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The Life Everlasting:
What is It?
Whence is It? Whose is It?

J. H. PETTINGELL, A.M.,
¦ . •
CONGREGATIONAL MINISTER ; FORMERLY DIST. 8EC. OF THE AM.
BOARD OF FOR. MISSIONS ; LATE CHAPLAIN AT ANTWERP, BEL
GIUM ; AUTHOR OF "HOMILETICAL INDEX j" "THEOLOGICAL
TRILEMMA;" "WILL SATAN LIVE FOREVER?" "LAN
GUAGE—ITS NATURE AND FUNCTIONS ;" " PLATON
ISM VERSUS CHRISTIANITY, ETC., ETC., ETC.

SYMPOSIUM,

In which Twenty Representative B(en— Clergymen, Lay.
men, Professors, Doctors and Scholars or Different
Evangelical Churches in Europe and Ann r-
iea — Unite in Expressing their own
Views on the Question Dis
cussed by the Author.

philadelphia :
506 Minor Stbekt.
J. D. BROWN
1882.

APOSTLES' CREED.

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven
and earth ; and in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgm
Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead,
and buried. He descended into Hades; the third day He
rose from the dead ; He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth
at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty; from
thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I
believe in the Holy Ghost ; the holy Catholic Church —
the communion of saints ; the* forgiveness of sins ; the
Resurrection of the body; AND THE LIFE EVER
LASTING. Amen.

Copyright.
J. D. BROWN,
18S2.

£-45

PREFACE.

The real question under discussion in this volume is stated as
clearly as possible on its title page ; but that its main purpose may
not bo misapprehended by those who may cursorily glance at a
page here and there, or by those who may feel called to criticize
it adversely without reading it, I have defined more particularly
its object and limitations in a brief Introductory Chapter. To this
I must refer all who may think it worthy of their notice ; and I
most earnestly entreat them to read this introduction, if they read
nothing more, before they shall attempt to characterize the book. So
much, at least, is due to the importance of the subject of which it
treats, as well as to the claims of truth and justice — not to speak
of the claims of the author. »
I am the more earnest in this regard, from the fact that the ques
tion herein discussed has been often so needlessly complicated with
other questions, by too many who have advocated it, and so obscured
and ignored by those who have argued against them, and who have
chosen rather to combat the irrelevant collateral issues which have
been raised, that the real question has rarely, if ever, had any fair
discussion before the public. Indeed, I have found nothing more
difficult than to bring the opponents of our view to an argument
on the main question. In all the adverse arguments which I have
ever read — and I have read everything which I could lay hold of
on the question that seemed to be worth any attention — it has
never been my good fortune to find one which fairly met this ques
tion : It the Life Everlasting, for which toe hope, the gift of Gtod
through Christ by a new birth, or is it the inheritance of all men from
Adam by their natural birth f Let our opponents direct their atten
tion to this main issue, without any attempt to divert the mind by

IV. PREFACE.
irrelevant and inconsequential issues, or to prejudge the question
in advance by assuming, as they too often do, the very thing
to be proved ; and any fair and honest argument against our posi
tion will be gladly welcomed.
We may here say, what is said more at length in another place,
that our inquiry is chiefly concerning Man, and not concerning the
" soul of man," as too many would have it. It is especially con
cerning the Life Everlasting for which man hopes, the Source and
Foundation of this hope, and not — excepting in an incidental way
— concerning the punishment of sin.
Our aim is to honor and exalt and glorify our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ, and to enhance, in every possible way, the estimate
that is to be put upon Him and His work in our behalf, and not, as
too many are doing, to depreciate and minify the boon which He
offers us. It is to affirm and confirm the authority of Divine Rev
elation, and to hold men to it as the only reliable source of knowl
edge as to the destiny of man. It is, indeed, our special desire and
aim to defend the Christian system, and to preserve its integrity as
a Divine and not a human device for the recovery and salvation
of men, against the " oppositions of science, falsely so-called," and
the insidious attacks of rationalism of every sort.
The manifest drift of the present age is towards a religion of
science and philosophy, and away from the simple truths of the
Gospel. Many well-meaning, but sophisticated minds are being
led away by the delusion that these truths must be brought within
the scope of natural laws. They are trying to bring the facts which
it reveals to the test of reason and science, and to consider the
Christian religion as one of the many forms of a natural religion
only pnrer and better than any other. Here is the real source ot
the confusion and darkness and doubt of many who would become
scientific and philosophical Christians, if Christians at all ; forget
ting that the first step in the knowledge of Divine things is to
become little children at the feet of Christ.

PREFACE. V.
The great truths of the Christian religion are revealed, not to
our reason, but to our faith. They do not come within the scope
or sphere of natural science or human philosophy. Its great facts
are altogether Divine and supernatural, and until this is appre
hended and allowed, no real progress can be made in the right
direction. They are above nature, and cannot be explained by
natural laws.
The creation of the world in the beginning was a supernatural
act, and whatever speculation one may enteKain as to the mode of
this creation, to deny its supernatural character, as though it could
be explained by natural laws is to be an atheist.
Sin itself is in opposition to all law, and nature provides no an
tidote to the death to which it inevitably leads, nor any way of
recovery from its ruin. If there be any remedy, or any recovery
from its fatal poison, it must be supernaturally provided. It is
just here that we find the radical difference between our holy reli
gion and all the other systems of religion the world has ever seen.
This is given from heaven ; as for the others, they are at best but
human devices.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is the foundation of the
Christian system, was miraculously conceived, and not begotten by
any natural law of ordinary generation. To deny this involves
also the denial of His divinity. His teachings and His mighty
works — excepting when He acted under the limitations of His
human nature — were divine and supernatural. His death was
human, for He died as a man ; but His resurrection was a stupen
dous miracle. It was wrought only by the divine power that was
within Him. "He was put to death in the flesh, but quick
ened in the Spirit;" and such must be our resurrection, or we do
not rise at all. It is not a natural process, but eminently supernat
ural. There is no such process in nature as a resurrection from
actual death. We may think we find some faint analogies in the
nwaking from sleep, in the revival of spring, in the qnickenins of

VI. PREFACE.
seeds in the earth, and in the transformation of the grub into the
winged butterfly ; nor need we deny this. But we must bear in
mind that these are all living processes. There is no actual death
in any one of all these — a dead tree never lives again, dead seed
will never sprout, a dead grub never develops into a butterfly. If
a man dies and lives again, and lives forever, it must be a super
natural, Almighty power, above the ordinary laws of nature, that
raises him up and endows him with this new, imperishable life.
Those who are attempting to explain this doctrine of the future
life on the ground of natural law, by the process of development
through death into a higher state of being — as, alas t too many
who call themselves Christians are doing at the present day — are
ignoring and denying one of the fundamental principles of the
Christian religion.
The same might be said of the doctrine of the new birth — a
truth which Nicodemns could not understand on any principle of
natural law, nor can any man ; for.it is supernatural. So, also, the
second coming of Christ, like the first, and the general judgment,
are not to be considered as natural phenomena, as philosophizing
Christians are endeavoring to do at the present time. However
sincere or well meaning they may be, their efforts are essentially
anti-Christian, and, so far as they are successful, they cannot issoe
in anything but in the subversion of all true Christian faith.
It is with the earnest hope and prayer that I may be able to con
tribute a little — if it be only a little — to withstand this rational
izing drift and tendency of the times away from tho simple Gospel
of Christ, and to recall men to the faith once delivered to the
saints on this question of Eternal Life which occupies such a fun
damental position in the Gospel system, that I have undertaken
this work.
I am well aware how presumptuous it will seem to many of even
my esteemed friends, for me to oppose myself to the popular cur
rent, on a doctrine that has had the sanction of so many good and

PREFACE. VU.
learned men, and has so entwined itself about what is called the
orthodox system of theology as to be regarded as one of its founda
tion principles, and to what severe judgment among men I am ex
posing myself. I am, however, encouraged to the effort by remem
bering how often it pleases God to use the weak things of the world
to confound the mighty, and things which are not to bring to
naught the things that are. But were I to consult my own per
sonal comfort and convenience and reputation, I would gladly re
main silent. But when I consider the origin of this dogma of im
mortality apart from God and without a Savior — how unscriptural
it is ; what reproach it is bringing on the character of our Heavenly
Father ; how it depreciates the work of Christ in our redemption,
and obscures the lustre of the glorious Gospel ; what a fruitful
source of error it has always been, and what mischief it is working
at the present day, I cannot hesitate to protest against it in the
name of Him to whom I must and will be loyal, come what may.
But though I speak with the earnestness of conviction, I desire to
speak the truth in love. Indeed, when I remember that under
the same false training to which those whom I address have been
subject, I was led away by this same delusion, and howl preached for
more than a score of years this error, the falsity of which I now see
by the grace of God, I have no occasion or heart for bitter words. Let
no one construe what I have written in any other sense than that
of kind, though earnest entreaty and persuasive argument. It is
no pleasant duty in itself to oppose men's cherished sentiments,
to attempt to destroy their cherished idols before their faces, or to
expose their errors of doctrine. Be it done ever so kindly, it is
hardly possible to perform such a duty without seeming to attack
their persons, and to be actuated by an ill feeling towards them as
individuals. It must be admitted that the discussion of principles
and doctrines among those who differ, though undertaken in the
utmost good-will, often degenerates into offensive personalities. I
have resolutely endeavored in the prosecution of this discussion,

Vlll. PREFACE.
whatever provocation I may have had — and I must say that I have
been very severely tried by what seemed to me the perversity and
unfairness of many whose views I have been called to examine
and oppose — to deal only with sentiments and opinions, and not at
all with the individuals who have expressed them, and to avoid
everything that might be regarded as an unkind personality. If
any line or word in this whole volume shall seem to any one to be
obnoxious to any such criticism, I beg that it may be attributed to
human infirmity, and to the necessity of hasty composition, for I
have had no time to rewrite, or properly revise what I have written.
I offer this, however, not as any apology for the sentiments I have
expressed, for they have been matured by a special and most care
ful study of many years ; but I could wish that I had been able to
put them into some better shape and to clothe them in a better
dress. The desultory manner in which I have been obliged to prepare
this work — writing at such irregular intervals of time as I could
snatch from exhausting labors in another direction — has resulted
in some repetition of thought in some of its various parts ; for I
have desired to give some degree of completeness to each of its
sections. This, however, though it might be regarded as a fault
in a strictly methodical argument, has its advantages in a popular
work, such as this is designed to be.
In citing Scripture passages, and in commenting upon them, I
have not hesitated to avail myself somewhat of one of my previous
works — The Theological Trilemma — now out of print, whenever it
would serve my convenience ; and those who are familiar with
that work will sometimes observe an identity of illustration and
of expression in those sections where I have traversed the same
ground. But still, this volume is intended to be a more full and
exhaustive treatment of the subject it discusses, and to embody the
result of ten additional years of earnest and careful study.
As the first part of this volume was written and stereotyped

PREFACE. IX.
before the Revised edition of the New Testament was given to the
public, my citations have in that part especially been from the
Old Version. In the latter part, I have frequently made my cita
tions in the language of the New Version. I am happy to see that
all my principal criticisms of the text of the Old Version, in the
earlier part of the book, have been justified by the revisers, and
while they have not done their work as thoroughly as could be
¦desired, so far as they have gone, it has been directly to sustain the
views which we are advocating.
I have given but a very small space to what are called the ra
tional arguments, either pro or con., on this question, because I do
not regard this doctrine under discussion as a doctrine of natural
religion. It belongs pre-eminently to that which is divine and
supernatural, and I have desired as much as possible to advocate
it and honor it as such. Life and immortality are only brought to
light in the Gospel — brought to light, not as an old truth of nature
which had hitherto been hidden, but as a new truth — as the great
gift of God, which Christ Himself came to bring down from
Heaven, and to offer as from His own hand.
THE SYMPOSIUM,
•with which this volume closes, will no doubt be regarded as
its peculiar and most interesting feature. I could wish that
the idea had been developed sufficiently early, to have allowed
time for a more systematic arrangement of topics and of papers.
But these papers have come to hand so irregularly and, many
of them, so tardily as to give no opportunity for any such
arrangement. They will be found, however, to cover almost every
phase of this question, and to exhibit a great variety of methods
in its treatment ; and most, if not all, of them will be regarded as
very able, and well worthy of careful study, and I hope that, how
ever imperfect the argument of the boo'; itself may be considered,

X. PREFACE.
these papers will not fail to establish in the minds of those who
read them the truth for which we contend.
It would have been quite easy, could the room have been
afforded, to have added greatly to the number of these papers.
Indeed, I would gladly have inserted others, had I not already ex
ceeded my original design, and reached the utmost practicable-
limit of space that could be allowed.
But it is hoped that those that are inserted are sufficiently nu
merous and varied to meet the purpose intended — namely :
1. To show that the essential doctrine of this book is not pecu
liar to any one sect or class or nationality of Christian men-
Among these more than twenty writers, may be found laymen as-
well as clergymen, professors of medicine and theology, scientists
of no mean repute, and erudite scholars, doctors of divinity and
humble preachers of the Gospel, widely scattered throughout the
States of the Union and various parts of Europe, and connected
with all the various evangelical churches in which it is possible
for men to hold and express, without expulsion, a belief in this great
Christian doctrine, that Jesus Christ is the only source of Eternal
Life. Hence it is that someof these denominations — evangelical
so-called — are not here represented ; for it will be noticed that sev
eral of these writers, though earnest Christian men, have been
driven out of the churches of their choice for this cause alone.
2. To lift this question above the claims of any sect or party of
Christians, to which some of its advocates have thought to hold it,
and to distinguish it from various other related and subordinate
questions, upon which those who hold it in common have differed
and perhaps always will differ, and to show that, however import
ant these other questions may be in themselves, they are by no
means fundamental to the question upon which we all, looking
upon it from so many different points of view, are agreed.
3. To unite Christian men who hold this truth in common not-

PREFACE. XI.
withstanding their differences on minor points, in harmonious
action in opposing this great anti-Christian error, and in advocating
this paramount Christian doctrine of Life Everlasting through
Christ and the Resurrection ; and so we have taken as our motto :
In things essential, unity; in things doubtful, libeb-
ty; in all things, charity.
4. And finally, to present something to the Christian public that
may be regarded as worthy of serious attention ; hoping that if my
own views and arguments may not be thought worthy of a special
notice, those who have so kindly come to my aid may be able so
to present this question as to secure such a fair hearing and a can
did and thorough discussion of it as its importance deserves. If
this can be secured, I have no fears for the issue,
It only remains for me to thank most heartily my Christian
friends who have so kindly co-operated with me in this work of
love and faith, and to express the hope that this great Scrip
ture doctrine of Life Everlasting through Jesus Christ and Him
only, which we have united to bring to the notice of our Christian
brethren of every name, will not seem to any of them to be un-
J. H. P.

worthy of their most serious attention.

Philadelphia, February, 1882.

INDEX
OF AUTHORS CITED.

Alford, Anaxagoras,
Anthon, Arnold, .
Athanasius, Athenagoras,
Augustine, Bain,Barnabas, .
Barnes, 265, 286,
Bartlett, 135, 193, 242,
Baxter, Beeton, .
Board man,
Birks,
Boyle,Brown, .
Burnet, Bushnell,
Butler.
Campbell,Chesebrough, Cicero, .
Clarke, Clement I.,
Clavering,
Constable, 30, 52,
Cook, _ .
Crosby," .
Cyprian, .
Dale, .
Delitzsch, .
De Burgh,
Dwight, Eadie, .
Edwards, .
Eusebius.
Farre,

/.

66 6
249 634541
. 190
93,95 33
341, 359, 575
194, 227, 241,
333, 335, 339571 256
. 134 63
246 62
. 57
218, 561
. 62
252
. 195
2,7
. 113
. 33, 42
. 18
156, 160, 163,
262, 268
510 328 4466
. 156 66
. 246,503 263, 264
43, 588 35
. 201

Ferrier, .
Gell, .
Gieseler, Goulburn,Good,Gray,Grant, .
Greenfield, Hagenbach
Hall, R.
Hall, W.
Hampton,Harmer, Heard, Henry, .
Hermas, Herodotus,
Hobbs, Hodge, .
Hooker,Hopkins,

Horsley,Hovey, Hudson,
Huntington Hyppolitus,Ignatius,
Irenaeus, Ives, .
Johnson,Justin, Kellogg,King,Kitto, .
Landis, Lacondre
Latham, Leo X., .
Locke,

43,

94
63 38
63 6
21911»182 38
282 90
. 206 13
. 160, 161 6534 4
561 84
. 102
159, 160, 162, 215, 226 256182 17
. 70, 195 443439
156, 157, 342 127
. 35
156, 157
. 247268
44, 245 245
. 127 54
66, 94, 185

INDEX OF AUTHORS CITED

Lowth, .

13

Stahelin, .

Alii.
. 13

Luther,

56, 102

Stuart, M.

260

Mead, .

. ' 118,197

Stewart, D.

. 94

McCulloch,

. 117

Suffield,

562
Maimonides,
17
Taylor, I.
46, 63
Minton,
. 51, 227
Taylor, J.
102
Moschus,
518
Tatian,
. 42
Murdock, .
. 25
Thales, .
6
Newton,
224
Tertullian,
42
Ogilvie,
. 127
Theophilus, .
38
Olshausen,
65
Thorn,
64, 160
Origen,
50, 53
Tregelles,
439
Ovid, .
8
Trench,
132
139, 141
Parker,
13, 327
Tulloch, .
66
Parkhurst,
117, 256
Tupper,
. 251
Peill,
191
Twisse, .
245
Pells, .
289
Tyndale, .
. 65
Perowne, .
65
Varro, .
531
Petavel, .
66
Walker,
. 247
Plato,
. 7, 9, 181
Warleigh,
152
Polycarp,
35
Warburton,
12, 572
Porter,
. 113, 146
Webster,
127, 255
Pusey, .
15
Whately,
65,
517, 573
Pythagoras,
6
Whiton,
18,
337, 566
Richardson,
127
White, . 16, IS
,73
321,419
Robinson, .
62, 256
Whiimore,
25,
272, 295
Rothe, .
66
Worcester,
127, 255
Scott, .
65
Young, '.
281
Seneca, .
8
Zenophanes,
8
Smith, W. .
. 256, 286
Zoroaster,
. 5,457
Socrates,
... 6
INDEX
OF SCRIPTURAL PASSAGES MORE PARTICULARLY NOTICED.

Gen. 2 : 7, 129, 147, 168, 170, 202
Genesis 2 : 16, 17, 129, 317, 388
Genesis 3 : 17-20, 202, 317, 388
Genesis 3 : 22-24, 105, 202, 389
Genesis 4 : 3, 4, . . 237
Genesis 18 : 23, 25, . 228
Exodus 33: 32, . 574
Numbers 16 : 30-33, . 266
Deuteronomy 28 : . 406
Deuteronomy 30 : 19, . 360
Psalm 8 : 4, 5, . . .397
Psalm 49 : 14, 171, 397, 437
Psalm 73 : . . . .419
Proverbs 24 : 20, . . 393
Ecclesiastes 12 : 7, . . 171
Isaiah 14 : 9-11, . . 216
Isaiah 21 : 11-12, . . 438
Isaiah 25 : 41, . . 284
Isaiah 34 : 9-10, . * . 342
Isaiah 66 : 24, . 438, 472
Ezekiel 13 : 22, . . .361
Ezekiel 18 : . . . 229
Ezekiel 31: and 32: . . 271
Ezekiel 33 : 8-11, . . 360
Ezekiel 37 : 5-8, . . 155
Daniel 12 : 2, 334, 439, 473
Matthew 5 : 22-29, . . 290
Matthew 7 : 13, 14, 140, 182
Matthew 10 : 28, , . 290, 332
Matthew 16 : 25-26, . 116
Matthew 17 : 1-13, . . 173
Matthew 22 : 23-33, . 277
Matthew 25 : 46, 235, 336, 445, 474
Mark 3 : 28-29, . . 476
Mark 8 : 29, . . . 464
Mark 9 : 45, 292, 338, 440, 498
Mark 12 : 18-27, . . 227
Luke 4 : 34, . . . 464
Luke 12 : 4, 5, . 290, 322
Luke 12 : 9-23, . . .116
Luke 14 : 14, . . 276

Luke 16 : 19-31, 174, 271, 480
Luke 20 : 27-38, 21, 420, 477
Luke 23 : 42-43, . . 173
John 3 : . . 159, 420, 477
John 4:5: and 6 : 20. 205. 206,
277, 421
John 9:2, . . .20
John 10 : . . 425
John 11 : . . . 206, 276
John 17 : 2, 3, . . 425
Acts 2 : 29 34, . . 281
Acts 13 : 36-37, . 281, 428
Romans 6 : 23, . . 321
Romans 7 : 13, . 362
1 Corinthians 2 : 14, . . 159
1 Corinthians 15 : 14-18, 171
1 Cor. 15 : 45-46, 159, 161, 350
2 Corinthians 9 : 15, . . 306
2 Corinthians 11 : 3, 184, 522
Colossians 2:8, . 184
1 Thes. 4 : 11-17, . 173, 176
1 Thes. 5 : 23, . . 159, 172
2 Thes. 1:9,. 236, 337
Hebrews 4 : 12, . . . 159
James 5 : 20, . . 140, 182
1 Peter 3 : 19, . . . 279
2 Peter 2:4, . 294
2 Peter 3 : 7-13, . . 492
1 John 5 : 10, 182, 431, 581, 600
Jude 7  341
Jude 19, ... 159
Revelation 2 : 10-11, . . 354
Revelation 14 : 10-11, 339, 486
Revelation 19 : 1-4, . . 483
Revelation 19 : 20, 21, . 488
Revelation 20 : 6, . . 354
Revelation 20 : 9, 10, 339, 490
Revelation 20 : 11-15,
323, 341, 354, 414, 467, 490, 575
Revelation 21 : 4, . 341, 467
Revelation 21 : 8, . 354

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
_ The question to be discussed defined, both negatively and posi
tively. — 1. Not an inquiry concerning the foul of man, but concern
ing man. — Different notions concerning the soul, none of them ad
vocated as the basis of our argument. — 2. Not concerning future
punishment, but the opposite— the gift of God, the Life Everlasting.
—3. Not in opposition to the evangelical system, but in support of
it. — 4. Not any new philosophy or doctrine, but the old doctrine of
the Bible — supernatural, not natural. — 5. Not a discussion of sub
ordinate or related points, but of this one great doctrine, the Life
Everlasting through Christ only  23-37

CHAPTER FIRST.
HISTORICAL SURVEY.
Section I. — Heathen Speculations.
Some truths and half truths, though mingled with error, to be
found in them all. — They show us the need of a Divine Revelation.
— Error of the old philosophers in claiming for all men what is
true only of the holy. — Astonishing that men with the Gospel
should fall into the same error. — Delusion of the adversary. — Its
sad fruits. — The ancient Egyptians. — The Chinese and Hindus. —
The ancient Persians. — The Arabians. — Earlier Grecian philoso
phers. — Socrates. — Plato. — The wise men of Rome. — Quotations
from Seneca, Ovid, Zenophanes, Plato.^— The mystery of the Future
Life solved only by the Gospel.  1-10
Section II. — Belief of the Ancient Hebrews.
No trace of the doctrine of man's Natural Immortality among
them. — Segregated by Jehovah to keep them from imbibing heathen
notions. — Sheol a place of silence. — The Gospel truth dimly fore
shadowed. — Citations from Warburton, Lowth, Harmer, Prof.
Stahelin, Ecce Homo, and G. D. Boardman, showing the absence of
the doctrine of Natural Immortality from their Scriptures. — After
the Jews returned from captivity, notions mixed. — Dr. Pusey. —
The Apocrypha. — Talmud. — Jewish sects. — Rabbins. — Citations
from White's Life in Christ and Hudson's Future Life. — Sadducees
and Pharisees both seeking to entrap Christ. — His reply. — The man
born blind. — The woman having seven successive husbands. — Mr.
White's remark  11-23

XVI. CONTENTS.
Section III. — Doctrine of the Fathers and Early Chrib-1
tian Church.
Why are their views important ? — The nearer to the time of
Christ the more important. — What our Lord taught. — The Life-
Giver. — Syriac Version. — What the Apostles taught. — Teaching
of their immediate successors. — Life only in Christ. — No immor
tality for the wicked. — Gradual change of views. — Forgeries and
translations. — Mr. Constable's testimony. — Platonism leads to Res-
torationism. — Three Schools : (1) Of Christ and the earlier
Fathers ; (2) Augustine's School ; (3) Origen's School. — Tabular
view of each School. — Citations from representatives of the first
School : Barnabas, Clement I., Hermas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin,
Theophilus, Irenseus. — Citations from the second School: Athen
agoras, Tatian, the Clementines. — Tertullian paralleled by Hopkins
and Edwards. — Athanasius. — Isaac Taylor. — Glance at the third
School. — Incredibility of the doctrine of eternal torment. — Ignis
sapiens. — Evasions and alleviations. — Origen's views. — One extreme
begets another. — Citations from Constable. — Lateran Council. 23-55
Section IV. — Modern Belief.
The Reformers did a noble, but not perfect work. — Rejected
many errors, but left the radical error untouched. — What Luther
said. — Obstacles to the progress of truth, — Idolatry of old creeds.
— Pan-Presbyterian Council. — Congregational Churches. — Old and
new creeds. — The National Congregational Council. — Word of God
not bound. — Men of progress. — Citations from Robinson, Butler,
Brown, Gell, Birks, Goulborn, Arnold, J. Taylor, Thorn, Luther,
Tyndale, Whately, Henry, Scott, Perowne, Olshansen, Alford, De
Burgh, Locke, Dale, Tulloch, . Rothe, Petavel. — The Question in
the United States. — Skepticism. — Expulsion for heresy on this ques
tion. — Instances. — Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, Con
gregational Church. — The writer's experience. — Second Advent-
ists. — The Episcopal Church. — Freedom of her creed. — Dr. Hunt
ington cited. — The Thirty-nine Articles. — Great Britain more
progressive, and why. — Exclusiveness of the Press. — Rev. E.
White,.his labors, his Life in Christ. — Dr. Petavel in Geneva. — Rev.
Mr. Byse in France. — Mr. White's lecture. — Names of adherents
throughout the world.  55-78
Annex. — Essay.
The Unity of Man  . 79-97

CHAPTER SECOND.
bible terminology.
Introductory Remarks.
Disagreements often more apparent than real, owing to different
understanding of terms. — Liability to error in translating from one

CONTENTS. XV11.
language into another. — Difficulty in translating from the ancient
Hebrew and Greek into English. — Peculiar religious sense given to
words. — Traditional creeds. — What is heresy ? — The Bible for (ill
classes. — Citations from Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, Luther. — An un
biased mind needed in the study of the Scriptures. . 99-103
Section I. — Soul and Life in the Old Testament.
Nephf^h occurs 753 times, with 44 different renderings. — Psuehe
occurs 105 times. — Its various renderings. — Life, Zoe aionios, two
kinds of life translated by one word. — Citations showing the differ
ent renderings of Nephesh. — Nephesh and Roach not interchangeable.
— Different meanings of Nephesh. — Our translators. — Psuehe not a
separate entity, independent of the body. — Prof. Mead. 103-119
Section II.— Soul and Life in the New Testament — The
Life Everlasting.
Citations showing the different renderings of Psuehe. — Zoe ren
dered Life. — Citations. — Notes. — Conclusions. 1. "Soul" ands
" Life" not synonymous, as now understood. — How defined by lexr-
icographers. — No Bible word answers to the modern, popular un
derstanding of " Soul." — 2. What does it mean in the Bible?— (1)<
Not an independent entity. — (2) Not something peculiar to man-
alone. — (3) Not synonymous with spirit. — Trench cited. — (4) Not-
immortal and indestructible. — Zoe designates the life that is im
mortal. — 3. Distinction between Psuehe life and Zoe life. — This
should appear in the translation. — 4. The Zoe life designated as
aionios, eternal. — 5. Thanatos, death, constantly put in contrast with
it. — 6. The corrupting influence of human philosophy on, Christian
doctrine. — Summary of Scripture teaching with respect to Immor
tality  120-144
Section III. — Soul and Spirit— The Difference between;
Them. j
Treated as synonymous in dictionaries and commentaries. — Corr-
fusion in the popular mind. — Pres. Porter on soul. — Distinction in>
the Bible between soul and spirit. — Creation of man — body, soul
and spirit. — Man an integer. — Soul not independent of body or
spirit. — Has spirit an independent personal existence ? — Bible
scholars not agreed. — The intermediate state discussed. 144-156;
Section IV. — Body, Soul and Spirit — The Tripartite:
Nature of Man.
Three theories. — 1. The materialistic. — Its advocates. — 2. The
Dichotomous. — More common theory. — 3. Trichotomous. — More-
Scriptural. — Pres. Hopkins. — Dr. D. Thorn. — J. B. Heard. — H-
Constable. — Dr. Deliizsch. — Their views. — Substantial agreement.
— Theories harmonized. — Constable's theory considered more at
length. . .  • . 157-175

XV1H. CONTENTS.
Section V. — Life and Death.
Phenomenal terms. — Meaning evident. — Tropical use. — Why
resorted to. — Reasons (or taking these words literally. — 1. No good
reason for not doing so. — Classic use. — " Religious sense." — 2. Ordi
nary rules of interpretation require it. — Locke. — The Tempter's
device. — 3. They declare the sanction of God's law. — 4. No other
reasonable interpretation can be given them. — Disagreements of
theologians. — The old creeds. — Augustine, Peill, Hovey, Landis,
Bartlett, Chesebrough, Mead quoted and criticized. — The Deity
and the devil. — 5. No other way of making Scripture consistent
and intelligible. — Dr. Farre quoted. — Texts examined. — Bishop
Hampton  175-207
Section VI. — The Life Everlasting.
Various grades of life in nature. — All transitory. — Natural lifeof
man and brute alike in this respect. — The supernatural Life. — Zoe
aionios. — The Divine Life in man eternal. — Pres. Hopkins' Moral
Science. — Tabufar view. — What God's Word reveals. — Conclusions
of true science.— Prof. A. Gray's lecture. . . . 208-220
Section VII. — Punishment.
Remarks. — 1. Punishment implies law. — 2. It is retrospective. —
8. It has primary regard to the law. — 4. Transgressors the only
proper subjects of punishment. — The penalty of God's law is to be
understood as meaning actual death, because: — 1. This is the literal
teaching of Scripture. — 2. This agrees with the penal economy of
Mosaic law. — 3. This agrees with the system of sacrifices. — 4. The
figurative as well as literal language of Scripture requires it. —
6. This agrees with our moral sense. — Various conflicting theories.
— God's purpose to fit us for a higher life. . . . 221-250
Section VIII. — Hell.
Original meaning of the word. — The same as Sheol and Hades. —
Authorities cited.— Sheol and Hades synonymous. — Citations of
Scripture passages, with their various renderings, in which these
two words occur. — Notes and Conclusions. — 1. Synonymous. — 2.
Should have had a uniform rendering.— 3. Do not designate a place
of punishment.— 4. A place within the earth.— 5. All men go there
and go bodily.— 6. Not a place of life and sensibility. — Rich man
and Lazarus.— A personification. — Woman who married seven hus
bands.— A temporary resting-place.— Tophet and Gehenna.— Scrip
ture citations— Notes and conclusions. — 1. A proper noun.— 2
Local application. — 3. A place for utter destruction. — 4. Scripture
meaning of the term reversed.— Tartaros.— Final conclusion. 251-29 >
Section IX.— The Great Salvation.
From what does Christ save us? — Letter No. 1. — From death.—
Letter No. 2.— From death  297-305

CONTENTS. XIX.
Section X. — The Unspeakable Gift.
What is it ?— The gift of Eternal Life through Christ. 306-311
Section XI. — Discarded Scriptural Terms.
1. Being for creature. — 2. Existence, to designate a state of life in
sin and misery, called death in the Bible. — 3. Annihilation for de
struction, objectionable because : (1) It changes the issue; (2) it is
ambiguous; (3) Not Scriptural; (4) It assumes the point to be
proved — The real question ignored, viz.: Are we immortalized in
Adam or in Christ? ........ 312331
Section XII. — Eternal, Forever, Etc'.
Not important to discuss the meaning of the word aion. — It has
no decisive bearing on this question. — It is never predicated of the
Psuehe, though often of Zoe. — Never of deaih. — Texts misquoted
and misapplied. — Rev. 14 : 9-11, and 20 : 9, 10. — Nothing peculiar
in the Scriptural use of olam, aionios, etc. — The indefinite and the
infinite confounded. — Impossibility of apprehending the infinite. —
Predicable of the Deity only. — All creature life dependent and
conditional.— Mistake in supposing everything future to be neces
sarily eternal  332-347
Section XIII. — The Second Death.
Revelation dualistic in substance as well as in form. — Human
philosophy ignores these distinctions. — Two worlds, two lives, two
classes of men, two kingdoms, two advents, two deaths. — The
second d^ath — Compared with the first. — Philosophy explains
away the meaning of both. — Reference to second deaih not in the
Apocalypse alone. — How this false dogma confuses the whole evan
gelical system. — How it substitutes unending torment for deaih. —
Two causes for wonder. — Satan's cunning and the vitality of Divine
Truth  348-368

CHAPTER THIRD.
bible eschatology.
Introductory Remarks.
Ultimate authority of the Bible. — Our inquiry: What saith the
SrriptureT — Not what can it be made to say by putting an unnatu
ral construction on its language? — Its plain declarations sustairj
our position. — How Scripiuie language has been accommodaied to
the doctrine of Plato and other errors. — Such changes protested
against. — What is proposed in the following sections. . 369-381
Section I. — The Fundamental Law.
Holiness the express condition of perpet*al life. — This agree
able to reason as well as God's Word. — Evil transitory in its na-

XX. CONTENTS.
ture. — An episode. — Survival of the fittest.— Scripture citation. —
Tree of Life. — Plan and purpose of Redemption. — Scripture cita
tion  382-394
Section II. — Death by Sin.
No warrant in God's Word for the doctrine of immortality in
sin. — The image of God. — 1. Silence of the Bible as to the immor
tal nature of man. — Not one hint of it. — Not " assumed " by the
sacred writers. — Death of the sinner taught in the sacrificial sys
tem. — The victims not tormented, but put to death. — 2. The same
taught by the legal penalties of the Mosaic law. — Death under the
three-fold aspect of the law. — An eternal 6tate of sin and misery
could not have been meant. — Citation of texts. . . 395-415
Section III. — Life Eternal through Christ.
Mortal condition of all men the background of the picture. — A
new revelation in the Gospel. — Hints of the new life in the Old
Testament fully-revealed in the New. — Teaching of Christ. — -Cita
tion of texts-. — Not blessedness merely, but an endless life of bles
sedness. — Preaching of Paul. — Citations from his epistles; also,
from Peter, John and Jude. . . . 416-433
Section IV. — The Great Alternative, Death or Life
Everlasting.
The two classes contrasted. — The two destinies. — Citations from
the Old Testament. — From the New. — The death which is the com
mon lot of all, and the life which is the peculiar portion of the
saved, not to be confounded with the personal rewards and punish
ments of the saved and lost. — Synoptical table of the final destiny
of each class. . . . .... 433-453
Section V. — The Glorious Consummation.
Beautiful correspondence between the opening and closing por
tions of the Bible, Genesis and Revelation. — Mixture of good and
evil in the present state not perpetual, but episodical. — What our
opponents believe. — What we believe. — The coming glory. — Cita
tion of texts  .... 454-468
Section VI.— Misinterpreted Texts, or Texts Supposed
to Teach Immortality in Sin and Misery.
The passages that can be made to seem to teach such a doctrine
very few.— Can only be made to do this by changing the meanin°-
of the words. — Texts referring to the good only are quoted as re-
ferring to all men.— False construction put on texts— Only one in
the Old Testament that can be made available, Dan. 12 • 2  In the
Gospels, Matt. 25 : 46, Mark 3 : 38. 39 (John 3 : 36) Mark 9 • 45-
50, Luke 16 : 9-31, Apocalypse 14 : 8-11, 19 : 1-21, 20 : 10-15. 468-495

CONTENTS. XXI.
CHAPTER FOURTH.
rational arguments and objections.
Preliminary Remarks.
Scientific and philosophical arguments defective. — Revelation
supplies the deficiency  497-499
Section I. — Nature of the Soul.
Its nature assumed. — Who knows ? — Our inquiry concerning
man and not simply concerning the soul of man. . . 500-505
Section II. — Capacities and Capabilities of Man.
Unlimited ? — Who knows this ? — All faculties must be improved
in order to their preservation. — Assurance of immortality not in
the intellectual nature of man, but in his moral fitness for it.
505-508
Section III. — Human Instincts and Aspirations.
Instinct of life natural to all animals. — Man not satisfied with
mere sensual good. — Revelation tells him how to attain to that
which will satisfy. — Must employ the means. — It is not forced upon
him, but is conditional  508-510
Section IV. — Analogy of Nature.
No life again after actual death in the processes of nature.— The
butterfly. — Seeds. — No analogy of endless life. — Analogy teaches
conditional immortality, if it teaches anything. . . 511-513
Section V. — General Belief.
Founded on fact. — A future life not necessarily an endless life. —
Belief in immortality not the general belief.— Citation from Whately.
— God's purpose in this sentiment. — How the Gospel meets it. —
Why should so great an error be permitted to prevail ? — Why an
error? — Force of tradition. — Majority argument unreliable. — The
watch set wrong  514-526
S^tion VI. — Utility.
Belief in future punishment necessary, but the punishment
threatened must be credible. — Certainty of punishment more
¦effectual than improbable threats. — Repentance and obedience the
fruit of love and not of terror.— -Power of the Gospel weakened. —
Men driven into infidelity. — God's penalty needs no human addi
tions. — What is now needed to restore to the preaching of the
Gospel its lost power  527-536

CHAPTER FIFTH.
CONCLUSION. Section I.
A brief summary of the foregoing argument. — I. Historical

XXU. CONTENTS.
Sketch.— II. Bible Terminology.— III. Bible Eschatology.— IV.
Rational argument. — Summarized  537-559
Section II. — Incidental and Indirect Evidences.
1. Traditional doctrine encompassed by many difficulties. — Our
views relieve many of them. — 2. The vulnerable point in the
Christian system is in this dogma. — Universalism has no raison
d'etre but for i his dogma. — 4. Purgatory. — 5. Ghostism. — 6. Socin
ianism. — 7. Redemption. — 8. Infant salvation.— 9. Infant baptism*
— 10. Arminianism. — 11. Teachings of reason and nature not op
posed. — 12. The great Gospel motive. — 13. Doctrinal differences. —
14. Challenges txamination. — 15. Silence of Old Testament ex
plained. — 16 Sacrifices — 17. Difficult texts explained. — 18. Divine
permission of sin  559-577
Section III. — Closing Appeal.
Another experience. — Two ways by which men are coming at
the truth on this question. — Some opposition salutary. — Several
classes. — 1. Conservatists. — 2. Traditionalists. — 3. Followers of
reason. — 4. Hesitators. — 5. Trimmers. — The truth a 6acred trust
from the Master. — Not to be used to serve personal ends, nor hid
den in a napkin. — The account to be rendered of our stewardship.
— What is the Gospel message ? . . ... . 577-600>

SYMPOSIUM.
In Limine. — A series of letters, essays, arguments and various
other papers furnished by representative men connected with
various evangelical churches in this country and Europe, as fol
lows : By Leonard W. Bacon, D.D., of Norwich, Conn.; Rev.
Edward White, of London, Eng.; Rev. Samuel Minton, London,
Eng.; Rev. George R. Kramer, Wilmington, Del.; Rev. J.'D. Wil-
Bon, Chicago, 111.; Rev. A. A. Phelps, A.M., Rochester, N. Y; A. M.
B. Graham, D.D., Little Rock. Ark.; William R. Hart, Philadel
phia, Pa.; William Leask, D.D., London, Jng.; Rev. E. Petavel,
D.D., Geneva, Switzerland ; Prof. J. H. Kellogg, Battle Creek,
Mich.; Prof. D. H. Chase, LL.D., Middletown, Conn.; Rev C. Byse,
Brussels, Belgium ; M. W. Strang, Glasgow, Scotland ; William
Laing, Edinburgh, Scotland; Prof. H. Schullz, Gottingen, Ger
many ; Prof. C. M.Butler, D.D., Philadelphia, Pa; Prof. M.Meier-
Smith, Philadelphia, Pa.; Canon H. Constable, London, Eng.; W
R. Huntington, D.D., Worcester, Mass.; C. R. Hendrickson, DD.~
Jackson, Tenn. (For particulars see Symposium table of contents'
603, 604.) .  605-80&

THE LIFE EVERLASTING.

Introtluctovg d(lta}!ter.

The title of this volume : The Life Everlasting :
What is it? Whence is it f Whose is it f would seem to be
all that could be needed to explain its object and the
nature of the question to be discussed. But the unfortu
nate perversion to which it has been subject, and its com
plication with various other subordinate or irrelevant
questions by those who have discussed it, render it im
portant that a few words should be said at the outset, by
way of defining both negatively and positively the real
question before us. Such a precise statement at the begin
ning of any discussion, especially when the question has
been misapprehended and confused with other questions,
not only clears the way and greatly facilitates the discus
sion, but is often better than a labored argument, and, in
deed, is sometimes all the argument that is needed to de
monstrate its truth or falsity to the mind of the reason
able inquirer.
We beg, then, most earnestly of our readers, and espe
cially of those who may think it their duty to oppose us, if
they would do it honestly and fairly, a careful attention to
the following statement of the leading question under dis
cussion in this volume :
1. It is not an inquiry concerning the nature and destiny
of the soul of man, but concerning the man himself.

XXIV. THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
There are various conflicting theories or hypotheses of
the nature of man.
The Materialist holds that man is an indivisible unit,
and that what is called the soul has no distinct entitative
existence of its own. It is only the effect of certain chem
ical organic action, and that when the organism is destroyed
the effect ceases and the soul vanishes into nothingness.
The Bichotomist holds that man is the union of two dis
tinct and separable entities — a physical organism, and a
soul within the organism and acting through it, but not
¦dependent upon it.
The Trichotomist maintains that instead of two, there are
three such natures in every perfect man. There are
various modifications of these three prime hypotheses con
cerning the nature of man that need not now be men
tioned. These various theories and the arguments by which
they are urged we shall notice as we proceed, so far as
may seem important to a clear understanding of the ques
tion in hand ; but we shall not attempt to actas champion
for any one of them, nor to set forth any distinct theory of
our own, for we have none of our own to urge as essential
to the main doctrine to be established.
We have earnestly studied this question in all its details,
and have given careful attention to all the various hy
potheses and to the arguments by which they have been
advocated, but we have never been able to arrive at any
such certain conclusion as many others express.
But without undertaking to dogmatize upon the com
posite nature of man, we are free to say that we have
never seen any good reason to believe that he can exist as
an intelligent, responsible, sensitive agent in a disorganized
condition ; or, in other words, that he can be dead and
alive at the same time. Whatever hypothesis of his nature

INTROnUCTORY CHAPTER. XXV.
may be adopted, science, reason, Scripture, and, indeed, all
the facts in the case that can be gathered from observa
tion, seem to unite in declaring that the soul of man, what
ever it may be, is as dependent upon the body or some
material organism for its activity and the exercise of its
legitimate functions, as the body is upon the soul. The
burden of proof that it is not so most evidently rests upon
those who assert a contrary doctrine.
The extensive prevalence of the Platonic philosophy,
which attributes to man an indestructible soul independent
of the body — which at best is but a philosophic guess —
has introduced«aform of expression, when treating of the
destiny of man, which is a quasi prejudgment of the ques
tion, or, at any rate, very confusing and misleading. We
are led into it by education and the usus loquendi of others.
From tlje force of early education and of habit the author
thoughtlessly employed it in his first work, The Theologi
cal Trilemma, and frequently said " the soul of man,"
-when in fact he meant simply man, and should have said
so. He hopes in the following pages to avoid this mislead
ing species' of.heterophemy.
Certainly no one ought to object to the use of this more
definite and simple mode of expression when it is the des
tiny of man, the whole personal man, and not of any one
¦or more of the parts of his complex nature into which
philosophy has divided him, that is the object of our in
quiry ; for it brings us into conflict with none of these
various systems of philosophy. We found no argument
upon any hypothesis of the nature of man, and we must
insist that our opponents shall not be allowed to do this,
until they have first proved their hypothesis to be true.
Let it, then, be distinctly understood that our inquiry is
not' concerning the body of man, nor the soul of man, nor
spirit of man, nor of any one of his actual or supposable

XXVi. THE LIFE EVERLASTING
component parts, but concerning the whole man — the man
whom God created ; the man who sinned ; the man to
whom God said, " Tnou shalt die ;" the man who actually
does die according to this sentence ; the man whom Christ
redeemed by His own death ; the man who will be raised
at the second coming of our Lord, and judged — what is
his destiny ? Has he the assurance of " length of days for
ever and ever ?" and if so, on what grounds ? and if not,.
why not ? This is the subject of our inquiry in the follow
ing pages.
2. It is not concerning Future Punishment. We be
lieve in the Scripture doctrine of future punishment; So
far from wishing to contribute directly or indirectly to the
skepticism which is prevailing more and more to an
alarming extent on this subject, we are especially anxious
to do all we can to withstand its progress, and to this end
we have undertaken to disprove the monstrous error,
which, by insisting on a doctrine of future punishment
that is not only anti-Scriptural but shocking to the moral
sense of every true man and absolutely incredible, is the
real source of this skepticism ; and to present and urge as
true, necessary and absolutely inevitable and remediless,,
the punishment which the Scriptures threaten to all per
sistent sinners — " the punishment of everlasting destruc
tion" — a punishment which though terribly just is cred
ible — a punishment which sinners can and will believe is
imminent, and which they will fear, when disabsued of
the ruinous delusion that they have an equal claim with
the saints to " length of days forever and ever."
But this is not the object of our inquiry at the present
time, but just the opposite. It is not to the death and
destruction of sinners, but to the salvation of the righteous
— the Life Everlasting that is promised to them in the Gos-

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. XXvii.
pel — that we would direct attention; What is this Life ?
Who is the Giver ? To whom is it given ? This is the great
question we have undertaken to discuss.
Taking man as he actually is in this life, we find him
frail, transitory, and, like all earthly things, hasting to the
end of his course. Beginning in weakness, he soon reaches
the maturity of his powers, and then goes down, step by
step in weakness and pain to the dust from wliich he came ;
and as the grave closes over his decaying body, affection
weeps and asks, " Is this the end of man?" Science says,
" It is." For there is no process in nature which gives life
to that which has once actually lost it. Philosophy may
speculate, but she has no certain answer to give to the
inquiry. Reason is dumb; and there is no voice that.
comes from the grave to speak one word of comfort ; nor is
there any hope in the Divine law.
But when we inquire of the Gospel, " If a man die
shall he live again ? yea more, shall he live forever ? a
flood of light is thrown upon this dark question. " Life
and immortality are brought to light in the Gospel." For
this very object it has been given. Not, indeed, to make
known an old truth in nature that man had never been
able to discover before, but to proclaim a new truth which
had only become actual by the death and resurrection of a
Divine Savior — a new life, not as the natural inheritance
of all men, but as a supernatural gift of God's grace
through Jesus Christ, His incarnate Son. It is He who
exclaims over the tomb of the dead Lazarus, as He does
over every other tomb : "Iam the Resurrection and the
Life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet
shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me
shall never die," or rather (as it. is in the original Greek),
ou me apothene eis ton aiona — shall not die forever.
It is our special object in these pages to consider this

XXV111. THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
glorious Gospel promise ; to inquire, what is this precious
boon ? through whom and from whom it comes ? to whom
it is given ? and what are the conditions of its bestow-
ment? But our opponents, starting with Plato's hypothesis of
the nature of man as their postulate — or rather that part
of it which attributes* an indestructible soul to man (the
former part which supposes the soul to be uncreated and
therefore indestructible, and which can alone justify the
¦conclusion, they reject) — insist upon it that man does not
actually die when he seems to die ; that there is a natural
vis vitai within him that cannot be quenched ; that death
simply opens the door into a higher, freer stage of exist-
-ence that never will end. Hence they presume to call, and
insist upon calling, notwithstanding our protests, the Gos
pel doctrine of life and immortality through Christ, the
doctrine of destruction, and often, by way of caricaturing
it and exposing it to philosophical ridicule, the doctrine of
annihilation, which term, by the way, is quite as appli
cable to every other living creature that dies as it would
be to man in any case.
But we cannot consent to have our main thesis carica
tured and reversed in this way, even did we accept of the
terms which they use ; for it withdraws the mind from the
main point to be considered, and confuses it with certain
speculations and ambiguities with which we have no con
cern whatever. There is certainly an alternative to the
boon offered in the Gospel, as there is. to the offer of every
heavenly gift, and we shall not pass it by unnoticed. But
it is not the alternative which we are proposing to con
sider as our main thesis, but the gift itself. This alterna
tive is only the negative of this question, the reverse side of
the medal, the background of the picture, which we can
not consent to have put in the place of the real question.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. XX1X.
Indeed, had this question no negative or reverse side in
our view ; did we believe in the final restoration of all
men, in the immortality and eternal life of all the chil
dren of Adam, as many do, we should still insist, as
strongly as we now do, on attributing this great boon to
redemption in Christ, and not to any inherent, inalienable
principle of immortality inherited by man in his natural
birth. But while we cannot understand the Scriptures as teach
ing the ultimate salvation of all men — for they seem to
us very decisively to teach a contrary doctrine — yet we
must insist that the doom of the lost, whether they be
many or few or even none at all, is not the question we
have undertaken to discuss. It is at best but the alterna
tive or negative of our question. Our opponents may
frame it into a thesis of their own, and discuss it as they
please, and we have no objection to discussing it with them.
Indeed, we shall discuss it incidentally as it falls in our
way in pursuing our main argument ; but we object to their
framing our principal thesis for us, and compelling us to
discuss it as our own and no other.
We have hitherto been singularly unfortunate in "not
finding them willing to discuss this great Gospel doc
trine of Life and Immortality through Christ only, as a
positive question. They have almost invariably exercised
themselves in foisting into prominence some incidental or
subordinate question, while the real paramount issue has
scarcely been noticed. If they think we are in error,
they certainly would not wish to ignore the real question
to avoid discussing it, nor would they misstate our posi
tion for the sake of controverting it. Truth requires no
such unfair methods. We beg, then, most earnestly to
call their attention to the real question which we propose
to discuss, and which we shall endeavor to substantiate ;

XXX. THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
and that they may not have any reason to complain of un
fairness on our part in stating it, it shall be given both
positively and negatively, in the precise terms of Scrip
ture, namely :
" This is the Record — that God hath given to
us Eternal Life, and this Life is in His Son. He
THAT HATH THE SON HATH THE • LlFE, AND HE THAT
HATH NOT THE SON HATH NOT THE, LlFE."
3. It is not proposed to attack the evangelical system,
nor any of its essential doctrines usually styled " ortho
dox." We propose rather to do what we can to honor
and establish them all. The whole system never appeared
so beautifully consistent and clear, as since we have come
to view it from the standpoint of the Bible. The philosophic
error of Plato has so entwined itself about many of these
great doctrines, and, indeed, so diffused itself throughout
the entire body of our traditional theology, as greatly to
prejudice and obscure its most precious doctrines, and, as
viewed by many, to throw suspicion over the whole evan
gelical sybtem. If this great traditional error could be
eliminated, so that these Gospel doctrines might be per
mitted to stand forth in their original simplicity, and the
whole system in its true and fair proportions, it seems im
possible that it should not commend itself to every Chris
tian heart.
>. When we come to recognize our indebtedness to the
second Adam, instead of the first, for the gift of a life that
shall never end, and to see that this new life is not the pro
longation of the old life, but a higher, purer life — the Divine
life itself imparted to man by a new birth and, therefore,
spiritual and eternal— then the necessity of a new birth for
all the children of Adam, however moral they may be,
•becomes apparent ; the divinity of that Savior through

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. XXXI.
whom this life is given can no longer be questioned ; and
salvation itself, instead of being a problematical rescue
from an incredible doom which, though threatened, could
never be inflicted by a God of justice and love, becomes a
heavenly boon of priceless value, to be earnestly sought
for by perishing mortals ; and redemption, instead of being
an act of simple justice, such as any child of Adam might
rightfully claim at the hands of his Mdker, becomes a
pure act of grace unmerited by any one, however moral
he may be, and Chrift, the Eternal Son of God, is exalted
to His true place in the scheme of our salvation, as the
only Life-giver of the world, and entitled to the crown
which He rightfully claims as Lord of all.
The great doctrines of the Second Advent, the Resurrec
tion of the dead, the General Judgment, and The Life
Everlasting, which stand out in such relief in the Gospels
and in the Epistles, and upon which the early disciples
fixed all their hopes for the future, but which, alas! under
the blighting influence of this false philosophy, have lost
their high place in the creed of the church and have come
to be regarded as shadowy myths that have no real mean
ing, will again, in the light of this Gospel truth be in
vested with all their original power, as sober verities close
at hand.
4. We have no new doctrine of philosophy or religion
to set forth, nor any new translation or version of the
Scriptures to urge as important for the establishment of
our thesis. Whatever light science and philosophy, in
their advance may throw upon our subject, we gladly
accept, not fearing that all truth — so far as it is rightly
apprehended — will be harmonious and self- consistent, and
whatever progress may be made in the understanding of
mysterious and ambiguous passages in the Word of God,

XXxii. THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
by a better translation and revision, we gratefully wel
come. Indeed, it must be admitted on all hands that all the
recent amendments that have been made in our Old Ver
sion have been directly in the line of the doctrine we hold,
and are contributing greatly to strengthen our position.
But the Old. Version, as it was and is, without the aid of
any new translation or revision, is all that we need to sub
stantiate our doctrine, if its explicit and uniform testi
mony is to be accepted ; or rather, the explicit and uniform
testimony of the Word of God is the doctrine, and the
only doctrine for which we contend.
Here we take our stand. We „must insist that those
who would discuss this great Scripture doctrine of the Life
Everlasting with us shall be loyal to the Word of God, which
is and must be our supreme authority on this doctrine. If
there be any one doctrine more than another which we are
to take directly from the Word of God, by a reverent,
honest and careful inquiry : "What saith the Scriptures?"
it is this. For neither philosophy, nor science, nor sentiment
is able to teach it to us. We hold it treason to the Scrip
tures and to the God of the Scriptures to reject their
plainly spoken, explicit testimony on this question, and to
attempt to read our own speculations or the speculations
of others into them, and to make them agree with pre-
established notions, by putting a forced or unnatural con
struction upon their language. And yet this is the grave
charge that must' be made — if the truth be spoken —
against the philosophical Christianity of the schools ; and
the only excuse that can be made is that it was the device of
a dark and corrupt age, and tradition has handed it down
to the present day ; that it has become so common that it
may be said of the multitude, as in the crucifixion of our
Lord : " They know not what they do."

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. XXxtii.
The Christian religion is a supernatural religion. Ita
doctrines are not to be proved by scientific processes. It
is above what is called the laws of nature. Sin itself is
against the law of nature, and so must be its remedy. The
incarnation of our Lord ; His resurrection and our conse
quent resurrection ; our redemption ; the new birth, and the
new life (which is the life everlasting), are not natural, but
supernatural events. Nature does not teach them. We
may find, or think we find certain analogies in nature that
correspond with these great Gospel truths, but it is only in
the Gospel that they are revealed. They are equally
accessible to the learned and the unlearned ; yea, they are-
more easily apprehended by the simple and childlike thani
by those whom this world calls wise. Hence the apostle's -
warning : " Beware lest any man spoil you through phi
losophy arid vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after
the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." Our
Lord Himself says : " I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of
heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things front
the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto.
babes." It is just here that we find our chief difficulty in dis
cussing this question ; for it cannot be denied by any one
who is able to read the Word of God, that the doctrine of
eternal life through Christ, and only through Him, is
asserted most positively and negatively with constant re
iteration in almost every variety of form of which lan
guage is capable, and if this testimony were to be lite
rally accepted, according to the ordinary import of these
words, the question would be settled beyond all contro
versy. There would be no room for any argument. But
the ingenuity of the scholastic Platonists, who were swept
into the Christian church by the tide of its prosperity in
the early ages, was equal to the task of reconciling the two

XXXIV. THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
antagonistic systems with each other. They had only to
vacate the language of Scripture of its true meaning
whenever it opposed their philosophy, and to put a new or
tropical sense into its terms, and the work was done ; and
this they easily taught their unlettered followers to do ;
until in time it became the common practice of the church ;
and the philosophy of Plato was accepted, and finally
declared to be the great fundamental doctrine of the
Christian church ; and the vicious practice of giving a
spiritual sense, a tropical sense, or what is called " a reli
gious sense," to all the crucial words of Scripture that
relate to the nature and destiny of man has been con
tinued to the present time, and has become so common
that the great mass of religious people really think it is
the proper thing to do. For example, whenever "death"
and " destruction " are declared in the Scriptures to be the
end of the wicked, we must not believe that real death and
destruction are meant — for that would be contrary to the
accepted philosophy — but only a forlorn and miserable
state of existence, which, to save the words themselves, is
-called spiritual death or spiritual destruction. And so
when " life," " eternal life," " life everlasting," " length of
-days forever and ever," and other similar terms are em
ployed to describe the portion of the righteous as the gift
of God through Christ, they must not be understood as
including life itself as any part of the gift, but only as
describing the purity and blessedness of that life which in
its own nature is naturally and necessarily endless. And
so we are taught to deal with all the other Scriptural terms
bearing on the question.
It shall be our effort to do what we can to correct this
^buse and to restore the simple language of Scripture to
ats oiiginal, natural meaning, and just so far as we shall

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. XXXV.
succeed in doing this we shall succeed in establishing our
thesis. Let it be understood, then, that we insist upon taking
the plain language of Scripture in its- ordinary and com
mon sense, unless some reason other than that it contra
dicts the philosophy of Plato can be given why another
sense should be given to it.
5. There are many collateral questions which are inter
esting in themselves, and which are often discussed in con
nection with the question of immortality in Christ. Upon
eome of them we have decided opinions, and shall not fail
to express them when occasion shall require it ; but upon
others of them we cannot venture to be so positive as many
are with whom we fully agree on the main issue. But it is not
proposed to give prominence to any of them, as we do not
consider their decision at all essential to the question in
hand, from which we would not have the mind diverted to
the discussion of other issues.
It is, however, upon these minor points that our oppo
nents prefer to make their attacks, and those who hold
with us have too often been drawn away from the real, vital
question to the discussion of other points more or less
related but not fundamental to the main question, and in
this way the real, vital question has been needlessly com
plicated or altogether lost sight of.
We therefore especially desire, in the very outset of this
discussion, to emphasize the main question as set forth in
the title of this volume, and to keep it as clear as possible
from all irrelevant issues. Whatever may be said, or
omitted to be said, or imperfectly said upon these other
questions that come in our way — let this not operate to

XXXVi. THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
divert attention from the main question : Do we derive
our immortality from our parents by natural birth, or from
Christ by a new, spiritual birth ?
Our reliance is not on science, or philosophy, or reason
for the decision of this question, but upon the teaching of
Divine revelation. Indeed, we do not attempt to formu
late any theological system in its true proportions. This
question has most certainly important relations to most, if
not all, the other doctrines of the Christian system, and
we shall not hesitate to speak of this relation whenever it
can be done without drawing us too far away from our
main purpose ; and yet we are assured that the view we
present is in complete harmony with the whole system of
evangelical truth. But it is not proposed to attempt any
such formal presentation of it in all its relations to other
doctrines. This can hardly be the work of any one man,
or of any one generation of men. It is rather the work
of many minds, and of long years of careful study and of
mutual criticism and correction.
We have not the vanity to suppose that imperfections
may not be found in our modes of conception and of state
ment on some points, and that nothing will need to be
modified or supplied by other minds, nor that we shall
escape the just criticism of friendly, much less of un
friendly readers. But of this we are confident: Of
supreme loyalty of heart and of purpose to the Divine
Master, and of a determination to deal honestly with His
Word, not as critics but as disciples. We are also quite
sure, however darkly we may see some things, aa
through a glass, that this one great truth, which philoso
phy has perverted and scholasticism and traditionalism
have buried beneath the rubbish of ages, and from which
the popular mind has been turned by the seductions of the

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. XXXVII.
adversary and of a false education — this truth which we
have undertaken to uncover and set forth with as much
ability and force as shall be given us, is the doctrine of
God's Word and the very truth once delivered to the
saints. That there may be no occasion for mistaking our
theme by any sincere inquirer, nor excuse for misstating it
on the part of unfriendly critics, we will again enunciate
it, as we have before and shall do again, in the very words
of inspiration and in these conspicuous letters :
"And this is the record: That God hath given
unto us eternal life, and this Hfe is in His Son.
He that hath the Son hath the life ; and he that
hath not the Son of God hath not the life."

adapter ojfrrai.

Historical Survey.

SECTION I.
Heathen Speculations.
It is always interesting, and often profitable, to study the
history of the opinions of men of ancient times on any
speculative question, especially on a question like this — the
future destiny of man — which so intimately concerns us all.
We study it, however, not to find a basis for our own faith
— for human opinions on such questions have no more force
than there is force in the reasons on which they are founded
— but for the sake of the half truths they may express, or
the whole truths they may, however dimly, foreshadow ;
and, more especially, if for nothing else, that we may learn
our need of a Divine Revelation to guide us in interpret
ing the voices of Nature, and to make known to us those
higher truths that are beyond the findings of mere reason.
There are elements of truth in all human opinions, how
ever extravagant, or however absurd they may grow to be.
It is ours, by such superior advantages as we may enjoy, to
discover these elements of truth, and to separate them from
the errors with which they are mingled. So is it with all
the various opinions and conceits of men with respect to
the future life. There is undeniably some truth at the bot
tom of them all. There is something within us all thai

2 HISTORICAL SURVEY. [Chap. I.
foretokens a life beyond the present, and there are analo
gies and hints in the natural world that seem to confirm
these sentiments within us.
But how vague and vapor-like are the opinions of the
wisest of men, with nothing but the light of Nature to teach
them ! They have no more definiteness or consistency than
the driven fog or the ever-changing clouds. It is here that
we see the need of a special revelation to show man, in his
bewilderment, just what and how much these suggestions
mean. . The error of the old pagan philosophers was, not in
guessing, hoping, or even believing with more or less doubt,
that there might be a life beyond the present, but in taking
no account of man's fallen condition ; in claiming for every
man, in his alienation from God and holiness, what could
be assured to him only on condition of union with his
Maker and conformity to His holy will ; in assuming that
whatever good man may conceive of, or desire, will yet
be given to him, whether he seek it or not or be fitted to
enjoy it. And yet they hardly ventured to assume so
much. Indeed, they knew not how to shape their beliefs
to conform them with their hopes and their fears. How
could they, without a divine revelation, discover and formu
late this, the great special doctrine of the Gospel — Life
Everlasting through an atoning Savior ? Well did Cicero,
in summing up the opinions of those who had gone before
him, express the mystery in which the whole question was
involved, and the only way in which it could be solved :
" Which of these opinions is true, some god must tell us ;
which is the most like truth, is a great question."* Some
god — yea, the only true God — has told us. It was the ex
press object of the incarnation of the Deity, to put men in
possession of this great truth ; to bring the Immortality for
which he yearns, after its forfeiture by sin, again within
* Tus. Quiest. lib. 1.

