God only ; He cannot die, angels are im
mortal, but God who made them can terminate their being : Man is
immortal in part, that is, in his spirit, but his body dies ; inferior

72 THE 'THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
It may well be questioned whether a dependent
existence is not necessarily a conditional existence:
whether these are not synonymous expressions ; whether
there is anything in the universe but God Himself
that is absolute and unconditional ; especially, whether
there can be any life but His that is unconditional ;
whether the very fact of its dependence does not make it
conditional, or subject to certain conditions that are the
sine qua non of its perpetuity.
If so, then we have only to inquire, what are the con
ditions of our immortality ? and to this inquiry, we shall
address ourselves.
We have been the more earnest in stating and repeat-
creatures are not immortal ; they die -wholly. Thus the principle
of immortality is differently communicated, according to the will of
the Communicator, who can render any creature immortal by pro
longing his life ; can confer immortality on the body of man together
with his soul, and who maintains angels in immortality by maintain
ing them in holiness. Holiness is the root of immortality ; but God
only is absolutely holy, as God only is absolutely immortal. All im
perfection is a drawback on the principle of immortality ; only God
is absolutely perfect, therefore only God is absolutely immortal." The
above article contains a strange mixture of truth and fiction. The
writer seems to have had a glimpse of the truth, but he does not venture
to carry out the doctrine he asserts. If holiness is the root of immor
tality, what becomes of immortality, if the root is wanting ? If God, as
he says, ' ' maintains angels in immortality by maintaining them in holi
ness," does he not maintain the saints in immortality in the same way ?
No doubt he does. But what then becomes of the evil angels and the •
wicked? How are they maintained in immortality? What he means
by " all imperfection is a drawback on immortality," we cannot guess
unless it is that the imperfect and the wicked are not quite so im
mortal as the perfect ! ! But is immortality a thing of degrees ? Can
one creature be more immortal than another and yet both be im
mortal ? Or does he mean that it is more difficult for God to make
imperfect creatures immortal, but He will doit? Why not say as
as God's Word says, that holiness is essential to immortality !

THE DEITY COMMISERATED. 73
ing this almost self-evident principle that God alone is
absolutely and essentially immortal, and that all His
creatures depend upon Him for " life- and breadth and
all things " because of its fundamental importance in this
discussion, and especially, because most men who would
not think of denying it when categorically stated, con
tinually lose sight of it in their reasoning about the human
soul. They think of the soul and speak of it and reason
about it always, and everywhere, as if it were naturally
immortal, and would of itself continue to live as long as
Jehovah lives. Hence they are brought to the inevitable
though unwelcome conclusion that if it is not saved, it
must necessarily suffer for ever ; the doom of the wicked
which is and can be nothing else than that of sin and
wretchedness forever is in their view a necessity of
nature — an awful result of transgression which the Deity
putJt_out_qf His jpower to prevent, when He created man,
by making him naturally immortal. They offer it as an
apology for Him when speaking of the eternal miseries
that will come upon the lost. They commiserate Him,
under the plea that if the soul cannot be saved from sin
it must necessarily exist in sin and wretchedness forever.
So they manage to comfort their own hearts and com
mend Him to the love and confidence of others, notwith
standing the cruelty their theory charges Him with in
flicting upon the. unsaved, because He does it involun-'
tarily. It is well they have some way of justifying the
ways of God to His creatures. But if it were not for their
error, His ways would need no justifying.
The deductions of logic are irresistable. If our pre
mises are well taken the conclusions must be accepted
however unwelcome. If we assume, as most persons do,
that the soul is immortal and that whatever its condition,
whether sinful or holy, lost or saved, it will maintain its

74 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
conscious existence without end : and if we take for
granted that the Bible is the Word of God, or in other
words, that it is true, then these two propositions must
harmonize with each ot-her. If they should seem to con
flict they must be made to agree.
The Bible assures us most positively that only a portion
(it would seem but a small portion) of the human race
will "inherit eternal life," that many shall seek to enter in
and shall not be able. Of course, if the dogma of the
actual endless life of all souls is true, the Bible cannot
mean what it says, but this must be taken figuratively to
imply some pure and blessed condition of the soul that
will endure forever. The Bible assures us with a
reiteration that is very remarkable that the souls that do
not enter into "life eternal " shall "die," shall "perish,"
shall be "destroyed," shall be " consumed." Of course,
if this dogma of the deathless and indestructable nature
of the soul is true, these and the many other expressions
that assert the contrary, must be understood as meaning
something else. They cannot be allowed to mean what they
always do mean and must mean when applied to other ob
jects, but must be taken in some tropical, unnatural
sense. ' Hence they are commonly received as describing
a depraved and miserable condition of the " never
dying " soul. And all those elements of destruction like
the devouring " worm that never dies," and the con
suming "fire that is not quenched " which are spoken of
as employed (whether actually or figuratively we will not
now stop to inquire) in bringing the soul to an utter and
final end — to denote the completeness and thoroughness
with which they do their dreadful work, and which are
understood to mean this, and nothing else when spoken
of in other connections (see Isaiah 66 : 24) are in this
case taken to be but the instruments of eternal torture.

THE DILEMMA. 75
And to sustain this theory, what is predicated of the worm
only, that it " never dies " and of the fire only that it is
not quenched, to show that they do not leave their work
half finished, is so transferred from these active agencies
to the soul which is the passive recipient as to make the
meaning to be just the reverse ; viz. : — that the soul never
dies — that the work of destruction is never completed.
This we understand to be the position of the great
majority of Christian men at the present time. They
cling to the idea of the necessary immortality of the soul
with a pertinacity which nothing can shake. They also
hold the Word of God in high esteem — none too high.
They feel that they ought to love and trust God as th'eir
Heavenly Father. They do love and trust Him. They
are jealous of His honor among men. Their hearts are
imbued with the spirit of the gospel. But 0, their logic !
It leads them to dreadful conclusions concerning God
and His government. They dare not believe in the final
salvation of all men ; for this would make Him a liar.
They dare not accuse Him of injustice and of wrong, even
towards His enemies. They shudder to think of what
will become of the great multitude of the unsaved. The
idea of their failing to be gathered with the ransomed of
the Lord into His everlasting kingdom, and of their
being blotted out from the book of life, were sufficiently
terrible. But the thought of their writhing under the in
flictions of God's wrath in all the agonies of hell forever
and forever, and that He who made them, either cannot
or will not put an end to their miserable existence ; to
be obliged to believe that there is no such thing as
capital punishment under the government of God, but that
He who has gnjoined it upon human governments as the
only suitable way of disposing of those who are guilty of
the highest crimes, proposes to Himself no such summary

j6 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
way of disposing of incorrigible offenders under His
righteous government ; that although He threatens them
with death, He will never execute them, but will imprison
and torment them forever and forever. This fills them
with dismay — they are utterly confounded. Their pious
hearts are wrung with inexpressible grief —they know not
which way to turn for relief. Their fidelity to the truth
forbids them to take refuge in any of those forms of
skepticism to which men of weaker faith resort. The
well-known doleful confessions of Albert Barnes* and of
many Godly men like him, or the more positive protests
of John Foster and others, need not be quoted. Every
Christian man and woman who thinks at all on this subject,
has felt substantially the same difficulty.
But surely when our logic brings us to conclusions
that are contradictory, preposterous and quite incredible,
it is time we went back and examined not only the pro
cess, but the premises from which we started, f
We do not propose to inquire into the truthfulness of
the sacred Scriptures : they rest upon a foundation that
cannot be shaken : nor into the correctness of our
common translation : it is good enough for us as it is.
But we do propose to inquire into the truth of this major
proposition, and we beg of those who may follow us, to
lay aside, as far as possible, for the time, their prejudices
and to give us a candid hearing, while we inquire what
are the teachings of Nature and of Revelation on this
question of the natural immortality of the human soul.
* See Barnes' Practical Sermons.
f " The Bible never requires us to receive as true, anything which
the constitution of our nature, given by God Himself, forces us to
believe to be false or impossible." — Systematic Theology. By
Charles Hodge, D.D.

CHAPTER IV.
Teachings of Nature Enlightened by Revelation. Nature
of the Soul ; its Two-fold Life. Words used in a
Double and Contradictory Sense. Destruc
tion NOT NECESSARILY ANNIHILATION.
i. The necessary immortality of the soul is argued,
so far as it is argued at all, on the ground that it is purely
spiritual in its nature. Matter is corruptible. But that
which is essentially spiritual is said to be incorruptible and
indestructible. Whether there is any existence in the
universe but the One Great uncreated self-existent -Spirit
that is absolutely and purely spiritual in the strictest
sense of the word, is a difputed point among philoso
phers, which it is not necessary for us to discuss. What
ever may be the spiritual essence of the soul, according
to the common use of the word spiritual, if, indeed, it be
a spiritual essence,* it is sufficient for us to know that the
soul of man was created. No theist will claim for it an
eternal pre-existence. But if the soul was created it may
* It is evident that the word "soul" is now taken in a higher
and more ethereal sense than belongs to the words nephesh (Heb.)
and pysche (Greek1) in the original Scriptures, for which it stands.
These two words are applied indiscriminately to men and beasts, in
the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. In the first chapters of Genesis,
living souls (nephesh cayah) are predicated of animals as well as of
men repeatedly, and so is it in other parts of the Bible; and in the
New Testament the souls (psychai) of animals are spoken of as well as
the souls of men ; but our translators have thought it proper to trans
late this word ' ' soul " almost never, excepting when man is spoken
of, but to use the words " beasts," " creatures," " life," etc., when in
ferior animals are spoken of. 77

78 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
be uncreated or destroyed by its Author. Whether it will
ever be destroyed is a question of fact to be determined
by such evidence as we can get from Reason and Revela
tion. But the argument for its necessary immortality on
account of its spiritual nature rests entirely on the sup
position that it cannot be corrupted like matter. But
-what if this supposition should prove false ? What if the
soul shall actually become corrupted, depraved, diseased, in
its own nature by sin ? The argument for its indestructi
bility has no force, or, rather, whatever force there is in
it goes to show, by analogy, that the soul, like material
existences, will be destroyed as a soul. At any rate,
the argument holds good only in case the original
purity of the soul is maintained or restored. This will
be found, when we come to the Scriptural Argument, to
be the very doctrine taught by divine Revelation which
we have undertaken to defend.
The holy alone shall escape destruction, but "the
soul that sinneth it shall die."
2. The human soul is generally understood to have
been endowed with an amphibious nature, or a two-fold
life ; the one allying it to the spiritual ; the other to the
material world ; the one looking upwards toward God and
heaven, and communicating with Him through its spiritual
faculties ; the other looking downwards to the earth and
gommunicating with natural and sensible objects through
the senses ; the one adapts it to fellowship with pure
spirits that are above it in the scale of being ; the other, to
association with animals that are beneath it in the scale of
creation : the one is called in the Scriptures the (pneu-
matikos) " spiritual mind " : the other the ( psuchikos ) "car
nal mind," " the fleshy mind," or, as it should have been
to perfect the antithesis, the phsuchical or soulical mind.

TW0.-F0LIJ NATURE OF THE SOUL. , 79
These two kinds of life in the same soul, so diverse in
their natures, are supposed to have been originally adjusted
to work in harmony together. Whether they were both
designed to be perpetual, and if this harmony were main
tained, to co-exist eternally, or whether the lower life was
transitory in its very nature, and was so constituted as to
fade away and give place to that which is higher and spir
itual and eternal alone, we will not now stop to inquire.
But it is evident that if this spiritual life is lost, and the
soul is cut off from God, the only source of spiritual life,
its animal or lower life alone remains. But this, whether
through sin or by its original constitution; is now tem
porary and must come to an end. Every species of lower
life is transitory. Every material organization is destined
) to be dissolved. What then becomes of the animal life
of the soul ? Or rather, what becomes of the soul itself,
— if it can be regarded as a distinct organism or entity, —
when both its spiritual and animal life *re gone — when it
isdead towards God and the spiritual world, and dead
towards earth and earthly things ? Has .it still another
third kind of life through which it may live forever ? .or
can it exist as a soul without any life whatever ? This is
just what some of the advocates of this theory of the
immortality of the soul have attempted to show.* Because
a tree can "exist," as it is claimed, for a time, after it is
dead, we are assured that the human soul may exist, and
that forever after it is dead, and not only exist without
life forever, but exist as an intelligent, conscious, active,
suffering, sinning soul, forever ! !
t But we deny that a tree or an animal or anything that
ever had; life can continue to exist, as such in any true
sense of the word, after it is dead. The dead form may

* See Life and Death Eternal, Chap. III.

80 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
remain. But it is not the carcass of an animal that con
stitutes the animal, nor the timber of a tree that consti
tutes the tree. No man can make a tree or an animal
though he can make an image of either. Life is necessary'
to the very existence of the thing itself, and if the thing
retains its life, it is not dead. The same is true of the
soul. We might, were it necessary, show how the death of a
tree necessitates the decay of the very form, sooner or
later, and how the death of an animal necessitates the
decomposition of the carcass : But the question is not how
long this dead tree might stand before going to decay, but
whether it can grow, bear fruit, no matter how bitter it
may be, or fulfil any of the functions of a living tre^after
it is dead.} The question is not how long the carcass of a
dead animal might be preserved after the life had gone
out of it, but whether its animal functions can go on as
before ! If any«one chooses to assert the absurd propo
sition, that the soul, whether as a material or immaterial
entity can exist as a soul after it is dead in both its spirit
ual and material natures, he has yet to prove that it can
think, remember, feel, suffer and maintain the functions
of a living soul though it is dead ! The assertion is not
only fatuous but self-contradictory. No man who asserts
it can tell what he means by it. He must first vacate the
words life and death of all their proper meaning and put
another meaning into them ; or rather he must use them
in double and contradictory sense at the same time.
No man at the present day would think of employing
such sophistical quibbles as this were he not greatly strait
ened to sustain an untenable theory. It savors of the phil
osophical quirks which the schoolmen of the dark ages
spent so much time in trying to solve. For example —
" When a man says " I lie," does he lie, or does he speak

THE SOUL NOT DEAD AND ALIVE AT THE SAME TIME. 8 1
the truth ! For, if he lies, he speaks the truth, and if he
speaks the, truth, he lies." "Can a spirit go from one
place to another without passing through the intervening
space ?" " Can two spirits occupy the same identical
point at the same moment of time?" Haec exempli gra
tia sufficient. So it is by the employment of such words
as life, death, existence and the like in a_double and con
tradictory sense in the same proposition, that a semblance
of support is given to the doctrine that the soul can sur
vive its death, and exist after it is destroyed. But it ill
becomes our theological instructors of the present day to
employ such logOdsedaly as this in the exposition of
God's Word.
The same sort of logical prestigiation is practiced with
the word annihilation which our~<rp*ponents are so fond of
flinging at us notwithstanding our protests, for maintain
ing the Bible doctrine of the destruction of the soul, as
though the extinction of conscious existence in any ob
ject implied or necessitated the annihilation of the very
substance of which that object was composed. This is a
very good word to juggle with, but it has no force in
this argument but in the double-entente of which it is
capable. The trick consists in first predicating it of the
elemental particles of which an object is composed ; and
then, " presto " — it is transferred to the object itself, and
if we admit or deny the predicate in the one case we must
admit or deny it in the other also. That is to say, — the
elemental particles that enter into the composition of a
house are not annihilated though the house be consumed
by fire and the ashes scattered to the winds, but they still
exist — therefore the house itself exists, and exists as a
house !
But we may be told that the soul is such a peculiar
entity that it cannot be destroyed so as to cease to exist

82 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
as a soul without the annihilation of its essence or sub
stance also, and that therefore the soul as a soul cannot
be destroyed so as to cease to exist as a soul. " For noth
ing is ever annihilated.
In all" syllogistic reasoning one must look well to his
premises or he may be led unawares to the" most fatuous
conclusions. In this syllogism both the premises are
assumed without any positive evidence to support them,
and assumed for the purpose of forcing the conclusion.
As to whether any elemental substance ever has been, or
ever will be annihilated, all we are at liberty to affirm is
— that we do not know. And surely our ignorance is no
proper foundation for a positive argument. As to the
other premise, that the soul cannot be destroyed so as
to cease to exist as a soul, without the annihilation of its
elemental substance : — it is simply an assertion without
any proof whatever. Before one can affirm this he must
first be able to tell us what the human soul is, and of
what it is composed, or whether it has or has not any
composition or elemental base.
The human body when formed was made, as the
Scriptures tell us, out of materials already existing, and
when it dies it is resolved back to its original elemenjs.
As a living organism it is destroyed and ceases to exist,
but the elemental particles remain. If the soul is a living
organism, no matter how ethereal the elements that com
pose it, then it may be resolved back into its original
elements and, in like manner, cease to exist as a soul
without the annihilation of these elements.
But is the soul only the effect or the manifestation of
certain organic relations ? Then the effect ceases when
these relations are destroyed. But there is no annihilation
of any substance. Annihilation is a physical term and
can only be predicated of substantial entities. -We do

WHAT BECOMES OF THE SOUL. 83
not say of color or of sound that they are annihilated.
We only Say, — They vanish, or fade away, or cease. Nor
do we predicate annihilation of a thought, nor of a series
of thoughts, nor of the principle of life itself. We say, —
It goes out, it is extinguished, it ceases to manifest itself
in the organism it had animated. But we, do not say that
it is annihilated ; nor can we truly say it.
But is the soul neither an organism nor the effect of
organic relations, but a simple entity or vital force, corres
ponding to the other invisible elemental forces in nature
emanating from the Deity and acting or manifesting them
selves only in connection with some organism or material
object ? Then what becomes of it when this connection
is dissolved ? What becomes of the animal soul, or the vital
force in any of the inferior organisms when these objects
die? What becomes of the electric or galvanic force that
has spent itself in the object where it had manifested
itself ? What of the cohesive power, or of chemical
affinity ? What of the flash of light that is extinguished ?
What of heat which is said to be only another mode of
motion ? What of motion itself when it is arrested ?
Philosophy tells us that action and reaction are equal and
that this force is not really annihilated. It has only
entered into other relations. It suggests also the inquiry
whether all these vital forces are not, in the last analysis,
resolvable into one common principle emanating directly
from the Deity and returning to Him, as the great
Reservoir and only Source of all life and power in the

* Dr. Noah Porter in his essay on "Psychology and the Soul,"
introductory to his work on the Human Intellect, teaches, if we
correctly apprehend his meaning, that the life of the body and of the
soul or the soul itself is one and the same principle or force, or agent;
to quote his own words : ' ' The progress of physiology in recent

84 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
Whether we reason about the cessation of cohesive, crys-
tallic, chemical, vegetable, animal, or spiritual life, when
the organism in which it manifests itself is destroyed, that
.-.is, when it dies, who can give any better account of the
matter than the wise man gives ? " Then shall the dust
return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to
God who gave it." — Ecc. 12:7. Ourchief difficulty in reas
oning on this subject is in our ignorance. Men ridicule
the idea of the destruction of the soul, not because it
seems impossible for God to destroy what He has made,
but because they cannot understand what becomes of it.
They might as well ridicule the idea of its being created
because they cannot understand where it came from.
times as well as the more careful study of the conditions of certain
psychical phenomena have seemed to favor .... the identity
of the vital and spiritual forces." "The principle of life and of
psychical activity is one." " If the principle of vital force andspirit-
ual activity be one and the same " — " Now whether o» not the life
and the soul are one," etc.
He then goes on to say, " That the soul begins to exist as a vital
force does not require that it should always exist as a vital force in
connection with a material body. Should it require another such
body or medium of activity it may have the power to create it for
itself as it has formed the one it first inhabited, or it may already have
formed it in the germ and hold it ready for occupation and use as
soon as it sloughs off the one which connects it with the earth." § 25.
All this is not only very philosophical but just what the Gospel
declares to be true in the case of every Christian ; a new spiritual
body will be given him, which' his new and heaven-born spirit will
animate forever. But how is it in the case of the wicked to whom
no such body will be given ? How, in the case of those who, accord
ing to the same Gospel, die, not only as to their bodies, but as to
their souls ? What possible life, or activity, or consciousness, remains
to them, when not only the organism upon which the vital force ex
erted itself, but the very force or agent itself has ceased to be, or
has returned to the source from which it came ?

ANNIHILATION NOT AFFIRMED. 85
But whatever its original source, God can demand it back
to that source. If, like the body, it was formed from
something previously existing, it can return like the body
to its original elements and cease to exist as a soul. If it
had no previous elemental existence, but issued directly
from God, then He may recall it to Himself so that it
shall have no more separate existence than it had before.
Is not this the meaning of the passage just cited ?
But the fact is, we know nothing and we affirm nothing
concerning the annihilation of the elemental substances or
forces in nature. The word ought not to be thrown into
this discussion to cqnfuse the mind and to bring ridicule
upon the Scriptural doctrine of the destruction of the soul.
We protest against being characterized or rather, carica
tured as " annihilationists " for defending this Scriptural
doctrine of destruction. It is a common pratice of sophists
and quibblers to endeavor to misrepresent their antago
nists, or to throw the odium of obnoxious terms over any
position they cannot successfully assail with fair arguments,
but we have a right to expect, and to demand, in the interests
of a common Christianity, more honest dealing on the part
of Reverend Doctors and Theological Professors in the
discussion of this question.*
* The author of " Life and Death Eternal," in his Preface, says :
" We have commonly employed the term " Annihilation " to desig
nate the cessation of existence which these writers advocate. We are
aware that many of them object to the term as not being fully expres
sive of their mode of stating and arguing the case. We would only
say that we cannot be debarred the use of a convenient (?), indeed an
indispensable (!) term, out of deference to their preferences."
It may be a very "convenient term," for him to use, and " indeed
indispensable " to his mode of stating and arguing the case, but is it
honest ? What must we think of the merits of a cause that needs to be
upheld by such methods.

CHAPTER V.
WHAT NATURE TEACHES.-(Continued.)
Analogies. Vegetables. The Chryslis. Successive Crea
tions and Destructions. Survival of the Fittest.
Everything must preserve its normal con
dition OR "PREMATURE RUIN ENSUES.
Nobility of Man's Nature.
3. The revivification of the vegetable world in the
Spring, after the apparent death of Winter, also, the
double life through which some insects pass, are thought
to typify, if they do not fortell, a future life for man.
These are certainly beautiful symbols of that future state
which is more plainly revealed in the Gospel, but they
come infinitely short of proving or even of symbolizing
the immortality of man in that future state, and much less,
the immortality of all men, both good and bad, which is
the point in question. If these analogies are to be used
at all in this argument, they afford a remarkable confirma
tion of the doctrine taught in the Scriptures that immor
tality is not the portion of all, but only of a part of the
human race. It is not every vegetable that revives in
the Spring — nor every seed that sprouts up after an appar
ent death in the ground, but only such as have life remain
ing in them. All others go to decay.
And as for the larvse that pass through the chrysalis state
into a higher life as winged insects, — they must preserve
the germ of their future life unimpaired while in their first
86

THE CHRYSALIS DESTROYED. 87
stage, or the butterfly within them is never developed.
They die after fulfilling their career as grubs or larva; and
come short forever of that aerial lepidopterous state for
which Nature had designed them, and into which those of
their species that are fit are admitted.
Naturalists tell us that every larva of this class, as the
caterpillar for instance, carries within itself while in its
grub state, an embryo butterfly or psyche (psuche?) — as it
is called in Greek — the very word the Scriptures use for
the human soul — possessing all the organs of the butterfly
in an undeveloped state, in addition to its own proper
organism, and that this embryo butterfly or psuche hidden
within the grub, is peculiarly liable to the attacks of little
winged insects called ichneumon flies, which prey upon its
substance and destroy its life, and that too, without any
apparent injury to the grub. It fulfils its larva life and
goes into the chrysalis state, and like all other grubs of
its kind, wraps itself in its cocoon or winding sheet in the
anticipation of a higher life to come. But it rises not
with its fellows to another life in the air as a winged but
terfly, for the embryo psuche (soul) within was destroyed
while it was yet a crawling grub. It only goes to cor
ruption and perishes forever. This butterfly life is
reserved for those only of its species that were prepared
for it and died in a well founded hope of the life to come.
Here is the doctrine of conditional Immortality typified
in Nature as clearly as possible.
The parallel is perfect, and if this does not foretoken
and teach what we believe the Scriptures declare, con
cerning the destruction of the psuche or soul within man
by sin while yet in this world, and his consequent forfeit
ure of that higher angeljc life in the world to come which
is reserved for the righteous alone, then it is impossible
for Nature to teach us anything by analogy

88 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
4. Is there anything in the character of God as dis
played in Nature and Providence, or in the nature of
fallen man to warrant the assumption that the soul will
never under any contingency whatever be destroyed ?
What might have been true of the soul had it never been
corrupted by sin, it is not needful now to inquire. But
what is the truth concerning the soul in its present con
dition of sin ? That God does destroy the works of His
hands will not be denied. The history of creation so far
as we are acquainted with it has ever been that of suc
cessive creations, and destructions, and of new creations
which are yet to be destroyed to give place to other forms
of life and beauty that are more perfect. And who shall
say that this process will not go on till " That which is
perfect is come and that which is in part shall be done
away." (1 Cor. 13 : 10) ? However true or false the
new "Development theory" may be, as a theory of
creation, it is unquestionably true that the less perfect are
supplanted by the more perfect, and "the fittest survive."
And this truth may be yet found to have a spiritual appli
cation in respect to the salvation of the righteous and the
destruction of the wicked which its infidel advocates
would be quite willing to ignore.
It is not material structures alone that are dissolved,
by the hand that created them, but living- organisms, also.
Life has been scattered everywhere with a wonderful
prodigality by Him who is the source of all life ; and then
it has been as freely taken away.
The human race began its career upon the earth sur
rounded on every side by the relics of living creatures
that had passed away. The life that had once animated
them had gone out of them, and they had been dissolved
and were dissolving back to their original elements. The
very dust from which our bodies were formed was com-

WHAT IF MAN FAILS OF THE END FOR WHICH CREATED ? 89
posed largely, if not wholly, of the debris of extinct
organisms that had once had an individuality of their
own but had lost it forever. The life {psyche) that was
given to man at his creation, carhe from the same source —
for there is no other, — that had animated them.
Now in the formation of man, who stands confessedly at
the head of God's creatures in this lower world, are we
sure that the Almighty has come to the climax of per
fection, or to the limit of His creative power, or even to
that limit where this law of change must be reversed, and
beyond which He will no longer destroy, but conserve
and preserve forever ? Did man at his creation have any
such assurance ? Does God's providence — to say nothing
now of His Word, which we will consider by and by —
teach us any such doctrine ? We are told that the inferior
forms of life and beauty are intended to be ephemeral,
and when they have completed their round or cycle they
have fulfilled their destiny, but that man was made to
move in an eternal cycle. Granting this for the sake of
the argument — on the supposition that man continued
pure as God made him — what if he should not continue
¦pure ? What if he should drop from this cycle into an
inferior one, and voluntarily seek selfish and finite ends ?
What if the blight of sin should come upon his soul, —
will this make no difference with the result ? Those
living organisms that are transitory in their nature, are
often blighted or nipped in the very bud and cut short in
their career. Those that are the most beautiful and
excellent are often the most frail and liable to premature
death. They do not fulfil their natural round, ephemeral
as it is, but come to an untimely end. Was man, the most
beautiful and excellent of all God's creatures, placed by
his Creator beyond the possibility of any such blight com
ing upon his soul .to bring it to an untimely end ?

go THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
It seems to be an universal law, so far as our observa
tion extends, that every thing in nature must preserve its
normal condition or it comes to premature ruin. This is
true not only of living organisms as a whole, but of every
separate organ. All organs or functions that are misused
or unused become disordered and weakened and finally
perish. Disease, paralysis and premature decay come
upon the eye or the muscle or the limb that is abused or
never used at all. There are said to be more than a
dozen species of animals in the dark mammoth cave of
Kentucky that have lost the faculty of vision. This .
is a law of the mind also. It is the secret of all
mental and physical health, growth and progress. Is this
law reversed in the soul of man ? Does it stand as an ex
ception among all the works of God ? Is it indestructible
in the very constitution of it being — liable to no blight,
no contingency that shall bring it to an untimely end?
Is man under no necessity of using his moral faculties and
using them aright? under no necessity of preserving his
norma] condition of holiness, that his soul may fulfil its
cycle — its eternal cycle — if such was the will of God in
his creation? The question answers itself. The Scrip
tures reiterate over and over again just this very truth
which Nature so plainly teaches. " For whosoever hath,
to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance ;
and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away
even that he hath," Matt. 13: 12. "The soul that
sinneth, it shall die." "When sin is finished it bringeth
forth, death." " The end of those things is death,"
et passim. Might we not infer from the teachings of Nature,
without the more positive declarations of the Word of
God, that sin in the soul is analogous to that principle of
disease or decay or rot in material organisms which is

HOLINESS NECESSARY TO PERPETUITY. 91
the sure precursor of death ; which unless arrested will
inevitably bring them sooner or later to dissolution ? Is
not holiness as necessary to perpetuity of being as it is to
happiness ? Holiness and happiness are one and insepar
able. Is it possible to predicate eternal perpetuity of the
one and not of the other ? Purity is the soul's normal
condition : and is not its preservation absolutely essential
to Eternal Life — or Eternal existence (if anyone prefers
the term) intelligent, active, conscious, sensitive existence
in which the soul shall exercise its functions of life forever ?
What though man was intended for an eternal career,
was it not for a career of blessedness and joy ? Was it
not as a holy and happy creatufe, living in obedience to.
the laws of his Creator and of his own being? Was not
this the career upon which he was first started ? Was
not this his normal condition ? And now that he has
fallen from it and the blight of sin has come upon his
soul, as all Nature, as well as God's Word declares —
and now that he has lost, with his purity, his blessedness
also, and consequently, all that makes his life worth pre
serving forever, will it be preserved ? May he still eat of
the Tree of Life ? Reason and Nature by all her analo
gies, unite their testimony to the dreadful truth — no
wonder man should be unwilling to receive it — that he
must surely die. Not man's body merely, but the sinning
soul — the man himself in the totality of his being.
The living voice of God Himself in His Word comes
to confirm their testimony, and yet, perishing man de
luded by Satan and blinded by sin denies the unwelcome
truth, and hopes to live forever !
5. The advocates of the immortalitjtof man insist much
on the nobility of his nature. He was made in the image
of God a little lower than {Elohim l) the angels (or, as

92 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
some translate it, a little lower than God Himself and
the very highest of all creatures.) He was crowned with
glory and honor. He was made to have dominion over
the works of God and all things (terrestial ?) were put
under his feet (Psalm 8.) He was endowed with faculties
and powers of which the highest orders of animals
beneath him possess but the rudiments, and with others,
of which they are entirely destitute : with a moral sense
that enables him to distinguish the right from the wrong,
with a mind that is able to rise towards God and examine
and appreciate His works and ways, and is capable of
unlimited expansion, and with a moral and spiritual
nature that adapts him to "communion and fellowship with
his Maker. — Let all this be admitted, and more, that is
said of the nobility of human nature in its original purity;
it comes infinitely short of constituting him a real deity,
or of investing him with any of the essential attributes of
deity. He is but a creature after all, a dependent
creature,- subject to the law of God. He has neither
Omnipotence, Omniscience, nor Omnipresence, nor In
fallibility. Neither has he that most peculiar and essen
tial, the most incommunicable, so to speak, of all the
attributes of Jehovah, the I Am — the attribute of Being,
or of Immortality.
Let it be gran-ted that it might have pleased God to
prolong his life indefinitely and without end if there
should be no reason for taking it away. But as a
dependant life, was it not necessarily a conditional life?
Was there no condition of any kind attached to this
boon ? Was there no possible contingency by which this
" noble creature " man, could forfeit his life ? (We will
listen to what the Scriptures say in answer to this question
by and by.) What if man should spurn the high and holy
alliance, the fellowship with His Maker to which he was

JUDICIAL DESTRUCTION. 93
invited ? What, if turning his back upon God and heaven,
he should seek his companionships among-the transitory
creatures of earth, and his pleasures in the things of time,
and sense ? What if he should disregard the voice of
God within his soul and set up his own will and pleasure
as the rule of his life, in opposition to the will of his Cre
ator? What if he should ignore the spiritual and higher
nature within him or bring it into degrading bondage to
his animal nature ? What if he should come down to the
level of the brutes that perish, indulge in the same pas
sions, live for the same finite, selfish, transitory ends ? Is
there no possible danger of his alienating, or losing, or
forfeiting the boon that was offered to his hope, and which
might have ever been held before him in the way of obedi
ence ? Is there no reason to fear lest he should share the
fate of the brutes with which he has cast his lot, and of
the world which he has chosen as his portion ? • Has the
creature whose ends and aims are all selfish, finite, transi
tory, any reason to hope for an eternal career ?
What if he defies the wrath of the Almighty by rebell
ing against Him ? What if he despises His laws and
tramples His ordinances under his feet and finally rejects
His overtures of mercy? Is there no such thing as
judicial destruction under the government of heaven ?
Has God made the life of the soul so sacred that He Him
self cannot take it away ? Is there no death penalty ? Is
this last resort reserved for human governments alone,
and must the Almighty Ruler content Himself with get
ting His enemies under a lock and key and tormenting -
them, forever, because He gave them in the outset a life
which He could not take away ? Neither Reason nor
Nature teaches any such doctrine as this.

CHAPTER VI.
TEACHINGS OF NATURE.-(Continued.)

The Instinct of Immortality. What It Shows. The
Belief Popular and Why. The Papal Church.
The Reformation.. Skepticism.
6. It is said that the subjective in man must have an
objective answering to it. That to every natural instinct
or faculty a corresponding object has been given upon
'"hich it may exercise itself, and in which it may find sat-
Tsraction. That man has an instinct of immortality, — that
he shrinks back with horror from the thought of extinction.
And, therefore, he will live forever. The philosophy of
the ancients, and the poetry of the present day is full of
this kind of reasoning.
" Whence springs this pleasing hope, this fond desire
" This longing after immortality ?
" Or whence this secret dread and inward horror
" Of falling into naught ? Why shrinks the soul
" Back on herself and startles at destruction?"
All this, and much more that might be urged in this
line, would be very good reasoning and true, were man in
his normal condition : had he not " fallen from the state
in which he was created." The great fact of sin and its
consequent ruin vitiates the whole. And now these
instincts, these vain desires, this longing after good that
is put beyond his grasp, these fearful forebodings of evil,
94

INSTINCT OF IMMORTALITY.

•95

only serve to show the magnitude of the disaster he has
brought upon himself. It is not so surprising that heathen
philosophers who had no Revelation to guidfe them,
nor that infidels who rejects its testimony, though Nature
testifies to the same truth, should reason about man as
though he had forfeited nothing by sin ; but how can
Christian men take up these arguments and urge them,
without ignoring the plainest teachings of God's Word,
and "denying one of the fundamental doctrines of the
Christian religion ?
Does man shrink back from extinction ? He also
shrinks back from physical death. Does he have an
instinct of immortality ? So the criminal under sentence
of execution has an instinct of life, and hopes, even
against hope, that his life will be given to him. So all
men desire to be happy, and they were constituted for
happiness, but only in the way of holiness. A certain
English writer* says : "A race of beings who can cor?*
ceive of themselves as destined to itnmortality, whose
universal aspirations have sought after it, whose language
is almost universally framed to express their ideas about it,
must, I believe, be destined to that end." Let the reader
substitute for immortality the word happiness, which is
equally appropriate, in the above sentence and then see
what sense it makes. Again, he says, " every innate desire
supposes a capacity in its subject answering to it. If, there
fore, the soul craves immortality (happiness ?), is capable
of the conception of immortality (happiness ?), and moulds
its beliefs and life with reference thereto, man must be^
immortal (happy ?) his nature being plainly constructed
with relation to indefinite and perpetual existence (happi
ness?)." * "Shall 1 live Forever ?" by William Barker.

96 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
Such an argument might have been expected from an
infidel, or from one who denies human depravity, or from
one who believes, and is endeavoring to prove, the final _
salvation of all men, but this is the language of an ortho
dox Christian who is trying to prove the necessary immor
tality of the ruined soul of man. If it proves anything, it
proves that man, sinner though he be, and though he con
tinue to be, shall have everything he desires and hopes Jor
in the future. He longs for eternal blessedness as much
as for eternal life. He is as " capable of the conception"
of the one, as of the other. " His nature is as plainly con
structed with relation " to the one as to the other.
" He moulds his beliefs and his life with reference " to
the one as much as to the other. But what if he moulds
his life with reference to neither ; but only with reference
to time and the ephemeral pleasures of earth ? What if
he turns away from the only Source of both life and bless
edness and seeks his highest gratification where neither
the one nor the other can be found ? Shall one be given
to him and not the other ? Is not holiness as necessary
to eternal life as it is to eternal blessedness ? The fact is,
man has forfeited both by sin ; and Nature, without the
Gospel, shows him no way by which he can regain either
the one or the other. And so " the whole creation groan-
eth and travaileth in pain together until now." But "the
earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the man
ifestation of the Sons of God." — Rom. 8.
7. If the immortality of all men is not a true doctrine,
why, its advocates triumphantly ask, is it so almost uni
versally accepted? Vox Fopuli, Vox Dei. Not only
such men as Plato, Socrates, Seneca, Cicero, Cato and
other heathen philosophers believed and taught it with
more or less assurance, but Atheists and Infidels unite

THE INSTINCT OF LIFE. 97
with Christian believers in professing to find it in the
Bible* and " Even the poor Indian whose untutored mind
" Sees God in clouds and hears Him in the mind,
" Whose soul proud Science never taught to stray
" Far as the solar walk or milky way ;
" Yet simple Nature to his hope has given,
" Behind the cloud-topt hill a humbler heaven,
"Some safer world in depth of wood embraced,
" Some happier island in the watery waste,
" Where slaves, once more their native land behold ;
" No fiend's torment : no Christian's thirst for gold :
•'And thinks admitted to yon equal sky
" His faithful dog shall bear him company."
The answer to this is very obvious. The instinct of
life is an instinct of Nature. It was given to man, as
indeed it is given to every living creature, however tran
sitory his existence, as a motive to the preservation of his
life. So long as he continued holy he had a right to
hope for the continuation of his life. When he sinned,
the instinct still remained as a sad reminder of the ruin
into which he had fallen and as a foundation for that
hope of recovery which was yet to be offered him in the
Gospel. There is something so sweet, and attractive, so an
swering to the highest aspirations of his soul, in the
thought of living forever, so assuring and flattering to his
pride, that it is not strange that he should still cling to it,
after he had forfeited all right to claim it, and lost every
thing that makes his life worth preserving.
' ' Hope springs eternal in the human breast,
" Man never is, but ever to be blest."
?See New Englander, Oct., 1871, p. 689. Also Preface to " Life
and Death Eternal."