Sec. 1.] HEATHEN SPECULATIONS. 3
his reach ; and to make known to him the way of attaining
it. " Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift" — the
gift of Eternal Life through an atoning Savior, and the
gift of the Gospel, by which it is made known to us.
But, alas, that men to whom this Gospel has been given,
and who profess to receive its testimony, should deny its
teachings on this very question, and turn from Him who
is declared most explicitly to be the only source and way
of Eternal Life, and continue to build their hopes of Im
mortality, their philosophies and their theologies of the
future life, on the shadowy foundations of the old pagan
notion of the immortal nature of man !
This may well excite our wonder. It would be alto
gether inexplicable, did not the Scripture explain the mys
tery, by attributing the inception and prevalence and per
petuation of this great falsehood — that sinning man shall
not die, but live forever — to the artifices of the arch
enemy of God and man. He was a " liar from the begin
ning," and at the very outset he whispered this very lie —
" ye shall not surely die" — into the ears of our sinning pro
genitors, to whom God had promised exemption from death,
only on condition of continued obedience. And Satan is
still able to change any truth of God into a lie, and even
to " transform himself into an angel of light," and as the
" god of this world " to blind the minds of them that be
lieve not, " lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ,
who is the image of God, should shine unto them."
Here we have revealed to us — while we are cautioned
against it — the fons et origo of that delusion, by which the
heathen, without the Gospel, were made to interpret the
teachings of Nature, which suggest the possibility of Im
mortality in the way of holiness, as the assurance of Im
mortality to all, even in sin. The same delusion causes
those to whom this Gospel reveals a new way of Eternal

4; HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. I.
Life as the special gift of God's grace through Jesus Christ,
to interpret it only as the offer of eternal blessedness to
immortal men, whose life had not been and cannot be for
feited by sin. By this delusion the character of God is
traduced, and He who is infinitely merciful, as well as just,
is made to appear as abominably cruel and tyrannical ; and
the Gospel is robbed of its distinguishing feature, as a
message of Life to dying men, and transformed into a mes
sage of Salvation from a doom which none but an al
mighty monster could inflict ! And then, that this delu
sive fiction of the inherent and inalienable immortality of
man might not too violently contradict the voice of God
in Nature, which declares that fallen man is a perishable
creature, and the same voice in His revealed Word declar
ing the wages of sin to be death, that other doctrine of the
duplex nature of man was invented, to give it plausibility.
This doctrine teaches that man is not an integer, as God
made him, but a twofold creature, (or rather a creature and
a being under one form,) called body and soul ; that the
one is mortal, but the other immortal ; that the one natur
ally lives only for a time and then dies, while the other,
when separated from the body, rises into greater freedom
and activity, and naturally and inevitably lives on forever.
This is the philosophy that has insidiously reversed the
teachings both of Nature and Revelation, and subordina
ted them to its malign uses.
We can give only a very hasty glance at the various
speculations and opinions that have been entertained by the
old pagan philosophers, concerning the nature of man and
his destiny hereafter. Those who are curious to inquire
further are referred to works more especially devoted to
this specific topic.
The Ancient Egyptians, according to Herodotus, "be-

Sec. 1.] HEATHEN SPECULATIONS. 5
lieved that the soul, at death, immediately enters some other
animal, and that after using, as vehicles, every species of
terrestrial, aquatic, and winged creatures, it finally enters
a second time the human body. They affirm that it under
goes all these changes in the space of 3,000 years. This
opinion some among the Greeks have adopted as their
own." They believed, not only in the future existence
and transmigration of human souls, but in the divinity of
the animal souls of dogs, cats, and crocodiles, and wor
shiped them as their gods. Are they the people to teach
us correct theology ?
The Chinese, the Hindus, and other inhabitants of
Eastern Asia, from time immemorial believed, and still be
lieve, in some sort of after life. It may be a personal ex
istence, or it may be an impersonal existence. It may be
a long series of transmigrations from the body of one ani
mal to that of another, till the soul is finally absorbed into
the divine essence from which it originally came. After
all their conflicting surmises and fancies, the sum of all
that their wisest philosophers could teach them may be ex
pressed in the language of one of them, thus : " The former
1 state of being is unknown ; the present state is apparent ;
the future is not yet discovered."
The Ancient Persians, according to Zoroaster, be
lieved in the purification of the souls of the wicked by
purgatorial fires, and in the final restoration of all men to
the favor of Ormuzd, their creator.
The wise men of Araeia appear to have believed in the
future existence of man through a resurrection of the body.
In this respect, under the light of divine tradition, not ex
tinguished till long after the time of Job who is thought
by some to give intimation of such a hope, (Job 19:25,)

6 HISTORICAL SURVEY. [Chap. I.
their notions were more in accord with the teaching of the
Bible than those of other ancient people. Dr. Good, in
his Book of Nature, says : " The Hindu philosophers, totally
and universally denying a resurrection of the body, support
their doctrine of a future life alone upon the natural im
mortality of the soul; while the Arabian philosophers, pass
ing over the immortality of the soul, rested it alone upon
the resurrection of the body."
Thales, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, and the leaders of
the earlier Grecian schools of philosophy, evidently bor
rowed many of their thoughts from the earlier schools of
Egypt and India. They held similar notions of the pre-
existence and metempsychosis of human souls, and to their
indestructible nature ; and some of them included the souls
of brute animals in the same category, and held that the
wicked were punished by being changed, after death, into
inferior animals ; and for this reason Pythagoras and his
disciples abstained from eating animal food.
Socrates appears to have had more divine illumination
than, perhaps, any other heathen philosopher, and to have
come nearer to the knowledge of the true God ; and yet,
when he looked into the future, he was like one looking
into a thick fog. But, while he held his opinions with the
modest doubt which characterizes all truly great minds,
when dealing with questions too deep for the human mind
alone to fathom, he was willing to die for them. Perhaps
he is somewhat indebted to the master genius of Plato, his
pupil, for something of the assurance with which they are
set forth in his Phcedon. Even Socrates, who died like a
Christian martyr, faithful to his convictions, leaves a dying
request that his friends would not neglect to sacrifice the
cock, which he had vowed to Esculapius, and in taking his
final leave of them, says : "Iam going out of the world,

Sec. 1.] heathen speculations. 7
and you are to remain in it ; but which of us has the bet
ter part, is a secret to every one but God."
Plato, the greatest of all the ancient philosophers, held
not merely that man is a twofold being, or rather a crea
ture and a being, consisting of soul and body, but that the
soul is bipartite in its nature, one part animal and the other
part rational ; that the rational is eternal in its existence
both in the past and in the future ; that the number of im
mortal souls is definite, so as not to be increased or dimin
ished. He believed also in the transmigration of souls,
and in the future restoration — if not of all the wicked — of
all excepting the most abandoned and incorrigible.
As for Cicero, Cato, Seneca, Epictetus, Pliny, and the
scholars, statesmen, poets, and others of the Roman world,
they followed very much in the track of their Grecian
predecessors. They were subject to the same hopes, doubts,
and fears. Their notions of the future state were equally
vague, fluctuating, and contradictory. It is needless to quote
in detail from their writings. Cicero very well expresses
the common sentiment of them all when he says ; " I have
perused Plato's Phwdon with the greatest diligence and
carefulness, over and over again, but know not how it is ;
whilst I read it, I am convinced ; when I lay the book
aside, and begin to consider by myself the soul's immor
tality, all conviction ceases."
A volume might easily be filled with similar extracts,
showing the surmises, poetic fancies, crude notions, or more
definite opinions of these and other ancient people. But
we get no further light. This is the sum of all they are
able to tell us of the future.
And what is the lesson we are taught by it all ? Not,
surely, that men in their alienation from God and in all

8 historical survey. [Chap. I.
their degradation are naturally and necessarily immortal,
but that there is a higher and a better life, in union and
harmony with God; a perfect good, designed for man, if he
but knew how to reach it; But alas ! this was the ques
tion of all questions which they could not solve : How
shall man secure the favor of the gods, and possess him
self of their highest gifts ? How to discover this to ayaOov
— this summum bonum — this supreme good which they all
blindly sought, was the great question which pressed its*elf
upon their anxious minds. None of them could give any
certain answer or throw any light on this question.
Seneca quite despairingly says : " Our corrupt nature
has drunk in such draughts of iniquity, which are so far
incorporated in its very bowels, that you cannot remove it,
save by tearing them out ;" and yet, faintly conceiving of
some supernatural aid, he adds : " No man is able to clear
himself; let some one give him a hand ; let some one lead
him out."
Ovid makes a similar confession : " If I could, I would
be more sane. But some unknown force drags me against
my will. Desire draws me one way, conviction another.
I see the better and approve ; the worse I follow."
Zenophanes closes his work on Nature in these words :
" No man has discovered any certainty, nor will discover
it, concerning the gods and what I say of the universe.
Fol, if he uttered what is most perfect, still he does not
know it, but conjecture hangs over all."
Even Plato — the wisest of all the philosophers of the
pagan world, and perhaps the most positive ; whose phi
losophy has been more generally accepted, not only by
heathen but also by Christian men, and which has had more
influence in shaping their psychological and theological
systems than that of all others combined ; who has even
been installed as the great teacher, throughout the Chris-

Sec. 1.] heathen speculations. 9
tian Churcii, on this subject concerning which we most need
divine instruction, and which has been made the special
subject of a Divine Revelation ; whose authority is made
to overrule and contradict the express declarations of that
Word, and to control in its interpretation — even he is con
strained to acknowledge, as he does in his Phcedon : " It
appears to me that to know them [truths concerning the
destiny of man] clearly, in the present life, is either im
possible or very difficult. But yet, not to test what has
been said in every possible way, not to investigate the
whole matter, and exhaust upon it every effort, is the part
of a very weak man. For we ought, in respect to these
things, either to learn from others how they stand, or to dis
cover them for ourselves ; or, if both these are impossible,
theu, taking the best of human reasonings, that which ap
pears the best supported, and embarking on that, as one
risks himself on^ raft, so to sail through life — unless one
could be carried more safely, or with less risk, on a secret
conveyance or some Divine Logos." And again he says in
his Alcibiades : " We must wait patiently until some one,
either God or some inspired man, teach us our moral and
religious duties, and, as Pallas in Homer did to Diomede,
remove the darkness from our eyes."
How vague and fluctuating, at best, are the notions of
those who have no Divine Revelation to teach them ! 0,
why is it that Christian men, with the Gospel in their
hands bringing Life and Immortality to light through
Christ the Savior, will reject this everlasting Rock and go
back to the sandy foundations of the pagan world on which
to build their hope of Immortality ?
This Gospel solves for us what, to them, was an insolu
ble mystery. Man was indeed intended for Immortality,
and made capable of it, provided he should continue in

10 historical survey. [Chap. I.
union with his Maker, but not apart from Him. In the
very outset, by the constitution of man's nature, and by
the universal law of Heaven, holiness only could give as
surance of Immortality, and sin must end in Death.
And now, after having come under the doom of death
through sin, these instincts of Immortality and yearnings
after another life beyond, remain in man — not to tantalize
and mock him as mere indications of God's original pur
pose now abandoned, but as pledges of the renewal and
continuance of that purpose to give him life again from the
dead — the Life Everlasting — if he shall be fitted for it
through redemption by a Divine Savior.
But when mankind had lost the knowledge of the true
God, " their foolish heart was darkened, and professing to
be wise they became fools ;" and, under the subtle tempta
tion of their great adversary,"t«Ao changed the truth of God
into a lie," they essayed to interpret these instincts of hu
manity as the assurance of Immortality even in sin, as their
inheritance by Nature, which God now offers only to such as
shall be born again and restored to holiness through grace
in Christ. " 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." Wonder of won
ders ! Christ's own church, redeemed by His blood, has
come, by the same delusive influence, to reject Christ's own
testimony, and to accept and indorse — as we shall soon see
—that of their adversary, who was a " liar from the begin
ning."

SECTION II.
Belief of the Ancient Hebrews.
We find among the early Hebrews no trace whatever of
the doctrine of the natural immortality of man, for the
good reason, that they were more directly under the teach
ing of divine inspiration than any other people. They did
have nbtions, more or less distinct, of a future life — not on
the ground of the natural immortality of the soul, but
through the redemption of the soul and body together.
It was the object of their divinely ordained sacrificial
system to foreshadow this great truth, that man needs to
be redeemed from the death to which all are subject on ac
count of sin. Their hope of living again, so far as they
laid hold of it, was in a resurrection from the dead by Di
vine Power, and not, according to the heathen ideas, on
account of the living nature of the human soul.
As they came under the demoralizing influences of the
nations with which they had intercourse, they imbibed
many of their false and superstitious notions concerning
the dead. It was expressly to keep them from the cor
rupting power of these false notions, that they were segre
gated, and cut off as much as possible from intercommuni
cation and association with them. They were forbidden to
practice their rites, and, especially, under pain of death, to
practice those delusions of the devil — necromancy, witch
craft, and the like — which so commonly prevailed through
out the Gentile world. And to the very last, though they
became sadly corrupted in their latter days, they were kept
more free from the ghostly superstitions of the heathen,
than any other people on the face of the earth.
They regarded the sheol into which all men, whatever
their character, descended at death, as a region, or rather

12 historical survey. [Chap. I.
a state, of silence, darkness, and utter unconsciousness, un
til God shall awaken them by His almighty power to live
again. While, by the rites of their religion, and by divine
'communications through their prophets, they were taught
'to look beyond the present life, and by faith to lay hold of
sthat mysterious, undefined, future good in reserve for them,
-and yet to be more fully revealed ; and while they believed
¦that the wicked should tremble in view of a future judg
ment and of remediless destruction ; yet their ideas'of any
thing beyond this life, even in the case of the most ad-
"vanced, were exceedingly vague, and the great mass appear
to have been hardly at all influenced by them. The mo
tives and sanctions of their divine law and system of re
ligion were pre-eminently earthly and temporal. The re
wards of virtue and obedience were health, abundant har
vests, numerous progeny, length of days, and general pros
perity ; and the penalty of sin and disobedience was just
the reverse of these — drought, famine, disease, pain, sor
row, and death. No doubt, there was involved in these
promised blessings, and especially in the promise so oft re
peated that the righteous should prolong his days, possess
the earth, etc., a deeper meaning than at first appeared.
Here was the germ of that gospel truth, yet to be revealed
through Christ, of Everlasting Life in the kingdom of God,
yet to be established on this renewed earth; and in the
.threatening of evil, and of death itself, there were doubtless
intimations of that second death which follows the future
judgment of the wicked, and from which there is no possi
ble recall. But these higher truths were not distinctly ap
prehended till they were brought fully to light in the Gospel.
Warburton, in his Divine Legation, says : " The doctrine
•of a future state of rewards and punishments is not to be
found in, nor did it make a part of, the divine legation of

Sec. 2.] BELIEF OF THE ANCIENT HEBREWS. 13
Bishop Lowth, in his Lectures, says that " no explicit
mention of immortal spirits " is to be found in the Hebrew
poets. Dr. Harmer says : " Many of the Jews understood the
life of the world to come in a literal sense ;" that is, they
believed in a literal resurrection from the dead, and in a
real substantial life, and not in any such ghostly life of the
spirit only, as was commonly imagined by the heathen.
It does, indeed, seem strange to those who are thoroughly
possessed by the Platonic idea of the immortality of the
soul as distinct from the body, and who try to find some sup
port for it in the Bible, that the Jews, who of all others
might be supposed to be well instructed in this " fundament
al truth of religion," as it is called, should be so unsophisti
cated and innocent of any such idea. It puzzles them. It
ought to lead them to inquire whether the idea — so far
from being fundamental — ought to have any place what
ever in any system of religion, as it certainly did not in
that which was divinely given by Moses.
Professor Ernst Stahelin, in The Foundation of Our
Faith, says : " Moses and Confucius did not expressly teach
the immortality of the soul ; nay, they seemed purposely
to avoid entering upon the subject. They simply took it for
granted." How does he know they took it for granted?'
He would better have said, As for Moses, he did not teach
it simply because, as God's servant, he had no such doc
trine to teach. It was Satan's doctrine, not God's truth ;
therefore he "purposely avoided " it. The author of Ecce
Homo, himself a believer in this heathen dogma, on pp. 35
and 36, says : " It is surprising that the early Jews, in whom
the sense of God'was so strong, and who were familiar with
the conception of an Eternal Being, should yet have been
behind, rather than before other nations, in suspecting the
immortality of the soul. The Greek did not even in the

14 HISTORICAL SURVEY. [Chap. I.
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, limii
their hopes and fears to the present life, and compare man
to the ' beasts that perish'. . . . The suspicion of immor
tality appears in the later Prophets — that suspicion which
Christ himself was to develop into a glorious confidence."
A glorious confidence in what? Not in the immortality
of the soul of man. That doctrine is not found in the
later Prophets, nor in the Gospel of Christ ; but in the
Christian doctrine of the immortality of the whole man
through a resurrection from the dead, by the almighty
power of God, and by virtue of the death and resurrection
of Christ the Savior. It was not the ghostly immortality
of disembodied spirits, but a living again of resurrected
saints to possess this renewed earth and to hold it forever.
Dr. G. D. Boardman, in his Creative Week, page 215,
makes the following admission, though he seems reluctant
to do it : " And yet — for I would be candid — I must add
that not a single passage, from Genesis to Revelation,
teaches, so far as I am aware, the doctrine of man's na
tural immortality. On the other hand, Holy Writ em
phatically declares that God only hath Immortality ; that
is to say, God alone is naturally, inherently, in His own
essence and nature, immortal. He alone is the IAM, hav
ing this as His name forever, His memorial to all genera
tions. If then man is immortal, it is because Immortality
has been bestowed on him. He is immortal, not because
he was created so, but because he has become so, deriving
his deathlessness from Him who alone hath Immortality ;"
and — he should have added — only by the regenerating
power of the Holy Spirit and a new birth and a resurrec
tion from the dead through the Savior, as revealed in the
Gospel.

Sec. 2.] BELIEF OF THE ANCIENT HEBREWS. 15
It was not till after the return of the Jews from their
long captivity, where they imbibed many heathen notions,
and after the close of the sacred canon, which had hitherto
been the foundation of their religious faith, that they be
gan to think of the soul as a separate essence, and to en
tertain the fables of the pagan world respecting its sepa
rate existence after death. Hence in the Apocrypha, and
in the Mishna and Gemara of the Talmud, and in the writ
ings of Josephus, who was a Pharisee and a Platonist, as the
Pharisees generally were, we find here and there traces of
such notions. But there is no uniformity nor consistency
of teaching in these writings, nor in the later writings of
their Rabbins. By careful scrutiny one may find, mixed
with much that is true and in accord with the Old Testa
ment doctrine, many passages, here and there, which favor
the Grecian philosophy, as well as vague hints that he may
construe either way as he may himself be inclined.
Dr. Pusey, in his Analysis of the Book of Enoch, main
tains that it is made up of contributions from several
authors, and can be quoted on either side of this question,
because it expresses both the belief of the Pharisees in
the endless suffering of the wicked, and of the orthodox
Jewish church in the everlasting life of the righteous only,
and the destruction of the wicked.
While nothing in all their Sacred Scriptures is said of
the natural immortality of the soul, as they fell away from
the teaching of inspiration, and adopted the views of others,
and their modes of thought and expression, we find such
phraseology cropping out in their " oral traditions " and in
their uninspired writings, as the following, in which both
views are mingled :
" God created man to be immortal, and made him to be
an image of His own eternity. Nevertheless, through envy
of the devil, came death into the world, and they that do

16 HISTORICAL SURVEY. [Chap. L
hold of his side do find it [death.]- For he created aD
things that they might have their being ; and the genera
tions of the world were healthful ; nor was the kingdom
of death upon the earth — for the righteous is immortal—
but ungodly men and their works and words called it to
them, for when they thought to have it for their friend,.
they were consumed to naught." ( Wis. 1: 2.)
" After death, the judgment shall come, when we shall'
live again, and then the names of the righteous be mani
fest, and the works of the ungodly shall be declared ; and
that shall die that is corrupt, and misery shall pass away,.
and the long suffering shall have an end." (Esd. 7.)
At the time of the advent of our Lord, the Jewish people-
were divided into various sects, such as the Pharisees, Sad
ducees, Essenes, and others. There was no uniformity of
belief among them on this question. Indeed, it was one of
the chief questions in dispute among them.
Plato's doctrine of the soul, its eternal pre-existence, and
its eternal life in blessedness or misery hereafter, pre
vailed among the Pharisees. Josephus, who was one of
them, and evidently indoctrinated into these notions, pre
sents their side of the case in as favorable a light as possi
ble in his writings, and yet he does not pretend that their
authority for this belief was derived from the written Law
of Moses, or from the Prophets, but rather from other
sources. In regard to the Jews generally, both ancient
and modern, Mr. Edward White, in his Life in Christ, p.
156, thus remarks :
" The Jews themselves have never pretended to derive
from the Mosaic Law a defense of the dqctrine that eternal
suffering is the legal punishment of sin. The greatest of
the modern Rabbins, Maimonides, Abarbanel, Kimchi,
and Bechai, with one voice teach that the punishment of im
penitent sinners is literal and absolute extermination at the
last judgment ; and they represent this as the tradition of
tlie Jewish Church in interpreting the Law. The absence
of the doctrine of eternal suffering from the Law, is deci-

Sec. 2.] BELIEF OF THE ANCIENT HEBREWS. 17
sive proof that modern men have misinterpreted the Reve
lation, by foisting into it the philosophic doctrine of nat
ural immortality; thus compelling Scripture to utter a
language not its own."
The author just quoted still further remarks, in sub
stance, that the doctrine of the Rabbins, during the Chris
tian era, shows that there is no dominant Jewish tradition
from the early Christian ages in support of the Pharisaic
opinion of an endless misery. " In the Mishna," says Prof.
Hudson, "we find no mention whatever of the immortality
of the soul — that is of all souls — or of eternal pain, though
exclusion from eternal life is often mentioned." In the
Gemara, which represents very ancient Jewish thoughts,
the destiny of the wicked is thus most fully described :
" Those who sin and rebel greatly in Israel, as well as
Gentile sinners, shall descend into Gehenna, and there be
judged during twelve months ; at the end of which, the
body is consumed, the soul is burned up, and the spirit is
scattered beneath the feet of the just, as it is said in Mal.
4: 3. But heretics, informers, and infidels, who deny the
law of God, and the resurrection of the dead, and those
who cause others to sin, as Jeroboam the son of Nebat,
shall descend into Gehenna and there be judged ages of
ages ; but in the end that fire shall utterly consume them,
leaving neither root nor branch."
There are in the Talmud traces of Restorationism —
chiefly in favor of the Israelites. But we find no indica
tion that the eternity of hell-torments was ever an accepted
Jewish doctrine, though asserted by certain Rabbins with
infinite puerilities. Maimonides, the greatest of them all,
distinctly teaches the immortality of the righteous alone,
and the absolute extermination of the wicked, in such em
phatic words as these :
" The punishment which awaits the wicked man is, that
he will have no part in eternal life, but will die and be ut-

18 historical survey. [Chap. L
terly destroyed. He will not live forever, but for his sins
will be cut off and perish like the brute. It is a death
from which there is no return. The reward of the righteous
will consist in this, that they will be in bliss and exist in
everlasting beatitude, while the retribution of the wicked
will be, to be deprived of that future life and to be cut off."
Mr. White avers that he has verified these citations from
the greatest of modern Jewish writers. Rabbi Manasseh
Ben-Israel says that Maimonides, learned in all the lore of
antiquity, undoubtedly understood this " cutting off" of the
soul, mentioned in the Scriptures, to be no other than its
annihilation. In Dr. Clavering's Latin version his words
are these: "Hoc autem supplicium impios manet, quod ista
vita non potientur, sed morientur, et penitus destruentur.
Qui ista vita est indignus mortuus est quoniam non in eter-
num vivet, sed iniquitatum gratia exscindetur et tanquam
bestia peribit. Et hac est exeisio de qua in lege scribitur,
EXSCINDENDO, EXSCINDETUR ANIMA ILLA."*
" Philo, nearly cotemporary with the Apostles, and, out
side of their circle, the most masterly Jewish intellect of
that period, seems to have believed in the annihilation of
the wicked as the result of future punishment. His idea
was, that the material world was to be destroyed and the
wicked ' involved in its destruction.' " (Is "Eternal " Pun
ishment Endless ? by Dr. Whiton.)
The Sadducees were a sect of materialistic infidels. They
interpreted the Mosaic Law literally, and in a sense en
tirely physical and temporal. They not only denied the
immortality of the wicked, but of the righteous also.
In a word, they denied all future existence. They
held that "there is no resurrection, neither angel nor
* " But this punishment awaits tire wicked, that they shall not
possess that life, but shall die, and be utterly destroyed. He who
ia unworthy of that life is dead because lie will not live forever,
but on account of his iniquities will be cut off and perish like the
beasts. And this is a cutting-off concerning which in the law it is
written, That soul shall be utterly extinguished."

Sec 2.] BELIEF OF THE ANCIENT HEBREWS. 19
spirit." They were the decided antagonists of the Phari
sees, and agreed with them only in their opposition to
Christ and His doctrines ; for he showed no favor to the
errors of either party. It is often -supposed and argued by
those who hold to the Platonic doctrine of the soul, and
endeavor to find some scriptural support for their views,
that, however much our Lord condemned the practices of
the Pharisees, He favored their doctrines; and, that he
opposed the Sadducees chiefly on account of their hereti
cal and infidel notions. But this was far from the case.
He sided with neither party. He did not set himself to
combat with their specific errors. This was not His method
of teaching. He endeavored to correct the errors of both
parties by supplanting them with the truth. He was quite
as severe in the condemnation of the one as of the other.
He warned his disciples to beware not only of the Saddu
cees, but of the Pharisees also. He denounced them for
teaching for doctrine the commandments of men, and for
making the word of God of none effect through their tra
ditions. " Then understood they that He bade them beware
of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees." The fact
is, they were both partly right and partly wrong, as is usu
ally the case with opposing religious parties. One extreme
begets the other. Mr. White very justly says :
" The Sadducees occupied an unassailable post, when
they declared that Moses and the Prophets knew nothing
of the Immortality of the Soul as a basis of hope in futu
rity. The Pharisees were equally in strength when they
declared that the Scriptures proclaimed the promise of
Eternal Life." And both alike erred, from failing to
grasp the truth which Christ himself would have taught
them — and which would have reconciled them, had they
been willing to receive it — " that man has lost the hope of
life eternal under the law, and only regains it by the grace
of God in redemption." (Life in Christ, p. 187.)

20 historical survey. [Chap.L
Both parties endeavored to catch Him in His words, to
win from Him something which they could use to support
their own cause or employ against their adversaries, or by
which they might be able to accuse Him before the people.
But they were most signally frustrated in every encounter
they sought with Him ; for they were obliged to admit that
" never man spake like this man."
Some of the disciples, who were aware of the Pharisaic
doctrine of pre-existence, made a delicate appeal to Jesus
on the subject by asking Him concerning a man who was
congenitally blind, " Who did sin, this man or his parents^
that he was born blind?" Without even noticing the
error of doctrine that was implied in this question, our
Lord simply said : " Neither hath this man sinned nor his
parents, but that the works of God should be made
manifest." The Pharisees believed themselves to be the
special favorites of Heaven, and that of all others —
whatever might become of the heretical Jews and
heathen Gentiles — they would most surely inherit the
Eternal Life, of which Christ spoke so much. They were
such sticklers for all the ceremonial observances of their
religion, so punctilious in observing their fasts and paying
their tithes, they supposed, of course, that He would admit
their claim. But he said unto them : " Ye search the Scrip
tures ; for in them ye think ye have (the assurance of)
Eternal Life, and they are they which testify of Me " — of
Me as the only true ground of hope. " But ye will not
come to Me that ye might have life." " Verily, verily, I
say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood
of the Son of Man, ye have no life in yourselves." "I am
the Way, the Truth, and the Life." " Your fathers did eat
manna in the wilderness, and are dead. 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 wiU

Sec. 2.J BELIEF OF THE ANCIENT HEBREWS. 21
give is my flesh which I give for the life of the world."
If they did not understand Him, it was not because He
did not speak plainly. But like the believers in the same
philosophy at the present day, their minds were so thor
oughly prepossessed with another doctrine, and prejudiced
against this great gospel truth of Eternal Life only in
Christ, that they could not receive it. But so much they
did understand, that He did not admit their claim, and
that, according- to His doctrine, they had no foundation
for their hopes of Eternal Life. Therefore they hated Him,
opposed Him, and sought to kill Him.
The Sadducees, on the other hand, though they prided
themselves on their strict adherence to the letter of the
Mosaic Law, could gain no aid or comfort from Him, in
their denial of the doctrine of the resurrection and of a
future life. When they came to Him with a supposed case
of a woman who had successively married and buried seven
husbands and then died herself, closing the case with the
inquiry, " In the resurrection whose wife is she ?" He re
plied : " The children of this world marry and are given
in marriage ; but they which shall be accounted worthy to
obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead,
neither marry nor are given in marriage ; neither can they
die any more ; for they are equal unto the angels ; and are
the children of God, being the children of the resurrec
tion. Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at
the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham,
and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ; for He is
not a God of the dead, but of the living ; for all live unto
Him." (Luke 20: 27-38.)
This reply of our Lord is most remarkable. It has
many interesting points, and we are tempted to dwell upon
it at some length ; and the more especially, because there
are so many who misinterpret it, and apply it to prove a

22 historical survey. [Chap. I.
doctrine which is not here in question between Christ and
the Sadducees. It is not concerning the intermediate state,
but concerning the resurrection of the dead, that the Sad
ducees inquire of our Lord ; and it is to this point that He
directs His reply. But we can only now note very briefly
these few points :
1. In the resurrection, man is not simply restored to his
original Paradisal state of purity and blessedness, but lifted
up to one that is higher and more spiritual.
2. It is pre-eminently the portion of those who are fitted
for it.
3. It is not transitory like the present. " Neither can
they die any more." Those who are admitted to it enter
upon the Life Everlasting. The implication is that those
who are not worthy to be admitted to it must die again in
the second death. This deathless existence — this Immor
tality of which Christ speaks — is the peculiar property of
the children of God.
4. Though Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now con
fessedly dead and buried, they are not lost or forgotten by
God. Their identity is still preserved. They are not ut
terly extinct. Their whole life is not completed, but only
begun. They have passed through one stage of it. They
are to enter upon the higher and. eternal stage, when He
shall call them. He watches over their sleeping bodies.
Their breath or spirit which they surrendered to Him, is
in His keeping. He is still their God, and will be, as in
the past, so in the future and forever. In the mind and
purpose of God His children never die. They all live by
Him, and in Him, and unto Him.
That those who heard our Lord's reply, understood it as
a complete answer to the cavils of the Sadducees as to the
resurrection, is evident from what follows : " Then certain

Sec. 2.] BELIEF OF THE ANCIENT HEBREWS. 23
of the scribes answering, said, Master, thou hast well said ;
and after that, they durst not ask him any questions at all."
It is well remarked by the author of Life in Christ,
" that the conduct of the Incarnate Life towards each of
these parties, throws a flood of light upon the cause of
their honest differences and the true mode of reconcilia
tion. The existence of the two sects seems to have been
permitted by Divine Providence, as the most effectual
method of leading men to the Christ who alone can open
the gates of Life Eternal to the dead."

SECTION III.
Doctrine of the Fathers and Early Christian Church.
With many, the question, What did the early Fathers
believe and teach t is one of high importance. Their tes
timony is regarded by them as next in authority to that of
the Apostles themselves. We do not, -however, attach any
more importance to their opinions than to those of other
men, excepting as it shall be made to appear that they
were derived directly from Christ, and those whom He com
missioned to preach and teach in His name. In this re
spect the question is important and very suggestive. Of
course, the nearer we approach to the Fountain Head, and
listen to the words of those who may be supposed to have
drawn their inspiration and doctrines from it — as the com
panions or immediate successors of the Apostles — the more
important it may be for us to know what they believed
and taught. With us, the teaching of God's Word is ulti
mate and supreme ; and, when upon such a question as this

24 HISTORICAL SURVEY. [Chap. I.
of Everlasting Life it is full and explicit, it needs not to be
supplemented by human opinions to render it entirely
credible and authoritative. But more for the sake of
others than for our own, and to give completeness to our
Survey, we have devoted much time and study to the pa-
tristic literature, as regards this subject. We have, also,
availed ourselves liberally of the researches of others, who
have made this literature a subject of special and thorough
investigation ; and we shall take the liberty of quoting
from their writings in aid of our position, as freely as
occasion shall require.*
What the Scripture teaches concerning this Life Ever
lasting, has been shown at length in another place. John,
the forerunner of Christ, proclaimed Him as the Life-giver
of the world. Our Lord himself declared it to be the
great object and end of His mission to this earth, to give
Immortality to perishing men. He offered himself as the
unique and only source of Eternal Life, and declared every
where and with constant reiteration that, in order to this
life, men must " believe " on Him, for he that believeth not
on Him cannot see Life. " This is the will of Him that
sent me, that every one that seeth the Son and believeth on
Him, may have Everlasting Life, and I will raise him up
at the last day."
The Apostles and early Christian disciples taught the
same doctrine — Life and Immortality through Christ alone.
He was the only Foundation upon which they rested all
their hopes of living again, after this life, and of living for
ever. "This is Eternal Life, that they might know Thee,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."
* Those who would pursue this subject further, we would refer
to the Ante-Nicene Library, an English work, edited by Rev. A.
Roberts, D. D., and James Donaldson, LL. D. Also, to Preben
dary Constable's work on Future Punishment, fifth edition • J. Ml
Denniston's Perishing Soul ; and C. F. Hudson's Debt and Grace.

Sec. 3.] doctrine of the fathers. 25
The titles given to the Lord Jesus, in the Scriptures, are
very suggestive. He is called the " Prince of Life," or, as
in the margin, Author of Life. (Acts 3 : 15.) Elsewhere
we read of " Christ our Life," etc. Mr. J. H. Whitmore,
in his excellent work, The Doctrine of Immortality, says <
that in the Syriac version, He is frequently called the
" Vivifier" and the " Life-giver;" and that these titles are
made much more prominent in that version than in our
authorized English version. The following are sample pas
sages given from Murdock's translation :
" There is not another name under heaven, which is given
to men, whereby to live." (Acts 4 : 12.)
" Him hath God established as a Head and Life-giver."
(Acts 5: 31.)
" I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of
God unto Life to all who believe." (Rom. 1 : 16.)
" I did not come to judge the world, but to vivify the
world." (John 12: 47.)
" Believe on the name of our Lord Jesus Messiah, and
thou wilt have Life." (Acts 16 : 31.)
" Our concern is from heaven, and from thence we ex
pect our Vivifier, our Lord Jesus Messiah." (Phil. 3 : 20.)
" He is able to vivify forever them who come to God by
Him." (Heb. 7 : 25.)
" The appearing of our Life-giver, Jesus the Messiah,
who hath abolished death, and hath made manifest Life
and Immortality by the Gospel." (2 Tim. 1 : 10.)
" From thy childhood, thou wast taught the Holy Books,
which can make thee wise unto Life, by faith in Jesus Mes
siah." (2 Tim. 3 : 15.)
" My Lord will rescue me from every evil work, and
give me Life in his heavenly kingdom." (2 Tim. 4 : 18.)
This was their assurance and their song : " Blessed be

26 HISTORICAL SURVEY. [Chap. I.
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which ac
cording to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again to
a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead, to an inheritance incorruptible (aphtharton, immortal)
and undefiled and that fadeth not away, reserved in
heaven, . . . ready to be revealed in the last time."*
If, now, we shall find the Apostolic Fathers following in
the same line of .thought with Christ and His Apostles ;
and if the nearer we approach to the beginning of the
Christian era, the more nearly they are found to accord
with their divinely inspired predecessors, in their forms of
thought and modes of expression ; and if, in other terms of
similar import, we find them honoring Christ as the great
giver of the Life Everlasting, and emphatically and al
ways ascribing their hopes of Immortality to Him, by vir
tue of His death and resurrection, and denying this great
boon to unbelievers, as the Scriptures do ; and if we shall
find that these early Fathers never speak of the soul" of
man as something separate and distinct from the man him
self, or as constituting the man himself without the body,
or as living in a disembodied state while the man is dead ;
and if we discover that they never use such expressions as
the " immortal man," " the immortal soul," " the death
less being," "endless sin and misery," "unending torment,"
" eternal woe," " the death that never dies," and others of
like import, which are never found in the Scriptures, but
which came into the literature of the Church with the phi
losophy of Plato, after the middle of the second century,
* The teachings of Scripture— especially of our Lord and His
immediate disciples— are considered at length in another chapter,
to which we must refer the reader, without any further enlarge
ment in this place. It will there be shown that the doctrine of
Immortality in and through Christ only, is not merely taught, and
taught with constant and emphatic repetition, but that it is the dis
tinguishing feature of the Gospel.

Sec. 3.] DOCTRINE OF THE FATHERS. 27
and which are so common at the present day ; then we may
fairly claim them as witnessing for us, and with us, lo this
great central truth of the Gospel — of Immortality and Eter
nal Life only through Christ the Savior.
This is just what we do find. On the other hand, as we
come down from the apostolic time, we shall find these
Christian teachers falling away from the simplicity there is
in Christ, and " the faith once delivered to the saints."
They begin to speculate concerning the nature and destiny
of man, and conceits of their own are mingled with the
doctrines of the Gospel. Plato's philosophy — which out
side of the Church is popular among the learned — comes
more and more into discussion in the Church, and a de
cided leaning towards it soon begins to manifest itself.
Converts are made from his disciples. Efforts are made to
win others by endeavoring to soften down the antagonism
of the Gospel to his doctrines, and by endeavoring to ac
commodate its teachings to his philosophy.
The temptation in this direction was strong. Nor was it
difficult for those who were so disposed, to bring these two
theories of man into an apparent agreement. Plato in
sisted on morality and virtue ; so did Christ. He taught
the immortality of man ; Christ taught the immortality of
the righteous. It was quite natural to enlarge the scope of
Christ's doctrine so as to make it universal in its applica
tion ; and then, as for the wicked, instead of their extinction
in the fires of Gehenna and in the second death — instead of
the punishment of everlasting destruction according to the
teaching of Christ — this punishment of the world to come
was allowed, according to Plato's teaching, in the first in
stance to be purgatorial and reformatory, and then, in the
case of the incorrigible, it was declared to be eternal tor
ment This compromise had the further merit, in the eyes-
of those who made it, of giving into the hands of the

28 HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. I.
domineering and ambitious ecclesiastics — who in this age of
increasing corruption had begun to claim to hold the very
keys of the kingdom of heaven — just the power for which
they thirsted, and which they soon learned to wield with
such terrible severity over the lives and consciences of the
people. These seeds of error, which afterwards sprung up and
bore such bitter fruit, were early sown. Indeed, they began
to manifest themselves even in the days of the Apostles.
Paul, in his Epistle to Timothy, says : " O, Timothy, keep
that which is committed to thy trust ; avoid profane and
vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so-called ;
which some professing have erred concerning the faith."
And to the Corinthians he says : " I fear lest by any means,
as the serpent beguiled Eve, through his subtility, [refer
ring to this very doctrine, " ye shall not surely die,"] so
your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity which
is in Christ." He warned the Colossians, saying : " Beware
lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit,
after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the
world, and not after Christ."
The incoming of these heresies, and especially of the
philosophy of Plato, iii which so many of them centered,
was stoutly resisted by those who were true to the faith of
the Gospel, as we may see in the voluminous discussions of
the ecclesiastics, and in the decrees of the Church Councils
during this early period. But as the Church rose into
power and authority, the spirit of the world increased ; hu
man speculations and philosophies gained the ascendancy
more and more ; the protests of the faithful became more
feeble, and at length impossible, excepting at the expense
of life itself. Before half a dozen centuries had elapsed,
this philosophy of Plato became triumphant in the Church,
and the simple Gospel of Christ had become completely

Sec. 3.] DOCTRINE OF THE FATHERS. 29
overlaid by the dogmas of the schoolmen and the vain con
ceits of heathen philosophy.
It is not always easy to ascertain what were the teachings
of the Fathers, especially of the earliest ; for the writings
of many of them are now extant only in a very fragment
ary form ; the writings of others are entirely lost ; and of
the writings of still others, who wrote in Greek, we have
only some portions translated into Latin. Some of them
have been evidently interpolated and corrupted in various
ways in later times, by those who would use their honored
names and influence to support their own heresies. For
the same reason spurious Epistles, written long after they
were dead, have been attributed to them. Still further ; it
is quite as practicable to deal unfairly with the credible
Epistles of these early Fathers, as, in translating the sacred
Scriptures into our language, to misconstrue their meaning,
and to make them seem to utter sentiments the very re
verse of what they entertained and expressed. In this way
controversialists, on all sides of religious questions in de
bate, have affected to find an apparent support for their
doctrines in the writings of the early Fathers, as they have
in the inspired writings of the Apostles.
But, using our best diligence, and honestly endeavoring to
learn just what these Fathers taught on the question in
hand, and availing ourselves of the investigations and criti
cisms of learned scholars, we can affirm with confidence
that the associates and immediate successors of the Apostles
gave no countenance whatever to the Platonic doctrine of the
nature of man, that afterwards came in, to vex and corrupt
the church. In all the genuine patristic literature now ex
tant, for the first century and a half of the Christian era,
nothing whatever can be found to favor it. Of course, this
question of Immortality in Christ alone, not being denied,

30 HISTORICAL SURVEY. [Chap. I.'
nor coming prominently into discussion in the Church till
after this period, we should not expect to find such cate
gorical statements, dogmatic utterances, and systematic ar
guments, in this regard, as are found in the writings of the
later Fathers. But the whole drift and tenor of their writ
ing, and all their modes of expression, as well as their
lines of thought, are in keeping with the doctrine they so
evidently believed and taught, that Eternal Life is the por
tion of the believers only, and that it is received, not in
the natural, but in the spiritual birth — that it is not from
Adam, but from Christ only. In some of these writings —
though by no means the most important — we meet with
the expressions, " everlasting punishment" and " unquench
able fire," as simple quotations from the New Testament,
with no addition or specification to define the precise view
of the writer. But in not one of them do we find a hint
of human immortality, or of " everlasting suffering." Mr.
Henry Constable thus declares:
" From beginning to end of them, there is not one word
said of that immortality of the soul which is so prominent
in the writings of the later Fathers. Immortality is by
them asserted to be peculiar to the redeemed. The pun
ishment of the wicked is by them emphatically declared to
be everlasting, in the sense of remediless destruction. Not
one*stray expression of theirs can be interpreted as giving
any countenance to the theory of restoration after purga
torial suffering. The fire of hell is with them, as with us,
an unquenchable one ; but its issue is with them, as with
Scripture, ' destruction,' ' death,' ' loss of life.' We challenge
our opponents to controvert our view of their writings in a
single particular."
It will be observed that the doctrine of Plato is, in fact,
a doctrine of Universalism. It claims for all men that Im
mortality which is the peculiar prerogative of the Christian.
After being received into the Church, it gave rise to two
parties: (1) those who held, with Augustine, to the theory

Sec. 3.] DOCTRINE OF THE FATHER8. BI
of the endless misery of the wicked, and (2) those who held,
with Origen, to that of their final restoration through pur
gatorial suffering. After a time, these two Platonic schools
coalesced, under a kind of compromise, by which both doc
trines were retained— venial offenders' were reclaimed
through purgatorial sufferings, according to Origen's notion,
and irreclaimable sinners were consigned to eternal suffer
ing, according to Augustine's doctrine.
Hence we find these three schools in the early Christian
Church : First, the school of Christ and the Apostles and
their immediate successors, maintaining the doctrine of the
Immortality of the righteous only. Second, that of Augus
tine — called after him, as its most renowned supporter,
though it had its rise two centuries before his time — main
taining the doctrine of the Immortality of all men ; of the
righteous in blessedness and glory, and of the wicked in
sin and misery forever. Third, that of Origen,. as a kind
of reaction and protest agaftist the horrible doctrine of
eternal torment — as is the doctrine of universal salvation
against the same dogma in our day — holding out the hope
of the final salvation of all men.
That the reader may be able to see at a glance the chro
nological order of these three schools, and the names of the
Christian Fathers attached to them severally, we subjoin the
following table, which is substantially taken from the author
last referred to, with some additions, after which we will
cite such of their writings as we can find room for in this
limited volume. As an entire chapter is de'voted to' the
words of Christ and His Apostles on this question, the ci
tations from the New Testament, which might otherwise
be in place here, will be reserved for that place, and, con
tenting ourselves with those made above, we begin at once
with the earliest of the Fathers after the Apostles.

32

HISTORICAL SURVEY.

[Chap.L

THE THREE THEORIES OF IMMORTALITY.

A.D.

90
100104107160164
182 190
200208220235238253258
300 ft
325373392
397400
430

IMMORTALITY IN
CHRIST ONLY.

Our Lord,
The Apostles,
Barnabas,Clement of Rome,
Hermas,Ignatius,
Polycarp,Justin (?)
Theophilus,

Irenseus,Clement of Alex.(?)

Arnobius,

Lactantius,

UNIVERSAL IMMORTALITY.

ENDLESS
TORMENT OF
SINNERS.

Athenagoras,Tatian,

Tertullian, Hippolytus,
Cyprian,
Athanasius,

Jerome,Ambrose,Augustine,

UNIVERSAL RESTOR
ATION.

Clement of Alex.(?)
Gregory Thau.,
Origen,
Pierius,Theognostus,
Pamphilus, Eusebius,Titus,Basil, Didymus,Gregory of Nvssa,
etc.

•The Christian Church.-

Sec. 3.] DOCTRINE OF THE FATHERS. 33
THE FIRST SCHOOL.
Barnabas was the companion of Paul. He is freqently
mentioned in the Acts. He was bishop of the Church at
Milan, which he founded. The writings bearing his name
are supposed by some to be apocryphal. If not his, they
are of very early date. Tischendorf found them appended
to the New Testament in the Codex Sinaiticus. They were
regarded in the first ages as canonical. He speaks of the
"life" of the righteous; and also of the "death" of the
wicked as the great evil to be avoided, but he gives no hint
of everlasting suffering. " He that chooses the evil shall be
destroyed ('jpoleitai) together with his works." (c. 21.)
" The day is at hand in which all things shall be destroyed,
together with the wicked one," whom he calls " the prince
of the time of unrighteousness," while " the Lord is from
everlasting to everlasting." (c. 18.)
Clement I., bishop of Rome, was probably the fellow-
laborer of Paul, of whom he speaks in Phil. 4: 3, "whose
name is in the Book of Life." He is supposed to have
been martyred A. D. 100. Some of the homilies and epis
tles that have been ascribed to him are now admitted to be
spurious. They were forged long after his death, at a time
when the philosophy of Plato was beginning to find advo
cates in the Church. Some expressions in these apocryphal
writings have been quoted as seeming to favor the received
doctrines. But those that are evidently genuine contain
nothing whatever that can bear any such construction. He
never speaks of the immortality of the soul, as later writers
do. He represents man as a creature of the dust, whose
life is but the " life of a day." He tells us that Immor
tality is one of " God's gifts to the redeemed ;" that if we
would gain it, we must " earnestly strive" for it ; that if we
' do not thus strive for it, we shall not obtain it. " How

34 HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. I.
blessed and wonderful are the gifts of God ! Life in im
mortality ; brightness in righteousness," etc. (c. 35.)
Hermas is supposed to be the person mentioned by Paul,
Rom. 16 : 14. His writings, though fanciful, were very
popular. They were read in the churches for several cen
turies, and were esteemed by Origen and others as inspired.
The Greek original of his Book of the Shepherd is now
nearly all lost. We have only a Latin translation, in
which his two constant themes are Life and Death. He
never speaks of future torment. The torment to which he
alludes as the penalty of sin is always of a temporal char
acter. His book is full of such expressions as these : " Life
.is distant from the wicked ;" " they are ordained to death ;"
"sin brings to death ;" " all who will not repent have lost
their life;" "they shall utterly die." "They who have
known the Lord and have seen his wonderful works, if
they shall live wickedly, shall be doubly punished and
shall die forever." " Many have altogether departed from
God ; they have utterly lost life." " Fear God and thou
shalt live, and whosoever shall fear Him and keep His
commandments, their life is with the Lord — they shall live
forever — but as for those who keep them not, there is no
life in them."
Ignatius, who was among the most eminent of the Apos
tolic Fathers, was ordained bishop of the Church at Anti
och in about the year 67, by Peter, as some suppose, or, ac
cording to others, by John. He continued there for forty
years and suffered martyrdom at last, by being exposed to
wild beasts in the amphitheatre, in 107. Of the eight epis
tles that are attributed to him, the three which iire re
garded as genuine— namely, those addressed to Polycarp,
the Ephesians, and the Romans— contain such expressions'
as the following : " Be vigilant as God's athlete ; the meed-

Sec. 3.] doctrine of the fathers. 35
is Incorruptibility and Life Eternal." " I do not desire
the food of corruption, nor the desires of this world. The
bread of God, which is the body of Christ, I seek; and
His blood, which is love incorruptible, and perpetual life."
" Christ our inseparable Life." " That He, might breathe
the breath of Immortality into His church." " The bread
which is the medicine of Immortality, our antidote, that
we should not die but live forever in Christ Jesus."
Polycarp is supposed to have been acquainted with the
Apostle John. He was bishop of Smyrna, and' suffered
martyrdom there by fire, at an advanced age, near the year
160. Only one short letter of his is extant, in which noth
ing definite on this question can be found. Eusebius, in
his Ecc. Hist., (b. 6, c. 15,) gives the following as the prayer
which he offered after he was bound to the stake :
"Father of thy well-beloved and blessed Son, Jesus
Christ, through whom we have received the knowledge of
Thee — the God of angels, and powers, and of all creation,
and of all the family of the righteous that live, before
thee — I bless thee that thou hast thought me worthy of the
present day and hour, to have a share in the number of the
martyrs and in the cup of Christ unto the Resurrection of
Eternal Life, both of the soul and body, in the incorruptible
felicity of the Holy Spirit ; among whom may I be re
ceived in thy sight, this day, as a rich and acceptable sac
rifice, as thou the faithful and true God hast prepared, hast
revealed and fulfilled . . . . "
Justin. We have seen that the views of the Apostolic
Fathers, from the time of Christ to that of Justin — that is,
to the middle of the second century — were in complete har
mony with the Christian doctrine of Immortality of the
righteous only. Their testimony is positive, uniform, and
incontrovertible. But the Apostles and their immediate
followers have now all passed away. Another generation
of disciples and teachers has arisen. The seeds of error,

36 historical survey. [Chap. I.
so early sown, are already beginning to bear fruit. The
tendency to speculate and philosophize, which the Apostle
Paul so earnestly rebuked in his day, has become yet more
strong and positive. The philosophy of Plato, which is
predominant in the world outside of the Church, now comes
into the Church with the converts which have been won
from the ranks of his disciples, and from this time onward
will become more and more evident and outspoken, till -it
gains the complete ascendency.
Justin was an eminent Greek scholar. He was of Gre
cian parentage, though born in Syria. He was thoroughly
educated in the philosophy of Plato, before his conversion;
and, after he became a Christian teacher, he wore the phi
losopher's garb. Although he was an earnest believer in
the Christian system, he endeavored to reconcile it with
the philosophy of Plato. He is quoted by controversialists
on either side of this question as favoring their views, and,
perhaps, with good reason. He is thought by many schol
ars to be inconsistent with himself. It is, indeed, no un
common thing for men to change their views on certain
questions, and to write at one time what they afterwards
contradict, or, in a transition period — like that in which
Justin lived — to vacillate between two opposing doctrines ;
or at least, in their endeavor to reconcile them with each
other, to seem to be inconsistent.
We are not concerned to vindicate his consistency, or to
claim him as one of our witnesses. Our cause is strong
enough without his testimony. The time is certainly near
at hand, in the history of the primitive Church, when the
influence of this doctrine of Plato is to become predomi
nant. We may as well date the beginning of this era with
him as with Athenagoras or Tatian or Tertullian, who were
more outspoken, a few years later.
It would, however, be easy to cite many passages from

Sec. 3.] doctrine of the fathers. 37
his writings which sustain our views. We have marked
several such for quotation, but we cannot well spare the
space for them. Nor does it seem important ; for it must
be allowed that there are others which admit of an oppo
site construction. He interested himself in behalf of the
persecuted Christians, and by his influence with the emper
ors secured for them some favors. He wrote two or more
"Apologies" for the Christian faith, and, no doubt, honestly
endeavored to soften as much as possible the apparent an
tagonism of the Gospel to the Grecian philosophy, which
was held by those in power. Hence in one of his Apolo
gies addressed to them he says ; " Plato and we are agreed
as to a future judgment. We differ in that Minos and
Rhadamanthus are his judges — Christ is ours. For the
souls of the wicked, united to the same bodies, will be pun
ished with eternal punishment, and not for a period of a
thousand years only, as Plato asserted."
This would certainly seem to imply that he believed in
the Immortality of the wicked. " But in numberless pas
sages, Justin tells us that Immortality will be the peculiar
and exclusive possession of the redeemed, and that the
wicked will not obtain it. In several places he lays down
the principle, that Immortality is a gift of God, not be
stowed upon any as yet, but promised at the resurrection."
Mr. Constable, whom we have just quoted, claims him with
the Fathers whose evidence we have already cited, and
says that, while he held to the utter dissipation of the souls
of the wicked, he also held to the eternal preservation of
their bodily members. According to the belief of his time,
the fire of God's judgment was distinguished from ordi
nary fire, in that it possessed the peculiar property of re
newing what it preyed on, and so of burning on forever ;
and " holding that animal life would not continue for eter
nity in hell, he laid hold of the idea, justified by the philo-

38 HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. L
sophical opinion of the time, that the members of the
deceased, devoid of animal life and therefore incapable of
pain, would forever continue to grow and renew them
selves." Gieseler (in his Dogmengeschichte, p. 45) says : " Justin
appears to regard it as possible that the souls of the un
godly will be at some time wholly annihilated."
Hagenbach (in his Hist, of Doc, vol. 1., p. 151) says :
" Justin, Tatian, and Theophilus, from various reasons sup
posed the existence of a soul, which, though mortal in it
self, or at least indifferent in relation to mortality or im
mortality, either acquires immortality as a promised re
ward by its union with the spirit and the right use of its
liberty, or, in the opposite case, perishes together with the
body." We have felt authorized to include him in our table
among the Fathers of the first school, but in view of the
apparently conflicting sentiments expressed in some of his
writings we have affixed an interrogation (?) to his name.
Justin was put to death at Rome about the year 164, for
refusing to sacrifice to the heathen gods.
, Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, died about 182. Some
few expressions of his have been thought to favor the Pla
tonic doctrine ; but the evidence is very strong and over
whelming that he did not believe in the natural immor
tality of man. On the contrary, he held that we are im
mortalized only in Christ. In one of his books he uses this
language : " When thou shalt have put off mortality and
put on immortality, thou wilt worthily see God. For God
shall raise up thy flesh immortal with thy soul ; then, hav
ing become immortal, thou wilt see him who is immortal
if thou believe, on Him here;" In another : " Death was
sent as a benefit to Adam, that he might not continue for
ever existent in sin. Like a vessel marred and recast, so it

Sec. 3.] doctrine of the fathers. 39
happens to man through death. For he is broken, that he
may be found sound at the resurrection — spotless, just, and
immortal. . . . But -some one will say, ' Was man made mor
tal by nature?' By no means. 'Immortal?' Nor do we
say that; If immortal, He would have made him a God.
If mortal, God would seem to be the author of sin. There
fore, He made him neither mortal nor immortal, but capa
ble of both ; so that, if he was carried to the things which
lead to Immortality, he might receive Immortality as a re
ward and become godlike. But, on the other hand, if he
should turn to the work of death, he might become the
author of death to himself. Now God repairs the evil ; for
as man brought death upon himself by disobedience, so, by
obeying the will of God, he that chooses may obtain for
himself the Eternal Life. For God has given us a law
and holy precepts, which everyone that obeys may be saved,
and obtaining the resurrection may inherit Immortality."
(11:27.) Iren^us, who was of Greek parentage and born proba
bly in Asia Minor, was a pupil of Polycarp. He was ap
pointed bishop at Lyons, and entered on his ministry there
as junior cotemporary of Justin. He was a learned scholar,
and wrote largely, especially against " Heresies." We have
only a Latin translation of most of his works. He died as
a martyr about the year 202. He held that man was en
tirely mortal in his original creation ; that he is constituted
immortal — souj. and body — by the inbreathing of the Di
vine Spirit in regeneration. He argued earnestly against
the Gnostics, who held that God (The Demiurge) could not
bestow immortahty upon any of His creatures. Hence
some have claimed him as arguing in favor of Plato's doc
trine of universal immortality. But this is a mistake ; for
he certainly claimed this as the peculiar boon of the right
eous as the following citations will show :

40 historical survey. [Chap. I.
" Life is not from ourselves, or from our nature, but it is
given or bestowed according to the grace of God ; and
therefore he who preserves the gift of life, and returns
thanks to Him who bestows it, he shall receive length of
days for ever and ever. But he who rejects it and proves
unthankful to his Maker for creating him, and will not
know Him who bestows it — he deprives himself of the gift.
of duration to alt eternity ; and therefore the Lord speaks
thus of such unthankful persons : ' If you have not been
faithful in that which is least, who will commit much to
you ?' — intimating thereby unto us, that they who are un
thankful to Him with respect to this short transitory life
which is His gift — the effect of His bounty — shall be most
justly deprived of length of days for ever and ever. . . . For
it was for this end that the Word of God was made man,
and He who was the Son of God became the Son of Man,
that man having been taken into the Word, and received
the adoption, might become the son of God. For by no
other means could we have attained to incorruptibility and
immortality. But how could we be joined to incorrupti
bility and immortality unless, first, incorruptibility and im
mortality had become that which we also are, so that the
corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and
the mortal by immortality, that we. might receive the adop
tion of sons. . . . This was done that man should not sup
pose that the incorruptibility which belongs to God is his
own naturally, and also, by not holding the truth, should
boast with empty pride, as if he were naturally like God..
For Satan thus rendered man more ungrateful to his Crea-.
tor, obscured the love which God had towards man, and
blinded his mind not to perceive what is worthy of God,
comparing himself and judging himself equal with God.
This therefore was the object of God's long-suffering, that
man, passing through all things, and acquiring the knowl
edge of discipline, then attaining the resurrection from the
dead, and learning from experience what is the source of
his salvation, may always live in a state of gratitude to the
Lord, having obtained from Him the gift of incorrupti
bility, that he might love Him the more, and that he may.
know how frail and mortal he is ; when he also understands
God, that He is Immortal and powerful to such a degree

Sec. 3.] doctrine of the fathers. 41
as to confer immortality upon what is mortal, and eternity
upon what is temporary." (Lib. 3 : 19, 20.)
THE SECOND SCHOOL.
We have now come down from the days of the Apostles
to the beginning of the third century. We have found all
of the Apostolic Fathers through the whole of this primi
tive period, till near its close, holding to the faith once de
livered to the saints by the great Head of the Church, on
this question of Eternal Life in Christ alone. We might
cite others, such as Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius, Lac-
tantius, and others in the third and fourth centuries in the
same line. But it is unnecessary. We might also cite
some of the earliest creeds of the church — especially the
so-called " Apostles' Creed," which we have placed in the
fore-front of this volume. The precise date of its origin is
not known, but there is no trace of Plato's doctrine of the
natural immortality of the soul to be found in it. It sim
ply proclaims the great Christian doctrine of " The Resur
rection of the Dead and The Life Everlasting." But
from this time onward we shall see this doctrine of a pagan
philosophy coming into notice and discussion, giving color
to the teachings of the christianized philosophers who have
come into the Church, developing itself more and more,
and gaining strength and influence until its supreme au
thority is acknowledged, and it is declared to be " one of
the fundamental truths of the Christian system."
We have seen how the Grecian philosopher Justin cher
ished the doctrines of his old master, after his conversion,
and how he tried to combine them with the simple doc
trines of the Gospel.
After him came Athenagoras, another Grecian philoso
pher, who was more positive and decided in his advocacy
of Plato's doctrine of Universal Immortality.