98 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
That man should be willing to listen to the assurances of
the tempter, as he still whispers in his ear the original lie,
by which he compassed the ruin of our race, should not
seem strange to Christian men who are instructed in the
Scripture and " are not ignorant of his devices." With the
Word of God in our hands it is folly to speculate upon the
origin or universality of this delusion ; for this tells us. It
would be strange, indeed, if he who yet " deceiveth the
whole world " should willingly give up that device which
gained him so much power,-and by which he is now able
to asperse the character of God, dim the lustre of the
gospel, drive men into infidelity and " make the heart of
the righteous sad and strengthen the hands of the wicked
that he should not return from his wicked" way by prom
ising him life." Ezk. 13 : 23.
It was on this very question that Christ and his
immediate followers came into collision with the Jews
and the whole Heathen world. The Gentiles were filled
with such vague notions as their poets had been pleased
to give them of the Elysian fields in reserve for them
selves, and the Avernian lake into which their enemies
were to be cast, after death, and a multitude of other
shadowy and fanciful ideas of happiness or misery
"beyond the river." The Pharisees tinctured with these
views, and dimly comprehending the prophetical testi
mony of their Old Testament Scriptures concerning the
life and immortality yet to be revealed, had come to
hope for a future life of blessedness for themselves at
least, through the law of Moses. While the Sadducees,
on the other hand denied the existence of any Spiritual
world or Spirit whatever. But the Gospel, in opposition
to them all, revealed a resurrection from the dead and a
judgment to come for all men, and a new life and a
blessed immortality for all the believers in Christ and a

SATAN S CUNNING. 99
second death with utter and final destruction for all who
should refuse to believe on Him. Christ and His im
mediate followers preached no other doctrine than this.
Nor can the Bible be made to teach any other, but by
the most unwarrantable perversion of its uniform testi
mony from the beginning to the end. It was this truth,
accompanied by the Holy Spirit, that gave the Gospel, at
the first, such power over the hearts and consciences of
men and carried it in triumph to the ends of the world.
Satan well knew the mischief he could work with it :
how he could bring the Gospel itself into disrepute ; how
he could turn the grace of God to His elect into an accu
sation of injustice to the unsaved, and represent Him as
yet more fiendish and cruel than himself. He knew also
what a means of tyranny and oppression this doctrine
would be in the hands of an ignorant and unscrupulous
hiearchy which has always been so ready to do his
bidding. The priesthood who were now beginning to
assert the Divine prerogative of opening and shutting
the doors of heaven to whomsoever they would, were quick
to perceive what an almost superhuman power it would
give them to keep the deluded and confiding masses in
subjection, to be able, in addition to the loss of heaven,
to hold over them the threat of eternal torments in the
world to come. We all know how they have wielded
their awful power. As a suitable accompaniment and
necessary counterpart to this doctrine of endless tortures,
they invented the doctrine of Purgatory, a place of tem
porary and preliminary torture where such offences as
they were pleased to specify, might be atoned for and
condoned by money payments, and masses, if offered in
time, and in sufficient abundance, and the " mystery of
iniquity" was complete.
When the people, groaning under the burden and

tOO THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA,
thirsting after the Gospel of the blessed God, and inquiring
as well they might, " Is His mercy clean gone forever ?"
began to show signs of revolt, the Iifquisition with its
fiendish tortures was set up on earth, as the fit prelude and
counterpart of the yet more horrible and protracted tor
tures beyond, and the Church pointed to God Himself,
in whose Name she acted, for both her warrant and her
example for all the cruelties she inflicted upon these
helpless victims of her displeasure ! !
It could not be expected that the' Reformers just
emerging into the light with all the prejudices in which
they had been brought up, with all the errors of the
past, like dark clouds hanging around them, should be
able at once to cast off every human tradition and set
forth the whole truth in its true proportions. They did
all that could have been reasonably expected of men in
their position. Luther, if not others in his day, appears
to have had a perception of the truth on this question, and
to have denounced this doctrine of the Papal Church as
an error.* But he seems to have seen it, like the doc
trine of transubstantiation, but imperfectly, or he was too
much occupied with subjects demanding more immediate
attention, and this dogma, lying underneath all the other
errors that confronted him was suffered to remain in the
creed of the Reformed Church, to be yet eliminated — as
it surely will be — by a more enlightened and calmer age.f
* " I permit the Pope to make articles for himself and his faithful,
such as that the soul is the substantial form of the human body, t/uzl
the soul is immortal, and other monstrous opinions to be found in
Roman decretals." — Martin Luther.
\ " I am very confident the Lord has more truth yet to break forth
out of His Holy Word. For my part, I cannot sufficiently bewail the
condition of the Reformed Churches, who are come to a period in
religion, and will go at present no further than the instruments of the

THE REFORMATION ARRESTED. IOI
The Reformers, like the family of Lot had no sooner
hurriedly got out of the doomed city, than a portion of them
began to look back as did Lot's wife, and from that day to
this, they have remained like her lifeless image, making no
progress whatever. And even the other members of the
family, though now in earnest and more progressive, have
shown themselves exceedingly loth to leave the " plain
round about, and go up higher." This heirloom of error
which they brought out with them, is still cherished with a
peculiar fondness. Though, from time to time, there have
been those to protest against it, their voice has been
drowned by the cry of heresy, and it still remains as one of
the chief sources of skepticism and a grand hindrance to
the progress of the Gospel at the present day.
first Reformation. The Lutherans cannot be drawn beyond what
Luther saw ; whatever part of His will our good God has imparted
and revealed unto Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it. And
the Calvanists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great
man of God, who yet saw not all things. This is a misery much to
be lamented." — Robinson's Last Charge, 1620.
" The Christian Church is yet but very imperfectly freed from .the
unholy influence and mischievous operations of human authority.
The house requires to be more carefully swept than it was at the
Reformation from Popery, and a more thorough search must be made
for the old heaven, that it may be more completely cast out." —
Dr. Brown.
" It is owned that the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet under
stood : so, if it ever come to be understood before the' restitution of
all things, and without miraculous interpositions, it must be in the
same way that natural knowledge is come at, by the continuance and
progress of learning and liberty, and by particular persons attending to,
comparing and pursuing intimations scattered up and down it, which
are overlooked and disregarded by the generosity of the world *
* * * Nor is it at all incredible that a book which has been so
lon.j in the possession of mankind should contain many ,truths as yet
undiscovered." — Bishop Butler,

102 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
There is nothing in the doctrine of the immortality of
the soul to offend the pride or the prejudices of any
man. Infidels and Scoffers of every name are quite
willing.to accept it, from whatever source it may come,
and they are glad also to take the assurance of the
Church, that it is found in the Bible, though accompa
nied by that other doctrine which they reject, but which,
to the Christian is its necessary corollary — the perpetuity
of evil, and the eternal misery of a portion of the human
race : for it gives them one of their chief arguments
against the Bible as the Word of God and against the
God of the Bible. But strange to say, Christian men,
who ought to be jealous for the Truth and for the Name
of their God, in their zeal for the defense of their dogma,
do not hesitate to quote the impious jibes and flings of
these scoffers at the Word of God as so much evidence
in their favor; * and yet they mourn over the growing
skepticism of the day and wonder why it is that the
masses are breaking away from the teachings of the
Church and running into every species of error !
To deny the doctrine of the eternal existence of sin
and misery, and that Satan with his gathered hosts will
live. to rage and suffer as long as God lives, will no doubt
seem almost like blasphemy to some pious souls, for while
* The author of Life and Death Eternal, p. 15, quotes the follow
ing words of Theodore Parker : "I believe that Jesus Christ taught
eternal torment." — " I do not accept it on his authority ; " and again
in his article in the New Englander Oct. 1871, p. 689, he refers to
the testimony of the "Parkers and the Paines " as so much evidence
on his side. Why did it not occur to him to quote also the testimony
of another and older witness. Gen. 3:4?
The Congregationalist of Dec. 19, 1877, in an editorial article
quotes this same utterance of Theodore Parker and also similar
utterances of T. Starr King and J. Ernest Revau for the same purpose !

DESTRUCTION OF ALL EVIL.

I03

they dwell in the comfortable assurance of eternal life for
themselves, they have learned to look upon Satan and
sin and misery as a necessary part of the universe of
God. They dare not allow themselves to think of the
time when every enemy shall be destroyed, and the arch
foe of God and man shall cease to have any being;
when the Kingdom of God shall completely come, His
glory shall shine through the whole universe and His love
shall fill every heart. This would be too good to be hoped
for, and too much like Universalism to be true. But if
this doctrine is true, as we think we can show from the
Word of God itself, then it would be impossible to frame a
greater libel on the Wisdom, Justice, Power and Goodness
of God than the dogma we have undertaken to refute. But
if we are in error, it shall be the error of those who are
entertaining too exalted views of the character of God,
and of the completeness of the destruction which Christ
shall bring upon His enemies. But confident that the
truth is with us, we are bold to say with the Psalmist, to
the whole world, " O magnify the Lord with me, and let
us exalt His Name together." "" For His mercy endureth
forever."

PART THIRD.
ARGUMENT FROM REVELATION.

CHAPTER VII.
Successive Steps in Creation, Different Orders. Psyche
and pneuma ; the soul and the spirit, the one per
ishable, the other imperishable.
Science shows a regular gradation in the works of
God from the lowest to the highest, (i.) First, there is
mere chaotic matter, or the simple elements of the uni
verse. (2 ) Next, there is matter aggregated into masses,
having the property of cohesion, which for the want of a
more general and comprehensive term we call its life or
the life power in its lowest manifestation. (3.) In the
next highest grade we find matter possessing chemical
properties and entering into chemical combinations.
(4.) After this, we find matter assuming certain definite
and regular shapes, like the crystal, by a certain formative
life force within and among its elemental particles.
(5.) Then comes matter endowed, in addition to the prop
erties of the orders beneath it, with organic life, and with
the power of growing and of eliminating, by a certain
blind instinct, its own proper pabulum from the objects
around it. (6.) After this, comes matter possessing all
the foregoing properties or various degrees of the life
104

SOUL AND SPIRIT IN MAN. I05
power, with a sensitive nature superadded, which is yet a
higher kind of life, with the power of thought, volition
and action. This kind of life is called in Hebrew,
Nephesh, which means living soul, or creature that lives by
breathing. The equivalent for this word in the Greek is
psuche {ox psyche) and this is the word commonly used in
the Scriptures to designate Animal life, whether of brutes
or men, often translated soul, but always with reference
to its physical relations. The Latin equivalent is anima,
meaning air or breath : hence our English word Animal,
which by accommodation is applied to all sensitive crea
tures to distinguish them from vegetables, whether they
live by breathing or not.
(6.) Last of all, comes man, carrying with him all the
properties, functions and faculties of the orders beneath
him, and yet endowed with something more which links
him to the invisible world above. This additional pecu
liar property in man is called in the Hebrew, Neshamah,
a word never applied to the brutes : the Greek equivalent
is Pneuma ; in Latin, it is, Spiritus ; hence our word
Spirit ; and the world above is called the Spiritual world;
and this higher kind of life in man is called his Spiritual
Xfe_{pneumatikos X\ie) to distinguish it from his animalj
(or psuchikos) life.
This would scientifically seem to be the natural order
of creation, and when we inquire of the Divine Record,
we find it declared to be the true order, in time also, of
these six-days' work of Creation as described in Genesis,
1st and 2d Chapters. It was not till after all these lower
orders, with their various kinds of life had been made,
and had existed upon the earth, — for how long a time we
need not now enquire — and the earth was fully prepared
for his residence that man was made. " And the Lord

106 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life (lives) * and he became
a living soul." {Nephesh Chayah) Gen. 2 : 7. This
Hebrew word here translated living soul, but usually
living creature, and its Greek equivalent, is applied indis
criminately to brutes and men throughout the Bible, (see
Gen. 1: 20,21, 24; 2: 19 ; 9 : 4, 9, 10. Lev. 24: 18.
Rev. 8 : 9, etc.) But the word Neshamah translated the
breath of life means the Spirit of God, and does not
belong to man even, except as it is breathed into him by
God Himself. The Greek word Pneuma and the Latin
Spiritus, and the English Spirit, properly signify the
same thing, but they are often used, as we shall see, with
a greater latitude of meaning.
We have seen that each order in the ascending scale
of Creation, while including all that is below, possesses
an additional something which gives it a superiority, and
distinguishes it from the orders beneath it. So man was
endowed with a superadded gift, which distinguishes him
from mere animals, and gives him superiority over them.
It is not the (psuche) the soul, the {psuchikos or) soulical
nature, for this he possesses in common with other
animals, though he possesses it in a more perfect degree,
but the {pneuma) the Spirit, the (pneumatikos or) spiritual
nature, or otherwise called, his religious nature, which the
brutes do not possess, and which allies him to his Maker
and enables him to hold communion with Him. It is
this spiritual or religious faculty that especially dis
tinguishes him from other animals.
We observe further that while each of these orders
appears to be distinct from every other — and though we
* The passage should be rendered " the breath of lives" — of both
animal and spiritual life — as it is in the original.

SOUL-ICAL NATURE IN BRUTES. I07
have no good evidence from nature, much less from Reve
lation to show, what some scientists are beginning to guess
and trying to prove, that the lower is developed into the
higher, in the upward movement of all things towards
perfection — we do > yet find that they somewhat overlap
each other, and each inferior order seems to possess, as
by anticipation, in a shadowy form, that peculiar ad
ditional something which belongs only to the next higher
degree and which gives it pre-eminence over those be
neath it. So is it with the brutes in relation to man.
They possess a soulical nature in common with man, but
the Spirit of God was never breathed into them as into
man. They have, properly speaking, no spiritual or reli
gious nature either in esse, or in posse: But yet they have,
especially those that have been tamed and domesticated,
something very much akin to it. We detect in them,
what may be called the rudiments or shadows of the
religious faculty in their loyalty to man, who stands
to them, somewhat in the same relation as the Deity
stands to us. They reverence and fear, and love him.
They are capable of a kind of companionship, union and
and sympathy with him. They- seem to have a sense of
what is right or wrong so far as to perceive what will
please or displease him. These are the faculties which,
in man, when exercised toward God, are called his reli
gious faculties. They belong properly, not to his soulical,
— but to his spiritual nature. But the brute can ascend
no higher ; he has no sense of God whatever and no
faculty by which he can hold any communion with Him.
In other words, he has no Pneuma or Spirit, but simply a
Psuche or Soul within him. But man was originally en
dowed with both.
It is true, there are certain passages of Scripture in
which the word spirit seems to be predicated of brutes, as

Io8 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
Ecc. 3, 2 1 : " Who knoweth the spirit {rooach) of a man that
goeth upward, and the spirit, {rooach) of the beast that
goeth downward ? " but it is not the spirit in its highest
sense (the Neshamah) that is spoken of ; another word
{rooach) is here used which implies something common
to both. Some have rendered the text, " Who knoweth
the spirit of man that goeth erect or upright, and the
spirit of the brute that goeth prone or on all fours?"
Others, " Who knoweth if the spirit of the children of
Adam goeth upward and if the spirit of the beast goeth
downward ? " For the wise man is not endeavoring to
exalt (he nature of the brutes, but rather to show that
man in the loss of his true spiritual nature had sunk to a
level with the beasts that perish, and must share in their
fate, as is evident from the context, to which we will refer
again. In the use of psychological terms, there must always
be some degree of indefiniteness, either from the poverty
of language, or from our inability fully to understand the
subject. But there is a radical distinction between these
two words, Soul and Spirit, which must not be ignored,
or it is impossible to discuss this question intelligently.
Every spiritual thing must first be incarnated that we
may apprehend it in our lower natures. So every spiritual
word must have a material base, so to speak, and a
material and sensual signification, but still its spiritual
signification is as real and actual as its material, and it is
difficult to say which ought to he called the primary and
which the secondary. At any rate, we often err in calling
one the actual and the other the tropical signification.
The words soul and spirit both have their base or
counterpart in natural objects, and hence are each used
in what appears to be two senses in the Scriptures as every
where else. The word Psuche or soul means that life which

DISTINCTION BETWEEN SOUL AND SPIRIT.

109

man and brutes possess in common, and is predicated of
either indiscriminately. It denotes and includes the
whole animal mind in its cosmical relations. It often
stands for the blood itself in which the life specially
resides (See Gen. 9 : 4. Lev. 17 : 11, etc.,) and often for
the person or individual, implying personality or indi
viduality. It denotes selfhood and in this sense it is
often used as a personal pronoun, and God applies it to
Himself in such expressions as " My soul shall have no
pleasure in him." " In whom my soul delighteth," etc.
And in the text translated " Let me die the death of the
righteous," it is in the original, " Let my soul (nephesh)
die the death of the righteous." Hence it comes to mean
even the dead body itself, as Num. 5: 1-2 ; and 6: 6 ; 9: 6 ;
19 : n, 13, etc. But its more ordinary sense is the living
person or individual, whether man or brute, with all the
faculties and functions of his nature ; and in its higher
sense it denotes the mental_ fj^ulty residing in the body
and belonging to it. It is now used more generally with
reference to man's higher nature, and less frequently to
denote that which he has in common with the animals,
than formerly — certainly in a much higher and exclusive
sense than the words for which it stands in the Scriptures.
Then there are various tropical senses which need not be
mentioned In the New Testament, see also Matt. 2: 20 ;
6: 25 ; 10: 39 ; Luke 12: 19 ; Jno. 12 : 25 ; Acts 2: 43, etc.
The word Pneuma or spirit, is often used in its material
sense to denote mere breath or wind, and also to designate
those invisible intelligences, whether good or bad that are .
supposed to be above man in the scale of being, whose
nature we do not propose here to inquire into, and also
in various tropical senses, it is applied to brutes and other
objects having any kind of life, to characterize the nature
of that life. But in its higher and more common Scriptural

I TO THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
sense it denotes that Divine principle of life dwelling
primarily in God, and, by Him, communicated to the
soul of man as its peculiar divine life. " God is a Spirit
and they that worship Him, raust worship Him in spirit
and in truth." Jno. 4: 24. "It is the Spirit that
quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing ; the words that I
speak unto you, they are spirit, they are life." 6 : 63.
" The Spirit itself b.eareth witness with our spirit that we
are the children of God." Rom. 8: 16 ; et al.
There is everywhere a real radical difference between
these two words as used in the Scriptures, but there is a
distinctive relative sense which is very obvious when they
are used in the same connection, or in contrast or com
parison with each other, as in 1 Cor. 15 : 45. "The first
man Adam was made a living soul, (psuchen zosan) the
last Adam, a quickening spirit, {pneuma zoopoioun) ; Or
in 1 Thes. 5 : 23, " And I pray God, your whole spirit,
soul and body, be preserved blameless unto the coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ." Or in Heb. 4:12. " For the
Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any
two-edged sword, piercing even, to the dividing asunder
of the soul and spirit."
This distinction is especially marked when these terms
are used adjectively, as they often are, to exhibit the
contrast between the two. But it would be more obvious
to the English reader if our translators had employed the
word animal to represent psuchikos as they have employed
Spiritual to represent pneumatikos, but rejecting it be
cause, perhaps it savored too much of the mere animal
to express the exact idea, they have used such words as
natural, sensual, etc., to represent it, and, if we continue
to discard the adjective animal, we shall need to coin the
somewhat uncouth word psuchical or soulical to bring out
the contrast between the two Greek words pneumatikos and

THE TRINITY IN MAN. Ill
psuchikos in the Scriptures, as for example, " It is sown
a natural body {soma psuchikon, i. e., a soulical body), it
is raised a spiritual body {soma pneumatikon). There is
a natural {soulical) body and there is a spiritual body,"
i Cor., 15 : 44. " This wisdom descendeth not from
above, but is earthly, sensual, {soulical), devilish, James
3 : 15. These be they who separate themselves, sensual,
(soulical), having not the Spirit," Jude 19. "The natural
man (psuchikos de anthropos, the soulical man, or man
with a soul) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God, because they are spiritually discerned," 1 Cor.,,
2 : 14. This soulical mind or nature in man is very frequently
called the carnal or fleshly mind or nature, and, as such
it is contrasted with the Spirit. They are represented as
opposed to each other and warring together in him in his
fallen state. And the contrast between the two is con
tinually pointed out in the Word of God, as " The Spirit
indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." " Glorify God
in your body and in your Spirit." "The flesh lusteth
against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh."
" Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the
Spirit." "To be carnally minded is death; but to be
Spiritually minded is life and peace."
From the above references and remarks it will be
seen, that man in his original state was endowed with a
three-fold nature — a body, soul, and spirit, each distinct
from the other but all united in one, a real trinity in
unity. The body and soul, he possesses in common with
other animals, the spirit in common with God. The soul,
midway between the other two, is, strictly speaking,
neither flesh on the one hand, nor spirit on the other, and
yet it may be fleshly or carnal, or it may be spiritual
according to the choice which it makes. In the one case

112 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
it is called the carnal, sensual, fleshly or natural mind
(for a great variety of epithets are used to express the
same idea) in the other case, it is called the spiritual
mind. The soul stands in the same relation to the body
that the spirit does to the soul. The soul is the life of
the body, and the spirit is the true normal life of the
soul of man. But when used distinctively in the Word
of God with reference to fallen man, soul denotes the
mind in its Adamic, or, what is called, its natural or
sensual relations, and spirit designates that which is
heavenly and divine in him. In man's pure and normal
state the spirit dominates the soul, and the soul the body,
but in his fallen condition the order is reversed, and man
is in disorder and ruin. The spirit is the breath -of God.
It is an immortal principle ; it cannot die. But the soul
can die spiritually, and it can die also naturally. And
after itjias lost its true spiritual life, it must die naturally
as in all other animals.
If man lives forever, while all other animals perish, it
will not be because he has a living soul ; so have they ;
nor because it is more perfect, more capacious, more
noble than theirs, but because it allies itself with the
Ever-living God and His Spirit gives it life. So long as
it is united to the body only, and is dominated by its
lusts and passions, and seeks its highest good in the
things of time and sense that are transitory, it must pass
away with them.
This, we believe to be the true doctrine concerning
the soul of man. We have been the more careful to
point out the radical distinction between the Soul and
the Spirit, and to dwell upon it, because it lies at the
foundation of any intelligent understanding of the ques
tion at issue, and because it is just here that the greatest
confusion exists in the minds of most persons who

THE TRINITY IN MAN. 1 13
attempt to discuss it. The soul of man when it becomes
entirely an animal soul, by the loss of its spiritual nature''
becomes perishable like the"°soul of all other animals.
But when it is, or becomes a spiritual soul, which can be
only by union with God, it may live forever. It is here
that we see the real difference between the children of
Adam by a natural birth, and the children of God by
a spiritual birth, and why it is, that while the former must
perish, the latter are immortal. "Tor to be carnally
minded is death ; but to be spiritually minded is Life
anjd peace."

CHAPTER VIII.
The Fall of Man. The Penalty. How Adam must have
Understood It. The Tree of Life. Why He was
Forbidden to Eat of It. The Natural
Comes before the Spiritual.
Man was created " in the image of God " with body,
soul and Spirit ; not with three distinct and separable per
sonalities, but with the three, all united in one real triune
personality. He was created pure and innocent, but not
holy, in the sense of having a holy character, for character
is subjective and is not an object of creation. His body
was pure and perfect, though formed from the dust ; his
soul was pure ; for it had never been polluted by sin : his
spirit was pure ; for it was the breath of his Maker. He
was created "a living soul" — not actually immortal;
neither was he created mortal ; but he was made capable
of either, or rather a candidate for immortality. He must
first be tested and proved. His character was to decide
his destiny.*
 c  ' ' '
• "But some may say, was not man created mortal? By no
means. Immortal ? Nor do we say this. Butjrry_orjinion js, that
he was neither mortal nor immortal by nature ; for if he had been
formed from the beginning immortal, He had made him a God.
Again, on the other hand, if He had made him mortal, God would
have seemed to be the • author of death. Therefore, He made him
neither mortal nor immortal, but capable of both, that he might
advance to immortality, and by kaeping divine commandments receive
immortality as a reward and become divine. But, if by disobedience
to God, he should turn to the works of the flesh, he would become
114

THE PENALTY OF DEATH. 115
He was- made lower than (Elohim, God ?) the angels,
in that he had an animal nature and was fitted for an
earthly residence. And it may be questioned whether he
was originally fitted for any thing higher than a pure
earthly existence; and he was made higher than the brutes,
in that he was made capable of fellowship, with God
through his spiritual nature.
What was the object of this test? Surely, not to
determine whether he should be forever happy or forever
miserable on earth ; nor whether he should be forever
happy or miserable in another state of existence, for there-
is no such state in question. There is not the least hint
of it in the Bible account of his probation and fall. But
the test was simply to determine what his character
should be; whether he would obey or disobey His
Maker ; whether he would live after the flesh or the
spirit ; whether the sensual or spiritual nature that had
been given him should predominate and rule in his soul ;
whether he would look upwards to God and heaven, or
downwards to earth and the things of time and sense for
the sources of his happiness ; whether his motives and
aims in life should be carnal, selfish, temporal and finite,

unto himself the author of his own death. " — Theopilus, Bishop 01
Antioch, Second Century. ,
Irenceus also says (Adv. Haer. 2, 64) : " Sine initio, et sine fine,
vive et semper idem et eodem modo se habens solus est Deus. . .
. . .' Et de animalibus de animabus et de spiritibus et omnis de
omnibus his quje facta sunt initium quidem facturae suae habeant per-
severant antem, quoadusque ea Deus et esse et perseverare voluerit.
Non enim ex nobis, neque ex nostra natura vita est sed secundem gratiam
Dei datur. Sicut autem corpus animale ipsum quidem non est
anima, participatur autem animam* quoadusque Deus vult, sic et
anima ipsa quidem non est vita, participatur autem a Deo sibi praes-
titam vitam."

Il6 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
or spiritual, holy, heavenly, and eternal, — in short, whether
he should be a mere animal, though the highest of them
all, and die with the animals upon the earth ; or whether he
should be a spiritual creature, and live in fellowship with
other pure spirits above him, and with God Himself forever.
Life he now has through the Spirit of God that was
breathed into him ; and so long as he shall continue in the
favor of God, he has no reason to fear that it will be taken
away. By the side of the " Tree of Knowledge of good
and evil " by which he is to be tested, there is also stand
ing in the midst of the garden, the "Tree of Life,"
whether as the pledge of the continuance of his life, or
the means by which it is to be perpetuated, it matters not
now to inquire. But in the other tree, there is the fear
ful alternative : " In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die," If an inquiry be made here, how Adam
would understand this ; I reply that we have no reason to
think he would understand it as referring to anything
more than the loss of life as an expression of the dis-
. pleasure of God. And indeed there is the highest evi
dence that the case admits of, that this was his under
standing of it. For in the account of the infliction of the
penalty after the law was violated ; in God's own inter
pretation of it in Gen. 3:19, there is still no reference to
anything further, "Dust thou art and unto dust shalt
thou return." Now it is incredible that Adam should
have understood this as referring to what has been called
" spiritual death " and to " eternal death," when 'neither
in the threatening nor in the infliction of the sentence, is
there the slightest recorded reference to it. Men have
done great injury in the cause of correct interpretation
by carrying their notions .of doctrinal subjects to the
explanations of words and phrases in the Old Testament/
— {Barnes' Notes on Rom. 5 : 12.)

THE PENALTY OF DEATH. I17
•
Against whom or what is this threatening denounced ?
It seems almost like trifling to raise the inquiry, but this
subject has been so mystified and perverted by human
philosophy as to render it indispensable. We reply then,
to the sinning man himself, most surely. Not to his
hand, nor to his feet, nor to his body, but to the whole
man. " What man holds of matter does not make up
his personality. They are his, not he." (Sir W. Hamil
ton.) The words of threatening are " Thou shalt
surely die." It is not the body alone, nor the soul alone,
nor the spirit alone, nor any two of them together, — much
less the body on the one hand, and the spirit on the other,
while the soul in which the personality of man especially
resides, is to live on forever. But the whole man to
gether in the totality of his being is to die. We have no
warrant in reason or in Revelation for taking man to
pieces in this way, and consigning the two extremes to
death and destruction, or, rather, the extreme material
to an actual death, the extreme spiritual, to a kind of
metaphorical death, and the central portion, in which the
real conscious being resides, which is actually the man
himself, to a life of Eternal misery ! Where could have
such an incongruous, such a monstrous theory have come
from ? Who could have invented it ? How is it possible
for any intelligent believer in the Word of God to credit
it for one moment ? The Scriptures tell us — -"and the
serpent said unto the woman, " Ye shall not surely die."
Nothing but the suggestions of th^terngter could have
given it origin, and nothing but the necessity of keep
ing up this delusive fiction, at all hazards, could have
perpetuated it in the world, and, above all, in the Church
of God, in spite of the plainest declaration of His Word,
to the present day. Every argument of which the
subject is capable, from Reason, Nature and Revelation,

Il8 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA. «
is against it, and if man was not blinded by this theory,
of the necessary immortality of the soul, he could not
help seeing it to be false.
We are obliged to admit, whether we will or not, that
the body dies. The Christian admits, as he also must,
that the sentence of death falls upon man's higher spiritual
nature. But the greater always includes the less. It is
this that especially distinguishes man from the brutes. -If
he loses that additional something, he must inevitably fall
into the same category with them, and share in their fate.
If man loses his peculiar higher nature by which alone he
is capable of union with God and of living in Him, there
remains to him only the soul and the body, and these, he
has in common with the lower animals. But further, the
loss of the higher carries with it the loss of everything
beneath it, by a law everywhere observable in nature.
As there are various kinds of life in nature, so there
are various kinds of death. For death is the antithesis
or negation of life. Spiritual life cannot be predicated
of animals, nor spiritual death, (except by a figure of
speech), for they never had such a life to lose. Nor
can animal life or animal death be predicated of a
tree, for the same reason, nor can vegetable life or death
be predicated of a crystal, but only such life and such
death as is possible to it. When life or death is spoken of,
that kind of life or death is meant which belongs to the
object in question. What is the kind of death in question
in the case of Adam ? Primarily, of course, the los."' of
that life which is peculiar to him ; but secondarily, and
necessarily, by a law of nature, every other kind of life
of which he is possessed. But when any object loses the
life that is peculiar to it, that is, when it falls out of its
normal condition, it does not simply drop down to the
next stage below, and there remain and flourish with the

LIFE AND DEATH.

II9

life and vigor of the inferior orders, but it falls down
through them all to the very bottom. It goes to utter
ruin and disintergration. It is dissolved into its original
elements. It loses its own identity forever ; but the ele
ments remain to be reconstructed by the will and power
of God, into other forms of life and beauty. The process
of dissolution, after death may be gradual. The tree
that has died may, for a time retain its organic form and /
its cohesive life-power, but its eventual decay and dis
solution, however long retarded, is certain and inevitable.
The body of an animal, after the life has gone out of it,
may retain its vital heat, and the power of spasmodic
motion, for a time and by the cohesive life or power
among its elementary particles the bodily form may be
preserved, but this is only for a time ; it is on the way to
utter dissolution as the final result. Is man an exception
to this law ? May he lose that which gives him his
peculiar pre-eminence, the higher life of his soul, and yet
remain a ruined living creature forever ? Does death
after doing its work in his spiritual nature overleap his
soulical nature and fasten itself merely on the organic life
of the body and bring that alone to ruin ? That the soul
is capable of a two-fold life all will admit. It may live
through the spirit, what is called a spiritual life, or it may *
live through the body an animal life. This lower animal
life, at best would seem to be temporal and limited in its
duration, as in all animals ; and shall the death of the
spiritual nature, instead of bringing more speedy ruin up
on all that which is below it, tend only to render his
lower life perpetual and deathless ? And yet to such an
absurdity as this, one is brought in his effort to prove that
the soul lives after its spiritual death ; or rather, that it
may live, and live forever after it is dead as to both its
spiritual and its animal nature.

120 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
That the soul may have a lingering moribund vitality,
such as a limb of a tree has after it is severed from the
source of its life, or as the animal body exhibits after
the vital spark has fled, or" that God may by the exercise
of His Almighty Power keep it alive, and re-unite it to
the body, to be raised again, to he judged and utterly
destroyed in the second death, or that he may regenerate
that soul, while it lingers in its mortal body, and when
that goes to decay, give it a new spiritual body in which
it may live with Him forever, need not be asserted here, as
it will be considered in another place, — but that the soul
as a soul, severed both from God as the source of its
spiritual life, on the one hand, and from the body,
through which it has its natural or animal life on the
other, may live on independently of either, and live for
ever, is not only contrary to the analogy of nature but
also to the uniform teaching of the Scriptures from Gen
esis to Revelation. The soul of man, apart from God
ihe source of its spiritual life, must die heavenward ; and,
subordinated to the body, and in bondage to its lusts and
passions, it must share with the body, its earthly destiny.
However long it may linger here on earth, its destiny
of utter ruin and dissolution is as sure as the law of
nature and the law of God. " The soul that sinneth it
shall die." " For whosoever hath to him shall be given,
and he shall have more abundance, but whosoever hath
not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath." —
(Matt. 13: 12.)
A ruined, dying creature, man is now driven out of his
earthly Paradise to linger indeed for a time, but to share the
lot he has chosen with the brutes that pel. \ and return to
the dust from which he was taken. Ana what is very
significant and conclusive as to his destiny, he is now
cut off from all approach to the " Tree of Life " to which

THE SOUL CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT LIFE. 121
he had hitherto had free access. " Cherubim and a flaming
sword are said to keep it — lest he put forth his hand and
take also of the Tree of Life and eat and live forever ! "
Whether we regard this prohibition as a merciful prohi
bition to prevent him from perpetuating his sin and misery
forever; whether we regard this tree as the sacrament or
the means of perpetuating his life, or in whatever light
we regard it, it teaches unmistakably this one truth.
Now that he has sinned he cannot be permitted to live
forever. He must die: And yet, by a species of exegesis
called " Scriptural," men are attempting to show that all
this means, that the sinning soul shall not die, or rather,
that it shall survive its own death and live on in sin and
misery forever ! ! *
It might be interesting here to inquire, What would

* Dr. Hodge in his Systematic Theology Vol. II, Chap. 6, says :
"The reward promised to Adam on condition of obedience was
Life. " This " included the happy, holy, immortal existence of the soul
and body." "The death promised was the opposite of the life
promised. But the life promised as we have seen, includes all that is
involved in the happy, holy, immortal existence of the soul and
body ; and therefore death must include not only all the miseries of
this life and the dissolution of the body, but also all that is meant by_
spiritual and eternal death." [But what is meant by this death of the
soul ? , What is the " opposite " of its immortal existence but its
actual death ? It surely cannot be immortal existence continued,
however miserable that existence may be.] "God is the life of the
soul. His favor and fellowship with Him are essential to its holiness
and happiness. " [And why not, to, its continued existence also ?] "If
His favor be forfeited, the inevitable consequences are the death of
the soul, i. e., its loss of spiritual life and unending sinfulness and
misery." That is to say, the soul will sin and suffer forever after it has lost
its "immortal existence." So the author slips away from his own
premises to save his dogma that the " soul will not surely die." -

122 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
have been the fortunes of the human race had there been
no sin and no loss of spiritual life ?
C That man was originally fitted for anything higher
than a pure earthly existence, we have no evidence.
That our first parents were at first pure and innocent,
there is no doubt; but that they were such exalted
creatures as some theological poets and poetical theolo
gians have described them as having been, may well be
questioned. Whether their material bodies, without
undergoing some transformation, could have entered -the
heavenly world where " they neither marry nor are given
in marriage but are as the angels of God," may well be
doubted, for we are assured that " flesh and blood cannot
inherit the Kingdom of God." We may suppose that the
natural decay of their bodies might have been somehow
arrested or repaired by means of the Tree of Life, and
so, their earthly existence might have been perpetuated
without end. But, by what means were they to rise to
that higher celestial life — that "life and immortality"
that are brought to light in the Gospel ? May we not
inquire whether they could have been qualified for this,
but by a knowledge of good and evil ? Whether they
could have risen to that life above, without first having
•gone down to death through the sad experience of sin ?
Was not the Adamic state necessarily preliminary and
preparatory to the higher Christian state ? In other
words, was not all this a part of the divine plan ? Do
men not err in considering the fall of man too exclusively
from that standpoint which makes it appear as a disaster,
in every sense deplorable, and the scheme of grace
consequent upon it, as a mere expedient to repair the
mischief, and which, at best, is but partially successful ?
To reason in regard to contingent events, as they
appear to us, and to declare what would or would not have

MAN AS ORIGINALLY CREATED. 1 23
been, had the event been otherwise, is always unsatisfac
tory, even in respect to the affairs of men, but still more-
so when considering the plan and providence of the
Almighty, with whom there are no contingencies, who sees
the end from the beginning and arranges all things in
infinite wisdom and according to His own good pleasure.
It seems to be a law of nature, and of providence, and
of grace, also, that the imperfect and the inferior should
come before that which is higher and better, and that the
highest stage should be reached only by coming up through
those which are below. " Arid so it is written, The first
man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was
made a quickening Spirit. Howbeit, that was not first
which is spiritual, but that which is natural ; and after
ward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth,
earthy ; the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is
the earthy such are they also that are earthy ; and as is
the heavenly such are they also that are heavenly. And
as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also
bear the image of the heavenly, Now this I say, brethren,
that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,
neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." — (i Cor.
15 : 45-50.) We must first go through this lower stage
and die before we can rise to a higher life in the kingdom
of God. Did not Christ teach this when He said, " Verily,
verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the
ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth
forth much fruit ;" and the Apostle Paul in the chapter
just referred to, " That which thou sowest is not quick
ened except it die," and in his beautiful argument on this
subject, in the context ? Or will it be said that all this
refers to the Adamic state after the fall ? But in any case,
is it not evident from this argument and from the whole

124 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
tenor of the Gospel, that man does gain infinitely more in
Christ than he lost in Adam ? That what we lost in Adam,
at best, was but an earthly Paradise, but that in Christ, we
gain a celestial Paradise. That Christ came not simply
to repair the ruin of the fall and to bring man back
again into favor with God, but to raise His people to a
state infinitely higher than they would have been entitled
to, through their earthly progenitor, had he remained in
the innocency in which he was created ? But though
these inquiries are full of interest, and closely related to
our subject, they are not so directly in our line of argu
ment as to make it necessary to dwell upon them longer.
It is sufficient for us to know that in our natural birth,
through our relations to Adam, we all become heirs to
sin and death, but that in our new birth, through Christ,
we become heirs to " an inheritance incorruptible and
undefiled and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven."