42 historical survey. [Chap. I.
Then came Tatian, who strongly advocated it. He
adopted, also, the heresy of the Marcionites, and founded a
sect called " Tatianists," after his own name. He is gen
erally regarded as unsound on other questions than the one
we are discussing. His name gives little strength to the
school that claims him.
The Recognitions of Clement and the Clementine Homilies
were produced about this time, but neither the precise date
of their appearance nor their authorship is known. They
were for a time' attributed to Clement of Rome, and by
many supposed to be his productions ; but modern criti
cism has shown them to be forgeries. They were composed
in the interest of this new Platonic philosophy now spread
ing in the Church, and attributed to Clement with the evi
dent design of securing the influence of his name in its sup
port. And now, in the early part of this third century Ter
tullian, the African bishop, educated as a lawyer, and
one of the most eminent of the Latin Fathers of his day,
gave the weight of his powerful intellect, his ardent mind,
and his revengeful spirit, in aid of this increasingly popu
lar dogma. With the philosophy of Plato, a hew phrase
ology, before unknown, is introduced, which has been per
petuated with this philosophy to the present time. The
soul is now spoken of as something " distinct from the
body," as " immortal," as suffering " eternal misery," as " re
ceiving death by punishment in immortality," etc. The
fierce and vindictive spirit of Tertullian seems to find com
fort in contemplating the eternal agonies of the lost. He
uses such language, as this :
"How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult,
when I behold so many kings and false gods of heaven, to
gether with Jove himself, groaning in the lowest abyss of
darkness ! S© many magistrates who persecuted the name

Sec. 3.] doctrine of the fathers. 43
of the Lord, liquifying in fiercer flames than they ever kin
dled against Christians ; so many sage philosophers blushing
in raging fire, with their scholars, whom they persuaded to
despise God, and disbelieve the resurrection ; and so many
poets, shuddering before the tribunal — not of Rhadaman-
thus, not of Minos, but — of the disbelieved Christ. Then
shall we hear the musicians more tuneful in the expression
of their own sufferings, then shall we see the dancers more
sprightly amidst the flames ; the charioteer all red-hot in
his burning car ; and the wrestlers hurled, not upon the
accustomed list, but upon the plain of fire I" (De Spectaen-
tis, c. 30.)
The barbarous, intolerant and persecuting spirit of the
age may be some apology for the use of such language by
this African Zealot. But it reminds us forcibly of lan
guage very similar in the sermons of Hopkins and Ed
wards, our own immediate fathers in the Gospel. Let us
stop for a moment and listen to them :
" The smoke of their torment shall ascend up in the sight
of the blessed for ever and ever, and serve, as a most clear
flass, always before their eyes, to give them a constant,
right and most affecting view. . . . This display of the di
vine character and glory, will be in favor of the redeemed,
and most entertaining and give the highest pleasure to those
who love God, and raise their happiness to ineffable heights."
Should this eternal punishment "cease and this fire be
extinguished, it would, in a great measure, obscure the light
of heaven, and put an end to a great part of the happiness
and glory of the blessed." (Hdpkins' Works, vol. 11, pp.
457, 458.)
" They will not be sorry for the damned ; it will cause
no uneasiness or dissatisfaction to them ; but on the con
trary, when they have this sight, it will excite them to joy
ful praises. However the saints in heaven may have loved
the damned while here, especially those 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, by seeing the
contrary misery. . . . When they shall see how miserable

44 historical survey. [Chap. I.
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 meantime, are in
the most blissful state and they shall be in it to all eternity ;
how will they rejoice!" (Pres. Edwards' Sermons, vol. 4.)
Tantasne animis Cadestibus ira f
It is not for us, but for those who indorse the eschatology
and theodicy of these eminent Christian fathers, of these
last days, to apologize for them as best they can.*
After Tertullian came Hippolytus, bishop of the Port of
Rome, and then Cyprian, another African bishop, men of
kindred spirit with Tertullian, and nearly cotemporary
* The expression of such sentiments has generally been consid
ered as unadvised, even by those who may be supposed to entertain
tlicm ; but Mr. Landis, who slings more slang and throws mgre
mud at all from whom he differs than good taste, even in the advo
cacy of a bad cause, would justify — in his work entitled, Tlie Im
mortality of the Soul — approbates such sentiments and undertakes to
show how proper they are. He even credits the damned with more
sympathy for the distresses of their friends than the saved may be
¦supposed- to have for the lost I Thus :
" The ties of earthly relationship, while they shall be remem-
'bered in all their controlling power by the lost — as with Dives, who
might well dread to see his brothers in hell, to which his own vile
• example tended to lead them — shall, in the case of the redeemed,
have no influence in view of the revelations of the eternal world.
.... An incident occurred some years ago, at the launching of a
;ship in Philadelphia, which may serve, in some respects, as an il
lustration of the point. As the vessel was one of the noblest that
lhad ever been built in our country, an immense concourse of peo-
iple assembled to see the launch. They thronged the wharves and
surrounding buildings, till every spot which could afford a view
was occupied, while even the river for a great distance was covered
with boats filled with men, women and children, to enjoy the scene.
By and by the appointed moment approaches and every eye is
turned toward the magnificent structure on the stocks ; and the mul
titude, with breathless expectation, await the signal which is to dis
miss her into her element. And now the loud booming cannon
gives the signal and the cry, ' She is coming /' bursts from the sur
rounding multitude. Just at that instant, a man at the outer ex
tremity of the long wharf misses his foothold and falls into the

Sec. 3.] DOCTRINE OF THE FATHERS. 45
with him, and both earnestly advocating the same doctrine.
Then came Athanasius, the zealous bishop of Alexan
dria, and the most eminent and influential man in the
Council at Nice. After him came Ambrose and Jerome,
and — not to mention others — finally, in the early part of
the fifth century, the great Augustine, another African
bishop. He was a man of eminent learning, of lively
imagination, and great zeal, but of a morbid and ascetic
disposition, and of extreme theological views. He proba
bly did more to formulate and establish that theory of the
ology which rests upon the natural immortality of the soul
as one of its chief corner-stones, than any other man. He
was an earnest advocate of this doctrine of everlasting life
water. But the attention of the multitude is so intently occupied
by the grand pageant before them that no one seems to notice the
sufferer I He struggles and shrieks for help, and is within reach of
hundreds, both in boats and upon the shore, but no one seems to hear
him, and there he struggles, and sin/cs, and perishes, surrounded by those
who could have rescued him, but whose minds are too intently occupied to
witness his dislressor hear his cries/ Such is the all-absorbing power
of a strong emotion ; and when the redeemed are assembled before
the throne in heaven and behold before them the object of their
most intense love and sympathy, and whom on earth they loved in
finitely more than life itself, can any one suppose that the_y will be
willing to share their sympathies with those who have renounced
his authority, despised his proffered love and 'trampled underfoot
his blood,' and derided his agonies, and thus intimate that they
think he lias treated their enemies too severely? It may comfort
the impenitently wicked and ungodly in this world to be assured
that they shall here, at all events secure their tender compassion
and regard ; but let them remember Eternal Truth declares that,
if after the present probationary state, they are found amo.ng the
enemies of God, they will meet with no sympathy froni any inhabi
tant of heaven." (pp .431, 432.)
However truly this may be supposed to represent the moral sen
timent of the redeemed in heaven, it is certainly a gross libel on
the citizens of Philadelphia. It would be impossible to collect a
rabble here, or in any other civilized community on earth, that
would willingly suffer such an event to take place, however strong
their momentary excitement. Who could suppose it possible for
such a crowd to have a scene like this perpetually before their eyes
and feel no concern, unless they had become thoroughly brutalized 1

46 historical survey. [Chap. I.
in sin and misery, and, no doubt, the vivid pictures he drew
of the ceaseless agonies of the lost were to him living reali
ties. This whole school of doctrine, of which he was the
most eminent defender, bears his name and is commonly
known as the " School of Augustine."
Though we need not question the piety and sincerity of
these Fathers, we may say, with truth, that they contribu
ted directly to the establishment of that abominable sys
tem of tyranny and cruel oppression, so antagonistic to the
spirit of the Gospel of Christ, that was fastened upon the
so-called Catholic Church, and was perpetuated through so
many long ages of darkness and corruption. Isaac Taylor,
in his Nat. Hist, of Fanaticism, thus speaks of the three
last mentioned :
" The regeneration of the Church was in that age hy-
pothetically possible, and was actually attempted ; yet it
utterly failed. The men, whose intelligence and expansion
of mind should have taught them to listen to reproof, and
who should have entertained — if it had been but for a mo
ment — the suspicion that the course of things might be un
safe, then with a headlong intemperance rushed upon the
objectors and triumphed. Ambrose, Jerome, and Augus
tine — the three illustrious leaders of the age — joined their
giant strength, and gave to the Church the plunge that
sent it down to the abyss. Whatever of degrading super
stition, whatever of sanguine fanaticism, whatever fallacy,
whatever corruption, whatever cruelty belonged to the re
ligious conviction of Europe, under the sway of Hilde-
brand, may be assigned (as a true consequence) to the part
taken and the course pursued by the great men we have
named. The fate of mankind through a long night of
ignorance and malign tyranny was sealed when Ambrose,
Jerome, and Augustine combined to crush dissent."
THE THIRD SCHOOL.
It is difficult to see how it can be possible for any man
of human instincts, to say nothing of Christian sensibili-'

Sec. 3.] doctrine of the fathers. 47
ties, to accept honestly and cordially the doctrine of eter
nal punishment, in the sense of pain and misery ceaselessly
and endlessly inflicted upon immortal creatures by their
Almighty Creator. It may be, and certainly is accepted
by multitudes as a theory, as an abstract article of a tra
ditional creed, that has come down to us from the earlier
ages ; but in these last days, when the Gospel of Christ has
done so much to enlighten the minds and soften the hearts
and refine the sensibilities of men throughout the Chris
tian world, it may be questioned whether there are any who
do considerately, truly, and sincerely accept of it, in its
actual, living application to any portion of their fellow
men. That enlightened public sentiment which has re
formed our penal code, and now insists upon the humane
treatment of the very worst of criminals, and even of ani
mals — refusing to tolerate cruelty to either man or beast —
cannot be indifferent to a question that so intimately con
cerns every man. It inquires whether He, in whom " we
live and move and have our being ;" who requires and ex
pects us to love and to trust, as well as to obey Him ; who
sets before us His own character as infinitely good, for
our imitation ; will execute upon any of the creatures of
His forming, even upon the most ill-deserving, such merci
less cruelties, endlessly perpetuated, as their creeds attri
bute to Him — such penal inflictions of endless misery and
woe as shock and outrage every humane sentiment in
man which the Deity himself has planted there, the faint
est imitation of which by any humane government, civil
ized or uncivilized, would not be tolerated for one hour.
Those who hold to the necessary immortality of every child
of Adam that is born into this world, whether he shall
prove himself worthy of this boon or not, will have, and
must have some way of evading the logical and imperative
conclusion to which their doctrine leads them, even in the

48 HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. L
case of desperate and incorrigible sinners. The idea of tor
ments inflicted upon the imperishable bodies of the lost by
actual fire— that secret fire, the ignis sapiens of the Augus
tinian School, which was absolutely inextinguishable and
eternal, because it perpetually reproduced that upon which
it fed, and which Edwards, Hopkins, Jeremy Taylor and
many others so vividly pictured — has very generally given
place to a more refined and subtile theory of spiritual suf
fering. And, in order to relieve the character of God of
voluntary cruelty, this suffering is supposed by many, not
to be inflicted by His hand, but to be self-inflicted, or, per
haps, to come by a necessary law of Nature ; as though the
government under which we live were administered by fate
rather than by the will of the Almighty Creator. Others
would fain believe and teach that the condition of the lost
is simply privative, and may be quite tolerable. It is un-
happiness or misery only in comparison with the higher
joys of the saved.
Another theory, which is finding many advocates even
among those that are considered " orthodox," is, that every
one goes to that place, in the future world, which he shall
prefer ; that the rebels against the government of God are
actually happier among their fellow rebels than they would
be if they were gathered with.His loyal subjects ; that the
door of heaven is always and forever open, and any mo
ment they shall choose to cease their rebellion and ask to
be forgiven, they will be pardoned and admitted to the so
ciety and joys of the blessed. This theory ignores and
contradicts all the teachings of Scripture with respect to
the finality of the awards of the judgment, and the hope
less lamentations of those who are rejected at the last day.
Among those who have not yet been driven into infidel
ity by following out the deductions of this false philosophy
to their logical end, but who still hold to the evangelical

Sec. 3.] . DOCTRINE OF THE FATHERS. 49
Bcheme, and endeavor to accommodate it to the teachings of
that system which tends directly to the subversion of the
Gospel, various other theories are held which we need not
now stop to notice. The drift of public sentiment through
out Christendom at the present day, is unmistakably to
ward Atheism, Skepticism, Universalism in some of its va
rious forms, and to other errors that sap the foundation of
Christianity, as the legitimate fruit of this pagan philoso
phy ; and it will be more and more strongly in this direc
tion, till the Church comes back to the simple faith oncg
delivered to the saints, of Immortality and Eternal Life
through Jesus Christ the Savior and Him only.
In the earlier ages of the Christian era, the pressing need
of such alleviations was not so keenly felt. When we see
how complacently these Fathers of the Augustinian School
contemplated the fate of lost sinners ; how they spoke of
their inconceivable and eternal agonies in hell, and dis
cussed the nature of the fire that would forever torment
without consuming them; how they disputed about the
eternal reprobation of infants and adults alike, as matters
of fact, altogether regardless of the claims of justice and
mercy ; we must remember that they lived in a cruel and
barbarous age, and had become familiar with the sight, if
not with the practice, of cruelty and oppression. Punish
ment then meant torment ; it was inflicted for this very
purpose ; and the more intense and agonizing it could be
made, the better it answered its end. It was not vindica
tive, but vindictive. And such were supposed to be the
punishments inflicted by the King of Kings ; and that by
making them as agonizing as possible and perpetuating
them without end, He most truly manifested the supremacy
of His majesty and power.
But even in this dark age of barbarism, the instincts of

50 HISTORICAL SURVEY. [Chap. I.
humanity could not be altogether suppressed. The barbar
ous conceptions of a heathen mythology, which these Fath
ers were determined to engraft upon the Christian system,
would not satisfy those who yearned for a God that they
could love and trust, as well as fear — one not merely more
powerful than the earthly despots whom they could only
fear and hate, but more just and merciful, and more worthy
of their affection and confidence.
We have seen with what extreme and intemperate zeal
Tertullian, in the early part of the third century, described
the terrors of God's wrath and the awful and never-ending
torments of the damned. Soon after, and in part cotem-
porary with him, Origen, the most learned and accom
plished scholar of his age, arose to protest against these
horrid pictures of eternal suffering, and to defend the char
acter of God against the aspersions which this doctrine
cast upon it. But unfortunately, he himself was a devoted
Platonist. He believed, as heartily as Tertullian and the
other adherents of the Augustinian School, in the inde
structibility of the human soul. Hence he could find the
alleviation he sought, only in the opposite extreme of error.
He found it in what is called the doctrine of Universal-
Restoration. He was, no doubt, a sincere Christian, though
fanatical to the extreme of self-mortification and mutila
tion. (See Matt. 19 : 12.) He accepted the Scriptures, as
did those whom he opposed, and he sought to sustain his
doctrine, as they did theirs, by putting a forced construc
tion upon the plain letter of their teaching. While those
of the School of Augustine contrived to take from the
words, " death," " destruction," and kindred terms, in which
the Scriptures so plainly announce the final end of the sin
ner their most obvious sense, and to put upon them, as
they still do, another meaning to make them agree with
their Platonic doctrine, Origen and his School did pre-

Sec. 3.] DOCTRINE OF THE FATHERS. 51'
cisely the same thing in the opposite direction and for
the same purpose. With the one party the death and
destruction of the sinner, so often and so plainly de
clared in the Scriptures, do not mean what they ex
press. They are not applicable to the sinner himself,
but only to his well-being and happiness. Everything
worth living for dies and is destroyed, but the living,
conscious individual himself never dies ; his being is per
petuated in eternal misery. So, with the other party,
"death" and "destruction" are not to be predicated of the
sinner — for he is immortal — but only of his sins. They
are to be purged away by the consuming fires of hell, while
the individual himself is to be restored to the favor of God,
and his being perpetuated in eternal bliss.
With regard to the followers of Augustine and of Ori
gen at the present day, Mr. Minton, in one of his letters in
the Christian World well remarks that Orthodoxy inter
prets the destruction which is constantly threatened to the
finally impenitent to mean the destruction of their happi
ness, and Restorationism interprets it to mean the destruc
tion of their sinfulness. So that to destroy a man is, ac
cording to one view, to make him perfectly miserable,
according to the other, to make him perfectly holy. And
this in the teeth of our Lord's precise definition of what
it is that will be destroyed — neither his happiness nor his
sinfulness, but the component parts of his being, his body
and his soul, the man himself. On the Orthodox theory
the words of Scripture should run, " Fear not them which
have power to make the body miserable, but have no power
to make the soul miserable ; but rather fear Him who has
power to make them both miserable in hell." On the Re-
storationist theory, they should be, " Fear not them which
can make the body holy, but cannot make the soul holy,
but rather fear Him who can make them both holy in hell."

52 HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. L
If this be the way in which the threatenings of God are
to be interpreted, then the Old Serpent was certainly right
when he said, in flat contradiction, of the word of the Al
mighty, " Ye shall not surely die." And he would almost
seem to be authorized to expound this fearful text in the
same way, as though the Lord had said to him, aside,
in the case of every sinner who falls into his power to be
tormented forever, or for a season that he may be made
fit for the bliss of heaven — as He said concerning His ser
vant Job, " Behold he is in thine hand ; but save his life."
One extreme of error begets another in the opposite di
rection, while the truth falls between them and is forgotten.
So while these rival schools are contending with each other
— for Origen had a numerous following for several genera
tions — the true Christian doctrine of the actual death and
destruction of the individual sinner, and of the Life Ever
lasting of believers alone by redemption through Christ,
drops into insignificance, and for long centuries remains in
obscurity and is apparently lost.
" Heathen philosophy had uttered Origen's theory long
before Origen was born, just as it had sketched out that of
Augustine. Plato may be said to stand sponsor for both
views. In his Tartarus he has given the exact prototype
of Augustine's hell. But endless misery for the wicked
was what Plato could endure for only a very few, whom he
called ' incurable.' The vast majority of the wicked were,
in Plato's conception, ' curable.' For all these, the scene of
punishment after death was the place of their purgation.
He had an Acherusian lake,- to which the majority of
wicked souls went, and from which, after a longer or
shorter period of suffering, they were released. He had
his lake of Acheron, where souls of a moderate amount of
crime went, and from which, after due suffering, they were
released. Even into his Tartarus, into which incurable
souls were sent for unending torment, some very wicked
yet curable souls were also sent, and after suffering there,
came forth to pass through the places of lighter suffering to

Sec. 3.] DOCTRINE OF the fathers. 53
a complete purgation. We thus see that Plato suggested
his idea to Origen as he did to Augustine. Very little need
be added to Plato's teaching, in order to make it one of
Universal Restoration. It was but to suppose that his few
incurables were not absolutely incurable, but might be
ranked among the curable, and the full idea of Origen was
displayed." (Constable's Fut. Pun., p. 314.)
It will be observed that both these schools were and are
schools of Universalism. They both claim for all men
what the Scriptures declare to be true of the righteous
only. The one teache"s that all men are immortal, though
only a portion will be forever blessed. The other teaches
also that all are immortal, and though some will suffer for
a limited time, all will eventually be saved. The transition
from the one to the other is natural and easy, and with
some, inevitable.
Origen is supposed to have derived his method of putting
a double sense on the terms of Scripture, and of finding a
hidden, mystical meaning in them, from his teacher, Clem
ent of Alexandria, who was also enamored of this Platonic
philosophy, and inclined to believe in the future restoration
of all men. There were many advocates of this view after
Origen, but he stands pre-eminent among all the defenders
of this doctrine, and has given his name to this school, as
Augustine, afterwards, did to the other school. This doc
trine of restoration was held and taught by many in the
Christian Church for several centuries. It prevailed for a
time in Syria and Egypt, and elsewhere. Among its advo
cates are counted Gregory Thaumaturgus, (243,) Pierius
and Theognostus, (282,) Pamphilus, (294,) Eusebius, (320,)
Titus, (360,) Didymus, (370,) Gregory of Nyssa, (371,)
Didorus, (378,) Theodore of Mopsuestia, (394,) and others.
But it was condemned by the Council of Constantinople in
553, and finally it was merged and lost to public view, as
was that of the first school — the School of Christ and the

54 HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. I.
Apostles and their immediate successors — in the Universal
ism of the School of Augustine, which was established and
sustained by the authority of Councils and ruling Ecclesi
astics. Henceforth this doctrine of the Augustinian School
— which taught the natural immortality of all men, in op
position to that of Christ which taught the immortality of
the redeemed alone, and which held to the endless misery
of the wicked, in opposition to that of the School of Ori
gen which held to their final restoration — was to be, for
long ages of darkness, error, and corruption the " Orthodox
doctrine " of the Christian Church so-called. All dissent
must be ruled out and suppressed by pains and penalties,
even down to the time of the Reformation. Indeed, it is
still cherished in the Protestant as in the Papal church, as
one of the fundamental principles of its faith; but happily,
the Church cannot now enforce her decretals by the methods
she formerly employed.
The Council of the Lateran, held under Leo X., issued
the following decree :
" Whereas, some have dared to assert concerning the na
ture of the reasonable soul that it is mortal ; we, with the
approbation of the Sacred Council, do condemn and repro
bate all who assert that the intellectual soul is mortal, seeing
that the soul is not only truly and of itself and essentially
the form of the human body, as it is expressed in the canon
of Pope Clement Fifth, but likewise immortal ; and we
strictly inhibit all from dogmatizing otherwise ; and we de
cree that all who adhere to the like erroneous assertions,
shall be shunned and punished as heretics."
This decree is no doubt high authority with the Roman
Catholic world, even to the present day, for the truth of
the doctrine it was issued to sustain. But how much weight
it should have among Protestants, it is for those who hold
to the same doctrine, and are seeking for arguments to sus
tain it, to determine. With us it furnishes strong presump-.

Sec. 3.] DOCTRINE OF THE FATHERS. 55
tive evidence of the falsity of this dogma, and that it de
serves to be classed with the many other false doctrines of
this corrupt and apostate Church, which required the same
kind of arguments to sustain them.

SECTION IV.
Modern Belief.
It is not proposed to sketch the history of this doctrine
since the Reformation. We can only note a few points.
The Reformers rejected many of the errors and false dog
mas of the Papal Church, corrected many of its abuses,
and did a noble work for the cause of truth — all, perhaps,
that they could reasonably have hoped to accomplish in
their day. But it is too much to say that they did all that
was desirable for all coming time ; that they left nothing
for future generations in a more enlightened and freer age
to do on this line. Educated and trained as they were, in
the false systems and traditions and superstitions which this
ancient Church had gathered and formulated into her
faith, through long ages of darkness and corruption, to bind
upon the consciences of her subjects, it is not to be pre
sumed that they were able, at one bound, to cast off all
their shackles ; to come into perfect light and liberty ; to
see the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ;
and to formulate and enunciate it so clearly and in such
true proportions as to require no further revision or amend
ment. They could not but oppose those evils that lay more es
pecially on the surface, and stood directly in their way.

56 HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. I.
They stood manfully for the cardinal doctrine of justifica
tion by faith, which Luther declared to be articulus vel
stantis vel eadentis ecclesiae; the supreme authority of the
Word of God, and the right of private judgment. But
they attempted no modification of the Romish doctrine of
the future state, excepting in its relation to purgatory.
They held as strongly as the papists to the eternal torments
of the damned. The great fundamental error of the Augus
tinian — or rather of that Grecian philosophy of natural im
mortality, wliich he and his coadjutors of the same school
had laid down as one of the corner-stones of the Christian
religion — had been thoroughly .wrought into the system
and had permeated its every part. It was too deeply hid
den and too firmly fixed to be at once perceived and eradi
cated. And yet Luther seems to have had some percep
tion of this error when he wrote, in 1620, as follows:
" I permit the Pope to establish articles of faith for his
faithful followers; such as, the bread and wine are trans
muted in the sacrament ; that the divine essence is neither
generative nor generated ; that the soul is the substantial
form of the human body ; and himself is the Ruler of the
world, and King of heaven, and God on earth ; and that
the soul is immortal ; and all the numberless prodigies of
the Romish dunghills of decretals."
But he and his associates had too much work on hand,
and were too severely pressed, on all sides, to allow them to
thoroughly search out and eradicate all the errors of that
corrupt system, even had they been qualified to do it. In
the modifications they attempted and were able, to accom
plish, this monstrous fiction of the pagan world, of the
necessary immortality of the wicked as well as the righteous,
and the consequent doctrine of the endless torments of the
unsaved — which had so long obscured th^ pure light of the
Gospel, throwing its dark shadow over the whole system,
transforming the holy character of God into that of a

Sec. 4.] MODERN BELIEF. 57
heathen monster, and justifying all the tortures and abomi
nable cruelties of a persecuting Church* — was taken over
into the Protestant creed, and has been perpetuated, in
the confessions and catechisms of the various branches of
the Reformed' Churches, to this day. It is still cherished
as one of the fundamental articles of their faith.
One of the chief obstacles to the discovery of truth, and
the return of the Church to the simplicity of the Gospel,
lies in the pertinacity with which good Christian men cling
to the creeds and catechisms and traditions of these coura
geous, self-denying, but half-enlightened men. Their work
is held in such high esteem, that it is regarded as sacrilege
to call in question any of their formulas of faith or state
ments of doctrine, however crude they may seem. They
are treated as paramount to the Word of God, and men
are regarded heretical or sound in the faith — not accord
ing to their reception or rejection of the teachings of the
Scripture, but — according to their reception or rejection
of these early symbols, that have been handed down to us
from the hazy morning of the Reformation.-
In the wide-spreading Presbyterian Church, and in other
great organic Churches, men are tried for heresy in these
latter days of the nineteenth century, not by the Word of
God, but by these old creeds ; nor are they allowed to ap
peal to the Bible for justification ! ! In the great Pan-
Presbyterian Council which has just held its second meeting
in Philadelphia, (October, 1880,) the question of revising
these old symbols of faith, with a view to correct some of
their more manifest errors, and to simplify some of their
* This was the plea— according to Burnet — of "Bloody Mary,"
the persecuting queen, who burned alive so many of her faithful
subjects during her short reign : " As the souls of heretics are to
be hereafter eternally burning in hell, there can be nothing more
proper than for me to imitate the divine vengeance by burning them
on earth 1 1"

58 HISTORICAL survey. £Ghap. I.
statements, was mooted. It found but few advocates. It
seemed to be the overwhelming sentiment of the body, that
not one of its articles should be altered in the slightest de
gree ; that candidates for ordination, and the clergy in
general — if not the laity — should be required to indorse
and affirm every sentiment therein expressed, and the pre
cise formula of words in which it was expressed. The
most that could be secured by the few who thought there
might possibly be some progress in the science of Theology
and Scriptural Interpretation, as well as in other branches
of knowledge, was the formation of a committee — not to
revise, but to define and interpret these church symbols,
and to report to the next triennial convention — with what
result, remains to be seen.
Even in the Churches of the Congregational order, in
which the spirit of liberty and of progress has ever been
more manifest, a strong effort is now being made by cer
tain reactionary leaders, or would-be leaders, to consoli
date these Churches, to throw them all back upon the ste
reotyped confessions of former times, and practically to
subordinate to them the Word of God, as the test of an
orthodox faith.
This is urged by many well-meaning Christian brethren,
in the interests of true orthodoxy, as they no doubt think,
under this specious plea, namely : The doctrines of the
Bible are given to us in such concrete and fragmentary
forms, and so scattered throughout the whole book that it
is necessary to bring them together and formulate them
into a system, that we may know ourselves, and show to
others just what we do believe, and that we may be the
better able to indoctrinate the children and the common
people. But there is another reason why this is so strongly
urged at the present time, whether it be avowed or not—
which is, to check the exercise of the spirit of free inquiry,

Sec. 4.] MODERN BELIEF. 59
and of independent judgment on the part of individuals,
in the study of the Scriptures, which is giving to the con
servators of our traditional orthodoxy a great deal of trou
ble at- the present time, and is likely to give them much
more in the future, unless withstood and repressed. This
is but a modified form of the plea of the Papal Church,
for the policy which withholds the Bible entirely from the
people, on the ground of their inability to understand it for
themselves, and the necessity of one uniform faith through
out the whole Church. Protestants are to be allowed to
have the Bible, and are to be encouraged to study it, but
not without the catechisms and creeds, which their betters
have framed for them, to tell them what is the true re
ligious sense of the terms it uses.
But the difficulty is, we live in a time of active inquiry,
and are passing through a transitional period, in respect to
our theological notions. Many of the old dogmas, which
the zealous Reformers brought out of the Romish Church,
and incorporated into their own reformed creeds, have, in
the progress of learning and biblical criticism, become so
evidently false and untenable, that no intelligent Christian
now believes them ; and there are others, that are fast los
ing their hold on those who venture to do their own think
ing. It would be a ridiculous farce to re-enact these old
formulas of belief, with all their crudities at the present
day; and as for formulating a new creed, just now, which
shall express the consensus of the whole Church, it is out of
the question, unless it shall be so very brief and compre
hensive as to fail of the object which it is proposed to
serve, or unless it shall be in the very words of Scripture ;
in which case, the whole Word would be better than a part,
or unless it be couched in such ambiguous phraseology as
to mean anything or nothing, according to the pleasure of
every one who may adopt it.

60 HISTORICAL SURVEY. [Chap. I.
The fact is, a large and increasing number of our best
Chrirtian scholars and thinkers have advanced far enough
into the light of a clearer day, to see the absurdity and
untenableness of many of the traditional dogmas with which
the Church of Christ has so long been burdened, and to
question the soundness of that philosophy from which they
have sprung, which dogmas nevertheless, those whom they
have left behind them are earnestly striving to perpetuate in
the creeds of the church to the end of time. But many of
them have not yet been able so to separate the true from the
false in the psycho-theological systems in which they have
been trained, as to formulate definitely their own ideas ; their
thoughts have not yet had time to crystallize into any such
precise and systematic form of words as would be quite satis
factory to themselves. Much less, are they ready to commis
sion others, whom they know to be in error, to do it for
them. This is the most important business that is to come be
fore the Triennial Congregational Council, which convenes
while these pages are passing through the press. Whether
those who are so earnestly urging the necessity of a new
proclamation of faith, for the Congregational Churches —
drawn up of course by themselves — shall succeed in carry
ing their point, we will not undertake to guess. But we
can assure them that if they would promote harmony
rather than discord among Christian brethren, by any
«reed which they shall offer for their acceptance, they must
leave out of it all their own philosophy, and conform it
strictly to the simple teaching of the Word of God— a con
dition to which it is to be feared some of them will not con
sent. But we are confident that, whatever they may do,
the discussion of their various beliefs, and the effort to cate
gorize them, will operate to the furtherance of the truth
for which we are contending.

Sec. 4.] MODERN BELIEF. 61
The Word of God is not bound ; nor is there anybody
in Christendom, at this late day, strong enough to bind it ;
though men may, for a time, bind themselves and such of
their fellow men as are willing to submit to their yoke.
The fictions of heathen philosophy and the dogmas and tra
ditions of a mediaeval Church cannot always prevail where
the Gospel is permitted to have free course, and in opposi
tion to its plain teaching. And this, the most ancient, the
most delusive, and the most mischievous of them all, and
though now so strongly intrenched and so popular, must
— though, perhaps, the last of them all — give place to the
truth as it is in Jesus ; and Christ be again honored, as He
was in the beginning, as the only Source of Immortality
and Eternal Life.
There have always been Christian men since the days of
the Reformation, and doubtless there were during the ages of
darkness — though their voices were suppressed — who have
seen this great Gospel truth, deeply hidden as it has been
under the rubbish of human traditions. There have been
many others who — though they have not been able to
break away from Ecclesiastical restraints and the habits of
religious thought and expression, in which they were trained,
so far as to see and acknowledge the glorious fact of condi
tional immortality — have yet been free to confess that the
whole scheme of Scriptural truth might not have been so
perfectly apprehended and so definitely enunciated by the
early Reformers, in the first instance, notwithstanding their
best endeavors according to the light they had, as to show
no defects, in the light of future ages. Let us hear what
some of these men have said :
" If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument
*¦' of His, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to re-
V ceive any truth by my ministry ; for I am verily persuaded
— I am very confident — the Lord has more truth yet to

62 HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. I.
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 first Re
formation. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go 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 Calvinists, 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, A. D. 1620.)
" It is owned that the whole scheme of Scripture is not
yet understood; so, if it ever come to be understood before
the restitution of all things, and without miraculous inter
positions, it must be in the same way that natural knowl
edge is come at, by the continuance and progress of learn
ing and liberty, and by particular persons attending to,
comparing, and pursuing intimations scattered up and
down it, which are overlooked and disregarded by the gen
erality of the world. For this is the way in which all im
provements are made, by thoughtful men tracing out oh
scure hints, as it were dropped us by nature accidentally,
or which seem to come into our minds by chance. Nor is
it at all incredible that a book which has been so long in
the possession of mankind should contain many truths as
yet undiscovered." (Bishop Butler.)
" The Christian Church is even yet but very imperfectly
freed from the unholy influence and the mischievous oper
ation 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 lea
ven, that it may be more completely cast out." (Dr. Brown.)
" How important to the cause of our heavenly Master is
the free discussion of religious topics, which we are natur
ally so anxious to repress when it goes against our faith.
Yet we need not. We dislike being called to account for
our more sacred opinions, especially those which we hold
with an uncertain grasp ; and we equally dislike to study
the reasons advanced by our opponents, without which it
must needs be impossible either to persuade or to be per-

Sec. 4.] MODERN BELIEF. 63
suaded. ' Prove all things' is a counsel of Christian per
fection beyond most men's observance, though it is the only
way to ' hold fast that which is good.' " (J. P. Gell.)
" The hope of the millennial kingdom of Christ [and,
we may add, the hope of ' life and immortality' in Christ
alone, with the ultimate ' reconciliation of all things'] has
naturally encountered the suspicions of those Christians
whose faith has been crystallized and frozen down in arti
ficial systems of theology. When the doctrines of the Gos
pel have once been compacted together by a logical pro
cess, and the result is conceived to embody the whole coun
sel of God, every new truth drawn fresh from the Scrip
tures is an unwelcome guest, or even a suspected enemy.
It wears a strange and foreign aspect, and disturbs the sym
metry of a laboriously-constructed system." ( T. R. Birks.)
" The truth has a vitality in it still ; and many dry ru
diments of it, which at present lie dull and uninteresting
in our minds, are yet destined to expand and acquire a
new significance. Let the mind be frankly open to any
and every truth, however unfamiliar to us the first view of
it, which may turn out to be in accordance with the teach
ing of the Apostles." (Dr. Goulburn, Dean of Norwich.)
" It is not all truth that triumphs in the world, nor all
good ; but only truth and good up to a certain point. Let
them once pass this point, and their progress pauses. Their
followers in the main cannot keep up with them thus far.
Fewer and fewer are those who still press on in their com
pany ; until at last even these fail, and there is a perfection
at which they are deserted by all men, and are in the pres
ence of God and of Christ alone." (Dr. Arnold.)
" When once this weighty question of the after-life has
been opened, a controversy will ensue, in the progress of
which it will be discovered that, with unobservant eyes, we
and our predecessors have been so walking up and down,
and running hither and thither, among dim notices and in
dications of the future destinies of the human family, as
to have failed to gather up or regard much that has lain
upon the pages of- the Bible, open and free to our use."
(Isaac Taylor.)

64 HISTORICAL SURVEY. [Chap. I.
" Scripture should be to Christians, what the field of na
ture is to the philosopher. As, since the days of Bacon, no
prejudice however inveterate, no principle however long es
tablished, can in scientific pursuits be allowed to stand in
opposition to fact, observed and authenticated by the slow
and cautious but certain method of induction ; so, were
professors of religion wise, and true to these principles, the
Inspired Writings would be to them a storehouse and trea
sury of spiritual facts, to which every theory of mere hu
man origin would be made to bend. Painful it is to think
that this beau-ideal of Christian practice has never yet, at
least on any extensive scale, been realized. In consequence
of this, how striking the contrast between the present state
of Theology and that of Science ! By making Nature her
guide, Science is everywhere removing the obstructions
wliich prejudice and authority in former times had thrown
in her path, and is advancing with gigantic and rapid
strides towards that temporary supremacy which is her
due. By neglecting the Scriptures, or by looking at them
only through the medium of human explanations of their
meaning, Theology, by her side, droops and languishes.
When will this state of matters come to an end ? When
shall creeds, confessions of faith, and articles of religion,
with other formularies of human origin, submit to be tried
by the Scriptures, instead of arrogantly insisting on the
God of truth, as fie speaks in His word, making His ap
pearance at their bar ? One thing is certain, that until hu
man expositions of divine things shall have been aban
doned, and the only competent authority in such matters
shall have been submitted to, Theology must continue to
occupy the low and stationary condition in which for ages
it has appeared." (David Thorn, D. D.)
Dr. Thorn, whom we have just cited, a distinguished
British minister in the early part of the present century,
was the author of a work entitled Soul and Spirit, in which
he maintains the trichotomous nature of the renewed man.
The natural man, possessing only a body and soul, is na
turally mortal; it is only by the inbreathing of God's
Spirit, that he receives a spiritual nature, and it is this

Sec. 4.] MODERN BELIEF. 65
which gives him Immortality. He says that Luther, in his
Commentaries on Ecclesiastes, comes near to the same point
of view : " He there maintains the entire dependency
of soul on body, connects the dissolution of the one with
the extinction of consciousness in the other, allows of no
existence of the soul apart from the corporeal frame, and
ascribes to the resurrection alone the joint revival of both."
This was certainly the doctrine of William Tyndale,
who says in his controversy with Sir Thomas More : " And
ye, in putting them [the souls of the dead] in heaven and
hell and purgatory, destroy the arguments wherewith Christ
and Paul prove the resurrection. . . . If their souls be in
heaven, tell me why they be not in as good case as the
angels be ; and then what cause is there of the Resurrec
tion?" If the space could be afforded, we would be glad to
quote largely from the writings of Archbishop Whately,
who threw the weight of his high position and his logical
reasoning, as may be seen in his Revelations of a Future
State, in favor of the doctrine we are maintaining ; as also
from the. writings of other men of learning and distinction
in the Church for the last two centuries. But we must
make our quotations as brief as possible, and hasten to the
close of this Sketch :
" In fact, no such doctrine [as eternal life in sin and
misery] is revealed to us." ( Whately.)
" God entrusted Adam with a spark of immortality ; he
foolishly blew it out." (Matthew Henry.)
" Adam forfeited the blessings of immortality." (Thomas
Scott.) " The immortality of the soul is neither argued nor af
firmed in the Old Testament." (Perowne.)
" The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and the
name, are alike unknown to the entire Bible." ( Olshausen.)

66 HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. L
" Eternal fixity and duration belong only to those who
are in accordance with God." (Dean Alford.)
" If there be one blessing more than another, which the
Scriptures agree in ascribing to Christ as its author, and
for which the believer is taught that he is wholly indebted
to redemption, it is immortality." (De Burgh.)
" It seems a strange way of understanding a law which
requires the plainest words, that by death should be meant
eternal life in misery." (John Locke.)
" 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 resurrection."
(R. W. Dale, D. D.)
"Hope in death can only spring from the principle of
Immortality, and this principle has no root save in Christ."
(Principal Tulloch.)
" The human soul is not a simple abstract entity, but it
is a concrete thing. As such, it is subject to the law of dis
solution. Sin is per se destructive. It ruins. It destroys
the soul that practices it. The punishment of hell con
sists in the sinner being left a prey to the process of de
struction, which is already preying upon his very being.
The completion of this process is absolute death — -that is, it
is the completed destruction of that concrete reality which
constitutes the human personality. The dissolution of ma
terial organisms is a species of combustion. This holds
true of the destruction of the soul. As the dissolution of
material organisms is their combustion, so the corrosive,
the disorganizing action of sin upon the soul, is the soul's
combustion. In this sense the biblical figure of hell-fire
is strictly grounded in reality. The wages of sin is ruin,
destruction, death. As the flame feeds upon the consum
ing candle until its whole substance is dissipated and ex
hausted, so the wasting disease of sin feeds upon the sub
stance of the soul until the personal organism is entirely
broken down and destroyed." (Dr. Richard Rothe.)
" It is worthy of remark, that the doctrine of eternal
torment is found neither in the Apostles' Creed, nor the

SeC. 4.] MODERN BELIEF. 67
Nicene "Creed, nor in two of the principal Confessions of
Faith of the sixteenth century, , viz., the otherwise rigid
Creed of the French Reformed Church and the Thirty-
nine Articles of the Anglican Church. And we believe
that if this dogma has been handed down throughout the
Protestant Churches, it is simply as an inheritance from
the errors of the middle ages and from the speculative
theories of Platonism. If we examine the writings of the
earlier Fathers, Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Hermas, Ig
natius,' Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch,
Irenseus, and Clement of Alexandria, we find them all
faithful to the apostolic doctrine of the final destruction of
the wicked. The dogma of everlasting torment did not
creep into the Church until she yielded to the influence of
Platonic philosophy." (Dr. E. Petavel, of Geneva.)
In our own country, this cause has been prejudiced by
the unwisdom of some of its advocates. It frequently
happens that when a man breaks away from the ecclesias
tical restraints to which he had been accustomed, in view
of some error against which he would protest, that he runs
into the opposite extreme of error ; or, if his mind is not
well balanced, he mingles crude and false notions with the
truth he actually perceives more clearly than others, and
so really hinders the truth he would advance. This was so
in the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and is more
or less true in all religious movements in behalf of truth.
This is due in part, at least, to ecclesiastical intolerance.
The church has too often set herself in opposition to any
progress in religious affairs. While rapid advances are
made in every other department of knowledge, and new
discoveries bring honor on those who make them, the man
who suggests any advance in the science of theology or re
ligion, only brings suspicion, persecution, and dishonor
upon himself.
There is no traditional dogma to which the Christian
Church more pertinaciously clings, than this of the natural

68 HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. I.
immortality of all men. It is popular also in the world,
outside of the Church ; fpr it flatters men with the idea of
their God-like importance, and makes void the real dis
tinction between the regenerate and the unregenerate,
which is that of Eternal Life. And as for its legitimate
counterpart, which Christians are better satisfied to retain
in their creed, than they are to believe it actually true, or
to hear it preached — the doctrine of endless torment — it
has ceased to have any constraining influence, excepting
among children and others of weak and superstitious
minds. Men of intelligence and thought cannot regard it
as credible. Hence when the Church insists on making it
a part of the truth of God, they only drive men from the
sanctuary where it is preached, and from the Christian
faith altogether. They cannot consent to worship or ac
knowledge a Deity whose character as portrayed by His
professed followers, they can neither love nor respect.
This heathen dogma, baptized with the name " Chris
tian," with its logical and yet incredible counterpart, is
one of the most efficient causes of the skepticism and infi
delity of the present day. And yet there is hardly any
species of " heresy," so-called, which may not be more
readily tolerated, than its denial — especially by a preacher
of the Gospel. He must be sound on this question of es-
chatology, however loose he may be on all others, if he
would retain his standing among his brethren.
The ministers that have been crowded out, or actually
cast out of the Churches of this country, since the more
active discussion of this question during the past few years,
may be counted by scores. Take for instance one exam
ple: The great Methodist Conference, at Cincinnati, re
cently put on trial two of its preachers; the one, for
beastly intoxication in the public streets ; the otlier, whose
piety was unquestioned and whose praise was in all the

Sec. 4.] MODERN BELIEF. 69
Churches, for preaching the doctrine of Eternal Life only
in Christ. The former, after a suitable apology, was re
tained in his position ; the latter was summarily expelled !1
Not a few similar trials and expulsions for the same
criine(?) have been enacted in the various Presbyterian
Churches of our land, during the past few years.
The same process has been attempted, in various Cler^
ical and Ecclesiastical Associations and Councils of the
Congregational body, but not with so complete success, as
we can testify from our own personal experience. It is
quite common in the case of such heretics, when the power
of expulsion is not equal to the will, to request them, as
the Chinese do their high criminals, to commit hari kari —
to take themselves voluntarily out of the way. Their
" honor" is appealed to, and the argument of " consistency"
is urged. But so long as we hold to the polity of
the Church, and stand . squarely upon the Word of
God, we propose to " abide in the same calling wherein
we were called," until some higher authority shall release
us. We know of not a few^ ministers — pious, learned, and
useful — who are of the same mind, and their number is
rapidly increasing.
The Second Advent Churches of this country, of which
there are several hundred, and into which so many earnest
Christians have been driven by ecclesiastical intolerance in
their own native Churches — especially on this question —
very generally nold to Eternal Life only in Christ. It is
unfortunate, perhaps, for the success of this doctrine, that
they should undertake to carry with it certain special and
sometimes conflicting views concerning the second coming
of our Lord, which are obnoxious to the prejudices of the
Christian community at large ; especially as they have no
necessary affinity for each other, except in this, that they
both are founded on a more literal interpretation of the

70 HISTORICAL 8URVEY. [Chap. I.
Scriptures than is common with others. But these
Churches — though especially active— ^are everywhere small
and feeble, and very generally frowned upon by those that
are larger and more wealthy.
Of all the great Churches of this country, there is more
freedom of opinion — certainly on this question — in the
Episcopal Church than in any other ; and probably more
who hold to our view than in any other ; and they hold it
unmolested. There is nothing in their symbols of faith,
their prayers, or their liturgy, that conflicts with it, but,
on the other hand, much to favor it. The constant recog
nition, in their collects and other forms, of Christ as the
Great Source of "Life," " Eternal Life," "The Life Ever
lasting," is quite remarkable. Dr. W. R. Huntington (in
his Conditional Immortality) says : " I am bold to assert
that were a believer of the doctrine of Eternal Life only
through Christ, to undertake the compilation of a liturgy,
such as should best set forth, under a devotional form, the
truth he desired to teach, he could not frame one better
adapted to the purpose than" that which already exists un
der the name of ' The Common Prayer.' "
It is interesting to note that the Confession of Faith of
this Church, now numbering thirty-nine Articles in the
Anglican, and thirty-eight in the American, originally
numbered forty-two; but that in Convocation, under the
presidency of Archbishop Parker, in 156£, the two arti
cles sustaining this papistic dogma, viz., the "Immortality of
the Soul" and the "Eternity of Future Suffering," were
suppressed. Since then, the official authority of the An
glican Church has declared that the doctrine of an eter
nal hell is not an established dogma of the Church. No
longer ago than 1864, the question was tried by the Judi
cial Committee, whether endless torment was a doctrine of
the Church or not. In the case of Wilson vs. Fendill, it

Sec. 4.] MODERN BELIEF. 71
was argued, on both sides, by most able counsel, and after
a mature deliberation, the Lord Chancellor gave judgment
— the two archbishops concurring — that it was not a doc
trine of the Church. " For," said he, "to affirm it to be
bo, would be re-instating the expelled article, which we have
no power to do."
That this doctrine of Life in Christ only, is more largely
accepted, and looked upon with greater favor in Great
Britain than in this country, at the present/ time, is due in
a very large degree to the earnest, patient, and persever
ing efforts of Rev. Edward White, of London. His high
social position, his unquestioned orthodoxy on all other
points, his eminent learning and ability, and, withal, the
. kind Christian spirit with which he has urged his cause,
have contributed to his success. For more than thirty-
five years, in the face of much opposition and misrepre
sentation, he has stood up boldly — and for the first half of
this period almost alone — for the truth of the Bible, on
this question. For a number of years, however, he has
had a strong reinforcement of noble men, eminent alike
for their learning, and piety, among whom are Henry Con
stable, A. M., Samuel Minton, A. M., William Leask, D.
D., and Henry S. Warleigh and others, some of whose
names will be found on a subsequent page.
The religious press has, also, been less exclusive and un
fair. While, in this country, it has never been practica
ble to argue this question through any of the accredite^l
organs of the various branches of the Church, excepting
on the popular side ; or even to state the question, or cor
rect the misrepresentations with which some of them teem ;
some at least, of their religious organs in England have
not been altogether closed to fair discussion. Mr. White
is a member in good standing of the great Congregational
body of that country, which also numbers several other

72 HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. I.
leading members, who share his views. His last work, en
titled Life in Christ — by far the ablest and most thorough
that has appeared — has just been translated into French
by Rev. Charles Byse, of Brussels, aided by Professor Peta
vel of Geneva, who also has written largely on this ques
tion. His French work La Fin du Mal, also rendered into
English under the title of The Struggle for Eternal Life,
was issued a few years 'since with an Introduction by R.
W. Dale, D. D.," and has done good service in both lan
guages. The light is spreading in France and Switzerland.
It is to be hoped that these and other works, which are
now rapidly appearing in behalf of this pre-eminent Gos
pel truth, may do something to check the lamentable ten
dency to Universalism and various other forms of error so
manifest in these countries, and in Germany; and, indeed,
we might say, throughout Chrfetendom — as the natural re
action from this heathen dogma — this fiction of the adver
sary—which the Church still persists in upholding and
proclaiming to be the veritable truth of God.
Mr. White has just been appointed to succeed the late
Dr. Raleigh in the Ancient Merchants' Lectureship, in
London, which may be regarded not only as a token of
high regard, but also as a quasi indorsement of his known
views on this question. There lies before us, also, a lec
ture recently given by him to the Artizans of London, an
extract from which will form a fitting close to this sketch.
*After candidly admitting that one of the chief causes of
the desertion of the sanctuary by the common people, and
the fearful prevalence of indifferentism, skepticism and infi
delity among all classes, is to be found in the fact that
they have outgrown and ceased to believe this great
heathenish dogma of eternal torment in the life to come,
to which the Church would fain hold them ; and that
they do not care to hypocritically worship a Deity whose

Sec. 4.] MODERN BELIEF. 73
character, as represented, commands neither their love,
confidence, nor respect ; and after declaring that the great
requirement of the age is a Reformed Doctrine of the
Moral Character of God, and assuring them that there
are not a few — and this number is fast increasing — who
would take them kindly by the hand and " expound to
them the way of Life more perfectly, and are anxious to
have them taste and see for themselves that the Lord is
good," he says :
" You will ask me, Who agrees with you in this interpre
tation of the Bible, which represents the character of God in
so glorious a light as the merciful Life-giver to sinful men?
I reply, a vast multitude of earnest and thoughtful Chris
tians all over the world. There is no country where able
men are not now teaching what I have taught you to-night.
It is, indeed, denied and condemned, by many worthy per
sons who will not examine the evidence, or even pray to God
to help them honestly to examine it. This doctrine is re
jected, or neglected, or cruelly misrepresented, by many
whose station in the Church requires them to be strictly-
obedient to orthodox tradition ; by many preachers who
fear the loss of usefulness among common church-goers, if
they even examined it. It is rejected by many of those
influential Capitalists of Lombard street, who too much
control the teaching of Missionary Societies ; as, for ex
ample, lately, when one of them ' chased from him ' several
of his ablest and godliest co-directors in the London City
Mission, for disbelieving in the endless torments *of the
London poor ; and again, when another eminent member
of the same banking firm — the otherwise most admirable
treasurer of the Baptist Mission — still insists that all the
. Baptist Missionaries shall teach the endless misery of the
unsaved heathen.
" But the Bible truth on Life only in Christ, and the na
tural mortality of man, is held to my certain knowledge
by the following persons, whose names are at least a coun
terweight to any opposite authorities. The Rev. Samuel
Minton, A. M., is well known to have sacrificed his living and
promotion to this cause. Prebendary Constable, late of

74 HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. I.
Cork, is also known as one of its ablest advocates. Dr.
Weymouth, Head Master of Mill-Hill School, and one of
the finest Greek scholars in the country, says that his
' mind fails to conceive a grosser misinterpretation of lan
guage, than when the five or six strongest words which the
Greek tongue possesses, signifying " destroy," or " destruc
tion," are explained to mean — maintaining an everlasting
but wretched existence.' The late Dr. Mortimer, Head
Master of the City School, spoke in the same sense. The
la,te eminent Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, author of
a well-known critical Commentary on the Psalms, in an
swer to the inquiry whether he knew any reason why the
corresponding Hebrew words of the Old Testament should
not be taken in their literal and obvious sense, replied in
these words, ' None whatever.' The Archbishop of York,
Dr. Thompson, in his 'Bampton Lectures,' says : "Life to
the godless must be the beginning • of destruction, since
nothing but God, and that which pleases Him, can per
manently exist.' This doctrine has advocates in all our
chief cities. In London it is held by Dr. Parker of the
City Temple, by the Rev. J. B. Heard, A. M., author of
the work on The Tripartite Nature of Man, and by not a
few ministers of all denominations. In Birmingham it is
taught by Dr. R. W. Dale. In Liverpool by the Rev.
Hugh Stowell Brown. In Cambridge it is maintained by
Professor Stokes, F. R. S., Secretary to the Royal Society,
who holds the Mathematical Chair of Sir Isaac Newton,
and is one of the foremost scientific men in Europe. In
Edinburgh it is held by several of the leading clergy of all
Churches, and by Professor Tait, perhaps the first mathe
matical reasoner in Scotland. In other parts of England
it is held by the Rev. Thomas Davis, A. M., Vicar of
Roundhay, and the Rev. W. Hobson, A. M., of Douglas,
two most able supporters ; by the Rev. J. Hay Aitken, the
earnest Missioner ; by the Rev. W. Kerr, (author of a cheap
Introduction to the study of this question, called Immor
tality: Whence? and for Whom? intended for plain peo
ple;) by Professor Stevenson of Nottingham, Professor
Barlow of Dublin, and Professor Barrett of the Royal Col
lege of Science in Dublin ; by the Rev. W. Griffith of
Eastbourne, Dr. Morris of Plymouth, and Mr. Maude oi

Sec. 4.] MODERN BELIEF. 75
Holloway, several of whom have written largely on the
Juestion, and all of whom are excellent biblical scholars.
t is held by the celebrated physicians. Dr. Andrew Clark
and Dr. Farre, and by a long array of Christian medical
men in all parts of the country. It is held by Mr. Thomas
Walker, late editor of The Daily News, a man of firm
faiih and uncommon literary attainments. It was held by
the late Mr. John Sheppard of Frome, and by the late
Mr. Henry Dunn, both of whom published works on Hu
man Destiny.
" Among American writers may be mentioned the names
of the late Dr. Horace Bushnell, author of Nature and the
Supernatural, who recently died in this faith ; Dr. Hun
tington of Worcester, Mass.; the late Professor Hudson of
Cambridge, U. S. A., author of the Concordance to the
Greek Testament, and Debt and Grace, as related to the doc
trine of a Future Life, one of the most accurate and accom
plished scholars of our time ; the Rev. J. H. Pettingell, A.
M., of Philadelphia, author of The Theological TrUemma;
Mr. H. L. Hastings, of Boston, Dr. Leonard Woolsey Ba
con, of Norwich, Ct, and many others.*
" In Jamaica we have the Rev. J. Denniston, A. M.,
author of the work called The Perishing Soul. In India
we have Mr. Skrefsrud, Missionary to the Santhals, and
one of the greatest linguists in Asia, speaking nearly
twenty languages ; and the Rev. W. A. Hobbs, of Cal
cutta, an experienced missionary, who writes that it is ' as
tonishing how this view of Divine Truth commends itself
to the almost instant appreciation of the unprejudiced na-
* This list of American names — though reliable, as we can vouch,
so far as it goes — is exceedingly meager and incomplete. It would
be easy to increase it many-fold, by adding the names of those per
sonally known to the writer, as having renounced the old dogma of
the immortality of the unsaved and accepted the gospel doctrine of
Eternal Life only in Christ ; and of many others whose minds are
in a transitional state, which will surely bring them to this conclu
sion. But, on the whole, it has seemed best to leave the list as Mr.
White has drawn it, and let every man speak for himself in his
own time and manner. But with respect to the late Dr. Bushnell,
we have the testimony of Dr. C. A. Bartol, his intimate friend, that
this was the conclusion to which be came in the last years of his
life. We had anticipated this result from reading his Nature and
Supernatural, the whole spirit and drift of which is in this direction

76 HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. I.
\
tive Christian mind. I never thrust it to the front, but
•nevertheless it is silently and rapidly spreading.'
" Again — in Paris it is held by M. Decoppet, Pastor of
the Oratoire ; M. Bastide, head of the French Religious
Tract Society ; M. Pascal, pasteur, M. Hollard, and Pro
fessor Sabatier of the Protestant College, one of the fore
most theological scholars of France. It is also held by
three of the pastors in the Church at Lyons. In Brussels
it is held and taught by M. Charles Byse, -who has just
published a French translation of Life in Christ, a man of
wide and accurate scholarship in Oriental languages. In
'Germany it was held by Rothe, Nitzsch, Olshausen, Hase,
Ritschl, and Twesten. It is taught by Professor Gess of
Breslau, who was theological tutor of Dr. Godet of Neu-
<chatei, and by Professor Schultz of Gottingen. In Geneva
it is valiantly defended by the accomplished scholar Dr.
Petavel of Chene Bougeries, by Professor Thomas of
D'Aubigne's College, by' M. Mittendorf, late editor of the
Semaine Religieuse, by MM. Walthur and Chatelain, two
-¦of the most active evangelists, and by M. Caesar Malan.
" In Africa it is held by Rev. Mr. Impey, Superintend-
•ent of the Caffre Mission of the Wesleyan body, who was
two years ago ejected from his high office after forty years'
labor, because he could no longer teach the endless misery
of the poor black Zulus and other heathens of Africa. In
China it is held by several of the ablest missionaries ; in
¦Ceylon by the 'Rev. Mr. Clark, A. M., of the Church
Tamil Mission. In Sydney it was held by Mr. Ridley, the
leading journalist of Australia, and an eminent scholar,
whose fame has reached his fatherland; and it is held by
many of the Australian pastors.
" I have recited these names of learned believers — of all
Protestant Churches — Scholars, Writers, Preachers ; Pro
fessors of Divinity, Criticism, and Physical Science; Lit
erary Men, Mathematicians, Barristers, Journalists, Evan
gelists, Missionaries; some of them men of the first
rank, all of them men of high education, who have
•carefully studied this question, under the conditions
?of prayerful inquiry and adequate learning; men who
have no object to serve except the maintenance of
truth ; mep who represent all varieties of modern knowl-

Sec. 4.] MODERN BELIEF. 77
edge and training in nearly every department of study —
for a special purpose, namely : — to encourage general in
vestigation, against the attempts of many persons, both
clerical and lay, to suppress inquiry by the assertion that
no one of any consequence agrees with us. My own ex
tensive acquaintance enables me to add that not a few
other persons of eminent ability agree in this view of Di
vine Truth, but are constrained to silence by the menaces
of ignorant men and fanatical women — especially the lat
ter — who threaten them with the fatal charge of heresy if
they avow their convictions."
That this doctrine for which we contend, of Life Eter
nal only through Christ the Savior, is destined to prevail
and to become the orthodox doctrine of the Christian
Church, we have no more doubt than we have of the tri
umph of the Gospel itself. It is indeed the great cen
tral doctrine of the Gospel. The civilized world every
where is crying out for a better theodicy, a better doctrine
of the moral character of God than the mediaeval church
has given to it ; and the people will have it, or none at all.
Here is just our ground of fear. Not that the Truth as if
is in Jesus will fail of ultimate success, but that multitudes
will throw away their faith entirely before the way is pre
pared for them to accept of the simple and humiliating
doctrine of God's Word as to the natural man ; that we
must pass through a period of skepticism, and infidelity,
an eclipse of faith that will threaten the very existence of
the Church. Hence it is not so much our object or desire
to expose or oppose the errors of the Church of Christ,
which, with all her imperfections, is " the pillar and
ground of the truth" — they are becoming more and more
obvious every day — but rather to strengthen the hands of
those who pray for her prosperity, by calling their atten
tion to this great Gospel doctrine from which she has so
sadly departed — a doctrine which, though humbling to the

78 HISTORICAL survey. [Chap. I.
pride of man, brings infinite honor to the justice, goodness
and grace of God ; which greatly magnifies the excellency
and glory of the Gospel ; a doctrine so plainly set forth in
His Word that nothing but the perverting, obscuring
power of this heathen dogma could have so long hidden it
from their view. And we most earnestly hope and pray
that the Great Head of the Church will bless the effort, in
leading to truer views of the character of God and of the
riches of His grace in Christ, in confirming the faith of
His disciples, and in strengthening the hands of His ser
vants in preaching the glorious Gospel which "is the power
of God unto Salvation to every one that believeth."

ANNEX.

THE UNITY OF MAN.
An Essay read before the Philadelphia Association of Congregational
Ministers, July 13, 1880.
That there is a certain threefold manner in which God
makes Himself known — as in Nature, in Christ, and in
Grace by His Spirit — and, consequently, a threefold aspect
in which He may be viewed, is no doubt true ; and for
aught that we know, there may be an actual trinity in His
nature. But this doctrine of the Trinity may be, and has
been, carried to such an extreme as to become a monstrous
error, and to differ but little from absolute Tritheism.
As a natural protest against this error, we have Unita-
rianism, which insists, as it should, upon the perfect unity
of God ; but in doing this, it has become obnoxious to the
charge of error in the opposite direction. We are prone
to extremes ; and even in the line of truth we may, and
often do, go beyond its limit and end in an untruth
Have we not done this in respect to the nature of man,
as well as that of God ? Because he is endowed with a
twofold or rather threefold power of action — physical, in
tellectual, and spiritual — and may be viewed' under these
several aspects, and regarded in a certain sense, as a dual,
or tripartite creature, philosophy has come to regard him
as actually two or three creatures in one.
Over against this extreme, we have materialism protest
ing against this error, and insisting so strongly on the com-

80 essay. [Chap. I.
plete unity of man as to discredit the existence of either
soul or spirit within him, and to attribute all his exercises
to the operations and changes of matter alone. Hence
science, which has its proper sphere within material limits,
comes, as in other questions of philosophy and theology, or
rather of philosophical theology, into antagonism with
what is called the orthodox doctrine of the true nature
of man. It finds its justification in the erroneous manner
in which this doctrine has been held and advocated.
Whatever objections, in a religious point of view, may
be brought against the scientific materialism of the present
day — and it is certainly open to serious objections as now
held and advocated by some of our leading scientists — it
emphasizes and insists on a truth which we do well to con
sider in discussing man's nature and destiny — the com
plete unity of man.
It is no doubt true, that man in a certain sense stands
midway between the spiritual and the natural world, and
may be considered as the connecting link between the two,
and fitted to control in the one while he has intercourse
with the other. He has his roots in the earth, like the
tree, but the blossom and the fruitage are in the air above.
But because he possesses, on the one hand, a physical body,
in common with the brutes beneath him, and, on the other,
" partakes of the divine nature" which is spiritual, it does
not follow that he is two or three creatures in one. And
yet our philosophical theology teaches us something very
much like this. Indeed, it teaches exactly this. He is
said to be, in the first place, a perfect animal ; and then
within this animal there is another complete nature, or
rather being — for so it is regarded, according to the phi
losophy of Plato, which is the foundation of our popular
theology — and this being is entirely spiritual.
Though that part of Plato's philosophy which teaches

Annex.] unity of man. 81
that this spiritual being within is uncreated and therefore
eternal, is dropped, as essentially atheistic, yet the conclu
sion that it is actually and necessarily indestructible on
account of its spiritual nature, is still insisted on. If in
stead of this dichotomous division, we adopt the trichoto-
mous, which certainly better harmonizes with the teach
ings of Scripture — if we are to make any division at all —
there are two beings in this one body in its normal btate ; a soul
and a spirit. But without considering this point on which
Christian philosophers differ, they may be said to agree
very generally in regarding the lower and higher natures
of man as so distinct and complete in themselves as to be
actually divisible at death. Their union in this life is but
temporary. Death dissolves the bond and lets them go
apart. It is like the dissolution of the marriage tie, or of
a partnership between individuals. However disastrous it
may be to one of the parties, it only gives greater freedom
and power to the other party or parties. Death is not
death to the entire man, but only to one of the parties.
The word " death" has no application to the other, except
ing in a figurative sense, to denote a depraved condition
of being.
That this is the popular notion, and that it is sustained
by the current theology and literature — both secular and
sacred — of the present day, no one will deny. But is it
true — we do not say according to the teachings of science,
for science teaches no such thing — is it true according to
the teachings of God's Word, which must be our final ap
peal on questions of this nature? It is certainly true that
man may be supposed to be divided into two or three or
any number of subordinate parts for the purpose of analy
sis and philosophical treatment ; and so may the brute ani
mals, or indeed anything else in Nature. But is it true
that any two or three or more of these parts are so inde-

82 essay. [Chap. I.
pendent of the others, as to be able to live and thrive and
fulfill their proper functions apart from the rest? The
Scriptures speak of the body, the soul, and the spirit ; so
also they speak of the mind, the heart, the head, the eye,
the tongue, etc. But do they speak of them as so many
separable and independent enities, and as having independ
ent responsibilities of their own?
Science may indeed be in error in ignoring the radical
distinction between the physical and the psychical, the
noetic and the material in man, and in asserting so posi
tively that all thought, feeling, and action in man and in
brutes alike, is due entirely to material agencies ; and yet
it may be fulfilling an important service to truth in calling
attention so especially to the actual unity of man — a truth
which is essential to' any true understanding of the future
state, and which has been greatly overlooked, if not quite
subverted, in discussing the destiny of man.
It must be admitted that those who have insisted the
most strongly on the duality or trinity of persons in man,
have never been able to find any proper cleavage between
the parties in this partnership, nor to agree with each
other, nor with themselves, as to the proper division of the
whole estate among the several partners. Indeed, when
hard pressed, they have been constrained to confess that
their arguments, for the most part, are as applicable to
brutes as to men.
Have we any better warrant from Scripture, or sound
philosophy, than we have from science, for our loose no
tions of the relation between the body and the soul — for
the popular notion that it is a kind of marriage relation
for this life only— a mere limited partnership, that may be
formed and dissolved as between two individuals — that the
soul, which is but one of two or, perhaps three partners,

Annex.] unity of man. 83
may assume the liabilities of both, and fulfill all the func
tions of life unimpaired ?
Do not the Scriptures represent man as a complete soli
darity ? Was he not created as such in the beginning ? The
body, soul, and spirit which were requisite to constitute
him a complete man, were not three persons with separate
responsibilities, but were united in one responsible person.
The law was laid upon man as one undivided and indivi
sible unity — not 'upon his body, nor upon his soul, nor
upon his spirit, but upon the whole in one: "Thou shalt
not eat," etc. And the penalty was not threatened against
any one part of his complex nature more than another,
but against his whole being : "Thou shalt die." He could
not have understood it otherwise, nor did he, until the
tempter suggested another solution. Nor could we, with
out this false philosophy, which shows us how to read an
other meaning into the plain and positive language of
Scripture, and to say and believe that the threatening of
actual death applied to but one of the partners in this
firm, but as to the other or others, it is to be understood
only in a figurative sense, as implying a sinful and misera
ble condition of being endlessly perpetuated. And so,
when the Bible speaks of the death of man, as the natural
and necessary result of sin, and of the utter destruction
of the wicked, no matter how emphatic and definite the
language it uses, we have learned to interpret it in this
double sense, as applying to the body only in any actual
real sense ; but as to all the rest of man — to the man him
self, the real, responsible sinning agent — it can have only a
figurative application ! The diseases, pains, and infirmi
ties of the body which result from sin are regarded as the
precursors of its death, or symptomatic of the certain end
to which they point; but the disorders, pains, and
distresses of the soul which result from the same

84 essay. [Chap. L
cause are not regarded as the precursors of ita coming
^death, nor as symptomatic of the approaching end, but
as the end itself — for it can experience no other death
Dr. A. A. Hodge, in his Outlines of Theology, truly
says : " While the senses are several and the bodily organi
zation is constantly changing, yet in every complex expe
rience, and through all time, the central /, which thinks
and feels, is an absolute unit." But he slips away from
this fundamental truth when he comes to speak of the
penalty of the law and the future state ; and so do all Pla
tonic Theologians. The penalty, " Thou shalt surely die,"
" Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return," is not ad
dressed to the man that thinks and feels, but to the body,
which, apart from this " central /," cannot think or feel.
But, in order to save both their philosophy and their theol
ogy — which, indeed, are in opposition to each other — they
say that while the body dies actually, the soul undergoes a
kind- of moral transformation metaphorically called death,
and lives on as sensitive and as active as ever and infin
itely more so, to sin and suffer forever. They constantly
affirm that the man himself does not and cannot die. So
said the tempter ; so said Plato ; and so says our tradi
tional theology which is founded on his philosophy. But
in opposition to all this the Word of God says, and re
peatedly and constantly and uniformly says, throughout
the whole Inspired Volume : " Sin, when it is finished,
bringeth forth death"— death to the sinning man— not
merely to one part of him, but to the entire man. And so
it is now working out its fearful and inevitable results in
every sinning soul, and when its sad work is finished,
whether sooner or later, the sinner must die ; and were it
not for that new life which is begotten in the children of
God through grace in Christ, which is not natural, but al
together supernatural, there would be no hope for any man.

Annex.] unity of man. 85
How clear and simple the teaching of the Scriptures
when viewed apart from this blinding, bewildering philoso
phy. " And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
and man became a living soul." Precisely the same thing
is said of all the other animals which God made, though
it hardly appears in our present version. When man- dies
he gives up the ghost or breath of life which God breathed
into him, and he' then becomes a dead man or a dead soul,
and so he remains till he is raised again in the resurrec
tion — the righteous to live again forever in His kingdom,
and the unrighteous to perish in the second death from
which there is no recovery.
The denial of the true unity of man not only obscures
the Divine Law and constrains us to such an interpreta
tion of its penalty, as to bring reproach on the justice of
God ; but it also obscures the Gospel, and robs Christ of
His real glory in our redemption. He did not die, they
say, to redeem us from actual death — excepting so far as
the body is concerned — but only from a state of sin and
misery. The new life which He offers us is not actually a
new life, but only an improved condition of our old life.
"The Life Everlasting," of which He so continually spoke,
and which He promised to all who would believe on Him,.
is no more enduring than our old Adamic life, which is
also everlasting. It simply means a purification of our
own immortal natures. The exhortation to " fight the
good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life," must mean
infinitely less than the words seem to import ; and the ex
postulation, " Why will ye die?" seems like bitter irony.
For, the death of the body cannot be avoided ; and as to
what is called " spiritual death," it has already fallen on
man ; and what other death to come can there be but the
teeond death? But this, in the sense of the actual death

86 essay. [Chap. L
and destruction of the soul, cannot, according to this phi
losophy, be allowed.
Those pregnant passages of Scripture which set forth
the love and mercy of God in our redemption — such as,
¦" The wages of sin is death, but the Gift of God is eternal
life through Jesus Christ our Lord ;" " God so loved the
world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life;" "I give unto them Eternal Life," etc., etc., — can
not be literally understood, but must be taken in a modi
fied and tropical sense to mean, man's recovery from a
state of sin and misery to a state of purity and blessed
ness. Here is the source of Swedenborgianism, Spiritualism,
and the various phases of ghostism, which prevail at the
present day. We are now told by Christian preachers
and teachers that in dying we do not really die : we merely
cast off our bodies like worn-out garments at. the door of
death, and rise, at once, into greater freedom of thought
and action. Death is a natural process ; it simply marks
one stage in the normal development of our immortal na
tures. There is nothing supernatural in the continuation
of our lives beyond the grave. Not merely the superna
tural character of the resurrection is denied, but the doc
trine of the resurrection itself, as taught in the Scriptures,
which Paul so much insisted on as the foundation of all
our hopes for any life whatever beyond the present, and
on which the early Christians fastened their hopes, is either
denied altogether or reduced to an unmeaning pageant.
And so, deprived of all its real significance and power,
this great doctrine has fallen into neglect.
Well did the other early reformers insist upon this unity
of man in life and in death, the unconscious state of the
dead, the miraculous character of the resurrection and of

Annex.] unity of man. 87
the future life, in opposition to the Spiritualistic fancies of
the Papal Church concerning the intermediate state, the
purgatorial sufferings of the wicked and the ghostly bliss
of the righteous.
This philosophy of Plato concerning the nature of man
— so flattering to his pride, but so inconsistent with the
simple teachings of God's Word — has been a fruitful
source of error and confusion in the church. Notwith
standing Paul warned the early Christians against it, they
soon fell under its corrupting influence and suffered it to
mould and shape their whole system of doctrines. Al
though we have rejected some of the grosser errors of the
Papal Church, and modified others to bring them into a
better harmony with the spirit of the age, our Protestant
notions of the intermediate state and of the final destiny
of man, and our interpretation of the teachings of the
Scripture on these questions, are still controlled to- a great
extent by the same philosophy.
A theological friend, in speaking of a recent volume en
titled, The Soul Here and Hereafter, says in a private
note : " What we want is a book on Man here and here
after. So long as men occupy their thoughts with the
' soul ' of modern philosophy and theology, they will miss
the real vital question, ' What is man and what is his fu
ture ? ' Man is the subject of Divine Revelation, not a
separate soul. A living man is a living soul. God created
man ; placed man under law ; banished man from Eden ;
and made man the subject of redemption ; and as to his
future, the great question is, ' If a man die shall he live
again ? ' This vital question the author ignores, and so do
most writers on this question. They annihilate man as
God made him, and devote whole libraries to a part of
man — ' His soul here and hereafter.' We shall never have

88 essay. [Chap. I.
a biblical and scientific theology of man until he is studied
and treated as a unit. Man is one being— genus, homo.
He has body, soul and spirit, all essential to his manhood
or humanity. Man is greater than body, greater than
soul, greater than spirit. He is the perfect combination
of all. And yet Christendom, for centuries, has magni
fied the soul to the utter neglect of man. The Bible,
from Genesis to Revelation, magnifies man. ' God made
man a little lower than the angels.' Christ honored hu
manity by appearing ' in the likeness of men.' 'He tasted
death for every man,' and the whole economy of redemp
tion is designed to bless and save man." * .
Christ did not take upon himself the body of a man
merely to redeem that from death ; nor the, soul of man
simply, to redeem that; nor the spirit of a man; but the
whole nature of a man, body, soul and spirit. He re-
deemed4hem all together in the redemption of man. And
when He lifts man into life again, it will not be a life of the
spirit alone that He will give him ; nor the eternal life of
his soul, but of spirit, soul, and body, again united in one.
The body will, indeed, be purified and " made like unto
His own glorious body." But it will, none the less, be a
real body — the fit receptacle of the soul and the spirit,
and the medium and agent as it now is, through which
they shall act.
Viewing man from the Scriptural standpoint, as one un
divided and indivisible creature, the teachings of God's
Word concerning him, here and hereafter, appear to be as
they really are, beautifully clear and consistent ; the diffi
culties, perplexities, and contradictions into which our Pla
tonic philosophy with its spiritualistic fancies, on the one
hand, and materialism with its infidei tendencies, on the
other, lead us, all vanish ; nor can we hope to reconcile

Annex.] unity of man. 89
these doctrines, or understand them, or reason correctly
about them, until we come back to the simple Scriptural
doctrine of the actual Unity of Man.

Post Scriftum : —
The tendency of scientific thought at the present day is
toward materialism, and, when divorced from religion, it
says that " there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit."
This is a result, in part at least, of a reaction from the ex
treme spiritualism of many religionists, who have gone
quite as far from the plain teachings of God's Word in the
opposite direction.
It has not seemed important, in considering this ques
tion of the Unity of Man, to discuss the theories of either
party to this controversy between materialism and spirit
ualism, nor to employ their perplexing terminology. It is
an old controversy, and has assumed many phases, as those
who are acquainted with the history of philosophy well
know. We have endeavored, in our studies, to follow the
current of this history from the times of Heraclitus, Em-
pedocles, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epi
curus, to make ourselves acquainted with their various
theories ; and to understand, as far as we were able,
their subtile distinctions. We have read, with some
care, the discussions of the earlier and later Fathers
of the Christian Church, and the speculations of the
schoolmen during the middle ages, and have paid con
siderable attention to the spiritualistic fancies of Sweden
borg, and those of his school at the present day. We
have also attentively listened to what such scientists, of the
opposite school, as Haeckel, Huxley, Darwin, Tyndall,
Spencer, and their disciples, have to say of cytods, mo-

90 essay. [Chap. L
nera, protista, dormant gemmules, spores, cell-germs, pro
toplasm, bioplasm, spontaneous generation, evolution, na
tural selection, and many other things in the arcana of
Nature, and have tried to understand the meaning of the
learned words they use. We have been impressed with the
great wealth of imagination, the inexhaustible treasury of
words, the dialectic skill, and keen logic of many of these
thinkers and scholars, both ancient and modern; but we
have to confess that we have found nothing upon which to
rest our faith, nor indeed one single ray of light concern
ing the nature and destiny of man, beyond what comes
to us from the Word, of God. Like the bird from the
ark, we have found no place over the whole wide waste of
waters upon which to rest the sole of our foot, until we re
turned to the ark we had left.
However attractive the speculations of these philosophers
may be to the intellect or the imagination, so far as they
depart from the Word of God, they seem to have nothing
but assumption upon which to rest. They show more skill
in demolishing the positions of their antagonists, than in
establishing their own. Indeed, some of our Christian
scholars who are enamored of the philosophy of material
ism on the one hand, or of dualism on the other, are can
did enough to admit that the point from which they start
is, and must be, a simple hypothesis ; but the theories which
they build upon it seem so perfect and beautiful in their
eye3 that they must be true, and the Bible must be so in
terpreted as to sustain them !
Mr. A. Wilford Hall, in his remarkable work entitled
The Problem of Human Life, dashes into the arguments of
Haeckel, Tyndall, Spencer, and those of that school, lik&
a bull into a china-shop, and fairly demolishes much of
their fine ware ; but he is quite as weak and open to attack
in the positions he undertakes to establish for himself. He

Annex.] unity of man. 91
makes much sport of Haeckel's doctrine, that " life and
mind are nothing but the complicated motions of the
molecules of the brain and nerves, placed together in a
most varied manner," and with the doctrines of spontaneous
generation and evolution which are so earnestly advocated
by not a few of our popular scientists; but, while he
would seem to be arguing for the doctrine of the opposite
school, his philosophy is nothing better than a sublimated
form of materialism, or the double materialism of the pre-
Socratic philosophers, and of Swedenborg, very much re
fined. He frankly admits that his theory is founded on a
hypothesis in the first instance, but it so clearly answers all
the conditions of the problem that it must be true. It is
this : That man is composed of two organisms, each com
plete in itself. Both of them are material, but the one is
of gross matter, and the other matter in its highest state
of refinement, answering, we suppose, to the fourth state of
matter of which Lockyer speaks, or, perhaps more truly,
to Aristotle's quint-essence. His own language is as fol
lows: " It is a fundamental law of Nature, that every anima
ted being, including man, is a dual organism, or double
entity ; the outer 6r physical structure being the visible
and tangible half, while the incorporeal, though invisible
and intangible, constitutes the other half, the one being the
exact counterpart of the other." (P. 48.)
" This interior organism, could we see it after the body
dies, would stand out a transparent manikin — with every
outline of the human body intact — a perfect representa
tion of our organic form in all its parts, as would a mani
kin of the arteries, veins, and nerves, could they be lifted
from the body, without disturbing their relative position."
(P. 46.)
" Thus inter-woven and inter-dependent upon each other,
it is not surprising that a blow on the brain should tempo
rarily paralyze the vital and mental structure, in propor-

92 essay. [Chap. I.
tion to the physical injury received ; and should such in
jury prove sufficient to result in a complete dissolution or
separation' of the two organisms, it is not inpresumable but
that the mental and vital entity might remain for some
time in a state of entire unconsciousness, or until the effects
of the dissolving shock should have sufficient time to sub
side. I say this is a reasonable supposition on the view
that we are really dual, substantial beings ; and then it is
equally rational that our interior, incorporeal enity, after
recovering consciousness may actually continue on forever
in a state of personal activity, as all religionists must hold,
if their religion is to be of any practical value in this
world or the next " (???) (P. 37.)
Because these philosophers cannot understand just how
the noetic and physical properties in man are combined,
or, indeed, how it is possible for the Creator to unite them
in one substantial organism, they must needs resort to the
hypothesis of a double organism, as though this would
solve the whole mystery ; but in reality it only throws it
one remove further back. It is quite as difficult to con
ceive how the manikin within can fulfill its spiritual func
tions unaided, without another still more etherial manikin
within itself, or this third, without another, and so on ad
infinitum. This kind of philosophy is very much akin to that old
philosophy which required something underneath the earth
to keep it from falling, and something under this, and so
on. And the arguments to prove it are certainly no bet
ter than the old philosophers used, nor is the theory any
better. The philosophy, and the reasoning to sustain it,
remind us of the method used by the old lady with her in
quisitive grandson. " What," says he, " does the world
6tand on ?" " On a great rock," she replies with prompt
ness, supposing that would end the matter. But not quite
satisfied, he inquired again : " And what does that rock
stand on ?" " Why, on another great rock," she replied,

Annex.] unity of man. 93
with some irritation at his dullness. But still unsatisfied,
and determined to get at the bottom of the matter, he
again asks : " Well, what does that rock stand on ?" This
was more than she had expected, but she was equal to the
occasion, and cut off all further questioning by exclaim
ing, with a great show of astonishment at the boy's stupid
ity : " Why, you foolish boy, don't you know, it is rocks
all the way down ?"
Some of our good Christian men have become so fearful
of the materialism of the present age, and of the atheistic,
agnostic, or infidel position which some of its strongest ad
vocates have taken, that they have run to the ¦ opposite ex
treme of error, and felt it incumbent on themselves to in
sist on this double-entity doctrine, as though the Christian
religion depended on it. But it really explains nothing..
Indeed, it tends directly to the Infidelity which they so
much fear ; for, so long as scientific thinkers are assured
by those whose office it is to expound the Scriptures, that
they teach a philosophy concerning man that is contrary
to the teachings of science and actually absurd, they will
sooner reject the Scriptures and the God of the Scriptures,
than stultify their own reasons. But there is no such ne
cessity on either hand. There is nothing in the Word of
God in which the sober men of either party may not unite.
What if we cannot understand how the mind and the
body can co-exist and act together in one organism, any
better than the ancients could understand how the earth
could float in space without something beside the power of
the Creator to sustain it ? We can understand it as a fact,
if we cannot explain the mode.
For the one party, Professor A. Bain, in his Mind and
Body, well says : " The alliance itself is unaccountable, be
cause it is an ultimate fact ; of it no explanation is compe
tent or relevant, except generalizing it to the utmost."

94 essay. [Chap. L
He also quotes Professor Ferrier as saying in his Institute
of Metaphysics:
" In vain does the spiritualist found an argument for the
existence of a separate, immaterial substance, on the al
leged incompatibility of the intellectual and physical phe
nomena to cohere in the same substratum. Materiality
may very well stand the brunt of that unshotted broad
side. This mild artifice can scarcely expect to be treated
as a serious observation. Such an hypothesis cannot he
meant to be in earnest. Who is to dictate to Nature what
phenomena, or what qualities inhere in what substance ;
what effects may result from what causes ? Matter is al
ready in the field as an acknowledged entity — this both
parties admit. Mind, considered as an independent entity,
is not so unmistakably in the field ! Therefore as entities
are not to be multiplied without necessity, we are not en
titled to postulate a new cause, so long as it is possible to
account for the phenomena by a cause already in existence ;
which possibility has never yet been disproved."
For the other party, Dugald Stewart, who had no par
tiality for materialism, says : " Although we have the
strongest evidence that there is a thinking and sentient
principle within us, essentially distinct from matter, yet,
we have no direct evidence of the possibility of this princi
ple exercising its various powers in a separate state from the
body. On the contrary, the union of the two, while it sub
sists, is evidently of the most intimate nature." And he
goes on to adduce some of the strong facts that show the
dependence of mind on body. He says that the mental
philosopher is rightly occupied in ascertaining " the laws
that regulate their connection, without attempting to ex
plain in what manner they are united."
John Locke also admits, that he cannot see that we are
in any way committed to the immaterial nature of mind,
inasmuch as Omnipotence might, for anything we know, as
easily annex the power of thinking to matter directly, tw

Annex.] unity of man. 95
to an immaterial substance to be itself annexed to matter.
In his Essays on the Human Understanding, he uses this
language :
" We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possi
bly shall never be able to kn6w whether any mere mate
rial being thinks or not ; it being, in respect to our notions,
not much more remote from our comprehension to con
ceive that God can, if He pleases, superadd to matter a
faculty of thinking, than that He should superadd to it
another substance of thinking ; since we know not whence
thinking consists, nor what sort of substance the Almighty
has been pleased to give that power. For I see no contra
diction in it, that the first eternal thinking being should, if
He pleased, give to certain systems of created senseless
matter put together as he thinks fit, sense, perception, and
fought." Professor Bain concludes his History of the Theories of
the Soul with these words :
" The rapid sketch thus given seems to tell its own tale
as to the future. The arguments for the two substances
have, we believe, now entirely lost their solidity ; they are
no longer compatible with ascertained science, and clear
thinking. The one substance, with two sets of properties,
two sides, the physical and the mental — a double-faced
unity — would appear to comply with all the exigencies of
the case. We are to deal with this as in the language of
the Athanasian Creed, ' not confounding the person, nor
dividing the substance.' The mind is destined to be a dou
ble study — to conjoin the mental philosopher with the
physical philosopher ; and the momentary glimpse of Aris
totle is at last converted into a clear and steady vision."
It has not been our purpose to favor, or oppose any par
ticular school of psychology, but merely to set forth what
we think to be the simple doctrine of Divine Revelation
as to the nature of man, namely : That man, however con
stituted, is one person in his life, and in his death, and in
the world to come ; that the second life, for which he hopes,

96 essay. [Chap. L
is not the natural prolongation of the present into another
state of being, but is altogether supernatural. It is only
through Redemption in Christ that he lives again, and
lives forever. We believe that this is not only the truth of
God's Word, but it is the only doctrine that will meet the
skepticism of the present day,' whether in the direction of
spiritualism or materialism, and give efficiency to the Gos
pel, which human speculations have so long perverted and
obscured. It is rather to what is falsely asserted to be the doctrine
of the Scriptures concerning the nature and destiny of
man, than to what they really teach, that so many of our
scientific men are opposing themselves. They cannot be
made to believe without any evidence whatever — and in
spite of much to the contrary — that man is a creature
with two organisms, when all the phenomena of his being,
according to their view, can be quite as well and even much
better explained on the theory of one. They cannot be
made to believe, in spite of the evidence of all their five
senses, as well as- the analogies of nature, that man is na
turally exempt from actual death, and that he naturally
and inevitably rises into greater freedom and activity when
he seems to die.
It is because the professed expounders of God's Word
have insisted upon their acceptance of these fictions of a
false philosophy, as the very foundation of the Gospel, that
they have been repelled from it, and forced to declare them
selves agnostics or unbelievers.
But there is nothing in the doctrine of a resurrection
from death by Divine power, and of an Eternal Life
through a new spiritual birth from above, that conflicts
with the teachings of reason or science, however much it
may he beyond them. This is just what the Gospel does
teach ; and just what must be preached, if we would save

Annex.] unity of man. 97
them from Infidelity, or save a world of perishing men.
" I am the Resurrection and the Life," says Christ. " 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."

Oplrapter jfcami'

Bible Terminology.

Introductory Remarks.
Many of the disputes among men arise from the different
senses attached to the words they use, and are more ap
parent than real. Words represent things and ideas.
When employed to represent what is objective and obvi
ous to the senses, they are less liable to be misunderstood
than when employed to express invisible things and ab
stract ideas.
This difficulty is greatly increased in translating the ex
pressions of one language into the words of another, espe-
cialfy in rendering from an ancient into a modern lan
guage, between which there must necessarily be so much
dissimilarity, owing to the different habits, customs, modes
of thought and expression of the people using them. The
ideas are often new and strange. It is frequently quite im
possible to find equivalent terms for the expression of any
given idea in the two languages, or even to be sure of the
idea that is to be conveyed from the one language to the
other. There is often opportunity for the translator to
impart something of his own mind and personality to the
work he is translating. Perhaps it is not possible for him
to avoid being influenced by his own mental state, if he

100 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
be ever so honest, in rendering the thoughts of another in
a foreign language into his own.
These are some of the embarrassments and disadvanta
ges — and others might be mentioned — wliich we experience
in the use of our English version of the Scriptures.
The Old Testament was written — nearly all of it — in
the old Hebrew language, long before the beginning of
the Christian era ; and the New, principally in the old
Greek language, in the first century after Christ, now
nearly two thousand years ago. These Sacred Scriptures
have necessarily suffered in being translated from those
ancient languages into ours, from the want of identical
and equivalent terms, from the imperfect knowledge of the
translators, and from the coloring which their own views,
prepossessions and prejudices must unavoidably have given
to their work. And more than all they have suffered, and
still suffer, from the peculiar meaning which expositors,
commentators, theologians, and others insist on putting
upon the otherwise plain terms found in the Scriptures, to
adapt them to their own human philosophy. The peculiar
religious sense in which, we are told, these words are to be
used, is often quite different from their usual meaning in
common life, and not unfrequently just the opposite of
their actual meaning ; and no other reason can be given
for this anomaly, but that the philosophy of man requires
it. In this way, plain common sense is ruled out of court,
and not allowed to have any voice — or any controlling
voice — in deciding what the Bible means, or intends to
teach ; and the people are driven to the commentaries, to
systems of theology so-called, and to catechisms and creeds
to know what to believe.
Many of our religious teachers, who are set for the de
fense of the truth, rely more upon the authority of tradi
tion than upon the Word of God to justify their position

Chap. II.] introductory remarks. 101
and enforce the doctrines they teach ; and so they hand
down their interpretations from one generation to another.
Indeed, it has already come to pass that in some of our
great organic church bodies, a man is regarded as hereti
cal or sound according as he agrees or disagrees with the
book of the Church, which is not the Book of God, but,
hke the Mishna of the Jews, is a digest of the traditions
of the elders and of the interpretations they have decided
to put upon the Scriptures. And when a man is tried for
heresy, he is tried by their church-book, and not allowed
to appeal to the Word of God ! !
It should be remembered that the Bible was given to the
world at large, and not intended for any one class of men
or minds ; and that, while it contains something that is
adapted to every stage of mental elevation and style of
thought, and contains depths that are unfathomable and
mysteries that are insoluble, even by the wisest of men, it
also contains much, very much, that is open to the simplest
intelligence. Indeed, many of its doctrines, that are called
mysterious, have only been made so by the fog which hu
man philosophy has thrown around them. They are clear
enough to the humble, docile spirit. Even its poetical por
tions only express the higher feelings of simple, pious
hearts. Its parables, its metaphors, and otlier figures of
speech, were not given to puzzle men, but to illustrate and
enforce doctrines which are elsewhere expressed in the plain
est language possible.
These tropical portions of Scripture in which philosoph
ical speculators and theorizers have always delighted to
revel — as affording the opportunity to find and prove just
what they wish to find and prove, no matter what it may
be — were not given to teach new doctrines, but rather to
illuminate those already taught. They are not to be taken
as doctrinal statements for the foundation of one's faith to

102 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
which the plainer literal portions must be made to. con
form, but only in harmony, as they are, with its didactic
utterances. Hooker, in his Ecc. Pol, says : " I hold it for a most in
fallible rule in expositions of sacred Scripture, that when
a literal construction will stand, the farthest from the let
ter is commonly the worst. There is nothing more danger
ous and delusive than that act which changes the meaning
of words, as alchemy doth, or would, the substance or
metals ; making of anything what it listeth, and bringing,
in the end, all truth to nothing."
Jeremy Taylor says: "In all the interpretations of
Scripture, the literal sense is to be presumed and chosen,
unless there be evident cause to the contrary."
Martin Luther, in his Annotations on Deut., also says :
" That which I have so often insisted on elsewhere, I here
once more repeat, viz. : that the Christian should direct
his first efforts toward understanding the literal sense of
the Scripture, which alone is the substance of faith and of
Christian theology. . . . The allegorical sense is com
monly uncertain and by no means safe to build our faith
upon ; for it usually depends on human opinions and con
jecture only, on which, if any man lean, he will find it no,
better than the Egyptian reed. Therefore, Origen, Je
rome, and similar of the fathers are to be avoided with the
whole Alexandrian school, which formerly abounded in
this species of interpretation. For, later writers unhappily
following their too-much-praised and prevailing example,
it has come to pass that men make just what they please.
of the Scriptures, until some accommodate the Word of
God to' the most extravagant absurdities."
In the critical examination of the Scriptures, it is not.
only requisite for the scholar to examine the original text,
but also — what is more important — to bring to his investi
gation a mind as free as possible from any preconceived
theories of his own or others ; to guard against any pecu
liar bent or influence, from whatever cause, which he may.

Chap. IL] INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 103
have toward any doctrine ; and to seek, with all docility
of mind and candor, to ascertain just what the Divine
Spirit intends to teach and does teach by the language em
ployed ; and this, not for the purpose of sustaining or op
posing any theory, but simply for the sake of the truth.
Let us try to examine the Word of God in this spirit,
with reference to some of the principal words employed in
this discussion.

SECTION I.
"Soul" and "life" in the Old Testament.
The word Soul occurs 477 times in the English version
of the Old Testament. It stands for the Hebrew word
Nephesh, and is the only Hebrew word (excepting two
instances, Isa. 57 : 16, and Job 30 : 15) that is translated
"soul." But Nephesh is not uniformly translated " soul."
It occurs 753 times and is rendered by a great variety of
words as follows :
(1) It is rendered " soul," as we have said, (477 — 2,)
475 times ;
(2) "Life," 120 times;
(3) "Man," "person," " fellow," " any," "one," in all 39
times; (4) By the personal pronouns, " I," " me," " myself,"
" he," " she," " himself," " we," etc., etc., 36 times ;
(5) "Will," "mind,"" desire," "pleasure," "appetite,"
"lust," 49 times;
(6) " Beast," " creature," " thing," " tablets," 15 times;
(7) "The dead," (dead) "body," "mortally," 13 times;

104 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
(8) "Deadly," "greedy," "hearty," once each, or 3
times ; and
(9) "Ghost" and "breath of life," 3 times.
The translators, in endeavoring to give what they doubt
less supposed to be the real meaning of the word Nephesh
in the 753 places where it occurs, have rendered it by 44
different English words, which we have arranged under
the above nine different classes. Whether they might not
have confined themselves to a smaller number of English
words, is a question of opinion which we will not now dis
cuss. But it is evident that had there been any one word
in our language exactly equivalent in all respects to the.
word Nephesh in the Hebrew, they would have needed to
use only this one word in translating it in every case where
it occurs.The same may be said of the Greek word Psuche (or
psyche) which occurs 105 times in the New Testament. It
is considered to be the exact equivalent of the Hebrew
word Nephesh. It is the only Greek word throughout the
New Testament that is rendered " soul," and is so rendered
58 times. But it is also rendered " life " 40 times, and in
the other 7 instances it is rendered " heart," " heartily,"
" mind," 6 times, and " you," once.
We think that by carefully collating the various pas
sages iu which the word nephesh occurs in the Hebrew,
and the word pmche in the Greek, if we are not able to
find one English word that will represent them both as
they represent each other, we shall, at least, be able to ar
rive at the primary idea which they represent, and that we
shall have no difficulty in expressing it by some form of
words, if not by one word, in our own language.
But with respect to the word " life," by which these two

Sec. 1.] SOUL AND LIFE — OLD TESTAMENT. 105
words are more frequently rendered than any other except
ing "soul," the question is rendered more complicated
when we come into the New Testament, by the revelation
of another kind of life, or a higher and better life, which
is only hinted at in the Old — to foreshadow which, another
word even in Hebrew (viz., chai) is used, differing from
nephesh, and, to reveal which the separate and distinct
word zoe instead of psuehe is always and invariably used
in the Greek. It is never translated by any other word
than "life." It is to this word zoe, and never in one single
instance to the word psuehe, that the epithet aionios, signi
fying eternal, everlasting, etc., is so often attached, and
then it is rendered " eternal life," or " life everlasting."
With the article 9 attached, as is often the case, it is more
properly rendered " the eternal life," or " the life everlast
ing," to distinguish it from the nephesh life or the psuehe
life, which is always spoken of as temporal and transitory,
and to which, the epithet "eternal" is never attached.
Even in the Old Testament, in which this higher and
better life is only vaguely spoken of, the word nephesh is
not used, but the word chai, and it is to this that the epi
thet olam, signifying eternal, is applied in two or three in
stances, but never, never to the word nephesh. (See Ps. 133 :
3. Dan. 12 : 2.)
But unfortunately the radical distinction between these
two words psuehe and zoe, and the two kinds of life they
serve to designate, which is so apparent in the original, is
not brought out at all in our common version ; for the
very same English word " life " is used to render them
both. It is a pity that, while our translators were able to find
so many different English words by which to render the
one. word psuehe, (and still more by which to render
nephesh,) they should not have been able to find two Eng-

106 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
lish words, by which to render the two Greek words psuehe
and zoe, and the two different ideas so evidently expressed
by them in the original, but that they must needs under
take to cover them both by the one English word, " life."
Therefore, in addition to the work of collating the sev
eral passages in the Old Testament, in which the word
nephesh is used, and in the New, in which psuehe is used,
we shall be obliged to cite the passages in which the word
zoe is used, and to refer our word " life," wherever it occurs
in the New Testament, back to the words psuehe or zoe as
the case may be, for which it stands. We shall cite every
passage, that by a complete comparison of the two words
we may come at the real gospel distinction between them,
and between these two kinds of life — the psuehe life and
the zoe life — which is hidden from the English reader by
the use of the single word, life, to cover them both.
This may seem like dreary and dull reading to the su
perficial inquirer. It certainly imposes no easy burden
on us ; but it seems to be required ; for we cannot ask oth
ers to accept of our conclusions, however true they may
seem to us, without giving them the opportunity to follow
us in the process by which we reach them, if they please,
and of judging of their fairness.
We may somewhat abbreviate our work in the Old Tes
tament — the number of passages is so great — by classify
ing the numerous texts in which the word nephesh is found,
and quoting only representative passages under their 44
different renderings. But in the New Testament, while
the number of texts is smaller, and the number of differ
ent renderings given to psuehe is not so great, yet the ques
tion has been so complicated, by rendering the one single-
word psuehe by two English words " soul " and " life," on
the one hand, and by rendering the two distinct Greek
words psuehe and zoe, by only one English word, that we

See. 1.] SOUL AND LIFE — OLD TESTAMENT. 107
Beem to be under the necessity of citing every text in
which either of these two words occur, that the inquirer
may come with us to an intelligent conclusion with re
spect to the true meaning of these two crucial words.

NEPHESH.
1. Nephesh, translated " soul," 475 times :
Gen. 2 : 7, breathed, and man became a living S.
27 : 4, that my S. may bless thee before I die
35 : 18, came to pass as her 8. was in departing
49 : 6, O my S.,- come not thou into their secret
Ex. 30 : 12, give every man a ransom for his S. unto
31 : 14, that S. shall be cut off from among
Lev. 4:2, If a S. shall sin through ignorance
5:2, Or if a S. touch any unclean thing
5 : 15, If a S, commit a trespass, and sin
7 : 25, even the S. that eateth it shall be cut off
17 : 10, I will even set my face against that 8.
22 : 11, But if the priest buy any S. with his
26 : 30, your idols, and my S. shall abhor
Num. 19 : 22, S. that toucheth it shall be unclean
30 : 10, bound her S. by a bond with an oath
Deut. 6 : 5, love the Lord thy God with all thy 8.
11 : 13, with all your heart and with all your 8.
12 : 15, 20, 21, whatsoever thy S. lusteth after
13 : 6, thy friend which is as thine own S.
Josh. 11 : 11, they smote all the S's that were
1 Sam. 1 : 26, Oh my lord, as thy S. liveth, my lord
18 : 3, because he loved him as his own S.
25 : 29, S's of thine enemies, them shall he
1 Kings 17 : 21, let this child's S. come into him again
Job 7 : 15, So that my S. chooseth strangling
10 : 1, I will speak in the bitterness of my 8.
27 : 8, gained, when God taketh away his S.
33 : 22, S. draweth near unto the grave and
Psa. 6 : 4, Return, O Lord, deliver my S.; oh save
7 : 2, Lest he tear my S. like a lion rending
11 : 1, how say ye to my S., Flee as a bird
16 : 10, For thou wilt not leave my S. in hell
22 : 29, and none can keep alive his own S.
23 : 3, He restoreth my S.: he leadeth me in
25 : 13, His S. shall dwell at ease and his
26 : 9, Gather not my S. with sinners, nor
34 : 2i, Lord . redeemeth the S. of his servants

108 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
Psa. 40 : 14, that seek after my S. to destroy it
42 : 1, so panteth my S. after thee, O God
42 : 5, 11, Why art thou cast down, O my S.
49 : 8, For the redemption of their S is
63 : 1, my S. thirsteth for thee my flesh
119 : 109, My S. is continually in my hand
Prov. 8 : 36, h<j that sinneth, wrongeth his own 3.
li : 25, The liberal S. shall be made fat
19 : 18. and let not thy S. spare for his crying
25 : 25j As cold waters to a thirsty S., so is
Isa. 44 : 20, he cannot deliver his S., nor say
53 : 12, he hath poured out his S. unto death
55 : 3, hear and your S. shall live ; and I will
Jer. 6 : 16, walk therein and find rest for yonr 8.
18 : 20, for they have digged a pit for my S.
32 : 41, my whole heart and with my whole S.
Ezek. 3 : 19, die . . . but thou hast delivered thy 8.
18 : 4, all S's are mine ; as the S. of the father
18 : 4, 20, the 8. that sfnneth it shall die
Hab. 2 : 10, and hast sinned against thy S.
Neshamah, translated " soul " :
Isa. 57 : 16, fail before me and the S's which I
Nedibah, translated " soul " :
Job 30 : 15, they pursue my S. as the wind, and my

2. Nephesh, translated " life " 120 times :
Gen. 19 : 17, Escape for thy L. : look not behind thee
19 : 19, hast showed unto me in saving my L.
44 : 30, that his L. is bound up in the lad's L.
Ex. 21 : 23, mischief follow, thou shalt give L. for L.
Lev. 17:11, For the L. of the flesh is in the blood
17 : 14, the L. of all flesh is in the blood thereof
Num. 35 : 31, take no satisfaction for the L. of a murderer
Deut. 19 : 21, L. for L., eye for eye, tooth for tooth
Ruth 4:15, he shall be unto thee a restorer of L.
1 Sam. 22 : 23, he that seeketli my L. seeketh thy L.
28 : 21, 1 have put my L. in my hand
2 Sam. 19 : 5, have saved thy L. and the L. of thy
1 Kings 1 : 12, mayest save thine own L, and the L.
2 Kings 1:14, let my L. now be precious in thy sight
Esth. 7 : 3, let my L. be_gi-ven me at my peiition
Job 2 : 4, all that a man hath will he give for his L.
Psa. 31 : 13, while . . . they devised to take away my L.
38 : 12, They also that seek after my L. lay snares
Prov. 12 : 10, a righteous man regardeth the L. of

Sec. 1.] SOUL AND LIFE — OLD TESTAMENT. 109
Jer. 48 : 6, Flee, save your L's and be like the heath
Jon. 4 : 3, take I beseech thee my L. from me
(Nephesh Chayah.)
Gen. 1 : 20, the moving creature that hath L.
1 : 30, and to everything wherein there is L.
Note.— There is another Hebrew word, Chai, which is rendered " Hfe ', some
150 times. It seems to belter represent our English word life, and to have a
higher meaning than is fouud iii the word nfphe:h. It more nearly coriesponds
lo tneGreek word zoe, and is so rendered in the Septuagint, and in the Vulgate
itis rendered vita, (and not anima as nepnesh is render, d.) The Hebrew adjec
tive olam, which means everFasiiny, is sometimes united with it, as the Greek
adjective aiowio-t, signifying everlasting, is joined with zoe — though never
joined with nephesh or ptmche. But as this higher and more enduring l'fe is
only brought fully to light in the Gospel, it is not so distinctly contracted with
nephe-h ns zor. is wilh psuehe. However, as itseeins tocontain the germ of that
greattruth yet to be revealed, as The Life Everlasting through ( lirist, we will
here give a few examples of its use, that the contrast may be observed :
Chai, rendered " life " 150 times :
: 9, the tree of L. alio in the midst of the
: 15, I h -ve set before thee this day L. and
: 19, I have set helot e yon I., and death
: 19, therefore choose 1.. th:.t both thou and
: 47, because it is your L.: and through this
: 12, Thou hist granted me L. and favour
: 11, Tho>t wiltshow mc the path of L.
: 4, He aske I L. of thee ; thou pavest it him
: 5. in his favor is L. : weeping may endure
: 12, Whatman is he thai desireth Laud
: 9, with thee is the fountain of L. in thy^
: 4, Who rndeemeth thy I., from destruction
: 3, commanded the blessing  L. for cwrmors
Prov. 8:18, She is a I ree • f I., to them that lay hold
8:22, So shall they be L unto thy soul
8 : S3, whoso findeth me findeth L. and shall
10:11, a wel I of L. : but violence co^ereth
11 : 19, As righte 'usness tendeth to L. ; so he
11 -.no, the fruit of the r ghteou?  a tree of L.
14 : 27, fear of tho Lord is a fountain of L.
15 : 21, The wny of L. is above to the wise
19 : 23, The fear of the Lord tendeth to L : and
Jer. 21 : 8, I set before you the way of L. and the
Dan- 12 : 2, some to Everlasting L. and some to shame

Gen.

2

Deut

30

30

30

32

Job

10

Psa.

16

21
SO
84
8G
103
133
3. Nephesh, translated "Man," "Person," "Fellow,"
"Any," "One," 39 times:
Er. 12 : 16, Save that which every M. must eat
Lev. 24 : 17, And he that killeth any man
Gen. 14:21, Give me the P. and take the goods thyself
36 : 6, All the Ps of his house
Num. 35 : 30, Whoso killeth any Person
2 Sam. 14 : 14, Neither duth God respect any Person
Ezek. 16 : 15, They traded the P's of men
110 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
Judg. 18 : 25, lest angry Fellows run upon thee
Num. 19 : 6, the dead body of Any man
Deut. 24 : 7, be found healing Any of his brethren
Lev. 4 : 27, If any One of the common people

4. Nephesh, translated by a personal pronoun 36 times :
Gen. 37 : 21, Let us not kill Him
Deut. 19 : 1, Lest the avenger of blood slay Him
Job 18 : 4, He teareth Himself in his anger
Amos 6 : 8, The Lord hath sworn by Himself
Psa. 105 : 18, with fetters ; He was laid in iron
Num. 23 : 10, Let Me die the death of the righteous
Judges 16 : 30, Samson said, Let Me die with
Psa. 131 : 2, and quieted Myself as a child
35 : 26, Ah I so We would have it
Isa. 5 : 14, Hell hath enlarged Herself
Jer. 40 : 15, Wherefore should we slay Thee
Esth. 4 : 13, Think not with Thyself
Job 36 : 14, They die in youth
Isa. 47 : 14, They shall not deliver Themselves
Lev. 11 : 44, Neither shall ye defile Yourselves
Jer. 17 : 21, take heed to Yoursdves
Prov. 14 : 10, The heart knoweth His own bitterness

5. Nephesh, translated "Will," "Desire," "Mind,"
'Pleasure," " Appetite," •' Lust," 49 times :
Psa. 27 : 12, to the WiU of mine enemies
Mic. 7 : 3, He uttereth his mischievous Desire
Gen. 23 : 8, If it be your Mind
Ezek. 23 : 17, Her Mind was alienated from them
Psa. 105 : 22, to bind his princes at Pleasure
Prov. 23 : 22, if thou be a man given to Appetite
Psa. 78 : 18, by asking meat for their Lust

6. Nephesh, translated "Beast," " Creature," " Thing,"
" Tablets," 15 times :
Lev. 24 : 18, He that killeth a Beast shall make it good,
Beast for Beast
Gen. 1 : 21, and every living Creature that moveth
1 : 24, the living Creature after his kind
2 : 19, Whatsoever Adam called every living Oreaturt
Isa. 19 : 10, Sluices and ponds for Fish

Sec 1.] 80TJL AND LIFE — OLD TESTAMENT. HI
Lev. 11 : 10, Any living Thing which is in the waters
Ezek. 47 : 9, Every Thing that liveth which moveth
Isa. 3 : 20, the Lord will take away — the Tablets t

7. Nephesh, translated "The Dead," (Dead) "Body,"
' Mortally," 14 times :
Lev. 19 : 28, Ye shall not.. ..cuttings in... .flesh for The Dead
21 : 1, None be defiled for The Dead
21 : 11, Neither go in to any dead Body
Num. 6 : 6, He shall come at no dead Body i
9 : 7, Defiled by the dead Body of a man
19 : 13, the dead Body of any man
Deut. 19 : 11, and smite him Mortally that he die

8. Nephesh, translated " Deadly," " Greedy," " Hearty,"
once each, 3 times :
Psa. 17 : 9, My Deadly enemies who compass me about
Prov. 27 : 11, They are Greedy dogs which can never have
Isa. 66 : 9, A man's friend by Hearty counsel

9. Nephesh, translated " Ghost," " Breath " (of life,)
3 times: Job 11 : 20, As the giving up of the Ohost
Jer. 15 : 9, She hath given up the Ghost
Job 41 : 21, His Breath (the leviathan's) kind let h coal
Gesenius, in his Hebrew Lexicon, gives as the primary
meaning of nephesh, " breath," " life," " the vital princi
ple in animal bodies,"
Furst defines it as " anima qua animal vivit turn hominis
turn bruti " — " the breath both of man and brute, by which
the animal lives."
Roy gives as its definition, " the soul," " life," " vital
part," "man," " a creature," " affection," "person," "sub
stance." Though animal breath appears to be the root idea of
nephesh, (as also of psuehe in the Greek,) there is another

112 BIBLE TEEMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
word, neshamah, or more frequently, rua'ch, (like pneuma
in the Greek,) usually translated " spirit," which is used to
represen t the vital breath. Nephesh is only once so translated
(viz., Job 41 : 21) where it is said that the breath (nephesh)
of the leviathan " kindleth coals." Indeed, these words,
nephesh and ruach, psuehe and pneuma, are never inter
changed or confounded with each other in the Hebrew and
Greek, as the corresponding words soul and spirit are in
our language. The word ruach is found 400 times in
the Old Testament, but it is not once translated " soul ;"
and the corresponding word pneuma is found 385 times in
the New Testament, and is never once translated "soul."
In the Septuagint, a Greek version of the Old Testament,
made long before the birth of Christ, the word psuehe is
always made to stand for nephesh and never pneuma;
thus showing that those who made this version regarded
nephesh and ruach in the Hebrew, and psuehe and pneuma
in the Greek — that is the soul and the spirit — as two dis
tinct things. The same distinction is observed in the Latin
vulgate. The spirit is represented as emanating from God, and the
soul or life as the result of the inbreathing of this spirit
into the animal body. Hence —
1. Nephesh is employed to designate the animal life or
soul which the spirit gives. After God had formed Adam
out of the dust of the ground, He breathed into his nos
trils this breath of life and he became (nephesh chayah) a
living soul. The same thing is predicated of all the ani
mals, and precisely the same term nephesh chayah is used.
They are all living souls. But this fact is concealed from
the English reader, for our translators, as if unwilling to
call the lower animals " living souls," as the Bible does,
have substituted the words " living creatures," or " beasts,"
or some other word, which more truly represented their

Sec. 1.] SOUL AND LIFE  OLD TESTAMENT. 113
own ideas. See Gen. 1 : 21, 24; 2:19. Lev. 11:10;
24 : 18, etc.
Dr. Adam Clarke, in commenting on Gen. 1 : 24, says :
" Nephesh chayah is a general term to expresa all creatures
endowed with animal life, in any of its infinitely varied
gradations." It is very generally used, not so much to designate any
one part or attribute of a man, as the whole man as an in
dividual. Thus : " All the souls that came out of the loins
of Jacob were seventy souls." " If a soul shall sin through
ignorance," etc., and in numerous other instances. Not
only men, but other animals are spoken of in the same
way, and sometimes in such a connection that our transla
tors could not well avoid calling them souls ; as Num.
31 : 28, " And levy a tribute. . .of one soul of five hundred,
both of the persons of the beeves, and of the asses, and of
the sheep." *
2. As life is the essential thing in every animal or ani
mated creature, the word comes naturally to stand for
"life," and it is so rendered, as we have seen, 120 times,
and might have been in many more cases, where it is ren
dered " soul." Life and soul are properly identical terms ;
they represent the same thing or principle, and have the
same origin. Indeed, Dr. Noah Porter, in his Psychology
and the Soul, introductory to his work on the Human Intel
lect, teaches, if we rightly apprehend his meaning, that they
are one and the same "principle," "force," or "agent."
Our translators have sometimes taken the liberty, where
this word nephesh occurs more than once in the same sen
tence, of rendering it by both of these words, as in Lev.
17 : 10, 11 : "I will even set my face against that (nephesh)
bouI ; for the (nephesh) life of the flesh is in the blood, and
I have given it to you upon the altar, to make an atone
ment for your (nephesh) souls." They have also treated

114 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. li
the word psuehe, in the New Testament, in the same way,
as we shall see. It has precisely the same meaning when
it is rendered " life " as when rendered " soul," and refers
to the same animal principle which vitalizes the body of
men and of beasts. In Prov. 12 : 10 it is said : " A right
eous man regardeth the nephesh of his beast." It is quite
immaterial whether we render it " soul of his beast," or
"life of his beast"; but, as in most other cases, it is ren
dered " life of his beast " in our version.
3. As the blood is the visible representative of this prin
ciple, it is said to reside in the blood, and to be poured out
with the blood ; and the blood, under the altar of the vic
tims slain, is spoken of as the souls of the victims un
der the altar. (Rev. 6 : 9.) Hence, by a metonymy, this
word designates the person possessing the soul or life or
blood. Not merely the noun "person " is used, as we have
seen, but tfee pronoun, in every variety of form in many
instances, and it might have been in many more quite as
well, or even better, had our translators thought best to
render it so. In Judges 16 : 30, Samson says : " Let me
die with the Philistines." Nephesh is the word which is
rendered "me," asis also the case in Num. 23 : 10, where
Balaam said : " Let me die the death of the righteous." So
' in Psa. 25 : 13, where the Psalmist says : " His (nephesh) soul
shall dwell at ease," the word might just as properly have
been rendered by the pronoun " he." In scores of other
places this word nephesh means nothing more nor less than
the person, who might have been represented by the pro
noun instead of the words, "my soul," "your soul," "his
soul," etc.
4. Representing the soul or life or the person possessing
it, this word naturally comes to denote the will, mind, de
sires, affections, and especially the animal appetites and
passions that the person or animal exercises. So the

8eC. 1.] SOUL AND LIFE  OLD TESTAMENT. 115
Psalmist prays that he "may not be given over to the
{nephesh) will pf his enemies." And Solomon says : " Put
a knife to thy throat if thou be a man given to (nephesh)
appetite ;" and so in many other cases that might be cited.
5. Designating the person, the whole person, it comes
naturally, by synecdoche to designate the body which rep
resents the whole person, and then by a natural turn of
thought, to stand for that body after the breath of life has
left it — the dead body — as will be seen under the texts
cited. "Neither go in to any dead body." (nephesh.)
" The dead body (nephesh) of any man," etc.
After a careful examination of every passage in the Old
Testament in which this word occurs, we do not hesitate to
say that it nowhere answers to the popular Platonic idea
of the word soul, as an entity existing independent of the
body, on the one hand, and of the spirit on the other. We
have no point to prove, or theory of the soul to establish ;
our single object is to learn what the Scriptures teach on
this subject. It is quite easy to read the Platonic theory
of the soul into many of the texts of Scripture ; but we
are quite sure it cannot be drawn out of th^m by an inde
pendent inquirer. That our translators held to the Pla
tonic theory, is evident from the support they have every
where thought proper to give to it in their rendering of
this word — nephesh — calling it " soul " when referring to
man, and by some other inferior word when referring to
the lower animals; calling it "life" when it3 transitory
nature was most evident, and " soul " when it could be
made to stand for that which was supposed to be immortal.
This is especially evident in the double rendering they
have given to the word when occurring more than once in
the same connection.
The Greek word psuehe has been treated in the same
way, as we shall see when we come to the New Testament ;

116 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
but we must refer, by anticipation, to one or two passages,
to illustrate this point. Take the passage in Matthew 16 :
25, 26 : " For whosoever will save his psuehe shall lose it ;
and whosoever will lose his psuehe for my sake shall find
it ; for what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole
world and lose his own psuehe, or what shall a man give
in exchange for his psuehe?" The same word occurs
four times in this passage ; in the two former it has been
rendered "life," and in the two latter "soul." There
seems to be no reason whatever for this, but to give sup
port to their idea that the soul was infinitely more import
ant than the life. "Whereas, if they had rendered the
word in all four cases by one word as they should have
done — either life or soul — the Bible truth in regard to this
matter would have been apparent to the English reader.
Take another passage— Luke 12 : 19-23 : " And I will say
unto my psuehe, 'Psuehe, thou hast much goods laid up for
many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.'
But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy psuehe
shall be required of thee ; then whose shall those things be
which thou htet provided? So is he that layeth up
treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. And he
said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no
thought for your psuehe, what ye shall eat; neither for
the body, what ye shall put on. The psuehe is more than
meat, and the body is more than raiment." In this passage
the word psuehe occurs five times. In verses 19 and 20 it
is translated three times " soul," and in the other two verses
it is translated " life." In the former part of the passage
we have the parable of the rich fool, and in the latter part
we have the lesson our Lord would draw from it. No
one can suppose, when he speaks of the psuehe three times
in verses 19 and 20, and then proceeds to speak twice of
this same psuehe in verses 22 and 23, that He means by

Sec. 1.] 80UL AND LIFE  OLD TESTAMENT. 117
it two different things. But as no one can suppose that in
verses 22 and 23 the word can mean an " immortal princi
ple," he must needs confess that it cannot mean an " im
mortal principle " in verses 19 and 20. But by rendering
it by these two words, "life" and "soul," the translators
have disguised the fact which the Bible teaches, that the
life and the soul are one and the same thing, and have done
what they could to sustain their theory of the natural im
mortality of the soul. But we shall have occasion to re
cur tq this point in the next section.
The words, "immortal soul," "the never dying soul,"
etc., are constantly heard from our pulpits and in all re
ligious exhortations, but there is nothing like this to be
found in all the Scriptures. This soul is everywhere spoken
of as mortal and transitory, sharing the fortunes of the
body, and common to the whole animal creation. It comes
with the breath, and goes with the breath. It ia impris
oned with the body, killed and poured out with the blood,
and seems to have no function or power of manifestation
or of action apart from the body. " His breath goeth forth;
he returneth to.the earth ; in that very day his thoughts per
ish." Psa. 146 : 4.
If this be materialism — to which title the popular phi
losophy concerning the soul has attached such an odium
iheologicum as to frighten many from seeing or acknowl
edging the plain teachings of the Scriptures — all we have
to say is, It is the materialism of the Bible, and will stand in
spite of all the hard names that may be given to it.
McCulloch, in his Credibility of the Scriptures, says:
"There is no word in the Hebrew language that signifies
either soul or spirit in the technical sense in which we use
these terms as implying something distinct from the body."
(Vol. 2, p. 471.) * y
Parkhurst, the eminent Hebrew lexicographer, says:

118 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
" As a noun, nephesh hath been supposed to signify the
spiritual part of man, or what is commonly called the
soul. I must confess myself, that I can find no passage
where it hath undoubtedly this meaning."
Another author (Miles Grant) says : " After surveying
the whole Bible on this subject, in our honesty, we can come
to no other decision than that the soul nowhere represents,
in the Bible, a conscious part of man existing as such
when the physical organism is sleeping in death. We are
fully satisfied that the popular theology of the day, on this
point, is sustained neither by facts, true philosophy, com
mon sense, nor the BIBLE."
The attempt to fasten upon the word nephesh (or upon
the word psuehe) the Platonic idea that the human soul is
naturally immortal and independent of the body in its ex
istence, entirely breaks down before any honest critical ex
amination of the original Scriptures. Indeed, there is no
plausible or decent apology for it. Even Prof. Mead, who
sets out, in his " Soul Here and Hereafter," with the evi
dent purpose of doing this, if it be possible, or, at any rate,
of heaping contempt and odium upon those from whom
he differs, comes ridiculously short of his aim, and is
obliged to make the following admission :
" When we consider the Hebrew word nephesh with ref
erence to. translation into English, it is manifest that we
have no exact equivalent. It must be rendered variously,
according to the varying shades of meaning which it bears
in the original. It is certain that the word ' soul,' though
the one most frequently used for it in our Bible, is far
from representing it. By ' soul ' at present is ordinarily
meant an immaterial, imperishable part of man, distinct
from the corporeal frame; nephesh, on the contrary,
though often verging on this meaning (?) yet generally
means either more or less ; that is, it generally means the
whole person, inclusive of what we call soul and body."
p. 22. '
That is to say, after throwing such, a cloud of learned

Sec. l.j SOUL AND LIFE  OLD TESTAMENT. 119
doubt about his subject that no man can follow him in his
reasoning — if that can be called reasoning which is made
up so largely of dogmatic assertion and personal reflections
—he comes exactly to the point for which we are contending,
viz., that the word nephesh, so often translated soul, " is far
from representing " the popular conception of what is now
called soul. We also agree with him and his school of
theology in holding that there is an immortality — a life
everlasting — for man, and that it is revealed in the Scrip
tures, especially in the Gospel. But it does not inhere in
the nephesh nor in the psuehe. It is not a natural prin
ciple, but supernatural. Jt is not human, but divine. It
is not of blood, begotten of the will of the flesh, nor
of the will of man, but of God. It is not given in the
natural birth, but in the new spiritual birth. The chil
dren of Adam who have no other life or soul than that
represented by the nephesh or psuehe, are mortal and tran
sitory.- The very object and end of the incarnation and
death and resurrection of the God-man was to immortalize
this mortal race — to lift it up from its animal and perill
ing condition, through a new spiritual life, into communion
and fellowship with their Creator ; and this immortal life,
though vaguely hinted in the Old Testament, is only re
vealed and fully revealed in the Gospel — not as the nephesh,
nor the psuehe, to which the epithet eternal, everlasting,
or immortal is never attached, but in the zoe aionios — the
peculiar life of God Himself.

SECTION n.
"Soul" and "Life" in the New Testament— The Life
Everlasting.
[Note. — The pages that follow in this section were written as a separate arti
cle, and read as such be lore the Middlesex Association of Congregational Min
isters—of which ihe writer wsi-. till recently, a m ruber, and also before the
Philiide'pltia Association of Congregational Ministers, to which he now belongs
— uuder the titld of " An Inquiry into t'ie Meaning of P^uclie and Zoe in ihe
New Testament Scriptures ;" consequently, some repetition of points elsewhere
discussed may be noticed. But it has not seemed necessary to reconstruct it, or
materially change it iu giving it a place in this discussion. We omit the intro
duction to the essay, us the substance of H is included in the foregoing section.]
PSTJCHE.
1. Psuche, rendered " Soul " 58 times :
Matt. 10 : 28, body, but are not able to kill tlie S. (1)
10 : 28, which is able to destroy both S. and body
11 : 29, and ye shall find rest unto your S's.
12 : 18, my beloved in whom my S. is well
16 : 26, gain. . .world, and lose his own S.
16 : 26, or what shall a man give. . .for his S. (2)
22 : 37, with all thy heart, and with all thy S.
26 : 38, My S is exceeding sorrowful, even unto
Mark 8 : 36, gain the. . .world and lose his own S.
8 : 37, Or what shall a man give, for his S.
12 : 30, with all thy S. and with all thy mind
12 : 33, with all the 8. and with all the strength
14 : 34, My S. is exceeding sorrowful unto death
Luke 1 : 46, Mary said, My S. doth magnify the Lord
2 : 35, a sword shall pierce through thy own S.
10 : 27, with all thy S. and with all thy strength
12 : 19, I will say to my S., S. thou hast much (3)
12 : 20, this night thy S. shall be required of thee
21 : 19, In your patience possess ye your S.
John 12 : 27, Now is my S. troubled; and what
Acta 2 : 27, thou wilt not leave my S. in hell
2 : 31, his S. was not left in hell neither
2 : 41, were added. . .about three thousand S's
2 : 43, fear came upon every S. : and many
3 : 23, every S. which will'not hear that
4 : 32, multitude. . .of one heart and of one S.
7 : 14, his kindred, threescore and fifteen S's
14 : 22, Confirming the S's of the disciples

Sec. 2/. 60TJL AND LIFE — NEW TESTAMENT. 121
Acts 15 : 24, subverting your S's saying, Ye must
27 : 37, two hundred threescore and sixteen S.'s
Bom. 2 : 9, anguish upon every S. of man that
13 : 1, Let every S. be subject unto the
1 Cor. 15 : 45, The first man Adam was made a living S. (4)
2 Cor. 1 : 23, I call God for a record upon my S.
1 Thes. 2 : 8, but also our own S.'s because ye were
5 : 23, I pray God your whole spirit and S.
Heb. 4 : 12, even to the dividing asunder of S. and
, 6 : 19, we have as an anchor of the S.
10 : 38, if any man draw back my S. shall
10 : 39, them that believe to the saving of the S.
13 : 17, they watch for your S's as they that
Jas. 1 : 21, word which is able to save your S's
5 : 20, shall save a S. from death, and shall
1 Peter 1 : 9, your faith even the salvation of your S.
1 : 22, ye have purified your S's in obeying
2:11, fleshly lusts which war against the S.
2 : 25, the Bhepherd and bishop of your S's
3 : 20, wherein few, that is eight S's were
4 : 19, commit the keeping of their S's to him
2 Peter 2 : 8, vexed his righteous S. from day to day
.2 : 14, beguiling unstable S's ; an heart they
3 John : 2, be in health even as thy S. prospereth
Bev. 6 : 9, saw under the altar the S's of them
16 : 3, and every living S. died in the sea
18 : 13, and chariots, and slaves, and S's of men '
18 : 14, fruits that thy S. lusted after are
20 : 4, S's of them that were beheaded for

2. Psuche, rendered " Life " 40 times :
Matt. 2 : 20, dead which sought the young child's L.
6 : 25, Take no thought for your L. what ye
6 : 25, Is not the L. more than meat
10 : 39, He that findeth his L. shall lose it
10 : 39, he that loseth his L. for my sake
16": 25, whosoever will save his L. shall (5)
16 : 25, whosoever will lose his L. for my 6ake
20 : 2*, and to give his L. a ransom for many
Mark 3 : 4, lawful. . .to do evil? to save L. or to kill?
8 : 35, whosoever will save his L. shall lose it
8 : 35, whosoever shall lose his L. for my sake
10 : 45, and to give his L. a ransom for many
Luke 6 : 9, Is it lawful. . .to save L., or to destroy
9 : 24, whosoever will save his L. shall lose it
9 : 24, whosoever will lose his L. for my sake
9 : 56, is not come to destroy men's L. but to

122 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
Luke 12 : 22, Take no thought for your L., what ye (6)
12 : 23, The L. is more than meat, and the body
14 : 26, and sisters, yea, and his own L. also
17 : 33, Whosoever shall seek to save his L. shall
17 : 33, whosoever shall lose his L. shall preserve
John 10 : 11, the good shepherd giveth his L.'for the
10 : 15, so know I. . .and I lay down my L. for (7)
10 : 17, I lay down my L. that I might take
12 : 25, He that loveth his L. shall lose it (8)
12 : 25, he that hateth his L. in this world shall
13 : 37, Lord. . .1 will lay down my L. for thy
13 : 38, Wilt thou lay down thy L. for my sake
15 : 13, that a man lay down his L. for his
Acts 15 : 26, Men that have hazarded their L's for
20 : 10, Trouble not yourselves ; for his L. is
20 : 24, neither count I my L. dear unto myself
27 : 10, with hurt and much damage. . .of our L's
27 : i.2, there shall be no loss of L. among you
Bom. 11 : 3, I am left alone, and they seek my L.
16 : 4, Who have for my L. laid down their own
Phil. 2 : 30, nigh unto death, not regarding his L.
1 John 3 : 16, because he laid down his L. for us
3 : 16, we ought to lay down our L's for the
Bev. 8 : 9, which were in the sea and had L.
12 : 11, they loved not their L's unto the death
Note. — The word " Life " occurs in six other places in our version — once at
the rendering of the word pneuma, Rev. 13 : 1-?, when it should have been ren
dered '" breath," as in the margin ; and five times as the rendering of the word
Bios, referring to manner of life, course of life, means, or income, by which life
is supported, etc. Luke 7 : 14. I Tim. 2 : 2. 2 Tim. 2:4. 1 Peter 4:3. 1 John
2:16.