CHAPTER IX.
Natural Life from Adam Transitory. Spiritual Life from
Christ Eternal. Life and Death, Actual, not Meta
phorical Terms. Hell, Sheol, Hades, Gehenna.
We have seen the result of man's first probation in the
loss of his spiritual life, and in the consequent death of
the whole man. We have seen how he was denied access
to the " Tree of Life," lest he should " eat and live for
ever," not lest he should eat and become pure again and
so live forever, not lest he should eat and regain his spirit
ual life and so live forever, but lest he should eat and live
forever as he was, a sinful, ruined, miserable creature ;
that is, lest he should become immortal in sin and misery ;
or, if one pleases so to understand it, — lest he should
retain the pledge of immortality after the reality had been
lost. We have heard the doom that was pronounced upon
Adam and his posterity, — a transitory life of pain and sor
row upon earth until he returns to the dust from which
he was taken.
We come now to consider, more particularly, the exe
cution of that doom. He begets children in his own like
ness, that is, " in the likeness of sinful flesh." The
stream can rise no higher than its source. He had no
spiritual life, and his posterity_aTe_born without anyspjritr
ual life. This is according to the uniform teaching of
God's Word. It is what theologians call the " total
depravity of man." They possess, like their fallen prp-
genitor, a mere earthly and transitory life, or what is now
called a " natural life," and in the Scriptures it is called
the soulical (psuchikos) life to distinguish it from- the
Ass

126 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
spiritual (pneumatikos) life that has been lost. Death,
death, sooner or later is the inevitable lot of the whole
Adamic race, — and this whether we consider it as a law
of man's physical nature, or as the penalty of a higher
spiritual law that has been violated. Henceforth the
soul's "natural " life, and its only life is that which unites
it to the body with all its natural instincts, lusts, and pas
sions. It act» and is acted upon through the senses of
the body. Its pleasures, its hopes, its motives, its aims,
its efforts are all in connection with sensible and perisha
ble things. It is characterized in the Word of God by a
great variety of names, as " the carnal mind," " the mind
of the flesh," " the old Adam," "the natural man." This,
in its own nature and by necessity, is perishable.
If the soul ever comes to have any other life, it must be
by the quickening power of the Spirit of God. It will not
be natural, but supernatural. This spiritual and super
natural life, which is immortal, is yet to be revealed in the
gospel. -A vague hint of it was given to our first parents
even when their doom of death was pronounced. Inti
mation of it became more clear and distinct as we come
down the course of time from age to age, till, growing
brighter and brighter, it ripens into an assured promise of
Life and immortality through Jesus Christ the Saviour.
It is offered to the hopes of man after his fall, to keep him
from utter demoralization and despair, and to encourage
him to look heavenward in expectation. Hence, "the
earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the mani
festation of the Sons of God," " while the whole creation
groaneth and travaileth together in pain till now." It lay
at the foundation of the faith which characterised the
patriarchs and other eminent saints to whom He more
plainly revealed His purposes of grace. It was that
undefined " some better thing "which " He had provided,"

THE OLD LIFE AND THE NEW, NOT THE SAME LIFE. 127
in anticipation of which they were enabled to live " as
strangers and pilgrims on the earth," though they died
" not having received the promises," — an unbroken suc
cession of faithful ones, till in the fulness of time, the vail
is rent, and the future life of His people through Christ as
the second Adam, which is an eternal life, is fully revealed
in the Gospel.
It ought to be clearly understood that this future life
is not a continuation of the old natural or soulical life into
another state. It is a new life, another life through the
spirit. The former passes away ; this, dating from the
new birth, endures forever. That is natural and perisha
ble ; this, supernatural and imperishable. In order to
possess it one must become a new creature, or rather, the
very possession of .it makes one a new creature. He is
" quickened " by the Spirit of God. " He is born
again," "not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of
the will of man, but of God."
But in the man that is born again we do not see two
persons, for there is only one soul, though he is yet to
have a new body. The soul preserves its identity through
all this change, from the capacity it has for a two-fold life.
It has _not lost its capacity for a new spiritual life,
though it has lost its spiritual life, and retains only its
natural life. This new life begins before the soul is dead
in its lower nature, and continues on after this death takes
place, and is not affected by it. Indeed, so far as we
know, this new spiritual life must begin before the soul is
completely dead in both senses. Hence it is only in life
that a man can be born again and saved to eternal life.
He is now dead in the higher spiritual sense but alive in
the lower natural sense.
This capacity of the soul for a two-fold life, the one
natural and mortal, and the other spiritual and immortal,

128 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
is the key to the double sense in which the words life and
death are used in the Scriptures. It is by disregarding
this, that men are led into such perplexity and confusion
of mind in reading and understanding its plainest
language on this subject. As there are two lives, so there
are two deaths predicated of the soul : both of them
actual and real. Spiritual life and Spiritual death.
Natural or soulical life, and natural or soulical death.
Bearing this in mind, such passages as the following are
perfectly clear : " You hath He quickened who were dead
in tresspasses and sins " — that is, they were already dead
spiritually, but not naturally when they were quickened.
" If ye live after the flesh ye shall die "• — that is, they are
already dead spiritually, but not yet naturally, but if they
live after the flesh, natural and total. death must ensue.
" He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall
he live," " and whosoever liveth (i. e., is alive) and be
lieveth in me shall never die." " If a man keep my saying
he shall never see death" — though the soul lets go its
natural life it shall retain its spiritual life forever. " He
that believeth on me hath everlasting life." " He that
heareth my Word, and believeth on Him that sent me hath
everlasting life (it is already begun) and shall not come
into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life."
" The hour is coming when the dead shall hear the voice
of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." " Let
the dead bury their dead, but follow thou me." "Thou
hast a name that thou livest and art dead." " No murderer
hath eternal life abiding in him." "Awake thou that
sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give
thee light."
This class of passages is very numerous, but it is not
necessary to quote more. It will be observed that some
times death is spoken of in the past tense, and some-

LIFE AND DEATH REAL, NOT METAPHORICAL. 129
times in the future, because sometimes the reference
is to spiritual death which is already passed, and some
times to soulical death, which is yet to come. The Greek
scholar will observe, also, what is not brought out in our
English translation, that this higher spiritual life, which
endures forever, is designated by zoe in contradistinction
from psyche the soul's lower or natural life.* But there
is no need of two words in referring to death ; the same
word thanatos serves as the antithesis of both kinds of
life, for death is the negative or the cessation of life, of
whatever kind it may be.
Here we wish to protest, with all the emphasis in our
power, against the practice, which has become so commpn
in dealing with the Word of God as to pass unnoticed,
of frittering away the meaning of these words, Life and
Death, to make them agree with the theory of the natural
immortality of the soul. Nothing must be allowed to contra
dict it. Whether dead or alive, the soul must be permitted
to maintain its conscious existence forever. Hence this
spiritual life, so often spoken of in the Scriptures, is
taken to be a kind of purification operated upon the soul
by the Spirit of God which brings joy and blessedness
as a consequence. It is metaphorically called " life," or
" the new life,'-' and the death, that answers to it, is only
a metaphorical death, signifying the loss of its purity,
and consequently, the loss of its joy and blessedness,
but, in either case, the soul itself lives on, and exercises
the functions of life. It remembers, thinks, loves or
hates, enjoys or suffers all the same as before. And even
the words life and death when used with reference to the
natural life of man, are not allowed their full natural
* The word aionios, eternal, is constantly joined with zoe ia the
Scriptures, but never in one instance, with psuche.

130 • - THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
meaning, as in the case of other things that have life. In
the natural death of other animals, everything they have,
is supposed to be included — not merely their bodies as a
material organism, but their living souls, such as they
have, are extinguished and they come to utter ruin and
disintegration, but in the natural death of man, his living
soul is excluded. So in either case, say they, whether
he dies naturally or spiritually, and when he dies in both
of his natures, he survives — that is, the soul lives, (for
the soul is the man himself), he is only metaphorically dead.
Nor can he die . in any other way, according to this
philosophy. And yet to save the appearance of con
sistency and to avoid seeming to contradict the Scrip
tures too flatly, when crowded by this argument, the
advocates of this theory will not say that the soul lives,
although it exercises the functions of life, but that it
exists forever ! And what do they mean by exists ? Why,
simply that it lives a life of sin and misery forever.
The fact is, spiritual life and spiritual death are as
actual and real as any other kind of life and death ; and
natural life and natural death, in man or in the soul of
man, are as real and as actual as in anything else that
has life and is capable of dying. Spiritual things or
entities are as truly entities as though they came within
the cognizance of our senses, and the words, life and
death, are as applicable to them, not as figures of speech
in some shadowy tropicaLunmeaning sense, but as actual
verities, as to things altogether material and sensible.
That these words as well as other words may be used
tropically, is not denied, but there is no more reason why
they should be used so, with reference to man's higher
nature than to man's lower. There is no reason what
ever for frittering them away in figures when predicated
of the soul of man, but just to save this dogma of the

READING THE BIBLE BACKWARDS. 131
natural immortality of the soul, which the Scriptures
everywhere so plainly deny. This whole theory of im
mortality in sin, is but the baseless fabric of a vision. It
vanishes into thin air the moment it is touched by the
wand of truth, and the dreamer consents to open his eyes
to the light. It is full time this stupendous delusion, " Ye
shall not surely die," were confronted with the testimony
of God's Word, and driven from the Christian -Church.
It is full time that believers in that Word had done
irifljmjjwithjts plainestutterances, and were willing to
acknowledge Christ " Who only hath immortality," as the
only source of immortality to perishing man.
There are too many who read their Bibles backward,
instead of forward as they ought ; and carry back into the
Old Testament what is peculiar to the New. They throw,
without any discrimination, the fearful alternatives of the
Gospel, and all the superadded curses denounced against
those who reject it, over the whole human family, and
they import into the simple words of both Testaments
their own erroneous conceits and false philosophies. We
take for example the word Hell, which occurs so often in
all parts of our English Bible. Every scholar knows that
the Hebrew word sheol and the Greek word Hades, both of
which are translated Hell, have no such proper meaning
as men now attach to it. But they meant simply the
grave or the place to which all go when they die, whether
good or bad. Then, there comes up, under the Gospel
another word of more fearful import, (in the Greek) —
Gehenna, from the Hebrew Ge Hinnom, signifying the
Valley of Hinnom. This also is translated Hell. This
Valley of Hinnom was a valley just outside of the walls
of Jerusalem where formerly the Hebrews, under some of,
their idolatrous kings, had worshipped Moloch and had

132 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
caused their children to pass through the fire to him. It
was afterwards devoted to the foulest uses, and the offal
and sewage of the city was carried into it, and the dead
carcases of animals and criminals were carried there to be
consumed by devouring worms, or by fires that were- kept
constantly burning for this purpose, and to purify the
atmosphere. Hence, under the Gospel, it became a
symbol of death and corruption ; of the place, into which,
the wicked after the judgment, were to be cast, and into
which Satan and all his hosts and every evil thing and
death and hell even were to be cast, to be utterly con
sumed. But unlearned readers, and even those who
ought to know better, carry back all the terrible ideas
associated with Gehenna into the words Sheol and Hades
wherever they are translated Hell, and make them all
alike to mean a place of torment. But the ancient
Hebrews attached no such idea to this word Hell.
" Generally speaking, the Hebrews regarded the grave
as the final end of all sentient and intelligent existence,
the land where all things are forgotten." *
This was the place down to which Jacob expected to
go mourning for his son Joseph. Gen. 26 : 35 ; 42 : 38.
It was where Job wished he might be hid. 14 : 13.
David prayed that his enemies might go down quick into
(sheol) hell. Ps. 55 : 15. Not into a place of eternal
torment, but of eternal silence and death. It was the
place into which our Lord Himself descended at His
death. Ps. 16: 10. Hence, by misunderstanding this
* Smith's Bible Dictionary, Art. "Hell." The same author
says, "This is- the word generally and unfortunately used by our
translators to render the Hebrew Sheol, and Greek Hades and once,
Thanatos. We say unfortunately because the English word Hell is
mixed up with numberless associations entirely foreign to the minds
of the ancient Hebrews. '

DEATH NOT A MERE PROCESS, BUT AN EVENT. 133
and other passages, Papists will have it that Christ went
into Limbo to deliver captive souls. See also Ps. 85 : 10 ;
89 : 48 ; Prov. 1 : 12 ; 30 : 16 ; Is. 5 : 14 ; Matt, n : 23;
1 Cor. 15 : 55 ; Rev. 20 : 13 ; et al.
We have no theory to propound or to maintain with
regard to the death of the wicked either before or after
the coming of Christ. What kind of a lingering mori
bund vitality the human soul, that is already spiritually
dead, may possess, if any, when separated from the body,
beyond that possessed by other animals ; how long it may
be in the act of dying ; under what conditions of suffer
ing and agony ; what distinctions there may be among
greater and lesser offenders ; what lamentations and
anguish on the part of the rejectors of the Gospel and
abusers of great privileges, — we know and profess to know
nothing more than is revealed to us by the Word of God.
It is not so much with the process as with the fact of
their death that we are principally concerned in this
argument. That they do actually die, His Word assures
us. And we believe it. We contend that no process of
dying is death until it is completed. That process which
goes on forever without coming to an end, however great
may be the agony, is not death. The loss of purity, the
loss of joy, the loss of heaven, is not death. Nothing but
the loss of life constitutes death. Separated from God,
their souls are already dead in their higher natures, and
when' separated from their bodies in which they now
only have life, they die in their lower natures also.
We have no wisTi to take away any of the safeguards
which God has thrown around His holy law, nor to
derogate in -the least from the terrible doom of trans
gressors, whether under the law or the gospel, nor even
to excuse those whom He does not excuse, who " perish
without law." We do not look upon His threatenings as

134 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
mere brutafulmina that will never be executed. But we
do not believe that all sinners will suffer alike, though all
sinners must die. For Christ Himself tells us that those
who " knew not " and yet committed, things " worthy of
death," " shall be beaten with, few stripes." But how can
those stripes be called few, however light they may be,
that are inflicted without cessation and without end ?
He tells us that it shall be "more tolerable" for some
than for others "in the day of judgment." But how can
that doom be tolerable in any sense of the word, which is
a doom of hopeless and eternal suffering ?
However heavy and numerous the " many stripes," and
however bitter and awful the less tolerable doom that shall
come upon such as did know, and upon those among whom
His "many mighty works were done," and "repented
not," we have no authority from Him for throwing
these dreadful threatenings indiscriminately and without
mercy over the whole human race that lived from the
time of Adam to the coming of Christ ; and over the
myriads of millions who have lived and died without
any knowledge whatever of His Gospel. We have no
reason or right to suppose that the whole Antediluvian
wOrld were swept alive into a Gehenna of fire where they
shall never die, but be tormented forever : nor that the
beastly inhabitants of Sodom, after four thousand years,
are still writhing in the fire and brimstone that consumed
the cities of the plain, but refuses to consume them ; and
that they are destined to writhe on in agonies that shall
never, never end ; nor that the brutal -Canaanites, whom
the children of Israel were commissioned to exterminate
from the promised land, were only exterminated from the
surface of the earth, that God might perpetuate their
miserable and worthless lives underneath it, to all eternity.
The judgments of God are sufficiently terrible, without

-" GOD MORE MERCIFUL THAN MAN. 135
any human, or rather inhuman exaggerations, to set them
off, and make them impressive ! The mortal doom of the
whole Adamic race is sufficiently sad and dreary, without
investing it with such cruel and eternal tortures as brutal
men- and fiends alone could invent to be poured out upon
all alike (save His elect) by the hand of the God whq_
made them.
We are' jealous of the name of Our Heavenly Father,
we believe He is worthy to be loved and trusted by all
His creatures, even by those to whom the gospel has
never been given. We believe " He is good to all and
His tender mercies are over all His works."
When we consider how unmerciful men often are to
each other; what cruelties they have inflicted upon the
victims of their power, as by His authority ; what tortures
upon earth and what infinite and eternal tortures they
have invented for their fellow-men in the world to come ;
what a veritable Moloch they have set up for us to love
and worship, we must say, give us back the God of the
Bible rather than the God bequeathed to us by the Papal
Church. Guilty and undeserving as we are, we cannot
but exclaim in the words of David to the prophet, " Let
me now fall into the hands of the Lord : for very great
are His mercies : but let me not fall into the hand of
man." i Chron., 21 : 13.*
* One of the chief objections urged against the doctrine of
"Annihilation," as they call it, by the advocate of endless torment
is, that sinners will not suffer enough, however long they may be in
the agonies of the second death, if they are ever permitted to expire.
This is the ground Dr. Bartlett takes in all his arguments on this
. subject, and'of others who follow him. This is IJr. Howard Crosby's
objections, (See sermon on ".Endless Punishment" in The Complete
Preacher, Feb., 1878.) He first says, "The alienated race of man,
as such, must suffer eternal death — that is eternal banishment from

136 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
God." By what right -or reason does he interpret " death" to mean
banishment, excepting to make it to harmonize with his dogma?
But all other advocates of this doctrine do the same — they cannot do
otherwise. Does banishment and the death penalty mean the same
thing under human governments ? Why should they, under the
divine government but to save this miserable dogma ? Then, after
apologizing for God and trying to excuse him for inflicting endless
torture, because fors"ooth, "The sinner's torture is the operation of
his own sin," he says, " Eternal Punishment is not annihilation. If'
it be punishment at the moment of annihilating, it certainly is not
punishment afterward. You cannot punish a being who does not
exist. Destruction and death do not mean annihilation, but the
ruin of the soul away from God — its misery and torture." As though
the loss of Eternal life with all its joys was not an eternal loss !
But the wretched culprit, or rather the countless millions of them,
must be kept alive forever, and that too under torture that they may
never cease to see and feel their loss and hopelessly to deplore it !
Then, expounders of God's will, not satisfied with the punishment of
death, which is the highest possible on earth, would add to it that (51
perpetual imprisonment under torture, which though contradic
tory, they have contrived to unite in one, by calling death and
destruction "banishment," and punishment "torture," and so the
punishment of eternal destruction comes to be eternal torture ! No
wonder they feel compelled to apologize for God upon whom they
charge such atrocious cruelty ! !

CHAPTER X.
Five Classes of Scripture Passages Bearing on this Question,
to be Considered. The Law, like the Nature of Man,
Two-fold. Its Temporal Application under Moses ;
its Spiritual Application under Christ. First
Class of Passages, Death and Destruction.
Our limits forbid us to undertake a minute and critical
examination of all the many passages of Scripture bearing
on this question : nor will it be necessary. For the sake
of brevity and convenience, those that we thall quote, may
be grouped into the five following classes ; a few of which,
under each of these several classes will be more particu
larly noticed.
ist. Such as deny the immortality of the natural man
and assert, that as such, he must die, perish, be destroyed.
2d. Such as speak of a new, higher, better life, a
spiritual and eternal life through Jesus Christ the Saviour.
3d. Such as bring into contrast the character and
destiny of the natural and the spiritual man, and declare
the life of the former to be transitory, and that of the
latter, eternal.
4th. Such as speak of the future destiny of each ofl
these two classes beyond the grave.
5 th. Such as foretell the complete victory which Christ
shall obtain over sin and Satan ; the utter destruction of
all His enemies ; the abolishment of Death and Hell ; the
creation of all things new, and the universal prevalence of
purity, love and joy forever.
We have seen that the soul of man was originally
endowed with a two-fold, — or, perhaps we should rather
J37

138 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
say, — with an alternative nature, enabling him, on the. one
hand, to look upwards towards heaven, and to unite him
self with God through the Spirit, and to look downwards,
on the other hand, to" the earth and unite himself with the
flesh through the senses ; the one spiritual, and, by con
sequence, eternal, the other natural, and. by consequence,
transitory. He would be a spiritual man or a natural
man according as the one or the other should predomi
nate. We have seen how his pure soul, like an evenly
adjusted balance finally preponderated towards earth, and
he became a (soulical) carnal and mortal man.
Now the Holy Law of God that was given to him,
possessed this same two-fold character ; a s.piritual and a
soulical application, adapting it to both, or to either of
these two natures in man.- In losing his spiritual life
through sin, and coming under the spiritual penalty of
the law which made him a mortal, rieTost also the sense
of the .spiritual character of the law, as he^did of^eyery-
thing else that was spiritual, and came directly under the
law as a temporal dispensation. The law itself lost noth
ing of its spiritual character, though it passed into desue
tude or eclipse, to be again uncovered by Christ when He
should come to bring spiritual life and immortality to the
soul of man. But it is obvious to every intelligent reader
of the Bible how pre-eminently, if not exclusively, tem
poral the Old Testament dispensation is, when compared
with the New. The rewards and the penalties, the bless
ings and the curses of the law "seem to be confined to
this life, and were so understood by the great mass of
those who lived under it. Health, prosperity, abundant
harvests, long life, a numerous posterity, the favor of God,
a peaceful death were the blessings promised to the
obedient, and the reverse of all these, to the disobedient.
Yet all these sanctions are capable of a two-fold sense.

SPIRITUAL THINGS GRADUALLY REVEALED. 139
They have a higher application which was, no doubt,
also intended, even though this was not apprehended by
those who had no spiritual discernment, an application
which Christ Himself brought to light when He came, —
an application of which the Old Testament saints got
glimpses more or less clear, and which grew more and
more perfect as they drew near to the light of the Gospel-
day. But not merely the righteous came to have antici
pations of " some better thing " awaiting them beyond
this life yet to be revealed to them, but the wicked also
came to have more and more distinct forebodings of evil
beyond the grave to disturb their security in sin. To the
one, the many promises of Life which abound in the
Old Testament as well as in the New, seemed like the
dawning of " light that ariseth in darkness," to the other,
the threatenings of Death which are equally numerous,
were like the rumbling of distant thunder from behind
the dark cloud which their vision could not penetrate.
As we come down the track of ages, these intimations
grow more and more distinct, till they culminate under
the Gospel, in a full announcement of a Resurrection from
the dead, a Judgment to come, and of a Second life, a
spiritual and eternal Life for the righteous, and of a Second
death — a death that knows no waking forever, for the
wicked. In the life and death that were set before the Hebrews,
when Moses gave them the law from heaven in an ob
jective form and exhorted them to choose life that they
might live (Deut. 30) : in the blessings and cu%ses he
caused to be pronounced from Ebal and Gerizim, (28) :
in the exhortations and warnings of Jeremiah, when in
the name of the Lord he says : " Behold, I have set be
fore you the way of life and the way of death" (Jer., 21) :
in the expostulations of Ezekiel by divine command.

140 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
saying : "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no
pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked
turn from his way and live ; turn ye, turn ye from your
evil ways.: for why will ye die, O house of Israel,"
(Ezk., ^^), and on the numerous other occasions, when
substantially the same language is addressed to them,
how much real significance they attached to these words
(or whether any) beyond what belonged to their earthly
career, it is impossible for us to say, nor is it necessary
that we should know. We who read the Old Testament
in the light of the New, no doubt, invest these words
with a deeper meaning than any they could attach to
them. But whether they are to be taken in a higher or
lgwer sense, the result to the sinning soul is the same.
Death is the antithesis, the destruction, of whatever
kind of life may be spoken of. We have seen how
spiritual death carries with it, sooner or later, every other
kind of death (unless that life shall be again enkindled
by the Spirit of God), and if now, having no spiritual
life to lose, the death of their lower or soulical nature is
intended ; this brings their soul's life to an end. Nor do
we need to inquire as to the accompaniments of this
death — how much of real suffering and how protracted ;
or whether the idea of the second death was always in
cluded in the threatening of the first, before the doctrine
of a resurrection is revealed. In either or any case, it
must have been the death of the person addressed — of
the individual sinning soul, if language has any meaning,
and no* of some irresponsible part of the person. It must
have been a real death, if the life in question was reaj.
That death and destruction — that is, just such death and
destruction as they are capable of, is declared to be the
lot of sinful man throughout both the 'Old and the New
Testaments alike, needs no multiplied array of texts to

PASSAGES IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 141
prove. It seems quite sufficient for us to quote a few
only in addition to those already cited, taken almost at
random from various parts of the Bible.
In the book of Job, such passages as the following
are of frequent occurrence : " The candle of the wicked
is put out.". " They are as stubble before the wind, and
as chaff that the storm carrieth away." "They shall lie
down alike in the dust and the worms shall cover them."
"The wicked is reserved to the day of destruction."
" By the blast of God they perish and by the breath of
His nostrils are they consumed." " He shall perish for
ever like His own dung." "He shall fly away as a
dream, and shall not be found, yea, he shall be chased
away as a vision of the night." "If He set His heart
upon man, if he gather unto Himself his spirit and his
breath, all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn
again unto dust." We might transcribe the whole of the
14th chapter, as in point, " Man that is born of a woman
is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth as
a flower, and is cut down : he fleeth also as a shadow
and continueth not." "There is hope of a tree if it be
cut down, that it will sprout again, .... but man
dieth and wasteth away ; yea, man giveth up the ghost
and where is. he?" "As the waters fail from the sea,
and the flood decayeth and dryeth up, so man lieth down
and riseth not ; till the heavens be no more (that is,
never, so far as Job knew) they shall not awake nor be
raised out of their sleep." (And then he asks, as though
it were utterly hopeless, as will be seen from what he has
already said) " If a man die, shall he live again ? "
The Psalms are full of such utterances as these, "The
way of the ungodly shall perish." " They are like the chaff
which the wind driveth away." " Thou shalt destroy them
that speak leasing." " The wicked shall be turned into

142 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
hell (sheol) and all the nations that forget God." " The
wicked shall perish and the enemies of the Lord shall be
as the fat of lambs : they shall consume : into smoke
shall they consume away." " As wax melteth before the
fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God."
" For lo, they that are far from Thee shall perish." " When
the wicked spring as the grass and when all the workers
of iniquity do flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed
forever." " For lo, thine enemies O Lord, for lo, thine
enemies shall perish." "His breath goeth forth; he
returneth to his earth ; in that very day his thoughts
perish." The 90th Psalm is one continued dirge in view
of the mortality of man. In the 49th Psalm the writer
declares how impossible it is for the rich man to redeem
the soul (or life), of his brother. " For the redemption
of the soul is precious and it ceaseth forever, (whether
' it ' refers to the soul or the redemption, the thought is
the same) that he should still live forever and not see
corruption. For he seeth that wise men die, likewise the
fool and the brutish person perish and leave their wealth
to others  Nevertheless man being in
honor abideth not, he is like the beasts that perish." Like
sheep they are laid in the grave : death shall feed on
them, and the upright shall have dominion over them in
the morning (or, speedily, to-morrow. It is possible
there may be a hint of another life for the righteous, but
of none, surely, for the wicked, for the Psalmist goes on
to say,) "He shall go to. the generation of his fathers;
they shall never see light. Man that is in honor, and
understandeth not is like the beasts that perish."
Solomon in the Book of Proverbs says that " The
lamp of the wicked shall be put out." " His destruction
cometh as a whirlwind." "He that speaketh lies shall
perish," etc. And in the Book of Ecclesiastes 3d chapter,

OLD TESTAMENT PASSAGES. 143
he compares man in his mortality to the brutes. " For
that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth the beasts ;
even one thing befalleth them : as the one dieth, so dieth
the other ; yea they have all one breath, so that a man
hath no pre-eminence above a beast ; (he has lost his
essential pre-eminence) for all is vanity. All go unto
one place ; all are of the dust, and all. turn to dust
again." We might follow the prophets, quoting numerous
passages, as ".The soul that sinneth it shall die." " The
destruction of the transgressors and of sinners shall
be together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be con
sumed." " They shall be as nothing : and they that strive
against Thee shall perish." " Behold, the whirlwind of
the Lord goeth forth with fury, a continuing whirlwind :
it shall fall with pain upon the head of the wicked. The
fierce anger of the Lord shall not return, until He have
done it, and until He have performed the intents of His
heart." And finally, we come to the memorable words
of Malachi at the very close of the volume. " Behold
the day cometh that shall burn as an oven and all the proud,
yea and all that do wickedly shall be stubble : and the day
that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that
it shall leave them neither root nor branch."
Thus far these judgments upon the wicked are in
variably spoken of as final. There is not one hint "that
they survive their own death, and exist to suffer after
they are destroyed. The language itself excludes the
idea. But in regard to the righteous, there are inti
mations, more or less clear, as we have already seen and
shall have occasion to notice more at length in the sequel,
of a life to come.
But when we go forward into the New Testament
dispensation, net only the righteous are fully assured of

144 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
that new life to come, but to the wicked, these threaten-
ings, though the same threatenings as before, are clothed
with an additional terror by the revelation of a resur
rection and a judgment to come, and a second death and
destruction that shall be absolutely irreversible and final.
It is the same doom as before. It is death and destruction
as before, but "now, rendered more terrible by the knowl
edge of a new fact concerning it.
It is the main fact of the death and destruction of the
wicked that we are considering, and not the circumstances
attending it. The great mistake of our opponents is, in
looking so exclusively at the circumstances, as to lose this
main fact out of sight altogether. They put that which is
subordinate and instrumental in the place of that which is
primary and central. They ignore the object or end in view
entirely, and take cognizance only of the means employed
to accomplish it. The pains and agonies that accompany
the death of the body or of the soul, however great they
may be, are not the death itself, nor is there any death,
until they have had their issue and have ceased. A
criminal may be put to death under any one of a great
variety of ways, more or less ignominious and painful,
and he may weep and deplore his fate during the whole
process of execution, but the penalty of the law has not
bee*i inflicted upon him until he is " dead," " dead,"
"dead." The undying worm, and the fire that is not quenched
are fearful agents, whether we- understand them as
figuratively or actually employed in the destruction of
the wicked, but they are only agents or instruments, after
all, for the accomplishment of a certain end, and not the
end itself. That end is destruction, and they are em
ployed to show how terribly, how surely, how completely
they will do their work. Far be it from us to attempt to

NEW TESTAMENT PASSAGES. I45
derogate in the least from the terribleness and certainty
of God's judgments upon the wicked. Indeed, our ob
ject is to show how terrible and certam_they are, and for
this reason, we are unwilling to see them explained away
at the expense of His truth, and so misinterpreted as to
traduce His^character — and all for the purpose of sus
taining the baseless assumption that the guilty soul is
deathless and indestructible, when He Himself has de
clared, it shall die and shall be destroyed.
Our limits forbid us to transcribe all the passages in
the New Testament we had marked for quotation. It
will not be necessary. Matt., 10:28 — "Fear not them
which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul :
but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul
and body in hell (Gehenna). The scholar need not be told
that the word (apolesai) here translated destroy, means
not only or merely to kill, but to completely destroy.
Mark 8:35 — "For whosoever will save his life shall
lose it : but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and
the Gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shall it
profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his
own soul (life) ? " Luke 13: 2 — " Suppose ye that these
Galileans were sinners above all Galileans, because they
suffered such, things ?' I tell you, Nay: but except ye
repent, ye shall all likewise perish," {apoleisthe, be utterly
destroyed). John 3: 16 — "For God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in
Him should not perish but have eternal life, (not
psuchen life, but zoen life). I
Acts 8: 20— •" Thy money perish {tie eis apoleian) with
thee." Rom. 2:12 — "For as many as have sinned without
law, shall also perish without law." • ,

I46 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
1 Cor. 15:17 — "If Christ be not raised ....
then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are
perished." (Had it not been for Christ the death of all
would have been final).
2 Cor. 4: 3 — " But if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to
them that are lost," (without this Gospel they must die
utterly). Eph. 2:3 — "By nature, children of wrath."
Philip 3: 19 — " Whose endis destruction, {telos, " end,"
means finis, beyond which there is nothing further).
2 Thes. 1:9 — "Who shall be punished (How, with
everlasting torment?) with everlasting destruction."
" For if we sin wilfully after that, we have received
the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sac
rifice for sin, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment
and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries."
Heb. 10: 26, 27.
"For our God is a consuming fire," 12:29 (not a
scorching, or roasting, or a torturing fire, but a consuming
fire). "But these, as natural brute beasts made to be
taken and destroyed — shall utterly perish in their own
corruption," 2 Pet. 2:12.
James 1: 15 — " Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth
death {thanaton, the complete extinction of life of what
ever kind it is).
1 John 3:15 — "No murderer hath eternal life abiding
in him," (He cannot, therefore, possibly live forever).
Rev. 20:12 — "And I saw the dead, small and great,
stand before God. And the books were opened ; and
another book was opened which is the Book of Life, and
the dead were judged out of those things which were
written in the books according to their works."
13 — " And the sea gave up the dead which were in
it, and death and hell (hades) delivered up the dead

THE WICKED UTTERLY DESTROYED. 147
which were in them, and they were judged every man
according to their works."
" And death and hell werecast into the lake of fire.
This is the second death."
" And whosoever was not found written in the book
of life was cast into the lake of fire."
1 Cor. 15 — " The last enemy that shall be destroyed
is death."Rev. 21 — "And there shall be no more death, neither
sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain ; for
the former things are passed away."
But we forbear to multiply quotations to prove that
the whole human race are mortal — not mortal in the
lower sense of the word, which needs no proof — but
mortal in every sense of the word, and that as sinners,
we all must be destroyed, unless we shall find our life
again in Christ. If these do not suffice, no array of texts
would suffice to prove it. As if to put this truth beyond
the possibility of question, it is asserted under every
variety and form of expression of which language is
capable. The wicked are said to die, to perish, to pass
away, to fade away, to wither, to be destroyed, consumed,
utterly consumed, root and branch, devoured, cut down,
ground to powder, burned up, plucked up by the roots,
broken to shivers, dashed in pieces, crushed, cut in
sunder, put away like dross, cast away, to vanish away
like smoke, like a dream, to perish like the brutes, to be
as ashes, to be as nothing, to be no more, not to be, etc.,
etc. Verily, if they can endure all this, and yet live — or
exist, if anyone prefer the term, — preserving their fac
ulties, their sinning and suffering powers in the liveliest
exercise, it must be because their souls are absolutely im
mortal and cannot possibly be extinguished. And what is

148 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
more, the truth for which we are contending cannot be
expressed. There is no language adequate to its expres
sion. And having once accepted the idea of immor
tality for all the world alike, men cannot be disabused,
simply because it is impossible to frame language strong
enough to disabuse them.
It is quite useless to enter into any discussion as to
the original meaning of the Greek and Hebrew words
that are employed in this connection. The fault is not
in the original words, nor in our English translation, but
in the meaning that is put into them when they are read.
Every Greek scholar knows that apollumi and its cognates
with their derivatives, translated by loss of life, lost,
death, destruction, perdition and the like, are the very
words to express this doctrine for which we contend, if
the writers of the Scriptures had intended to express it.
They could have employed none that were stronger, or
more in point. They had a well defined classical mean
ing when they employed them. Plato when discussing
this very doctrine of the immortality of the soul, in his
" Phaedo " uses them, and denies what the Scriptures
assert concerning it, that it will die, will be destroyed or
will perish. But. now as men deny this^ doctrine, not
withstanding the words assert it, they have invented
another meaning for all these words when used in the
Bible, to sustain their delusion, a kind of tropical meta
phorical, religious sense, which makes them mean just
what they desire, or rather just the very opposite of what
they say, and leaves the soul a living, sinning, suffering
soul forever, after it has died, and perished and been
utterly destroyed forever.
All words are capable of being used in a secondary
and non-natural sense. But because by diligent searching
through the classics, and because in some of the poetical

NATURAL SENSE OF WORDS DENIED ; WHY ? 149
Books of the Bible, some of these words are found to be
sometimes so used, they hasten, at once to the conclusion,
that they all must be so understood, and always so under
stand : and -that never, even in the sober, judicial
language of the Scripture, in the most solemn utterances
of our Saviour or the other sacred writers,- can they have
any other than a secondary, figurative, mysterious, enig
matical, inexplicable sense. And why? Is thare any
other reason but simply this ? That the ordinary and
natural sense must not be allowed, because it would be
fatal to their^ dogma, which must be defended at all
hazards. The fact is, they come to the reading of God'&
Word with a foregone conclusion, which no testimony
can shake. No matter if it denies, point blank, in
the plainest terms, and ten thousand times repeated,
the^loctrine they have embraced, all they have to do is to
put another meaning into these terms, and still hold on to
their cherished doctrine and to their Bibles also. And if
by any possible ingenuity of construction, they can find
a few texts that can be adapted to their use, however
fragmentary or whatever their original application, their
doctrine is abundantly sustained. Indeed it needs no
proof. It is self-evident. .Np matter if the Scriptures,
never anywhere, assert the endless existence of the human
soul, as they are obliged to confess. " They are charged
with messages of such tremendous import concerning the
character and condition of that endless existence, as quite
to throw into the background the abstract proposition of
the souls immortality " ! * etc.
If this is Christian exegesis, what is Rationalism ? If
theological teachers may handle the Word of God in
this way, what can they say to those who adopt their
* Life and Death eternal, p. 191.

150 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
method upon all doctrines, and play upon these Oracles of
truth as upon an old fiddle, any tune that may suit them,
or explain them all away as myth's having no palpable
meaning whatever ? Would it not be more honest and
decent to shut up the volume entirely, and fall back up
on the finding of reason alone ? Would it not be more
reverent to accept at once this doctrine, " Ye shall not
surely die," from the mouth of its originator, and give
him the credit of it, than to compel the Word of God to
indorse it ?

CHAPTER XL
Second Class of Passages. Eternal Life given to the
Righteous through Christ. The New Testament a
New Revelation. The New Life, another Life,
and not the same Old Life Restored. It is
Eternal, because it is Spiritual — the Life of
Christ in us.
The New Testament is not simply a fuller and clearer
revelation of Divine truth than the Old. It is all this,
but it is more : it is a New Revelation. As in Nature
we find one stage following another in the work ot
creation, each higher than the one to which it succeeds ;
so is it in the revelation of Divine truth. And as in
nature each higher grade, while it includes all that is in
the grades beneath, and exhibits it in greater perfection,
contains something more that especially distinguishes it
from them ; so the New Testament, while it embraces
all the truths of the Old, and reveals them more clearly,
contains other and higher truths which distinguish it as a
New Revelation.
And still further : As every inferior grade in nature
over-laps that which is to follow, and foreshadows its
peculiar characteristics, and, perhaps,' contains them all
in a rudimental state, so the Old Testament contains in
an undeveloped form, in its types and symbols, in its
prophesies atfd promises, hints more or less clear of the
truths yet to be revealed in the New. But these two
Revelations are separated from each other by a line, as
broad and distinct as that which separates any two
grades in nature.