3. Pstjche, translated "heart," "heartily," "mind," 6
times: Eph. 6 : 6, Doing the will of God from the Heart
Col. 3 : 23, Whatsoever— do it Heartily as to the Lord
Acts 14 : 2, and made their Minds evil affected against
Phil. 1 : 27, Stand fast in one spirit, with one Mind
Heb. 12 : 3, Lest wearied — and faint in your Minds

4. Psuche, translated "you" once:
2 Cor. 12 : 15, Spend and be spent for you

Sec 2.] 80TJL AND LIFE — NEW TESTAMENT. 123
ZOE.
Zoe, translated " Life "150 times :
Matt. 7 : 14, narrow is the way which leadeth unto L.
18 : 8, 9, it is better for thee to enter into L. (9)
19 : 16, shall I do, that I may have E. L.
19 : 17, if thou wilt enter into L. keep the com.
19 : 29, every one. . .shall inherit E. L.
25 : 46, go away. . .but the righteous into L. E.
Mark 9 : 43, 45, it is better for thee to enter. . .into L.
10 : 17, shall I do that I may inherit E. L.
10 : 30, receive. . .in the world to come E. L.
Luke 1 : 75, In. . .righteousness. . all the days of our L.
10 : 25, what shall I do to inherit E."L.
12 : 15, man's L. consisteth not in the abundance (10)
18 : 18, what shall 1 do to inherit E. L.
18 : 30, and in the world to come L. E.
John 1 : 4, In him was L. ; and the L. was the light
3 : J 5, 16, should not perish, but have E. L.
3 : 36, He that believeth. . .hath E. L.
3 : 36, believeth not the Son shall not see L.
4 : 14, of water springing up into E. L..
4 : 36, reapeth. . .gathereth fruit to L. E.
5 : 24, hath E. L ., and shall not come
5 : 24, believeth. . .is passed from death unto L.
5 : 26, For as the Father hath L. in himself
5 : 26, so hath he given to the Son to have L. in
5 : 29, done good unto the resurrection of L.
5 : 39, for in them ye think ye have E. L.
5 : 40, will not come to me that ye might have L.
6 : 27, meat which endureth unto E. L.
6 : 33, cometh down from heaven and giveth L.
6 : 35, I am the bread of L. ; he that cometh to
6 : 40, believeth on him, may have E. L.
6 : 47, He that believeth. . .hath E. L.
6 : 48, I am that bread of L.
6 : 51, which I will give, for the L. of the world
6 : 53, and drink his blood ye have no L. in you
6 : 54, Whoso. . .drinketh my blood hath E. L.
6 : 63, words that I speak unto you. . .they are L.
6 ; 68, Lord. . .thou hast the words of E. L.
8:12, followeth me. . .shall have the light of L.
10 ; 10, 1 am come that they might have L. and (11)
10 : 28, I give unto them E. L. ; and they
11 : 25, 1 am the resurrection and the L. : he
12 : 25, that hateth. . .shall keep it unto L. E. (12)
12 : 50, I know. . .his commandment is L. E.
14 : 6, 1 am the way, and the truth, and the L.

124

BIBLE TERMINOLOGY.

[Chap. H.

John

17

2,

17

3,

20

31,

Acts

2

28,

3

15,

5
20,
8
33,
11
18,
13
46,
13
48,
17
25,
Bom.
2
7,
5
10,
5
17,
5
18,
5
21,
6
4,
6
22,
6
23,
7
10,
8
2,
8
6,
8
10,
8
38,
11
15,
ICor.
3
22,
15
19,
2 Cor.
2
16,
4
10,
4
12,
5
4,
Gal.
6
8,
Eph.
4
18,
Phil.
1
20,
2
16,
4
3,
Col.
3
3,
3
4,
ITim.
1
16,
4
8,
6
12,
6
19,
2 Tim.
1
1,
1
10,
Titus
1
2,
3
7,
Heb.
7
3,
7
16,
Jas.
1
12,
, that he should give E. L. to as many
, This is L. E., that they might know
, believing ye might have L. through his
, Thou hast made known to me the ways of L.
, Killed the Prince of L. whom God hath
k. . .to the people all the words of L.
, declare. . .for his L. is taken from the earth
, Then hath God. . .granted repentance unto L.
yourselves unworthy of E L., lo we turn
, as many as were ordained to E. L.
, seeing he giveth to all L. and breath
, who. . .seek for. . .immortality, E. L.
, reconciled, we shall be saved by his L.
, shall reign in L. by one, Jesus Christ
, upon all men unto justification of L.
, through righteousness unto E, L.
, so we also should walk in newness of L.
, unto holiness, and the end E. L.
, E. L. through Jesus Christ our Lord
, commandment, which was ordained to L.
, the law of the spirit of L. in Christ Jesus
, to be spirituallymindedisL. and peace
, the spirit is L. because of righteousness
, neither death nor L. nor angels, nor
what . .the receiving. . .but L. from the dead
, or L. or death, or things present, or things
If in this L. only we have hope in Christ
, to the other the savour of L. unto L.
11, that the L. also of Jesus might be
, So then death worketh in us, but L. in
, mortality might be swallowed up of L.
, he. . .shall of the spirit reap E. L.
, being alienated from the L. of God through
magnified. . .whether it be by L. or by death
Holding forth the word of L. ; that I may
, other. . .whose names. . .in the book of L.
, and your L. is hid with Christ in God
When Christ. . .our L. shall appear, then
, should hereafter believe on him to L. E.
, having promise of the L. that now is
, lay hold unto E. L. whereunto thou
, that they may lay hold on E. L.
, according to the promise of L. which is
have brought L. and immortality to light
, In hope of E. L., which God that
heir according to the hope of E. L.
, neither beginning of days, nor the end of L.
made. . .after the power of an endless L.
he shall receive the crown pf L., which
Sec. 2.] SOUL AND LIFE — NEW TESTAMENT. 125
Jas. 4 : 14, what is your L. ? It is even a vapour
1 Peter 3 : 7, being heirs together of the grace of L.
3 : 10, he that will love L. and see good days
2 Peter 1 : 3, pertain unto L. and godliness, through
1 John 1 : 1, hands have handled, of the word of L.
1 : 2, the L. was manifested. . .that E. L.
2 : 25, And this is the promise. . .E. L.
3 : 14, that we have passed from death unto L.
3 : 15, no"murderer hath E. L. abiding in
5 : 11, hath given to us E. L. and this L.
5 : 12, He that hath the Son hath L. ; and he
5 : 12, that hath not the Son of God hath not L.
5 : 13, that ye may know that ye have E. L.
5 : 16, he shall give him L. for them that sin
5 : 20, This is the true God and E. L.
Jude : 21, of our Lord Jesus unto E. L.
Bev. 2 : 7, will I give to eat of the tree of L., which
2 : 10, behold. . .1 will give thee a crown of L.
3 : 5, not blot. . .his name out of the book of L.
11 : 11, the spirit of L. from God entereth into
13 : 8, not written in the book of L. of the Lamb
17 : 8, were not written in the book of L. from
20 : 12, another book was opened which is. . .of L.
20 : 15, not found written in the book of L. was
21 : 6, of the fountain of the water of L. freely
21 : 27, are written in the Lamb's book of L.
22 : 1, a pure river of water of L., clear as
22 : 2, the tree of L. which bare twelve. . .fruits
22 : 14, that they may have right to the tree of L.
22 : 17, whosoever. . .let him take of the water of L.
22 : 19, take away his part out of the book of L.
Notes— 1. Man may be able to kill (apokteinai) or put an end to the bodv, but
not to the whole person— no one but God can do this. All ihe dead are to be
raised, and those who are unfit to enjoy immortality are to be exterminated,
utterly destroyed (apolesai) in (gehmna) hell.
2. The word psuehe occurs four times in this passage, but only twice is it ren
dered " 8»ul ;" in i he other two cases it is rendei-i d " life ;" and the English
reader Is led to suppose that saving and losing line's life is a different thin fr. m
saving and losing his soul ; but according to the text, it is preei eiy the same
thing. In Luki', iDstead of psuehe, the word heauton is used, and rendered
" lose himself or be cast away."
8. The word psurhe occurs five times in this passage (19-28 verses.) but it is
rendered *Voul'' only three times, and in the oi her two ''life;" and the reader is
given to suppose I hat when Christ says, "Take no thought for your psuehe,"
Somethingdifferent is meant trom the psuch" which God required of the rich
fool ; but, in .act, precisely the same thing is meant.
4. The full force of the contrast drawn in this, and several of the adjacent
verses, between the soul and the spirit, and between the soulica] nature of the
natural man, and the spiritual nature of the renewed man, is lost in our trans
lation, for the want oi proper corresponding adj ctivea to express it. We have,
¦s the adjective rV.rm of pneuma, the word pne»malikos, which is properly trans
lated spiritual, but the adjective of psuehe, which is psuchikos, ia translated

126 BIBLE TEKMIJN uiahj*. [Chap. II.
" natural" instead of soulical or soulish, as it should have been to give the con
trast. Let us supply this adjective and then the who e passage (1 Cor. IS : 43-46)
will read : " It is sown a soulical body ; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a
soulical body, and there is a spiritual body. As it is written. The first man
Adam was made a living soul ; the last Adam was made (pneuma zoopoioun or
life-giving) quickening spirit. Howbeit, that was not first which was spiritual,
but that which was soulical and afterwards that which is spiritual." This con
trast between the two kindsof i i f o i s broug'Hout in the Vulgate by the use of
the adj 'ctive animate and spiritale to represent the two nouns respectively an*.
ma, soul, and spiritus, spirit ; thus : "8*dmon prius quod spiritale est, sed quod
animate; deinde quod spiritule." This contrast is obscured, or lost, also in other
passages, by the want of a proper adjective t > represent the soul ipsnrhe) in the
English, as psuehikon represents it in the Greek. (See James 3 : IS. Jude 19.)
S. See note 2.
6. See note 3.
7, 8. It will be observed by referring to texts quoted under " Zoe," that two
kindsof life are spoken of in these passages, as in others — the psuch ¦ >ife, and the
zoe life. The distinction between these two I. ves, which is frequently made in
the writings of John, and the small estimation in which the former is held in
comparison with the latter, is qoite ignored in our version by the use of the
same word " life" to express both. It is observed in the Vulgate by the use of
anima to represent psuehe, and vita to represent zoe.
9. Mark says, " Kingdom of God," (Instead of zoen life.)
10. In the 15-22 versus the word psuehe occurs five times, and is twice trans
lated soul, and three times translated life ; and zoe occurs once and is also trans
lated "life;" so that there is a distinction made between psuehe and psucht
where there is actually none, and the distinction that should be made between
psuehe and zoe, is not made at all in our version.
11. In the next verse (11) it is said, " The good shepherd giveth his life for the
sheep j" and, in verse 17, "Hay down my //«;" but it is to be observed that it
was nis psucAfi-life and not his Boe-life which he laid down. See also 1 John
8:16: " We ought to lay down our (psuchas) lives," etc. That there is a real dis
tinction between these two words— psuehe and zoe — one of which (zoe) is always
rendered life, and the other (psuehe) is sometimes rendered life and sometimes
soul, according to the pleasure of the translators — is quite evident, or they would
not both have been employed hy the inspired penman ; and it isa pity that this
distinction should not have been observed in our translation. Itis true, a few
passages may be cit ed where zoe is use I , in which iisuche might apparently have
expressed thesameidta; butonlyafew. Whenever the new life — thespirilnal
life, the life of God in man, the eternal life — is spoken of, the word zoe is al
ways used j and whenever that life which is mortal and transitory— which man
possesses in common with all animals— is spoken of, the word psuehe is em
ployed. But the difficulty is greatly increased by the fact that, while we have
but one English word to express two words and two different ideas, psuehe and
zoe, i n the Greek, we have two or more English words to express the one word
psuehe "souP' and "life,11 and our translators change from one to the other with
out any apparent rule or reason. We have already called attention to the pas
sage in Matt. 16: 25. 26, where pmche is twice rendered "soul" and twice
"life," and in Luke 12 : 15-23, where pi "che is three times translated '• soul" and
twice 'life," and zoe is also rendered li'e. The real teaching ol Christ in these
passages is greatly obscured ii not entirely lust.
12. Take another passage where the contrast between the two kinds of life
referred t o is lost. John 12:25: " He that loveth his (pwehen, soul) life shall
lose it; and ho that hateth his (p'uohen, soul) life in this woild shall kfep it
unto (zoen avminn) life cental ." If the bias or coloring which has been given
by our translators to these nnd other passages that might be cited in favor ef
the Platonic philosophy, and which we have been taught to read into them,
should not he sustained by the texts themselves in Ihe original, may we not
question the truthof this philosophy, without, being chargeable with miscon
struing the Scriptures? Ought not our philosophy to be subordinated to the
Word of God, rather than God's Word to our philosophy »

SeC. 2.] SOUL AND LIFE  NEW TESTAMENT. 127
CONCLUSIONS.
1. The words "Soul" and "Life" are by no means
gynonymous and interchangeable according to the common
understanding of these terms at the present day. Though,
in some of their remoter significations, they may run to
gether or cross each other, yet they represent to us differ
ent ideas. The word " life " denotes a certain state or con
dition of being, or a principle in action ; while the word
"soul," as now commonly understood, especially in its re
ligious uses, refers to what is regarded as a real substantial
entity, whether organized or not, in man. But the word
psuehe, (as well as its equivalent nephesh in Hebrew,) as
used in the Scriptures, seems hardly to express either of
these ideas. It seems to mean something more than mere
life, and it certainly means something less than what is
theologically meant by " soul," as this word is now under
stood. Webster defines the soul to be, " The spiritual, rational,
immortal part in man," etc.
Worcester, " That part of man which is considered dis
tinctly from the material body, as giving it life, sensibility,
and understanding ; the immaterial part of man ; the
mind ; the spirit."
Richardson, "The spirit, the breath of life, the animat
ing or vital principle or power ; an animated, intelligent
or intellectual being."
Ogilvie, " The spiritual, rational, and immortal substance
in man which distinguishes him from brutes."
Johnson, " The immaterial and immortal spirit of man."
Latham, The same as Johnson.
It is not the office of lexicographers to teach us philoso
phy or affix meanings to words, but simply to tell us in
what sense they are already used and understood.
Although these authorities differ somewhat from each

128 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
other, as might be expected, they all concur in showing
that the word "soul" is understood to represent some
thing in man that distinguishes him from all other "ani
mals, something that is spiritual and immortal. Indeed,
they make little or no distinction between the soul and the
spiritj. which are so widely distinguished in the Scriptures.
They give almost, if not exactly, the same definitions to
both of these words.
We do not find any word in the original Scriptures that
covers these definitions. The word psuehe (Hebrew neph
esh) certainly does not, as we have abundantly shown, al
though it is so rendered ; for it is predicated of brutes as
well as of men ; it is uniformly spoken of as mortal and
perishable, and is used as the very antithesis of that wliich
is spiritual. The words dianoia, nous, gnome, etc., signify
" mind," " understanding," " judgment." The word zoe,
as we have seen, is used in the Scriptures especially, though
not exclusively, to denote that higher supernatural princi
ple of life which belongs to the Deity himself, and which
is communicated to man in the new birth. And pneuma
(Hebrew ruach, neshamah) denotes the divine Spirit, and
also the heavenly breath by which this new life is commu
nicated to man. Hence it is called" spiritual life," as con
trasted with his " natural life." If, then, there is no Scrip
tural word which answers to the high demands of this
word " soul," as it is used in our systems of psychology and
theology, ought we not to inquire whether these systems are
built on the teachings of God's Word concerning the na
ture of man, or on a philosophy that finds no warrant in
that Word?
2. If the word psuehe, as used in the Scriptures, does
not mean all that is now meant by the word " soul," the
question arises, What does it mean ? It may not be possi-

Sec. 2.] SOUL AND LIFE — NEW TESTAMENT. 129
ble to give one simple, positive, definite reply that will.
apply to all the uses of the word in the Bible ; for, within
certain limits, it takes, like other words, various shades of
meaning ; but we think it quite possible to define these
limits, and to show, at least, what it does not mean. This
is what we propose to do.
(1.) It does not denote something that is separate or sep
arable from the individual himself; something that is put
into him when he is made, and which lives after he is dead ;
or may die while he yet lives ; and which constitutes him,
as it were, a kind of double man. The spirit (the pneuma)
was breathed into him at his creation, and he became a
(nephesh chayah) living soul. It was the pneuma that was
put into the man when he was formed, and it is this that
leaves him when he dies, not the psuehe. It was the living
psuehe that he then became. As before remarked, this
term seems to designate the entire person himself more pre
cisely than any other word that could be employed, unless
it be the personal pronoun. It is often translated by the
pronoun, and might be in numerous other cases. Wn%n
the Scripture says: "The soul that sinneth it shall die,"
nothing more nor less is meant than that the individual
himself shall die. It is the soul, the psuehe, that sins, and
it is the psuehe that dies. When God said to Adam :
" Thou shalt surely die," He did not speak to his body,
but to Adam himself; that is, to (the nephesh chayah)
the living person that was before him. There were not
two personalities in him ; one of which was to die for the
sin which the other committed. If there is anything
which the Scriptures teach, it is that man is a single per
sonality — an integer.
It is true, man may be considered with respect to his
body, bis soul, and his spirit, as triune in his being, but not
as a triple person. He may be spoken of possessing a

130 bible terminology. [Chap. H.
a body, a soul, a spirit. So may he be spoken of as pos
sessing and losing himself. Indeed, the passage already
cited from Matthew says: "For what shall a man be
profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own
(psuehe) soul ?" But according to Luke it reads — " if he
gain the whole world and lose himself or be cast away?"
He is capable of two kinds of lifts — the zoe, or spiritual
life, which is only received by a new birth, and which con
stitutes him an heir of heaven; and the piuehe, or animal
life, which he possesses in common with all earthly crea
tures. They are both real ; and death, which is the anti
thesis of life, of whatever kind it is, may be predicated of
either ; and he may be dead in one sense, and alive in an
other. This is the condition now of natural men — desti
tute of the zoe or spiritual life. The lower life, which only
remains to them, is hastening to its end ; and when dead
in both senses, the man himself is dead. The Bible tells
us of no tertium quid through which he may live to sin
and suffer forever.
^2.) Psuehe does not, evidently, denote something that
is peculiar to man alone, and which distinguishes him from
the animals that are beneath him in the scale of being.
That there is a great and radical difference between man
and the very highest order of brutes, there ought to be no
question. But the word psuehe does not express it ; for
this word is employed in numerous instances (with its equiv
alent nephesh in Hebrew) to designate brute3 as well as
men. It is rendered by the Latin word anima in the Vul
gate ; hence our word " animal." It designates any ani
mal that lives by breathing, and often includes all crea
tures both on the land and in the sea. (See Gen. 1 : 20, 21,
24, 30 ; 2 : 19 ; 9 : 10, 12, 15, 16, etc. Prov. 7 : 23 ; 12:10.
Ezk. 47 : 9. Bev. 8:9; 16 : 18, etc.)
It seems the more important to call especial attention to

tSec. 2.] soul and life — new testament. 131
this common biblical use of the word, from the fact that it is
almost entirely concealed from the reader of our English
version. For some reason, our translators, while they have
very generally rendered nephesh and psuehe " soul," when
man is referred to, have almost never given this rendering
when the lower animals are spoken of, but have supplied
some such words as "beasts;" " creatures," ," living crea
tures," etc. Scores of instances might be given, but it
must suffice to cite the following : " A righteous man re-
gardeth the soul of his beast," (rendered " life of his beast."
Prov. 12 : 10.) " He that killeth the soul of a beast shall
make it good soul for soul," (rendered " killeth a beast. . .
beast for beast." Lev. 24 : 18.) " And a third part of the
¦creatures wliich were in the sea and had (psuchas) souls
died," (rendered "had life." Rev. 8 : 9.)
(3.) It is evidently not synonymous with pneuma. It
means something quite different in the Scriptures, though
in our dictionaries, and in the popular conception of the
two terms, they are nearly or quite identical. Indeed,
they are often contrasted with each other in the Word of
God ; and when both are employed in the same category,
psuehe is given the inferior position : " The first man Adam
was made a (psuchen zosan) living soul ; (and so were all
other animals, as we read again and again in Genesis 1st
and 2d chapters ;) the last Adam was made a (pneuma
zoopoioun — a life giving) quickening spirit." (1 Cor. 15 : 45.)
" And I pray God your whole (pneuma) spirit, (psuehe)
soul, and (soma) body, be preserved blameless," etc. (1
Thess. 5 : 23.) " For the Word of God is quick and pow
erful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even
to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit." (Heb. 4 :
12.) This radical distinction is even more marked in the
original, when these words are used adjectively, but un
fortunately is not brought out in our version ; for while

132 bible terminology. [Chap. H.
the English word " spiritual " is employed to represent the
adjective of pneuma, the Words " natural," " sensual," etc.,
are used to represent the adjective of psuehe. For exam
ple : " The natural man [but in the Greek, psuehikos de
anthropos, the soulish or soulical man,] receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God, because they are spiritually
discerned." (1 Cor. 2 : 14.) " This wisdom descendeth not
from above, but is earthly, sensual, [but in the Greek,
psuchike, soulish or soulical,] devilish." (James 3:15.)
" These be they who separate themselves, sensual, [but in
the Greek, pmchikoi, soulish or soulical,] not having the
spirit." (Jude 19.)
Trench, in his Synonyms of the New Testament, under
this word psuehikos, says :
" It is at first with something of surprise that we find
psuehikos employed in these senses, and keeping this com
pany; (with epigeios, worldly, and daimoniodes, devilish;)
and the modern fashion of talking about the soul as though,
it were the highest part of man, does not make this sur
prise the less ; for it would rather lead us to expect to find
it grouped with pneumatikos, as though there were only
slight shades of difference between them. But, indeed,
this is characteristic of the inner differences between Chris
tian and heathen, and indicative of these better gifts and
graces which the dispensation of the Spirit has brought into
the world. Psuehikos, .continually used as the higbest in
classical Greek literature, and constantly employed in
praise as the noblest part of man, must come down from
its high estate, another so much greater than it being in
stalled in the chiefest place of all ; for indeed the old phi
losophy knew of nothing higher than the soul of man;
but Revelation, of the Spirit of God, and of that, indwell
ing and making his habitation with men, and calling out
an answering spirit in them. According to it, the psucKe,
no less than the sarx, belongs to the lower region of man's
being. . . .The psuehikos of Scripture is one for whom the
psuehe is the highest motive power of life, in whom the

Sec. 2.] SOUL AND LIFE — NEW TESTAMENT. 133
pneuma, or the organ of the divine Pneuma, is suppressed,
dormant, for the time as good as extinct, wbom the opera
tion of tjiis divine Pneuma has never lifted into the region
of spiritual things."
And yet our lexicographers tell us the soul is the spirit
ual part of man ! They even define it by the same terms ;
and our teachers of theology, our commentators and re
ligious writers and speakers, use the two words inter
changeably, or make little or no distinction between them ! !
Is it to be wondered at, that ordinary readers of the Bible
should have confused and erroneous notions of its teach
ings concerning the soul and the spirit, soulical and spirit
ual things — the natural life, which is common to all men,
and even to men and brutes alike, and that spiritual life
wliich is the peculiar attribute of the Deity, and of His
children to whom He communicates it, in the new birth ?
Is it not but too evident, that the popular conception of
what is now denominated the soul of man has been shaped,
rather by the philosophy of Plato than by the Word of
God, and that the rendering of the Scriptures into our
tongue has been greatly influenced by these unwarranted
speculations ?
But this is not the point to which we would now so much
direct attention, as to the fact that, whatever may be the
popular conception of the soul, or whether it be true or
false, that conception, such as it is, does not find its repre
sentative in the word psuehe as it is used in the Scriptures.
If this word, wherever it occurs in the Scriptures, whether
referring to man or brute animals, had been uniformly
rendered by one English word, even by the word "soul" —
instead of by the words " beasts," " creatures," "lives," etc.,
when brutes are spoken of, and sometimes by the word
"soul " and sometimes by " life " when men are spoken of
— Bible readers in general would have had a better and

134 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
truer idea of what the soul is, and what God's Word
teaches concerning it.
(4) Neither does psuehe, as used in the Scriptures, desig
nate a principle in man, that is immortal and indestructible,
as the word " soul " is defined to mean. If so, then God'tr
Word teaches that all animals are immortal and indestruc
tible; for psuehe is predicated of them, as well as of man.
But, on the contrary, whatever may or may not be true of
what is now called the " soul," it is not true of the psuehe
of the Scriptures, for it is everywhere spoken of as transi
tory, perishable, mortal, liable to be lost, to be destroyed,
as hastening to death, etc. This would be too evident to
require any showing, were it not for the fact, that almost.
always when its transitory and mortal nature is specially
spoken of in the Scriptures, this word is translated, not
"soul," but "life." By referring to the passages under
psuehe that are rendered "life" instead of "soul," the
reader will perceive this.
But it seems to have been hardly possible to avoid the
use of that word soul altogether in such cases. As for
instance : " Fear not them which kill the body, but are not
able to kill the soul ; but rather fear him which is able to
destroy [put an end to] both soul and body in hell." " He
that converteth a sinner from the error of his way, shall
save a soul from. death and hide a multitude of sins,"
" The soul that sinneth, it shall die." In all the many
hundreds of times in which this word psuehe (and its equiv
alent nephesh) is used in the Scriptures, not one single in
stance can be found where its deathless nature is affirmed
or even hinted at. Olshausen says, in his commentary un
der Luke 16 : " The Bible knows not either the expression
' immortality of the soul,' or the modern doctrine of im
mortality." Dr. George Dana Boardman (in his Creative
Week, p. 215) says : " Not a single passage of Holy Writ,

Sec. 2.] SOUL AND LIFE — NEW TESTAMENT. 135
from Genesis to Revelation, teaches, so far as I am aware,
the doctrine of man's natural immortality. On the other
hand, Holy Writ emphatically declares that God only hath
immortality." Every candid Biblical scholar will agree
with this testimony.
This certainly is very remarkable, if this is to be re
garded a " fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion."
Dr. Bartlett, in his Life and Death Eternal, tells us that
all mention of it is omitted, because it is too evident to re
quire any mention ! But the immortality of God is re
peatedly affirmed. He has chosen this attribute to be the
very title by which He is to be known — Jehovah, " the
ever living," "the Eternal God," "the Everlasting
Father," " who is and was and ever shall be," " whose years
have no end," " who liveth forever," " who only hath im
mortality," " I lift my hand to heaven and say, i" live for
ever," etc., etc. Is this immortality of the human psuehe
ao much more evident than the immortality of its Maker,
that no mention or hint of it need to be given anywhere in
all the entire Scriptures, while that of the Deity needs to
be constantly affirmed ? Or is it not rather because it is
not true, and therefore no Bible doctrine at all ?
But, what is more, the Bible tells us how we have become
mortal and transitory; that perpetuity of life was ex
pressly conditioned on perpetual holiness ; that the boon
was lost in Adam ; that the very reason why he was put
out of the garden was, " lest he put forth his hand and take
of the tree of life and eat and live forever," after he had
become a sinful and miserable creature. (Gen. 3 : 22, 23.)
It shows us how the blight of sin, like leprosy in the blood,
has come upon the whole Adamic race, and that it is sure,
sooner or later, to develope itself and end in death and ex
tinction, unless some divine remedy shall be provided;
that holiness is not only necessary to happiness, but also

136 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
to an endless life ; that sin is not merely destructive of weU-
being but of being itself; and, that " sin, when it is finished,
bringeth forth death."
But yet, there is hope. God in His mercy has provided
a ransom and a remedy. The universal aspirations of sin
ful perishing man are not altogether unwarranted or vain.
God designed man for immortality — but not in sin. Then
how shall this great boon, which has been lost by sin, be
recovered? How shall man be lifted up out of the animal
and mortal condition into which he has fallen, and come
into fellowship with God, his Maker ? How shall the life of
God be imparted to his soul ? How shall he become a sub
ject of His everlasting kingdom ?
The tempter assured our first parents that they would
not lose their Immortality even by sin. They believed
him, in spite of God's Word. He has been whispering his
false assurances into the ears of their posterity even to this
day. The old heathen philosophers had glimpses of the
possibilities of man's nature, and they interpreted them as
the evidences of his certain immortality, even without a
Savior ; and so have their willing disciples in every age.
But they could not tell men how to make sure of the good
for which they thirsted. It is not in philosophy, nor in
nature, to teach this truth. It can only be taught by a
Divine Revelation, for it is not a natural endowment. It
is rather supernatural — the gift of God through Jesus
Christ. It is not to be purchased by good works, nor by
penances, nor gained by religious observances. It is not a
reward of merit ; but a free gift to all who will receive
it as .such. This is the Eternal Life that is brought to light
in the Go.»pel. It was for this that the Son of God came
from heaven to earth, and died — not merely to save us from
sin and suffering, but from that to which sin and suf
fering inevitably lead— from death. He came to bring us a

Sec. 2.] SOUL AND LIFE — NEW TESTAMENT. 137
higher and better life even than that which had been for
feited by sin — His own peculiar life ; not the perpetuation
of the old psuche-\ife, but the impartation of the new zoe-
life. A new word is used to express it. It is the great
object of the Gospel to reveal this new life to us, and to
show us the great, radical distinction between the natural
life, which all men inherit, and this supernatural life which
comes only by regeneration. The one is earthly and tran
sitory ; the other is heavenly and eternal. This distinction
would be apparent to every reader had it not been obscured
in the translation, by rendering both psuehe and zoe by the
same word " life." And then we are taught by modern
theology to consider the former as the only real life, and
the latter as a figurative expression denoting purity and
blessedness, and the death that is opposed to it, as a state
of sin and misery which endures forever! There is no rule
or reason for such a perversion of the plainest teachings of
God's Word, but the necessity of maintaining the unscrip-
tural dogma of the natural immortality of the soul.
3. It were greatly to be desired that some method might
be devised by which the distinction between psuehe and zoe
could be preserved in our version. Not only in the Greek,
but also in the Hebrew, and in tne Latin Vulgate, two
different words are used. If psuehe were uniformly ren
dered " soul," the word " life " would be left to represent
exclusively zoe, which is always rendered " life."
It needs but a hasty glance at the passages cited to show
that they by no means express the same idea. Whatever
may be the literal classical meaning of zoe, it will be ob
served that it is almost invariably used to designate a
higher kind of life ; or, at any rate, whenever the higher
life, which is peculiar to God himself, and which he im
parts to His people in the new birth, is spoken of, the word

138 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
zoe is always used, and psuehe never. The two words are
not infrequently used in the same connection, in contrast
with each other ; the one referring to the natural life of
man, and the other, to the supernatural ; the one to that
which is transitory, and the other to that which is endur
ing and eternal. For example : " In Him was (zoe) life
and the (zoe) life was the light of men." "And this is the
record, that God hath given to us (zoen aionion) eternal
life, and this (zoe) life is in His Son. He that hath the
Son hath (zoen) life, and he that hath not the Son hath not
(zoen) life." " We know that we have passed from death
unto (zoen) life, because we love the brethren." " Hereby
perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His
(psuchen) life for us; and we ought to lay down our
(psuchas) lives for the brethren."
The result of rendering these two words by the one word
" life," has been to give occasion to those who cannot but
see, that in our version, "life" is used in two different
senses, to say that this higher kind of life is a figure of
speech, not denoting a real life, but a state of purity and
blessedness under the psuche-\\ie. But if either of the two
Greek words denote a life that is more real and substantial
than the other it is certainly the word zoe. The fact is,
the Scriptures plainly tell us of two sorts of life. The one
is earthly, transitory, and belongs, not only to man, but to
the brutes also. This is represented by psucKe. The other
is that higher life which is begotten by the Spirit of God
in regeneration — the life of God Himself — a life upon which
we enter in earnest at the resurrection. It is a life that is
intensely real and never to end. This is always spoken of
as the zoe, or zoe aionios.
4. No one can fail to notice how often, and with what
constant reiteration, the adjective aionios, translated " eter-

Sec. 2.] SOUL AND LIFE — NEW TESTAMENT. 139
nal," " everlasting," etc., is coupled with zoe. That this
adjective always carries with it the sense of endlessness,
wherever and whenever it is used, need not be asserted.
But it is so used in connection with zoe, and in such rela
tions and contrasts as often to forbid us to place any limita
tions to it. It is declared to be the attribute of the Deity
Himself. But what is equally important to be noticed is
the fact that neither this adjective, nor any other signify
ing perpetuity, is ever joined with psuehe, in the Word of
God. Nothing is more common than to hear religious teachers
speak of the " immortal soul," the " never-dying soul," etc.
But nothing like this can be found from Genesis to Revela
tion in the Scriptures. This fact, when taken with the
fact that its mortality and transitory nature are constantly
affirmed, ought to put it beyond controversy or question
with all who receive the testimony of God's Word as the
truth, that there is no immortality for man, but in the pos
session of the zoe aionios — " the gift of God through Jesus
Christ our Lord !" Possessing nothing higher or better than
( psuchai) souls, they must perish and become extinct.
5. Here again, let it be remarked, how often, and almost.
uniformly, (thanatos) death is spoken of in the same con
nection with this (zoe) life.* Tne one is set over against the
other ; as, for example, in the passage just alluded to : " The
wages of sin is death (thanatos,) but the gift of God is eter
nal life (zoe,) through Jesus Christ our Lord." The Apostle
Paul carries this antithesis through the Epistle to the Ro
mans. It is seen also in the Gospel and Epistles of John.
As the life represented by zoe has been taken figuratively
to mean a purified and blessed condition of the psuche-life,
* The true antithesis of zoe is thanatos. (Trench's Synonyms of New
Testament.)

140 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. U.
so this (thanatos) death, which is used as the antithesis to
it (as well as apoleia and other words signifying destruc
tion, etc.,) is made, in the same way and for the same rea
son, to signify a kind of unreal tropical death, which is
nothing more nor less than a state of sin and misery end
lessly perpetuated. And yet the words employed to assert
the death and destruction of the sinning soul are the very
strongest that could be used. Nothing but the exigencies
of a false philosophy require them to be taken in any other
than their common and natural sense. Even the lexicons
which have been prepared, professedly, to help us under
stand the Scriptures, have been made to teach the same
philosophy. Having first read his own dogma into the
original word, the compiler transfers the word and its in
terpretation to his lexicon, with references to the passages
where it should be so understood. In my lexicon, referring
to Matt. 7 : 13-14, 1 am informed that the word apoleian
(destruction) here means " misery," and the word zoe means
"eternal happiness;" so that the passage should actually
be understood thus : " Enter ye in at the strait gate, for
wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to misery,
and many there be that go in thereat ; because strait is the
gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto eternal hap
piness, and few there be that find it." Under thanatos
(meaning death) I am referred to James 5 : 20, and told to
read the passage as follows : " He that converteth a sinner
from the error of his way shall save a soul from an un
changing, eternal state of misery." And so of other crucial
texts. That sin and misery go together, is very true. But the
misery is not the full result of sin. It is only the first
fruits. It is premonitory of the end that is sure to follow,
*' When sin is finished, it bringeth forth death ;" not misery
alone, but death. The soul that will not live in harmony

SeC. 2.] v SOUL AND LIFE — NEW TESTAMENT. 141
with God's law and government, is out of harmony with
the law of its own being, and hastening to destruction. If
it cannot be restored to holiness, it must, in the end, cease
to live at all. So also holiness and blessedness are one and
inseparable ; for only as one lives in harmony with God's
law does he live in harmony with his own being. But the
purity and bliss which they enjoy, and ever will enjoy in
the kingdom of heaven, to whom this new life, this zoe
aionios, has been given, are but the inseparable concomi
tants of that life, and not the life itself.*
6. When will Christian men be willing to subordinate
their speculations concerning the human soul, and the life
to come, to the Word of God ? When will they consent to
receive its plain and positive teachings with respect to the
mortal effect of sin, and the necessity of another and higher
life than that which is received from Adam — even the life
of God himself — in order to eternal existence hereafter?
We have no philosophy beyond the teachings of revela
tion concerning it. We have no theory or hypothesis to
offer — no new definition to give. Our simple desire and
object is, to know and believe what the Scriptures, which
are our only rule of faith, teach in regard to it — or rather
in regard to the psuehe, which is commonly translated
"soul;" and what concerning the zoe aionios, or the Eter
nal Life, which is offered us in the Gospel through Jesus
Christ the Savior. But with every possible inducement to
hold fast to the notions into which we were trained, and
* "Revealed religion, and it alone, puts death and sin in the clos
est connection, declares them the necessary correlatives one of the
other, and, as an involved consequence, in like manner, life and
holiness. It alone proclaims that, wherever there is death, it is
there because sin was there first; wherever there is no death, that
is, life, it is there because sin has never been there, or having been
once, is now cast out and expelled. . . .Life is the correlative of
holiness." (Trench, Synonyms of New Testament.)

142 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. r[Chap. H.
which we long preached ; and with the utmost reluctance
to controversy, for its own sake, or even to dissent from the
views of the majority, we cannot, after the most earnest
and careful examination of the Word of God, come to any
other conclusion than that we have indicated in the foregoing
remarks, and which may be briefly summarized as follows :
Mau was created with a capacity for an endless life, and
a desire for it ; but it was assured to him only on condition
of perfect holiness. By a law of his being, as well as of
all being, holiness is absolutely essential to endless perpetu
ity of existence. Sin is per se disorganizing and destruc
tive, not merely of happiness, but of life itself, when it is
finished. Good has but one enemy ; that is sin. But sin
has two, viz., itself, and the good, and must sooner or later
go to the wall. A house divided against itself cannot
stand. Nothing can exist eternally that does not conform
to the law of its own being, and the will of God its creator.
It must, sooner or later, go to utter ruin, pass out of exist
ence, and give place to that which is loyal and pure. When
mau sinned he became naturally and necessarily a mortal
creature ; not partially mortal, that is, actually mortal
with respect to his body, and only figuratively mortal with
respect to his soul, which is the man himself. He lost all
reasonable hope an'd even possibility of immortality in any
sense, unless some divine and supernatural remedy should
be provided. , When he yielded to the persuasions of the
tempter, and the seductions of his lower nature, and turned
away from God to seek his highest good in the transitory
things of earth, he too became a transitory creature, and
like the animals beneath him in the scale of being, liable
to death and extinction.
But God's purpose in his creation was not to be foiled
by the malice of Satan, or the folly of the creature him
self. His plans were laid deeper, and reached further than

Sec. 2.] SOUL AND LIFE — NEW TESTAMENT. 143
at first appeared. He has power to bring life out of death,
and salvation out of ruin, and to make what seemed a
great and remediless disaster contribute to the display of
the riches of His wisdom and grace through Jesus Christ
His Son, and even to the higher glory and blessedness of
man himself. And He will do it. He proposes to lift man
entirely out of the animal and mortal condition into which
he has come ; to give to him another life, even his own pe
culiar life, the zoe aionios, which is infinitely superior to the
old psuche-\\fe which he has forfeited ; to make him a new
creature, a spiritual being, and to translate him into His
own everlasting kingdom.
This purpose was hinted, though but vaguely, in ambigu
ous term3, immediately after the fall, to keep man from ut
ter demoralization, and that he might still look heaven
ward in hope. It was prefigured in the sacrificial system,
in the death — not in the torture — of the victim on the al
tar. It was foreshadowed in the Mosaic ritual, and gradu
ally unfolded to the faith of the ancient worthies, as that
" better thing " which God had provided for His people ;
but was not fully revealed till the coming of the Savior
Himself, through whom Life and Immortality are brought
to light in the Gospel. This was the very errand of the Son
of God to earth — the object of his incarnation and death
— to make it possible for dying man to live again, and live
forever. This is the gift of God, " the unspeakable gift,"
the gift of zoe aionios through Jesus Christ to man — to all
men if they will receive it. But it is not forced upon any
man, nolens volens. It cannot be bought, or earned, or
deserved, or demanded as a right. It is a gift, a free gift,
and it must be received as such, if at all. It must be de
sired, sought, asked for through Jesus Christ the Savior ;
and these are the only, but indispensable conditions of its
bestowmpnt. To as many as so receive Him, " He gives

144 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
power to become the sons of God, even to them that be
lieve on His name." This will constitute them the heirs
and subjects of His everlasting kingdom, where holmess,
happiness, and immortality will be united in endless per
fection. All other kingdoms are destined to come to an
end. All other life is transitory. The kingdom of Satan
is a kingdom of darkness and death. However long it
may endure, it contains within itself the seeds of death
and utter ruin. It must fade away before the light and
glory of the everlasting kingdom of our Lord, and He
alone "shall reign forever and ever!"

SECTION III.

Soul and Spirit— The Difference Between Them.
Notwithstanding what has been said with respect to the
" soul " and the " spirit," and the difference between them,
in the foregoing section, we are constrained to call the
reader's attention again to this, matter, in view of its su
preme importance in this discussion. It is impossible to
discuss this question intelligently without a distinct appre
hension of the meaning of these two words, or, at any rate,
of the radical distinction between them. The confusion in
the minds of so many, and the erroneous notions to which
they come on this question of the Life Everlasting, seem
to have their source just here : They have no clear under
standing of the distinction between soul and spirit, nor of
their relation to each other. They use the terms inter
changeably. The dictionaries define the two words in al-

Sec. 3.] SOUL AND SPIRIT. 145
*
most precisely the same terms. Perhaps our lexicogra
phers are not to be blamed for this ; for it is their business
to give the sense in which the words are used and com
monly understood. The same interchangeable use of these
two words is to be found in our encyclopedias, and in all
our systems of theology.
Among the many volumes we have consulted, wq have
failed to find a single one sustaining the popular view of
the immortality of the soul, that gives any clear definition
of these two most prominent words in the whole argument.
Most of these treatises confuse the two terms utterly. They
quote what the Scriptures say of the soul of man, and then,
without any reserve, predicate it of the spirit, and vice
versa. Many of these writers do not appear to have had
any thought on the subject. Others, however, confess that
the terms are distinct, yet claim that they are so nearly
identical that it is quite unnecessary to draw any distinc
tion between them.
Here again we see, as everywhere in our religious think
ing, the mischievous influence of Plato's philosophy in cor
rupting the simple Bible doctrine of the' nature and des
tiny of man. The Bible teaches that man is a unit — a
complete integer — possessing, indeed, in the perfection of
his nature, a body, a soul, and a spirit, but so united as to
constitute one. and only one person. Neither one nor two
of these three parts can constitute the man, nor fulfill the
functions of a man without the others. But that philoso
phy, discarding this trichotomous division, and dividing
man into two distinct organisms, has so robbed the body on
the odo hand, and the spirit on the other, of their high pre
rogatives, that there is but little left to consider or that is
worth considering, but the soul of man. Hence our re
ligious discussions, instead of turning on the nature and
destiny of man, are made to turn entirely on the soul of

146 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. EL
man, a3 though neither the body nor the spirit were of suf
ficient importance to be noticed ; and, as all the essential
attributes of the spirit have been attributed to the soul to
magnify its importance, the two words, for the sake of
euphony and variety, are used synonymously and inter
changeably. ,
Even President Noah Porter, who shows so little favor
to Plato's grand dogma of " the Immortality of the Soul,"
that it is impossible to tell whether he endorses it or not in
bis profound work on the " Human Intellect," has evi
dently come so far under its influence as to almost entirely
ignore the Bible distinction between soul and spirit. We
quote from his introductory chapter on "Psychology and the
Soul," p. 6:
" The word soul differs from spirit, as 'the species differs
from the genus ; soul being limited to a spirit (?; that either
is or has been connected with a body or material organiza
tion, while spirit may also be applied to a being that has
not at present, or is believed never to have had such a con
nection. " The term soul originally signified the principle of life
or motion in a material organism. It was pre-eminently
appropriated to the vital principle or force which animates
the animal body, whether in man or the lower animals.
Traces of this signification may be distinctly discovered in
the threefold division of man into body, soul and spirit, in
which the soul occupies the place between the corporeal or
material part, and the spiritual or noetic. The interme
diate part was sometimes called the animal soul, and was
believed to perish with the body. Hence the term spirit
was applied to a nature that had never been fixed in a
body, or soiled and degraded by connection with it. In the
New Testament (psuehikos) psychical is often applied to the
body in the sense of animal, and opposed to the spiritual
or higher body. As applied to the affections and charac
ter it signifies those which are lower or fleshly, as distin
guished from those which are nobler in their nature or

Sec. 3.] SOUL AND SPIRIT. 147
origin. Inasmuch as in man the attention would naturally
be directed to that which gives dignity, it is not surprising
that when soul was limited to man [not by Bible teaching,
but by Plato's philosophy in opposition to the Bible — j. h. p.]
and signified the human soul, it came to designate, by emi
nence, those endowments by which man is distinguished from
the animals, instead of denoting, as previously, those which
he had in common with them."
Thus this eminent Christian scholar frankly admits that
the old Bible doctrine of the soul has been supplanted by
this other philosophy, and then leaves us to infer that he
himself sanctions the change — certainly he does not pro
test against it. What else could one do, if a popular and
acceptable treatise on psychology and the soul is to be pre
pared? For who, in this enlightened and philosophical
age, would, respect or accept for a moment such a treatise,
however able, if it were to be based upon the old, discarded
Bible notions of the soul ?
. But our present inquiry is not what philosophers may
teach, however wise and learned they may be, but what the
Bible teaches on this question. In order to learn this we
must go back — unpopular and ridiculous as the attempt
may seem in the eyes of learned philosophers — and inquire
What is the old Bible doctrine of the soul and the spirit ?
As we do not propose to discuss the various theories of
men, nor the various interpretations they have contrived to
put upon the Word of God to make it harmonize with their
own notions, nor even to set forth any theory of our own,
but simply to listen to the teachings of Sacred Writ, our task
would seem to be a very easy one. And so it is ; for we have
in the Bible account of the creation- of man the whole doc
trine in a nutshell — a doctrine to which all the sacred
writers adhere throughout the whole inspired volume.
Gen. 2:7, " And the Lord God formed man of the dust
of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of

148 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
life, (neshamah chayim,) and man became a living soul,"
(nephesh chayah.)
Here are three things to be noted :
1. The formation of man, or the Adam as the word sig
nifying earth implies — a complete physical organization,
but as yet without life.
2. There are two Hebrew words signifying breath or
breath of life — neshamah and ruach. The former is found
24 times in the Old Testament Scriptures, and is usually
translated " breath," but sometimes " spirit." The latter
occurs 400 times, and is usually translated " spirit," but
sometimes also " breath," " wind," etc. These two words
appear to be used synonymously and interchangeably as in
the case of Hebrew poetic parallelisms, as for instance Job
33 : 4 : " The spirit (ruach) of God htith made me, and the
breath (neshamah) of the Almighty hath given me life."
This breath, or spirit, or divine influence, or afflatus, is now
imparted to the physical organism — the adam or man —
and life or soul (nephesh) is the result. He begins to live.
He becomes a living soul. It is the presence of this spirit.
in man that gives him life.
3. It is not a soul that is imparted to man by his Maker,.
but God's own living, life-giving spirit. Nor is it a living
spirit that man now becomes, but a living soul.
Now let the process be reversed. Let God take away
from man this life-giving spirit, and he ceases to live ; he
becomes a " dead soul " — to use the language of Scripture
— or a dead " adam " or man. The physical organism is
resolved back to dust from which he was taken. So reads
the sentence : " Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou re
turn." " Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was,
and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."
Here we have a body, a soul, and a spirit, all united in
one perfect man — a real tripartite nature, but not three

Sec. 3.] SOUL AND SPIRIT. 149
persons or three natures joined in one. No one of the
three is able to constitute a living, conscious, responsible
person without the others. The body has no life or sensa
tion without the spirit, and the spirit has no power of mani
festation excepting through a material organism, and the
soul, midway between the two, is dependent upon the joink
action of both to give it being and to enable it to fulfill its
functions. We shall not undertake the fruitless and impossible task
of apportioning to each of the parts the several faculties
and powers that belong to them in the constitution of man,
with which so many have puzzled themselves, and the
minds of others. There is no cleavage or definite line of
division between them, for the good reason that man is a
perfect integer, and cannot be partitioned off in this way.
We should be abundantly satisfied if we could understand
what is meant by the words " soul " and " spirit " as ap
plied to man.
According to the popular philosophy of the day, soul and
spirit are the special attributes of man, and in the posses
sion of them he is distinguished from the brute. But the
Scriptures make no such distinction. Although a more par
ticular account is given of the creation of man than of the
lower animals, yet the same terms are used. As Ave have
abundantly shown elsewhere (nephesh) "soul," "living
soul " is predicated of brutes, as well as of men ; but
it is not brought out in our version so clearly, because our
translators have usually given some other rendering to the
word when brutes are spoken of. The same is true, also,
of the words neshamah and ruach, signifying spirit ; but
' the fact is in the s,ame way covered up in the translation.
For example, Gen. 6:17: " Behold I do bring a flood of
waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh wherein is the
breath (ruach, spirit) of life." Gen. 7 : 15 : " And they went

150 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
in unto Noah, into the Ark, two by two, of all flesh, where
in is the breath (ruach) of life." Psa. 104 : 29, 30 : " Thou
hidest thy face, they (the beasts) are troubled, thou takest
away their breath, (ruach,) they die and return to the dust.
Thou sendeth forth thy spirit (ruach,) they are created."
*Eccl. 3 : 19-21 : " That which befalleth the sons of men be
falleth the beasts ; even one thing befalleth them ; as the
one dieth, so dieth the other ; yea, they have all one breath,"
(ruach spirit.)
All living animals have souls, according to the teaching
of Scripture, and they all derive their life from the in
breathing of the same almighty Life-giver. We must,
therefore, look elsewhere for the distinguishing difference
between man and other living animals. The difference,
as among the various orders of animals, may lie in their
peculiar organization, or in the quality of the spirit that
is breathed into them, or perhaps in both.
The organization of man, especially of that part through
which his mind acts, is every way more perfect than that
of any other animal ; and the spirit which God breathes
into him may, perhaps, also be of a higher quality. What
ever may be true of the natural man in this regard, we
find in the New Testament the word pneuma, which is sup
posed to answer exactly to ruach in the Old, used with
more special reference to the renewed man. It is evidently
used with a higher signification and a deeper meaning.
This is especially apparent in its adjective and adverbial
form, pneumatikos and pneumatikos, spiritual and spirit
ually minded. In this regard, he is contrasted with the
natural man, who is simply psuehikos or soulical and car
nally minded. We are told, in Jude 19, that ungodly men
have not the spirit, or rather, as it is in the original,
" Spirit," without the article but with a capital S, referring
perhaps to that special divine influence by which men are

Bee. 3.] SOUL AND spirit. 151
renewed. Hence some writers on the tripartite nature of
man have laid the distinction between the natural and re
newed man in this, that the former is possessed of body
and soul only, and the latter of body, soul, and spirit. As
we have discussed this matter at length in another section,
we must now pass it without further remark.
We ought to notice here another use of these words,
ruach and pneuma, to denote another order of creatures,
invisible to us but known to exist from the frequent refer
ence to them in the Scriptures. We call them " spirits ;"
not properly disembodied spirits, for we have no good rea
son to suppose them to be of Adamic origin ; nor even un-
embodied spirits, for as finite creatures we can hardly con
ceive of them as entirely destitute of some organized sub
stantial form, though it may be exceedingly rare and atten
uated. God only is pure spirit. All created existences,
whether high or low, must, as we believe, come under the
limitations of form and space. But we find these spirits —
certainly those that are evil — yearning for an embodiment
in some grosser physical form, that they may take part in
human affairs, and as a means, it would seem, of increas
ing their power.
But we can not now stop to consider these various
branches of our subject. Our main object is to indicate
and emphasize the radical distinction, in the Word of God,
between Soul and Spirit. These terms are never used at
random and interchangeably in the original Scriptures.
Our translators, though they might have been tempted by
their philosophy to disguise this distinction, have uniformly
honored it. Never in one single instance have they ren
dered pneuma " soul," nor psuehe " spirit ;" nor have they
ever rendered nephesh " spirit," nor ruach " soul ;" and
only in one instance have they given this rendering to
neshamah, and this is evidently a mistranslation, viz., Isa.

152 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
57 : 16 : " For I will not contend forever, neither will I be
always wroth, for the spirit (ruach) should fail before me,
and the souls (neshamah, spirits?) which I have made."
We are not careful to affirm or to deny the individual
entity of the soul, as distinct from the body on the one
hand, and the spirit on the other ; for, though we have
studied this question patiently for years, we have never
been able to arrive at any very positive and dogmatic
conclusion in regard to it. Neither could we affirm or
deny with certainty the substantial existence of fire, apart
from the oxygen on the one hand, and the elemental base
with which it combines on the other. But of this we are
well assured, that it is only in conjunction with these two
concomitants that it can act and manifest itself. And we
are confident in saying the same of the soul. There is no
evidence whatever, either from Science or from Scriptures,
that it can maintain an active, entitative existence, and
fulfill the functions of a soul apart from any bodily or
ganism — but much to the contrary. If it does not pass
out of existence entirely as a soul, on the death of the body,
it certainly loses all its power of action and manifestation,
and so must remain till it is again called into activity in '
the revival of the body at the resurrection.
As for the Spirit, we would speak with more reserve. It
is too far removed from the apprehension of our senses. It
is an influence, a power, a living emanation directly from
the Great Source of all Life and Power. What it is in its
essence, even in those lower and transitory forms of Nature,
by which they spring into being and life and fulfill their
brief career and then pass away, we know not. What it
is in man, the highest of all the creatures of earth, awak
ening in him all the varied operations of thought, reason,
and feeling, we cannot tell. Much less can we tell, or
know, what it is in that higher and peculiar manifestation

Sec. 3.] SOUL AND SPIRIT. 153
by which man is not only qualified to live here, but here
after and forever — by which he is lifted up into another
sphere of being, made partaker of the Divine nature,
brought into immediate fellowship and communion with
his Maker, and made an heir of the Life Everlasting. It
is only by the teaching of His Word and the guidance of
that Divine Spirit, that any one can arrive at any true
knowledge on this subject. " For the natural man receiv-
eth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are fool
ishness to him ; neither can he know them, for they are
spiritually discerned." Hence natural men, however wise
and learned in other matters, are prone to go astray here ;
and religious men are too often inclined to follow their phi
losophy, rather than the teachings of the Spirit, and to say
as Nicodemus, the inquiring master of Israel, did to Christ :
" How can these things be ?"
Had man continued in union with his Maker, the spirit
would have dominated the soul and the body, and his tri
une nature would have operated in such harmony with it
self that, partaking of the Tree of Life, according to his
need, he might have lived on, and on, perpetually and for
ever. But when the lower nature triumphed over that
which was designed to be superior and controlling — and
must be, in order to perpetuity of being — and subordinated
it to the base purposes of man's animal nature, he became,
not simply by an 'arbitrary law of God, but by the law of
his being and of all being, not only miserable, but mortal.
Nothing that fails to conform to the law of its own being, ,
which is the law of God, and to work in harmony with
itself and its Maker, who is the source and life of all be
ing, can live forever. It must sooner or later pass out of
existence and give place to that which is more perfect.
" When that which is perfect is come, then that which is
in part (ex merous, imperfect, out of harmony) shall be

154 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
done away." Hence the sentence, "Dust thou art, and
unto dust shalt thou return." The organism must break
down sooner or later ; the conflict cannot always continue.
The unnatural strife must end in death at last. " Sin " —
which does violence to man's physical, as 'well as moral
being — " when it is finished, bringeth forth death." " Then
shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit
shall return to God who gave it." As the receiving of the
spirit brings life, so the losing of the spirit causes death.
This, indeed, seems to be true of all animal life. Psa. 104 :
29 : " Thou takest away their breath, (ruach,) they die and
return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, (ruach,)
they are created." Psa. 146:4: "His breath (ruach)
goeth forth '; he returneth to his earth ; in that very day
his thoughts perish." Eccl. 3 : 19-21 : " That which be
falleth the sons of men befalleth beasts ; even one thing
befalleth them ; as the one dieth, so dieth the other ; yea,
they all have one breath, (ruach.) So that a man hath no
pre-eminence above a beast. All go to one place ; all are
of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the
spirit (ruach) of a man that [whether it] goeth upward,
and the spirit (ruach) of the beast that [whether it] goeth
downward to the earth ?"
But there seems to be this distinction to be noted be
tween the departure of the spirit of the natural man and
of the righteous : The former loses it, whether willingly or
not ; the latter surrenders it to the keeping of God who
gave it. Hence the Psalmist says, Psa. 31 : 5 : "Into thy
hand I commit my spirit." Stephen also, Acts 7 : 59 :
" Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Our Lord Himself said,
Luke 23 : 46 : " Father, into thy hands I commend my
spirit, (pneuma,) and having said this he gave up the
ghost," (exepneusen, expired, breathed out his pneuma,
spirit ;) or, as recorded in Matt. 27 : 50 : " Jesus, when he

Sec. 3.] BOUI. AND SPIRIT. 155
had cried again, with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost,"
(pneuma;) and in John 19 : 30 : " He bowed his head and
gave up the ghost," (pneuma.) Our Lord laid down His
life, (psuehe,) but he yielded back His spirit, (pneuma^)
into the hands of God.
It was by the return of this same spirit that He lived
again and rose from the dead. 1 Peter 3 : 18 : " Being
put to death in the flesh, but quickened (made alive) by
the spirit." It is in the same way that we are raised to
life in the day of resurrection. This is prefigured in the
vision of Ezekiel, 37 : 5-8 : " Thus saith the Lord unto
these bones, Behold I will cause breath (ruach) to enter
into you and ye shall live, and I will lay sinews upon you,
and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with
skin, and put breath (ruach) in you, and ye shall live. . .
Lo the sinews and flesh came up upon them, and the skin
covered them above ; but there was no breath (ruach) in
them. Then said He unto me, Prophesy unto the wind
(ruach;) prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind
(ruach,) thus saith the Lord God : Come from the four
winds, (ruach,) oh breath, (ruach,) and breathe upon these
slain that they may live. So I prophesied as He com
manded me, and the breath (ruach) came into them and
they lived."
Here the interesting and perplexing inquiry arises,
What is the condition of these human spirits between death
and the resurrection ? Do they, like the physical elements
of man, return to precisely the same condition as before
man began to be? Are they re-absorbed into the Divine
Essence from which they came ? or is the individuality of
each human spirit preserved, and in this way the identity
of each man maintained, till he is raised again in a spirit
ual body? On this point we must forbear to dogmatize, or
to attempt to be "wise above what is written." The

156 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
Word of God does not seem to be so clear and explicit on
this point as to warrant the expression of any very posi
tive opinion concerning it. There are certain passages of
Scripture that seem to favor one view, and others that fa
vor the opposite view. Hence there is no unanimity of
sentiment among Bible scholars on either side of the main
question we are discussing, with respect to the interme
diate state of the dead. But, to us, the weight of Scripture
testimony seems to favor the belief of the unconscious state
of the dead — certainly of the impenitent dead. The many
passages bearing either directly or indirectly on this point
seem better to harmonize in this view than any other. We
do not appear to be warranted in believing that the human
spirit, even of the righteous, much less of the wicked, de
velops any such individuality during this life, as to enable
it at death to assume and maintain a distinct, entitative,
personal, conscious existence of its own, during the inter
val between death and the resurrection.*
* There is hardly any point upon which there is a greater diver
sity of opinion among those who hold with us the main doctrine of
eternal life only in Christ, and perhaps we might say, among all
Christians, than on this. Mr. Constable, Dr. Ives, Prof. Kellogg,
and those who regard man from a materialistic standpoint, hold
that the thinking, conscious principle is entirely dissipated in death,
and only restored in the resurrection ; others, that the spirit sur
vives only in a state of coma or utter insensibility ; others still, that
the righteous alone are conscious, while the wicked are in a pro
found sleep till they are raised .o be judged and destroyed in the sec
ond death ; and still others, that the first death does not interrupt the
•consciousness of any one, but this is the result of the second death.
Dr. Delitzsch holds that the survival of the soul or spirit is alto
gether miraculous, with a special view to the resurrection and final
judgment. Mr. Warleigh contends that the spirit of the believer,
which is the Spirit of God within him, in death becomes a separate
individual spirit, with all the attributes of mind and survives in
Paradise till the coming of our Lord when it rejoins the hotly in
the resurrection. Mr. White thinks that one uniform rule may not
be applicable lo all cases, that some may be active, while others are
dormant, some may be happy while others are miserable and that
some may be in a condition to accept of offered salvation, etc. See
Jjife in Christ, chap. 21.

SECTION IV.
Body, Soul, Spirit— The Tripartite Nature of Man.
There are three distinct theories of the nature of man.
They are designated and generally known as the theories
of, (1) Materialism, (2) Dicbotomism, and (3) Trichoto-
mism. 1. The materialistic theory regards man as an organism
possessed of but one simple nature. All the activities of
his mind as well as of his body are the result of cell action
— physical changes under the operation of natural laws.
He is made up of atoms organized in a certain way. A
certain force is inherent in every atom ; as these atomic
forces unite in the molecule, so the combined force of all
the molecules organized into his body constitutes the life
and soul of that body. The phrase "human organism," or
matter organized in a certain way, represents all there is of
the man ; or in the words of one of the chief expounders
of this theory, " Life and mind are nothing but the com
plicated motions of the molecules of the brain and nerves
placed together in the most varied manner."
Scientific physiologists very generally incline towards
this theory ; but Christian men have usually declined to
adopt it on account of its apparent atheistical origin and
tendency. Still, good, Christian scholars, as for instance
the late Prof. C. L. Ives, in his Bible Doctrine of the Soul,
and Prof. J. H. Kellogg, in his Soul and the Eesurrection,
have advocated it. And among our most sober Christian
philosophers, there are many who strongly favor this view
— with some modifications.
2. The Dichotomous theory is that of the dual or duplex
nature of man — of a material body, and a spiritual soul as

158 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
a distinct entity — for a time at least — in one person. It in
cludes the whole of our intellectual and higher nature with
all our religious faculties under this one term soul. It
recognizes a distinction between the words soul and spirit
but not as indicating any fundamental difference. When
the words are distinctively used, as is sometimes the case
the word spirit is understood to be more generic and inclu
sive, and the word soul more specific, but for all practical
uses they are employed interchangeably.
At death, the soul is supposed to become a real spirit
independent of the body. Its freedom and its powers, in
stead of being restricted or weakened, are greatly increased.
The more common view is that it exists in a kind of ab
normal or intermediate state, though active and conscious,
till the general resurrection of the dead, when it re-enters
its own body, made fit for its permanent occupancy, and
with it, after the judgment, enters upon that eternal state
of happiness or misery for which it is fitted. But others
suppose that the resurrection spoken of in the Scriptures
takes place at death, and that the spirit takes on at once
its spiritual body — "an elimination of- a non-atomic en-
swathment of the soul," and is ready to enter immediately
upon its eternal state.
3. The Trichotomous theory is that of the tripartite na
ture of man. It holds the body, the soul and the spirit to
be three distinct organs or principles or faculties — not how
ever three personalities as some would have it — in every
perfect man, all combined in one harmonious unity.
It does not point to the demonstrations of Science, like
the first, nor, of Philosophy, like the second theory —
though it has no necessary conflict with either — but to the
teachings of Divine Revelation for its proofs. The knowl
edge of this third, spiritual faculty and of its functions is
given us by the Spirit of God, to whom we are especially

Sec. 4.] TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN. 159
indebted for its life within us. Neither science nor philos
ophy alone can teach it. It is not surprising then, that it
is not to be found in the systems of science and philosophy,
constructed and taught by the ancient philosophers, nor in
the systems of unregenerate men at the present day, how
ever wise and learned they may be. But it is thought that
Christian scholars drawing their inspiration from a higher
source ought to recognize it. Pres. Mark Hopkins in his Lec
tures on Moral'Science (p. 158) says, "Here it is that we find
the ground and necessity of a threefold division of man into
body, soul and spirit, which the Scriptures seem to recog
nize and which philosophy will be compelled to adopt."
That there is a broad distinction between soul and spirit
in the Word of God which should not be overlooked or
covered up, is evident from such passages as the following :
" The first man Adam was made (psuchen zosan) a living
soul ; the last Adam was made (pneuma zdopoioun) a quick
ening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is (pneu-
matikon) spiritual, but that which is (psuchikon, soulish)
natural, and afterwards that which is (pneumatikon) spirit
ual." (1 Cor. 15 : 45, 46.)
"But the (psuehikos) natural man receiveth not the
things of the (Pneumatos) Spirit of God for they are fool
ishness unto him ; neither can he know them, because they
are (pneumatikos) spiritually discerned." (1 Cor. 2: 14.)
" And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly, and I
pray God your whole (pneuma) spirit, and (psuehe) soul
and (soma) body, be preserved blameless (en in,) unto the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thes. 5 : 23.)
" For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper
than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing
asunder of (psuches te kai pneumatos) soul and spirit," etc.
(Heb. 4 : 12.)
"These be they who separate themselves (psuchikoi, soul-

160 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
ical) sensual, not having the (pneuma) spirit." (Jude 19.)
" That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which
is born of the (pneumatikos, pneuma esti) spirit is spirit,"
(John 3 : 6,) etc.
But this distinction in some of these and other passages
is nearly lost to the reader of the common version because
the word soul has no good adjective (unless we coin the
word soulish or soulical) as the word spirit has, namely,
spiritual, and hence in using the adjective natural or sen
sual, the real antithesis between that which is soulical and
spiritual is not observed.
This contrast which is drawn in the Greek original be
tween the (psuehe) soul and the (pneuma) spirit, and the
(psuehikos) soulical and the (pneumatikos) spiritual, is
maintained in the Latin Vulgate by the words anima and
spiritus ; animate and spiritale ; also in other versions and
it should have been in ours. The same distinction is made
in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, though of course it
is not so clearly Drought out ; for it is the more specific ob
ject of the Gospel to make known the difference between
the spiritual and the natural man.
Among the distinguished advocates of this theory, men
tion may be made of the late Dr. David Thorn, Rev. J. B.
Heard, Canon H. Constable in Great Britain ; Dr. Delitzsch
and other German writers, and Dr. Mark Hopkins in this
country. There are some differences in the terms they use,
and in the details of their teaching, which perhaps should
be mentioned.
Dr. Thorn, in his profoundly metaphysical treatise on
Soul and Spirit, (H. K. Lewis, London,) holds that spirit
(for he uses the words soul and spirit without any article)
belongs exclusively to renewed men as the mind of Christ
in them. It was not even given to man in his original
creation. " The first Adam was made a living soul ; the

Sec. 4.] TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN. 161
last Adam a quickening spirit. Howbeit, that was not
first which is spiritual, but that which was natural (psuchi-
kon, soulical) and afterwards, that which is spiritual." (1
Cor.15 :46.) It is pre-eminently theswpernaiura^ gift of God.
The body and soul of Adam were originally pure and
perfect but his mind without spiritual life was naturally
fleshly — not fleshly in the grosser sense now attached to the
word, but fleshly as contrasted with a spiritual mind. It
was wnspiritual. His obedience would have been, at best
but a soulical or natural righteousness — a perfect morality.
Sin then, did not cause the death of the spirit ; for the
spirit was not yet given to him, but the death of the soul.
He has now since his fall no claim to even an earthly
immortality, much less to one beyond. His posterity
are like him. " That which is born of the flesh is flesh,"
and must share in its destiny. " And that which is born
of the spirit is spirit," and is in its very essence and nature,
as the life of God Himself, immortal. Dr. Thom seems to
be very much of a necessitarian, and to incline strongly to
the doctrine of materialism in his views of the soul ; it is
an attribute or quality of the body peculiarly organized ;
but still it is the shadow and germ of a superior princi
ple. He evidently favors the idea of restorationism, though
he does not declare himself decisively on this point.
Mr. Heard in his treatise on The Tripartite Nature of
Man, (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh,) a masterly and thor
oughly evangelical work, which ought to be better known
in this country, treats the soul and the spirit as separate
organs and defines the functions of each. He includes in
the body and soul all the faculties and powers which we call
natural, and which qualify man for a worldly life, and rele
gates to the spirit, those that may be called strictly religious
and supernatural, and which are especially the fruit of the
new birth.

162 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H
As to whether a true spiritual nature was given to man
originally, or to what degree it was given, he speaks with
hesitation, and with some apparent vacillation, in various
parts of his book, but on the whole he appears to think
this faculty was given to him in the germ rather than in
its full maturity, and that in the fall, it was not altogether
destroyed, but deadened, and that it now lies dormant in
the natural man, until quickened by the Spirit of God.
" The spirit is dead as to all higher exercises of faith, hope
and charity ; but not so dead as to have lost all fear of
God, all sense of dependence on Him, or all sense that His
law is the supreme standard of right."
On the question of Immortality through the Spirit alone,
he is clear and decisive. He says, " We conclude that man
was made for Immortality, it is true, but that this immor
tality was contingent on bis spiritual likeness to God
through obedience. Man, when be fell, lost for himself and
all his posterity that spiritual likeness to God in which
alone his true Immortality is to be sought." " Adam was
created a ' living soul,' and with a capacity of becoming a
quickened spirit. But when he fell, he not only lost the
pneumatical faculty for himself, but also the power of
transmitting it to his posterity."
Dr. Hopkins in his Baccalaurate discourse, entitled
Spirit, Soul and Body, graphically describes the function
and capacity of each, and enforces his subject practically,
without discussing the question of the origin and loss of
the spiritual nature in man, or the ground of his hope for
Immortality. He describes the body as looking downward,
and seeking its chief good in the gratification of its appe
tites and passions. Multitudes seek and find no higher
happiness than is found in animal indulgence.
He describes the soul as looking outward, and busying
itself with material things, and their relations, properties

Sec. 4.] TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN. 163
and laws. He speaks of the vast and almost unlimited at
tainments and achievements that are possible to man, in
the exercise of his physical and mental faculties alone.
But alas ! all these things are transitory at best, and fail
to satisfy his higher needs. What is man at the best with
out the knowledge of God ?
He describes the spirit as looking upward to God Him
self, the source of all life and light. It is this that brings
man into fellowship and communion with Him. It is only
in his love and favor that man's highest longings are satis
fied, or that he is fitted for a destiny that is worthy of his
highest aim. And — he might have added — it is only in
this way that he can have any assurance of the Immortal
ity, he is exhorted in the Gospel to seek, or of the Life
Everlasting which is promised to those alone who seek it in
Christ the Savior.
Canon Constable's theory of the tripartite nature of man
— to which, with some modification, we strongly incline on
account of its simplicity, freedom from speculation, and its
•close adherence to the letter of God's Word — differs so
much from the above that we propose to consider it more
at length, after having made some general remarks on
¦those we have already noticed. Before doing this, how
ever, we may add to the above the views of Irenseus, as
given by Mr. Constable, as_ follows :
" Irenseus seems to have considered that man, as he was
at first created, was mortal as to his entire nature. The
spirit which is in the believer now, he apparently considers
not to have been bestowed upon Adam at creation. He
was a being, at the first, only of a body and of a soul, and
therefore mortal as to his entire nature. The spirit of the
'believer, he evidently thinks, is a part of the Divine Spirit
imparted to the believer through Christ, and only given
since Gospel times. Without this spirit, he holds that
there can be no such thing as immortality for man. He

164 BIBLE .TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H,
apparently considers that the union of this Spirit to the
soul of the believer in this life renders the believer's soul
immortal now, and that its union with the believer's body
at the resurrection will render the body thenceforward in
corruptible and immortal. . . . Augustine makes a part of
human nature to have been possessed from the very begin
ning of an essential and inalienable immortality. Irenseus,
on the contrary, represents the entirety of that nature, body
and soul alike, to have been created mortal, and to have
been as yet unjoined by an element which was essential to
the possession by either of immortality. In order that
unfaUen man should obtain immortality, Irenseus thinks
that he must have obtained something which he had not at
first. This something — this third part of man — ^the Divine
Spirit, uncreated and eternal, he supposes not to have been
given, until the time of Christ, and then only to believers.
They who were not believers, never received it, according
to Irenseus, and must therefore be mortal. Man in his first
estate was but mortal ; man in his fallen estate, and refus- ,
ing to accept Christ as his Savior, cuts himself off from
the gift of the Spirit, which would have been essential to
the immortality even of unfallen man."
There seems to be a substantial agreement among these
authors, whose views we have briefly given, on the main
question, though perhaps they would not agree upon all
points. But we think that their minor differences might
be harmonized under one general view, somewhat as follows :
God designed man for immortality, but only as a crea
ture, all of whose faculties and powers should be in perfect
accord with each other — the lower subordinated to the
higher, and all to Himself in sweet conformity to His holy
will. For only in this way could the highest welfare of
man, and God's end in his creation be secured.
Without disturbing the vexed question of the time and
method of man's creation, it will be admitted that his body
was first formed. It would seem from the record in Gene
sis, to have been formed in its maturity — at least it came

Sec. 4.] TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN. 165
to maturity first, and was capable of exercising all its
physical functions.
The soul that was given him, embracing as it does the
intellectual faculties, must have been rudimentary at first ;
for he could have had neither memory, nor experience, nor
the power which comes from the use of the mind in com
paring and reasoning from cause to effect. Mental power
is of slow growth, and the result of exercise. As for his
spiritual nature which is still higher and more ethereal,
might it not have been yet further in the background, ex
isting in posse rather than in esse, as the fruit in the bud, or
even in the germ, and depending on the right development
of that which must come before, in the order of nature ?
This is the order God did observe in the work of creation,
as His Word assures us ; first appears matter in its chaotic
state, and then in its cruder forms, controlled by the blind
forces of attraction, cohesion, and affinity, and after this,
in its lower organic forms, with an unconscious vitality,
and then animal organisms, with sensitive life and the
power of volition, and later still, man, including all that is
beneath him, with a rational life or soul which fits him for
an earthly career ; then follows, may we not infer, last of all,
and contingent upon the true development of these lower
faculties, that spiritual nature which crowns the whole
and unites him to God and fits him for an Immortal destiny?
This is the order observed in the growth and develop
ment of every individual plant — " first the blade, then the
ear, after that, the full corn in the ear" — in the growth
and development of every animal — and of man himself:
the basilar faculties and powers come first, and soonest to
their maturity. It is not until these lower faculties have
acquired considerable strength by the exercise of their ap
propriate functions, that those which are higher even appear
— much less are perfected. That Adam was created pure

166 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
and perfect, need not be disputed ; but he could not have
been created holy ; for holiness implies character. Char
acter is voluntary ; like the will, it must be free or it does
not exist. It is the attribute of man's spiritual nature,
and can exist only as the fruit of his voluntary action or
choice. Now the test that was given to man, seems to have been
the mildest possible. But the temptation addressed to his
lower nature carried all before it ; and this inchoate spir
itual faculty perished in the germ — died, as it were, in the
birth, and man became an empty vine bringing forth fruit
only to himself. The spiritual faculty, designed to be the
crowning glory of man, and to fit him for communion and
fellowship with his Maker, was apparently lost in the fall.
And yet the reliquoz still remain as a reminder of what he
has lost — of what God designed him to be, and of what He
yet designs to make him through graced This is seen in
the longing which man has for immortality ; in the sen
tence of condemnation he feels within himself; in his baffled
efforts for a higher and better life which he can conceive
of, but to which he finds himself unable to attain. When
he would do good, evil is present with him, (see Rom. chap.
7,) and so he remains, and ever will remain, until he shall
receive help from above.
Dr. Thom holds that all this sad experience of good and
evil, and of death through sin, is preparatory and neces
sary to the reception and enjoyment of the higher life re
vealed in the Gospel ; and which comes to man through the
atonement made by Christ. He must bear the image of the
first man, who is of the earth, earthy, before he can bear the
image of the second man, who is the Lord from heaven.
(1 Cor. 15 : 45-49.) Be that as it may, the express object of
the incarnation and death of Christ, was to give Immortality
and blessedness to man, by imparting to him His own life,

Sec. 4.] TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN. 167
which is spiritual and eternal ; and so, may we not say, to
carry out and perfect God's original plan in his creation.
In order to this, every child of Adam must be born again.
The natural man possesses, at best, only a body and a soul ;
the spirit is wanting. The regenerate man possesses body,
soul and spirit. The spirit is the peculiar gift of God in
the new birth. It may be weak, at first, and struggling with
evil habits and the opposing influences of the world, the
flesh and the devil ; it may never attain, iu this life, to the
complete mastery, at which it aims ; but in the life to
come, when it shall take on its spiritual body, and enter
the eternal state for which the man is here preparing, the
victory through grace shall be complete.
This doctrine of the new birth, and of a new spiritual
life, is indeed foreshadowed in the Old Testament dispen
sation, but is only brought to light in the Gospel. It is al
together a mystery to natural men; and is but dimly,
too dimly apprehended by the disciples of our Lord. (See
John chap. 3.) " For the natural man receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God ; for they are foolishness to
him ; neither can he know them, for they are spiritually
discerned." But so far as this truth is received, it throws
a flood of light upon the whole system of divine truth. It
makes a new book of the Bible. The types and shadows
and sacrifices and ceremonies of the old dispensation, with
its temporal sanctions, are seen to have ' a meaning they
never had before. One now sees why the moral law, even
in its negative and prohibitory form, failed " to make the
comers thereto perfect ;" much less to give them spiritual
life ; and how, under the Gospel, it takes on its higher
spiritual meaning, which is all expressed in the one word,
Love. God Himself is love. Love is the essence of spir
itual life ; the spontaneous exercise of every holy creature.
Faith and hope may be exercised as the graces of a re-

168 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
newed man, but they may also be exercised in common
with all rational creatures. God cannot exercise faith or
hope ; they belong to dependent natures. But God does
exercise love, and this is the crowning grace of every re
newed creature. " For God is love, and every one that
loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." " And this is
Eternal Life, that they might know thee,, and Jesus
Christ, whom thou hast sent."
Canon Constable's theory is that the nature of the liv
ing man is tripartite, but that the body alone, highly organ
ized and complete in itself, constituted in the beginning the
man or adam, as the word implies. In proof of this he quotes
Gen. 2:7: " The Lord God formed man of the dust of the
ground." After he had formed the man, He " breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a liv
ing soul," possessed of body, soul and spirit. This breath
of life — otherwise called the spirit, (ruach in Hebrew, or
pneuma in Greek,) — is an emanation directly from the
Deity. It gives life or soul (nephesh Hebrew, or psuehe
Greek) to the body, and man then becomes a living soul
(nephesh chayah). He communicates life to the whole ani
mal creation in the same way. All living creatures,
whether high or low, are living souls, and are so called in
the Word of God. The same terms are employed in speak
ing of them as of men, in the original Scriptures ; but the
translators of our version have hidden or obscured tliis
fact by using different words. The real difference between
man and the lower animals, lies not in the breath or spirit
that is given, nor in the soul or life which it causes to
spring into being, but in that which lies back of this. As
the spirit within this organized body gives rise to the life
or soul, so when God takes away this breath or spirit which
He gave — when man gives up the ghost, the life or soul

Sec. 4.] tripartite nature of man. 169
which depends on it ceases also, and man becomes what he
was before the spirit was breathed into him, a lifeless body
— a dead man or a dead soul as he is often called in the
Scriptures ; and the body crumbles back to its original
dust. To sustain this view, Mr. Constable cites many pas
sages of Scripture, such as : " The spirit of God hath made
me and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life."
(Job 23 : 4.) Man's " breath (or spirit) goeth forth ; in
that very day his thoughts perish." (Psa. 146 : 4.) " If he
(God) set His heart upon man, if He gather unto Himself
His spirit and His breath ; all flesh shall perish together
and man shall return into dust again." (Job 34 : 14, 15, etc.)
Mr. Constable argues with much earnestness, in his work
entitled " Hades," to show that the body of Adam before
life was given to it constituted the man, or a man. But
he admits that there were two stages in his creation, the
first ends with the creation of the organized body, the sec
ond with the completion of the living man, possessed of
body, soul and spirit. This point he seems to carry to an
unnecessary extremo. But he gives the greater emphasis
to it that he may effectually antagonize the error of the
Platonic philosophy, which has come so extensively to pre
vail, which insists that the soul of itself constitutes the
real man, and that the body is nothing but its temporary
encasement, a garment which may be cast off without
detriment to the man himself, but rather with real ad
vantage ; that it now operates as a kind of straight-jacket
to confine the soul within narrow limits, and when it is
laid aside at death, the soul rises into greater freedom and
power. While we agree with him in opposing this grievous error,
which has confused and darkened the Bible doctrine of
the true nature of man, we think it would be quite as ef
fectually, and more fairly antagonized, by insisting on the

170 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
indissoluble unity of man as consisting of body, soul and
spirit, and that his creation was not complete till he be
came a living soul. As for the text (Gen. 2 : 7) which de
clares that " The Lord God formed man of the dust of the
ground," the language may be regarded as proleptical, as
when we say, a woman made some bread out of flour, and
baked it in an oven. It is only dough at first, and does
not really become bread till it is baked. So the " man "
which God formed of the dust of the ground, is only the
body of a man, till the breath of life has been breathed
into him. As for the many other texts which he cites, in
which the personal pronoun is used in referring to the
dead body of a man, and where it is called by the name he
bore in life, as when the burial of Abraham, of Joseph, and
David is spoken of, and, as is common throughout the
whole Bible history and even at the present time with men
of all shades of opinion on this question, the language may
not be perfectly exact, and yet, sufficiently accurate for all
practical purposes. Life itself is essential to the being of
any animal, as the word anima (life) imports ; and this is
no less true of a man, strictly speaking.
The body, soul and spirit are all three essential to the
existence of a man. When any one of them is taken' away,
the other two do not and cannot constitute a complete man.
Hence when the spirit or breath (ruach or pneuma) leaves
the body, all life (psuehe) ceases ; as the fire goes out when
the air or oxygen is excluded from the burning substance;
or the locomotive stops when the steam which is its motive
power is shut off from the engine. Not only this, but the
body having no more life-power to conserve this delicate
organism, falls back to its original state. "Then shall
the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit (or
breath) shall return to God who gave it." (Eccl. 12 : 7.)
" If He set His heart upon man, if He gather unto Him-

Sec. 4.] TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN. 171
self His Spirit and His breath, all flesh shall perish to
gether and man shall turn into dust again." (Job 34 : 14,15.)
" His breath goeth forth, be returneth to the earth ; in
that very day his thoughts perish." (Psa. 146 .- 4.)
Hence the necessity that Christ should rise again after
He had been put to death ; for he really died ; He gave
up the ghost. He only lived again as he was quickened
by the Spirit. Hence also the necessity of our resurrection,
that we may live again. We here see the reason why the
¦ early Christians, before their faith had become corrupted
by Plato's philosophy of a ghostly state apart from the
body, attached so much importance to the doctrine of the
resurrection. All their hopes of a future life were founded
on it. " If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain
and your faith, is also vain. Then they also which are
fallen asleep in Christ are perished." (1 Cor. 15 : 14-18.)
We see how unscriptural is the popular notion of the
intermediate state which came into the Christian Church
during the mediseval ages of darkness, to corrupt the sim
ple teachings of Christ and His early followers, and to be
the source of so many mischievous errors, and which, with
more or less modification, has been handed down by tradi
tion to the present time. The Word of God speaks of the
dead saints as "asleep," " asleep in Christ," in anticipa
tion of their restoration to life when He shall come again,
to call them from the dead. It declares that " The living
know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything."
" For there is no work nor device, no knowledge nor wis
dom in the grave whither thou goest." (Eccl. 9 : 5-10;}
" Like sheep they (the wicked) are laid in the grave ;
death shall feed on them ; and the upright shall have do
minion over them in the morning." (Psa. 49 : 14.)
Christ died to ransom not merely the souls of His peo
ple, but " their bodies also from the power of the grave,"

172 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
{sheol) and this is what was promised to them, (Hos. 13 :
14,) and what they longed for, " waiting for the adoption,
to wit, the redemption of our body." (Rom. 8 : 23.)
Many of the primitive disciples hoped to live on earth
until the second coming of the Lord, and so Paul prayed
that their whole spirit, soul and body might be preserved
nlameless unto (in) the coming of Christ, (1 Thes. 5 : 23),
at which time their vile, mortal bodies would be fashioned
like unto His own glorious body, and the three in one indis
soluble union be made glorious and incorruptible forever. .
Hence it was not death that they longed for and prayed
for, that they might be delivered from their trials, but
for the speedy coming of their Lord. They regarded
¦death not as a friend but as an enemy, though the last
enemy, and as such it is everywhere spoken of in the Word
of God. Indeed, so far were they from thinking that their
deceased friends had gone at once into the presence of
their Lord, so well assured were they that they were sleep
ing in an unconscious state, that they needed to be com
forted concerning them and assured that Christ at His
<w>ming would not forget them, or even manifest Himself
first to the living. " But I would not have you ignorant,
brethren, concerning them which are asleep that ye sor
row not, even as others which have no hope. For if we
believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also
which sleep in Jesus will God bring (from the dead) with
Him. For this we say unto you, by the Word of the
Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the com
ing of the Lord shall not prevent (go before) them which
^are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from
heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and
-with the trump of God ; and the dead in Christ shaU rise
first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught
«ip together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in

Sec. 4.] TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN. 173
the air ; and so shall we ever be with the Lord." 1 Thes.
4: 11-17. Paul's fervent desire to depart (or rather to be
released, analusai, to cut loose like a ship from her moor
ings,) and be with the Lord, was not, as he expressly tells
us, to be unclothed — to become a ghost, as some have in
terpreted it — but to realize just this common hope of them
all — or, even if he should be understood as entertaining
for the moment the selfish desire to die to be released from
the trouble and vexation of further serving his Lord —
though he expressly says he knew not which to choose,
life or death — he was assured that however long the inter
val, the very next moment of consciousness to him, he
would be in the presence of Christ, and so he need not
actually wait one moment ; for those who are sound asleep
take no note of the lapse of time. So even the weary
traveler in a foreign land may long to set sail for his dear
native home, and make no account of the long voyage that
lies between his releaso and the full realization of his hope.
The promise which our Lord made to the dying thief is
yet to be fulfilled, for it was not that he should be with
Him in Paradise that day, as the false punctuation makes
it seem to read, but that day, was the promise made to
him. Even in our Lord's dying agony, and as soon as the
thief had believed, this assurance was given to him. He
had prayed to be remembered when Christ should come in
(not into as it is translated) His kingdom, and our Lord
gave him this ready assurance, that very day, to cheer him
in his dying agonies. (Luke 23 : 42, 43.)
Those who would cite the transfiguration scene (Matt.
17:1-13,) in proof of the conscious life, of Moses and
Elias before the resurrection, forget that it was a vision
given to His three favored disciples, to enlighten and en
courage them with respect to the glory of His future king
dom, and expressly declared by Christ (verse 9) to be a

174 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. n.
vision (orama,) which means an unreal appearance. Even
if it were to be considered as real in the case of these two
saints, it must be borne in mind that their departure from
earth was with each of them miraculous, and not by a
natural death. The transformation of their bodies, which
we all expect at the last day, may have taken place. At
any rate, they did not appear as ghosts, but in such spirit
ual bodies as all the saints are supposed to take in their
resurrection. As for the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, (Luke
16 : 19-31,) which is so often cited and explained, or rather
mis-explained in support of the same false doctrine, it
should be remembered that it is a parable and not the
record of a historical fact, and that it will not do to un
derstand it as a real occurrence, or partly as a fact and
partly as a fiction, to adapt it to any theory of our own.
It was not the object of this parable, as will be quite evi
dent by referring to the context and considering the whole
drift of our Lord's teaching, to tell us about the affairs of
another world, but to show the proud, self-righteous, Phari
saical Jews, to whom such high privileges had been ac
corded, how completely their condition and that of the
poor Gentiles whom they so much despised, would be re
versed. Understood in this light, it will be seen to be won
derfully prophetic. It has been fulfilled to the very letter.
It is by the misconstruction of these few passages — to
wliich, perhaps one or two more vague expressions might
be added, to which it is unnecessary now to advert — that
this heathen dogma of the ghostly existence of disembod
ied souls or spirits, attempts to find support from Scrip
ture ; while the tenor of its teaching from beginning to
end contradicts it, and represents man — though like his
Maker possessed of a triune nature, yet as one undivi
ded and indivisible personality, consisting of body, soul

Sec. 4.] TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN. 175
and spirit, all of which are essential to his perfect life, not
only here but also in the life to come ; it assures us that
when the spirit leaves the body he dies, and would never
live again were it not for the grace of God through a Re
deemer ; that the dead, both the just and the unjust, re
main under the dominion of death till God shall again
breathe into them the breath of life, when, as in the vision
of dry bones, they shall live again and stand up an exceed
ing great army — the righteous in their spiritual and glori
fied bodies to live and reign forever with Christ ; and the
unjust to die again the second death from which there is
no resurrection.

SECTION V.
Life and Death.
Life and Death as phenomenal words need no definition
or explanation, for they designate phenomena with which
we are all familiar. Scientists and metaphysicians may
inquire into their interior signification, and dispute about
the real source and essence and meaning of these phenom
ena ; but for all practical purposes these terms need no
definition. The same is true of all the ultimate and anti
thetical terms that are in common use in our language, or
in any language. Their meaning is so obvious that any at
tempt to define them, like the attempt to demonstrate an
axiom, tends only to obscure the subject and confuse the
mind. Life as a phenomenon of Nature is everywhere visible.
So is death. The one is set over against the other. Hence
they are called antithetical terms. They explain each

176 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
other. If the one be known, the other must also be known.
But death is not simply the antithesis of life, as darkness
is of light, and cold is of heat. It is more. It implies a
previous life. It denotes the loss of what was once pos
sessed. We do not predicate death of a stone or a lump
of clay. We say they are lifeless. They are not dead, be
cause they have never had life and have never died. " Life
less " is the proper negation of " life."
Neither can we predicate degrees of death as we can of
many other terms. It is an absolute and ultimate term.
Nothing can be said to be dead so long as there is any life
in it. It may be almost dead, or about to die, but it is not
dead till all life is utterly extinguished.
We sometimes, however, use the term death prolepti-
cally, or by anticipation of what is sure to follow ; as when
we say of one who is attacked by a fatal disease, or has re
ceived a fatal wound, " He is a dead man." But we can
use this figure only with reference to the actual death in
view. It is true of all words that have their application to ma
terial and physical things, that they are susceptible of sec
ondary and tropical uses ; for we have no other way of
speaking of things that are beyond the reach of our senses
than by the use of such terms.
All spiritual truths are represented by terms that have
a physical or material base. It is by means of the re
semblance which they are supposed to have to sensible
things that we can at all apprehend them. Hence the ne
cessity in treating of these higher truths, not only of using
these physical terms, but of adhering strictly to the idea
expressed by them, if we would understand ourselves or be
understood by others. For, unless the strictest analogy be
preserved, we might as well use one term as another, or no
terms at all, for no definite idea would be expressed by them.

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 177
A man's life may be said to be in the hands of another,
who has the power to take it from him. Or a child may
be said to be dead to his parents when his life is entirely
lost to them. We readily understand such figures of
speech. But if the analogy be far-fetched or obscure, our
meaning will be obscure in the same degree. This is the
reason why some metaphysical speculations are so hard to
be understood. The terms that are used suggest no anal
ogy to our minds. This is why some sorts of poetry con
vey to us no meaning, or are susceptible of almost any .in
terpretation our fancy may dictate. This was just the se
cret of the Delphic oracles. They were intentionally
couched in tropical terms of ambiguous application. This
is just the use to which theological speculators would put
the Oracles of God — the Sacred Scriptures. By interpret
ing the language of Holy Writ in a tropical sense, they
may put into it any meaning their fancy or philosophy
may require.
There are no words in the Bible that have suffered more
from this kind of treatment than these two words, Life
and Death ; for they are two of the most important words
in the whole Bible. The whole controversy between our
selves and those who hold to the deathless nature of man
centers in these two words. They are the two hinges on
which the whole question turns. If they are to be taken
literally when referring to the destiny of man, as we main
tain, then our opponents have no ground to stand on for
one moment. They must give up the case at once. It is
absolutely necessary to the maintainance of their position,
that the literal and ordinary meaning of these two words
should be taken out of them, when the destiny of man is
spoken of; and, as they must have some meaning, another
must be found and put into them, that will harmonize with
their doctrine concerning the immortality of all men.

178 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
We hold that the Scriptures mean just what they say,
when they set forth death as the sure result of sin, and
endless perpetuity of life as the portion of the righteous
only. We believe that Jehovah meant just what He said,
just what Adam must have understood Him to mean, when
He promised him perpetuity of life only on condition of
obedience, and threatened him with death in case of disobe
dience. He could not have understood these words in any
other sense, nor did he, till the Tempter suggested another
meaning — a, figurative meaning — as he still continues to do
to all who will listen to his interpretation.
We hold that when men now die in consequence of sin,
they actually die ; and that they live again, not because
they are immortal and must naturally live on, and live for
ever, but only by the gracious purpose of God as made
known in the Gospel of Christ, who is the Resurrection
and the Life; and that through Him, and Him only,
another life, a higher and better, an Eternal life, is given to
His redeemed people; and that the second death of the un
saved is also an actual death, from which there is no resurrec
tion. They hold, on the other hand, that to the active, con
scious, sensitive life of man there is no end, no literal death,
as in the case of every other living creature upon the earth ;
that both the first death and the second death, spoken of
in the Scriptures as the consequence of sin, denote a state
of sin and misery which, if the sinner is not recovered
from it, will be endlessly perpetuated in hell ; and that
the life, the everlasting life which Christ gives to His re
deemed people, is a state of purity and blessedness end
lessly perpetuated in heaven.
Now we believe that such trifling with the plain declara
tions of God's Word is utterly unwarranted, sacriligious,
and subversive of the truth. In the name of the Master,

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 179
whose word is the supreme rule of our faith, we protest
against it, and insist on accepting and understanding these
words — Life and Death — as meaning just what they seem
to mean. We do this for the following reasons :
1. There is no good reason why they should not be so ac
cepted and understood.
Our opponents can give no reason whatever for taking
their plain, literal, common-sense meaning out of them,
and putting another into them, but simply this : As they
now read, they contradict the philosophy concerning the
nature of man which they bring with them to the Scrip
tures ; and they cannot possibly make them agree with it,
but by changing their meaning.
Their philosophy teaches that man is a deathless being ;
that he is not mortal and transitory like everything else in
nature with which they are acquainted ; that he has not
become mortal by sin; that he cannot lose his life; but'
that, whether sinful or holy, saved or unsaved, he will live
on, and on, so long as God Himself shall live.
But the Scriptures teach just the contrary doctrine ; and
in the plainest possible words, if the words are taken in
their ordinary sense. They declare that man, though he
might have lived forever, had he lived without sin, fell
under the sentence of death the moment he sinned, and
became a mortal, transitory creature, like all other earthly
creatures; and that there is now no hope for him, but
through redemption from death by a Divine Savior ; that
a new life may be given to him, through Christ who has
died in man's stead ; yea, a new and perpetual life will be
given to all who believe in Him ; and that they, and they
alone, shall live forever in a higher, purer, more glorious
state than this. Also, that all the wicked, who are not re
claimed, shall be " cast away," " shall be blotted out of the
book of life," "shall be destroyed," "shall be burned up,"

180 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
" shall be consumed," " shall utterly perish in their own
corruption." These things are said in every variety of
language possible, throughout the whole Sacred Volume,
and in the plainest possible words that could be used.
Those who hold to a philosophy, which is so directly
and uniformly contradicted by the Word of God, must
throw away either their philosophy or the Bible, or else
put a new meaning upon the language which will make it
seem to agree with their philosophy. They have ventured
to do the latter ; and they call this new meaning they have
invented, "the scriptural sense," "the religious sense,"
" the spiritual sense" in which these words are to be taken,
which is just the opposite of the sense in which they are
ordinarily taken.
No fault can be found with the words themselves. They
are the very words that would be used, that should be
used, yea, that must be used to set forth the doctrine for
which we contend — the words which our opponents them
selves would use to set forth our doctrine, if they had no
conflicting theory to maintain.
These terms in the original Hebrew and Greek are as
plain and decisive as the words in our English Bible by
which they are represented. The words chayah, chai,
nephesh, in the Hebrew Scriptures ; and zao, zoe, psuehe, in
the Greek, meant " to live," " life," etc., just as they do in
our language ; and the words, muth, maveth, etc., in the
Hebrew, and apothnesko, thanatos, etc., in the Greek,
meant " to die" and " death," as with us. The ordinary,
natural meaning of these terms is plain enough in any
language. It is as obvious as the phenomena they denote.
But this philosophy forbids us to accept them when predi
cated of man in the Scriptures, as we do when predicated
of anything else. A scriptural, a religious meanmg must
then be given to them, because their philosophy requires it.

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 181
The Greek scholar knows that Plato, in his Phsedon and
in his other writings oh this very question of life and death,
used these same Greek words that are employed in the
New Testament, just in the very sense in which we insist
they should be taken, that is, in their ordinary and natu
ral sense. He was not embarrassed, as bis Christian disci
ples are, by the endeavor to make his own doctrine of the
nature and destiny of man agree with the doctrine of the
Bible. He taught that all men are immortal beings, and
destined to live forever. The Scriptures teach — using the
very same terms he employed — that man,- as a sinner, is
not an immortal being ; that he is mortal and destined to
perish, unless he shall be saved by the supernatural grace
of God through redemption ; and that only those who are
so saved will or can live forever. Hence these Christians
of the Platonic school are embarrassed by the necessity of
making these two conflicting systems of doctrine agree with
each other ; and they can only do it by using these Greek
terms, and their English representatives, in a sense just
the opposite of that in which their master used them, and
just the opposite of that in which they are most evidently
used in the Sacred Scriptures.
Could the space be afforded in this treatise, we might
cite numerous examples in point, from the Phsedon, and
Timseus, and other dialogues of Plato, and from other clas
sic Greek authors ; but we must refer the scholar, who would
verify for himself what we say, to their writings. We may
also refer our readers generally to Mr. White's Life in
Christ, where numerous citations are given in Greek, with
their English version, showing conclusively, that the render
ing our opponents give to the words apothnesko, apollumi,
thanatos, olethros, translated "to die," "to be destroyed,"
"death," "destruction," etc., is in violation of the well
known classic use of these words by their own masters in

182 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
philosophy, as well as contrary to their most evident mean
ing in the Scriptures.
But this extraordinary scriptural sense which they put
upon these words, they attempt to justify by the necessities
of the case, the nature of the subject, etc. Prof. Hovey,
in his " State of the Impenitent Dead," pp. 32, 52, says :
" It is evident (?) that the term death, when predicated
of the soul, does not mean precisely the same as it does
when used of the body. As a predicate, its meaning is
modified by the nature of the subject." "We conclude
and maintain that the clause, ' Thou shalt surely die,' was
not employed to denote extinction of being, but to denote
a forlorn and miserable existence ; that is to say, we hold
that the term death, when used by sacred writers to sig
nify the penalty of sin, refers to the destruction of well-
being rather than of simple existence."
This is the religious sense that is put into these words
when quoted in our catechisms and creeds and symbols of
faith, and when defined in our Greek Lexicons, that are
constructed especially tb aid the Bible-student to under
stand the Word of God ! ! For example : In the writer's
Greek Lexicon, (Greenfield's,) appended to his Greek Tes
tament, under zoe, " life," the definition given is, " eternal
happiness," and Matt. 7 : 14 is referred to ; which should
read, according to this definition, " Strait is the gate and
narrow is the way which leadeth unto eternal happiness,
and few there be that find it ;" and under thanatos, " death,"
the definition given is, " an unchanging, eternal state of
wretchedness and misery," and James 5 : 20 and 1 John 5 :
16, 17, and other passages are referred to. Turning to the
first of these references, we then must read: "Let him
know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error
of his way shall save a soul from an unchanging, eternal
state of wretchedness and misery, and shall hide a multi
tude of sins ;" and so it is in scores of other cases that

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 183
might be cited. It is not pretended that the classical
meaning, or the common meaning, or the true meaning of
these words is given, but it is the scriptural meaning, the
religious meaning that is given! Why are they to be
taken in this extraordinary, contradictory sense when used
in the Scriptures ? No reason whatever can be given, but
that Plato's philosophy requires it.
2. It is contrary to all the well established and universally
accepted rules of interpretation, to put an uncommon mean
ing into the words of any writer, unless we are especially
authorized by him to do so, or unless the character of the doc
ument itself shall warrant it.
The Bible was not written especially for philosophers,
or metaphysicians, or poets, but for men of all classes and
conditions in life. Hence we find something in it that is
particularly adapted to all these several classes. We have
poetry, prophecy, parables, proverbs ; in which we should
expect to find figures of speech and a tropical and fanci
ful use of words, as we do in other writings of the same
sort. But by far the larger part of the Word of God is
in plain, sober prose. It was written for the instruction of
the people generally, and ought to be understood without
the aid of philosophers and metaphysicians to explain it,
and would be understood far better than it now is, were it
not for the metaphysical, scholastic and traditional inter
pretations which the schoolmen of the middle ages, and
the commentators and creed-makers of the present age,
following in their lead, have contrived to put upon its
meaning. But this is an old device for " making the Word of God
of none effect." It was very common among the Hebrews.
Christ denounced it in His day. Of this Jehovah speaks,
when He inquires of Job, "Who is this that darkeneth

184 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
counsel by words without knowledge ?" Indeed, we trace
it back to the garden in Eden, and see the great Adver
sary of God and man, in the very beginning, construing
the threatening of Death, which God had declared to be
the penalty of sin, to mean, " Ye shall not surely die ; ye
shall be as gods, who are immortal." And could our Pla
tonic Christian brethren have been present at that inter
view, they must have said "Amen" to the declaration of
the Tempter, " that is just what we believe. Man is. an
immortal being. He cannot actually die. The death
wliich his Creator threatens cannot mean actual death. It
must mean ' an unchanging, eternal state of wretchedness
and misery,' or something else, or anything but death."
Now it was against this very traditional doctrine that
Paul warns the early Christians, when he says : " Beware
lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit,
after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the
world, and not after Christ." (Col. 2 : 8.) Referring es
pecially to this act of the Adversary, he says : " I fear lest.
by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his
subtilty, so your mind should be corrupted from the sim
plicity that is in Christ." (2 Cor. 11 : 3.)
The Word of God ought certainly to receive the same
honest treatment which we accord to the writings of men.
When we read fiction or poetry, we may indulge our fancy.
The author invites us to do so. But when we read a vol
ume of history or a legal document, we are bound to con
strue the language in its literal sense. So should it be
when we read the Bible. Who- would think of giving a
fanciful construction to the Constitution of the United
States, or to the laws of the country? When the law
specifies " death," as the penalty for capital crimes, no one
understands this to be a figurative expression for some
other mode of punishment. When the judge solemnly

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 185
sentences the criminal " to be hung by the neck till he is
dead, dead, dead," the culprit does not understand him to
mean perpetual and life-long imprisonment with torture.
But when we read the constitution of God's government
over us, and the laws which He has instituted and declared in
the most solemn manner, we are taught to construe His
words just in this fanciful way, and to understand the
penalty of death which He threatens as meaning, not death
at all, but simply " the destruction of the sinner's well-
being," " a forlorn and miserable existence endlessly per
petuated !"
On this point Locke says : " By death some men under
stand endless torments in hell-fire. But it seems a strange
way of understanding a law which requires the plainest
and directest word, that by death should be meant eternal
life in misery. Can any one be supposed to intend by a
law that says, ' For felony thou shalt surely die,' not that
he should lose his life, but be kept alive in exquisite and
perpetual torments ? And would any one think himself
fairly dealt with who was so used ?"
And when we read the precious promises of our Lord to
His people about life — a life of purity, blessedness and
glory in His everlasting kingdom — a life that shall never
end — we are taught to understand something quite differ
ent from what He promises. Indeed, He does not mean
life at all, but simply a pure and blessed condition of life,
that shall endure forever. As for life itself, His people are
not indebted to Him for it. It is their own inalienable in
heritance from Adam. Christ did not die to save us from
the power of death, but only from a state of sin and misery,
into which we are all born, and which we must endure for
ever, unless we are rescued ; and from the further suffering
due to our own sins, to which there can be no end, unless
He saves us.
So many believe and talk. And this would be a great

186 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
salvation indeed ; but the salvation which Christ offers in
the Gospel is a greater salvation than this ; for the penalty
of sin is a greater, deadlier penalty than suffering. It is
death. " Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."
The pains and sorrows and miseries that follow in the train
of sin, are but the inevitable results and accompaniments'
of sin. But they are not the death that is threatened..
They are but the preludes and shadows and concomitants
of that death to which they point, and to which sin inevit
ably leads.
It is from this death that Christ saves His people. The
purity and blessedness and joys of that life which He gives
them are not the . life itself — they are but the accompani
ments of that life, the necessary accompaniments — for it is
His own peculiar life that He gives them, which is pure
and blessed and immortal. No other life can be perpetu
al but one that is in perfect harmony with the Divine Life-
It was by this insidious device, that the great Adversary
of God and man succeeded at the first in compassing the
ruin of man. He taught him to believe that the original
threatening of death — " dying, thou shalt die" — ought to be-
interpreted as meaning, " ye shall be as gods and live for
ever." And now again he would teach his willing listen
ers, by the same process of interpretation, to rob the Al
mighty Savior of the crown of glory which He claims, and
which is His due as the Redeemer and Life-giver of His
ransomed people, that man may put it on his own head,.
and wear it as an immortal god in heaven or hell forever !
3. These two words — Life and Death — are not merely the
crucial words in this controversy, but they are the principal
words by which the sanctions of the Divine Law are made.
known to us.
They are used more than any others to mark the grand*

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 187
distinction between the righteous and the wicked. There are
but two classes of men spoken of in the Scriptures. They
are designated by a great variety of titles, as, the righteous
and the wicked ; the children of God and the children of
this world, or of the devil ; natural men and spiritual men ;
the elect and the reprobate ; the saved and the unsaved.
• etc., but the specific reward that is promised to the one
class is, Life, Life, Life forevermore, Life without end ;
and the specific doom of the other class is, Death, Death,
Death. These are the principal words employed every
where throughout the Sacred Volume, from Genesis to
Revelation, to designate the lot, or portion, or end of these
two classes respectively. The word signifying " to die," or
" death," is used at least one thousand times by the various
writers of the Inspired Volume ; and the word signifying
" to live," or "life," is used nearly as many more.
Of course, it is not pretended that these words are em
ployed in an absolutely literal sense at all times, and in all
places where they occur. Every variety of style is to be
found in this Book of many books. Some parts of it are
entirely figurative, and metaphors of various sorts abound
in many other parts. Perhaps there is no common word
which may not be tropically used, by some one of these
many writers. But it does not follow, because instances of
a figurative use of the words " life" and " death" may be
found here and there, that a figurative sense should be
given to them all in othef places, or in any other place
where the reader may choose to put such a construction
upon them, to suit his fancy, or to sustain his own pecu
liar doctrine. It does not follow, because figures of speech
are employed in the poetry and prophecies and parables of
the Word of God, that its plain, sober prose, its didactic
instructions, its judicial utterances, its gospel promises, are
to be treated as tropes and metaphors, and the plain, ordi-

188 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
nary meaning is to be taken out of them and another put
in, to suit the minds of speculating theologians.
If there is any book that demands of us an honest, rev
erent treatment, it is the Word of God. We should come
to its reading, saying, in the simplicity of our hearts, "I
will hear what the Lord will speak ;" and not, as too many
do, with the deliberate purpose of reading into its lan
guage what we have determined beforehand to believe.
If this principle of interpreting the Word of God fig
uratively, of finding a double meaning, or an uncommon
meaning in the plain terms it uses, according to the pleas
ure of the reader, be allowed, anything or rather nothing
oan be proved by Scripture ; we are all afloat in our the
ology, with no one truth to which we can anchor ourselves.
Indeed, this practice has already wrought incalculable
mischief in the Church and out of it. It is one of the
chief causes of the error and confusion that now prevail
throughout Christendom, as regards theological questions
in general, and especially in regard to this question of the
destiny of man. The Church of Christ, which was de
signed to be " the pillar and ground of the truth," and
those who are set for the instruction of others in the things
of the kingdom, will never be able to agree among them
selves, or to know what the truth of God is on this ques
tion, until they shall consent to lay aside all their human
philosophies and traditional dogmas, and come, as children,
to the reading of the Scriptures, desiring only to know
what the great Master Himself would teach them. Then
they will be able to make the great discovery, which will
scatter all the fogs and mists that men have been gather
ing about this question for ages, and let in a flood of light
upon the whole Gospel system — a discovery of the truth
that has always lain upon the very surface of the Word,
but which they could not, or would not see, because they

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 189
were looking for something else — that " the wages of sin
is death, but the gift of God is Eternal Life through Jesus
Christ our Lord."
4. No other reasonable or satisfactory definition can be
given to these words.
We have been carefully examining the various systems
of doctrine that have prevailed, and that, still prevail in
the various branches of the Protestant Church with special
reference to this question ; and, preparatory to our present
task, we have attentively and faithfully read all the more
prominent treatises and arguments that have been put
forth, during the past few years, in support of the popular
theory of the natural immortality of man, and in opposi
tion to the "heresy of annihilation" — as most of these
writers insist on calling the doctrine of Eternal Life in
Christ only — and we must confess that we have been quite
unable to find any one definite principle of interpretation
in any of them, or any one leading idea in which they
agree, but this : That the natural and inalienable immor
tality of man must be maintained at all hazards, and every
other doctrine throughout the whole system, like " the sun
and moon and the eleven stars " in Joseph's dream, must
be required to make obeisance to it.
The older Catechisms and Creeds of the various branches
of the Reformed Protestant Church agree very generally
in giving the same interpretation to the doom of death
which Adam incurred for himself and his posterity that
the Papal Church had formulated for them, namely, a
triple death : (1) Temporal death, or theactual death of the
body ; (2) Spiritual death, or alienation from God ; (3)
Eternal death, or a state of sin and suffering without end.
It is given in Cruden's Concordance, with the various
texts of Scripture into which these various meanings are to

190 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
be read, thus : " Death signifies (1) The separation of the
soul from the body. This is temporal death. (2) A sep
aration of soul and body from God's favor in this life,
which is the state of all unrenewed persons who are without
the light of knowledge and the quickening power of grace.
This is spiritual death. (3) The perpetual separation of
the whole man from God's heavenly presence and glory, to
be tormented forever with the devil and his angels. This
is the Second death, or Eternal death."
It was maintained by all the older theologians who fol
lowed their logic to its inevitable conclusion, that this
doom included not only actual transgressors, but all the
children of Adam. Hence they were obliged to admit,
however reluctantly they might do it, that all the non-elect
heathen, and infants dying before the age of personal re
sponsibility, were born to an inevitable heritage of eternal
sin and suffering.
Augustine, the father of the old school theology, says:
" It may therefore be rightly said that little ones dying
without baptism will be in (damnatione mitissima,) the
mildest damnation ; yet he (multem autem fallit et fallitur,
qui eos in damnatione predicat non futuros) greatly de
ceives and is deceived, who preaches that they will not be
in damnation." (Opp. 7, p. 142.)
But modern theologians shrink from this monstrous con
clusion, and so, at the risk of being thought illogical, as
they really are, they wish to be considered as holding that
the heathen, to whom the gospel has never been offered,
and infants dying before their probation begins, are, or
perhaps may be, exempted from the third specification in
this doom of death. And this, in spite of, the plain decla
ration of Scripture, that this " death passed upon all men,"
and " reigned even oyer all them that had not sinned after
the similitude of Adam's transgression." (Rom. 5 : 12-14.)

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 191
Others would exempt the whole family of man from
this doom of eternal misery, until they shall personally in
cur it by their own individual transgressions. These are
the words of one of th'eir number :
" It i3 evident from Scripture itself that the second death
— eternal misery — is not included in the penalty threat
ened against Adam, which began to take effect the day that
he sinned. The second death comes only through personal
unbelief, and not as the necessary result of the conduct of
another. Reason and Scripture are both at variance with
the doctrine, that, eternal death was included in the pun
ishment incurred by Adam's transgression. Reason de
clares it unjust that one man's eternal destiny should be
determined for him by the act of another. Such a view
outrages man's moral sense, conflicts with his personal re
sponsibility, and is utterly incompatible with the equitable
character of his present trial and its issues." (Peill's Man's
Immortality Proved.)
This author might have gone one step further, and have
said, as we do, that, " Reason declares it unjust" for God
to inflict endless misery upon any creature with a compul
sory immortality, and that " such a view outrages a man's
moral sense."
Prof. Hovey, to whose work on The State of the Impen
itent Dead, we have already alluded, thus teaches :
" The body of Adam seems to have been mortal, even
before the fall. It was made of the dust of the ground ; it
was earthy, and therefore corruptible." " That the all-com
prehending penalty of sin was the ruin and misery of the
soul ; . . . that the death of the soul took place immediately
after the fall — being a state of -misery which naturally and
normally culminated in eternal woe." That this death
" was not the extinction of conscious being, but the ex
tinction of well-being — was not the loss of existence, but
rather the loss of true spiritual life which is the normal and
blessed working of a moral nature." (See pp. 16, 30, 51, 52.)

192 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
According to this author, the death which is threatened
as the penalty of sin, means something entirely different
from any other kind of death. Indeed, it is not death at
all, but the loss of " well-being whi'ch naturally and nor
mally culminates in eternal woe ;" and of course its oppo
site — the life which is promised to us through Christ — is
the restoration of this well-being which naturally apd nor
mally culminates in eternal joy. This is the way in which
this theological professor metamorphoses the plain declar
ation of God's Word, and teaches his young students to
expound it to others, so as to maintain the great funda
mental doctrine of his philosophy — the indefeasible
immortality of man.
Rev. R. W. Landis, in his large volume on The Immor-
tality of the Soul, pursues a somewhat different method to
compass the same end. On page 420 he says : " The word
' Life' in the Bible has two meanings : (1) mere existence,
and (2) eternal happiness." Here we have the play of
Hamlet — with Hamlet left out. The one definition is too
wide, and the other too narrow. " Mere existence" does
not necessarily imply life, for a thousand things exist that
have no life at all, and never had ; and as for happiness, one
cannot have it without life, but he can have life without hap
piness. But taking his definitions as they stand — and they
are meant to be exhaustive, for he gives no other — if death
be the antithesis of life, and life be " mere existence," then
* death must be the loss of existence, or non-existence, as we
hold — the very thing he is trying not to prove ! !
Now let us consider his definitions of death. He gives
us three : (1) "That the term death, as applied to man in
the Scriptures, ever means utter annihilation or extinction
of conscious existence, is a mere assumption, and is entitled
to no respect whatever." And yet this is the very assump
tion he makes by defining life, the antithesis of death, to be

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 193
" mere existence." (2) " It means the separation of the in
terior and incorporeal of our nature from that which is
exterior and corporeal ; though in strictness of speech, as
Knapp remarks, death does not consist in the separation,
but this separation is the consequence of death." (3) " It
means a severance between the creature and Creator as the
source of true life or happiness." (P. 319.)
Ignoring the flat contradiction between bis first defini
tion of death, and his first definition of life, he assumes, in
his second, that, while the body depends on the soul for its
life, the soul has no such dependence on the body ; and, in
the third, that it has no dependence on its Creator for the
maintainance of its life in misery. Upon what then does
it depend ? If the soul of man, that is to say, man him
self, can maintain a perpetual, conscious, suffering exist
ence when entirely severed from the source of true life or
happiness, then he must be most certainly immortal in his
being, which is the very thing to be proved — not to be as
sumed. In this he is in conflict with another (anonymous)
writer of the same school, who contends with more reason,
" that the torments of the damned in hell are so intense
and excruciating that no sinner could survive for a single
moment, were it not for the constant presence of God to
uphold him by His almighty power."
We must leave these theologians to settle their minor
differences as best they can. But on this one cardinal
point they are agreed : " That, as man never will or can
actually die, he must be kept in eternal conscious exist
ence by some means or other."
Dr. S. C. Bartlett, in his popular work, Life and Death
Eternal, takes hold of the subject as a professional expert,
con amore most evidently. He makes no effort to conceal
his contempt for the weak-minded and perverse heretics,
whom he has been employed to denounce (see his Preface).

194 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
as Balaam of old was to do a similar work. But he can do
nothing till he has changed their doctrine, whatever it may
be, into the doctrine of " Annihilation," and then he knows
just what arguments to use. Like the doctor, whose specialty
was fits, "he was death on fits," as he himself declared ; and
so he would always seek first to change the disease of his
patient, whatever it might be, into " fits," and then he knew
just what to do. Likewise our doctor is death on " anni
hilation," and nothing in that shape can stand before him !
The magic key with which he unlocks this mysterious
question of Life and Death, is simply functional activity.
"Life is true functional activity." (p. 41.) "Death is
merely a change of condition or mode of action," (p. 39;)
in other words, " false functional activity." We cite his
own more extended definition, found on page 46 :
" Death is that state of separation from God, and from
the beatific fruition of God, in which all the higher facul
ties of human nature are working falsely and discordantly;
in which the true end of living is discarded, and its true
enjoyment lost ; and in which there is, at last, the com
plete extinction, not of the soul's being, but of its well-
being. It sums up the whole penalty of sin, the complex
woe, beginning here, matured and perfected hereafter."
Now, as we have "true functional activity," meaning
life, and " false functional activity," meaning death, this
champion should have told us what "functional activity"
itself is, without regard to its true or false character. Is
it life ? or is it death ? or is it nothing ? Again, is all
wrong or false " functional activity " death ? If not, what
degree of false " functional activity " constitutes death ?
Perhaps he will say, " It must be utterly false to amount
to death." What, then, would be the loss of all
" functional activity "? He would probably say that man
is such a creature that he cannot lose all his " functional

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 195
activity." Why not? " Because he cannot." "His func
tional activity must be kept up at any rate whether he
lives or dies." Q. E. D.
In the New Englander for March, 1879 — a Quarterly that
has always been open to any thing on the popular side of
this question, but has always, unfortunately, had too great
a press of matter on hand to afford room for any article on
the other side — Rev. Mr.. Chesebrough undertakes to
review Rev. Dr. Huntington's late work on Conditional
Immortality. He follows in Dr. Bartlett's wake, and uses
his arguments, as far as he uses any, and even his illus
trations, but in a more amiable mood. He announces his
purpose of being. so very fair as not to use the word
" annihilation " to characterize the doctrine of this book.
He will use the word " extinction " in its place ; and hence
he entitles his paper " The Latest Utterance on the Doctrine
of Extinction." Dr. Huntington ought to be obliged to
him for his fairness, in as much as the subject of the book
is neither "Annihilation " nor " Extinction," but just the
opposite — "Immortality : Eternal Life in Christ." Here is
just the reviewer's difficulty. He complains of the author
for not treating of the question he wants to attack, and
then proceeds to attack that question as though it were the
real one in issue. He also complains that the words " end
less torment," which the author uses to characterize
the orthodox doctrine on this question, "is a gross mis
representation," but admits that some of his brethren have
not treated this delicate subject as gingerly as they should
have done, or, to use his own language, " We venture to
say that we think that the manner in which the doctrine
of everlasting punishment has been, in former days, taught,
has been needlessly revolting." But still, he says, it is
preached as much as formerly, only the penalty is of a
different nature. It is not physical torment now, but

196 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
mental. It is not inflicted by God, but by the sinner him
self upon himself; and this only so long as he chooses to
endure it. For, says he, " If the soul were truly penitent,
it could not suffer any longer the supposed agonies of
remorse. And if such' a case were to occur, orthodox
theology, so far as we know, presents no obstacle to that
soul's blessedness from that time forth." So that, to use
the expressive words of the poetaster of his own college
days, he may say : " Now an opportunity is given
To emigrate from hell, and flee to Heaven 1 "
And this is what he believes to be the death penalty of
God's law violated — everlasting punishment. No wonder
that he, and others of his school, should say, as they often
have to the writer, that they could sooner accept of the
doctrine of universal salvation than that of " Conditional
Immortality "; for their doctrine is the very next door to-
Universalism, and leads directly to it. Indeed, it is Uni
versalism already, in so far as it nullifies the chief gospel
distinction between the righteous and the wicked, and
claims for all men what the Word of God promises to'
believers only. This critic laments the coming in of this
heresy of " Conditional Immortality." " It looks to us,"
he says, "like the spread of a contagion." The chief
weapon with which he undertakes to meet it is Dr. Bart-
lett's famous " functional activity." This is the specific, or
the " clew," as he calls it, to the mystery. This is to do
the busiriess, if anything can. He uses it with all the skill
he can command ; and he ventures to express the hope
that this growing evil " will soon spend its force." We
can assure our amiable friend that be will need to put a
great deal more of this "functional activity" into his
broom before he will succeed in driving back the swelling
tide!