152 the theological tri-lemma.
If it be asked, What is that " additional something,"
that truth which is peculiar to the New Testament and
gives it pre-eminence over the Old ? We reply without
hesitation, The Gospel. The Revelation of Life and
Immortality through Jesus Christ the Saviour. And
subordinately or co-ordinately in connection with this,
the doctrine of the New birth, the Resurrection, the
General judgment and the Second death.
But this is not only a new and higher revelation, but
the Life itself that is revealed is a new and higher Life,
and those. who are the subjects of it are new creatures.
" If any man be in Christ he is a new creature." Not
new in some metaphorical sense as denoting simply that
he is a reformed man, that he now forsakes his old way
of sin and begins to regulate his life by a higher standard
of morality, that he now seeks and finds his enjoyment
in higher things. It means all this, but infinitely more.
He is actually a." new creature." He has the beginning
of another Life in his soul. He does not lose his identity,
for it is the same soul that receives this new life. But its
former life was a natural life only : this is spiritual. It
has hitherto lived only through the body. It now begins
to live through the spirit also. The old Adamic nature
still survives for a time, but it goes to death, and the
soul that was associated with it must have shared in its
destiny, had it not received this new life ; but now, after
this natural body shall go to corruption, the renewed soul
will take to itself a spiritual and incorruptible body in
which it will live forever.
This new Life of the*oul is a spiritual Life, but none
the less real and actual because it is spiritual, but infinitely
more so. We should be glad so to emphasize the idea of
its actuality that our meaning will be understood. It is
a mistake — the great mistake that is made by most per-

SPONTANEOUS REGENERATION IMPOSSIBLE. 153
sons in considering spiritual things, to fritter away their
reality in tropes and figures, to suppose that they are
unreal, to suppose that the new birth is not a new birth
in any other than a tropical sense, that the spiritual Life
in the regenerated soul denotes only a purified condition
of the soul under its old life, which is the only actual life
the soul ever has. •' ' ' -' *e>
The old life of the soul is mortal : this is immortal,
and is as distinct from it as any other two kinds of life in
nature can be. It lifts the soul out of its former condi
tion into a higher sphere. Its condition and destiny are
altogether changed.
There is no such thing in nature as spontaneous gen
eration or regeneration. No object takes to itself life,
even of the lowest kind by any inherent power of its
own. It is the prerogative of God alone to confer it.
All life of whatever kind must be communicated directly
from Him, the source of all life. Much less can any
dying human soul take to itself this new life, by any
effort of its own. It is the prerogative of the Spirit of
God to give it. The soul may indeed put itself into a re
ceptive condition. It may seek this new life from Him,
but from Him alone it must come : " Of His own will
begat He us through the word of truth," " which were
born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of
the will of man, but of God."
The new life in the soul is eternal because it is spir
itual. It is the Pneuma, the breath of God Himself; the
same that animates Him who liveth forever. The old
lifejs the same with that of his natural progenitor." The
new Life is the same with that of his Spiritual Progen
itor. All the inferior forms of life are transitory. The
objects they animate are earthly and go to decay. The
whole material universe with all it contains of organized

154 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
matter and life will pass away and be dissolved into its
original elements, to be again reformed into the new
heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness ;
but the regenerated soul of man, purified by the Spirit
dwelling within it, from all its carnal dross, and clothed
with its new spiritual body, will survive the wreck and
dissolution, and live in the presence of God, pure, im
mortal and blessed forever.
Christ came, not merely to reveal this Life and to
take the natural and legal obstacles to our receiving it
out of the way, but also to communicate it to us by the
Spirit dwelling in Him and proceeding from him, " For
God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him." He
came not as John, to exhort to repentance and newness
of life, but He came as the " Way, the Truth and the
Life," the very Source and Fountain of Life itself. "In
Him was Life and the Life was the light of men."
Adam was, at best, but_ a creature;!amere_^rigsoul,
and 'like all other earthly creatures with a transitory life.
"His breath was in his nostrils." We could derive no
higher life from him. But Christ our Spiritual Progenetor
was the everlasting Creator Himself, and we, who are be
gotten by Him and live in Him, must live forever ," " Be
cause He lives we must live also." " The first man
Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam a quickening
Spirit." This is the doctrine Our Lord would have
taught Nicodemus in the very beginning of His ministry,
(John 3), verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be
born again {actually) he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
" That which is born of the flesh is flesh (this includes
the natural soul as well as the body) and that which is
born of the Spirit is Spirit." " As Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness even so must the Son of man
be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not

SPIRITUAL LIFE, ANOTHER ACTUAL LIFE. 1 55
perish (die utterly) but have eternal life." " For God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have
everlasting life."
Nicodemus, like the other Pharisees, had vague
notions of a life beyond this, but it was onjy the prolon
gation of the soul's natural life into another state; it was
the same old life continued — the same doctrine substan
tially that men still cling to ; the same we are combat
ting. He had no conception of this new Spiritual Life,
which begins only in a new birth, and which is the only
foundation for any good hope of -eternal Life. He was
destitute of that spiritual principle by which only he
could conceive of it. And so is it with the great mass
of men even to the present day. " The natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God because
they are spiritually discerned '. " For they are foolishness
unto him ; neither can he know them."
This is the doctrine Our Lord taught to the woman
of Samaria at the well, under the figure of living water
(John 4). Figures are used to represent realities and not
to represent other figures, and this Spiritual Life of which
He speaks under a figure, was an actual life. " If thou
knewest the gift of God and who it is that saith to thee
Give me to drink ; thou wouldst have asked Him and
he would have given thee living water." 
" Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again ;
but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give
him shall never thirst : but the water that I shall give
him, shall be in him a well of water springing up into
everlasting life." But her fleshly mind was filled only
with temporal and carnal ideas, and, as yet,' there was no
place in it for these spiritual and eternal verities.
It was of this Life that Christ spoke in His discourse

156 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
to the Jews after healing the man at the pool of Be-
thesda, " For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and
quickeneth them even so the Son quickeneth whom He
will. Verily, verily I say unto you, He that heareth my
word and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlast
ing Life, (it is already begun) and shall not come into
condemnation, but is passed from death unto Life. The
hour is coming and now is when the dead (as to their
spiritual natures) shall hear the voice of the Son of God ;
and they that hear shall live. As the Father hath life in
Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have Life in
Himself. Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye
have eternal life. (Why do you think so ? You are in
error if you expect it from any other source than this)
and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not
come unto me that ye might have Life." (And therefore
ye must die, there is no eternal Life for you.)
We desire to call special attention to this passage just
quoted. From the many hints and prophecies in their
Scriptures, and from other sources these Jews, like others,
and they especially, as they had more light, had come to
have notions more or less clear of an immortality for the
soul, but they expected it as a natural inheritance, and
not as a special gift through Christ. They thought they
found this doctrine taught in their Scriptures, but it was
only as these Scriptures testified of Christ that it was taught,
and it was only to be had through Him. It would seem
that nothing could be more conclusive on this question.
The same truth was preached after the miracle of the
loaves and fishes, (Chap. 6). "Labor not for the meat
which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto
everlasting life," which the Son of man shall give unto
you. I am the bread of Life, he that cometh to me shall
never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never

ETERNAL LIFE FROM CHRIST ONLY. 157
thirst. And this is»the will of Him that sent me, that
every one which seeth the Son and believeth on Him may
have everlasting Life. And I will raise him up at the
last day. Verily, verily I say unto you, He that believeth
on me hath everlasting Life, (even now) I am the bread
of Life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness
and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down
from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die.
I am the living'bread which came down from heaven, if
any man eat of this bread he shall live forever. And the
bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I will give for
the life of the world. Verily, verily I say unto you,
except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His
blood ye have no life in ye (no spiritual and abiding life).
Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath
eternal Life, and I will raise him up at the last day. As
the Living Father hath sent me and I live by the Father,
so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is the
bread which came down from heaven ; not as your
fathers did eat manna and are dead : he that eateth of
this bread shall live forever. It is the Spirit that quicken
eth ; the flesh profiteth nothing ; the words that I speak
unto you, they are spirit and they are life.-"
If any amount of reiteration could have conveyed
this truth to their carnal minds they must have under
stood Him. But they did not comprehend His meaning.
Neither do men who have no Spiritual discernment now
comprehend it. " From that time many of His disci
ples went back and walked no more with Him. Then
said Jesus unto the twelve, will ye also go away ? Then
Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go,
Thou hast the words of Eternal Life ? " Alas, how many
there are of Christ's disciples, so-called, and even of
those who profess to teach the meaning of His words to

158 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
others, who if they do not " go back atid walk no more,"
on account of this truth, still continue to look at Him
and to " Know Him only after the flesh," as a Saviour
from hell and eternal misery, but not from actual death,
and as a Giver of joy and blessedness that shall endure
forever, but not of Eternal Life — Eternal Life itself ! !
How shall they be made to understand this great and
glorious truth excepting by the Spirit of God.* May it
please Him to bless our humble efforts to this end, that
they may be able to say with us in the language of the
Apostle, " Though we have known Christ after the flesh,
yet now henceforth know we Him (so) no more."
O brethren in Christ, why will you any longer agree
with the enemies of your Lord to rob _F£irn_^of His. pe
culiar glory as the Giver of Life, Eternal Life to His
people. You indeed love and cherish Him, as well you
may as your Saviour from sin and misery, but He is infi
nitely more, He is the Author of Eternal Life to your
souls. Is it not time that old things had passed away and
all things had become new in your views of Him ? And
ye whose privilege it is to preach Him to your fellow-
men, O preach Him in all the fulness of His glorious
character as the Life and the only Life of a perishing
world !
" Then said Jesus again unto them (Chap. 8) " I go my
way and ye shall seek me and shall die in your sins;'
whither I go ye cannot come. Ye are from beneath; I am
from above : ye are of this world, I am not of this world.
I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins.

* An unknown friend who has recently come to the knowledge of
this glorious truth writes, " I verily believe it to be a revelation from
the Lord and that no man can or will receive it unless it is given him
from above."

CHRIST ALONE GIVES ETERNAL LIFE. 159
For if ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your
sins." .... Verily, verily I say unto you, If a man
keep'my sayings, he shall never see death," (not misery,
but death). They were already spiritually dead and were
going down to natural death, their souls with their bodies.
But there was another life which He could impart to
their souls that would endure forever.
Again He teaches the same truth under the allegory
of the Good Shepherd (Chap. 10) "Who giveth His life
for the sheep." And again under that of the vine and
the branches, (Chap. 16) " If a man abide not in me,
he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered ; and men
gather them and cast them into the fire and they are
burned (not tormented but consumed.)
This is the burden of His instructions to Martha at the
grave of Lazarus, (Chap, n.) She, with Mary also, had
been taught by Him concerning the resurrection of the
dead, the judgment and the life to come ; but her notions
were very imperfect and confused. She had no real
understanding of the source, the method and the nature
of that life when she said, " I know he shall rise again at
the resurrection at the last day." Jesus said unto her,
" I am the Resurrection and the Life, he that believeth
in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And Who
soever liveth (being alive) and believeth in Me shall never
die." This same truth is expressed in His intercessory
prayer, (Chap. 17) "As thou hast given him power over
all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou
hast given him. And this is eternal Life that they might
know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom
Thou hast sent."
We might refer to the other Evangelists, but John is
more full on this subject. If these quotations do not

l6o THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
suffice, no array of texts would be sufficient to prove that
there is no eternal Life but in and through Jesus Christ.
Can it be possible that any of His people should still
claim immortality as the natural prerogative of their own
souls and deny to Him " who only hath immortality " the
gift which He purchased for them with His own blood.
Give unto the Lord O ye His people — " Give unto the
Lord the glory due unto His Name."
Is it possible that this eternal Life of which our Lord
speaks so earnestly and with such constant reiteration
as the boon He came to bring to dying man, for which
He gave up His own life, and which He freely offers to
all who will believe on Him, — is not after all, eternal
Life, but only a certain condition of life, a pure blissful
condition of life it is true, — but as for eternal Life itself
it is equally the portion of all men?— it was never forfeited
and cannot be lost ? Can it be that He meant no more
by these high sounding words than, that he would engraft
upon the naturally eternal life of His people a condition
of blessedness which should endure forever, while those
who refused to believe in Him would spend their eternal
life in sin and misery ?
How long will men under the Gospel hug to their souls
thjs_delusion of immortality in sin ? O how long will
Christ's people evenTsliuttheir eyes to this truth that
illuminates every page of the New Testament, humiliating
indeed to the pride of man, but glorious to Himself and
so full of comfort and of joy to those who receive it and
so full of hope for the world ?
It was not until after the Holy Spirit had been poured
out with power upon the Apostles and immediate follow
ers of our Lord, that their minds were opened to receive
this truth, but when they did receive it, and "knew the
power of His resurrection," they were lifted completely

PREACHING OF PAUL. — ETERNAL LIFE IN CHRIST. l6l
out of their former condition and filled with an energy
and zeal which nothing could withstand. To the Apostles
the angel said, (Acts 5 : 20) ; " Go stand and speak in
the temple to the people all the words of this Life."
This is what Paul and Barnabas preached at Antioch,
first to the Jews, but when they refused to believe they said,
(Chap. 13) " It was necessary that the Word of God should
first have been spoken to you, but seeing ye put it from
you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo
we turn to the Gentiles  And when the
Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the Word
of the Lord, and as many as were ordained to eternal
Life, believed."
This is what Paul preached to the Athenians, but with
their minds full of the fanciful notions of their poets and
philosophers concerning the spirit world, they scouted
the idea of a resurrection of the dead and of eternal Life
through Christ alone.
It is the leading truth that runs through the Epistles
of this great Apostle, and the string upon which all the
other doctrines of the Gospel are hung.
To the Romans he preached that all, whether Jews or
Gentiles, were under one common sentence of death.
Those who had sinned without law must perish (not be
punished) without law, and those who had sinned under the
law should be judged by the law, but that all had come
short of the glory of God, and that death reigned over all
the children of Adam by nature. But that by the grace of
God there was hope. Though the wages of sin was death,
" the gift of God was Eternal Life, through Jesus Christ our
Lord." As in the gift of natural life and in the appoint
ment of man's temporal condition God was a Sovereign,
He was also a Sovereign in the bestowment of this higher
gift of eternal Life. This was a new life, a spiritual life.

162 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
It concerned itself not with carnal and perishable things,
but with things Spiritual and Eternal. They who possessed
it were led by the Spirit of God. They would not come
into condemnation. Nothing would be able to separate
them from the love of Christ, in whom and to whom
they were henceforth to live as the elect of God and the
heirs of eternal life.
This great truth is equally prominent in his Epistles
to the Corinthians. In the First, he shows how impossi
ble it is for human philosophy or human wisdom to
attain to any true knowledge of the Gospel — how foolish
these truths seem to natural men, " For the natural man
receiyeth not the things of God. But that this is the foun
dation of all their hopes for the future life. " Eye hath
not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart
of man the things God hath prepared for them that love
Him." " The fashion of this world passeth away, the
prize which natural men seek is corruptible, but theirs is
incorruptible. And finally, coming to the great and
glorious doctrine of the Resurrection, he dwells upon it
more at length, and shows how it is assured to them by
the death and resurrection of Christ. If this assurance
were to be taken away they would be the most miserable
of all men, for then they would have no hopes of life
beyond the grave. He attempted to explain the nature
of these Spiritual bodies which their Spiritual souls will
take on at the resurrection — how glorious and incorrupti
ble they will be ; how entirely different from these earthly
bodies which are fitted only for carnal souls and which
could not possibly inherit the kingdom of God, and how
those who should be alive at the coming of Christ would
be changed, " In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trump. For the trumpet shall sound and the
dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be

ETERNAL LIFE FROM CHRIST ALONE. 163
changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption,
and this mortal must put on immortality," and Death be
"swallowed up in victory."
The Second Epistle is equally full of this great truth
— Eternal Life through Christ alone, and so are his other
Epistles, but we must cut short this view. We have
no room to quote the many passages in which he speaks
of Christ as " our Life," and exhorts his fellow disciples
to lay hold of Eternal Life, to seek for glory, honor and
immortality, (why seek for it if it is theirs without seek-*
ing?) with the assurance that He will render to them
Eternal Life
Peter, James and Jude follow in the same track and
speak of the "inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and
that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven ready to be
revealed the last time," and John, especially in his
Epistles, as in his Gospel, dwells upon the theme of the
New birth, its spiritual nature, and the eternal Life to
which it introduces its subjects. And finally, in his
Revelation, he gives a panoramic view of the field of
battle to the end of time, and shows us Christ as the
Lamb that was slain, victorious over all His foes : Satan
and his hosts are bound, judged and utterly destroyed.
And the redeemed from earth whose names are written
in the Lamb's Book of Life from the foundation of
the world, clothed in white robes, shall walk the golden
streets of the Celestial Paradise, with crowns on their
heads and harps in their hands, singing praises to Him
who hath gotten the victory. And they shall have a
right to the Tree of Life and the Lamb which is in the
midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them
unto living fountains of waters. And God shall wipe
away all tears from their eyes:"

CHAPTER XII.
Third Class of Scripture Passages. — Death and Eternal
Life Contrasted. — Adam and Christ Compared.
Our attention has been directed in the last two Chap
ters, especially to two classes of texts : — ist. Those that
teach that the portion of the sinner or natural man is
death and destruction : — 2d. Those that teach that the
portion of the righteous or spiritual man is Life ever
lasting. Under the designation of sinners is included the
Whole human race. As children of Adam we are all
mortal, — not mortal in any partial sense, as to our
bodies merely, but mortal in every sense of the word —
having no eternal Life of any sort abiding in us by
nature. Immortality is declared to be the gift — the
special and peculiar gift of God through Jesus Christ,
and is only received as we are born again by a new Spir
itual birth.
The two opposite destinies of these two classes are
set forth, both positively and negatively, categorically
and figuratively, with such constant reiteration and in
such a variety of language, in every part of God's
Word, that these two prime truths, if no others, might
well be considered as established beyond all question,
viz : 1. That apart from Christ, the natural man has no
possible ground of hope for immortality or eternal Life,
2. That this immortality is just what every regenerated
soul has assured to him, in the Gospel of Christ.
But, as if to put these truths beyond all controversy,
and to make them stand out as clearly as possible, tnere
164

THE CONTRAST. 165
is still another class of passages in which they are
brought into juxtaposition; and a comparison by con
trast is instituted between the wicked and the righteous,
sinners and saints, natural men and spiritual men, the
children of Adam by ordinary generation, And the chil
dren of God by regeneration ; and their opposite char
acters and destinies are set, the one over against the
other. The children of Adam are shown to be like
their fellow progenitor, sinful, selfish, carnal, finite in
their aims, earthly, mortal, and beset by a thousand ills,
as they run their transitory career, until they go down to
sheol, and return to the dust from which they were taken.
While, on the other hand, the children of God, by a new
birth, are, like their spiritual progenitor, holy, heavenly
minded, seeking those things that are above j though
these two natures, the old and the new mingle for a time,
and struggle for the mastery in the same body, like the
infants Esau and Jacob, the last born shall finally sup
plant the first, and come off completely victorious. And
when the old nature shall go down to death and decay,
the new man, created after the image of God in true
holiness, shall take to itself a spiritual body adapted to its
spiritual nature, and rise immortal both in body and soul,
to its inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled; and that fadeth
not away, reserved for him in heaven.
3. It is to the consideration of this class of passages
that we now come.
It is not in the Gospel that this contrast is first insti
tuted. But from the time when God first began to
choose to Himself a peculiar people out of this world,
and the line began to be drawn between them and
others, a separate destiny was suggested to their hopes ;
and their faith laid hold of it, though it was but dimly
conceived of. For life beyond the grave and immor-

166 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
tality through Jesus Christ was not yet brought to light.
Though a very prominent place is given to temporal
blessings, in the good that was promised to the faithful,
yet they finished their earthly course under an impres
sion more or less distinct, that they had not exhausted
the promise. " All these having obtained a good report
through faith received not the promise, God having
provided some better thing for us, that they without us
should not be made perfect." Heb. 11:39-40. Their
faith lighted up the dark valley and dissipated its chief
terrors. The way to the grave became brighter and
brighter as the Gospel day began to dawn. While to the
wicked these shadowy terrors that came up from sheol to
meet them, became more and more terrible.
There was much mystery even in the language of Christ
Himself, and much more in that of the, old prophets; but
their words were felt to be pregnant with meaning.
Says Moses, in his farewell address Deut. 30, etc. " I
call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that
I have set before you life and death, blessing and curs
ing, therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed
may live." In many of the Psalms, this contrast is beau
tifully drawn out — -in the Firs't, Second, Thirty-fourth,
Thirty-seventh, Seventy-second and third and in many
more. They abound in the writings of Solomon, " The
wicked is driven away in his wickedness, but the right
eous hath hope in his death." "The light of the right
eous rejoiceth, but the lamp of the wicked shall be put
out." " Though a sinner do evil a hundred times, and
his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be
well with them that fear God, which fear before him.
But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he
prolong his days, which are as a shadow, because he
feareth not before God."

THE PROPHETS, LIFE AND DEATH. 167
In the Prophetical books this contrast is set forth in
earnest and glowing language, " Say ye to the righteous,
that it shall be well with him ; for they shall eat the fruit
of their doings. Wo unto the wicked, it shall be ill with
him ; for the reward of his hands shall be given him."
Ezekiel, a thousand years after Moses, makes use of
the same pregnant words Life and Death, in exhorting
the murmuring Hebrews. They complained that the ways
of God were unjust and unequal in dooming them all to
death for the sins of their fathers ; that it made no differ
ence whether they were righteous or wicked, for all must
die alike. * He declared that it was not so ; that God had
no pleasure in the death of him that dieth. It was His
will that the wicked should turn and live. " Turn ye,
turn ye, for why will ye die." He could not have meant
Life and Death in a mere physical sense, for then His
words would have been nothing but irony. Their com
plaints would not have been met. He must have meant
Life and Death in the fullest conceivable sense. This
they could not doubt, though they failed to comprehend
his meaning and though the prophet failed himself to
comprehend it.
Daniel looking forward in prophetic vision to the
final issue says, " And many of them that sleep in the dust
of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting Life and
some to shame and everlasting contempt." [Not ever
lasting shame and contempt, as most persons read it, but
"shame and everlasting contempt."} *
* The author of Life and Death Eternal, in his zeal to sustain
a position which needs every text that can be pressed into the service,
has fallen — unintentionally it is to be hoped — into the common error
of misquoting this text and joining the epithet everlasting to the word
shame instead of contempt as it is in the text. There is not another
passage in the Old Testament that even seems to hint at an eternal

t68 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
" And the wise shall shine as the brightness of the
firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness, as
the stars forever and ever." Shame is subjective and is
expressive of what one feels within himself ; but contempt
(or abhorring, for this is the rendering of the same word
in Is. 66 : 24) is objective, and expressive of the feelings
of others towards him. No man can properly be said to
feel shame any longer than he lives, but he may be, like
Judas, an object of contempt in the memory of others,
long after he has passed away.
This is just what the prophet was careful to say.
And in saying it, he gives no hint that the wicked shall
have any other immortality but that of contempt in the
memory of those who have seen their destruction.
Malachi concludes the Old Testament canon with a
vivid picture of the preservation of the righteous as the
jewels of God, and the destruction of the wicked, who
shall be burned up as stubble and the ashes trodden
under foot.
Now comes John the Baptist like the day star before
the rising sun, or as a herald in advance of the king to
prepare the way, saying, " Repent ye for the kingdom of
heaven is at hand." A new spiritual kingdom is to be
erected on the earth. " The axe is laid unto the root of

future for the wicked, and so it is necessary to make the most of this.
Nor does this if it is properly quoted. He says. "Dan. 12 : 2 ; also
describes in the same utterance the ' life ' of the righteous and the
'shame' of the wicked by the same epithet 'everlasting.' (! !) It
cannot without violence be understood otherwise than as declaring
them to be equally, and in the same sense everlasting." p. 332.
Now this is just the very thing Daniel does not do. It is not the
shame which the wicked feel that is everlasting but the contempt that
is felt for them by the righteous ! !

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN SPIRITUAL. 169
the trees. Therefore every tree which bringeth not forth
good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. (For
what purpose ?' To be consumed of course.) " His fan
is in His hand and he will thoroughly purge His floor,
and gather His wheat into the garner. But [not, and He
will gather His chaff into another garner, that both wheat
and chaff may be separably kept forever, but] He will burn
up the chaff with unquenchable fire." *
At last, in the fulness of time the King Himself
comes down, bringing with Him to earth the King
dom of heaven. He comes to set it up in this lower
world, and to call men into it. But all men are,
by nature, earthly and carnal, under the dominion of
temporal things. This is purely spiritual. Hence they
must be born again. They must become new creatures.
Their natural birth gives them only a low and transitory
life. But the new life that He gives to His followers shall
never pass away. "Because He lives, they live also."
" He is the Door by which they enter." " He is the
Way, the Truth and the Life." The gate that leads to
destruction is wide, the way is broad, and therefore many
go in thereat ; and because the gate that leads to Life is
straight and the way narrow, there are few that find it ;

* We shall have occasion to comment on this word unquenchable
(asbestos) in another place and will simply remark here that it is of
frequent use in the Scriptures and in the classics to describe a fire or
anything else that is violent, excessive and irrepressible. Had it
always been correctly rendered, as here, much misapprehension would
have been avoided, but in Mark loth our translators have taken the
liberty of substituting a whole phrase in the place of this one word,
viz. : that never shall be quenched. This, no doubt was their idea
about it, but they did not get it out of the word abestos. When
Homer speaks of abestos gelos, (irrepressible laughter) we do not
understand him as predicting that this laughter "never shall be
quenched," but only as saying that it was violent and irrepressible.

17° THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
and yet it is open to all who will enter it. "For God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have
everlasting Life." They who build on any other founda
tion will be completely overwhelmed when the final test
shall come; but they who build on Him, like a man who
builds on a rock, will never fail. Treasures laid up on
earth will be lost ; those that are laid up in heaven will
be secure forever, He is the bread that came down
from heaven. All who feed on Him shall live forever ;
but other bread — even the manna that was given in the
wilderness can nourish only for a little time. He gives
the water of Life. Natural water is transient in its effect ;
but the water He gives, shall be in one — a well of water
springing up unto Bverlasting Life.
He is the true Vine, His people are the branches, and
live by their union to Him as long as He lives — that is
forever. But branches that are cut off from Him must
wither away and be burned up.
By these and by a great variety of other figures, our
Lord set forth in contrast the perishable nature of all
earthly things, and the certain destruction of those who
choose them as their chief good, and the enduring nature
of heavenly things and the eternal Life of those who seek
them. This is the thought, that runs through all His
teachings. Whatever other truths He taught beside, this
stands out prominent among them all. This, indeed, was
the grand object of His mission, to rescue man from sin
and consequent death, and restore him to God and to
eternal Life, Life, eternal Life was the boon He offered
to dying man. And this Life He could impart to those
only who believe on Him.
The moral law which Moses had given to the Israel
ites was holy and perfect, even in its adaptation to their

SPIRITUAL THINGS REAL. 171
earthly life alone, though none of them had been able
fully to keep it. And its penalty of death was a righteous
penalty. But now He uncovers a new and Spiritual
aspect of the law, of which they had hitherto had no
conception. It is found to be equally adapted to the
wants of His Spiritual Kingdom. It needs no 'change.
Everything belonging to this world is gross, sensual,
changing and perishable. It must soon pass away. They
who set their affections on it, and pursue its trifles must
pass away with it. But everything belonging to His
Kingdom is Spiritual and incorruptible, and for this
reason, abiding and eternal. The new life of His people
is a Spiritual life. Their desires, their affections, their
motives to action, the hopes that animate them, the in
struments they use, their weapons of offense and of
defense are all Spiritual.
Their bodies are yet fleshly, and the old life yet
lingers in their souls : but all this is soon to be changed.
Their bodies with all their lusts are to be cast off, and
they are to be clothed in bodies that are pure and incor
ruptible. For flesh and blood cannot inherit the King-
dam of heaven. In that world to which He will bring
them, " they neither marry nor are given in marriage,
neither can they die any more."
Let no one suppose that by Spiritual, something
shadowy, unsubstantial, unreal is meant. There cannot
be a greater mistake. This new life and these Spiritual
things are as much more real and substantial than the
old life and the things of this world, as they are more
abiding. Hence our Lord exhorts men to seek first the
Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and to lay up
their treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust
doth corrupt it, and where thieves do not break through
nor steal. He who-seeks mainly to save his natural life,

I72 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
shall lose it, but he who hateth it (or forgets it in his
higher aim) shall keep it unto (zoe) Life eternal. "Fear
not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the
soul. (This, man cannot do, but God can). But fear
Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell
(Gehenna) (Is there anything left of a sinner after both
soul and body are destroyed ? The elements perhaps,
but what becomes of the individual ?)
The net gathers all sorts of fishes : the good are kept ;
the bad are cast away. The curse that fell upon the
tree that bore nothing but leaves, was "Let no fruit grow
on thee henceforward forever." It was not condemned
to bear miserable and bitter fruit forever, but no fruit at
all, and it withered away. The good wheat, at the time
of the harvest, was gathered into bundles to be pre
served, but the tares were — not kept in separate bundles,
but burned up. Only those who had on the wedding gar
ment were admitted to the feast. The man who failed to
put it on was forever excluded. The wise virgins who
had oil in their vessels with their lamps went in with the
bridegroom ; but the door was shut against the foolish
virgins who had no oil, and their lamps went out. .
At the final separation He would say to those on His
right hand " Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the
kingdom prepared for you from before the foundation of
the world " : and to those on his left hand. " Depart
from me, ye cursed into everlasting fire, prepare for the
devil and his angels." And these shall go away into
everlasting punishment, but the righteous into Life eternal.
As this is one of the passages principally relied on to
prove the eternal existence of the wicked, we shall
consider it in the proper place in a following chapter.
We forbear to remark further upon it at this time, than to
say, that we hope to show, that the everlasting fire pre-

DESTRUCTION AN ACT NOT A STATE. 173
pared for the devil and his angels was prepared — not to
preserve them alive, but to destroy them, and that the
everlasting punishment of the wicked is elsewhere de
clared to be, not everlasting torment, but everlasting de
struction "Who shall be punished with everlasting
destruction " (2 Thes. 1.) If the reader had_not his
mind preoccupied by the notion, that the wicked will cer
tainly exist forever, this passage would no more suggest
to him the idea of.an eternal process of punishing than
the words "eternal judgment" (Heb. 6:2) would sug
gest the idea of an eternal process of judging, or the
words "eternal redemption" (Heb. 9:12) an eternal
process of redeeming, or the words eternal " salvation "
(v. g.) an eternal process of saving. It is the complete
ness, the finality and irreversibleness of the act that is
signified. At the final separation the righteous are
to be rewarded with eternal Life — which of course, is
continuous, for it is actual and positive, and the wicked —
and this includes the devil, and all his followers, are to
be punished with everlasting destruction, which can
mean nothing less than a completed act. The one is a
state which continues forever, and the other is — not a
state but, an event or_transaction, final and eternal in its
consequences. In fixing our attention upon the prominent points in
this contrast between the two great classes into which the
whole family of man is to be divided, Life to the one, and
Death to the other, we are not losing sight of what our
Lord said of the rewards and penalties that would be
distributed to every one according to his deserts at the
last day.
To the righteous will be given that measure of com
mendation, and those stations of honor and trust to
which their faithfulness has entitled them. They who

174 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
have sown sparingly shall reap also sparingly, and they
who have sown bountifully shall reap bountifully. And
upon the wicked, will be visited that measure of reproba
tion and wrath they have deserved — and no more, but so
surely and impartially, as may well, cause every sinner to
tremble in view of it. There will be " many stripes '.'
and " few stripes." " There will be weeping and gnash
ing of teeth," " tribulation and anguish," There will
be disappointment, dismay, despair and rage on the part
of the rejectors and enemies of Christ, when they shall
see " many coming from the East and the West, from the
North and the South, and sitting down in the Kingdom
of God and themselves thrust out. But these rewards,
on the one hand, are not the Life itself which Christ
gives to this people, neither are these final judgments, on
the other hand the Death in which all who die unsaved
share alike. This Life eternal is not a reward of faith
fulness. And those who conceive of it as such have no
true conception of the Gospel. It is " the gift of God."
Neither is this death the penalty of individual trans
gression. It is the common lot of all who fail of the
great salvation. It must not be confounded with the
penalties, every sinner is to receive according to his own
individual deserts. Pre-eminent among all the dreadful
accompaniments of death is Death itself, from which the
Gospel offers to deliver men, and in addition to all this, the
forgiveness of their own individual sins, however many or
few through the merits of the Saviour. So also is the
Life, which is already begun in the soul of every true
believer, pre-eminent and distinct from the reward he
shall receive for his faithful services, whether many or
few while on earth.
It is by confounding these two things together, Eter
nal Life, which is the gift of grace, and is common to

DEATH FROM ADAM, LIFE FROM CHRIST. 1 75
every believer, and the varying rewards of every one
according to his deserts, on the one hand, and the " debt
of nature," which is also common to all natural men,
with the penalties which every sinner must receive accord
ing to his deserts, on the other hand — an error which
those who maintain the doctrine of the immortality of all
men cannot well avoid — that the whole Gospel system
has been thrown into inexplicable confusion, in the minds
of most persons.
We must cut short our quotations of individual
passages contrasting the natural with the spiritual man
and showing the opposite destinies of the two, which
abound in all the Epistles, and the observations we had
intended to make on them, that we may have room, before
closing this chapter, to notice the extended parallel which
the Apostle Paul has drawn in the Epistle to the Romans,
and also again in the First of Corinthians, between Adam
and Christ, or the first and the last Adam.
Commentators and common readers of these Epistles"
have found great difficulty in understanding them,
especially in understanding this parallel. But the chief,
— if not the whole difficulty springs from the false mean
ing which they give to the words Death and Life in the
text. The theory which they have in their own mind, in
regard to the deathless nature of the soul, forbids them
to understand the word Death, which is the key to the
whole, in its only true and proper sense. It may mean
the separation of the soul and body. It may mean a
depraved and miserable condition of the soul in another
state of existence. But it cannot mean, according to
their theory, the real death of the soul. No wonder,
under such limitations, that they fhid it difficult to make
good sense out of the Apostle's argument — without im
pugning the justice of God. Theologians have been

176 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
obliged to invent the monstrous doctrine of imputation
of sin and its correlative, the imputation of holiness, and
to resort to various contrivances and special pleas to re
lieve the difficulty, which their own error has created, and
to explain the reasonableness and justice of God in con
signing the whole human race to endless misery on
account of the original sin of our first parents — a doctrine
which never has been, and never can be justified to the
moral sense of any man.
If any one will consent to lay aside this blinding
theory of the deathless nature of the human soul, long
enough to read these Epistles through, giving to the
words Life and Death — just for the sake of the ex
periment, — their true and proper meaning, he will see a
beauty and clearness in the whole argument.of which he
before had no conception.
We have room only to indicate, in the briefest manner
possible, the main points in this parallel.
Adam and Chri'st stand respectively at the head of two
kingdoms, the one natural, the other spiritual. The natural
is first, and necessarily so, "afterward that which is spiritual."
Adam is a mere creature ; he possesses, at best, but a
derived and a dependent life. Christ is the Almighty
Creator, the Source and Fountain of all life.
To Adam as an individual was offered, and to us also,
through him as our representative, a natural earthly im
mortality conditioned upon perfect obedience, which was
liable to be forfeited any moment by sin. He lost it both
for himself and for us, by one act of sin. Christ also, in
the flesh that He might become a perfect Saviour, stood
before the same law. His obedience was tested, " He was
tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin," and
through Him is offered to us, a spiritual and heavenly
immortality which cannot be forfeited or lost.

THE FIRST AND SECOND ADAM COMPARED. 1 77
Adam was a mere earthly creature, — at any rate, he be
came so after his sin ; — there was no spiritual life in his soul ;
it was dominated by his animal nature ; and therefore he
could not be otherwise than transitory and mortal ; he
became the progenitor of a race like himself, destitute of
spiritual life, carnal, selfish, sinful and, necessarily, mortal,
— mortal in every sense of the word. Christ was a
Spiritual Being; though in the flesh tor a time, His
spiritual nature, which is undying, dominated the whole
man; and this nature He communicates to us as His
children by the new birth ; and " because He lives, we
live also."
Because Adam sinned, we all must die, irrespective
of our individual deserts ; — even those who have not sinned
after the similitude of Adam's transgression must pay
the penalty of a natural law violated ; — because Christ
died and rose again, " we all shall be made alive,"
irrespective of our individual deserts ; — both the death
of the body, and the resurrection of the body are equally
involuntary, and equally comprehensive of the whole
human race, and both without regard to individual moral
character. But we become participants in the moral guilt of
Adam only as we sin by our own individual act — So,
also, we become participants in the merits of Christ only
as we are united to Him by a personal act of faith. This
is the foundation of the rewards and penalties that
shall be distributed to every one, at the last day according
to his deserts.
But through Adam* we inherit a proclivity to sin,
and we also suffer a thousand ills we did not bring upon
ourselves by our sins. So through Christ a thousand
blessings, and heavenly influences come round us which
we have never deserved or sought.

178 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
Through the sin of Adam and our participation with
him in its guilt, we lose both our natural bodies and the
natural life of our souls ; we lose an earthly paradise, and
the right to the Tree of Life in the midst of it, by which
means only, our frail natures could have been renewed
and kept in repair. But in Christ we gain " much more "
than we lost in Adam. We gain a glorious Spiritual
body, an incorruptible nature that needs no repair, a
heavenly Paradise and a right to the Tree of Life which
stands in the midst of the garden of God, not as the
instrument but the enduring pledge and sacrament of a
pure and blissful immortality.
Our opponents charge us with narrowing down, and
restricting to their most literal sense, the words Life and
Death as employed in the Scriptures to set forth the
opposite destinies of the righteous and the wicked.
While, at the same time, they complain that we charge
them with making them to mean mere happiness and
misery. But neither of us admit the charge. There i.s
nothing gained to the cause of truth by misrepresenting
each other. We both, no doubt, understand them to
mean vastly more. We all regard them as pregnant words,
full of meaning, and desire to give them as broad and
full a sense as our respective theories will allow. But
they cannot receive them in as broad and full a sense as
we do. They cannot understand by them all that we do;
for, then, there would be no controversy between us.
They are the crucial words in this dispute. The ques
tion is, how much or how little we are to understand by
them. We believe that eternal Life means Life indeed,
but it includes also and carries with it all the blessings
promised to the righteous, and that Death means death
indeed, and it also includes and carries with it all the
curses threatened to the wicked. Our opponents be-

LIFE MEANS LIFE, DEATH MEANS DEATH. 179
lieve that the 'words mean all that we do, except Life itself
and Death itself ! That is, they reject from these words
the main idea. It is the play of Hamlet with Hamlet
left out. Surely the accompaniments of Life, however
joyous, are not life itself, nor are the accompaniments of
death, however terrible, death itself. We hold that the
leading thought, around which all the others cluster in
subordination, in the portion of the righteous, is Life,
Life, and that this Life is derived from Christ their liv
ing Head. We hold also that the leading thought,
around which all the other cluster in subordination, in
the portion of the wicked, is Death, Death ; for they are
utterly and forever separated from Him who is the only
source and sustainer of Life.
We cannot but ask : Is it probable ? Nay. Is it pos
sible that the Scriptures should ring with these two
words from one end to the other — the two most promi
nent and important words in all the Bible as regards our
destiny, when neither Life itself nor Death itself is really
meant, but only a certain condition of life — blessed in
deed on the one hand, and miserable indeed on the
other ; but as for Life itself, it is not the peculiar gift of
God to the righteous through Jesus Christ, but the com
mon inheritance of both the righteous and the wicked
through Adam — and as for Death itself, it is not the
wages of sin ; for there is no such thing as actual Death
even to the wicked — but only endless misery. Any
theory that requires such wresting of God's Word to sus
tain it has no foundation in Truth.