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 197
The most remarkable work of all in this line, and the
last that we can notice, is that of Prof. C. M. Mead,
entitled " The Soul Here and Hereafter," recently issued by
the Congregational Publishing Society. We' really do not
know how to speak of this book as it deserves, without
seeming to be disrespectful to its author and to the vener
able seminary that enjoys the benefit of his labors. He has
no doubt done his best to justify his high position as
teacher of orthodox doctrine and a valiant opposer of
heresy — or rather of heretics, for it is against the authors
of certain books on " Conditional Immortality " that he
more especially delivers himself. The most striking char
acteristic of this book is its personality. The name of one
of these authors is repeated in full three hundred and fifty
times in the volume, and the names of several others scores
of times, with the still more frequent use of the personal
pronouns referring to the same individuals.
We are astonished that the Congregational Publishing
Society should have been willing to put their imprint on
a volume that is so pre-eminently and offensively personal
towards members of their own household, and containing
little else but words. We can account for it only on the
supposition, that confiding too implicitly in the source
from which it came, their committee neglected to examine
it before publication. It has never been our fortune to see
a work that made such a tremendous show of learning
with such meagre results. His main endeavor seems to be
to see how many arrows he can shoot into his chosen vic
tims, and that, too, after the Indian method, from behind
a tree ; for he lays down no principle, nor does he under
take to defend any thesis. The most he does is to say that
this or that idea is false, or preposterous, or ridiculous, or
cannot be proved. He devotes one hundred and ninety
pages to the two words, " Life " and " Death." He quotes

198 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
an innumerable multitude of texts, and gives their Hebrew
and Greek equivalents, and tells us how this and that and
the other are to be read, and when he comes to the end, it
is all a muddle — " Parturiunt monies, naseetur ridiculus
mus ! " We have read this whole section twice through,
very carefully, pencil in hand, with an earnest effort to dis
cover what he intended to teach, and have been obliged to
give it up. Nor do we believe that any other man " can
find out," nor that he himself knows, excepting that he has
a very contemptible opinion of the authors he criticizes,
and wants to show it. We have succeeded in fishing up
out of the muddy water, these two definitions of Life and
Death, which we1 will give for the benefit of searchers after
the truth. They are as follows : Life means " vitalized-
ness," and Death is a state of " unvitalizedness," or rather
"" devitalizedness." This is almost equal to Dr. Bartlett's
" functional activities."
We certainly have a great deal of pity for the distress
these good Christian brethren labor under in getting at
some definition of these two words — Life and Death — that
will make them mean pretty much the same thing for both
•classes — that is, that will allow the dead sinner to live for
ever as well as the saint. No doubt they are very worthy
brethren, and learned and able, and are doing the very
best they can. The fault is in the cause they are trying to
maintain. Nobody could do better at it. The Old Serpent
bimself could not prove what he said in the same line.
The sage conclusion to which our author comes at the
¦end of his treatise of 450 pages, is, that " the Judge of all
the earth will do right." In this we are happy to agree
with him. Still further, we agree with him in believing
that "Whatever He does is right." But it does not fol
low that whatever atrocities men may choose to charge
upon God are right — that whatever they say He will do, is

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 199
right. Nor can we agree with him in saying that we are
not able to form any judgment as to what would be right
or wrong for God to do. For what is the use of our moral
sense, if we cannot exercise it ? How can we know whether
God is just or unjust unless his dealings with man can be
made to commend themselves to our moral sense ? How
can we love and trust Him, unless we can feel and know
that He is good ? How, indeed, can we distinguish be
tween our God and Moloch, or Satan himself, but by the
exercise of the reason He has given us ?
Under the shelter of this plea, that man is not competent
to understand what would be right or wrong for God to do>
all sorts of abominable injustices and cruelties have been
charged upon Him by well-meaning men, with the design
of frightening sinners into repentance. But genuine
repentance, and trust, and love, are absolutely impossible
for any one, till he can be made to see and feel that God
is just and good. He has been represented as so vengeful
and vindictive, and such lurid terrors have been thrown
round His holy character, as to make it quite impossible
for the sinner who credits their representations, to love and
trust Him, (bowmuchsoever he may tremble in view of
His wrath. It often seems to such men that there is but
little to choose between the God that is offered them and
the blood-thirsty monsters of the heathen. This has been
one of the most fruitful causes of infidelity, or, rather, of
what is called infidelity.
The mistake of the so-called infidel judge, on listening
to a very orthodox and forcible sermon of this sort, was
quite natural. On being asked by his minister, the next
day, how he liked the sermon, he replied, " Very much, in
deed." " Ah," said the minister, "Iam glad to hear you
say so, for I thought you did not hold to that view of the
Deity I presented." " The Deity, do you say ? I thought

200 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
it was the Devil you were preaching about. You must
excuse me ; I am a little bard of hearing."
We have sermons in our library, preached by men of
the highest reputation for orthodoxy, which would be more
truthful and effective could they be read under the same
delusion. We do not question, for a moment, the sincerity
and piety of these men. We find no fault with their logic.
Admitting their premises, their conclusions are irresistible.
This dogma of the necessary immortality of the sinner
forces upon them a theodicy which outrages their moral
sense, and conclusions, from which they would gladly
escape. They are so firmly grounded in the faith of the Gospel
that they cannot reject it altogether, as many do. Hence
they try to be faithful to their commission and to apolo
gize for their Master in the best way they can. This is
just the sad theological position of a very large number of
the most conscientious and thoughtful preachers of the
present time. If they preach their creed in full, they drive
their most intelligent hearers away from the sanctuary.
If they neglect to preach it, they are unfaithful to their
vows. If, after preaching it, they attempt, ^s too many
are doing, to tone it down, to make it seem reasonable, to
suggest queries and doubts, or to explain it entirely away
by putting an untruthful construction upon the words they
use — the message is robbed of all its force, and the Gospel,
which is the " power of God unto salvation to every one
that believeth," " is made of none effect."
5. It is only by accepting these words, Life and Death, ac
cording to their plain, literal sense, that the Scriptures-^
especially the historical, doctrinal, didactic and hortatory por
tions — can be made intelligible and self-consistent.
If the Bible is the Word of God, as we believe, all of its

SeC. 5.] LIFE -AND DEATH. 201
utterances will be in harmony with each other. If they
seem to conflict, it must be either because we misapprehend
them, or because we have read a meaning into some of its
passages that cannot be sustained by others. This is just
the difficulty interpreters have found with the doctrine
under consideration. It is quite possible to construe these
terms, Life and Death, in certain passages which our
opposers are in the habit of quoting, in such a way as to
seem to favor their doctrine. But they are in such evident
conflict with others, which most positively threaten absolute
death and extermination to the wicked, or promise endless
perpetuity of life to the righteous only ; and so out of har
mony with the whole drift of the Scriptures from Genesis
to Revelation as to forbid any such construction to be put
upon them. But there is nothing in all the Scriptures that
forbids us to take these words in their ordinary sense. Yea,
we cannot do otherwise without doing violence to the
Word of God.
Dr. Farre, an eminent English physician, in a recent
private remark, so well expresses our view, that we must
quote his words :
" I believe that there are very few important doctrines
of Christianity that do not meet with some apparent con
tradiction in Scripture, so that we can only get at the truth
by taking the Scripture as a whole — whether this apparent
contradiction arises from the desirableness pf expressing
the doctrine in high relief, so as to make it more striking
and impressive ; or from the somewhat exaggerated mode
of Oriental speaking, which has this object ; or from the
different purposes for which the doctrine is mentioned on
different occasions ; or from viewing the doctrine, as it
were, in all lights. But I think there are few important
doctrines so free from contradiction as this — that eternal
life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ, and that the
finally impenitent will lose it."

202 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
We cannot, in this place, go into as extended a compari
son of Scripture with Scripture as we could wish. It will
hardly be necessary to do more than to direct the reader's
attention to a few passages.
Take, for instance, the original threatening : "Thou shalt
surely die ;" or, as it is more exactly in the margin, "Dying
thou shalt die." (Gen. 2 : 7.) It is hardly possible to
believe that Adam could have understood the language to
mean anything but just what the words imply. No one
would ever have thought of forcing another meaning into
this language, had it not been for the purpose of sustaining
a doctrine which the Scriptures do not teach. But when
God Himself proceeds to interpret the meaning of these
words, which He does immediately after the fall (in the
next chapter, Gen. 3 : 19) : " For dust thou art, and unto
dust shalt thou return," — this surely ought to be the end
of all question among those who have any regard whatever
for the truth of God's Word.
But still further, wehave an exhibition of God's mercy,
as well as His justice, in dooming the sinner to death. He
will not allow him to perpetuate a life of sin and misery.
Hence the " Tree of Life," to which he had hitherto had
access, is now denied him ; and for this very reason — as
God Himself tells us : " And now, lest he put forth his hand
and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever,"
— he is driven from the garden, and cherubim are stationed!
to guard the tree of life against the sinner's approach. The
tree is not destroyed. A new way of access is to be pro
vided through an atoning Savior, and a new life through
Him ; and Christ's ransomed people will again "have a right
to the tree of life" in the Paradise beyond, to which He will
bring them. It is impossible to make any sense out of this
passage, unless we understand it, as it reads — that the
death which follows sin is actual death, and the life which.

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 203
is the portion of the holy, is actual life with all its blessings.
For, if we take death to mean a forlorn and wretched con
dition of life or existence, endlessly perpetuated ; and life
to mean purity and joy ; then why should not God, in His
mercy, have been willing to let Adam " eat and live for
ever ?" Or, — and perhaps this is an effectual way to test
the definition which is given of life — if the tree of life is
only the tree of holiness and " well-being," why was God
so unwilling that man should put forth his hand, and
take, and eat, and possess holiness and " well-being" for
ever. We once asked a theological professor, who gives
this interpretation to these words, "Why was God so
unwilling to permit Adam to eat and live forever?" After
much hesitation and evident embarrassment, he replied :
" It is a skeptical question. It don't deserve an answer."
This is as satisfactory an answer as these expositors can
give. What can be meant by those many expostulations,.
entreaties and warnings of God's Word, but actual death
and extinction of being? " Turn ye, turn ye, for why will
ye die." " The wages of sin is death." " Sin, when it is
finished, bringeth forth death." " If ye live after the flesh
ye shall die." "The end of those things is death."
" Whose end is destruction ;" etc. These words are spoken
to sinners and of sinners. They are already "spiritually
dead," according to this theology. As for the death of the
body, no one can avoid that. What other death can be
meant, or possibly inflicted upon them, but actual death ?
What other kind of life do they possess, but their natural
•life? The popular theory is, that the second death, which will
be inflicted upon impenitent sinners in the day of judg
ment, will be a continuation of their present spiritual death ;.
that is, alienation from God, with a great addition to their

204 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. n.
sufferings, whether of mind or of body, or of both. But
this is not the infliction of the death that is threatened.
The Word of God tells them that they shall die, and not
that they shall continue dead under circumstances of
aggravated misery. It represents God Himself as inflicting
this death upon them, by casting them into hell (Gehenna)
for the destruction of both soul and body. God never in
flicts spiritual death. That which is so called, is indeed
the sin for which actual death is the penalty. They who
are spiritually dead' — that is, alienated from God, and
necessarily wretched as long as they live — cannot be per
mitted to live at all, after their reclamation has become
hopeless and justice has been satisfied. They are
to.be gathered as the tares and chaff — not to be preserved
forever, but only to be burned. It is the good seed only
that is gathered into the garner.
Why are we exhorted to seek for glory, honor and
Immortality, if this immortality is what all men have with
out seeking ? Why are we urged to " lay hold on eternal
life," or why is eternal life so emphatically and repeatedly
promised to the righteous as their own peculiar portion, as
the special gift of God through Christ ? Surely something
more than purity and happiness must be meant. All this,
•of course, is included in the gift of that blessed life. But
it is the life itself that is promised. Life must have
a deeper and more radical meaning than its accompanying
•conditions ; for we speak of a sinful and wretched life, as
well as a pure and happy life. But the evident teaching
of Scripture is, that the latter only can endure forever, and
the former must inevitably come to an end ; "the end of
those things is death." The miseries that accompany sin
are likened to the diseases of the body. They are especially
likened to that dreadful, fatal disease, called leprosy,
which terminates only in the death of the victim. It is

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 205
declared to be the great, universal law of God's govern
ment, that nothing can live permanently that is not in
conformity with His holy law ; that sin is self-destructive,
and must inevitably end in death ; not merely in misery
and wretchedness — these are only the first fruits — but in
death, when it is finished. In this way the universe is to be
cleansed, " and there shall be no more death, neither sor
row, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain ; for
the former things are passed away."
If the word zoe, life, is to be taken to mean simply a
state of blessedness, and the word thanatos, death, a state
of misery, why should not the epithet, aionios be equally
applicable to both, if they are both equally enduring?
But never, never in one single instance is it applied to the
latter in the Word of God, while it is continually used to
designate the endless perpetuity of the former.
It is this false philosophy concerning the natural and
necessary immortality of all men, that has rendered the
arguments of the Apostle Paul in his epistles to the
Romans and Corinthians respecting the universality of
death in consequence of Adam's sin, so inexplicable, and
has necessitated the invention of so many various theories
to make the dealings of God with the heathen world, and
with infants, appear to be just. Let Him be understood
to mean just what He says, and His. arguments need no
explanation, nor do the ways of God need any apology.
They are most evidently "just and true."
The words of our Lord, as recorded in John, especially
in that notable sixth chapter, where He proclaims Himself
as the "Bread of Life," are explicable only as we understand
Him to mean life, as He says, and not mere happiness as
these teachers would fain explain them : " Verily, verily, I
say unto you, He that believeth on Me hath everlasting
life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna

206 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
in the wilderness, and are dead," — not, are wretched, but
are dead. The manna which they ate had no power to
give them perpetual life. But " I am the living bread
which came down from heaven ; if any man eat of this
bread, he shall live forever." There is no analogy here,
unless we understand by the life which Christ gives, endless
perpetuity of life.
So, in the fifth chapter, He asserts with great emphasis,
that everlasting life is from Him : " Verily, verily, I say
unto you, he that heareth my words, and believeth on
Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come
into condemnation ; but is passed from death unto life ;" —
that principle of life is already generated in him which
shall never be extinguished. " For, as the Father hath
life in Himself," — not happiness, but life, — " so hath He
given to the Son to have life in Himself." The Jewish
people had come, very generally, to claim this future life
of eternal blessedness for themselves, as the special favorites
of Heaven — as the children of Abraham ; but our Lord as
sures them that they can only secure it through Him : "He
that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life ; he that
believeth not the Son, shall not see life." "Search the Script
ures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life [or the
promise of eternal life] ; and they are they which testify
of Me " — as the only giver of this life, — " and ye will not
come unto Me that ye might have life." " If ye believe
not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins."
Again, when at the grave of Lazarus, our Lord pro
claims Himself as the Resurrection and the Life, how could
those who heard Him, or how can we, understand Him as
declaring anything else than that the dead can live again
only by a resurrection, and that this resurrection and this
life are only through Him ? On this point, Bishop Hamp
ton, in one of his Bampton Lectures, says :

Sec. 5.] LIFE AND DEATH. 207
" The notion of the separate existence ofthe soul has so
incorporated itself with Christian theology, that we are apt,
at this day, to regard a belief in it as essential to orthodox
doctrine. I cannot, however, help viewing this popular
belief as a remnant of scholasticism. I feel assured that the
truth of the resurrection does not rest on such an assump
tion. What our Lord says to Martha's declaration, 'I
know that he shall rise again,' when He proclaims Himself
the Resurrection and the Life, is to this point. The Jews
then entertained a philosophical belief in a future state.
Our Lord tacitly reproves an assurance on such grounds,
by His strong reference to Himself: ' / am the Resurrec
tion and the Life; whosoever believeth in Me shall live
though he die.' "
In short — for we must hasten to the conclusion — what
else can be meant by having one's name " blotted out of
the book of life,"* but to be counted unfit any longer to
live, and to be consigned to that "second death," from
which there is no resurrection? This will be a fearful
doom, indeed, and one in view of which the sinner may well
tremble ; for he cannot dispute its justice, while all heaven
exclaims, " Behold the goodness and the severity of God !"
*See Phil. 4:3; Rev. 3:5; 13 : 8 ; 20 : 12, 15 ; 21 : 27 ;
22 : 19.

SECTION VI.
The Life Everlasting.
There are various forms or degrees of life, or, it may be,
various ways in which that one force in nature, which, in
its higher forms, we call life, manifests itself. We observe in
this respect a regular gradation, from the lowest to the
highest form.
Beginning with crude matter, this force is first seen in
what is called the attraction of gravitation — that universal
force by which all particles of matter throughout the uni
verse tend toward each other, and without which the
universe could not exist, excepting in chaos.
It is next seen, as we ascend one step higher, in what is
called ihe attraction of cohesion, by which solidity and
strength are given to material forms.
Ascending still higher, it shows itself in chemical affinity,
in a manner wliich approaches toward intelligent action.
As these three lower forces, or manifestations of force,
exercise no organizing power, we call them inorganic forces.
But as we ascend still higher, we discover forces in which
various degrees of organizing power, discrimination, selec
tion, appropriation and intelligence, are manifested ; and
now we begin to call this force, or these forces, Life.
The lowest of these is vegetable life, a power by which
plants are enabled to eliminate from the surrounding soil
and atmosphere, the pabulum which they need to promote
their growth, form and color. Above this, there is the
sensitive, and volitional, andpassional life, which is manifested
in the lower animals, with the power of instinctive action
and locomotion, and with various degrees of intelligence.
And still higher, blending with these, rising gradually
through various stages of animal existence, and culmina-

Sec. 6.] THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 209
ting in man, we have what is termed rationaVand intellectual
life, with all its varied manifestations of feeling, thought,
will, choice, and action. These higher forms of manifesta
tion, whether in man or in brute, are designated in the Old
Testament Scripture by the common term, nephesh, and
in the New, psuehe, which words, in our version, are some
times translated " soul," and sometimes " life."
These forces may be, for aught we know to the contrary,
one and the same principle in all their many and varied
manifestations. If, as with matter, we suppose this active
principle to be eternal in its essence, or to have its origin
in one and the same great Source of all life, yet in its in
dividual forms and manifestations, it is evidently transitory.
It unites itself with material forms. It has its sphere of
activity in physical organisms. It comes and goes with
them. It has its birth, its growth, its maturity, and its
decay and death, with them. This is equally true of every
form of physical and cosmical life — if we except, perhaps,
that principle which is at the bottom of them all, and
upon which all things material are conditioned ; viz. :
the force of gravity. ,
So the Word of God everywhere teaches — " The things
which are seen are temporal ; but the things which are not
seen, are eternal." " All flesh is as grass, and all the glory
of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth and
the flower thereof falleth away ; but the Word of the Lord
endureth forever."
So science also teaches. So reason and observation
teach. There is nothing in the physical organism of man,
nor in his soulical nature, to render him superior to the
universal law of all earthly things. However superior
in his endowments he may be to the animals beneath him
in the scale of being, he belongs to one and the same
Bystem of life. He comes into being in the same way, by

210 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
natural generation. He is nourished in the same way.
He is subject to the same laws, and he goes out of life by
the same process of death. The vital and organic elements
of his constitution are the same, and when the body dis
solves in death, we certainly have no scientific evidence
whatever that the individual life, either of man or of any
other animal, is perpetuated in its integrity as a separate
entity. That man is the highest of all earthly creatures, and
vastly superior to brutes of the highest rank, is certainly
true. But the distinction between him and them, by
nature, is not an infinite one. He was formed out of the
same dust as they, though more exquisitely fashioned. He
was quickened into life by the same breath of God. He
is subject to the same physical laws. Indeed, it is difficult
to draw an exact line of distinction between the human
and the brute races, and tell just what is peculiar to the
brute and what is peculiar to men.
There is hardly any faculty, or power, or susceptibility,
in man, that may not be found in its rudimental state, or
more or less developed, in the more intelligent orders of
animals, and that may not be still further developed by
domestication and training. They possess sensation, per
ception, association of ideas, memory, imagination, the
power of thought and of reasoning, to a certain extent.
They are capable of love, hatred, anger, revenge, sympathy,
trust, pride, shame, and even of insanity. They are sensi
tive to praise and blame ; under disappointment and chagrin
they have been known to deliberately commit suicide.
They can imitate, contrive, repair, count, perceive the
relation of cause and effect, mourn, rejoice, dream, obey,
disobey. They exercise patience and self-denial, indulge
in expectation and forethought, execute commissions, and
rtfford mutual aid. Not only do they assist each other, but

Sec. 6.] THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 211
they are often known to afford voluntary aid to man in
distress, as in the case of a dog rescuing a drowning child.
Nor are they entirely destitute of those faculties which we
term specifically religious, when exercised by man towards
his Maker. They exercise the same towards man, who
stands in the relation of a superior being to them. They
are often very loyal to him ; they fear, love and obey him.
They try to gain his approbation and favor. They seem to
have a sense of what is right and wrong, so far as to per
ceive what will please or displease him. They are fond of
his society, and capable of a kind of companionship and
sympathy with him.
While we may perceive a difference in degree, and even,
perhaps, in kind, between man and the lower animals, with
respect to these faculties and powers, the difference is by
no means infinite. It is not so great as to take man out of
the category of mortal creatures, and to secure him against
the common lot of all material and organic life. Were
mankind capable of no higher life than this natural life,
this soulical life, which he possesses in common with the
brute, we might well say with the Psalmist, " Lord, where
fore has thou made all men in vain ? What man is he
that liveth and shall not see death? Shall he deliver
his soul from the hand of the grave ?" (Ps. 87 : 47, 48.)
But there is another kind of life, not yet named, which
is above all these. These lower forms of life have their
sphere in material, sensible things, in material organisms.
But this belongs especially to the spiritual world, and
takes hold of spiritual and invisible things. Hence it is
called the " spiritual life." It is the life of God Himself,
who is a Spirit, and of the inhabitants of His spiritual
kingdom. For this life the brutes have no capacity what
ever. But man has been made capable of a spiritual, as
well as a rational life, of direct intercourse and communion

212 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
with God, and of fellowship with spiritual creatures.
Herein lies the distinction between man and brutes. Not
that every man actually possesses this spiritual life ; — alas,
too many rise no higher than the brutes in the lives they
do live! Their desires, purposes, and aims are all con
fined to material and transitory things. But every man,
notwithstanding, is endowed with a capacity for this higher
and better life. It was for this life he was originally
designed. It is to this life he is called, and it is the special
object of God's economy of grace to lift him up into this
life. This life does not belong to the kingdom of nature,
but to that spiritual kingdom which is above nature. It
is not natural, but supernatural. Without this life, how
ever high man may rise as a creature of earth, he belongs
to the animal kingdom, and is jessentially and necessarily
a mortal, transitory creature. This spiritual life is not
subject to the lot of things material and transitory, and
whoever possesses it is fitted for that world where death is
unknown ; or, rather, he is fitting for that world — he is a
candidate for it. Man is placed, as it were, between these
two kingdoms, and his final condition and lot shall be
according as he gives himself to the one or the other.
"That was not first which is spiritual, but that which is
natural (psuehikos, soulical), and afterwards that which is
spiritual." "They which shall be accounted worthy to
obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead,
neither marry, nor are given in marriage ; neither can they
die any more ; for they are equal unto the angels ; and are
the children of God, being the children of the resurrection."
This life, though dimly revealed to the Old Testament
saints, is brought especially to light in the Gospel, as the
life we receive, not from Adam by a natural generation,
but from Christ by the regeneration of the Spirit of God.
A new word, or rather an old word adapted to a new use.

Sec. 6.] THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 213
is employed to designate it. Psuehe is the word by which
our natural and animal life — that which we have in com
mon with the animal world beneath us — is designated.
This new life is designated by f aijj (zoe), or rather j? Za>rj, (he
zoe), the life, to distinguish it from every other kind of life,
and to give it pre-eminence over them all.
Whenever new truths, peculiar to the Gospel dispensa
tion, are to be revealed, new words are not invented for
this purpose, but words in common use are employed and
set apart, and sanctified to this higher use. So is it with
this word zoe, meaning " life." It is employed specifically
and especially to denote this higher spiritual life, and no
other word is ever used for this, purpose. We do not say
that this word zoe is never employed in a lower sense in
the New Testament ; but this is very rarely done. It
occurs more than 130 times in the New Testament, and, as
the reader may see by referring to our citations in a previ
ous section, it is used almost exclusively to denote that
higher spiritual life which is the peculiar life of the Deity,
and which He communicates to us in the new birth by His
Holy Spirit. No other term is ever used to designate this
life. And what is more, it is to this life that the word aiwvtoc;,
aionios, signifying eternal, everlasting, is so often — more
than 60 times — applied. This epithet, " eternal," or " ever
lasting," is never in one single instance applied to the Word
Psuehe, also translated life, but always referring to the
natural life,which is transitory. And Still further, the article
" the," which our translators have unfortunately omitted,
is prefixed to higher life, to indicate that this is the only
life that is permanent and abiding ; thus : ij C«"? acajvtos,
(he zoe aionios) — the life everlasting. For example : "Strait
is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto the
Life, and few there be that find it." (Matt. 7 : 14.) "And be
hold, one came and said unto Him, Good Master, what

214 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life ? And
He said, If thou wilt enter into the life, keep the command
ments." (Matt. 19 : 16.) " This is the life eternal, that
they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ,
whom Thou hast sent." (John 17 : 3.) " And this is the
record that God has given unto us, the eternal life, and
this life is in His Son." (1 John 5 : 11.)
This life is eternal, for it is the life of God, " who only
hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can
approach unto." It is pure and blessed, also, for the same
reason. Indeed no life can be eternally perpetuated but
that which is pure and blessed, and in perfect harmony
with the great Source of all life. This was the great object
and end of man's redemption through Christ, to ingenerate
within dying man this new, Divine life — to immortalize
him, and lift him up into communion with God and
spiritual and holy creatures — and so to make him holy and
blessed forever. Man not only needs forgiveness and jus
tification from sin in order to secure his salvation, but he
needs this new Divine life, without which he cannot live
forever. The natural life of man, however pure he may be
as an earthly creature, is frail and transitory. "He cometh
forth like a flower, and is cut down ; he fleeth also as a
shadow, and continueth not."
This phrase, " the life everlasting," which is so constantly
employed in the Scriptures to designate that Divine life
which the Spirit breathes into man in his new creation,
means something more than simply purity and blessedness
forever. It means all this, but it means, over and above
all this, LIFE— the life of God. " And this life is in His
Son ; he that hath the Son hath the life, and he that hath
not the Son of God, hath not the life."
That philosophy which attributes to the natural man the
same perpetual, endless life that is the peculiar attribute of

Sec. 6.] THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 215
the children of God, is obliged to rob this phrase — " The
Life Everlasting " — of its chief significance, and so make it
mean simply purity and blessedness, that it may bring the
teachings of Scripture into conformity with its own error.
But it is a gross perversion of the Word of God, and it
cannot be too severely rebuked. Nothing but the exigen
cies of this false philosophy, which denies to our Lord the
supreme glory of giving to His redeemed people eternal
life, that it may attribute this immortality to all men,
could have robbed this word, that so emphatically ex
presses this truth, of its essential meaning, and frittered it
down to the simple signification of purity and blessedness,
which at most are but the conditions and accompaniments
of that life. How unwilling dying man is to put his entire
dependence on Him who died to redeem him from death !
How reluctant he is to give Him all the glory of his salva
tion! These various forces or forms of life in nature, rising one
above another, and becoming more and more perfect in the
ascent, are likened by Dr. Mark Hopkins, in his Lectures
on Moral Science, to a pyramid. That which is at the base
is universal, and each successive form is conditioned upon
that which is beneath, and includes all that is within it,
and yet shows something that is more excellent, till we
reach the summit in the rational and moral life of man.
If he had gone one step higher, and added, as the top stone,.
this higher, this spiritual, this Divine life, this life of God
in the renewed man, this life everlasting, which is the
great theme of the Gospel, the idea which we are endeavor
ing to set forth would have been very truly expressed. But
as this is a supernatural life, it is hardly a part of the
scheme of nature, which he was representing. Let us, then,.
complete this picture.

216

BIBLE TERMINOLOGY.

Chap. II.

THE LIFE EVERLASTING.

FORCES.
Spiritual Forces.

Psuchical and
Organic Forces

Inorganic Forces.

LAWS OF ACTION.
Spontaneity. Will, Choice.
Instinct, Volition.
Selection. Affinity. Associa tion. Neces sity.

Sec. 6.] THE LIFE EVERLASTING. , 217
We have first, at the base, the attraction of gravitation,
which acts by what we may call a law of necessity upon
every atom in the universe.
Next comes the attraction of cohesion, acting among the
molecules by the law of association.
After this, chemical attraction, acting by the law of affinity.
In the next stage, we have vegetable life, acting by the
law of selection.
Above this, we have animal life, operating under the law
oi instinct and volition.
Still higher, we have human and rational life, operating
under the law oi free-will and choice.
All these are natural forces ; the three lower are called
inorganic, and the three higher, organic. They all mani
fest themselves through physical forms and organisms. By
what law of development — if by any — these lower forms of
life are raised to those that are higher and more perfect, we
need not stop to inquire. It is sufficient for us to know
that they are all subject to change, and are transitory in
their nature. They spring into being, fulfill their
career, whether longer or shorter, and pass away, giving
place to others that are alike transient, and these to others,
in one continual round of birth, life, death, and decay.
Whatever may become of the elements of these individual
forms, or of the forces that operated through them, the in
dividuals themselves, throughout the whole realm of
nature, have no permanent existence.
But above all these is a life which, by pre-eminence, is
called The Life.
Though science may know nothing of any force beyond
the forces of nature, so-called, and may fail to discover, by
any of her processes, any life but that which is revealed
in material forms, the Word of God reveals to us a spiritual
world, and a life that is higher, more perfect and enduring

218 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
4
than any natural life. It is not communicated from one
earthly creature to another by natural generation. It is
supernatural. It is that life which is peculiar to God
Himself, and is communicated by His Spirit to such of
His creatures as are capable of receiving it. This is the
life to which He proposes to lift mankind — the highest of
earthly creatures — by a new birth and by a resurrection
from the dead. " Except a man be born again," said our
Lord, " he cannot see the kingdom of God." " That which
is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit." This is the life of which Peter speaks:
" Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incor
ruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth
forever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man
as the flower of the grass* The grass withereth, and the
flower thereof falleth away ; but the Word of the Lord
endureth forever. And this is the Word which, by the
Gospel, is preached unto you."
This life is everywhere designated as the spiritual life, in
contra-distinction from the natural life. The word zoe, in
stead of the word psuehe, is always used in speaking of it.
This is the life, and the only life, that is ever spoken of
as permanent and eternal. The law of this spiritual life
is a law of liberty. The acts of those who are under its-
power, are free and unconstrained. They are spontaneous.
If they can be said to be under any law,it is a law of spon
taneity. Our natural life, under the moral law, is a con
tinual struggle with antagonistic forces. We are tempted
and drawn hither and thither, and can regulate our con
duct only by a continual exercise of the will-power.
" What we call our virtue now (as we rise into this new
life) is no more a will -work, or a something done according
to law, but it is a continuous and living ingeneration of
God, who has thus become a Divine impulse or quickening

Sec. 6.] THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 219
in us, and so the life of our life. Therefore, now we are
free."* We keep the commandments of Christ because
we are one with Him. We enter then into a liberty that
fulfills all law — the liberty of love. "There is, therefore,
now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made
us free from the law of sin and death. For what the law
could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God,
sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for
sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of
the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the
flesh, but after the Spirit." The bondage is now gone. Th|e
stage of liberty is come. This is the Spirit that grjrefh, lifer
This is the ministration of righteousness. "And if thjexminr
istration of condemnation be glory, much mOre doth' 'the-
ministration of righteousness exceed in glory: '"
T» ¦ 1 T 1 11 "iS ' 1 '.'till''/ ;!;llS
But true science, when enlightened by, Revelation, seems^
to point to the same conclusion, that immortality ','. and
eternal life, belong only to the " perfected man," and that
man can only be so perfected by being brought into har
mony with the supreme Source of all life — into fellowship
with his God. If we rightly apprehend, tlie reasoning of
Prof. Asa Gray, in his recent lectures at Yale College,, this
is the conclusion to which he ¦ comes. His words are as
follows : . 1 1 j. . : i
" It will not do to say that thought carries the
implication of immortality, for our humble compan
ions (the brutes) have the elements of that, or of simple
ratiocination, and the power of reproducing conceptions in
memory, and — what is even more to the present purpose —
in dreams. Once admit this to imply immortality, and
you will be obliged to make soul co-extensive with life, as
some have done, thereby well-nigh crushing the whole doc
trine of immortality with the load laid upon it. At least,
* Nature and the Supernatural. H. Bushnell.

220 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
this is poising the ponderous pyramid on its apex, and the
apex on a logical fallacy. For the entire conception that
the highest brute animals may be endowed with an im
mortal principle, is a reflection from the conception of such
a principle in ourselves; and so the farther down you
carry it, the wider and more egregious the circle you are
reasoning in.
" Still, with life goes duality. There is the matter, and
there is the life, and we cannot get one out of the other,
unless you define matter as something which works to ends.
As all agree that reflective thought cannot be translated
into terms of extension (matter and motion), nor the con
verse, so as truly it cannot be translated into terms of
sensation and perception, of desire and affection, of even
the feeblest vital response to external impressions of sim
plest life. The duality runs through the whole. You
cannot reasonably give over any part of the field to the
monist and retain the rest.
"Now see how evolution may help you ; in its conception
that while all the lower serves its purpose for the time
being, and is a stage toward better and higher, the lower
«ooner or later perish, the higher — the consummate — sur-
¦vive. The soul in its bodily tenement is the final outcome
¦of nature. May it not well be that the perfected soul alow
¦survives the final struggle of life, and, indeed, ' then chiefly
lives ' because in it all worths and ends inhere ; because it
¦only is worth immortality, because it alone carries in itself
the promise and potentiality of eternal life. Certainly in
it only is the potentiality of religion, or that which aspires
to immortality."

SECTION VII.
Punishment.
In considering the word punishment, we naturally in
quire : (1) what punishment is, and (2) what is its purpose ;
but these two questions may be considered together under
the following remarks :
1. Punishment implies law, and law implies authority.
No law can have any binding force unless it be sanctioned
by a penalty. Punishment is the infliction of this penalty
upon the transgressor by the same authority from which
the law proceeds. The penalty threatened must be some
thing that tends to protect the law from violation. It may
be the infliction of pain of whatever sort the offender is
capable of suffering, or the deprivation of any pleasure,
privilege or possession he might otherwise enjoy.
When there is no law or authority, there can be no pen
alty threatened, nor punishment inflicted. One person may
threaten retaliation or injury upon another ; he may in
flict pain or loss upon one who has offended him, but if he
has no authority over him, he cannot punish him. Such an
infliction cannot properly be called punishment. Pugilists
are said sometimes to punish each other severely ; but this
is a low and false use of the term. A man who shoots, or
beats, or otherwise injures a person who trespasses upon his
rights, if he does it without the authority of law, does not
punish him. Neither can a ruler, or officer, or magistrate
punish one who is not under his jurisdiction. Nor could a
parent inflict punishment upon a child who had passed
entirely from under his authority. If a parent were to give
away, or disinherit and disown a child, so as to relinquish all
claim to him, and the child were to pass completely from
under his care and authority, he would not only have no

222 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
right to punish him, but he could not punish him accord
ing to the true meaning of the word, whatever injury he
might inflict on him. For punishment implies law and
authority, and reciprocal obligations. To be subject to
punishment one must owe allegiance to the authority or
power that punishes him. Power alone cannot punish, but
only power under the authority of law violated can inflict
punishment, and that only upon one who owes allegiance to
that law, and has the right to claim its protection. Power
may inflict vengeance, suffering, loss, torment, upon an
irresponsible victim, but that would not be punishment.
The reason why we are liable to Divine punishment is
not because God possesses supreme power, but because we
are the subjects of His government ; we are under the pro
tection of His law, and owe Him allegiance. He is not only
the Source of all the blessings we enjoy, but the Author
and Sustainer of our lives. It is possible for us to forfeit,
not merely these inferior blessings, but the boon which in
cludes them all, even life itself, and to become liable to
what is called, under human government, capital punish
ment. The criminal that is condemned to imprisonment
for life, is still under the protection of the government that
is inflicting punishment upon him ; and he has the right to
claim its protection against any one who should treat him
unjustly. But if, instead of capital punishment or impris
onment for life, the government were to expel him from
her domain, confiscate his property, and withdraw from
him all protection of law, he would be no longer amenable
to that government, nor any more liable to her punishment
than any other alien.
The same is true of the Divine government, after which
all human governments should be modeled ; and yet the
popular theology teaches that God proposes to continue
to inflict perpetual and unending torment upon sinnew

Sec. 7.] PUNISHMENT. 223
after He has judicially, finally, irreversibly and forever
withdrawn from them all protection and favor, and cut
them off absolutely and entirely from His government !
That our lives are in His hands, and that we are moment
arily dependent on Him to sustain us in being, and that
He has the right to withdraw His sustaining power and let
us drop out of being, or to inflict upon us capital punish
ment if we shall forfeit our lives, no one can reasonably
doubt ; but that He has the right, because He has the
power, to cut off the offender from all relation to His gov
ernment; to take from him everything implied by life, and
then to perpetuate that life solely for the sake of torment,
and to pursue the helpless victim with perpetual and un
ending vengeance, cannot be shown. Such an imputation
strikes every reflecting mind with horror. Such a proced
ure could not be called punishment. It would deserve the
severest epithet of which our language is capable ; for it
would outrage every principle of right and justice in the
human soul.
During past ages of darkness and barbarism, inhuman
monsters of tyranny have essayed to practice on these
principles, and have pleaded the example of the Supreme
Ruler, as set forth in the doctrines of the Church, for their
devilish abominations. But even in those days their names
were held in universal execration, and they have come
down to us loaded with infamy.
2. Punishment is retrospective, and not prospective in its
action. In this it differs from penalty, or the penal sanction
annexed to every law. This is prospective. It is threatened
for the purpose of protecting the law from violation. It is
to show the estimation in which the law is held by the law
giver, and the importance he attaches to obedience. The
penalty is minatory in its character. It must be made

224 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
known with the law, that those to whom the law is given
may understand the importance of the law, and the conse
quences of disobedience.
The penalty of every human law is always announced with
the law and defined within certain specified limits, and must
be, or there could be no just punishment ; for punishment is
the infliction of the penalty. It is to be inflicted after the law
has been violated, and never before the deed, in anticipa
tion of its infraction. Nor can a heavier penalty be in
flicted than was threatened. These are well-known princi
ples of equity, applicable to all human jurisprudence, and
no reason can be shown why they are not equally applicable
to the administration of the Divine law.
The penalty for violating the Divine law was definitely
announced when the law was given. It was Death — not
imprisonment, not torture, much less perpetual and endless
imprisonment, with eternal torture ; but Death. This
must have been what Adam understood by it. It
is just what the word imports, no more, no less. It would
be the way in which every one who had no conflicting
theory respecting the deathless nature of man to support,
would understand it. But we are told by our popular
theology that God conceived in His own mind of a penalty
entirely different from the death He threatened ; infinitely
more severe — a penalty directly the opposite of that which
He threatened, namely — of a life of misery eternally per
petuated. Then, we ask in the name of reason and justice:
Why did He not say so? Even the creature has the
right to demand of his Creator truth and honest dealing.
It cannot be shown that it would be any more right for the
Almighty to say one thing and to mean another, to change
the nature of the penalty threatened, and infinitely to in
crease its severity, than it would be for a human ruler to
do it.

Sec. 7.] PUNISHMENT. 225
In order somewhat to relieve the character of God of the
imputation of cruelty and deceit which this doctrine casts
upon it, we are told that sinners are sentenced to endure
endless misery because they will sin forever. But punish
ment is, and must be, altogether retrospective. It cannot
in its very nature be anticipatory. It would no more com
port with Divine than with human justice to anticipate the
crimes one may commit, and to include the future as well
as the past in one sentence of punishment. But more than
this, it is no more possible for a sinner to violate God's
law after he has been entirely severed from God, and cut
off absolutely and forever from His government, and made
a complete alien, than it is for one to violate the laws of
any human government that has cast him out and with
drawn all protection from him.
3. Punishment has primary and special regard, not to
the offender, but to the law. It is inflicted not for the pur
pose of doing him harm or good. What the transgressor
may actually deserve, or what may be the effect of the
punishment upon him, are considerations not to be entirely
disregarded — especially in cases of minor offences under
human government, and for this reason some latitude of
discretion, within specified limits, is allowed to the admin
istration — but the penalty, such as it is, must be inflicted,
for it is for the sake of the law, and not for the sake of the
criminal, that there is any penalty to be inflicted. If we
go back of the law, and find that it is for the good of those
to whom it is given — as we shall, if the law is just — then
we may say that the punishment, which is the infliction of
the penalty that sustains the law, is in its ultimate design
for the good of those who are under its protection. But in
no case can it have special reference to the transgressor
himself.

226 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
"Evil inflicted for the sake of discipline, is generally
supposed to be punishment, and parents say to children
that they punish them for their own good. But if that be
the sole end, the infliction of evil has no reference to law,
and cannot properly be called punishment. — Punishment
¦is the infiiction of a previously declared penalty, by the will of
the law-giver, for the sake of sustaining the, authority of the
law." (Dr. Mark Hopkins, Christian Ethics.)
It was not because Major Andre deserved to die that
the penalty of death was inflicted upon him. Washington
wept when he signed his death-warrant, and would gladly
have saved him, if it had been possible to sustain the law
without this terrible penalty. The British honor Andre's
memory, and, indeed, so do all men. On the other hand,
there are others who are known to be traitors at heart, and
as ill-deserving as possible, whom the law cannot punish,
because they have committed no overt act of transgression.
Nor could God Himself punish them, did not His author
ity extend to the hearts as well as the acts of men, and all
transgression- of His law is from the heart.
But even under the government of God the sinner is not
punished on his own account. While in life he is under
the discipline of God's providence and grace, and the evils
imposed upon him as a transgressor are for the sake of
reforming and saving him. They are sometimes called
" disciplinary punishments," but they are chastisements,
corrections, and not punishments in reality. But the final
punishment which will be visited upon irreclaimable sin
ners at the last day will have no such purpose.
Here we see the fallacy of the reasoning of those who
hold that eternal punishment must consist in the eternal
conscious suffering of the victim that is punished. Then-
ideas of punishment are such as prevailed in the dark ages
of the world among barbarians, when government meant
tyranny, and those who were invested with power taxed

Sec. 7.] PUNISHMENT. 227
their ingenuity to invent tortures to be inflicted upon the *
subjects 'of their wrath. Those truer notions of the
administration of justice that are now recognized by all
human governments throughout Christendom, are still
rejected by our conservative theologians. They still seem
to suppose that the special object of punishment is to inflict
misery upon offenders ; or, at least, that it is so under the
Divine government, if not under human governments, and
that the true measure of punishment is to be found in the
amount of agony inflicted, and the length of time during
which it is protracted. This is the sum of Dr. Bartlett's
reasoning in his Life and Death Eternal. On this ground
he holds that extinction of being would be no adequate
punishment for sin under God's law, and possibly no pun
ishment at all to some brutal natures. 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." (p. 289.)
According to this theory, capital punishment should be
made as agonizing and protracted as possible under human
governments, or rather the death penalty should entirely
give place to life-long and ceaseless torture. But in his
anxiety to make good his theological arguments for the
endless torment of the unsaved, he overlooks and miscon
strues the real object and nature of punishment. It is not
for the sinner's sake — neither to do him good nor to make
him wretched — but for the maintainance of God's right
eous government. We may be assured that whatever is
just and good, and necessary to this end, God will do.
" It is important to remember that the final punishment
of the irreclaimably wicked will not be for their own sake.
The superficial remarks, therefore, that are frequently
made about the destruction of the wicked having no terror
for those who are without spiritual desires, simply fall to

228 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H
the ground. As long as punishment is correction, that is,
inflicted for the good of persons punished, it is essential
that they should feel its bitterness. But when it is purely
retributive, that is, inflicted with no hope of benefiting the
guilty, but solely to vindicate the majesty of law, it is not
of the smallest consequence whether they care about it or
not, so long as it is something which the innocent would
dread. Now, whatever may be thought of any preliminary
punishment that the wicked may have to undergo, it is
quite certain that the last stroke, which blots them out of
existence, must be for the sake of others. Their destruc
tion will be necessary, first, that the universe may be recon
ciled to God ; and secondly, to make them an ' example ' of
the destructive nature of sin; to show to all intelligent
creatures throughout eternity that evil cannot continue;
that in Christ all things consist, and that, therefore, they
cannot live apart from Him." (Minton's Glory of Christ
p. 155.)
4. Transgressors are the only proper subjects of punish
ment. The innocent cannot be punished for the acts of
the guilty. No righteous ruler would think of inflicting
the penalty of a broken law upon his subjects indiscrimi
nately. Heathen tyrants have sometimes attempted to
indulge their cruel natures in this way, for the purpose of
showing their power, or of terrorizing their vassals ; but
these acts of vengeance or spite cannot be called punish
ment. It is only when the penalty is visited upon the
persons of the guilty that the infliction can be considered
as punishment. The plea of Abraham before God was
founded upon a universally recognized principle of jus
tice: "Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the
wicked ? That be far from thee to do after this manner,
to slay the righteous with the wicked ; and that the right
eous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee : shall
not the Judge of all the earth do right ?" (Gen. 18 : 23, 25.)
And yet the righteous may suffer, and suffer grievously,

Sec. 7.] PUNISHMENT. 229
and suffer from generation to generation, in consequence of
the wrong-doing of others for whom they have had no
responsibility. But they do not suffer punishment in any
true sense of the word. A sinning parent may indeed be
punished in his posterity, as well as in his own person. It
may be a part of the penalty on him that his children must
suffer loss, disgrace, pain, in consequence of his own fault;
but they are not punished for his sins. Their losses or
pains may be called disastrous results, or penal consequences,
but they cannot be called punishments.
The Lord Himself indignantly repelled the insinuation
which His ancient people brought against His justice in
this respect.
" What mean ye that ye use this proverb concerning the
land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children's teeth are set on edge? As I live, saith
the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use
this proverb in Israel ; Behold all souls are mine ; as the
soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine; the
soul that sinneth it shall die. . . . The son shall not bear
the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the
iniquity of the son : the righteousness of the righteous shall
be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be
upon him." (Ezek. 18 : 2, 3, 4, 20.)
If an innocent person were to volunteer to take the
place of the offender, and to bear the penalty which had
been incurred, he might, perhaps, be accepted as a substi
tute, provided the law could be as well honored and sus
tained in this way. But no such substitution could be
demanded, either on the part of the victim or the authority
accepting him. It must be entirely free to both parties.
Here we see the great dilemma of our so-called orthodox
brethren. Their Platonic philosophy concerning the death
less nature of the soul, has driven them to adopt such views
of the character and government of God, and such an in-

230 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
terpretation of the Scriptures in regard, to Hia dealings
with man, as can not be reconciled with the moral sense He
has given us, nor so defended with any ingenuity of argu
ment, as to seem to be either reasonable, or just, or con
sistent with the spirit *nd teachings of the Gospel of Christ.
Holding as they do, to the deathless nature of man, they
are constrained to understand the penalty of death
denounced against sin, as meaning, not the actual death of
the conscious, sinning man himself, but as a state of sin
and misery eternally perpetuated ; and as the whole race
are included in this doom of death, whatever it is, they
must somehow be considered as included in the guilt of the
original sin. That some color of justice, if possible, may
be given to the imposition of this terrible, helpless, hopeless
•doom of eternal misery in hell for all the posterity of Adam,
the doctrine of the imputation of sin must be invented.
And then to off-set this under the redemptive scheme,
we have the imputation of holiness — as though character
and fitness for heaven or hell could be transferred from
one moral creature to another by such a legal or com
mercial fiction.
This false philosophy of the nature of man, has given us
a theological system that is full of inconsistencies — a the
odicy that needs to be apologized for, excused, and
alleviated in every possible way, to make it toleiable.
Indeed, in some of its aspects, it will not compare favorably
¦ with that of the heathen world. " How long does your God
torment His enemies ?" asked a heathen inquirer of his
missionary teacher. " Forever and ever," was the reply.
" Then," said the heathen, " He is not so good as the one
we now worship, for he torments them only a thousand
years." This fundamental error is the prime source of most of
the theological difficulties and controversies that have

Sec. 7.] PUNISHMENT. 231
vexed the church so long, and have thrown so many in
telligent, thoughtful men into antagonism to the evangelical
system. The law and the Gospel are greatly obscured-
The doctrine of the atonement, which ought to be clear, is
rendered mysterious and incomprehensible. It is impossible
to explain or understand the argument of Paul in his
epistles to the Romans and Corinthians — especially in the
parallel he draws between the first and the second Adam,
— under the controlling influence of this error.
But, apart from this false philosophy, the economy of
God's government over his creatures, as set forth in the
Law and in the Gospel, seems to be self-consistent through
out, and in perfect harmony with the immutable principles
of truth, justice, goodness, and mercy. Though there may
be depths which we cannot fathom, and mysteries which
are insoluble by our feeble minds, yet, so far as we can
penetrate, those dark and repulsive features that need to
be explained away by sophistical arguments, or excused on
the ground that we are unable to understand what would
be right or wrong for the Almighty to do, or covered up,.
lest they offend our moral sense, are all taken away ; and
we can look up to Him with the fullest confidence, and call
Him " Our Heavenly Father," as Christ taught us to do,
and say with the Psalmist, " The statutes of the Lord are
right, rejoicing the heart : the commandment of the Lord
is pure, enlightening the eyes : the fear of the Lord is
clean, enduring forever : the judgments of the Lord are
true and righteous altogether."
No one can fail to recognize the wisdom and goodness of
God in constituting Holiness the ruling principle of His
government over His moral subjects — complete harmony
with Himself and with each other — and in providing that
this only should be permanent and perpetual, and that
sin should be self-destructive and transitory. This was the

232 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
principle which He made known to Adam at his creation.
He was permitted to hope for perpetuity of being, only on
condition of perfect conformity to the will of God. And
when he sinned, he fell under the doom of death and ex
tinction, unless he could be restored to holiness. Tho tree
of life, by which his immortality was sustained or asuured,
he could no longer partake of; but it was not destroyed.
It was guarded, and he was kept from it, " lest he should
eat and live forever " in his sin and misery. In this is seen,
not merely the goodness of God, but the first intimation of
His gracious purpose, afterwards to be fully revealed, to
provide a way by which man might again " have a right
to the tree of life," and live forever in holiness.
As a mortal man, Adam became the progenitor of a mor
tal race, subject to all the disastrous consequences which
sin entails, and to death itself "when sin is finished." The
doctrine that all the posterity of Adam are " made liable
to death itself, and all the pains of hell forever," as a pun
ishment for the sins of their progenitor, cannot be defended
on any ground of reason or justice. But that they may
suffer loss and deprivation, in consequence of his sin, and
may also in addition, be liable to such punishment for their
own individual sins, as God's holy law requires, no one can
impugn as unjust. God could be under no possible obliga
tion to create all men immortal in the outset. Indeed, in
view of the inevitable consequences to the unsaved, this
would comport neither with His wisdom nor His goodness.
But when we are assured that He has " subjected " man
kind to this mortal condition " in hope " — with the possi
bility of attaining to everlasting life, by a restoration to
holiness and harmony with Himself, and that He Himself
has provided the means for securing to man this great
boon, by the sacrifice of His only Son, our Lord, an
Almighty Savior, " who of God is made unto us wisdom

Sec. 7.] PUNISHMENT. 233
and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption"
— His justice, goodness, love, mercy and grace shine forth,
conspicuous and resplendent ; and, instead of trying to ex
cuse and justify the ways of God to man, as we are con
strained to do under the false theology we are opposing, we
cannot but exclaim : " O, the depth of the riches both of
the wisdom and knowledge of God." " Thanks be unto
God for His unspeakable gift " — the gift of another life,
through a new birth and a resurrection from the dead, a
higher life, a spiritual life, an eternal life because it is His
own peculiar life through Jesus Christ His Son our Savior.
That this glorious universe of God will eventually be
cleansed, and all that would disturb its harmony and
beauty, so far as it cannot be transformed and purified, will
be cast out like chaff and destroyed, and all sinful creatures
that will not or cannot be brought into sweet and loving
conformity to His holy will, must pass away and give
place to those who are worthy of His eternal love and
favor, would seem to be the teaching of Providence, as well
as of Revelation. Whether it be by the operation of the
law of the survival of the fittest, which obtains throughout
the natural world ; or of a higher spiritual law, which has
made sin transitory and self-destructive in its very nature,
and which gives stability and permanence to that only
which is good ; or by the direct infliction of Divine justice
upon those who persist in rebellion, the result is the same.
" It is appointed to men once to die, but after death the
judgment," and after judgment the Second Death — the
complete and final extinction of all irreclaimable sinners.
" The harvest is the end of the world ; the reapers are the
angels. As, therefore, the tares are gathered and burned
in the fire, so shall it be in the end of the world. The Son
of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather

234 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which
do iniquity, and cast them into a furnace of fire ; and there
shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." " And they shall
be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence
of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He
shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired
in all them that believe in that day."
Death, in the sense of extinction of being, and not misery
eternally prolonged, we believe to be the final penalty of
the Divine law, because :
- 1. This is the plain, literal teaching of the Scriptures.
This is not a question of nice philological criticism. It does
not turn upon the subtle shades of meaning that may be
given to one or two words in the original Hebrew or Greek
Scriptures ; but rests upon the uniform teaching of the
Bible in all its various forms of speech, of doctrine, of
threatening and exhortation, of promise and prophecy, and
of illustration from beginning to end.
The word " penalty " is not found in our common ver
sion, but the idea is expressed in other words, in connection
with the law of God, with great frequency ; but with this
uniform utterance : " The soul that sinneth it shall die " —
not be miserable — misery always follows in the train of
sin, as a kind of first fruit — but the final harvest is death.
" Sin when it is finished bringeth forth death."
The words punish and punishment occur many times in
the Old and New Testaments, as the rendering of a dozen
different Hebrew words, and of some half a dozen different
Greek words ; but in most cases it is in connection with
human affairs, or temporal judgments. There are only two
or three passages, in which it occurs, that have any im
portant bearing on the question under discussion. They
are these :

Sec. 7.] PUNISHMENT. 235
" And these shall go away into (Kolasin aionion, punish
ment eternal) everlasting punishment ; but the righteous
into (zoen aionion) life eternal." (Matt. 25 : 46.) " Who
shall (diken tisousen, undergo the punishment of) be pun
ished with (olethron aionion, destruction eternal) everlasting
destruction," etc. (2 Thes. 1 : 9.) " He that despised
Moses' law died without mercy under two or three wit
nesses. Of how much (cheironos, severer) sorer (timorias,
retribution) punishment suppose ye shall he be thought
worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God." etc.
(Heb. 10 : 28, 29.) " The Lord knoweth how to deliver
the godly out of temptation, and to reserve the unjust unto
the day of judgment to be (kolazomenous) punished."
(2 Pet. 2:9.)
We have no need whatever of going into any critical
examination of these several Greek words, for it cannot be
claimed with any show of reason that they give any possible
support to the idea that the punishment, which God inflicts,
is that of eternal torture. The idea must be first read into
them before they can be made to seem to agree with any
such doctrine. As to the words kolasin aionion, translated
everlasting punishment, in the passage quoted above from
Matt. 25 : 46, there has been a great deal of learned dis
cussion, which,we do not propose now to review. It will
be sufficient here only to remark — as this passage will be
considered at length in another place — that our translators
have given, perhaps, some faint support to this idea in
our common version, by rendering the word aionion "ever
lasting," when predicated of the punishment of the wicked,
and " eternal " when predicated of the (zoen) life of the
righteous. But it will be noticed that it is the same word
in both cases, and should have had the same rendering.
Nothing definite as to the nature of the punishment can be
drawn from the word kolasin. It will bear the rendering

236 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
*
of punishment by excision, deprivation, destruction, as well
as by torment, for it includes both ideas ; and this is just
what we hold to be its double meaning in this case — a
miserable, ignominious death, capital punishment, an eter
nal excision from life and all its joys, actual and final, and
remediless destruction, as by fire, as unfit any longer to live.
Indeed, this is the rendering in the two most ancient Latin
translations and in not a few of the modern. " These shall
go away (ad ignum aternum) into eternal fire." When we
find the real nature of the punishment specified, and de
clared to be " everlasting destruction," as we do in
2 Thes. 1 : 9, — " Who shall be punished with olethron
aionion, everlasting destruction," we have no right to
put any other construction upon it. There can be no
question as to this word olethron. No stronger word could
be found to denote absolute, complete, entire destruction,
extermination, obliteration, than this — a destruction, not
merely of the well-being of the individual, but of all being,
of the individual himself. This is what is uniformly
taught throughout the Scriptures, and no one would ever
have thought of giving to these and the other passages of
Scripture foretelling the doom of the wicked any other
sense, had not his false philosophy concerning the inde
structible nature of the soul taught him how-to read it into
them. 2. This agrees with the penal economy of the Mosaic
law. There was no such punishment as imprisonment for
life ; much less of imprisonment for life, with torture, under
this law. The penalty for the highest offences was always
death — an ignominious death without mercy. This law
was from God Himself. It had two applications, the one
physical and the other moral. While the administration
of this law in its physical aspects was committed to human

Sec. 7.] punishment. 237
hands, God reserved to Himself its moral administration.
But there ought surely to be an agreement in the sanctions
of this law in both of its aspects. If the punishment for
the highest offence under its temporal administration had
been imprisonment for life, or imprisonment for life with
perpetual torture, then it might be claimed with some show
of plausibility, that it would be the same under the Divine
administration, and that by eternal punishment might be
meant eternal misery in hell. But now we can draw no
other conclusion than that it is capital punishment — pun
ishment by death under the Divine as well as under its
human administration.
3. This agrees with the system of sacrifices ordained by
God. These sacrificial victims were not tortured, nor im
prisoned, but simply put to death. By this the offerer
acknowledged that he had forfeited, not his liberty, not his
well-being, but his life — his being itself. It was not an
offering merely, which God required, but the offering of
the hfe of an innocent victim in the place of the offerer.
It is just here that we see the difference between the offerings
of Cain and Abel, and why the " Lord had respect unto "
the one and " had not respect unto " the other. Cain
brought an offering — a pure offering, so far as anything to
the contrary appears, but he did not offer up the life of any
victim. " But Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock."
(Gen. 4 : 3, 4.) In the death of the victim lies the real
significance of the offering. Without this it has no merit
nor meaning.
These sacrifices all pointed to Christ, " the Lamb of God
that taketh away the sin of the world." If the punishment
due to our sins is not death, actual death, but an existence
of sin and misery infinitely prolonged, it is impossible to
see how Christ made any atonement for us by His death.

238 bible terminology. [Chap. II.
That " He laid down His life for us " there can be no ques
tion. He died an ignominious and painful death ; but the
agony on the cros3 was brief, compared with that which
many suffer who are put to death in this way. No sensible
man, at this day, will try to show, as theologians have tried
to do in past ages, that the agonies which He suffered were
equal in amount to those which would have been endured
by all the redeemed in the aggregate throughout an eternity
of suffering in hell. Even in that case nothing whatever
would have been gained on the score of mercy by such a
preposterous commercial exchange.
If the death to which we are liable is what is called
spiritual death merely, that is, alienation from God and an
eternal existence in sin and misery, Christ certainly did
not suffer such a death for us, nor make any adequate
atonement for us, nor redeem us from death by dying for
us. But if one will lay all his speculative philosophy aside,
and look at this wonderful transaction simply in the Ught of
revelation, he cannot help seeing how this God-man paid the
exact and full penalty of the law that was due to us-He died,
actually and truly died, just as any other man dies, and as
we all must have died, with no hope of any resurrection ;
and then, by the Almighty power of the Divine Spirit
within Him, which could not die — " being put to death in
the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit" — He rose victorious
over the power of the grave,^and so became " able to save
to the uttermost all who come unto God by Him."
4. That death in the sense of forfeiture of life, and not
in the sense of the forfeiture of happiness and well-being,
is the penalty of sin, agrees with the figurative language of
the Bible, as well as its literal declarations.
In addition to the - oft-repeated declarations that the
wicked "shall die," "be lost," "perish," "melt away,"

Sec. 7.] PUNISHMENT. 239
" fade away," " wither as the green herb," " vanish away
like smoke " — " like a dream," " shall be no more," " shall
be as nothing," " shall not be," etc., much severer language
is used to describe the doom of obdurate offenders and
rejecters of offered mercy : they " shall perish in their own
corruption," " shall be put away like dross," " shall be cast
away like bad fish," "shall be destroyed," "consumed
utterly," "be as ashes under the feet of the right
eous," " burned up as in an oven," " burned up as stub
ble," be so completely consumed as to " leave neither root
nor branch," "plucked up by the roots," "broken to
shivers," " cut in sunder," " dashed in pieces like a potter's
vessel," " cut down as fruitless trees," " cast into the fire to
be burned," " destroyed in the second death ;" " Their
names shall be blotted out of the Book of Life."
It is needless to multiply citations of phraseology, or to
go into any critical examination of the Hebrew and Greek
words by which this doctrine of the complete and final
destruction of unsaved sinners is asserted. — It must be
admitted that the words abad, shachath, shamad, charam,
and apollumi, kataluo, katargeo, and others, that are used
to express this idea, are the appropriate words, and the
very strongest that could be used to express it ; the very
words our opponents would be under the necessity of using
if they were to attempt to express it. The fault — if they
lack unmistakable clearness in expressing the doctrine — is
not in the words, but in the mind of the reader. If he
comes to the reading of God's Word with the foregone con
clusion that the wicked do not actually die, so as to cease
to exist in an eternal state of conscious misery ; are not
utterly destroyed, or consumed, or blotted out of the Book
of Life ; then he must either reject, out and out, the declar
ation of the Scriptures, or find some way of putting another
sense upon these words to save his doctrine.

240 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
The same may be said of the figures employed. They are
as expressive as they could be. Take, for example, the follow
ing passages : " In the time of harvest I will say to the reap
ers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in
bundles to burn them ; but gather the wheat into my barn."
(Matt. 13 : 30.) " Now the axe is laid unto (at) the root
of the trees ; therefore every tree which bringeth not forth
good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire." (Matt.
3 : 10.) "Whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly
purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner ;
but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
(Matt. 3 : 12.)
The meaning of these and other like passages is too evi
dent to require any explanation. Indeed, no other meaning
than this can be got out of them : that these tares, these
fruitless trees, this useless chaff, to which the wicked are
likened, are to be cast into the fire to be burned up, con
sumed utterly : not to be preserved and perpetuated. The
very nature and operation of fire is to destroy and consume.
It is the most destructive element or force in nature.
Nothing can stand before it. Hence it is called unquench
able. It cannot be arrested or prevented from doing its
destructive work. Be it, that it is an " everlasting fire,"
and this may be true, for aught that we know. It may be
always ready to destroy whatever of evil may arise in the
universe, and to purify it. God Himself is said to be a
" consuming fire " — not a tormenting fire, but a consuming
fire. The idea of these figures is evidently not torment,
but consumption. There would necessarily be torment in
the destruction of the wicked by fire, but their destruction,
miserable destruction, utter destruction, is inevitable, ex
cepting by a perpetual miracle to keep them alive that they
may continue to suffer. But this notion, which some have
actually advocated, is a pure invention of a heathen phil-

Sec. 7.] PUNISHMENT. 241
osophy and of a barbarous age. It has not the shadow of
any foundation in the Word of God.
The advocates of the doctrine of eternal suffering have
been compelled to resort to various hypotheses, and special
pleadings, to which nothing but this wretched and baseless
dogma could have driven them, in order to sustain their
cause, so contrary to the plainest teachings of Scripture. It
is becoming quite common in these days of culture and
refinement to reject the idea of fire altogether, as the in
strument of eternal torture. It is mental or spiritual, and
not physical torment that will be eternally inflicted, we are
told. But if the punishment be equally severe, then noth
ing is gained but on the score of sentiment, by changing
the mode of its infliction ; but if the design is to render it
less terrible, then its minatory character is weakened, and
our Lord is chargeable with exaggeration and with false
pretence in threatening punishment which He never in
tends to inflict. Yea, more, if the wicked are not to be
consumed, there is no analogy or applicability in the figure
that is used ; for it is the chief function of fire to consume,
and it is evidently the very object of casting these things,
to which the wicked are likened, into the fire, to have them
burned up.
Those who hold to the old doctrine of perpetual and end
less torment, object to our understanding these figures in
any literal sense, or in any true sense, because they are
conclusive of the whole controversy, and establish our posi
tion without any further argument. They flatly contradict
and overturn their own doctrine of the indestructible
nature of the soul. This is what one of their most distin
guished champions says :
"Here is the main argument of the whole body of
annihilationists on this subject. It is the fundamental
principle of their system. And its unsoundness appears at

242 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
once from the fact that it necessarily cuts off the possibility
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 any process in a
temporal world is temporary, and each process here that is
most terrific and painful is incidentally the most short.
Dissolution most speedily attends it" (Life and Death
Eternal, p. 284.)
Such is the most extraordinary confession of one who
professes to be an honest expounder of God's Word. The
figure used by our Lord must not be allowed to have its
natural and proper meaning of speedy, inevitable
consumption, but must be taken in exactly a con
trary sense ; that is, instead of being understood as
teaching that the wicked are destroyed, it must be under
stood as teaching that they are to be preserved alive in
torment forever. And why ? Because it contradicts his
own philosophy, and he cannot sustain his own position
without completely reversing its meaning ! ! And yet this
author, in a previous chapter of his book, had been trying
to show that the immortality of the sinner was so obvious
that there was no need of its direct assertion in the Word
of God, but that it was everywhere taken for granted. It
is true that the immortality of the Deity is asserted again
and again, as an abstract proposition. But he says that :
"The Scriptures are charged with messages of such
tremendous import concerning the character and condition
of that endless existence, as quite to throw into the back
ground the abstract proposition of the soul's immortality.
If they had been mere human teachers, they might have
indulged in sentimental dissertations and romantic specula
tions on the greatness and the immortality of the human
soul. But they came as divine teachers to teach men
concerning their present and eternal relation to the gov
ernment of God ; to proclaim endless holmess and well-
being, or everlasting sin and woe, as pending on faith and

)
Sec. 7.] PUNISHMENT. 243
repentance here. To them the naked question of immor
tality, aside from these relations and issues, was of no
account at all — no more than the life of an oyster. . .
 On such abstract propositions they waste no
breath. It is always in the form of the actual, concrete
immortality that Christ and His apostles teach this doc
trine," etc. (p. 191-2.)
Hj then, they have never asserted this doctrine — as they
most surely have not — " aside from these relations and
issues " " as imaged forth in these transient figures," and if
these figures cannot be used to prove it, but only the con
trary doctrine, then what becomes of the doctrine ? How
is it to be proved from the Scriptures ? It is impossible.
And the reason is, the doctrine is not found in the Scrip
tures. It can only be read into them by doing violence
to the whole spirit and tenor of God's Word, and to the
literal sense of its teaching, from beginning to end.
5. This doctrine for which we contend agrees with
the teachings of our moral sense. We cannot avoid,
if we would, exercising our moral judgment on the
character and acts of others — nor on the character
of God, as made known to us in His Word and
Providence. This faculty was given to us to be exercised
in this way. We may form a false judgment from
prejudice or the want of knowledge. This may be
corrected; but, so far as we can observe and know,
what God is and does, we must either approve or
disapprove of His ways. He expects us to do this.
No one can be brought to love and trust Him, any
further than he can be made to see and feel that He is just
and true, and good, and merciful. He invites us to con
sider and see whether His ways are not just and true, and
righteous altogether ; to taste and see that He is good.