CHAPTER XIII.
The Old Dogma supported by two Props ; Assumptiok and
the Double Use of Words. Specious Reasoning.
What Constitutes Orthodoxy, and what is
Heresy on this Question ? Natural
Immortality not hinted at
in the Scriptures.
The doctrine of eternal sin and misery rests on two
props: — namely, (i.) The assumption that man is neces
sarily immortal, and (2.) A certain, or rather uncertain
double or alternative use of the crucial words in the con
troversy according to the convenience of its advocates.
1. If it be assumed as a postulate that man is destined
to an endless existence regardless of its character or con
dition, then there are many passages of Scripture that
may be made to appear to sustain the inference, that the
wicked will exist forever in sin and misery ; for if, accord
ing to the assumption, they must spend a conscious
eternal existence somewhere, and if they cannot spend it
in the happiness of heaven, then where else can they
spend it but in the misery of hell ? Hence all those many
passages that speak of the final rejection of sinners, of
their exclusion from heaven, of their destruction, of their
perdition, of the loss of their souls, of their never being
forgiven, etc., are received as teaching the doctrine of
eternal sin and misery : All that speak of their weeping
and gnashing of teeth at the last day, are supposed to
teach that this weeping and gnashing of teeth will be kept
up forever : All that speak of the disappointment, dis
may and anguish that shall seize upon the wicked when
God shall bring them into judgment for their sins, are
supposed to teach the same doctrine.
180

THE MAIN QUESTION ASSUMED. l8l
The "undying worm " and the "unquenchable fire,"
are supposed to represent agents that will forever feed
upon the bodies and souls of their miserable victims with
out consuming them. " Everlasting punishment " is
supposed to mean everlasting torture. The two ex
pressions are taken to be synonymous. " Everlasting
destruction " is taken to mean the same thing, — that is,
the everlasting process of destroying that never ends in
destruction. Even death, the word that is more frequently
used than any other, to describe the doom of sinners, is
supposed to mean, the eternal agony of dying that never
ends in death. When all these passages are collected
and set forth in fearful array, they are thought to be very
conclusive by those who are fully possessed of the idea
that the soul is immortal and indestructible. They are
certainly conclusive against the doctrine of universal sal
vation. But not one of them sustains the doctrine of
eternal sin and suffering, as distinguished from everlasting
destruction. So far from having any real force against
this doctrine of everlasting destruction which we are
maintaining, we take them all as so many incontrovertible
arguments in favor of our position. If the inquirer
could be induced to drop his theory of the necessary im
mortality of the soul, which he will find nowhere asserted
or even hinted at in the Bible, and to look at these pas
sages with a mind unbiased by prejudice, he would be sur
prised to see how uniformly they all sustain the doctrine for
which we are contending. He would, also, be amazed to
see how little support he can find in the Word of God
for his doctrine of eternal sin and suffering. It is only
as he assumes the unconditional immortality of the soul
— the very thing that needs first to be proved — that he is
able to find any apparent support for it. While, without
any theory on the subject to blind him, he will find

182 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
innumerable passages that assert, in almost every form of
language, and in the most positive manner, the death and
destruction of the wicked.
2. As for the other prop on which this dogma rests
for support : — namely, the double or alternate use of the
principle words in the discussion : — we have already, in
a previous chapter shown the double d^utyjhe^word anni
hilation is made to perform, and how the sophistical
reasoner sometimes predicates the term of the living
organism, and sometimes of the elements that compose it;
and alternates from the one to the other, as the necessi
ties of his argument require. The same double game is
played with the correlative word existence, upon which
we have also remarked. We may predicate existence
of a house, for instance, or of the materials of which
the building is composed, even after the house has been
destroyed as a building, but it is not the house that now
exists, but only the ruins or the elements that exist.
A running brook may be said to exist for a time. But
let it be dried up. The vapory particles may be some
where in existence, and the dry bed may still exist but
the -brook no longer exists. The body of an animal
may exist after the animal is dead, or has been destroyed,
but it is not the animal that exists. All this is so obvi
ous that it would seem unnecessary to say it. Yet there
are those calling themselves Christian teachers who, by
playing on this word exist attempt to show that the soul
may exist not only after it is dead, but after it has been
destroyed, and not only exist but exist as a living, con
scious soul, and that too, forever — because forsooth its
elements — if indeed it has any elements — may be said to
exist : — a kind of sophistry of which any honest man
ought to be ashamed. *
* See Life and Death Eternal, pp. 37, 38.

DOUBLE USE OF WORDS. 183
The same sort of logodaedaly is practiced with the
words Life and Death. Sometimes, that is, when it is
convenient, the word Life is taken to mean life, and so
also, the word death is taken to mean death. But when
the theory requires it, neither of them can be allowed to
mean either life or death, but the one, a certain blissful
condition of life, and the other a certain miserable condi
tion of life. It is by playing between these two mean
ings, calling one ,of them scriptural and the other literal,
and taking either just as the theory requires, that these
advocates contrive to delude others, and themselves, also,
with the idea that they are proving from the Bible, that
the soul exists as a soul after it has been destroyed, and
lives and exercises the functious of life after it is dead !
The same art is practiced with the word destruction
{apoleian, olethros, both from the same root,) of such fre
quent use in the Scriptures. It is the strongest word
that can be employed to denote the complete and utter
deln^litionTtakmg to pieces, and ruination of the thing
spoken of. It means everything but the absolute anni
hilation of the elements of the object. It is so under
stood ordinarily. But when the Scriptures speak of the
destruction of the soul, why, that is a different thing, for
the soul is, according to the theory, /^destructible. There
fore when the Bible speaks of the soul and body both as
being destroyed in hell, it cannot mean that they will
actually be destroyed, but it means that they will both be
made as miserable as .possible in hell. This is called
Bible exegesis.
The same may also be substantially said of the word
punishment {kolasis),w\i\ch has a subjective and an objective
application, the one referring to the pain which the crim
inal feels, and the other to the demonstration which
justice makes for the observation of others. In regard

184 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
to the future punishment of sinners, the theory requires
that it should be taken subjectively as pain that is eter
nally felt, although the Scriptures tell us that the wicked
are "punished with everlasting destruction." And so of
other important words which might be mentioned.
Starting with the assumption that man is destined to
an endless existence, and then by a skilful selection of
texts without regard to their original connection or appli
cation, and by taking the crucial words in them in either
one of two or more senses, as may be found convenient,
it would be astonishing indeed, if a specious argument
could not be made out from the Bible in favor of eternal
misery. There is no popular heresy or error, and there never
was one, current in the Church that could not in this way
glean some apparent support from the Scriptures. All the
old errors of the Papal Church, which we as Protestants
have long since discarded ; such as Transubstantiation,
Penance, Auricular Confession, Extreme unction, Salva
tion by works, Peter's supremacy and the Infallibility of
his successors, etc., have a show of support in many
passages of Scripture. So of many Protestant errors
that might be mentioned. But the question with every
sincere inquirer after the truth should be, not how much
apparent support can I get out of the Scriptures for my
favorite dogma by an ingenious use of certain texts? but
what do they really teach, and what is the general spirit
and tenor of their testimony ? -We are bold to affirm,
that if anyone will come tothe Word of God in this way,
without any theory of his own to sustain on this subject,
he will not find half a dozen passages in all the Bible that
even suggest to his mind the thought — we will not say of
the natural immortality of the soul — for there is not one
that does this, while there are hundreds that flatly ton-

WRESTING OF GOD'S WORD. 185
tradict it — but of an eternity of sin and suffering for the
wicked. This is more than can be said of most of the
other errors that have had or now have currency in the
world. And there is not one of even these few passages,
as we hope to show, that cannot be understood equally
well — unless one is determined not to so understand
them — as harmonizing with the overwhelming flood of
testimony from all parts of the Bible to the actual death
and destruction of the wicked.
It is time that Christians uttered their protest against
the license that is taken with the Word of God by those
who are set to proclaim its messages to dying men and
to expound its meaning — and not their own philosophies.
There is no book that requires a more reverential hand
ling. There is none that is so deceitfully dealt with. And
upon no subject has its testimony been mor^jwrested_a,nd
falsified, than upon the subject now in hand — the ulti
mate doom of the unsaved. It has a weaker basis to
rest upon than any other false doctrine that ever found
its way into the Christian Church, even in the times of
its deepest corruption.
It was the policy of the Papal Church to heap every
possible, imaginable horror upon the heads of those who
fell under her censure or who died out of her communion.
While Protestants denounce her Spirit as that of barbar
ism, and have rejected most of her grosser dogmas and
methods as unchristian and demoralizing, they have in
herited her Spirit and teachings on this question with
scarcely any modification. They have rejected her
Purgatory with its purifying fires, it is true, but they have
retained her Hell with all its eternal tortures without any
protest. They cherish her extremest_views on this sub
ject as specially sacred. They labor hard to prove them

186 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
correct, and have little charity for those who call them in
question, or attempt to show that their reasoning in this
regard is sophistical and contrary to the whole tenor and
Spirit of the Gospel. Garbled passages are taken here
and there from the Bible wherever they can be found
without any regard to their connection or application ; bits
of sentences and poetic ejaculations are gathered up ;
predicates are transferred from their proper subjects to
others ; the fire and brimstone that was rained upon
Sodom; the everlasting burnings spoken of by Isaiah with
sole reference to the temporal miseries inflicted upon his
people by their invading enemies : the undying worm and
the unquenchable fire of the valley of Hinnom, spoken
of by the same prophet, and quoted by our Lord ; the
sheol of the Old Testament, clothed with all the terrors of
the Gehenna of the New ; the tormenting flame and the
parched tongue of Dives in the parable describing a
scene anterior to the judgment; the vials of wrath
poured out upon the enemies of the Church in its vic
torious progress through the world, causing them to gnaw
their tongues for anguish and to call upon the rocks and
mountains to fall upon them and hide them from the
face of the Lamb, as seen by John in his vision in the
book of Revelation ; the miseries of those who worship
the beast, having, no rest, day nor night, forever ; the wrath
that comes upon mystical Babylon, and upon the beast,
and the false prophet, and the old serpent, in their final
destruction, the smoke of whose torment ascendeth up ages
upon ages to the end of time : these and all the other terri
ble epithets andpredicates, and metaphors, and figures, and
images, that can be gathered from the Bible, are brought
together and mingled into one seething caldron of wrath
and fury to be poured without mercy, and without ces
sation upon the " never-dying " souls of all the unsaved

HORRORS OF THE INQUISITION. 187
children of Adam, by their Maker forever and ever, and
ever !
We read in the history of- the Church of many revolt
ing deeds of cruelty — of men and women being flayed
alive; having live coals poured over their naked bodies;
being roasted on gridirons over slow fires ; being stretched
in racks till their limbs were wrenched asunder ; being
broken on wheels ; having their nails torn off, and their
eyes gouged out, and their torfgues torn out by the roots,
and of suffering many other savage and cruel tortures,
such as human fiends alone could invent, while every
device was employed to protract their agonized lives as
long as possible, though, at length, exhausted nature
would give out, and their tormentors could only seek new
victims upon whom to exercise their hellish functions.
But not so with the Almighty Tormentor of their creed,
whom they professed to serve and to imitate. They had
not the power to protract interminably the lives of their
victims, though they had the will to do it. He, as they
represented Him, has both the power and the will. Hence
the fleeting miseries of this life are but trifles ; they are
nothing at all compared with the infinite and endless mis
eries of the death — that is, of the Life — to come. Accept
ing from the mouth of the tempter the assurance to sinning
man "ye shall not surely die," they could prove all the rest
of this doctrine and even this assurance, from the Word of
God itself. We have accepted at their hands, both the
assurance and the doctrine of endless torment that rests
upon it, as well as their methods of proof.
It is a very suggestive fact that no man is ever sus
pected of heresy, however much he irray lean in this
direction, however much he may draw on his immagina-
tion, or however sophistically he may handle the Scrip
tures to sustain his doctrine, or however cruel or unmer-

ISO THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
ciful a character he may attribute to our Heavenly
Father. Indeed, the more extreme he is in this line of
things the more orthodox he is. But let him "begin to
suspect that the Bible really means what it says about the
death and utter destruction of the wicked ; let him begin
to question whether it is possible for God, who so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son that who
soever believeth in Him should not perish but have ever
lasting Life, to be so cruel towards the whole race of
unsaved men, whether this Gospel has ever been offered
to them or not, as to consign them all alike to perpetual
and endless miseries in a world to come ; to keep them
alive eternally by an effort of miraculous power, that He
may torment them for His own glory- and the good of
those whom He saves — let him begin to ask whether the
Bible really teaches any such doctrines as this : and he
at once falls into discredit. Why is all this ? Is the dark
side of God's character that which alone is to be
cherished ? and the darker it can be made to appear, the
more worthy of being defended and cherished? Are we
in danger of error and obnoxious to suspicion, only when
we begin to look at His paternal character, and to speak
of His love and mercy ? Does not the fact of human
'ctepravity and the certain doom of death and extinction^
to which every natural man is hastening, present a back
ground sufficiently dark and dismal upon which to paint
the Gospel in all its glory ? Has this Gospel no beauty, no
living force of its own, no power to touch the hearts of
perishing men without these lurid horrors thrown in
around and behind it, as a foil, to give it piquancy and
zest ? Is it rather to the way in which one paints the
background than the picture itself that we are to look for
the test of his orthodoxy ?

JONATHAN EDWARDS. 189
Take a specimen extract from one of the discourses
of a leading orthodox divine of the last century :
" The world will probably be converted into a great lake
or liquid globe of fire — a vast ocean of fire, in which the
wicked shall be overwhelmed, which will always be in
tempest, in which they shall be tossed to and fro, having
no rest day or night, vast waves or billows of fire con
tinually rolling over their heads, of which they shall
forever be full of a quick sense within and without ;
their heads, their eyes, their tongues, their hands, their
feet, their loins and their vitals shall forever be full of
glowing, melting fire, enough to melt the very rocks and
elements. Also they shall be full of the most quick and
lively sense to feel torments — not for one minute, not for
one day, not for one age, nor for two ages, nor for a
thousand ages, nor for ten thousand millions of ages, one
after another, but forever and ever, without any end at all
and never, never to be delivered ! " — Jonathan Edwards.
Take another pasage from the same author :
" We can conceive but little of the matter, but cannot
conceive what that sinking of the soul in such a case is.
But to help your conception, imagine yourself to be cast
into a fiery oven, all of a glowing heat, or into the midst
of a glowing brick-kiln, or of a great furnace, where your
pain would be as much greater than that occasioned by
accidentally touching a coal of fire, as the heat is greater.
Imagine also that your body were to lie there for a
quarter of an hour, full of fire, as full within and without
as a bright coal of fire, all the while full of quick sense ;
what horror would you feel at the entrance of such a
furnace ? How long would that quarter of an hour
seem to you ? If it were to be measured by a glass, how
long would the glass seem to be running? And aftei
you had endured it for one minute, how overbearing
would it be to you to think that you had it to endure the
other fourteen ? But what would be the effect on your
soul, if you knew you must lie there enduring that
torment to the full for twenty-four hours? And how
much greater would be the effect if you knew you must
endure it for a whole year ; and how vastly greater still, if

I90 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
you knew you must endure it for a thousand years? O
then, how would your heart sink, if you thought, if you
knew, that you must bear it forever and ever ! That
there would be no end ! That after millions and millions
of ages, your torment would be no nearer to an end than
ever it was, and that you never, never should be de
livered. But your torment in hell will be immensely
greater than this illustration represents." — (Edwards'
Works, Vol IV.)
No doubt, that wise and good man believed all this,
at least, he thought he did, or he would not have
preached it. Do men believe it at the present day ? If
not, why not ? What then do they believe and preach
on this subject ? If all this is true, it ought to be preached.
It has come down to us formulated in our creeds and
catechisms, which are held to be the embodiment of truth,
and almost as sacred as the Scriptures.
If there is any difference between orthodox theologians
of the present day and of the former age on this subject,
it is not in their creed, but in their mode of presenting it.*
* In reply to a circular sent out by the publishers of the Congre
gationalist in Dec, 1877, to one hundred representative Congrega
tional Ministers, propounding the inquiry whether there had been
any essential departure from the faith of our fathers on this question
of endless punishment, the great majority expressed their decided
conviction that there had been none. It was generally admitted,
however, that while Ministers believed this doctrine, they handled
it with more delicacy and reserve than formerly ! The principal
difference seems to be that these grosser representations have given
place to those that are more refined. Mental torment is substituted
for corporal, and by many it is described as subjective rather than
objective, in order to relieve God from the responsibility of inflicting
it, and throwing it on the sufferer Himself. It is implied, that as it is
the natural result of sin, and the creature was made immortal, God is
obliged to" witness the shocking spectacle ! Did not He make a
mistake in giving an unconditional immortality to these poor
wretched creatures ? »

THE BIBLE NEVER SPEAKS OF "IMMORTAL SOULS." 191
It would greatly have served the convenience of those
who are anxious to prove the doctrine set forth in the
above extracts, if the Word of God had somewhere
asserted, or at least, had hinted at the indefeasible im
mortality of the human soul ; but so far from this, it has
uniformly denied it in the plainest terms on almost every
page from Genesis to Revelation. It seems to be one
of the chief objects of the Bible to show how brief, .
vapory, shadowy, transitory the life — not the earthly
life, but the actual life— of fallen man is, and how endur
ing, substantial and eternal is the life which dwells .in
God and which is imparted to the souls of His children.
It is said by those who have taken the pains to examine
this point, that the human soul is spoken of in the
Scriptures more than sixteen hundred times, and in nol
one solitary instance is it spoken of as immortal or deathless
in its nature, but always as a short-lived and perishable
thing. The only hope of an eternal existence hereafter
that is held out to man since the fall, is that which is
offered to him through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. *
The advocates of an eternal existence in hell have felt
the force of this fact : and how do they meet it ? Why,
nothing is more easy. Let us hear what one of their
chief champions has to say on this point.
"Why does not the Bible deal in such phrases as ' the
immortality of the soul ? ' — phrases of so frequent oc
currence in human compositions. The answer is short.
* Olhausen says in his commentary on Luke 16 : " The Bible
knows not either the expression immortality of the soul, or the modern
doctrine of \mmortality ." And again in his comment on Matt. 22 : 23 :
"The resurrection, we must distinguish from the immortality of the
soul. Of the latter the Scrip'.ures never speak . on the contrary,
God is called ' O monos echon athanasian ' who alone hath immor
tality, I Tim., 6 : 16."

I92 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
It is not alone because the fact was admitted (1) and
might be assumed, but also, because they were charged
with messages of such tremendous import concerning the
character and condition of that endless existence as quite
to throw into the background (2) the abstract proposition
of the soul's immortality. If they had been mere human
teachers very possibly they might have indulged in sen
timental dissertations and romantic speculations on the
greatness and immortality of the human soul. But they
come as divine teachers to teach men concerning their
present and eternal relations to the government of God, to
proclaim endless holiness and well-being, or everlasting
sin and woe as pending on faith and repentance here.
To them the naked question of immortality aside from
these relations and issues, was of no account at all, (3) —
no more than the life of an oyster ! ! {Life and Death
Eternal, pp. 191, 192.)
This we regard as a most remarkable declaration for
a master of Israel to make. (1) So far from being
"admitted" as he says — of all people in the world the
ancient Hebrews had the least suspicion of the immor
tality of the human soul. The reason was, they were
under the special teaching of God Himself. In confir
mation of what we assert, it will suffice to quote a
remark, which any candid Bible scholar will endorse, of
the author of Ecce Homo, who was himself a believer in
the dogma we oppose.
" It is surprising that the early Jews, in whom the sense
of God was so strong and who were familiar with the con
ception of an Eternal Being, should yet have been behind
rather than before other nations in suspecting the immor
tality of the soul. [It is not at all surprising.] The
Greek did not even in the earliest times believe death to be
annihilation though he thought it fatal to all joy'and vigor,
but the early Jews, the Legislator himself, and most of
the Psalmists limit their hopes and fears to the present
life, and compare man to the beasts that perish. * * *
The suspicion of immortality appears in the later prophets,

WHY THE PHRASE IMMORTAL SOUL' NOT IN BIBLE. I93
that suspicion which Christ Himself was to develop into a
glorious confidence," pp. 35-36.
(2) Instead of " throwing this doctrine of immortal
ity into the back ground " they have no such back ground
at all. It is foreign from their thoughts. But they do give
us a back ground of death and destruction on which to
set forth their " tremendous messages." (3) As for
being " of no account at all," it is of all questions of
fact the most important to have answered by the Word
of God ; for man pannot answer it himself. It has been
the question of questions in all ages of the world, on the
part of those who had no Revelation to teach them.
" If a man die shall he live again ? " And shall he live
forever ? God has thought it more important to declare
His own immortality than any other attribute, and that
too " as an abstract proposition." He has chosen this
attribute to be the title by which He is to be known.
Jehovah, "the Ever-living" "the Eternal God," "the
Everlasting Father." "He who is and was and ever
shall be," " whose years have no end," " who liveth for
ever and ever," "the Lord shall endure forever."
It is just on this point that He contrasts Himself with
" man whose breath is in his nostrils." " I kill and I make
alive, neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand
For I lift my hand up to heaven and say I live forever."
Shall puny man lift up his hand to heaven and say I,
too, live forever ? Is his immortality so much more evi
dent and sure than that of his Creator, that there is no
need of even hinting at it in all the Bible, while that of
Jehovah must be constantly asserted ? Is it not rather
because man is a finite creature with no immortality of
his -own to speak of, and no hope. of living forever but
in union with God through Christ the Saviour, who has
promised, eternal Life to all who believe on Him ?

CHAPTER XIV.
Fourth Class of Passages and Misinterpreted Texts of
Scripture Examined, Everlasting, Eternal. — Pun
ishment : Its Nature and End. — Un
quenchable fire.
The words {aio?i, aionos, eis ton aiona, eis ton aiona tou
aionos, eis ton aiona kai eti, etc., etc.) efernal, everlasting,
forever, forever and ever, etc., of so frequent occurrence
in the Scripture, are used, as every Bible scholar knows,
with a wide latitude of signification : sometimes relating
to this world and to things evidently transient as hills,
mountains, the Aaronic priesthood, the temple service, a
temporal inheritance, the leprosy of Gehazi, life servitude,
etc., and sometimes to God Himself and the things of the
world to come.
This agrees with the radical meaning of the word aion
from which all these other forms of expression are de
rived. Its simple, primary signification is duration.
Hence it is often taken for a definite period of time, as a
life time, a generation, an age or cycle, and, perhaps,
oftener, for an indefinite period of time or simply for
duration, without regard to any limit. But in either case,
it does not contain the idea of endlessness, but simply of
duration to which no limit is seen or assigned. Men are
very apt to confound the indefinite with the infinite, but
there is a radical difference between these two ideas, as
we shall see if we will apply the test to numbers instead
of time. The number of grains of sand on the sea-shore
is indefinite, and we may express this idea by a word im
plying actual infinity, because we do not know or cannot
194

THE INFINITE AND THE INDEFINITE. 195
express the actual number ; but still they come infinitely
short of being infinite in number. The same is true of
this word aion and its derivatives. The term is often and
properly applied to God, Whose life-time actually has no
end ; but this term does not of itself necessarily imply it.
The fact of the absolute endlessness of any thing to which
it is applied must be declared in other ways, and deter
mined by other considerations.
When the Scriptures speak of the everlasting hills, or
of everlasting earthly arrangements or processes, of ever
lasting doors, or chains, or burnings, or fire, or any
natural or transient thing, the word is limited by the
nature of the thing spoken of, and by the common sense
of those to whom they speak, and there is no need of
misunderstanding their meaning. When they speak thus,
of that which in its own nature is absolutely incorruptible,
and which has been declared in other ways and by other
forms of speech to be absolutely without end, we have no
occasion, either in reason or in the nature of the thing to
limit the term. It takes all the force of which it is
capable. Hence it is equally proper to speak of an ever
lasting inheritance on earth and of an everlasting inheri
tance in heaven, though reason assures us that one will
come to an end and the Word of God assures us that the
other will be without end.
When the term is applied to that which might be sup
posed to be endless without doing violence to reason, or
to that concerning which we have no other evidence what
ever but such as we find in this word or phrase, all we
can do is to give to the expression that very indefinite-
ness, which is its peculiar characteristic*
* Since the above was written the meaning of these words has
been the subject of thorough discussion by many learned scholars, and

I96 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
We have not the least desire to 'detract from the force
or meaning of these phrases, as used in the Bible, and we
have no need to do so. Let them have the entire and
full meaning that belongs to them in the connection
where they are found. But we believe there is a very gen
eral misapprehension as regards the use of these terms in
connection with the soul of man and the allotments of the
future world, in the Scripture. The expressions, the "ever-
living soul," "never-dying soul," "the immortal soul," "the
deathless soul," etc., also, "eternal misery," "eternal sor
row," "eternal woe," "eternal death," "the death that
never dies," etc. which are so frequently on the lips of reli
gious teachers, have no place whatever in the Bible. They
are human inventions, and have their origin in that false
philosophy we are opposing. There is no term signifying
endless duration, or duration without limit, ever applied to
the soul itself in the Word of God. Nor is any such term
ever applied to the subjective condition Of the wicked as
one of unhappiness or sorrow, etc., in a future state. But
they are of very frequent occurrence in their application
to the subjective condition of the righteous, as one of
life, joy and blessedness.
The question is often asked, why the Bible speaks of
the views we have expressed would seem to be confirmed by their
united testimony.
But we have but little concern, excepting so far as regards the
truth in this matter, as to what force may be given to them. We do
not rely at all on any peculiar meaning that may be attached to them.
They are never employed to define the life-time of the human spul,
nor the duration of the sufferings of the wicked. They are employed,
however, in connection with the (zoe) Life of the righteous and the
irreversable rejection and punishment of the wicked, which is declared
to be that of everlasting destruction. Whatever meaning may be
given to them, they have no real force against the doctrine for which
we contend — that of eternal Life only in Christ.

UNSCRIPTURAL TERMS. I97
the "eternal death " of the wicked, if by it eternal misery
is not meant. We reply : It does not so speak. There
is no such phrase in the Bible. We have the phrase
eternal Life constantly repeated, but never once eternal
death. It is true we have a book written to prove that
eternal death means eternal torment. It is entitled, i9Life
and Death Eternal," as though both these terms were
found in the Scriptures ; but the title is as misleading as
the book itself.
The word everlasting is several times applied to the
agents or agencies employed in the destruction of the
wicked, and twice applied to their objective doom — that is,
a doom that may be observed by others and remembered
after they have passed away, once, as " everlasting pun
ishment," Matt. 25:46, and once (2 Thes. 1: 9) as "ever
lasting destruction," and, lest any should take the word
punishment altogether in a subjective sense, and make it
mean everlasting misery, instead of taking it in its objec
tive sense, as intended, the latter phrase defines the
former and makes the meaning sure. The passage reads
" Who shall 'be punished with everlasting destruction (issuing)
from the presence of the Lord and frpm the glory of his
power." There would be no need of the word everlast
ing even in its application to the objective doom of the
wicked ; the term death or destruction without any
epithet would have sufficed, if no salvation or rescue
from this death had been revealed in the Gospel of
Christ ; had not the glorious fact of life from the dead
been made known. Now there is hope for those who
have fallen under the curse of the law which is death ;
those who have brought destruction upon themselves
may yet be saved if they seek the Lord while He may be
found. But in the end, of this day of grace, when this
reprieve shall be exhausted without the accomplishment

198 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
of its object, and the final judgment shall come, then,
the sentence of death and destruction will be final and
conclusive. The gospel is no more offered. There is no
longer any hope of rescue, and the doom may well be
termed everlasting. This also brings the sentence that is
pronounced upon each of the two parties in the judgment
scene described in Matt. 25, into contrast and shows that
on both sides it is final, conclusive and irreversible. "These
shall go away with everlasting punishment (which is ever
lasting destruction) but the righteous into Life eternal."
But it is a monstrous perversion of this passage to say,
that it show that the miseries of the wicked will endure as
long as the blessedness of the righteous, and that both will
be without end. It shows no such thing. The scene here
pictured for us to look at is objective. Whatever of hap
piness or of misery there may be in it to the parties
described is incidental to the main point in question. It
is not in regard to the happiness and misery of the two
parties that our Lord is primarily speaking, but in regard
to their final separation and the infinite difference be
tween their respective allotments. The righteous will be
received into eternal Life and rewarded for all their good
deeds while upon earth. Of course this will bring ever
lasting joy, for life itself is positive and subjective. It
is not something merely for another to observe, and if it
is without end, as it is declared to be elsewhere, they
never shall die any more," then their blessedness will be
perpetual and unending. The wicked will be cast into
the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels,
there to be punished for their misdeeds and to be forever
destroyed. Death is the negative of life, as darkness is
of light. It is not something that can be enjoyed or suf
fered, excepting in the process of dying, and the same
may be said of destruction. There cannot be an ever-

THE FINAL AWARD.

199

lastingjiying which does not issue in death, nor an ever
lasting destroying that never issues in destruction.
However great the pain that is suffered in the process,
when the process is completed, as it must be, or there is
no meaning in the term, then it becomes an objective
doom, and if it is_finaL_.it may well be called an ever-
lasting destruction, and when this destruction is the pen
alty inflicted upon the wicked, they are punished with
everlasting destruction, or, in other #words, it is " ever
lasting punishment."
The advocates of the doctrine of endless suffering
regard this passage (Matt. 25:46) as their main reliance
and as decisive in their favor. They say that, as the hap
piness of. the righteous and the misery of the wicked are
both declared to be everlasting, the one must endure as
long as the other — all this is very specious ; but there is
a fallacy here which thousands fail to perceive, and which
perhaps, they do not see themselves. If these were the
two objects contrasted, viz : happiness and misery, their
argument would be good. But the Scriptures make no
such contrast, and it is just here that their error lies. It
is not the happiness and the misery of the two classes,
but the Life of the one and the death-punishment of the
other that are contrasted. Life is a state ; it continues
forever, and is full of joy and blessedness in the case of
the righteous. Punishments not a state but an act, an
event, and so is death. There will be sorrow, pain and
anguish, no doubt, on the part of the wicked, but the
contrast is not in this, but in the separation and the issue,
and in the everlasting finality of the issue. All this
would be plain enough were it not for the presence of
this dogma in the mind which blinds it to the real mean
ing of this and other passages bearing on the subject.
It is assumed that the souls of the wicked are immortal,

200 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
and so they will live on and sin and suffer forever after
they have been punished with everlasting destruction!
But the Scriptures teach no such doctrine.
But what is punishment, and what is the object and
end of it ? That it supposes pain, or loss, or evil of
some kind inflicted upon the subject of it, is not to be
questioned. The chief object in view may be, as it usu
ally, or often, is in this world, the good of the sufferer.
In that case, mercy is mingled with severity, and it is
called chastisement or correction, or disciplinary punish
ment. But it may have no respect whatever to the good
of the sufferer but only the public good. Its chief object
may be to vindicate law and justice and to maintain
authority. But in either case the suffering inflicted is not
the chief or ultimate object in view, though it may be
incidental and necessary to that object* At least, it is
not the chief object under any just government. Here
is just the mistake of most of the advocates of the doc
trine of eternal torment. It is the great error of the book
entitled " Life and Death Eternal." The author devotes
a large portion of his work to an attempt to show, that
suffering is the main thing in punishment, and that the
intensity of the pain and the length of time it is felt
determines the amount of punishment inflicted. He
closes the Sixth Chapter with this emphatic conclusion,
to the proof of which the whole chapter is devoted.
" The future punishment spoken of in the Scriptures
clearly consists in inte?isity of suffering." And again in
the following Chapter "As the punishment consists in
suffering, etc. Again in a previous chapter, he says:
" Even extinction, in so far as it would be punishment
at all, would be so only so far as the expectation of
it, and the process would be productive of suffering."
Why, according to this theory capital punishment is one

PUNISHMENT VINDICATIVE, NOT VINDICTIVE. 201
of the lightest kinds of punishment, if summarily exe
cuted. If the criminal is arrested and tried, condemned and
executed without delay, he is hardly punis*hed at all ; for
his sufferings are but momentary. Whereas, they should
have been made as full of the intensest agony, and as
protracted as possible. Or rather, there should be no
death penalty at all under any government ; but for the
highest offenses the penalty should be torture, and torture
as long as the victim could be made to live and endure
it. This is just the kind of punishment that men of
brutal instincts, and unfeeling hearts, and too little of the
love and tenderness of the Gospel in their, souls have
invented for the government of God. But it is sheer
barbarism, and has long ago been exploded as philosophi
cally unsound, and repudiated by every decent government
on earth, but it is still suffered to remain in our orthodox
theology as the theory of God's government, because the
dogma of necessary immortality requires it.
There is a great confusion of ideas in the minds of
these men on this question of punishment. They over
look the main and ultimate object which every just ruler
has in view in the punishment of criminals. Instead of
being vindicative, as it should be, they make it simply vin
dictive. In fact, the whole question Uetween us and these
theologians reduces itself to this : What is the leading
object which God, the Creator of all men, has in view, in
His dealings with them, especially those who are not
saved ; those to whom the Gospel has been offered and
who have rejected it, and the millions upon millions of
those to whom it has never been offered ? Is it to tor
ment them, and torment them forever, or is it to destroy
them ? Is it His declared purpose to purify His king-

202 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
dom and maintain His government by casting out and
destroying all who are disloyal and impure and cannot
be reclaimed, or* to preserve them in sin and misery for
ever ? Will the unsaved portion of His creatures be
tormented forever for the purpose of maintaining the
blessedness of the other portion and the glory of His
Name, or will they be utterly and forever consumed, so
that nothing shall remain but what is holy and blessed
forever throughout His universal kingdom ?
We believe it to be His primary purpose in His deal
ings with fallen men to save them, if they will or can be
saved ; but if they will not or cannot be saved, then to
destroy them. If they will not live according to the laws
of their own being, if they will not live as loyal, obedient
and loving subjects of His righteous government, then
they shall not live at all. They shall die. But if on the
other hand they will live in union with Him and all His
holy creatures, He will make them blessed and happy
forever. This we believe to be according to the uniform teach
ing of His Word. And the doctrine that He will preserve
the lives of all alike, whether angels or devils, saints or
sinners, permitting the one class to bask in the sunshine
of His favor, while He lavishes upon them every con
ceivable good, and compel the other class to writhe in
all the agonies of an«uneonsuming fire, while He pours
' out upon them every conceivable woe forever and ever,
we believe to be an unwarranted perversion of the teach-
; ings of the Bible, and an abominable reproach to His
/ holy -character.
The passage in' Isaiah 33 : 14, " Who among us
shall dwell with devouring fire? Who among us shall
dwell with everlasting burnings ? " which is often quoted
to help out the rhetoric of those who are trying to de-

GOD S DEALING WITH MEN. 203
scribe the torments of hell and to give as lurid a glare as
possible to the picture, we need not inform the intelligent
reader, has no relevancy to the question of future punish
ment. We only notice it because some will insist on
quoting it in this connection. But it will readily -be seen
that the prophet refers only to temporal calamities and
miseries brought upon his people by their enemies. It is
one of those impassioned outbursts of which there are
many examples among the prophets of the Oid Testament.
We know of but one solitary text in all the Old Tes
tament that requires to be noticed among the Scripture
texts that seem to favor this doctrine of eternal suffering,
and this only, because it is misquoted. We have already
noticed it perhaps sufficiently. It is in Daniel 12 : 2, 3,
" And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth
shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame
and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall
shine as the brightness of the firmament : and they that
turn many to righteousness, as the stars forever and ever."
It is generally supposed that this refers to the last resur
rection. If so, it is the most explicit announcement of
that doctrine in the Old Testament. But the reader will
notice how very careful the prophet is, in the use of the
epithet everlasting, not to say the very thing which he is
charged with saying. What is it that is everlasting, and
forever and ever ? It is the life of the righteous and the
brightness of their shining. It is not the " shame ; " there
is no such epithet applied to that which the wicked feel
themselves, and no doubt will feel as long as their miser
able lives continue ; but it is the " contempt " (or " abhor-
ing," as this word is elsewhere translated) which others
shall feel towards them,- that will be everlasting.
There are many passages in the New Testament that
speak of the " outer darkness " into which the wicked

204 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
shall be cast, and of the disappointment and anguish they
shall feel in being rejected from the kingdom of heaven.
All these are pertinent to the question of future punish
ment, but they have no bearing on the question of the
eternity of that punishment, and can only be made to
appear to have any relevancy to this question but by first
assuming the very point to be proved, that the soul is
indestructible and will live forever.
With regard to the parable of Dives and Lazarus,
(Luke 16) — What may be its precise meaning and appli
cation — questions much contested by Commentators —
we need not stop to inquire ; as all of them agree in the
only point which concerns this discussion — that it refers
to scenes anterior to the resurrection and the judgment.
For Dives is represented as still having five brethren
alive upon the earth, while he and Father Abraham are
holding this dialogue in Hades. *
The passage in Mark 9 : 43-48, claims more particular
aotice. Here these fearful words are thrice repeated with
very little change : " To be cast into hell, into the fire
that never shall be quenched ; where the worm dieth not
and the fire is not quenched :
We remark on this passage :
1. Two of these thrice repeated expressions "where
the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched," (44th,
46th verses) and the words, " into the fire that never shall
be quenched," in 45th verse, and the word "fire," in the
* " Rightly to understand the whole delineation, we must, above
all, keep clearly in view that it is not everlasting salvation or con
demnation which is here described, but the middle state of departed
souls between death and the resurrection. The Bible knows not
EITHER THE EXPRESSION IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL (God is O
monos echon athanasian, 1 Tim. 6 : 16) OR THE MODERN DOCTRINE
OF IMMORTALITY." (Olshausen on Luke 16: 24, 26.)

UNQUENCHABLE FIRE. 205
end of 47th verse, are not found in the Sianitic and the
Vatican Codices, and in several other of the oldest
manuscripts, and are supposed by many critics to be
spurious. But as they are found substantially in the
43d and 48th verses, these supposed interpolations and
these repetitions do not affect the main question with us,
only so far as they show how strong the tendency, and
how early it was manifested, to magnify and make as
much as possible of the terrible expressions found in the
Scriptures. 2. We have hitherto avoided making criticisms on our
common excellent version, not because there was no room
for them, but because we did not wish to appear to be cap
tious, and because the doctrine we maintain can be made
sufficiently evident without such criticisms ; but we must
here say that our translators have taken a very unwar
ranted license with the word asbestos occurring here.
They have elsewhere rendered it by its proper equiva
lent English adjective, unquenchable, but here they have
substituted in the place of it the whole phrase, " that
never shall be quenched." It is composed of two parts,
a, privative, meaning "not," and sbestos, from sbennumi,
meaning "to quench," "to extinguish," "repress," etc.,
hence asbestos means unquenchable, inextinguishable,
irrepressible, etc., and nothing more. It no more means
" that never shall be quenched," than the word aoratos
"unseen," "invisible," means that never shall be seen,
or the word agnos "unknown," " unperceived," means
never shall be known, or the word adikos "unjust,"
means never shall be just, etc. Why they, instead of
translating it by its simple equivalent epithet unquenchable,
as they have done in Matt. 3 : 13, have taken the liberty
of forcing an extra meaning into it, and introducing a
prophecy of their own concerning this fire into the text,

206 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
we are unable to guess, unless it was that they might
lend all the help possible to the doctrine they, no doubt,
fully believed— that this fire will prey upon the bodies
and souls of its miserable victims forever without con
suming them.
3. This word asbestos is frequently found in the
Classics and elsewhere, and no one thinks of giving it
that sense, or, rather, nonsense, which is here given it.
Homer * speaks of an unquenchable fire which broke
out among the Grecian ships, and was afterwards extin
guished. The early Christian writers do not hesitate to
call the fire which consumed the bodies of the.martyrs
" unquenchable fire." Eiisebius tells us in the sixth
book of his Ecclesiastical History, that Cronion and
Julian, at one time, and Epimachus and Alexander at
another, were destroyed " with unquenchable fire." We
read in Jer. 13 : 27 : "I will kindle a fire in the gates
thereof and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and
it shall not be quenched." Who supposes that this fire
is now burning and will literally burn forever ? . All the
language means here or anywhere else in the Scripture is,
that the fire shall not go out, or be put out, till that which
it preys upon shall be completely consumed, and no one
would think of putting any other sense upon it but for
* " The Greek authors used asbestos unquenchable, in the sense of
violent or excessive without any reference to its duration or possibility
of its being quenched or stopped. Homer speaks of asbestos gelos,
II. 1 : 559, and after saying that in the attempt of the Trojans to
burn the Grecian fleet, phlox asbeste (an unquenchable fire spread
itself over one of the ships (16: 123,) he saw nothing absurd or
contradictory in adding in the same book (293) of Patroclus, that
he extinguished the- blazing fire and that the ship was left half
burned kala d'esbesen, aithomenon pur." — Minton's Glory of Christ.
Note on p. 58,

UNQUENCHABLE FIRE. 207
the assumption that the souls and bodies of the wicked
will be miraculously preserved alive forever in hell, and
then, this textseems to sustain the postulate.
4. But we are not greatly concerned to correct the
rendering of this word. It is the attribute of the fire
and not of the' soul. The same may be said of the epi
thet undying in the text. These theologians reason as
though the Scriptures predicated the terms unquenchable,
and undying of the souls and bodies of sinners in hell,
but it is only of the agencies that are set to devour and
destroy them. Here we have another illustration of the
artful practice of which we had occasion to speak in
commenting on Daniel 12:2, of transferring the attrib
ute or predicate from one subject; to another, and making
the sacred writers affirm that of one thing, which they
meant only to affirm of another. If any one chooses to
spend his strength in attempting to prove that this Scrip
tural fire, is so unlike all other fire that it is actually un
quenchable, or rather never shall be quenched, and that
these Scriptural worms are so different from all other
worms, that they are actualy immortal, let him not suppose,
after his foolish task is accomplished to his own satisfac
tion, that he has proved anything of the kind concerning
the bodies and souls of the wicked in hell, of which noth
ing of this sort is predicated in this or in any other- text
of the Bible. But we have a right to demand if he im
poses his conclusions upon us, that he shall be consistent
with himself, and carry out his principles of exegesis
into other passages where the same figures are used.
He will find in the closing verses of Isaiah this passage
to which Our Lord referred and no doubt intended to
quote : " And it shall come to pass that from one new
moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another shall
all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord.

208 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
And they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of
the men that have transgressed against me, for their
worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and
they shall be an abhorring to all-flesh."
Barnes, in his notes on Mark 9 : 43-48 well says:
" This figure is clearly taken from Isaiah 66 : 24. In
describing the great prosperity of the Kingdom of the
Messiah, Isaiah says that the people of God shall go
forth and look upon the carcasses of men who have trans
gressed against God. Their'enemies shall be overcome.
They shall be slain. The people of God shall triumph.
The figure is taken from heaps of the slain in battle;
and the prophet says that the number shall be so great
that their worm — the worm feeding on the dead — shall
not die — shall live long — as long as there are carcasses to
be devoured : and that the fire which was used to burn the
bodies of the dead shall continue long to burn, and shall
not be extinguished till they are consumed."
This is just what it means, no doubt, and no more.
And no sensible man thinks of giving it any other inter
pretation as originally used by the prophet. But when
our Lord quotes this figure to describe the complete and
miserable destruction of all sinners, it is seized upon to
prove, what ? Why just exactly the opposite, namely:
that they never shall be devoured by the worm, and never
shall be consumed by the fire ! !
To such devices are these advocates driven in order
to defend their favorite doctrine of jternal sin and
misery. In their eagerness to make out their case, they
not only overlook the chief point in the figure used by
Our Lord, the complete and eternal destruction of sinners,
soul and body together, but they turn it into an argument
for the certain preservation of both in misery forever.
5. It is the function of the worm to devour, not pri
marily to torment ; and if the worm does not die, it will
surely accomplish this work. It is the office of fire to

FIRE AND THE WORM AGENTS OF DESTRUCTION. 209
consume. Philosophically speaking, fire is the effect
and evidence of consumption, and when there is no con
sumption, there is no fire ; and if it is not extinguished,
it will surely accomplish its work. The chief object for
which it is ordinarily employed ij^noJM^rrnent, but de
struction. Torment may accompany its action upon
living flesh, as also that of the worm. But this is inqi-
dental and subordinate to the main purpose, which is
destruction. This is what is meant by the worm and the
fire of the valley of Hinnom, spoken of by the prophet.
They are horrid but impressive images, not primarily and
principally of torment, but of death and destruction.
This is what is meant by the same figures as used by our
Lord, when speaking of the worm and fire of Gehenna.
And nothing but an inveterate, "unquenchable" deter
mination to establish this dogma, against which we are
contending, could have obscured the meaning and re
versed the sense of this passage which so clearly teaches
the certain, complete and eternal destruction of the wicked.
6. Our champion author, so often referred to, com
plains of those who give to this passage its natural and
common sense meaning. He says the principle is un
sound. And why? This is his reason :
" Its unsoundness appears at once from the fact that
it necessarily cuts off the possibility (the italics are his own)
of imaging forth any other penal transaction than a tran
sient one, and forcibly turns all such representations into
images of extinction (! !), for the reason that every pro
cess in a temporal world is temporary, and each process
here that is most terrific and painful is incidentally the
most short lived." — (pp. 284-5.)
Verily, this is a most extraordinary confession for one
to make who is sincerely endeavoring to show us what
this passage means. The figure used by our Lord must
not be allowed to have its natural and proper meaning,

2IO THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
such as it has elsewhere, but must be understood and
taken in exactly the contrary sense — and why ? Because
he .can't prove his dogma without perverting it! Then
let it go, unproved, as it must. Does he not see that if
these natural and transient figures cannot be used to
prove the immortality of the soul, it is all the more nec
essary, if the doctrine is true, that the Scriptures should
definitely and categorically assert it " as a naked truth
aside from these figures" as they have that of God.
But no. He tells us in a previous chapter that 'there is no
need whatever of this, that " it is always in the form of
the actual concrete immortality that Christ and his Apos
tles teach this doctrine " " On such abstract propositions
they waste no breath." " To them the naked question of
immortality, aside from these relations and issues is of
no account at all — no more than the life of an oyster."
If then, they have not asserted this doctrine — as they
surely have not — aside from these relations and issues as
imaged forth in these transient figures, and these figures
cannot be used to prove it without doing violence to
them and actually reversing their meaning. What is to
become of this doctrine? Like all the other works of
the devil it is doomed to be destroyed. *
* Near to the place where the above was written is the splendid
Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in the grounds of which imme
diately adjacent is an immense collection of statuary, bas-relief
images and various devices, representing sacred characters and scenes.
At the further end is a grotto, where lies an image of the body of our
Lord, wrapped in the vestments of the tomb. Sculptured on the
surrounding walls, and painted in vivid colors, is a representation of
Purgatory and miserable creatures, enveloped in flames, writhing in
agony, and stretching out their shriveled hands in supplication for
relief. But more prominent than these victims, or the devils that are
tormenting them, are the stokers standing by, and with long poles
stirring the fires. The eager satisfaction they take in their pious

DESTRUCTION FIGURATIVELY REPRESENTED. 211
work manifests itself in their countenances, and in the earnestness
with which they address themselves to it. The only drawback to
their complete happiness would seem to be the fact, that these fires
are not "unquenchable and everlasting," but only purgatorial, and
these wretched victims may yet find relief. But there is no such
drawback to the happiness of thosewho advocate the doctrine of_end-
less torment, and who seem determined, if it w.ere possible, to make
it true, whether they can prove it or not.
In Dr. Bartlett's book — to which we have had frequent occasion
to refer, because it claims to be a " Refutation of the theory of Anni
hilation," as he is pleased to call the doctrine of conditional immor
tality, and because he assumes to be, and is perhaps, considered as
the chief champion of the doctrine of endless torment — nothing is
more striking than the self-complacent, positive, oracular, unfeeling
manner in which he handles this grave question, and his contemptu
ous and scornful bearing toward such of his Christian brethren as
cannot accept his hideous doctrine.
It might be supposed, that a man, who was simply contending
for the truth, however earnest he might be, would have no occasion
or desire to misrepresent his antagonists, or to handle the Word of
God deceitfully. But he not only misstates the position of his oppo
nents, but boldly confesses that he does it, because it is "indispensa
ble" to his argument to do so ! !
And, of the multitude of texts that are quoted, he must know,
that many of them — and especially those on which he mainly relies —
have no relevancy whatever to the question in hand ; they are pressed
into the service, like Simon the Cyrenian, who was compelled to bear
the cross on which his Saviour was crucified.
His theory is, that the great end of punishment is not exemplary
and demonstrative, but vindictive and for the special purpose of in
flicting pain ; and the greater the suffering, and the longer it is con
tinued, the greater the punishment ; that all future punishment under
God's government is always and inevitably endless ; the whole posterity
of Adam, without exception, are already condemned, not simply to
death and extinction, as we. hold, but to endless punishment, which
means endless torment, and that this punishment will be inflicted
upon every individual soul, excepting such as are saved by the special
grace of God ; that not only the rejectors of an offered Gospel, but all
the myriads of millions to whom no Gospel has been offered, excepting
perhaps a few rare cases of those possessing " a potential or germinal

212 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
faith," whb may possibly escape the common doom, are inevitably
destinated, if not predestinated, to endless punishment, that is, endless
torment in the life to come.
One would think, that a man with human instincts, not to say
of Christian feelings, if he felt obliged lo advocate so dismal a theory,
would, at least, manifest some tenderness of spirit, if not sadness, and
grief, and, perhaps, drop a tear or two over the helpless, hopeless
doom of so large a portion of his fellow men. But, instead of all this,
he writes as if he would be grieved to have his doctrine disproved,
and as having no patience with those who call it in question or hesi
tate to receive it. We have the deepest sympathy and utmost respect
for those who, like Albert Barnes and others, preach this doctrine with
bowed heads, and aching hearts, and tearful eyes, because they know
not how to escape from the dilemma into which their false philosophy
has led them.
If this volume, entitled "Life and Death Eternal," had been
written in a modest and tender spirit, it might have done something
to check the alarming spread of universalism, which the doctrine it
advocates is doing so much actually to encourage. But as an argu
ment against the Scripture doctrine of Eternal Life from Christ, it is
utterly wide of the mark ; and the zeal it shows, and the spirit it
breathes, and the method it pursues in the work to which it is devoted,
are sadly suggestive of the grim services of the zealous stokers in the
grotto at Antwerp. But this book is very, very orthodox. It bears
the imprint of the American Tract Society. Fresh editions are called
for to meet the growing skepticism of the times. Let them be issued;
and let the scene above described be added as a frontispiece ! Why
not ? It would make the doctrine it advocates more impressive 1 We
used to have such pictures in our old Catechisms. Why have they
been omitted? Is it another sign of the growing skepticism of the
day ? No doubt these men think they are doing God service. Perhaps
they are ; for He knows how to make even the wrath of man to praise
Him. But would that they might seek and find some better way of
doing it.

CHAPTER XV.
The Doctrine that especially needs to be Proved, is by
its Advocates, Assumed. Reasoning in a Circle.
Texts in the Apocalypse Examined.
i The advocates of the doctrine of eternal sin and
misery, as we have seen, assume as the basis of their
Bible argument on this subject, that man is naturally and
unconditionally immortal. It is this idea which they
carry with them into the texts they cite, that gives all the
plausibility and force there is to their reasoning. Let
their postulate be denied, and they have no ground to
stand upon. They believe, or, at any rate, reason as
though they believe, that; unless God, by a special act of
His power take away the life of the soul — -whatever may
be true of the body— it will live on, and on, by a certain
vis vitce of its own forever ; that there is given to every
human soul in its creation an indefeasible life which can
not be forfeited ; that the natural and normal cycle of its
existence is an eternal cycle, and that it makes no differ
ence with respect to the perpetuity of its conscious ex
istence whether it is holy or sinful, whether it possesses any
spiritual life or not, whether it lives in Union with God
or not, it will live on and on, independent of all consid
erations whatever. All this we deny, as being supported
by no evidence, and as something very much akin to
atheism. We hold that no created soul has any such
asbestos nature given to it ; that there is but one inde
pendent existence in the universe : That is God. That
a dependent existence implies necessarily a conditional
213

214 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
existence ; and God Himself has defined for us the con
dition of our perpetual existence. This condition_-_has
been forfeited. It is no more possible for the human
soul than for any thing else to live, in any sense, when
entirely cut off from God the Source of all Life. Spir
itual Life, which is the Life of God in the Soul is the
only Life that is eternal.
2. They also hold, that the common lot of the whole
human race — excepting such as are saved — is not death
in any literal sense (excepting so far as the body is con
cerned), but is punishment, that is, torment ; for according
to their theory, as we have shown, punishment implies
torment, and there is no more punishment than there is
suffering or torment.
This we also deny. We do not for a moment call
in question the fact of the future punishment of the
wicked, and such punishment as will cause ^uffermg.
God will be as true to His threatenings as to His prom
ises, and every individual will " receive according to that
he hath done whether, it be good or bad." But we
maintain that there is a wide difference- between the
death that comes upon every child of Adam as the
result of his inherited, fallen condition, and the punish
ment that is inflicted for his own individual transgres
sion. It is by confounding the two and calling them
both by the same term, punishment, and by making this
punishment' to consist in torment, and eternal torment,
that such a terrible mystery has been thrown over God's
dealings with fallen man. Though every child of Adam
is to die — and by death we mean no partial death, but
the actual death of the whole person — unless a new life
shall be given him in Christ, it does not follow that every
one is born to be punished, that is, tormented, and this
too forever, unless he shall personally deserve it. We

PUNISHMENT VINDICATIVE, NOT VINDICTIVE. 2 15
also deny that the chief end God has in view, even in the
punishment of the most unworthy, is to torment them.
Punishment is objective and demonstrative, as well as
subjective and painful. It is vindicative rather than
vindictive. It is true, the words basanizo, to test, to try by tor
ture, and kolazo, to prune, to hold in check, to punish,
with their derivatives, are used somewhat interchangeably,
as though they were synonymous, and for this reason, that
in the inhuman practices of men, the one often implied
the other. It was once the chief function of the execu
tive officer of the law to torment. Hence prison keepers
were called tormentors, and they continued to be so
called, even after these inhuman practices that once pre
vailed had been discarded — or without any special regard
to this function which gave them their original name —
jugt as the title alderman (elderman) which was once
given to civil officers, who were selected for certain pur
poses on account of their age, is still retained without any
reference to their age.
3. These advocates not only assert (1) that God deals
with the whole race of unsaved men in the world to
come, whatever may have been their opportunities or
characters in this, in the way of punishment, and (2) that
the chief thing in punishment is torture, but also (3) that
this punishment in all cases will be ceaseless and eternal.
These three propositions belong together. The mon
strous conclusions to which they bring us concerning
God and His method of dealing with His creatures is a
logical deduction from the premises they have chosen to
take. Hence, many accept it in spite of their reason
and their hearts, because their theory compels them to
accept it. The God of their philosophy and the God of
their love and faith are not the same. They must have,

2l6 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
and they will have, a better God to love and trust, than
their theology allows them.
The advocates of this theory have an adroit and facile
way of proving these three propositions by making them
reciprocally support each other, thus :
They first assume, as we have seen, that man has an
indefeasible immortality. Then, if he is forever excluded
from the happiness of heaven, as the Scriptures declare
every impenitent man will be, and if he is punished, as
every unsaved sinner will be, and if punishment is tortore
— then every unsaved sinner will be tortured forever and
ever. There is no escape from the conclusion, if the
premises are granted.
But how do they -prove the original premise, the inde
feasible immortality of every nmn ? Why, nothing is
more easy; all they have to do is just to reverse the
syllogism, and take this last conclusion for the main
premise of a new syllogism, and they get the postulate
of the first as the conclusion of the second, thus : All
unsaved sinners will be punished forever, for this has
been proved from the Bible, and this punishment means
eternal torture ; but if they are tortured forever, then
they must exist forever. Therefore the human soul is
immortal. Q. E. D. So this argument, with its pre
mises and conclusions perpetually changing places,
chasing each other round in one eternal circle, becomes
a fit symbol of the eternal circle of existence in which
the miserable soul is said to move with nothing but itself
to rest upon.
Having considered all the Scripture texts that are
relied on to prove the doctrine of ete'rnal sin and misery
but such as are in the Apocalypse, and found them to be,
not only very few in number, but without any real force
in this behalf, unless one assumes the chief point to be

THE APOCALYPSE. 217
proved ; we now come to the examination of the passages
in this book that are so often quoted to sustain the
doctrine, and upon which these advocates are obliged
mainly to rely. They are the only texts that present any
real difficulty. This, however, arises only from the myste
rious and symbolical character of the book.
It is confessedly the most difficult part of the Word
of God to interpret and understand. No two Commen
tators are agreed in their explanation of its incongruous
allegories, its perpetually changing figures, its phantas-
magorical images, its unnatural combination of types and
symbols, and its intense and intentionally extravagant
language. We certainly do not profess to be wise enough
to tell just what and how much is meant by all that is
' shadowed forth in this vision or dream, but we remark
in a general manner : »
That we see no good reason to question the canon-
icity of this book, as some have done, or to deny any
doctrine it may evidently design to teach. We believe it
to be. an important part of the divine Revelation God has
given to us, and a very fitting close to the whole volume
of His inspired teachings. But it should be remembered,
in trying to decipher the meaning of any part of it, that
it is neither sober history, nor sober prophecy ; that it is
neither didactic prose, nor poetry, nor was it intended
to be so understood, but rather as a vision, or dream, as
it really is — a relation of what John saw and heard while
in a trance in the isle of Patmos — a panoramic view of
the leading events in the history of this world to the end
of time, and, especially, of the great last struggle between
Christ and His enemies; arid the final victory which He
gains over them. m
We contend that its imagery of hieroglyphics and word
painting is not to be taken as plain, sober, didactic utter-

2l8 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
ances. We protest against the practice so common with
the advocates of this doctrine, of taking half an image in
a ffgurative, and half of it in a literal sense, just because
it best suits their purpose to do so ; or of picking out,
here and there, from the midst of a dramatic scene, such
words and s^itences and bits of sentences as can be
made to fit into their dogma, and calling them proof
texts. And, still further, we insist on its being taken as
a canon of Scripture interpretation, especially in drawing
proof texts from such a book as this, that, when any
passage is equally capable of two interpretations, and one
of them is sensible and in accord with other parts of the
Bible, and the other is contrary to reason and to the uni
form teachings of Scriptures, the former is to be preferred.
The first passage occurs in Chapter 14: 8— n, where
the destruction of mythical Babylon and the beast, which
is usually supposed to symbolize the Papacy, are de
scribed. She had " made all the nations drunk with the
wine of her wrath," and now her votaries in turn are
made to " drink of the wine of God's wrath." " If any man
(shall) worship the beast and his image, and receive his
mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink
of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out with
out mixture into the cup of His indignation ; and he shall
be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of
the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the
smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever
(to ages of ages) ; and they have no rest day or night,
who worship (worshiping) the beast and his image, and
whosoever receiveth the mark of his name."
' In the 1 8th Chapter a fuller account of her destruction
is given, and John is shown how "her plagues shall
come in one day, death, mourning and famine, and she
shall be utterly burned with fire ; and how the kings and

APOCALYPTIC VISIONS. 2 19
merchants and ship masters, and those who have com
mitted fornification with her, and traded with her, shall
bewail and lament her. And then, to further indicate the
completeness of her destruction, " a mighty angel took up
a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea,
saying, 'Thus, with violence, shall that great city Babylon
be thrown down and shall be found no more at all,' "
(21). " And after these things, 1 heard a great voice of
much people in heaven saying, Alleluia ! salvation and
glory and honor and power unto the Lord our God !
For true and righteous are His judgments; for He hath
judged the great whore which did corrupt the earth with
her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of His
servants at her hand. And again, they said Alleluia,
and her smoke rose up forever and ever, and the four and
twenty efclers and the four beasts fell down and wor
shipped God that sat on the throne, saying, Amen,
Alleluia" — (19: 1-4). Then the marriage of th.e Lamb
is described, and the array of the bride and the supper.
And after this, the Lamb, under another designation,
comes riding out of heaven on a white horse, with his
garments dipped in blood. " Out of his mouth goeth a
sharp sword, many crowns are on his head," "His eyes
are like a flame of fire." A mighty host follow Him, all
on white horses, and He smites the nations and rules them
with a rod of iron, and treads the wine press of the
fierceness and wrath of God. Then an angel is seen
standing in the sun, and he cries with a loud voice saying
to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, "Come
and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the
great God." (17, 18).
And now he sees this beast combining with the kings
of the earth, and gathering a mighty host to make war
against Him who sits on the white horse, " And the

220 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
beast was taken, and with him, the false prophet, that
wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived
them that had received the mark of the beast and them
that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into
a lake of fire burning with brimstone, and the remnant
were slain with the sword of Him that sat upon the
horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth, and all
the fowls were filled with their flesh," (20-21).
The reader will bear in mind that this vision is in
tended to describe, in shadowy outlines, events transpir
ing — not in some future state, but in this world in which
we now live, and events occurring, perhaps, in our day,
at any rate, previous to what is called the millenium.
We see how complete has been the destruction of the
two great evils or organized systems of evil personified
as the beast and the false prophet, that have ^vithstood
the progress of the Gospel. There yet remains another
obstacle to be removed before the universal reign of
Christ on earth shall begin. " The Dragon, that Old ser-
pent,^which is the Devil and Satan " must be removed,
but he is not yet to be destroyed. The time has not
come for that. But he is to be bound ; and now John
sees " an angel come down from heaven having the key
of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand, and
he lays holds of this monster and binds him, and casts
him into the bottomless pit, and shuts him up, and sets a
seal upon him, that he shall deceive the nations of the
earth no more till the thousand years shall be fulfilled,
and after that he must be loosed a little season."
(20: 1-3.)
The first resurrection now takes place, whatever may
be understood by that. The souls of the martyrs are
raised, and they live and reign with Christ on the earth a
thousand years. Then Satan is loosed out of prison.

THE SECOND DEATH. 221
There is a general outburst of wickedness. Gog and
Magog are gathered together, in number, as the sand of
the sea, in battle array. They compass, the camp of the
Saints, and the beloved city. Fire from God, out of
heaven comes down upon them — all these wicked hosts —
and devours them. But their diabolical leader is reserved
for particular wrath. He is cast into the same bottom
less pit where the beast and the false prophet had been
cast a thousand years before, to be destroyed, and he too
like them, to be tormented day and night forever and
ever (to the end of time.)*
Then follows — how soon, or how long after this we
are not told — the second or general resurrection, and the
judgment, and they whose names are not written in the
book of Life, are cast into the lake of fire. Death and
Hell also are cast into the same lake of fire. This is the
Second Death. The earth and the heavens flee away,
and there is no place for them.
Now, the vision changes. Time has passed away.
Eternity begins. All opposition has been completely
destroyed. All systems of error, the beast, the false
* If this word aionios when referring to the past can properly be
rendered, as it is, " Since the world began," Rom. 16 : 23. " Be
fore the world." 1 Cor. 2.7. "From the beginning of the world."
Eph. 3:9. " From ages." Col. 1 : 26, it is equally proper to render
it, when referring to the future, especially when temporal events like
the succession at day and night are concerned, "to the end of time."
Indeed it is rendered (I Cor. 8:131, "While the world standeth.''
But in this passage (Rev. 20 : 10) day and night " forever and ever,"
and so this passage is quoted every few pages, again and again
throughout the whole book entitled Life and Death Eternal, and is
the author's main reliance to prove that the wicked — to whom it does
not even refer, are to suffer torments that are absolutely endless ! !
This is, indeed, the very best foundation that can be laid for the
monstrous superstructure that has been built upon it.

222 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
prophet, the dragon, that old serpent the original temp
ter, the very concentration of evil, are all together cast
into the bottomless pit, and, finally, Hell itself, their
prison house, and Death the king of terrors are cast in
after them, and all, together, destroyed. Could there be
a more clear and positive description of the utter de
struction of all evil of every sort than this ? Why, death
instead of reigning any longer, as these advocates assert,
is actually destroyed. "There is no more death." As.
for Hell — the Scriptures always speak of it in connection
with this earth. , It has no other locality. The fallen
angels when they were cast down to hell, were cast down
to this earth. And when this earth is destroyed, hell,
their prison house, and the prison house of all the wicked,
is destroyed. But that there should be no doubt what
ever on the subject, we are here told that not only death,
but Hell also, is cast into this all-consuming lake of fire.
A new scene opens. This material earth, the theatre
of this conflict and victory, has passed away, and the
visible heaven also. A new heaven and a new earth
appear. The tabernacle of God is with men. All tears
are wiped away. " There shall be no more death, neither
sorrow, nor crying ; neither shall there be any more pain:
for the former things are passed away." — -(21 : 1-4.)
We need be at no loss to understand the general
truths intended to be taught by this book. That it was
given to comfort and encourage the hearts of the people
of God during the many trials that would come upon
them, from >age to age, and to assure them of the glorious
issue of all these conflicts in the complete triumph of
Christ and His followers, and the final destruction of all
evil, is quite evident. No doubt it was given in the form
best adapted to all the purposes for which it was intended.
It was not designed to be a didactic or doctrinal treatise,

LITERAL INTERPRETATION IMPOSSIBLE. 22-3
like some of the Epistles of Paul, or the discourses of our
Lord. It was not intended that we should reduce its
language to logical propositions, or define with precision
its dramatic imagery, and bring all the details of this
panorama into place, as we would the events of a sober
history; certainly not while in the midst of the scenes it
is describing to us. No man but a fool is wise enough to
do this. Nor will any sane man (unless he has a theory
to maintain ; and then it is impossible to say what a man
will not do) think of analyzing the wine of wrath that is
said to be poured out, to discover how much alcohol it
contains, or of inquiring into the shape of the cup of in
dignation into which it is poured, or of criticising the
anatomy of the grotesque figures that appear on the
scene. No man will undertake to prove from the
language here used that Christ actually rides, or will ride,
on a white horse, with a sharp sword in His mouth, or
that an angel stands in the sun, or throws a great stone
into the sea, or that there is somewhere a bottomless pit
with a key fitting to it, and that an angel will bring this
key in one hand, with which to open the door to it, and
a great chain in the other, with which to bind the old
serpent that he may cast him into it, and lock him up for
a thousand years, or that there is an actual lake of fire
and brimstone, where there are myriads of millions of
human beings roasting, without being consumed, in the
presence of the holy angels and the Lamb, while the
smoke of their torment ascendeth up before them, forever
and ever.
And yet, strange to say, we find pious and otherwise
rational men, so blinded_ by this dogma, and so hard
pressed for arguments to support it, eagerly catching up
such of the figures and phrases of this vision as will suit
their purpose, and parading them as so many proofs of

224 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA,
the doctrine of eternal sin and misery. They freely allow
the unreal character of most of these images and phan
tasms, as they have no special use for them ; but they
hesitate not to pick out the fire, and the brimstone, and
the torment, and the smoke, and the words, forever and
ever, from the mass of other symbols, and apply them
literally to what ? Not to those personifications only, but
to living men and women, like themselves. They insist
that all the other texts, occurring in the didactic and
doctrinal parts of God's Word, which speak of Life and
Death, etc., should have a metaphorical and not a literal
sense given to them ; but now, when they have come to
that part of His Word, which is altogether metaphorical,
they insist on giving a literal sense to such texts as they
may be able to pick out of it, that will suit their purpose.
But what is still more strange and inconsistent : they
are not content with giving them a full and literal appli
cation to the things of time and sense, where they b jlong ;
for they are used with reference to events, transpiring on
earth previous to the consummation of all things ; but
they must wrest them from their terrestrial and temporal
connections, and carry them over into the spiritual world,
where the Scriptures tell us, there are no such material
agencies, and no succession of day and night, and no
more pain, and no more death, in order to prove that
there is pain and death there, and a lake of fire and brim
stone, and that the wicked are still writhing there in un
utterable anguish, having no rest, day nor night, while the
smoke of their torment ascendeth up, forever and ever.
We verily believe that a more entire perversion of God's
truth, a more complete reversal of the decided testimony
of this book, could not be perpetrated. But these two
texts — 14: 10, 11, and 20: 10 — are the very texts, above
all others, that are relied on to prove this doctrine. They

TEMPORAL, NOT ETERNAL, SCENES DESCRIBED. 225
are quoted over and over again in every discussion of
this question. The author of "Life and Death Eternal"
puts them first, and last, and midway, throughout his book,
quoting and requoting them more than thirty times, as
though by their frequent repetition he could multiply their
number and strengthen his case.
If anyone inquires what we make of these expres
sions, " fire and brimstone," "smoke of their torment for-
ver and ever," "without rest day or night," we reply,
that we make sense of them ; we take them in the con
nection in which they occur, as applying to temporal and
not eternal scenes. We treat them as we do all other
passages of Scripture of the same class, and as these
advocates would treat them, provided they had no theory
to maintain. If the enquirer will turn to Gen. 19th, he
will there find a description of the destruction of Sodom
and the cities of the plain — a scene which John, no
doubt, had in mind in describing the destruction of
typical Babylon by the same elements. " The smoke of the
country went up like the smoke of a furnace," 28th verse.
Jude (7th verse) tells us that Sodom and Gomorrah "are
set forth as an example suffering the vengeance of eternal
fire." If he will also turn to Isaiah 34th, he will see what
a judgment was to come upon Idumea. "And the
streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust
thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become
burning pitch, and it shall not be quenched, night nor day;
the smoke thereof shall go up forever : from generation t >
generation it shall lie waste, none shall pass through it for
ever and ever."
No one attempts to construe all this literally. The
prophecy in its spirit and full import, has long since been
fulfilled: and these fires have gone out. And yet the
Hebrew words translated forever and ever in this passage

226 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
are even stronger if possible than in the corresponding
passage in Revelation, le nehtsagh nehtsaghim, " the per
petuity of perpetuities," yet all, this has come to an end;
and we now look back upon it as fully accomplished, as
the righteous will look back from their eternal state upon
their old world with all its sin and misery,' so utterly and
forever destroyed that it shall no more be found.

CHAPTER XVI.
Fifth Class of Passages. The Complete and Final Victory.
The Old and New Testaments Contrasted. Two
Different Ideas of God. Truth Gradually
Revealed. The Last Enemy Destroyed.
Glorious Consummation.
The Old Testament opens with a description of the
creation of this lower world, with an earthly Paradise
where all things were very good, though in their nature
material and transitory.
The New Testament reveals to us the new creation,
and closes with a glowing description of the celestial
Paradise, in which everything is also very good, but in
an infinitely higher degree, because it is spiritual and
eternal. The Old Testament describes the formation of man
from the dust of the earth, and tells us of his perfection
as an earthly creature, but also, of his frailty and of his
fall, and the consequent ruin of the whole human race.
The New Testament shows us the Creator Himself,
not of an earthly origin, but descending from heaven, not
made, but becoming also a man, but without frailty or
liability to fall; and instead of bringing ruin, bringing
salvation to this lost race again.
Through the one, we see how a natural life and an
earthly Paradise are lost ; through the other, we see how
a spiritual life and a celestial Paradise are gained — not
simply regained, for Christ acquired for us in dying, infi
nitely more than Adam lost, or could have kept, by
living. 22J

228 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
The one, was at best, but a creature, the other was the
Creator ; the one earthly, natural, frail and temporal ;
the other heavenly, Spiritual, Almighty and Eternal.
The inferior comes before the superior. Night comes
before the day. " That was not first which is spiritual,
but that which is natural ; and afterwards that which is
spiritual. The first man is of the earth earthy ; the
second man is the Lord from heaven."
Those dwelling under the shadows of the temporal,
and temporary dispensation of the Old Testament,
looked back upon an earthly progenitor, and beyond him
into the blackness of chaos ; and forward toward the day
dawn, which, through the mists that enveloped them, was
but dimly perceived even by those who stood upon the
walls of Zion ; and to those who anxiously inquired
"Watchman what of the night," they were able to give
but a vague reply. But dwelling under the brighter spir
itual dispensation of the Gospel morning, we are able to
look back upon Christ, our spiritual progenitor, as the
sun already risen, and beyond, to the retiring shades of a
night passing away forever, and forward, with assured
hope, to the coming on of the noon tide glory of the
perfect day — the day in which no cloud shall obscure the
brightness of the sun ; the day that shall be followed by
no night and shall be without end.
We are so accustomed in this imperfect state, to the
mixture of " good and evil " that it is difficult for us to
conceive of the one without the other. Holiness and sin,
joy and sorrow, life and death, light from above and
darkness from beneath, mingle together in this midway
sphere. Everything that is true, and bright, and lovely,
has its counterpart in that which is false, and dark, and
hateful. It always has been so in our experience, and we

GOOD ETERNAL, NOT EVIL.

229

naturally come to feel that it must always be so ; or if
these extremes do not meet and mingle in the same
scene or person, they must somehow be perpetuated as
cotemporary with each other and as necessary to each
other, in some part of this universe. It somehow seems
unreasonable to think of a heaven without a hell some
where — of the King of glory and of His angels, without
thinking of the devil and his angels also — of the ran
somed of the Lord, rejoicing forever in the kingdom of
Light and life, without thinking also of the lost, suffer
ing and wailing forever in the kingdom of darkness and
death. The idea tnat the time ever will come,. or can come,
or ought to come, when there shall be no sin anywhere,
no sorrow, no death, no darkness, no devil, no hell, but
one complete rounded universe of holy, happy creatures
centering in God, and revolving around Him as the
source of all their life and all their blessedness, seems
so strange and extravagant, that those who have been
trained to regard eternal sin and suffering as an integral
part of the universe are afraid to indulge it. They look
with suspicion upon any one who ventures to express the
hope of such a'consummation, as though he were giving
up an essential part of the orthodox faith. To most
Christians, evil seems to be as permanent a part of the
universe as good — the eternal existence of Satan as cer
tain and logically necessary, as that of God Himself.
Theologians have undertaken to show that this perpetual
antagonism or antithesis is necessary in the very nature
of things. The Manicheans held that there are two eternal prin
ciples, the one good and the other evil, both without be
ginning and both without end, eternally in conflict with
each other. But these Christian theologians, less consis-

230 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
tent than the Manicheans, hold, that, while there are now
two such principles at war with each other, it is good only
that had no beginning ; evil dates its origin in time ;
but now that it has begun to be, it will never end ; that
God either cannot, or will not eradicate it, so that it shall
cease to exist. But we, in opposition to both these teach
ers, hold to the Scriptural doctrine of the eternity of good
alone, both in the past and in the future, and to the tran
sitory nature of the evil that now exists. It had a defi
nite beginning, and it shall have a definite ending : that
however necessary it may be to this incipient and prepara
tory stage of our existence ; however useful as a foil or
a background to the picture yet to be ; however neces
sary night may be to the introduction of day, or the
knowledge of evil to the knowledge of good, or the expe
rience of death, to the enjoyment of Life eternal, or of
sin to the "bringing in of everlasting righteousness," it
is but incidental and temporary after all, and not integ
ral and perpetual, and that the time will come when, hav
ing fully subserved its purpose, whatever that purpose
may be, it will pass away.
" What is the chaff to the wheat " that it should be
garnered and preserved forever ? Why should the stag
ing, used in the erection of the building, be suffered to
remain forever after it is finished, to disfigure its beauty ?
Of what value are the chips and the debris, but to be
destroyed ? Why should the fogs and mists that usher
in the coming day, remain forever, to obscure the light
of the risen sun' ?
We believe that the Bible plainly teaches that the
devil and all his works shall utterly be destroyed ; that
death shall be abolished and swallowed up of life ; that
all evil shall give place to good — and that sorrow and
sighing shall be unknown, and that there shall be no more

TWO DIFFERENT IDEAS OF GOD. 231
pain ; that the victory that Christ shall gain over all His
enemies, and all the enemies of His people, will be com
plete ; and that " every knee shall bow and every tongue
shall confess Him Lord to the glory of the Father."
Tojis, this glorious consummation seems, also, essen
tial to the idea of a perfect Deity, perfect in wisdom, per
fect in goodness, perfect in power.
The difference between us and • our adversaries, in
this discussion, consists really, in the different ideas we
entertain of the perfection of our Leader. Our arguments
have been directed, sometimes to one subordinate point,and
sometimes to another, but in reality the question in dis
pute is, " What think ye of Christ ? " As an Almighty
Sovereign and Leader, what has He undertaken to do?
What does he desire to do ? What can He do ? Is
tjiere any limit to His goodness or to his power ? or any
such limit a,s hinders Him from destroying his enemies as
He has threatened to do ?
In regard to the work of creation, our opponents be
lieve that He gave to man in the outset an unconditional,
indefeasible immortality like His own : we believe that
He only gave to man a dependent and conditional life,
liable to be lost by sin.
They believe " that all mankind, by their fall, lost
communion with God, are under His wrath and curse,
and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death
itself, and to the pains of hell forever." We believe the
penalty incurred in the fall was, " Cursed is the ground
for thy sake, in^sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of
thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to
thee : and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the
sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return.
unto the ground. For out of it wast thou taken. For
dust thou art, to dust shalt thou return."

232 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
They believe that God will punish the unsaved chil
dren of Adam in another life as well as in this, and
eternally punish them," both for the sin of their progenitor
and for their own sins.^ We believe He will punish no
man in a future life, but for His own sins.
They believe that this future punishment which God
will inflict " will consist in intensity of suffering," and
that this suffering will be perpetuated forever. We be
lieve that this'punishment will consist in such suffering
as each one deserves, and no more ; and end in their ever
lasting destruction.
They believe it is His purpose and end in the punish-
"ment of the unsaved, to perpetuate their miserable ex
istence in sin and suffering forever. We believe it is
His purpose and end to exterminate all sin and sinners
and suffering from the universe.
They believe that Christ proposes to Himself in the
struggle in which He is now engaged with Satan in this
world, as the very object for which He came down, and
died, to get back as much as possible of the territory He
has lost, and to recover as many of the human race as
He can, from the power of His adversary, and to make
them pure and blessed forever in heaven ; and as for the
rest, to get them with their leader safely under lock and
key, where He can torment them all unceasingry forever
and ever.
We believe He had an end infinitely higher and more
glorious in view, in His humiliation and death for dying
man. He comes to bring Life — eternal Life, with all its
accompanying and consequent blessings, to His redeemed
people — blessings infinitely greater than any that man
lost in the fall. And as for the rest, whether they be
many or few, whom He does not see fit to save, or can
not save, or who would' not be saved, — He will blot them

TRUTH NOT ALL REVEALED.

233

out entirely from the book of Life, and utterly destroy
them. And when His work is completed, He shall see
of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. There shall
be but one King and one Kingdom^ " One fold and one
Shepherd." It is not according to the Divine method to reveal
truth in logical and categorial forms, nor to reveal it all
at one time, but only so far and so fast as man can re
ceive and use it. To the most enlightened of the Old
Testament saints, many of the facts and principles of the
Gospel, that are now clear to the child, were revealed
only in the most dim and shadowy outline. Our Lord
said to those who came under His own immediate tuition:
" I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot
bear them now." We must not expect, even under the
clearer and increasing light of these " last days," to be
able fully to understand and describe that which is pecu
liar to the dispensation yet to come, that is entirely
spiritual — the dispensation of immortality — or, to be able
to fix the precise and definite meaning of all the many
allusions to it, in the Scriptures. The inspired writers
themselves did not fully comprehend the import of the
language they used, and surely, it was not the intention
of the Spirit that inspired them, to give us, even had it
been possible, a literal, definite and accurate account of
the affairs of the Spiritual and eternal world which lies
before us. All we can hope for, is to be assured, as we
are, of its actual existence, to know what are our present
practical relations to it, and to get such glimpses of its
excellence and glory, as shall stimulate us to wise en
deavors, and cheer our hearts, and strengthen our faith
in that Adorable Leader, who has undertaken to bring us
thither.

234 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
All this we have in the Word of God. It gives us
every assurance we need, of His wisdom, goodness and
power, of the complete victory He will gain over all His
f,oes and our foes, and of the glorious consummation that
will finally crown His self-sacrifjring work of love.
i. We believe that the celestial Paradise, with its
spiritual beauties and glories, and " filled with the fulness
of Him that filleth all in all," so graphically described in
the closing chapters of the Apocalypse, was typified, and
meant to be typified, in the terrestrial Paradise described
in the beginning of Genesis, with its earthly beauties and
pleasures, where everything according to its nature was
very good.
2. We understand the enigmatical address of God to
the serpent that had seduced our first parents from their
allegiance to Him, as prophetical of the issue of the strug
gle he had challenged, " I will put enmity between thee
and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed, and
it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."
His brief career of apparent success was to be followed
by a complete overthrow and utter extinction. # The
head is the citadel of life — a crushing blow here, as. the
word means, is fatal, but an injury to the heel may be
repaired. 3. We take the many promises God made to Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, concerning their spiritual posterity, and
the extermination of all their enemies, and especially the
solemn oath He made to Moses, " As truly as I live, all
the earth shall be filled with the glory of God," in no
partial, restricted sense, but as giving us the assurance,
that when that time shall come, when the earth shall be
filled with the glory of God, not only its surface shall be
cleansed, but, within its bowels, there shall be no dark

THE GOOD PRESERVED, THE BAD DESTROYED.

235

place left where the miserable victims of His wrath shall
sin and curse and suffer forever.
4. The book of Psalms is full of promises, more or
less explicit, especially the Messianic Psalms, of the glory
to come under the reign of Christ, " His name shall en
dure forever." His name shall be continued as long as
the sun, and men shall be blessed in Him. All nations
shall call Him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God of
Israel, who only doeth wondrous things ; and blessed be
His glorious name forever ; and let the whole earth be
filled with His glory. Amen, and Amen. — (72d Psalm.)
Many of the Prophets, especially Isaiah and Zecha-
riah, describe in the most extravagant and glowing terms,
the completeness of the victory and the fulness of the
glory of His universal reign. There shall be nothing
to hurt or destroy throughout His everlasting Kingdom.
" The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to
Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads,
and they shall obtain joy and gladness ; and sorrow and
sighing shall flee away." " The mountains and the hills
shall break forth before you into singing, and all the
trees of the fields shall clap their hands." "Instead of
the thorn shall come up the fir tree ; instead of the brier
shall come up the myrtle tree ; and it shall be to the
Lord, for a name, and for an everlasting sign that shall
not be cut off." See also the whole of the 50th Chapter
of Isaiah. The Old Testament closes with a description of the
gathering in of God's people, as jewels, into His King
dom, and the utter destruction of all the wicked. " He
will burn them up as stubble is burned in an oven, -and
leave neither root nor branch." He will not heap up all
this garbage and rubbish in some dark corner and leave
it to rot and give forth its pestilential strength forever/

236 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
neither will He cast it into a fire which will forever burn
and smoke, but by a miracle, never consumes that refuse
upon which it feeds. But He will " burn it up " " and
leave neither root nor branch."
5. John Baptist taught the same truth under the
figure of the wheat garnered from the threshing floor,
and of the chaff that is burned with unquenchable fire,
and also, of the axe laid unto the root of the tree, and
every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn
down and cast into the fire — to be burned — not to be pre
served. 6. This, the Scriptures declare to be the very purpose
and end for which Christ came, " That, through death
ii He might destroy — not torment forever — him that hath
the power of death, that is the devil," Heb. 2 : 14. "For
' this purpose the Son of God was manifest, that He
might destroy the works of the devil, 1 John 3 : 8.
This is very plain and explicit. We have the faith to
believe that He will not fail of His object. He will
accomplish it too, not in some partial and figurative
sense, but actually and completely. Indeed, Satan is now
destroyed in all his moral nature. He has destroyed him
self thus far by his own act, and so does every one who
sins against God. What other destruction remains for
him, or them, but an actual and utter destruction ? It is
impossible to make any other sense out of this passage,
and no one would think of trying, were it not required,
by this miserable theory we are opposing, to perpetuate
the existence of Satan and his victims throughout an
eternity of sin and suffering. God's word assures us that
they all shall be destroyed together ; but these advocates
declare that instead of this they shall all be " salted with
fire," and so preserved to sin and suffer forever.
The demons themselves were conscious of their im-

SATAN DEFEATED AND UTTERLY DESTROYED. 237
pending fate, and cried out when they saw Jesus, " What
have we to do with thee Jesus thou Son of God ? Art
thou come hither to torment us (to bring us to trial and
punishment) before the time." Matt. 8 : 29. And again, at
another time, changing the language but not the thought.
" Art thou come to destroy us." Luke 4 : 34.
Peter and Jude both assure us that they are even
now kept — in what manner we do not know — " in ever
lasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the
great day " — that day when their time of destruction will
come. We understand this to be what our Lord taught con
cerning the unsaved, in many of His parables, and in
His didactic utterances — such as the parables of the
tares and the wheat, the good fish and the bad, the talent
taken away, and in the miracle of the blasted fig tree,
etc., and especially in the scenic representation of the
last judgment, when He consigns them on His left hand
to the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his
angels, which, we are elsewhere told, means, everlasting
destruction, " when the Lord shall be revealed from
heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, taking ven
geance on them that know not God and that obey not the
Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who shall be punished
with everlasting destruction (issuing) from the presence
of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He
shall come to be glorified in His saints and admired in
all them that believe in that day," 2 Thes. 1 : 7-10.
There are many allusions scattered along through all the
Epistles, more or less distinct, to the glorious issue of the
contest now going on between Christ and Satan, the
Prince of Peace, and the Prince of the Power of the Air
— " that wicked whom He shall consume with the Spirit
of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His

238 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
coming; " but we have no room, more particularly to refer
to others. In 1 Cor. 15th Chapter, Paul, after drawing a parallel
between the first and second Adam, and showing how
that which is base must come before that which is pure,
and that which is natural, before that which is Spiritual,
and that which is temporal, before that which is eternal,
speaks in glowing language of the glorious consumma
tion, when that which is imperfect is done away, and
that winch is perfect is come. In describing the resur
rection of the righteous and the glorious bodies they
shall then put on, his mind is so filled with the
theme, that' he quite ignores the resurrection of the
wicked — though, from other parts of the Bible we have
reason to believe that their souls will be united to their
vile material bodies again, that they both maybe de
stroyed together. " Then cometh the end, when He
shall. have- delivered up the Kingdom to God, even the
Father, when He shall have put down all rule, and
all authority, and all power. For He must reign till He
hath put all enemies under His feet." " The last enemy
that shall be destroyed is Death."
Peter, in his first Epistle, Chapter 3d, describes the
coming of the last day, and the complete destruction of
all the wicked, and the general conflagration in this " day
of God, when the heavens, being on fire, shall be dis
solved and the earth shall melt with ferment heat," and
then he adds, "nevertheless, we, according to His promise,
look for the new heavens and a new earth wherein
dwelleth righteousness." Jude informs us that even
Enoch prophesied of these things.
9. But it is reserved for the last book in the Bible, as
we might naturally suppose, and especially for the con
cluding portion of it, to give us the fullest description of

THEN COMETH THE END. 239
the closing scenes in this earthly drama, and the most
perfect picture of the world to come.
We will not here attempt to follow the course of this
wonderful vision through its scenes of conflict, and car
nage, and fire, and smoke, in which our Lord, now as the
" Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the Ending,
which was, and is, and is to come, the Almighty," and
now, as " the Lamb which was slain from the foundation
of the world," and now as a glorious conquering " Prince,"
is described as waging war with the many protean forms
of evil personified under every actual or imaginable sym
bol or image. The grotesque imagery which the Seer
employs of beasts with many heads and horns, of dragons
belching forth floods of water, of horses breathing fire
from their nostrils, of locusts with scorpion strings, of
angels flying through the air with vials of wrath, or with
sickles, with which to reap the harvest of this earth ;
the impossible figures he introduces, the extravagant
language he uses, are such as to defy all logical analysis
or definite and precise application. Nor is this at all
necessary to a most clear understanding of the object for
which he employs them, and of the truths he intends to
express, and of the certain result towards which they all
point us, namely, the overthrow and abolishment of all
opposition, and of all evil, whatever form it may assume,
or, however strongly it may be entrenched, and the ultimate
reign of righteousness, peace and love, throughout the
universal kingdom of God.
We see how the mystical Babylon, that had so long
held sway in the earth, is overthrown and consumed with
fire, like Sodom of old; how the beast and the false
prophet, whatever forms of organized evil they may repre
sent, are unceasingly tormented and then destroyed in the
lake of fire and brimstone, and how, finally the great head

24O THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
center of all this apostacy and iniquity, is first bound,
and then, when his time is fully come, is judged and de
stroyed in the same lake of fire with the beast and false
prophet. "Then cometh the" end." The Judge is seated
upon a great, white throne ; and before His face heaven
and earth flee away. The dead, small and great, stand
before Him. The sea, and Death, and Hell, give up all
that are in them. The books are opened, and everyone
is judged according to his works ; and all, whose names
are not written in the Book of Life, are cast into the lake
of fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. This is the
Second Death ; and then Death and Hell are cast in after
them ; and the earth itself, with its Sheol, its Hades,] its
Gehenna, its Tophet, its Tartarusjlor by whatever name
the place of the abode of the wiclced here confined may
be known, is consumed with the visible heavens, in one
general conflagration, and the curtain falls upon time, and
eternity begins. •
Once more, for a little season it is lifted, and we look
in for a moment upon the glories of the celestial world.
We see a "new heaven and a new earth," "for the first
heaven and the first earth are passed away." We see
" the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of
heaven," with its jasper walls, its golden palaces, its
crystal streams, and its trees bearing all manner of
precious fruit, and, in the midst of all, the Tree of Life
again. We see the celestial and glorified inhabitants
clothed in white, with crowns on their heads, and harps
in their hands, singing the praises of God. " There shall
be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall
there be any more pain, for the former things are passed
away." The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne
shall feed them, and lead them unto living fountains of
water, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

THEN COMETH THE END.

241

And there shall be no night there. And they need no
light of a candle, neither light of the sun ; for the Lord
God giveth them light ; and they shall reign forever and
ever."

CHAPTER XVII.
Recapitulation. Incidental Evidence to Corroborate
our Position. Solution of Many Doctrinal
Difficulties.
We first showed in our Introduction, that the question
under discussion, instead of presenting a Dilemma, as
had generally been supposed, had another alternative
in which was found the true solution of all the difficul
ties of the case.
We then, in the two preliminary chapters, proceeded
to remark on the common orthodox belief, and to show
the appalling and incredible conclusions to which it
leads ; and defined more particularly the real question
at issue between those who hold to this belief and those
who hold to the doctrine maintained in this book.
We, then, before making our final appeal to the
Scriptures, stopped to inquire what Reason and Nature
have to say with respect to the natural immortality of man.
i. Reason, when enlightened by Revelation, teaches
that there is but one unconditional, independent exist
ence in the universe — that self-existence is the distinguish
ing attribute of Jehovah, that He is the source of all life ;
and that the life of every other creature, however high or
low, must depend on His will and power, or in other
words, be conditional life.
2. It was shown, also, that Nature, while giving us
hints, and affording many beautiful symbols of a higher
and better life beyond this, has nothing to say respecting
the duration of that future life. Much less does Nature
teach that any such life is necessarily without end, or
242

SUMMARY RECAPITULATION. 243
that it is the common inheritance of the whole race.
Indeed, the analogies of Nature show, that, as this
second life may be destroyed in the grub while in the
first stage of its existence, so that it never attains to the
second, so it may be in man : also, that everything having
life must fulfil the conditions of that life and preserve its
normal state, or it comes to a premature end ; and we
have reason to believe that this is true of the soul of man :
that the instinct of life in man, he possesses in common
with the brutes that perish, and that this shrinking from
death proves no more in his case than in theirs : and as
for the longing man has for immortality, it may indicate
the possibility of an endless life, but it certainly does not
show that there are no conditions attached to this boon,
and that it cannot be alienated ; indeed, these, and other
longings that are unsatisfied may serve to show him the
ruin into which he has fallen by sin, and the need he has
of a Saviour.
Coming then to the Scriptures, we showed that it is
not in the possession of a living soul that man is dis
tinguished from the brutes, but in the possession of a
living soul that is capable of Spiritual life, and conse
quently of communion with God; that it is this life
alone that insures to the soul its immortality, and that it
was just this Spiritual life and union with God that man '
failed to maintain; that when man loses this "additional
something " which distinguishes him from the brutes, he '
falls into the same perishable category with them ; the
loss of the higher, necessitates the loss of the lower, and
he becomes inevitably a transient and dying creature.
We observed, also, that the terms "Spiritual life" and
" Spiritual death " so frequently occurring in the Scrip
tures, are not figures of speech denoting certain pure or
depraved conditions of life, but that they denote an actual

244 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
life and an actual death of the soul; and that the "new
life" that is given in regeneration denotes, not a renova-
^trbn of the old life, but a real new life like that of Christ
Himself ;~ and that it is by this life and not by the perpet
uation of the natural life of the soul that we are to have
immortality. We then showed (i) by a long array of passages taken
from all parts of the Scriptures, how they uniformly speak
of man in his natural — that is in his fallen condition, as
mortal and perishable, and also (2) by citing another
large class of passages, how they speak of the regenera
ted man as possessing a life that shall never come to an
end ; and that this eternal life is the gift of God through
Jesus Christ alone.
We then (3) examined another large class of texts in
which the brief and transitory life of the wicked is con
trasted with the enduring and endless life of the righ
teous, and after this, (4) those passages that are relied on
to prove the doctrine of the eternal existence of the
wicked in a state of sin and suffering, and showed, that
instead of asserting this, as is claimed, one must assume
the fact of the immortality of the soul before they can
be made to appear to sustain the doctrine ; and that it is
only because man's indestructible nature is taken for
granted that these texts seem to have any force in this
direction ; and finally, (5) we showed it to be the uniform
testimony of the Word of God from the beginning to
the end, that sin with its consequent evil is not eternal, a
parte ante, nor, a parte post — Aat it had its beginning in
time, and is restricted to this material world, and that it
will have its end, with the end of time, and its final extinc
tion when this world shall be destroyed and God shall make
all things new ; that Christ will gain a complete victory
over every form of evil, and that in the new heavens and

INCIDENTAL EVIDENCES. 2415
the new earth yet to be, there shall be found neither
darkness, nor sin, nor pain, nor sorrow, nor death, but
only light, and love, and joy, and life, and blessedness
forever. It only remains to allude briefly to a few points that
have occurred to us while pursuing this discussion which,
not falling exactly in the line of our argument, may be
taken as incidental evidences in favor of the position we
are endeavoring to maintain.
Whenever -any doctrine is found to be in conflict with
itself and with other doctrines known to be true, and to
lead to incredible conclusions, we ought to infer that it
is either wholly or partly unsound. On the other hand,
whenever any doctrine is found to harmonize -with itself
and all other known truth, and to throw much light upon
many dark places in the Word of God, and to solve for
us mysteries otherwise inexplicable ; all this — if not an
absolute proof of its soundness — ought, certainly, to
commend it to our favorable consideration. This de
scribes, as we think, the case as it stands, between the
two doctrines brought into comparison in this discussion.
The doctrine of the unconditional and necessary im
mortality of man, however agreeable it may be to the
instincts of our nature, and flattering to our pride, is sur
rounded by many difficulties. No one pretends that it
can be demonstrated from reason or nature, that man,
even as a holy creature, possesses the power of an end
less life ; and now that he has fallen from his normal con
dition by sin, the Word of God seems certainly to teach
that he is altogether mortal, unless divine mercy shall
interpose to save him from the doom he has incurred ;
and in order to maintain the contrary, a forced construc
tion must be put upon the entire testimony of the Bible.

246 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
It leads directly to conclusions concerning God and the
character of His government that are appalling, and that
shroud Him in terrible gloom, and bring different parts
of His Word into direct conflict with each other; it
throws a mystery over many of its doctrines ; it renders
some of them shocking to our moral sense, and others
quite inexplicable.
It is not for a moment to be supposed that any finite
creature will be able to comprehend a complete sys
tem of divine truth, and to fathom all its depths and solve
all its mysteries ; or, that the natural heart of the sinner
will beat in sympathy with all the doctrines of the Bible.
But all truth, so far as it is discoverable, whether in
nature or in revelation should harmonize with itself ; and
no man whether holy or sinful can be made to accept of
doctrines that are at war with his reason and moral sense.
There is nothing in the doctrine we maintain; namely,
that man might have been immortal had he not forfeited
his right to live forever by disloyalty to his Maker, that is
opposed to the teachings of Reason or of Nature ; but
on the contrary, this position is agreeable to many of the
teachings of both, if man would only listen to them ;
and when we inquire of Revelation, this doctrine is
found to be in harmony with all its utterances from
beginning to end." It agrees with the sanctions of the
Law and the provisions of the Gospel. It defines very
clearly the penalty of sin. Though it is humiliating to the
pride of man, he cannot find any fault with it on the
score of justice. It frees the Almighty from those asper
sions and_ accusations of cruelty which the doctrine of
eternal torment casts upon_ Him. It magnifies the work
of Christ, and greatly enhances the power and glory of
God in our redemption. It makes evident the distinc
tion between the natural man and the spiritual man, and

THE SOURCE OF MANY ERRORS. 247
shows why every child of Adam must be born again, that
he may enter the Kingdom of God and live forever. In
short, it clears up many collateral doctrines and passages
of Scriptures that have long been regarded as dark and
incomprehensible. It is the key to many, if not to most
of the questions that have been in dispute among Chris
tians in all ages. It sets the believer upon a vantage
ground from which he may triumphantly meet the attacks
of infidels and scoffers against the Bible as the Word of
God. Let that most peculiar and distinguishing privilege
of the saints ; namely, eternal life, be conceded to
all men in their sins, and the main argument by which
the Gospel is to be urged upon the world is thrown
away; and other and inferior motives must be substi
tuted — motives which are too often powerless, because
they commend themselves neither to the hearts nor con
sciences of men.
Let natural men be assured by the heralds of the
Gospel, as Christ and His immediate disciples assured
them, that they can have no hope of immortality but
through Him ; that not merely a fearful reckoning awaits
them hereafter, and deserved punishment for all their
own sins, but final and inevitable destruction as members
of a mortal race, and you have laid a foundation in
truth for the presentation of the Gospel, which however
humbling it may be to their pride, they will find it hard
to gainsay or resist.
When all Christians come to understand the truth
on this question, the occasion for most of their doctrinal
differences will be taken away.
1. Origenism, Socinianism, Swedenborgianism, the ex
tremes of Arminianism and Calvinism, Spiritualism and

248 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
many other errors and heresies that have prevailed, or
now prevail, have their origin, or find their chief support
in this dogma of the indestructible nature of the human
soul. Without this, they would be quite unable to justify
their existence.
(1.) The arguments of Universalists and Restora-
tionists against the doctrine of eternal sin and suffering,
have no significance or force but in the assumption that
the wicked are equally immortal with the righteous.*
(2.) The Socinian cannot but see that if Christ came
not simply as a Reformer of men's lives, but as a Saviour
from death, not simply to teach and bless the world but
to give life and immortality to His people, He must have
been divine as well- as human. To improve or restore
what already exists might be the work of a man, but to
communicate, to dying man the immortality which God
alone possesses, — to make him a new creature, is the
work of a Divine Being only. As in the first miracle of
Christ, ij: was not poor wine that was made better, but
good wine that was made out of what was no wine at all,
.so in the miracle of regeneration, He does not simply
make men more pure and more blessed, and so lift them
up to heaven, but He gives them a new life — another life,
which, like His own, is pure and eternal.
(3.) The fanctes of the Swedenborgians concerning
the other world, will be seen to be but the baseless fabric
of a vision when one awakes to the realization of this
truth, that the future life is not, at all, the prolongation
of this present life into another state, but it is quite

* The arguments of Mr. Jukes, in the Christian Union, (March
20-27, 1878', in favor of the doctrine of universal restoration, hav«
no foundation or force but in the assumption that saints and sinners
alike are destined to an endless existence.

BLINDED BY THIS ERROR. 249
another life, which dates its beginning hot in the Natural,
but in the Spiritual birth of the soul.
(4. The Arminian differs from the Calvinist, not so
much as to the doctrine of God's Sovereignty, as to the
inferences that are drawn from it, and the supposed
manner of its exercise. He finds fault, and with good
reason, with the doctrine that God first imperiled the
eternal happiness of the whole race in the trial of their
progenitor, and then elected a certain number to eternal
happiness and foredoomed all the rest, most of whom
have never had the offer of salvation, to an endless
existence of sin and misery. But let it be understood
that it was a question — not of eternal woe or eternal
weal, but of death or life, that is, of mortality or immor
tality that was decided in Adam ; and that every member
of this fallen race, though a mortal by the conditions
of his birth, is answerable for his own sins only at the
bar of God, and that God exercises His Sovereignty, as
indeed, He must, in giving or in not giving another life —
His own peculiar life — as He does in giving any other
kind of life to whomsoever He will, and no man can call
His justice or goodness in question.
(5.) Modern Spiritualism, which is but the revival
of the old heathenish art of Necromancy, which the
Scriptures ascribe to the devil and the practice of which
is forbidden on pain of death, is the natural outgrowth of
this error, and could not exist a moment were it not for
the sanction and support derived from it.
2. This great error like a veil or cataract upon the eyes
of the reader of the Scriptures, prevents him from seeing the
beauty and completeness of the contrast between Adam
as the Natural man and Christ as the Spiritual man,
to which allusion is often made in the Scriptures, and
which the Apostle Paul has drawn out in detail in his

250 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
Epistles, and which Commentators have found so much
-difficulty in explaining. But let this veil be taken away,
and then the parallel between the first and the second
Adam, and the Natural, Earthly, Mortal and Transitory
life which comes through the one, and the Spiritual,
Heavenly and Eternal life which comes through the
other, will appear beautifully perfect, and in harmony
with our highest conceptions of the wisdom and good
ness of God. " That is not first which is Spiritual, but
that which is natural and afterwards that which is
Spiritual." (3.) Were it not for the blinding influence of this
error, the distinction between the sinner and the saint,
the Natural man and the Spiritual man, the Moral
man and the "Christian, the " children of this world "
and the " children of the Kingdom," which is so
vaguely apprehended by most believers, and is an utter
mystery to all unbelievers, would be very clearly defined.
It is not a distinction in degrees, but in kind ; not a mere
moral distinction between men, all of whom are more or
less imperfect, but a distinction between two different
things — two differerulkinds of life, the one received from
Adam, the other from Christ ; the one tending naturally
downward to its origin in the dust, the other upward to
its origin in the heavens; the one is essentially and neces
sarily transitory, for it is imperfect and finite, the other
is essentially and necessarily eternal, for it is- the life of
the holy and infinite Jehovah Himself, though in the
soul of man. /Q?r*' <->¦'! r£.-i 1; fjtt Sa.HH ..' -«) CcJtO^,
The heir of heaven, in the outset, may be no more
moral than his neighbor — he may be far beneath him
in all the elements of natural goodness, but there is
an assimilating power in this new life, which will subdue
all things to itself, and go on increasing more and

NATURAL IMMORTALITY NOT IN THE BIBLE. 25 I
more unto the perfect day; but the other nature, how
ever fair it may now appear, has the seeds of death within
it, and goes inevitably downward to death and dissolution.
Let the moral man who boasts of his goodness, and hopes
to be saved by the law of Moses, come to apprehend this
distinction, and he will see at once, how impossible it is -to
attain to eternal life without being born again — not of
blood, nor of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
The principle of immortality is not inthe soul ofjuiy
child of Adam, however moral he may be, it must be
implanted there by the Spirit of God, or he can nevei
hope to live forever.
4. Here we have explained also the otherwise unac
countable omission of any mention of a future life for the
sinner in the Old Testament; and of the natural immor •
tality of the soul in either the Old or New Testament.
Life and immortality are only brought to light in the
Gospel, and then only as the portion of the believer ii.
Christ. The Law in its spiritual and higher application
was quite unknown. It was carnal, as the Apostle says.
It was received and understood only in its lower and tem ¦
poral application by those to whom it was first given.
Under Moses, men were all treated as mortal men, and
approved and rewarded, or condemned and punished
according as they obeyed or disobeyed its behests.
Warburton devotes a large part of his learned work
on " the divine legation of Moses " to the proof of this:
proposition, to which every Bible scholar must give his
assent, " That the doctrine of a future state of reward;
and punishments is not to be found in, nor did it make a part
of the divine legation of Moses."
But if man had been on trial as to the weal or woe of
an endless existence, and if the sanctions of this law
were actually eternal blessedness, on the one hand, and

252 THE. THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA
eternal torment on the other, in a life beyond the grave, it
is absolutely incredible that this great fact should have
been so utterly ignored by God's commissioned law
giver. When, however, we once recognize this great fun
damental truth of both the Law and the Gospel, that the
eternal life which is given to the people of God, comes to
them in no sense whatever by the observance of the law,
but only through faith in the Saviour, and that it is the
peculiar gift of God through Jesus Christ, this mystery
vanishes at once, and we see the necessity there is for
both the law and the gospel. The law once broken may
remain as a rule of life, but it can afford no relief to
those who have incurred its penalty which is death.
5. It is here too, that we see how Christ suffered the
full penalty of the law for us.
Theologians have endeavored to show how the tem
porary suffering of an -infinite being was commuted for
the eternal sufferings of a multitude of finite creatures ;
or how the supreme dignity of the sufferer rendered it a
full equivalent ; or, how Christ actually suffered in dying,
the full amount of all the agony that was threatened
against all those whom he redeemed, had their agonies
been prolonged through all eternity. But all these spec
ulations are very unsatisfactory. But if the penalty of the
law was death to both soul and body, and not suffering,
excepting as it precedes and accompanies this death,
then, there is no difficulty in understanding how Christ,
by^sufferingjind dying^nJJisjwhole human nature — for
in His divine nature He could not die — paid~the full
penalty of the law. Is not this the true meaning of what
Peter says. " For Christ also hath once suffered for sins,
the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God,
being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the
Spirit," — and the meaning of what Christ Himself says,

DARK PASSAGES MADE LUMINOUS. 253
" I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold I am
alive forevermore."
6. New light is thrown upon the sacrificial system of
the Old Testament ; and the real significance of these
offerings is made very clear. That they were typical of
the great sacrifice yet to be made by Christ there can be
no doubt. But if the atonement made by Christ consisted
in suffering to redeem us from suffering, then why should
not these sacrificial victims be put to torture ? But if it
consisted in dying to redeem us from death, the giving of
one life for another ; and if the suffering He endured
was only incidental to this, then we see plainly, that the
death of the victim, and not the suffering, was the chief
thing necessary to its completeness.
7. From this point of view we can understand, also,
what Moses meant when he prayed, if God would not
forgive the sins of the people, that He would blot him
out of the book which he had written (Ex. 32 :3i), and
what Paul meant by saying that he could wish that he
were accused from Christ' for his brethren and kinsmen
in the flesh (Rom. 9 13), not that they could be willing to
sin and suffer eternal agonies as the enemies of God, but
that such was their love for the people of their care, that
.they would rather die for them, or with them, and perish
forever and be forgotten, than to live after they were
utterly destroyed.
8. There are other passages, such as those that fore
tell the destruction of the last enemy — death, (1 Cor. 15:
26,) and the casting of death and hell into the lake of
fire which is the second death,. (Rev. 20 : 14,) etc., which
commentators find it very difficult to explain while they
hold to the doctrine, that death shall reign forever over a
portion of the children of Adam. But there is really no
difficulty whatever but such as their dogma imposes.

254 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
The editor of the Cottage Bible in commenting on this
latter passage, says :
" What is meant by death and hell, or the grave, or in
visible world cast into the lake of fire, is not so clear. We
apprehend with Mr. Lohman that it is designed to inti
mate, that there will be in future no intermediate state,
no death, no grave ; — the whole human race will in future
be found in heaven or hell, in eternal life or everlasting
misery ! awful thought ! How important it is to secure
for our names a place in the Lamb's book of life."
How completely he ignores the main sentiment and
drift of the passage ! and yet, this is the way many
commentators darken counsel by words without knowl
edge, when they come across any passage that conflicts
with their notions about the eternal perpetuity of death,
and hell, and sin, and misery.
9. Much light also is throw upon the great question of
ages — the divine permission of sin, or the existence of
evil in this universe. We may not be able by searching
to find out God, to find out the Almighty to perfection.
There are secret things which belong to God alone. This
may be one of them. But they involve it in darkness and
gloom infinitely more profound who teach, that now this
evil which God has permitted to come into His universe,,
or which has come in without His permission, never can,
or never will be expelled ; that though all things were
very good and perfect in the morning of creation, the
clouds that have since come over the face of Nature will
never cease to linger in the horizon and to cast their dark
shadow upon some portion of the field ; that He will
permit the rival that rose up against Him in heaven,
though cast down to hell, to retain a portion of his prey,
and reign over them, and that He will concede to him
and to all the victims of his wiles one province, at least,

EVIL TRANSITORY. 255
of His own hitherto universal empire ; that the integrity
and unity of His government has been forever destroyed,
and that hereafter, instead of one everlasting kingdom,
there shall be two everlasting kingdoms, — a kingdom
of light and a kingdom of darkness, a kingdom of joy
and a kingdom of sorrow, a kingdom of praise and a
kingdom of cursing — running parallel with each other to
all eternity. No wonder that the good and wise, in all ages have
confessed themselves amazed and confounded by. the
enigma, and utterly unable to see the goodness or wis
dom of God through the clouds which their own false
philosophies have thrown around Him.
But this dark subject assumes, at least, a lighter and
more cheerful shade, when we come to learn that all the
evil that now exists — as it had a beginning — will have an
end ; that it will all be dissipated like the fogs and mists
Of the morning when the sun shall shine forth in His
strength; that it is in some sense preliminary and prepar
atory to the coming in of the perfect day in its noon- ¦
tide splendor ; that it is but an incident in the develop
ment of his infinite plan — necessary perhaps, to its per
fection, but not integral to it ; that, after having made "
the rage of Satan and the wrath of man to praise Him,
the remainder He will restrain, and as surely as He lives,
" all the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the
glory of God." That the very object for which Christ
came down from heaven was to destroy Satan and all his
works, and He will surely accomplish the object of His
mission. "For He must reign, till He hath put all
enemies under His feet." " The last enemy that shall be
destroyed is death," (i Cor. 15 : 25, 26), and, in the
new heavens and the new earth that shall follow, " There
shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying ;

256 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
neither shall there be any more pain, for the former
things are passed away." (Rev. 21).*
* It may be. perhaps, unnecessary to say, that our inquiries and
conclusions are confined to this universe of intelligences centering in
Christ, the Lord, to which our attention is especially directed in the
Scriptures, and to the cycle of being, through which we, in common
with the Spiritual world about us, are passing. As to other universes
— to use an astronomical paradox — if there be other universes, and
to other cycles of being ; if there be such, we know nothing. As to
what* may have been, or may yet be, or now is, in the infinite reach
of the boundless dominions of the Almighty, and in the sweep of
cycles that are measureless, we do not presume even to guess.
When any one comes to have any true conception, however
faint, of the possibilities of the infinite ; of duration without any
beginning or end whatever ; — of extent without limit ; of being that
is absolute and independent ; a sense of his own insignificance, and
of the littleness of the sphere through which he moves, forbids him
to dogmatise or to make much account of his own knowledge or
wisdom. What is the earth itself with all it contains, but a particle
of dust floating in the sunbeams ? or the circuit through which it
revolves, but a mere point in the vast expanse that stretches out
without any possible limit on every side ? or the duration of its
career, but that of the bubble that forms and' bursts in the same mo
ment upon the surface of the ocean ? — compared with tha lifetime of
the Almighty, the amplitude of His sway, and the totality of his
works ?

CHAPTER XVIII.
Two Objections Considered. — Conclusion.
The two main objections to any modification of the
old doctrine we have been opposing are :
i. That this belief has generally prevailed in all ages
of the world, and is the popular belief at the present day.
If this belief were the result of a careful induction of
facts, or if it were based on testimony, this would be a
strong argument in its favor.- And yet, even in such a
case — in regard to facts and principles that are dernon-
strable — how often have the whole world been found to
have been wrong in their belief, by the more careful
investigations of science. But this belief is, at best, but a
mere opinion or sentiment, which cannot be demonstrated
or proved to be true by human testimony.
On such a question, the belief of a multitude carries
no more authority with it than the belief of one person ;
nor does it gain any real, force by being handed down
from one generation to another.
But even if it could be shown to be probable that the
soul lives after the death of the body, which we have not
attempted to assert or deny, this is far from showing,
what many seem to suppose, that it will never die, much
less, that this is true of all souls, without any condition or
qualification whatever.
It is just at this point that we take issue with the
advocates of this doctrine, not as to the possibility or
probability of another state, nor, indeed, as to the fact of
a future state for both the righteous and the wicked ; but
as to whether the life of the wicked is eternal, as well as
257

258 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
that of the righteous, or, in other words, as to the indestruc
tibility of the human soul.
We think we have proved, so far as it is capable of
proof, both from reason and nature, and especially and
conclusively from the Scriptures, that no human soul can
possibly live eternally, unless it is in_union with_God, and
consequently, pure and blessed ; that the sinful soul has
no power of an endless life within itself : that, cut off from
Him Who is the source of all life, it must necessarily
perish ; that, when it is both physically and spiritually
dead, it is also actually dead.
Man was made capable of immortality, because he
was made capable of spiritual union with God. Immor
tality is the boon that was offered to him, but only on
condition of continued obedience. So long as he remained
holy he had "a right to the tree of life." But the right
has been lost by sin. The original birth-right has been
traded away for a mess of pottage. And now he is un
willing to accept the consequences of his foolish bargain,
or to believe that his Heavenly Father will disinherit him.
He clings to the hope, as is quite natural, in spite of the
forfeiture. The tempter, who whispered in the ears of
our confiding parents, " Ye shall not surely die," contin
ues to delude their posterity with the same assurance, and
they are equally ready to believe him. The great mis
take and delusion of the world from that day to this, has
been in claiming for man in his sins, what could be true
of him only in his normal condition. And now that a
new way of eternal life has been made known in the
Gospel, man refuses to recognize this way, or to accept
it at the hands of Christ as a gift of grace, but claims
it as his natural inheritance. We can hardly wonder
that those to whom this Gospel has never been offered
should cling to the delusion, nor that those to whom

THE POPULARITY OF THIS ERROR. 259
Christ is preached as a mere Saviour from sin and misery,
and not as a Saviour from death, should, under the blind
ing power of sin, hold fast to this belief in the uncondi
tional immortality of their souls, which has been taught
to them from their infancy ; but it is surprising that those
who have been enlightened by the Spirit of God* and
called to be Saints, should so utterly ignore the chief dis-
tinction^which God has made between themselves and the
world, that they should deny to _Christ the special glory
of the gift He has purchased for them — the gift of Eter
nal Life.
It is surprising that they should concede to dying
sinners the preposterous claims they make to an immor
tality like their own, and so reduce the Gospel message
which ought to be an offer of Life — eternal Life to mortal
men, to a mere proclamation of a way of escape from
those infinite and eternal torments which, to most men,
are quite incredible, and which those who proclaim
them scarcely_believe will be inflicted.
It may seem like foolish presumption to oppose so
popular a doctrine as the -indefeasible right of all men to
an endless existence, and to stand by this great truth of
the Gospel, which has been so obscured by human phil
osophy : — That there is no eternal Life for any child of
Adam apart from Christ-: but the humiliating doctrines
of the Gospel have never been popular in the world — nor
have they always been in the Church. Christ has too
often and too long been wounded in the house of His
friends and robbed of half of His glory. This doctrine
of immortality from Adam and not from Christ is so flat
tering to the pride of man, and so sweet and delusive, that
the world will cling to it as to their last hope. Certainly
they will never give it up so long as they are sustained
in it by the authority of the Church herself. It will, no

260 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
doubt, be one of the last of the many delusions from
which the Church of Christ, in her onward progress, will
free herself. But this, too, like others that have had their
day, will pass away, and then, and not till then, will she
go forth as the morning, clear as the sun, and fair as the
moon, and terrible as an army with banners, to a speedy
triumph in the earth.
2. It is urged that a belief in the indestructibility of
the human soul and in the eternal misery of the unsaved
is necessary to restrain men from sin, and dispose them to
seek salvation. It is on this ground that most Christian
people, many of whom cannot bear to think of or hear of
the agonies of the lost in hell, cling to the doctrine with
such tenacity. They fear that if it is called in question,
the foundation of God's government will be weakened,
and the Gospel will lose its power over sinners. We
greatly respect their pious solicitude for the ark of God,
and their anxious desire for the conversion of sinners.
We sympathize with them to the f ullest^ extent in their
zeal for the truth. We agree -with them in the truism
that God's law, like every other law, must have a penalty,
and a penalty too, that answers to the offence, and that
the Gospel will never be anything but foolishness to those
who neither feel nor fear the evils from which it offers to
deliver them.
We desire not to weaken the power of the law or
of the Gospel, but rather to give them that efficacy and
force which they are losing through the prevalence of
error, by setting forth the truth as it is in the Word of
God, and as it was preached by Christ and His early
disciples. It is not our object to deny the doctrine of future
punishment, but to establish its truth upon a firmer basis ;

GOD'S LAW MAGNIFIED. —HOW ? 26*
to show how just, how terrible and how sure the punish
ment of the wicked will be. It is not ourselves, but the
advocates of the doctrine we are opposing, who are
bringing — though unwittingly — both the law and the
Gospel into contempt, by proclaiming a doctrine which
they secretly hope is not true, and by endeavoring to
make sinners receive it and act in view of it, while_they
scarcely believe it themselves. Their mistake lies in
supposing- that to den/ the doctrine of future punish
ment as they have been accustomed to hold it, is to deny the
doctrine altogether, and that there is no alternative to the
doctrine of endless misery, but that of no punishment
at all. They seem to suppose that God has no way of
magnifying His law and making it honorable without
threatening .all transgressors with infinite and eternal
torments. Is there nothing dreadful in the thought of
being excluded from the kingdom of heaven ; of being
counted as unfit to live ; of being blotted out from among
God's creatures and forgotten forever?
Is there no terror in the death penalty ? Is there no
such thing — can there be no such thing as capital pun
ishment for irreclaimable offenders under the govern
ment of God ? How is it under human government ?
Is that penal system which is the most savage and
cruel that can be devised, the one which reflects the
most honor on the government that employs it, and
which the most perfectly secures the ends of justice?
Must the death penalty be made as full of torment and
as protracted as possible — or rather, must there be no
death penalty at all, but only life long torture inflicted
upon criminals of the first grade ? This is the way that
all tyrants have reasoned. The more terribly cruel and
protracted they could make their punishment, the more
force, as they supposed, they were giving to their laws.

262 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
All the fiendish tortures of the inquisition were thought
to be justified on this plea. And both the church
and the state, in the dark ages of the world, have
found an example for all their most shocking cruelties in
this theory of the divine government. But this kind of
philosophy, so far as civil polity is concerned, has had
its day. A more humane, enlightened, and wise system
of penal jurisprudence is taking the place of the old bar
barous codes that were once so popular, and is beginning
everywhere to prevail, and this too, with manifest advan
tage to the cause of justice and good government. But
in theology the old dogma yet lingers. The Deity must
be represented, not as simply just, but as ijifinitely
cruel. He must not punish the wicked with death
according to His word — this would be dangerous leni
ency — but he must keep them alive forever, and in
flict upon them endless torments ; at any rate, He
must be represented as threatening to do it, and sinners
must be made to believe the doctrine if possible. And
then, in order to free Him, somewhat, from their unjust
aspersion, so that men can love and trust Him, it is
vaguely hinted that perhaps, after all, some way, yet
unrevealed, may be found by which sinners will be saved
from so dreadful a doom.*
* Christian Union, October 16, 1872, notices the ordination of a
Congregational Minister by vote of Council 15 against 2, who at his
examination said : "I believe there will be an opportunity for
repentance in the future to all who die in impenitence, and hope that
all will willingly embrace it," Since then other candidates have
avowed similar hopes and beliefs. How many others entertain them
in secret it is impossible to say. There is reason to fear that the
number is large and rapidly increasing.
This wejinderstand to be in substance, the ground taken by Canon
F. W. Farrar, in recent sermons, preached in Westminster Abbey
and republished in this country. And this, we fear, is the position

FUTURE RETRIBUTION, CERTAIN. 263
Is this the way to magnify the law of God and make
it honorable ? M.ust He be represented as the most
tyrannical and cruel Being in the universe that sinners
may fear Him, and then as a deceiver, and too good to
execute His terrible threatening that men may love and
trust Him ? We do not so understand the truth. We
sympathise most fully with our opponents in the end
they would secure ; but we believe that there is no more
effectual way of defeating it than the method they pursue.
If there is any one doctrine which stands out prominent
above others in the Word of God, and which ought to
be held and preached without any peradventure, it is the
doctrine of a future retribution — of the absolutely hope
less and remediless doom of those who die in their sins
— of the eternal and irreversible distinction that will be
made between the righteous and the wicked. But the
sanctions of God's law are sufficiently impressive without
which the eloquent preacher and pastor of the Plymouth Church,
Brooklyn, is taking. It is certainly creditable to their hearts that
they should reject with abhorrence the dreadful doctrine of end
less torment for those who die in their sins. It is creditable to their
honesty that they should say this openly when they have so many
reasons for keeping silent. But what shall we say of their theology ?
What possible ground for hope does the Word of God give for the
final recovery of these lost souls ? It is remote Universalism, at the
best, and will have all the demoralizing influence of that pernicious
error, upon those who accept their views. But what else can they
preach, so long as they cling to this dogma of the deathless nature of
the human soul ? They shut themselves up to a dilemma, which com
pels them to deny the goodness and justice of God on the one hand,
or the truth of His Word on the other. When by dropping their false
philosophy they might hold to both ; O that they, and others like
them, who are now groping in darkness, might be led to the only
sure foundation for their feet to rest upon— that the scales might fall
from their eyes that Christ might be seen and owned and preached as
the only hope and source of immortality for perishing men.

264 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
any human additions. If there is no power in the threat
of " everlasting destruction " or in the offer of " eternal
life " to move the heart of the sinner, the preacher can
not make them effective by any false coloring of his own.
He loses vastly more than he gains by endeavoring to
exalt the judicial character of God at the expense of
His justice, on the one hand, or of His truth on the other.
The sinner must believe that He is just as well as terri
ble in His judgments, and that He will be as true to all
His threatenings as to His promises. But in order to
this, the threatenings must be such as his own conscience
assures him are just. Fear without conviction of sin
will never lead to repentance. Men may be shocked,
and horrified by terrible descriptions of the ceaseless
and eternal agonies of the lost, till every true sentiment
of their moral nature revolts against the monstrous injus
tice and cruelty of Him whom they are taught to be
lieve will inflict them, but all this has no tendency what
ever to produce conviction of sin, or penitence, or love,
Those who have relied the most upon this kind of ex
hortation, have not been the most successful in bringing
men to embrace the Gospel.
There may be a kind of restraint for a time exer
cised over low and grovelling natures through the influ
ence of such motives, but they soon exhaust themselves.
Their ultimate effect is to degrade, demoralize and
harden the heart. It is a better policy, even under
human governments, to endeavor to control men by
appealing to their moral sentiments, to make them feel
that the penalties of law .are just and necessary, and that
they will surely fall upon the head of the transgressor.
But this is absolutely essential under the government of
God. A religion'without confidence and love is worth
less. God's first demand is for the heart of the sinner.

THE GOSPEL BROUGHT INTO CONTEMPT. 265
It is a sense of His goodness that leads men to repen
tance. Men may be made Christians in name — -the
world is full of them : — a servile conformity to the out
ward forms of religion may be secured by operating on
their fears : but they cannot be made true Christians ;
they cannot be made really obedient ; they cannot be made
pure and holy in this way.
And what now if men shall outgrow their early fears ?
What if they shall begin to suspect they have been dealt
with deceitfully — that their real danger has been greatly
magnified in order, if possible, to catch them by guile ?
A reaction is sure to follow. Both the law and the
Gospel will be brought into contempt, and they will be
further from salvation than ever before.
This we sincerely believe to be the state of the case
at the present day. The evil is rapidly increasing, and
there is no way to meet it but by the presentation of the
truth as it is in God's Word, and as we have endeavored
"to present it in these pages. It is not to be disguised that
the doctrine of eternal sin, and eternal suffering, as it
was once held, is practically, if not theoretically losing its
hold upon the Christian world. Even those who are the
most pertinacious in retaining it as an article of the
creed, are unwilling to preach it or hear it preached as in
former times. Those who occasionally venture to touch
upon it in their public ministrations, do it with ill-con-
cealed doubts and misgivings. And many of our most
devoted and intelligent ministers have ceased altogether
to preach it. But the dogma upon which the doctrine
depends, and which, if true, makes it logically certain—
namely : the indestructibility of the soul, is as popular as
ever. The result is, the law of God is not feared or
honored, and the Gospel as a message of salvation has
but little of its rightful power over the hearts and con-

266 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
sciences of men. The exhortations of those who pro
claim this message are comparatively heartless and
feeble. Their warnings and their invitations fall upon
the ears of their unbelieving hearers as an idle tale ; or
they refuse to hear them at all. Complaint is made that
the pulpit is losing its influence over the masses ; that the
missionary spirit is dying out in our theological semi
naries ; that young men and women are not offering them
selves, as formerly, to carry the Gospel message to the
heathen. Indeed, why should they, if the heathen will
probably be saved without the Gospel. If these myriads
of millions of human beings are destined to an endless
existence, as they suppose, they cannot doubt that a just
and merciful God will provide some way of escape for
them, either here or hereafter, from eternal misery. It
seems to them incredible that He should foredoom from
their birth, so large a portion of the human race to
eternal torment in another life for the sin of their pro
genitors, or even for their own sins, without giving them,
at least some chance to escape — even if they die without
a knowledge of the Gospel. — It is incredible.
But it is not incredible, that He should create a
mortal race of men, nor that He should permit men to be
come mortal through the sin of their progenitors, and then,
that He should provide a way by which mortal men can
have the offer of everlasting life as a gift of grace, and
that He should condition their salvation upon their
knowledge and acceptance of a Saviour. It is not
incredible that He should judge and punish all men from
both Christian and Heathen lands, according to their in
dividual deserts, after this life is ended, some with few, and
others with many stripes ; that there should be a second
death for the unsaved, from which there is no recovery.
The declaration of God's Word, literally understood as

THE TRUTH NEEDS NO APOLOGY. 267
we claim it should be, that " The wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord," is every way credible. It commends itself to the
understanding and the conscience of every man, not only
as reasonable and just, but also as worthy of a Gpd of
infinite goodness and mercy. There is nothing, either in
the law of God or in the Gospel, that needs to be covered
up, or explained away, or apologised for. It is only be
cause man, by his false philosophy, and Satan by his arti
fices, have distorted and perverted the simple truth that
its power has been weakened and God's character dishon
ored. Let it be believed and felt, that sin, when it is
finished, bringeth forth Death, and that the whole race of
Adam have fallen under the power of sin, and that the
Gospel is an offer of life, of eternal life, to dying man, and
that there is none other name given under heaven where
by we must be saved but the name of Jesus Christ, and,
that this offer of life must be tendered and accepted
before sin has finished its work, or there can be no possi
ble hope of salvation : — let it be believed and felt, as it
should be, that every sinner, whether in Christian or in
Heathen lands, who is brought to Christ, is a soul saved from
death to eternal life, and that every sinner, who dies apart
from Christ, must inevitably perish forever, and there will
be founds to be nojack of power, either in the law or the
Gospel, to move the hearts of men.
This is the very message of truth, the good tidings of
great joy which Christ commanded His disciples to preach
through the world. " He that believeth shall be saved
and he that believeth not shall be damned " (condemned).
This was the truth that fired the souls of His apostles and
early disciples, and gave them such abundant success in
all the world.
This truth has lost none of its power to nerve the

268 THE THEOLOGICAL TRI-LEMMA.
hearts of His people to their highest endeavor to save as
many as possible of their fellow men, nor to bring the
stoutest rebels to the foot of the cross. Let it go forth
again in its fulness and simplicity, freed from the traditions
of men and the interpretations of science, falsely so-called,
and it will prove, as it always has proved, mighty to the
pulling down of the strongholds of Satan, the wisdom of
God and the power of God unto salvation to every one
that believeth.
When that day shall come, as it surely will come, the
kingdom of heaven will be near at hand. " The Lord
hasten it in His time."

SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY.
WILL SATAN LIVE FOREVER ?

[Note. — The following essay was not originally intended for this volume.
It was written for another purpose ; but having never been published, it is added
as germane to the subject under consideration, and a fitting close to the discussion.
The author has used, as will be noticed, some of the arguments and illustrations,
and possibly, some of the language employed in the foregoing chapters.]
Accepting without question the views commonly
called orthodox concerning the existence and personality
of Satan and the host of evil spirits that are associated
with him, and using this title generically for the sake of
convenience, as is usually done, we naturally inquire
what is to be his future destiny ? Will Satan live forever,
ur will he be destroyed ? That he has been already
destroyed by sin, in his moral nature, and that there is no
possible hope of his recovery, we are well assured. Ts
his ruined, wretched life, to be perpetuated without end,
or is there a further and more complete destruction
awaiting him ?
We are aware that to many this is a startling ques
tion. Their suspicion is at once excited against any one
who raises it. They do not consider it to be an open
question. With them it is as fixed, if not as fundamen
tal a doctrine of belief, that Satan is doomed to an inter
minable existence, as that Christ Himself will exist for
ever. They freely admit that there was a time when he
did not exist even as a holy angel, but now that he has
come into being, though he has fallen irrecoverably from
the purity and blessedness of his original estate, and
forfeited everything worth living for, he has not forfeited
life itself ; he cannot forfeit it. His restoration to holi
ness is hopeless ; his exit from life is equally hopeless..
The time never will come, nor can come, in all the cycles
of the future, when he shall cease to be the same miser-
269

270 SUPPLEMENTARY essay. *
able, ruined fiend, he now is ! In him evil had a begin
ning; but in him it shall never have an end; nor, what-
over changes shall occur, shall it cease to mar the beauty
and completeness of the universe into which he intro
duced it ! Sin has the power to destroy everything else it
touches; but the life of the creature into whom it enters
it cannot destroy ! The blight and misery it brings have
no tendency to extinguish the light of life in the soul of
its miserable victim ! It separates from God the source
of all life : it works disorganization and ruin, and when
"finished bringeth forth death," that is, the death of
everything but life !
They dare not, even in their thoughts, look forward to
the time, however much they might desire it, when Satan
and all his works shall be utterly destroyed, and when all
the evil that now exists shall be transmuted into good, or
eradicated from the universe, and God shall be able as in
the beginning to pronounce everything very good. Such a
consummation is too glorious to be hoped for, or thought of.
Even God who made Satan, has no power to unmake him,
or, if he has, He will never exercise it! He can defeat Him,
He can bind him ; He can imprison him ; He can torment
him forever. All this He will do. But He cannot or will
not put an end to his miserable life ! Christ proposed to
Himself in coming to earth to set up his kingdom, no
such achievement as the utter destruction of Satan and
all his works excepting in a figurative sense ! He only
proposed to overcome him, and wrest from his grasp as
large a portion of his prey as possible, and, then to cast
him, with the remainder of his deluded victims, like so
many wild beasts or raving maniacs, into the bottomless
pit, and pour out upon them- the vials of his wrath for
ever ; while he gathers all whom he has redeemed and
rescued, into the bright realms of glory, where, with the
angels, who have kept their allegiance, they shall praise
Him as their deliverer and king, forever and ever ! And
He shall "see the travail of His soul and be satisfied]" Such
they believe to be the glorious consummation promised
'and provided for in the Gospel of Christ.
But what if we shall find in the Word of God the
assurance of a victory yet more complete, and a con-

WILL SATAN LIVE FOREVER ?

271

summation more glorious than this ? do we dishonor God,
or discredit the work of Christ or tarnish the lustre of the
Gospel, if we believe it ? Is our fidelity to the truth to be
suspected, because we believe it more literally and fully,
and find even more to hope for and pray for in the
promises of our glorious Redeemer, than many others
who hold them with us in common ?
As we read and understand the Word of God, the
popular view concerning this conflict between Christ and
Satan, and the final victory he shall achieve, comes in
finitely short of the truth. The popular notion that to
Satan belongs an immortality like that of Christ " who
only hath immortality," and that contemplates him as a
dethroned monarch occupying, after his defeat, a certain
realm partitioned off from God's otherwise universal
dominions, still in rebellion, and holding on to a portion
of his ill-gotten spoils, and rioting and raging with the
horde of his miserable subjects, so long as God and
heaven endure, is, we humbly think, a sad perversion of
the truth.
This doctrine has been long and extensively held.
Our fathers believed and taught it. It is the doctrine of
the Romish Church. It was the doctrine of the dark
ages. But we cannot trace it back to Christ and His
Apostles and to their teaching in the Scriptures. The
Word of God tells us very explicitly, that He has it,
not only in His power, but in His purpose, not merely to
defeat and subjugate Satan, but to destroy him and all
his works utterly and forever; that the evil that now
exists as the fruit of his malice, whether real or apparent,
is but transient. It had a beginning and it shall have an
end. It shall not remain forever to mar the perfection
and glory of the universe. It is not necessarily an integral
and permanent part of it. When it shall have served its
purpose, it will not be garnered like the good seed, but
consumed like the chaff. God has already prepared an
inextinguishable, all-consuming fire, for the purpose — not
of simply tormenting Satan and all his hosts, though this
will be incidental, but for the purpose'of destroying them:
And that the day is coming that shall burn them up and
leave neither root nor branch. . \

272 SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY.
The object for which Christ came was, not simply to
get Satan safely under lock and key, where he can be
held forever, so that he can do no more mischief, but
only rage and curse and suffer forever; but that He might
exterminate him; and we believe as fully as we believe in
His promises, that the time is coming when He shall have
so perfectly accomplished His object, that there shall be
found no place for him or any of his persistent followers,
in any portion of His universal dominions. There shall
be, not two folds, but one fold and one Shepherd. Every
knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things in earth
and things under the earth, and every tongue shall confess
Him Lord, to the glory of God the Father. This lower
world into which he and his associates in rebellion were
cast from heaven, and which has been the theater of this
conflict between Christ and His enemies, shall be burned
up, and with it, death and hell and all their guilty crew. In
that new heaven and new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness that shall follow, there shall be no more
death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be
any pain, for the former things are passed away.
The doctrine of the endless existence of Satan needs
to be proved. It is not enough to say that it is very
generally believed. This may entitle it to our respectful
consideration : but this affords no solid ground for our
own belief — certainly, it gives us no warrant for imposing
it upon others. The general prevalence of any belief in
matters of doctrine may warrant the supposition that
there is some evidence for it, but it is not the evidence
itself. The opinion of — no matter'how many persons —
is no better than the opinion of one person, if it rests on
no other foundation than the fact that it is the popular
belief. Ten thousand men holding on to each other can
no more stand on nothing, than one solitary individual.
It is not, then, how general is this belief that Satan will
live forever? but what are the grounds for this belief?
which is the subject of our present inquiry.
In order to prove that Satan will live forever, one
must establish either one of these two positions, (1) that
neither God nor any other power exists, or can exist, that

WILL SATAN LIVE FOREVER? 273
is able to destroy his life ; or (2) that, though there may
be such a power, it will never be exercised to destroy his
life. These are the only two alternatives that are sup-
posable by which this doctrine can be maintained.
If God gave to Satan when He created him, an abso
lute, indefeasible, inextinguishable life, which maintains
itself independent of God and every possible contingency
— if in short, God gave to him, as to Jesus Christ, to have
life in himself, then, of course, he will, like Christ, live for
ever, and for the same reason. But if this position cannot
be established, then it will be necessary to show, at least,
that either reason*or Scripture teaches us that God never
will take from him the life which He originally gave him,
nor withdraw His sustaining power and suffer him to
expire, nor allow him to destroy himself, but will per
petuate that life so long as He Himself shall live.
Let us examine these two alternatives in their order :
*
I. Did God give to Satan in His creation an absolute,
necessary immortality — an unconditional, inalienable, in
destructible life, like His own ? Every theist must admit
that self-existence is an attribute of deity, and is incommu
nicable in its very nature ; for existence that is communi
cated is not self-existence. It cannot therefore, possibly
be an attribute of any creature. God is the only Being,
strictly speaking, in the universe, or rather, it is to the
Being that is self-existent that we give the name of God.
We cannot go higher than this. It is this attribute of
self-existence more than any other that constitutes Him
what He is. It is this that gives Him His pre-eminence.
Everything else is from Him and dependent upon Him.
He is the source and fountain of life to all His creatures,
" seeing He giveth to all, life and breath and all things."
This is His name, Jehovah, which means self-existence.
It is by this name I Am that I Am, that He makes Himself
known to His creatures. This is the attribute which He
emphasises and insists on more than any other. It in
cludes all-His other attributes. He is the Living God;
the Everlasting God; the Alpha and the Omega, the Be
ginning and the Ending, which Is, which was and which
Is To Come, the Almighty. All the Life in the universe

2 74 SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY.
flows cut from Him and centres in Him — not merely such
lue in its lower forms and manifestations as is continually
coming and going at His bidding, which we call transient
and ephemeral, but life in the very highest manifestations
known to us. ' Our Adamic life, or the natural life of the
soul, is His breath, breathed into us. Apart from Him,
we have no life at all : That higher life, the Spiritual life,
called also Eternal life, which He gives to His people in
the new birth, is from Him, and is ours only as we
live in Him, and are united to Him, as the branch is
united to the vine. It will never be extinguished, not
because it is independent and self- perpetuating, but
because He has guaranteed its perpetuity. Gabriel is as
dependent on God for his life, and for its continuance,
as the insect of a day. To suppose otherwise would be
to -invest him with the highest attribute of deity, and to
make him a god at once, independent of his Maker.
If Satan possesses an absolute and necessary existence,
then he is not only like God, but equal to God in the most
essential attribute of his nature — that of self-existence,
and we have two gods, one good and the other bad,
both alike immortal in their natures ; indeed we have as
many gods, both good and bad, as there are such beings.
This brings us at once into the depths of Polytheism. This
was the very doctrine which Satan himself taught to our
first parents in their temptations. Ye shall hot surely die.
Ye shall be as goa's, — the doctrine which He has per
petuated with respect to himself, and to his followers, in
spite of God's Word to the contrary, — to the present hour.
" Ye shall not surely die," " Ye shall live forever, assert
your independence ; defy His power, He cannot execute
upon you the death He has threatened. He doth know
that you are immortal. We all have within us the power
of an endless life." This is Plato's doctrine, which has
overlaid and perverted the most evident teachings of
God's Word on this subject. It is the very pivot on
which his philosophy turns. Man is a being, not a crea
ture. There never was a time when he began to be^ and
of course, there never will come a time when he shall
cease to be. In this he was more logical and consistent
than his followers. For self-existence implies an eternity

WILL SATAIl" LIVE FOREVER ? 275
of being both in the past and in the future. They both
go together and hang upon each other. If we accept of
one we must.accept the other also: if we reject one, we
must for the same reason reject the other also. And yet
nothing is more common, than to hear men talking of
themselves and of all living creatures above them in the
scale of life, whether good or bad, as immortal and inde
structible by nature ; as having been made so in the act
of their creation— or in other words as having been con
stituted beings, to distinguish the life that is in them from
the lower forms of life in creation. The angels above
them are beings, the devils also are beings. In this sense,
brutes are not beings, for they hold their lives subject to
the will of God. But man, and angels, and devils, are
beings, living by a certain vis vita, that was given to them
in their creation, and will continue of necessity to live to
all eternity. But how can one be a creature and a being
in the absolute sense of this word at the same time ?
There is no irreverence in saying that the divine power
could not create such a being. The terms are contra
dictory. Sensible men have given up the idea of self motion, or
perpetual motion as it is called in physics. It is time
that the cognate doctrine of life self-originated and self-
perpetuated — in metaphysics, were abandoned also. .
Spirits may be invested with power over matter as
supernatural agents, by their Creator, and with power
over inferior spirits, but they cannot have power either to
originate their own lives, or to perpetuate them independ
ently of their Creator. Every created life is a dependent
life. It cannot possibly be anything else.
Neither to Adam in his innocency, nor to Satan as a
holy angel, did God give any other life than this, and
surely by their fall they have not pat themselves beyond
the reach of His Almighty power. If Satan, or any other
fallen creature, shall actually live forever, it will not be
because he has eternal life abiding in him, nor because he
has acquired it by sinning ; but because the Being who
created him, and upon whom he depends for life and
breath and all things, wills to keep him alive forever.
This is the alternative to which all who assert the end-

276 SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY.
less existence of Satan must come ; for there is no other
ground upon which they can stand for a moment, than
this : — that it is the will and purpose of God, by His
Almighty power to uphold, sustain, and perpetuate his
miserable life so long as He Himself shall live.
II. Have we then, any good reason to believe that it is
the will and purpose of God to keep Satan alive forever ?
All the knowledge we can have on the subject is what
Reason and Revelation give us.
1. Reason apart from Revelation cannot positively
answer this question. We believe that the good angels
will live forever, not because they are absolutely and
unconditionally immortal ; for such an immortality as we
have shown is the attribute of God alone — " Who only
hath immortality," nor because they are so highly exalted
in the scale of existence — for as creatures, they are infin
itely beneath their Creator who is self-existent and eternal,
nor because they are spirits without bodies, if such be the
case — or with spiritual bodies composed of matter infin
itely attenuated. Neither do we believe in their endless
existence precisely on the same grounds that we believe
in the eternal life of the glorified saints. For to the saints
eternal life is given by Christ, and guaranteed so positively
and with such frequency of reiteration throughout the
gospel, that no believer in the gospel can doubt it. (Per
haps, however, the words of our Lord, Luke 20 : 36,
" Neither can they die any more ; for they are equal to
the angels," — ought to be understood as positively assert
ing the immortality of the angels.) But we believe it
because we have no reason to doubt it, — because no inti
mation is given to us that their cycle of existence is a lim
ited one, — because we can find no reason why God should
withdraw from them His sustaining power, and cut them
off from life, so long as they continue in the normal state
of holiness in which they were created.
And yet we are to remember that God does give life
and take it away. He does create and destroy the work
of His own hands, without making known to us the reasons
for his conduct. All the living forms and organisms
throughout this lower sphere are more or less transient.

WILL SATAN LIVE FOREVER? 277
They come into existence at His call ; fulfill their round,
and then pass away forever, to give place to others that,
are also to die and be dissolved into their original ele
ments ; and the life that animated them returns to the
source from which it came. Not that they are annihilated
as to their constituent elements, or ever will be — for con
cerning this we know absolutely nothing, and ought to
say nothing. But as individual organisms, they are dis
solved, lose their identity and pass away forever.
We cannot look above and fathom the infinite depths
of God's eternal being, and say what He has been doing
throughout the infinite eternity of the past nor what He
will do throughout that which is to come, — what worlds
of sentient creatures He may have created and destroyed
before the creation of this world in which we have our
short round of life — nor what worlds He will create after
this shall have been destroyed. Nor do we know the
boundaries of the universe as it now exists ; what worlds
and systems of worlds beyond this little earth and the
system of which it is a part ; what ranks and orders of
creatures, or how high or how low they may be in the
scale of life, and what may be the conditions of their
existence. But so far as we do know, He has appointed
to every creature a certain round or cycle for it to fulfill.
But to none of His creatures has He given an uncon
ditional and indestructible existence even in its appointed
cycle. However ephemeral or transient its natural life
may be, it must keep within its sphere. Its normal, con
dition must be maintained, or it comes to an unnatural
and premature end. We have every reason to believe
that this is an universal law of life for all God's creatures,
from the lowest to the highest.
What if the angelic cycle was designed to be an un
ending cycle like His own, never to be completed (though
it could not be like His own in having had no beginning)
— must not these high and holy creatures preserve their
normal condition in order to live forever ? Did God give
to them, alone of all His creatures, an unconditional right
and power to live as long as He lives ? The supposition
is absurd. He gave to man in his original creation the
hope of an eternal career, but only in the way of obedi-

278 SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY.
ence. So far from giving him any guarantee that his
•life would be perpetuated, He actually, conditioned its
perpetuity upon his maintaining his normal state of
purity. If he fell from it ; premature and certain death
was to be the result.
The mysterious tree of Life, by which his life was
guaranteed, or perpetuated, was accessible to him only
on this condition. The alternative was Thou shalt surety
die, not thy body, Thou thyself shalt surely die, not
figuratively, but actually. Not thou shalt be miserable
forever, but be blotted out of life. Misery is the neces
sary consequence of sinning; but it 'is only the precur
sor of that death to which it inevitably leads. Sin
brings disorder and blight upon the soul, and when it is
finished it bringeth forth death — not deprivation, not
wretchedness merely, but death. It is to the spiritual
organism what mildew or rot, or a cancer, or the leprosy,
by which it is symbolized in the Scriptures — or any other
disease unchecked, is to the physical organism. It
brings it, sooner or later, to certain destruction. The pain
and anguish and despair that ensue, and precede this
death, are, not the death itself, but its forerunners. It
takes time for sin, like any other mortal disease, to
complete its work of ruin, but when it is finished, it
bringeth forth death, and nothing less.
But in our case, there is still hope of an eternal life,
for God has provided a ransom, and a remedy if applied
in season. This eternal life, if we receive it at all, is not
received from Adam— for in Adam all die, but from
Christ who only hath immortality. We are not born to
immortality in our natural birth, but born to die. It is
only in the new birth that we are born to life eternal —
the one is transient ; the other is imperishable, because it
is the life of Christ in our souls. It is not the chief
glory of Christ, that He brings holiness and, happiness to
an immortality already^ssured, but that He brings both
efernanlie^and blessedness to the perishing soul.
Through what processes of trial and development,
the angels may have risen to their present exalted condi
tion, or whether they were created the high and lofty
creatures they now are, we know not. But we have no

WILL SATAN LIVE FOREVER?

279

reason to suppose that they have been placed beyond the
possible contigency — not of sinning for some of them
Rave fallen by sin — but of reaping the legitimate fruits
of sin in their death. Are they now .too high and too
spiritual in their natures to be subject to any such law?
To which of the angels has He said at any time, as He
said to Christ Thy throne is forever and ever. Is Satan so
great a power in the universe, or so necessary to its integ
rity, or so exquisite a specimen of workmanship, that the
Almighty cannot, or dare not destroy him ? Shall he defy
the Living God and trample upon His authority with the
assurance that he can never forfeit his life ? Lifting his
hand to heaven shall he. say like Jehovah Himself " J live
forever. ' ' (T)eutj$2^ 40. )
HasTfiie^ATniighty Lawgiver enjoined it upon human
goyernments to put their worst offenders to death — and
is there no such thing as capital punishment under His
higher government ? Or is it true that Satan, as yet, has
done nothing worthy of death ? Or does the threatened
penalty " the soul that sinneth it shall die " mean imprison
ment for life under torture ? Is this the example He
intended to give to human governments of the way in
which to punish offenders ? an example which cruel
tyrants in past ages have been too happy to plead — but
which is everywhere discarded under the benign teach
ings of the gospel. Has our glorious King and Lord no
way to rid the universe of devils and demons ? Can he
only banish them to some dreary penal colony, where they
shall suffer and rage forever ? We think the Scriptures
rightly understood give us higher views of the power,
justice and goodness of God.
2. But let us quit the domain of speculation, and inquire
of God's word whether Satan will be permitted to live for
ever. That he is permitted to live after his fall is evident.
That he is permitted to exercise his malice upon the
human race that hadbeen created a little lower than the
angels and endowed with life conditioned upon their obe
dience, is equally evident. He would seem to have accom
plished his purpose in dragging them down to ruin with
himself. But God who was able to cast him down from

280 _ SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY.
heaven, is able also, to defeat his malice in this, lower
world, which he was permitted to enter, and to overrule
his malice to the promotion of His own glory in the
redemption of man, and in the more complete and utter
destruction of Satan himself.
We have in the very opening of the Scriptures, in the
scene where Satan is first introduced to our notice,
a prophecy which would seem to be decisive of this whole
question as to the doom that awaits him. " I will put
enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy
seed and her seed, it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt
bruise her heel:" — (Gen. 3 : 15.) This prophecy, though
mysterious and enigmatical when it was first uttered, is no
longer so under the Gospel. It is universally, and no
doubt, truly understood, to foretell the coming of Christ,
as the seed of the woman to bruise, or rather to crush the
head of the serpent, by which Satan is represented. Liter-"
ally translated it is, " He shall crush thee as to thy head."
The heel is the least vital part of the body ; it is farthest
from the head. A wound in the heel may be severe ;
it may indeed lead on to death, if no remedy is applied.
But it can be healed. But if the head is crushed, death
is a sure consequence. A serpent may retain life and
motion in his body and tail for a considerable time even
after his head has been crushed. It is popularly said
" till the sun goes down ;" but the next morning will find
him dead throughout the whole length of his body. Be
that as it may, the injury is mortal. He cannot long sur-
vive it. Neither can Satan that old serpent live forever
after his head has been crushed. He may retain a cer
tain degree of moribund life till the last sun has gone
down upon the scene of conflict, but when the morning of
eternal glory, so beautifully pictured in the Apacalypse,
shall dawn upon the new celestial paradise, he will have
passed away forever. There shall be no more Satan, nor
sin, nor sorrow ; " no more death, nor pain, neither shall
there be any need of the light of the sun," for the whole
rounded universe shall be bright with the glory of the ful
ness of Him that filleth all in all.
We understand the Scriptures to teach most explicitly,
that this is the very end for which Christ is born into the

WILL SATAN LIVE FOREVER ? 281
world as the seed of the woman, " to destroy the works of
the devil," and then, last of all, " to destroy him that
hath the power of death, that is the devil," and we believe
that He will not fail of His purpose
Indeed, what other destruction can await him but the
destruction of his life ? He is already destroyed in all
his moral nature — nothing of good remains to him to enjoy
or hope for, — nothing to fear, but the final execution of
that dreaded penalty, long delayed but sure to fall " when
the Lord shall consume him with the spirit of His mouth
and destroy him with the brightness of His coming."
The demons when confronted by Jesus in person,
anticipating the doom that awaited them, cried out " What
have we to do with thee, Jesus thou Son of God ? Art
thou come hither to torment us before the time" (that is,
to bring us to trial and punishment). And again, chang
ing the expression but not the thought, " Art thou- come ,
to destroy us?" There will, no doubt, be torment in this
destruction : they expect it ; but torment alone is not
destruction. The word torment is sometimes used as1
synonymous with punishment in the Scriptures, because it
was customary to punish with torment, and the execution
ers of the law were also called tormentors. But when the
penalty to be inflicted was death, however protracted the
torments, by which it was preceded, these tormentors or ex
ecutioners did not stop short of the life of their victim.
Surely " to be punished with everlasting destruction "
cannot possibly mean nothing more than to be punished
with everlasting torments. The process of destruction
that is never completed is not destruction. The act of
dying that never issues in death, is not death. They
suffer torment to a certain degree even now in anticipation
of the day of wrath to come. " They believe and trem
ble." "They are already in everlasting chains," that is,
in chains which will hold them till death, as Peter and-
Jude both assure us, awaiting that dreadful day. Their
range is limited to this earth and its immediate surround
ings. They cannot go beyond the length of the chains that
hold them surely " against the judgment of that great
day," " when the heavens shall pass away with a great
noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and

282 SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY.
the earth also and the works that are therein shall be
burned up." " Nevertheless we, according to the promise,
look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth
righteousness." God has prepared an everlasting fire, an all-consuming,
unquenchable fire, for the very purpose of destroying
Satan and all his hosts ; — not for the purpose of tor
menting simply, as some would have it, much less, for
the purpose of tormenting them eternally without des
troying them. " For behold the day cometh that shall
burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that
do wickedly- shall be stubble, and the day that cometh
shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it
shall leave them neither root nor branch." It is the
nature of fire to destroy, to devour, to consume. In
deed, scientifically speaking, fire is the effect of con
sumption. That fire is unquenchable which cannot be
arrested or turned aside from its object, until that which
it preys upon is completely consumed; then it dies out
by the limitations of its very nature. It is everlasting in
the same sense in which many other things that are
transient in their nature and have their issue in time, are
said in the Scriptures to be everlasting, and eternal ; that
is, they endure to the end of the age, eon or cycle, under
consideration. Every scholar knows that the words aion,
aionas, eis ton aiona, etc., etc., translated, everlasting,
eternal, forever, etc , do not express the idea of absolute
endlessness ; — certainly not when applied to objects or
processes that are naturally limited and transient. "They
are equally applicable to the affairs of this life and of the
life to come. They are used in the Scriptures, and in the
classics, as well as in common parlance, at the present
day, with a wide latitude of signification, and the extent
of their application is not to be found in the words them
selves, but in the nature of the thing spoken of. Even
could it be shown that God's special agent of destruction
is absolutely eternal like Himself, we are far from show
ing that everything it is set to devour is eternal in the
same sense. We have no authority for transferring these
epithets from .the former to the latter,-— much less for
rendering these forcible expressions, by which the irresist-

WILL SATAN LIVE FOREVER ? 283
ible, all-consuming nature of fire is indicated, in such a
manner as to reverse their meaning and make them declare,
that the object upon which it feeds never will be consumed.
No one supposes that Isaiah meant to declare that
the carcasses of the slain who had transgressed against
God, would never be consumed, when he said, "their worm
shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched," (66).
He rather meant to declare how surely and completely
these devouring agencies would do their dreadful and
loathsome work. And so our Lord, who evidently
quotes this passage, in setting forth in the most vivid
manner the dreadful and certain destruction of Satan
and his followers meant to declare, not that they never
would be destroyed or consumed, as many would have it —
but their destruction would be sure, awful and complete.
When the same prophet foretelling the vengeance
that would come upon the enemies of Zion and upon
their land (Is. 34) says : " And the streams thereof shall
be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone,
and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It
shall not be quenched night nor day : the smoke thereof
shall go up forever," 'no one attaches the idea of absolute
endlessness to this scene. No one supposes that this
smoke shall continue to ascend after the earth itself shall
be destroyed. Neither does any rational man suppose
that the smoke of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities
of the plain, which " went up as the smoke of a furnace "
which cities, Jude tells us " are set forth as an example,
suffering the vengeance of eternal fire," is yet ascend
ing and will continue to ascend to all eternity. The
example of their suffering is all that is perpetuated with-
Qut end. And yet, when these same figures of speech
are used in the Apacalypse, a book which is confessedly
altogether figurative, to set forth the doom of Satan as
an individual, or as a personification of evil agencies,
together with the beast and the false prophet, also person
ified symbols of the two great organized systems of error
in the world, the expression " the smoke of their tor
ment ascendeth up forever and ever, that is, ages upon
ages, or throughout the ages, they are taken, literally to
mean, not that they shall be fearfully destroyed, which is

284 SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY.
the evident intent of the writer — but just the opposite —
that they shall never be destroyed; but continue to exist
(and be tormented, when these ages upon ages have
passed away and this earth itself and all it contains shall
have been burned up ; and the smoke of their torment
shall be wafted across the bounds of time to obscure for
ever the glory of the world beyond.
The fact is, all these scenes of conflict, of victory
and destruction have their theatre, and their issue upon
this earth, and in this eon or cycle of time, and the
words of the text here find their limitation. The forever
that is mundane is temporal and transcedent, and not
the forever of the world beyond.
The inheritance of the Israelites ; the servitude of
their bondsnien : the priesthood of Aaron ; the leprosy of
Gehazi ; the hills round about Jerusalem, etc., were all
everlasting; they were to endure forever, — that is, to the
end of the dispensation or period spoken of. Such
expressions are not intended to convey the idea of abso
lute endlessness, but of duration throughout the present
dispensation, or at most to the end of the world.
What scenes may be transpiring in all the many man
sions of Our Father's house, throughout the vast realms of
the boundless universe that surrounds us on every side :
what orders of creatures, like, or unlike ourselves, may
occupy them ; how He manifests His glory to them, and
through what trials and temptations they may be led, to
develope their virtue and to confirm them in holiness, we
will not venture to guess. There may be one common,
central heaven,, where He has His peculiar throne, into
which He is gathering and will gather, His elect from the
four quarters of His universal kingdom, — perhaps we
might say that the Scriptures give us some hints that point
to such a consummation. But be that as it may, there is
no hint of one common, universal antipodal hell, into
which shall be garnered all the refuse of the universe for
its eternal preservation in wretchedness and misery, un
ending ; but, on the contrary, the whole tenor, spirit and
letter of God's Word is opposed to this monstrous as
sumption. We have no reason, whatever, to suppose that
the range of Satan and his evil angels extends beyond

WILL SATAN LIVE FOREVER? 285
this earth, the theater for the display of his malice, and,
also, for the grace and power of His Almighty conqueror,
and to which his destiny is linked in its coming doom.
The hell, of which the Scriptures speak, whether the Sheol
of the Old Testament, or the' Hades or Gehenna of the
New, has no extension beyond the limits of this earth and
its immediate surroundings. It is altogether mundane,
and is destined to be destroyed, when the elements shall
melt with fervent heat and the earth and the works
therein shall be burned up ; and when the new heavens
and the new earth shall appear, wherein dwelleth right
eousness, it will have passed away forever, with all it
contains. Not only Satan and all his hosts shall be cast
into the all-devouring lake of fire, but death and hell shall
be cast in after them, to.be all consumed together.
There shall be left "neither root nor branch " to disturb
the peace or dim the glory of God's universal kingdom.
We discredit the power, and greatness, and glory of
otir Lord and Leader, and unduly exalt the power of
Satan, His enemy, when we divide this universe, however
unequally, between them, as between two contending
chieftans, and give to each a perpetual and inalienable
portion — to the one the Kingdom of heaven, and to the
other the Kingdom of hell.
The Kingdom of Satan is a Kingdom of darkness and
death. It is essentially weak and transient, and destined
to fade away before the Kingdom of light and life that is
to come. The one is as much superior to the other in
its extension and durability, as it is in its perfection and
glory. They are not to run parallel with each other to all
eternity. The lifetime of Satan, however protracted it
may be, throughout the ages of this world, bears no greater
proportion to the lifetime of Him who hath immortality,
Who is and was, and ever shall be, the Almighty, than
time bears to eternity. He is at best, but a fallen,
miserable, dying creature, " whom the Lord shall consume
with the Spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the
brightness of His coming."

THE END.