244 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
He challenges complainers to show that His dealings with
them are not just and equal. If they are so, they can be
made to appear so, even to our limited understanding, just
so far as we can see and understand.
Now, we assert without hesitation, that the doctrine we
are opposing, namely : the infliction of unending misery
by the Almighty Creator upon the dependent, helpless
creatures of His power, cannot be reconciled with the de
mands of that moral sense which He has implanted within
us. Nay, more; no thoughtful man was ever able to
believe this doctrine. One may think, or try to think,
that he believes it. He may accept it as an abstract
theological doctrine, and try to believe it possible, but as
an actual, concrete fact, it is absolutely incredible. Bishop
Newton, in his Dissertations (No. 60), says :
"Imagine a creature, nay, imagine numberless creatures —
delivered over to torments of endless ages, without the
least hope or possibility of relaxation or redemption.
Imagine it you may, but you can never seriously believe
it, nor reconcile it to God and goodness."
We are not forgetful of the various hypotheses and the-
odicies that have been suggested and argued by the
theologians of the church, in its various branches, to ex
plain and justify this doctrine. We are not altogether
ignorant of the writings of Augustine, Baxter, Bates,
Bellamy, Bledsoe, Burnet, Calvin, Charnock, Dwight,
Edwards, Emmons, Fuller, Hopkins, Mason, Owen, Post,
Taylor, Twisse, Watson, and of many others whose honored
names might be cited. We recognize the learning, piety,
earnestness and sincerity of most of them. They show
great dialectic skill, logical power, profound thought ; but
not one of them all, from the days of Augustine till now,
has been able to found a theodicy upon this underlying
principle of the necessary, inalienable, conscious existence

Sec. 7.] PUNISHMENT. 245
of sinners in hopeless and endless misery, that could be
accepted as honorable to God, or consistent with His truth,
wisdom, justice, goodness and mercy, or that could satisfy
the reason, or the heart, or the faith of His loving, tfusting
subjects — and this, not because they did not earnestly desire
to do this, but because it could not be done on the false
foundation upon which they have attempted to build it.
Nothing better shows the hopelessness of the task to wliich
these wise and good men have devoted themselves through
long ages of discussion and scholastic argumentation, than
those various theories of theodicy that have been proposed,
and have had their adherents and their day, and have
passed away to give place to others equally unsatisfactory
and transient.
It has been argued that, God being above all law, is a
law unto Himself alone, and under no obligations to any
of His creatures ; that they have " no rights which He is
bound to respect." As the heathens used to say of their
gods, Sunt superis sua jura, " The gods have a justice of
their own." So it has been said that God has a perfect
right to do anything whatever.
" His acts are not to be brought before the tribunal of
human wisdom and justice, nor examined by the rules of
our reason and equity ; especially as it is lawful for God,
the Creator, to treat a creature, however innocent, in what
ever manner He pleases, whether it seem good to God to
annihilate him, or to inflict upon him any torture what
ever." (Dr. Twisse, Prolocutor, Westminster Assembly.)
It is said that sin is against an infinite God, and there
fore deserves a punishment of infinite duration :
" The soul of man deserves an infinite punishment for
despising an infinite good." (Lacondre.)
That sinners are punished with eternal suffering, not sim
ply for the sins they committed while on earth, but for those

246 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
they will eternally continue to commit in hell. So long as
they sin they must be punished, and as they will never
cease sinning, they will never cease to suffer.
" God may punish sin so long as it exists. He who sins
through this life, may evidently sin through another such
period, and another, and another, without end. That
while we continue to sin, God may justly punish us, if He
can punish at all, is equally evident. (Dwight, Theology,
Sermon 167.)
That, inasmuch as all sinners have an indestructible
nature, God Himself cannot destroy them, nor prevent them
from sinning, nor from suffering its consequences.
That punishment is not inflicted by God Himself, but by
a necessary law of nature. On this point Bishop Burnet

" If any difficulty arises in our minds that this punish
ment is said to be everlasting, as seeming inconsistent with
the goodness and justice of God to punish finite sins with
everlasting suffering, we may consider, First, that this suffer
ing is founded in the nature of things, and is not properly an
act of God, but the natural effect of a natural cause. And
when this suffering is threatened by God as a punish
ment, it is really nothing more than a forewarning to sin
ners of what will be the consequence of their folly, and
what their sins will naturally bring upon them." (Boyle
Lectures.) That the terrible spectacle of eternal suffering, as the
penalty of sin, is necessary to restrain the holy and keep
them from sinning.
That the punishment of the sinner in hell is not alto
gether intolerable. If is a low, miserable kind of life,
which is altogether unworthy of an immortal being ; but it
is, after all, such as he chooses.
" The Divine goodness is not to be charged with cruelty
for letting them continue in that existence, though it be

Sec. 7.] PUNISHMENT. 24T
very miserable, when they themselves will not have it re
moved ; or for not altering their condition, which they
utterly refuse to have altered. It is better for them, in
deed, not to be than to be ; but only in the opinion of wise
men, to which they do not assent. (King, Origin of Evil.)
That sinners are actually happier in hell than they
would be in heaven ; it is the very best and kindest thing
God could do for them, to send them there.
" Hell i3 appointed in mercy to the lost, because heaven
would be less congenial" (Walker, Phil, of Skepticism, p.
155.) That future punishment is altogether spiritual and men
tal. That it is self-imposed, and need not be endured any
longer than tho sinner chooses to bear it.
And so we might go on to notice other hypotheses, at
great length, but these must suffice for the present ; for we
have no intention of discussing any of these points at the
present time. We may have something to say in regard
to some of them in a subsequent chapter. But we can only
say now, that none of them have answered the purpose for
which they were intended. Instead of relieving the moral
difficulties of the case, they have served only to increase
them, and to throw the whole question of Divine punish
ment into inexplicable confusion. But if they have served
no other good purpose, they have certainly gone far to
wards demonstrating that it is impossible to found any
theodicy on this heathen dogma, that will, at the same
time, be honorable to God, consistent with the teachings of
His Word, and satisfactory to the moral instincts He has
given us.
It is not the leading purpose of this volume to demon
strate the doctrine of the destruction of the wicked, or to
give any prominence to the punitive character of God's

248 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
government. These views have already occupied too large
a share of attention in discussions concerning the nature
and destiny of man. Our special object is just the reverse
•of this ; to set forth the other side of this question ; to speak
of the great boon of life everlasting, which God gives to
mortal man, through a divine Savior. This other question
belongs to the background, and should be treated as sec
ondary and an alternative consideration.
We have dwelt upon it at some length in this section
only because our opponents insist on bringing it into this
discussion, and would not be satisfied to have it ignored.
But we are persuaded that our religious teaching has been
too largely shaded by these dark views of the punitive char
acter of God. Our prevalent systems of theology
have been built up too exclusively on theories of
government. Too much prominence has been given
to the idea of rewards and punishments in our relig
ious instruction, and too little to the beneficent,
merciful, gracious and loving attributes of our Heavenly
Father. As a consequence, the religious community has
come very generally to feel that the chief end that God has
in view is to govern, to reward, and punish His creatures,
and that the real end they are to seek after, is to avoid or
escape from His terrible justice, or, at least, to gain the re
wards or gifts of eternal blessedness and joy, which He has
to dispense. Like children under their teacher at school,
who think only of avoiding the effects of his displeasure,
and of gaining the rewards he holds out to stimulate them
to high endeavors, and so overlook entirely the ultimate
purpose of their education, we are apt to take the same
low and false view of the economy of the Divine adminis
tration ; and to forget that the object of our tutelage and
discipline here on earth is to fit us for a higher and nobler
life beyond, and for a more glorious and blessed sphere of

Sec. 7.] PUNISHMENT. 249
action, to which we can only be introduced as we are made
worthy of it, and ready for it.
It is not the chief function of parents to govern their
children, and to punish them for ill-doing, and reward them
for well-doing. This is done only with the higher purpose
of training them to a life of virtue, usefulness and prosper
ity. Indeed, the idea of government is to be kept quite in
the background, and they are to be stimulated, as far as
possible, by purer and better incentives than the fear of
punishment and the hope of reward.
. It is true, law and its sanctions, rewards and penalties,
cannot be dispensed with altogether in any disciplinary
stage of being ; but these motives belong to an imperfect
stage. Legal obedience is better than none. Perhaps it is
necessary that it should first be learned. But obedience
from love is better, and should follow close after. Spon
taneity of action, in the way of holy obedience, is still
better. It is to this more perfect stage of virtuous action
that God would educate us, and lift us. The angels do the
will of God, that is, they do that which is pure, and good,
and lovely, spontaneously, and not because they are com
manded or required to do it. They do not need to stop to
consider the advantages and disadvantages of such action.
It is quite possible, yea, probable, that they may have had
to pass through this lower plane of discipline, through
which we are now passing, in order to reach the higher and
the ultimate stage of holy living. It may be necessary for
all moral creatures to have the experience of that which
is natural, before they can enter upon that which is spirit
ual. Indeed, the Apostle says : " That was not first which
was spiritual, but that which is natural ; and afterward
that which is spiritual." (1 Cor. 15 : 46.) At any rate, it
is quite evident that we need " to bear the yoke in our
youth " ; to be educated and disciplined up to that higher

250 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
plane of living, which is set before us in such glowing
colors in the Gospels. This is just what our heavenly
Father is doing for us and with us now, in this lower,
earthly stage of our being. He would fit us for another and
more excellent life beyond, and raise us up to it, and even
bring us into fellowship with Himself in eternal blessed
ness, and He will do it, if we will yield ourselves to His
culture and discipline.
But if this shall be ineffectual, if there are any who
will not be brought into unison and harmony with Him
self, and all that is true, and good, and lovely, then they
must be taken out of the way, and destroyed as cumberers
of the ground — not preserved that He may inflict upon
them eternal torments, that He and the holy in heaven may
ever look • upon their helpless, hopeless agonies^-but de
stroyed with grief and pity on His part, and on the part
of all the holy in heaven, but, nevertheless, destrdyed with
an everlasting destruction, because they would not be

SECTION VIII.
Hell.
This word, Hell, affords a remarkable illustration, of
which we have many, of the influence of theological opin
ion in changing the meaning of Scripture terms. The
primitive idea in this word is, " to cover up," " to hide,"
" to conceal," and hell originally meant nothing more than
a place that was covered up and concealed from view.
As the bodies of the dead are covered up and concealed
when buried in the earth, it came to designate the place,
and then the condition of the buried dead, and naturally
the ideas of darkness and gloom were associated with it.
It was, however, a state, not of life — whether of joy or
suffering — but of silence and death.
But gradually, as heathen philosophy and heathen
notions concerning the separation of the soul from the body,
and of its existence in a ghostly state of consciousness and
activity came to prevail, the word hell was employed to
designate that state or condition into which all, both good
and bad, go at death. But as the good were supposed to be
happy, and the bad miserable in this ghostly state, it was
divided off by mediaeval theologians into various depart
ments, such as Paradise, the place where good souls are,
in a state of happiness ; Limbus patrum, the place for the
souls of good men till the coming of Christ ; Limbus in
fantum, a similar place for unbaptized infants ; Limbus in-
faiuorum, the receptacle of all vanity and nonsense;
Purgatory, a place for purification by fire, where venial
sins are expiated by suffering, with hope of release ; and
Hell proper, where the irreclaimable are confined, to be
forever tormented without any hope of release. And so, at
length, in the theology of the papal church, as in the

252 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
poetic fancies of the heathen mythology, this dark, hidden,
unknown place came to be as well-defined and mapped out
as any earthly territory. Indeed, the authorities of the
church professed to hold the keys of this nether world, and
to have the power of determining the precise place in it to
which men would go after death.
But in these modern times, this word Hell is employed
almost exclusively to designate the place of perpetual and
eternal torment for souls that are hopelessly lost ; and the
ordinary reader of our common version of the Scriptures
attaches this idea to it wherever it occurs in the Bible.
But this use of the word is entirely without warrant, as all
candid biblical scholars, whatever be their theological no
tions, will admit. The translators of our common version
have contributed to this error and confusion of mind by the
•uncertain, vacillating, and arbitrary manner in which they
have dealt with this word. They have given us this word
31 times in the Old Testament, and 23 in the New — 54
times in all. The Hebrew word which it represents is
sheol, and the equivalent word in Greek is HADES. The
original signification of these words was, no doubt, the same
with that of Hell, that is, " the covered or hidden place."
- Hades is composed of a, privative, and eido, to see.
"As regards the analogy between the word hades and the
English word hell, it may be remarked that the latter, in
its primitive signification, perfectly corresponds to the for
mer. For, at first, it denoted only what was secret or con
cealed, as it is found moreover with little variation of form,
and precisely the same meaning in all Teutonic dialects."
¦(Anthon's Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.)
If these words had been translated uniformly by the
word Hell, wherever they occur in the Old and New Tes
taments, the common reader would have been better able
to discover the idea that is in them ; or, what would have

Sec. 8.] hell. 253
been better — and what it is to be hoped the revisers of our
version will do — if they had simply transferred these words
to the English version without translating them, their
meaning would have been obvious. But, instead of this,
. they have sometimes rendered them by the word " grave,"
where they could be made to mean nothing else ; as, for
example, when Jacob said, " I will go down into (sheol,
hell) the grave unto my son mourning": (Gen. 37 : 35),
and when Paul said, " O death, where is thy sting ? O
(hades, hell) grave where is thy victory ?" (1 Cor. 15 : 55.)
And, sometimes, when the word sheol could be made to
mean nothing more, they have translated it " pit " ; as for
example, when Korah and his company are spoken of, it is
rendered : " They, and all that appertained to them, went
down alive into (sheol, hell) the pit." (Num. 16 : 33.) But
usually, and wherever these words would bear the meaning
of a place of torment if it were put into them, they have
rendered them "hell."
But this is not all ; the subject is still further compli
cated and confused by the rendering of two other words in
the New Testament by the English word hell, namely,
Gehenna and Tartaros. They are both proper names, and
should have been transferred without change, as the word
"Tophet," in the Old Testament, which answers to the
word Gehenna in the New, is transferred. The word Tar
taros belongs to the mythology of the heathen world. It
occurs but once (2 Pet. 2 : 4), and then with no reference
whatever to men, but only to sinning angels. There was
no good reason for translating it at all — much less for
translating it " Hell."
The word Gehenna occurs 12 times, and, instead of
transferring it as a proper name, as they have other proper
names, and as the word Tophet, to which it answers in the
Old Testament is transferred, our translators have unfortu-

254 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
nately undertaken to translate it, and still more unfortu
nately, by the same word "hell," into which they have
rendered Sheol, Hades and Tartaros (Latin, Tartarus.)
This word Gehenna is unquestionably a word of terrible
import. It carries with it the idea of an awful penal de
struction — destruction by. fire. The consequence of trans
lating it by the same English word by which sheol and
hades are translated, is to throw these same ideas into them
all, and to lead the common reader to believe that wher
ever the word " hell " occurs in his Bible, it means the
same thing — a place of punishment by fire — than which
nothing can be more false.
Our translators have done the very same things with the
words nephesh, psuehe, and zoe, as we have had occasion to
show in a previous section. They have rendered the first
two sometimes " soul," and sometimes " life," and some
times by some other words, and then the third they have
also rendered " life " ; in the one case making distinctions
where there were none to be made, and in the other con
cealing the real distinctions, which ought to have been
made as manifest as possible.
No wonder that the psychology and the eschatology of
the Bible have been thrown into lamentable confusion by
such treatment. Mr. Martin F. Tupper, in a paper enti
tled the Names of Deceit, in remarking upon some words,
the meanings of which " have been changed by priestcraft,
and embalmed as sources of unscriptural error " in our re
ligious literature, says :
" So also with hell, usually known to our Saxon ancestors
as the realm of Hela, goddess of Death, and rather the
place of rest than of punishment. Hades, or hell, into which
our Lord descended, is (all are agreed) by no means the
place where the wicked are cast : and we all know that
there are three different words in the original, which our

Sec. 8.] hell. 255
translators clumsily render but by one ; whilst, if you try
to explain away the differences, you simply confound them
to the vulgar apprehension."
It is to be hoped that the Revisers will do something to
repair this mischief, and to set the real Bible doctrine of
the nature of man and his destiny in its true light. But it
will be some time yet before we shall have the complete
revision, and still longer before it will come into general
use. It will be necessary, therefore, as in the case of the
words "soul"and "life," in a previous section, in order to a cor
rect understanding of the meaning of this word "hell" in the
Scriptures, to refer it back to the original words which it
is made to represent, and to cite the passages — and we shall
cite them all — in which these words, Sheol, Hades, Ge
henna and Tartarus, occur in the Old and New Testa
ments. But first, let us advert again to the primary meaning of
the word Hell, and then, by a careful examination of texts,
we shall be prepared to inquire into its true Scriptural
meaning, wherever it occurs in the Bible. As to the original
meaning of this word " Hell," there is no dispute among
respectable philologists and biblical scholars. It anciently
designated simply a place that was covered up and hidden
from view, and the ideas that are now attached to it are
entirely foreign to its primitive meaning.
Webster derives it from " the Anglo-Saxon, and the old
high German helan, to hide, conceal, cover up.
Richardson says, " Skinner and Wachter concur with
other etymologists that ' Hell ' is from the Anglo-Saxon
helan. Ger. hullen, to cover."
" Our English, or rather Saxon, word " hell," in its origi
nal signification, exactly answers to the Greek word hades,
and denotes a concealed or unseen place, and this sense of

256 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
the word is still retained in the western counties of Eng
land : to ' hele over ' a thing is to cover it." (Parkhurst.)
" At first it denoted only what was secret or concealed."
(Dr. Campbell.)
" The English word ' hell ' signifies nothing more than
' the unseen and covered place,' and is properly used, both
in the Old and New Testaments, to render the Hebrew
word in the one, and the Greek word in the other, which
denotes the invisible mansion of disembodied souls (?) with
out any reference to suffering." (Bishop Horsley.)
" Our old English word " hell," which, though scarcely
used (at the present time) but for the place of torment, yet
being a derivative from the Saxon hellan, to hide, or from
' hell,' a cavern, anciently denoted the concealed or unseen
place of the dead generally." (Robinson's Biblical Dic
tionary.) " It is an old English word, or rather Saxon, signifying
a place of concealment." (Beeton's Biblical Dictionary.)
"This is the word generally and unfortunately used by our
translators to render the Hebrew sheol. We say unfortu
nately, because — although, as St. Augustine truly says,
Sheol; with its Inferi, and Hades are never used in a good
sense, yet — the English word Hell is mixed up with num
berless associations entirely foreign to the minds of the
ancient Hebrews. It would, perhaps, have been better to
retain the Hebrew word Sheol, or else render it always by
' the grave ' or ' the pit.' Passing over the definitions sug
gested by older writers, it is now generally agreed that the
word comes from the root " to make hollow," and therefore
means the vast hollow subterranean resting place which is
the common receptacle of the dead." (Smith's Dictionary
of the Bible.)
We might add to these authorities indefinitely ; but the
above will suffice to show what was the primitive meanmg
of the word. What it has now come to mean under the
influence of our traditional theology, and how these ideas
have been infused into it by scholastics, philosophers, poets

Sec. 8.] hell. 257
and theologians, in its progress down the ages — it is not
important for us more particularly to inquire at the pres
ent time. But we are chiefly concerned to know whether
these views are correct, whether they are in accordance
with the teaching of God's Word, or, in other words, what
does this word mean in the Bible, or rather what do the
original words signify which in our Bible are translated
" Hell." As before remarked, there are four such words, namely :
Sheol, in the Hebrew, and Hades, Gehenna and Tartaros,
in the Greek ; to these we may add also the Hebrew word
Topheth, or Tophet, which — though never translated hell,
but simply transferred as a proper name, yet as it is rep
resented by the word Gehenna in the Greek, also a proper
name, but which, instead of being transferred, has been un
accountably translated " hell " — requires our notice in con
nection with the Greek word Gehenna.
SHEOL AND HADES.
These two words may be considered as substantially one,
for they are universally admitted to be synonymous. In
the Greek version of the Old Testament, called the Septua-
gint, made nearly three hundred years before the Christian
era, this word Sheol is almost uniformly rendered Hades.
In the Latin Vulgate they are both represented by the
same word, Infernus.
Peter, in quoting from Psa. 16 : 10, "Thou wilt not leave
my soul in (Sheol) hell," uses the word Hades as the equiv
alent of Sheol, thus : " Thou wilt not leave my soul in
(Hades) hell." (Acts 2 : 27.) So we may consider these
two words together as one word. But as they have not
been uniformly rendered by the one English word, "hell," in
our common version, but by several words, according to the
pleasure of the translators, we shall be under the necessity

258 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
of citing, not merely the passages rendered " hell," but all
of the passages in which these two words occur in the orig
inal Hebrew or Greek, in whatever way they have been
rendered. Sheol occurs 65 times, and is rendered " Hell " 31 times,
" grave " 31, and " pit " 3 times. Hades occurs 11 times,
and is translated " Hell " 10 times, and " grave " once, as
follows :
SHEOL.
Sheol, translated " Hell " 31 times.
Deut. 32 : 22, and shall barn unto the lowest H.
2 Sam. 22 : 6, the sorrows of H. compassed me about
Job 11 : 8, what canst thou do ? deeper than H.
26 : 6, H. is naked before him and destruction
Psa. 9 : 17, the wicked shall be turned into H.
16 : 10, for thou wilt not leave my soul in H.
18 : 5, The sorrows of H. compassed me about
55 : 15, and let them go quick down into H.
86 : 13, delivered my soul from the lowest H.
116 : 3, and the pains of H. gat hold upon me
139 : 8, if I make my bed in H. behold thou
Prov. 5 : 5, down to death ; her steps take hold on H.
7 : 27, her house is the way to H. going down
9 : 18, knoweth . . her guests are in the depths of H.
15 : 11, H. and destruction are before the Lord
15 : 24, that he may depart from H. beneath
23 : 14, beat . . and shall deliver his soul from H.
27 : 20, H. and destruction are never full
Isa. 5 : 14, therefore H. hath enlarged herself
14 : 9, H. from beneath is moved for thee to
14 : 15, yet thou shalt be brought down to H.
28 : 15, and with H. are we at agreement
28 : 18, your agreement with H. shall not stand
57 : 9, and didst debase thyself even unto H.
Ezek. 31 : 16, when I cast him down to H. with them
31 : 17, they also went down into H. with him
32 : 21, shall speak to him out of the midst of H.
32 : 27, which have gone down to H. with these
Amos 9 : 2, though they dig into H. thence shall
Jonah 2 : 2, out of the belly of H. cried I and thon
Hab. 2 : 5, who enlarge his desire as H. and is as

Sec. 8.J hell. 259
Sheol, translated " Grave " 31 times.
Gen. 37 : 35, 1 will go down into the G. unto my son
42 : 38, down my grey hairs with sorrow to the G.
44 : 29, down my grey hairs with sorrow to the G.
44 : 31, down the grey hairs . . with sorrow to the Q-.
1 Sam. 2 : 6, he bringeth down to the G. and bringeth
1 Kings 2 : 6, hoar head, go down to the G. in peace
2 : 9, bring thou down to the G. with blood
Job 7 - 9, he that goeth down to the G. shall
14 : 13, O that thou wouldst hide me in the G.
17 : 13, if I wait the G. is mine house
21 : 13, and in a moment go down to the G.
24 : 19, so doth the G. those which have
Psa. 6 : 5, in the G. who shall give thee thanks
30 : 3, hast brought up my soul from the G.
31 : 17, the wicked . . let them be silent in the G.
49 : 14, like sheep they are laid 'in the G.
49 : 14, their beauty shall-consume in the G.
49 : 15, redeem my soul from the power of the G.
88 : 3, and my soul draweth nigh unto the G.
89 : 48, deliver his soul from the hand of the G ? '
141 : 7, our bones are scattered at the G's mouth
Prov. 1 : 12, let us swallow them up alive as the G.
30 : 16, the G. and the barren womb
Eccl. 9 : 10, no work . . in the G. whither thou goest
Cant. 8 : 6, jealousy is as cruel as the G.
Isa. 14 : 11, thy pomp is brought down to the G.
38 : 10, 1 said . . shall go the gates of the G.
38 : 18, for the G. cannot praise thee
Ezek. 31 : 15, in the day . . he went down to the G.
Hos. 13 : 14, ransom them from the power of the G.
13 : 14, O G. I will by thy destruction

Sheol, translated " Pit " 3 times.
Numb. 16 : 30, and they go down quickly into the P.
16 : 33, went down alive to the P. and the
Job 17 : 16, they shall go down to the bars of the P.

HADES.
Hades, translated " Hell " 10 times.
Matt. 11 : 23, thou shalt be brought down to H.
16 : 18, gates of H. shall not prevail against it

260 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
Luke 10 : 15, and thou . . shalt be thrust down to H.
16 : 23, in H. he lifted up his eyes being in torment
Acts 2 : 27, thou wilt not leave my soul in H.
2 : 31, that his soul was not left in H. neither
Eev. 1 : 18, I . . have the keys of H. and of death
6 : 8, 1 looked . . and H. followed with him
20 : 13, death and H. delivered up the dead
20 : 14, death and H. were cast into the lake

Hades, translated " Grave " once.
1 Cor. 15 : 55, O death— O Grave, where is thy victory ?

NOTES AND CONCLUSIONS.
1. That these words sheol and hades are synonymous, and
are used to express the same idea — whatever it is — in both
the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, we have already shown.
Were this disputed, we might cite numerous authorities to
establish the point. But we need only add to those al
ready given, the remarks of Prof. Moses Stuart, in his
Essays on Future Punishment :
" Before the New Testament was written, the translators
of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek ; i. e., the "seventy,"
as they are usually called, had made very frequent use of
the word hades to translate sheol. They have done this in
no less than sixty instances out of sixty-three in which the
word sheol is employed in the original Hebrew 
The sense which these translators affixed to it is most evi
dently the same as the Hebrews affixed to the word sheol.
In the Apochrypha I find the word employed sixteen

Bee. 8.] hem.. 261
times, and in all cases in a manner that corresponds en
tirely with the use of sheol. We are prepared then to ex
pect the like use of hades in the New Testament."
2. That these words, or this word, as we may properly
say, has one general, uniform meaning wherever it occurs
throughout the entire Bible, and should have had a uni
form translation, if translated at all, is equally obvious to
reason and to the observation of any one who will take the
trouble to examine for himself. It is unreasonable to-
suppose that the inspired writers would use one word to ex
press ideas so diverse and conflicting as those now attached
to these several words by which sheol and hades are translat
ed, without giving us any intimation of this variety of use-
Not only in the Greek Septuagint and in the Latin Vul
gate, as we have seen, but in the oldest Latin version made
from the Syriac by Tremellus, a learned Jew, this word
sheol is uniformly rendered sepulcrum, which means sepul
chre. In the French version of the American Bible Soci
ety, it is likewise invariably (excepting in one instance,
Job 9 : 8) rendered sepulchre. It is universally regretted,
by all Bible scholars, whatever their views on the main
question may be, that our translators should have treated
this word as they have done. It is to be accounted for in
part on the supposition that the word " hell " had not in
their age taken on that definite and exclusive meaning
which it now holds ; but was more nearly synonymous with
" the grave " than it now is. This is seen in the fact that
in very many cases, after putting the word "hell" into the
text, they put the word " grave " into the margin, as an
alternative rendering. Had they confined themselves to
either word, it would have been better than to vacillate be
tween them. Had they uniformly employed the word
" hell " in translating both sheol and hades, it might have
tended to fix the meaning of this word in its original and

262 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
Scriptural sense ; for the etymological meaning of these
three words is the same in these three languages ; but now
that this English word has come to designate a place of
endless torment for the wicked, the texts in which it is
found, convey, to the common reader, a meaning that is
utterly false.
" It had been well if our translators had observed the
uniformity of translation of which the Septuagint version
set them an example. In their utter confusion of ideas,
however, on this whole question, produced by their adop
tion of the Platonic ideas of death and the soul, they have
given to the Hebrew word sheol such a variety of transla
tions as have effectually prevented the English reader of
the Old Testament from being able to form any opinion
of what the Old Testament really teaches. . . . The
result has been a confusion of thought upon this question,
which seems all but impossible to remove." (Intermediate
State, p. 99.)
3. That sheol and hades do not designate a place of pun
ishment for the wicked, much less a place of eternal pun
ishment, may be asserted without any fear of successful con
tradiction. That there is a future punishment for the
wicked after death, the Bible most explicitly declares. It
is not our purpose or desire to deny it. We Would rather
emphasize this truth. But there is nothing to be gained by
forcing this doctrine into passages that were not designed to
teach it. Indeed, it is in this way that the doctrine itself
is brought into doubt and contempt.
That the impenitent wicked are to be punished, fearfully
punished, everlastingly punished, is too solemn a truth to
be ignored, or explained away, or trifled with — but it is
not in sheol, nor in hades, but in Gehenna, quite another
place, as we shall see when we come to consider that word,
though unfortunately it has been mixed up with these
two other words by our translators.

Sec. 8.] hell. 263
Sheol and hades indicate a place into which all mortals
go at death, whether high or low, young or old, good or
bad. Indeed, the Psalmist would seem to make it the re
ceptacle of beasts also, when he says : " Like sheep they
are laid in the grave." (Psa. 49 : 14.) This is,sheol, hell, in
the original, and is so rendered in the Douay version. But
not to insist on this ; it is the universal receptacle of the
dead of the human race. It denotes, not so much a specific
place of burial, as the condition or state into which all go
at death. There is another word, Keber, which is used to
designate a specific, individual grave — sheol is used in a
general and collective sense to denote the realm, region, or
state of the deceased.
"Sheol and hades do not mean that narrow bed in
wliich one corpse is laid, but in this relation they signify
that region of darkness and insensibility in which all
corpses repose. One corpse is lowered into its keber — all
corpses lie in sheol." (Dr. Eadie, Biblical Cyclopedia.)
The Psalmist asks (Psa. 89 : 48), "What man is he that
liveth and shall not see death ? Shall he deliver his soul
from the hand of the grave?" — sheol, hell, it is in the origi
nal, and it is so rendered in the Douay version. It was in
to this place that Jacob said he would go mourning for his
son Joseph. " For I will go down into the grave (sheol)
unto my son mourning." (Gen. 37 : 35.)
Here David expected to follow his infant child. "I shall
go to him, but he shall not return to me." Here Job
wished that he might be hidden. " O, that thou wouldst
hide me in (sheol) the grave." (Job 14 : 13.) It was into-
this place that our Lord descended when he expired on the
cross. The Psalmist, prophetically speaking of him, says :
" Thou wilt not leave my soul in (sheol) hell, neither wilt
thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption." (Psa. 16 : 10.)
Peter quotes this passage (Acts 2 : 27) as referring to our

264 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
Lord, and employs the Greek word hades as equivalent to
the Hebrew sheol.
The word " soul " here is evidently meant to include the
whole person. It is a Hebraism of frequent occurrence in
the Old Testament, as we have shown in a previous sec
tion. " A very little attention to the laws of Hebrew gram
mar, and the principles of Hebrew poetry and parallelisms,
will at once render the meaning of this prophecy plain to
the meanest capacity. The 16th Psalm refers to the Mes
siah. He expresses a perfect confidence in His Father.
Being assured of His own ability to fulfil His commission,
he has no less confidence that the Father whom He served
would raise Him from the dead — the law being satisfied,
and His work being concluded. " My flesh shall rest in
hope, for —
" 'Thou wilt not abandon me to sheol,
Nor permit thy Holy One to see corruption.'
" The two lines form what is called a parallelism — the
last hemistich echoing the sentiment of the former. The
words my soul mean merely myself. . . Nouns of this
nature are used, because the Hebrew has no intensive or
reflective pronouns. It is thus obvious that the argument
based upon the idea that Christ's soul went to Sheol and His
body to the grave, has no foundation. The Hebrew does not
warrant this distinction. Christ's "soul" in such an idiom
is His entire person. Now, what is meant by sheol ? It is
the place where corruption is seen — the region of the dead.
So the apostles understood it. Though Messiah was to die,
death's power over Him was to be very limited. He was
not to be abandoned to his dark dominion. His body was
to be so short a time in the grave, as not to suffer the ordi
nary process of decomposition." (Eadie.)
4. Sheol and hades designate a place within this earth,
and not some far distant region of the universe. The popular
idea of heaven as above this earth and beyond the stars,
has, by a kind of induction, located hell in the opposite

Sec. 8.] hell. 265
direction, and equally far removed from the earth. But
there is not the least warrant for this in the Scriptures.
This place is always spoken of, both by direct assertion
and by implication, as underground, in the bowels of the
earth. Our Lord Himself designates His resting place
after burial as in the heart of the earth. " For as Jonas
was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so
shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth." (Matt. 12 : 40.) Paul, in alluding to
the same event, says : " Now that He ascended, what is it
but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the
earth." (Eph. 4:9.)
The word sheol denotes, says Taylor (Heb. Con.), as
quoted by Barnes (Isa. 14 : 9) —
" The underground parts of the earth, otherwise called
the nether or lower parts of the earth ; the earth beneath,
in opposition to the earth above, where men and other
animals live. In sheol are the foundations of the moun
tains (Deut. 32 : 22). Into sheol men penetrate by dig
ging into the earth (Amos 9 : 2). Into sheol the roots, of
trees do strike (Ezek. 31 : 16). Into sheol, Korah, Dathan
and Abiram went down alive (Numb. 16 : 20). In sheol
the body is corrupted and consumed by worms (Psa. 16 :
10). They that rest together in the dust are said to go
down to the bars or strong gates of sheol (Job 17 : 16). In
sheol there is no knowledge, nor can any praise God or
give thanks (Psa. 6 : 5. Isa. 38 : 10, 11). Sheol and the
pit, death and corruption are synonymous. A grave is one
particular cavity digged purposely for the interment of a-
dead person ; sheol is a collective noun for all the graves.
He that is in the grave is in sheol, but he that is in sheol
may not be in the grave, but in any pit, or in the sea. In
short, it is the region of the dead, which is figuratively
considered as a city or large habitation with gates and
bars, in which there are many chambers."
This is so obvious, that sheol is rendered "grave" instead
of hell, in our version in 31 passages, and hell and grave

266 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
are given as alternative renderings in the text and in the
margin in many other passages. And in the New Testa
ment, though hades ten times out of eleven is rendered
"hell," it could not be so rendered in the eleventh instance
without conflicting with the doctrine of our translators,
that hell is a place of eternal torment, and so (as we will
soon show) they translated it " grave."
5. These words designate a place into which not merely
all men go at death, but into which they go bodily. It is
not that ghost-land which modern theology — borrowing its
ideas from the heathen world — represents it to be, — a place
where the souls or spirits of the deceased go, while their
bodies only are consigned to the grave, but where both go
together. In the case of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, Moses said:
"If the earth open her mouth and swallow them up, with
all that appertain to them, and they go down quick into
(sheol) the pit, then ye shall understand that these men
have provoked the Lord. And the earth opened her mouth
and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men
that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods, they and
all that appertained unto them went down alive into
(sheol) the pit, and the earth closed upon them." (Numb.
16 : 30-33.) Here this word sheol is rendered " pit," and
the ordinary reader has no intimation that it is the same
word that is rendered " hell" in some places, and " grave"
in others.
Job evidently used this word as equivalent to the grave
when be said : " If I wait (sheol) the grave is my house. I
have made my bed in the darkness. I have said to cor
ruption, Thou art my father ; to the worm, Thou art my
mother and my sister, and where is now my hope ? as for
my hope, who shall see it ? They shall go down to the

Sec. 8.] Hell. 267
bars of (sheol) the pit, when our rest together is in the
dust." (Job 17 : 13-16). Here again in one verse sheol is
rendered " grave," and in another, " pit."
The Psalmist also says : " Our bones are scattered at the
mouth of (sheol) the grave." (Psa. 141 : 7.) And again,
" Let not their hoar head go down to (sheol) the grave in
peace." (1 Kings 2 : 6, 9.)
The notion that there are two separate places for the
same individual, into one of which his body goes at death,.
and into the other his ghost goes, is not sustained by ode-
single passage of Scripture. It is a heathen fancy that ha*
been imported into our theology, and it is only by mis
translations and perversions of various texts that any seem
ing support has been found for it. The Scriptures uni
formly speak of the whole individual, entire, as going down ,
to sheol, as resting in sheol. Sometimes the individual is
designated by his proper name, as that of Jacob, or David,
or Christ. Sometimes the pronoun he or she is used, and
sometimes the words " my soul " or " his soul," not how
ever as describing one particular part of our complex be
ing, but for the sake of emphasis, and for the want of the
reflex pronoun in the Hebrew language. In our language •
we would say I, myself, he, himself, but in the Hebrew my
soul, his soul is necessarily used. Our translators, instead?
of rendering these passages according to the laws of our
language by the reflex pronoun, have unfortunately given
us these Hebraisms " my soul," " his soul," " your soul,"
and in this way encouraged the impression that the body is
especially excepted. For a full illustration of this point
the reader is referred to the citations and remarks under
nephesh in a previous section.
" Heathen poets and tragedians amused their fancies by
pictures of Elysian fields within this earth, where the souls
oi the blessed dead sought relief from the tedium of exist-

268 (176) BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
ence in occupations as like to earth as their disembodied
conditions would permit of. Something of what Plato
sought vainly to establish by reason, the fancy of the Greek
poets, copied by the Latin muse, eagerly laid hold of as a
good ground-work for amusing the wits of Athens and
Rome. . . The introduction of heathen ideas among the
Jewish people, consequent upon the conquest of Alexander;
the incorporation of the Jews into the Grecian empire, and
especially the residence of vast numbers of them in Alex
andria, brought into the region of Jewish thought and
speculation the heathen fancies of Elysium for righteous
Souls, and Tartarus for wicked souls during the disembodied
state. But for all this they had to travel beyond the re
gion of their own holy books. The Law, the Psalms, the
Prophets ignored any such land as Pluto ruled within the
heart of the earth. They knew of no ghost-land for disem
bodied souls. With them, death was truly death. With them,
God carried out the spirit and the letter of the old sen
tence, which said : "In the day that thou eatest thereof
thou shalt surely die." They did not seek to evade this
sentence of death, or to cast discredit upon the word of
Him whose Spirit inspired them, by teaching that death
was only a change of life, sometimes better, sometimes
worse." (Hades, p. 121.)
" A careful examination of the passages in which these
words (sheol and hades) occur, will probably lead to the
conclusion that they afford no real sanction to the notion
of an intermediate state, of the kind indicated, but are used
by the inspired writers to denote the grave — the resting
place of the bodies both of the righteous and the wicked."
(Kitto, on Luke 16.)
6. These words denote a place — not of life, conscious
ness and activity, but rather — of death, insensibility, dark
ness and corruption.
Solomon says : " There is no work, nor device, nor
knowledge, nor wisdom in (sheol) the grave whither thou
goest." (Eccl. 9:10.) The Psalmist says: "Let the
wicked be ashamed and let them be silent in (sheol) the
grave." (Psa. 31 : 17.)

Sec. 8.] hell. 269
In the Hebrew parallelisms — in wliich the same idea is
expressed under two forms — the word sheol is always made
synonymous with death ; thus, " The sorrows of (sheol) hell
compassed me about ; the snares of death prevented me."
(2 Sam. 22 : 6.) "For in death there is no remembrance of
thee ; in (sheol) the grave who shall give thee thanks."
(Psa. 6 : 5.) " Like sheep they are laid in (sheol) the
grave ; death shall feed on them." (Psa. 49 : 14.) "What
man is he that liveth and shall not see death ? Shall he
deliver his soul (himself) from the hand of (sheol) the
grave?" (Psa. 89 : 48.) " Her feet go down to death ; her
steps take hold on (sheol) hell." (Prov. 5 : 4.) " Her
house is the way to (sheol) hell, going down to the cham
bers of death." (Prov. 7 : 27.) " For (sheol) the grave
cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee," (Isa. 38 :
18), etc., etc.
It is true that commentators and lexicographers define
sheol and hades as meaning the region of departed spirits
and of ghosts. But it is only after they have read this
heathenish notion into these words. It is not their Scrip
tural meaning. In the Bible, uncorrupted by pagan fiction
or philosophy, sheol is "the land of darkness and the
shadow of death ; a land of darkness as darkness itself, and
the shadow of death." (Job 10 : 21, 22.)
Gesenius, as though he would accommodate his defini
tion to cover these opposite views, says : "Sheol is the hades
of the Hebrews, in which thick darkness reigns, and where
all men after death live as ghosts, without thought or sensa
tion." What kind of a life that would be "without thought
or sensation," we are quite unable to understand. In what
does it differ from death itself? But if one chooses to call
that life, we need not dispute about the term, so long as he
holds with us this truth, that the dead in sheol are " with
out thought or sensation." This is the condition in which

270 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
the Word of God represents them as being, and remaining
till the resurrection, when they shall live again.
There are, ho.wever, certain passages in which the dead
are metaphorically spoken of as though they were alive, but
these expressions are so evidently figurative, that they would
require no special notice were it not for the fact that they
have been pressed into the service of this false philosophy,
which teaches that the d«md are actually alive, and that
sheol and hades denote a place of conscious life and ac
tivity. Isaiah, in one of his most beautiful poetic visions, thus
describes the overthrow of the haughty king of Babylon,
and represents the hadean world as rejoicing in his down
fall, and the many kings that he had slain in battle as
taunting him as he goes down to meet them. Yea, the
whole earth is full of joy and rejoicing, that the city, so
long distinguished for oppressions and arrogance, is laid
low ; and even the cedars are introduced as uttering a most
severe taunt over the fallen tyrant, and expressing their
security now that he is no more. Then the scene changes
from earth to hades. Hades, or the region of the dead, is
represented as moved at the descent of the haughty king
of Babylon to these abodes. Departed monarchs rise
from their thrones and insult him, on being reduced from
his pride and magnificence to the same low state as them-

"Hell (sheol) from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee
at thy coming. It stirreth up the dead for thee, even all
the chief ones of the earth. It has raised up from their
thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak
and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we ? Art
thou become like unto us ? Thy pomp is brought down
to (sheol) the grave, and the noise of thy viols ; the worm

Sec. 8.] hell. 271
is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee." (Isa. 14 :
9-11.) Similar figures of personification are employed by Eze
kiel to describe the overthrow of Pharaoh, king of Egypt
(see 31st and 32d chapters) :
"Thus saith the Lord God : In the day when he went down
to (sheol) the grave, I caused a mourning. I covered the deep
for him and restrained the floods thereof, and the great waters
were stayed ; and I caused Lebanon to mourn for him, and
all the trees of the field fainted for him. I made the nations
to shake at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down to
(sheol) hell with them that descended into the pit ; and all
the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that
drink water shall be comforted in the nether parts of the
earth. . . They also went down into (sheol) hell with
him, unto them that be slain with the sword."
Then follows an enumeration of the various forces of the
slain that are in hades, " whose graves are set in the midst
of the pit," " the princes and mighty warriors slain with
the sword," " which have gone down to (sheol) hell with
their weapons of war." They are described there as "speak
ing out of the midst of (sheol) hell."
• In the same line we have in the New Testament, in the
Parable of the Rich man and Lazarus, a prophetical repre
sentation of the overthrow and humiliation of the haughty
Pharisaical Jewish people, and of the elevation of the poor
Gentiles, whom they so much despised, to the high
places of privilege from which they were to fall.
It cannot be denied that this is a parable, a suppositional,
and not a real scene that is depicted, and that, as in all
parables, unreal persons are introduced, and metaphors are
employed. And yet, strange to say, this is the text of all
others that is relied on to prove that the hadean world
is a place of conscious suffering. Indeed there is no other
passage, among the whole number in which sheol or hades

272 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
is found throughout the Bible, which can bear this construc
tion. " This is the text," says an able writer, " upon which the
advocates of this theory mainly rely. In offensive warfare
it is their sword ; in defensive, their shield. When their
position is attacked, and outwork after outwork falls, they
retreat behind this citadel, from which they profess to be
able to successfully repel every assault. Dare to question
the popular doctrine, anil the parable of the Rich man and
Lazarus is the text that is expected to meet every objection,
remove every doubt and silence every opponent. It seems
to be the settled orthodox conviction that from this text,
or rather from the popular exposition of it, there can be no
appeal. It is relied upon to prove that dead men are con
scious, that the soul is immortal, and that the wicked are
to suffer endless misery. Orthodox preachers and writers,
after calling it a parable, treat it as though it were a real
narrative." (Doctrine of Immortality, p. 229.)
There is no reason whatever that can be offered for
construing the terms of this parable literally, but just the
necessity for finding some support for this doctrine ; and
here its advocates think they find it. But we must ask,
Is it to be presumed that after having the meaning oisheol
and hades fully defined and established by the vmiform
usage of Scripture in all the numerous other passages where
they occur, we are at liberty to construe this passage from
a parable which is evidently figurative, in such a way as to
contradict them all, and reverse their meaning ?
Parables are not to be used in this way. They are not
given to teach us the literal meaning of terms, nor, indeed,
to elucidate doctrines, but rather, on the contrary, to partly
conceal them, as our Lord Himself has said : " And the
disciples came and said unto Him, Why speakest thou unto
them in parables ? He answered and said unto them :
Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the
kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. There-

Sec. 8.] hell. 273
fore speak I to them in parables, because they seeing see
not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they under
stand," etc. (Matt. 13 : 10.) If this scene had been located
in Gehenna, which is evidently a place of ignominious de
struction, as we shall soon see (which has also unfortunately
been translated by the same word as hades, though the name
of an entirely different place), there might be some excuse for
the arguments that are attempted to be built upon it. But
the scene is located in Hades, the region of death and silence.
It is not into Gehenna that the rich man is represented as
going at death ; and when he is figuratively spoken of as
dead, and bemoaning his sad condition compared with
what it had formerly been, and contrasting it with the
happy lot of Lazarus, whom he had formerly looked down
upon with contempt, we are not to ignore the plain teach
ing of our Lord in this parable — as the context as well as
the text itself make evident — that, by a literal interpreta
tion, and by special pleading, we may make it seem to
teach a doctrine that is quite foreign to its intent, and
which is in conflict with the uniform teaching of all other
parts of the Scripture.
As we shall have occasion to consider this passage
again when we come to examine those texts that have
been supposed to teach the doctrine of eternal torment, w*
leave it for the present without further remark.
7. Sheol and hades denote not the eternal, but only the
temporary resting place of the dead. It is the place
where the dead, both good and bad, wait for the coming
of the Lord. It is a place of darkness and silence, and of
sleep: so says God's Word. The righteous cannot there praise
Him, nor can the wicked curse Him ; neither can the im
provident there make any further preparation for the judg
ment. " It is appointed unto men once to die, and after

274 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
this the judgment." Death is the fruit of sin. So it is the
lot of all men, " for all have sinned." Were it not for re
demption through Christ ; had He not ransomed us from
the power of death, hades would have been our eternal
resting place, " our long, last home." The resurrection of
the dead is not the natural consequent of death. It is not
a normal process of development, as a false philosophy,
which ignores the work of Christ, teaches. It is altogether
supernatural and miraculous. This is one of the cardinal
truths of the Gospel. It was indeed foreshadowed before
the coming of Christ, and dimly apprehended by God's an
cient people. Hence they died in hope, believing that
" God had provided some better thing " for them in the
future, but by what means, and how they were to obtain it,
was to them a mystery, until life from the dead — " Life
and Immortality were brought to light through the Gos
pel." And the heathen world still more dimly apprehending
this great Gospel truth ; and looking into the grave, and not
beyond it to Him who is "the Resurrection and the Life,"
they have invested the hadean world with that life —
whether of pleasure or pain — which can only be given by
a resurrection from the dead. Hence the Athenian philos
ophers, when Paul " preached unto them Jesus and the
resurrection," were offended, and called it "a new doc
trine," and the same philosophy opposes it to the present
day. But it is none the less the teaching of Divine revela
tion, both in the Old and New Testaments. God's ancient
servants were inspired to prophesy concerning it. And
though they did not apprehend the full import of the words
they used, we are told they " inquired and searched dili
gently — searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit
of Christ which was in them did signify when it testified
beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that
should follow." (1 Pet. 1 : 11.)

Sec. 8.] hell. 275
The Psalmist says, " God will redeem my soul (me) from
the power of (sheol) the grave." Contrasting the future
lot of the righteous with that of the wicked, he says : "The
upright shall have dominion over them in the morning •"
that is, when they are redeemed from the power of sheol.
(Psa. 49 : 14, 15.) " My flesh will rest in hope ; for thou
wilt not leave my soul (me) in (sheol) hell; neither
wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption. Thou
wilt show me the path of life ; in thy presence is fulness of
joy. At thy right hand are pleasures forevermore." (Psa.
16 : 9, 11.)
Daniel says, " 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 everlasting shame
and contempt, as our opponents often quote the passage].
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." (12 : 2, 3.)
Hosea says : " I will ransom them from the power of
(sheol) the grave, I will redeem them from death. O death,
I will be thy plagues 1 O (sheol) grave I will be thy de
struction." (13 : 14.) We understand the same doctrine
to be figuratively taught in Ezekiel's vision of the dry
bones (37th chap.)
But this is especially a doctrine — or rather, the doctrine
— of the Gospel. It is at the foundation of all its other
doctrines. For the Apostle truly says : " If the dead rise
not, then is not Christ raised ; and if Christ be not raised,
your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also
which are fallen asleep in Christ are (gone to nought) per
ished." (1 Cor. 15 : 16-18.) This was the great leading
doctrine which Christ Himself taught, or rather would have
taught His followers, but they were very dull of apprehen
sion. They were to lay up their treasures, not on earth,

276 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
but in heaven. They were to look for the reward of their
faith and faithfulness, not here, but in the life beyond.
The disciple may not receive his recompense here ; but,
says Christ, " Thou shalt be recompensed" — not in hades,
or the intermediate state, but — " at the resurrection of the
just." (Luke 14 : 14.)
Mary and Martha, under the instruction of Christ, had
come to receive this doctrine in ,a vague and technical way,
but, like the other believing Jews, they had no true concep
tion of it, much less of the real foundation on which it
rested. Hence when Jesus said to them at the grave of
Lazarus, " Thy brother shall rise again, Martha said un
to Him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection
at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the Resurrec
tion and the Life. He that believeth in me, though he
were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and be
lieveth in me shall never die." (John 11 : 23-26.) 'That is
to say — as we understand it-»-Those that have gone down
to hades shall be restored to life, and those who continue
in life till the last day shall not die, but be changed and
raised to the life everlasting that I shall give them. This
certainly is the truth which His disciples were commis
sioned to preach. As Paul teaches :
" For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even
so them which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. For
this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we
which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord
shall not prevent (go before) them which are asleep. For
the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,
with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of
God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we
which are alive and remain shall be caught up together
with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and
so shall. we ever be with the Lord." (1 Thes. 4 : 14-17.)

Sec. 8.] . hell. 277
Again, to the caviling Jews, our Lord says :
" For, as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth
(giveth life to) them, even so the Son quickeneth whom -He
will. . . Marvel not at this, the hour is coming in the
which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and
shall come forth ; they that have done good unto the res
urrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the
resurrection of damnation. . . Search the Scriptures,
for in them ye think ye have eternal life. [But you wili
find no promise of it there excepting through me.] They
are they which testify of me. And ye will not come unto
me that ye might have life." (John 5 : 21-40.)
Here was one of the chief points of difference between
the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Neither party held to
this doctrine as taught in the Scriptures. The Pharisees
had very generally adopted the notions of the heathen na
tions around them with respect to the intermediate state.
Hades was, in their view, a region of ghosts, where disem
bodied spirits dwelt and had intercourse with each other,
and received the rewards or penalties of their conduct in
this life. So far as they believed in any resurrection at
all, it was more as a great pageant than as that great event
upon which all hope or possibility of a future life rested.
The Sadducees, on the other hand, believed in no future
life at all. Death was to them the end of all being. That
they might perplex and confound Christ, they brought to
Him the supposed case of a woman who, after marrying
seven brothers in succession, died at last herself; and asked
Him, "Whose wife shall she be of the seven, in the resurrec
tion ?" (Matt. 22, Mark 12, Luke 20.) The reply of Christis
well worthy of careful study in its bearing on the point in
hand. He first says: "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures,
nor the power of God." If the question had been pro
pounded by the Pharisees, it would doubtless have been :
"Whose wife shall she be in Hades?" And His reply,

278 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
" Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of
God," would have been equally applicable. But as there
was . no question between Him and the Sadducees respect
ing the unconscious state of the dead, He takes no notice
of the error of the Pharisees on this point, for it was not
to them He was addressing Himself. He goes on to say :
" When they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry
nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels which are
in heaven." It seems incredible, if there be any conscious
ness in hades, and the relationships of this life be there
remembered, that Christ should not have made some allu
sion to it.
But He still further replies, "As touching the dead, that
they rise" — or, as recorded in Luke, " Now that the dead
are raised — even Moses showed at the bush, when he call-
eth the Lord, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob ; for He is not the God of the dead,
but of the living ; for all live unto Him." Though their
life on earth is finished ; though they are sleeping in the
dust of the earth, God has them in His keeping and remem
brance. Their career is not finished. In that sense they are
not dead, but sleeping. He will yet raise them up and reward
them. That both the Sadducees and Pharisees understood
the reply of our Lord as meeting the point the Sadducees
had raised — not concerning the intermediate state, as some
have endeavored to construe it, but — " as touching the
resurrection of the dead," is evident from the sequel ; for it
is said, " After that they durst not ask Him any ques
tion at all." " But when the Pharisees had heard that He
had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered
together," etc.
The notion prevails very generally in the Papal church,
and to some extent among Protestants, as a part of the

Sec. 8.] hell. 279
legacy of error that tradition has given us, that the souls
of the righteous dead were liberated by our Lord when He
descended into hades at His death, and that they then as
cended with Him to heaven, and that, all who have died
since that time, if purified from all sin, go directly to
heaven — and that they will only come back for their bod
ies at the time of the general resurrection. In connection
with this doctrine, and as a part of it, Christ is supposed to
have preached the Gospel to the spirits that were confined
in this hadean prison, during the interval between His
death and resurrection.
We cannot here enter into the discussion of this subject.
There are two or three texts of Scripture that are quoted
to sustain this doctrine, as there are texts that can be made
apparently to sustain every other error of that corrupt
church. But we are to inquire, not how certain texts can
be made to yield an apparent support for any doctrine to
which we may be partial, but rather what is the uniform
teaching of God's Word ; and how can passages that seem
to conflict with each other, or that are capable of two
renderings, be reconciled with each other, and made
to harmonize with the whole drift and import of its teach
ing ? To us, it seems obvious that these notions are at war
with the general and uniform teaching of Scripture, and
that they are sustained, so far as they are sustained at all,
only by an unwarranted construction of certain texts,
which are admitted on all hands to be mysterious and
difficult of interpretation, and especially by the false and
heathenish ideas that have been forced into this word hades
as used in the Scriptures.
To one who comes to the reading of the Scriptures with
no theory to bias his mind, their natural and obvious teach
ing would be that Christ died the same kind of death to
which every child of Adam; both before and since His

280 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
coming, is subject : that His descent into hades — so unfor
tunately rendered " hell " — was like that of every other
man ; and that the only difference between Him and His
people, in this respect, is in the time during which He lay
in the embrace of death. "He was put to death in the flesh
but quickened (made alive again) by the Spirit," that
Divine, inextinguishable, ever-living Spirit, " which was in
the beginning, now is, and ever shall be," the Supreme
source of all life.
In the death and resurrection of Christ, we are not merely
furnished with an example or illustration of the way in which
we shall be recovered from the power of death, but we have
the procuring cause and the pledge of our own resurrec
tion. " Now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first
fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death,
by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in
Adam all die, even so in Christ Bhall all be made alive.
But every man in his own order ; Christ, the first fruits,
afterwards they that are Christ's at His coming." (1 Cor.
15 : 20-23.)
By this, and numerous other passages more or less ex
plicit, we understand the resurrection to be, not an event
"already past," as did Hymeneus and Philetus, "who
concerning the truth have erred," nor as now passing, as
too many of their followers at the present day do, but as
yet future, though none the less certain.
The Apostle Peter, in his Pentecostal sermon, after show
ing how Christ had been put to death according to the
"determinate counsel and fore-knowledge of God," and
how He had burst the bands of death, " because it was not
possible that He should be holden by it," quotes the lan
guage of David in the 16th Psalm as prophetical of our
Lord's death ahd resurrection, and declares explicitly
that, while it had been fulfilled in the case of Da-

Sec. 8.] hell. 281
vid's Son, it had not yet been fulfilled in the case
of David: the One had risen and been exalted to the
right hand of God, and was even then dispensing the gift
of His Spirit upon the living, the other was still resting in
his sepulchre. " Men and brethren," he says, " let me
freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is
both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto
this day. . . For David is not ascended into ihe heav
ens." (Acts 2 : 29, 34.) And Paul says, " For David after
he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell
on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers and saw corruption ;
but He whom God raised, saw no corruption." (Acts 13 :
36, 37.)
If David still sleeps in hades waiting for the coming of
his Lord to awake him, we may well suppose that this is
true of all the other ancient worthies, and, indeed, of all
the pious dead. To us who are living, it may seem a long
time to wait, but to them who are asleep, there is no sensi
ble interval. The moment of dying is the moment of
awakening in the likeness and in the image of Christ.
But were we to suppose them to be not insensible, but in
that abnormal state of consciousness, which is so commonly
believed to intervene between death and the resurrection —
" unclothed," as the Apostle expresses it, a condition which
he did not desire, but rather to be " clothed upon, that
mortality might be swallowed up of life " at the coming of
his Lord — then we could hardly avoid conceiving of it as
a long, and dreary, and unsatisfactory interval ; for it is
only when they shall awake in Christ's likeness, that saints
shall be satisfied.
To us, such a state of disembodiment in which the de
ceased are now supposed to be lingering out of their
natural bodies, but not yet having entered their spiritual
bodies, dwelling neither on earth nor in heaven, but sus-

282 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
pended as it were between the two, taking notice of the affairs
of this world, striving perhaps to communicate with the
friends they have left behind — not only seems unwarranted
by Scripture, but opposed to its teachings. To us it has no
attractions. These notions seem to us, like the dreams of a
morbid imagination, mingling with a heathen philosophy.
Certainly, there is nothing in the practical influence of
these fancies to recommend them.
It is said that Dr. Robert Hall held, as we do, to the
doctrine of the unconscious state of the dead, till the loss
by death of a dear brother, when he fell into this way of
thinking of the disembodied spirits of the dead, which is so
common with those from whom dear friends have been
taken by death.
It may not be easy to reason against sentiments of this
nature, but there is no argument in them. We may not find
it in our hearts to severely censure them, and yet we can
not sympathize with them. Our own experience of be
reavement has been the very reverse of this. While writ
ing these pages, the blow that has crushed our fondest
earthly hopes has fallen upon us ; a son, an only son, a
dearly cherished son, in the bloom of health and the fresh
ness of early manhood — a youth of great promise and
of Christian faith, one who fully sympathized with us in
our religious views — one upon whom we had begun to lean,
and had hoped to lean more and more in our declining
years ; one whom we had expected would close our eyes in
death, has been snatched away before us — and we have laid
his cold, lifeless body in the tomb. He sleeps in Jesus,
and this is our comfort, not that he "hath already ascended
into the heavens" — not that he has gone away to that far
distant, undefined, Utopian region of disembodied spirits,
from whence he must come again to undergo a kind of sec
ond resurrection — not that as a ghost he is now hovering;

Sec. 8.] hell. (191) 283
around us as we write, and cognizant of these fast-falling
tears, which he is powerless to wipe away, but that he
sleeps all unconscious of the sorrows of this mortal vale of
tears, sleeps, taking no note of the lapse of time ; sleeps
with his dear mother, whom we laid to rest before him, and
with all the righteous dead, not one of whom is forgotten
by their Lord, ready for the joyful summons which shall
call them, and us all, whether living or dead, "to meet Him
in the air when He shall come to be glorified in, His saints
and to be admired in all them that believe in that day."
" For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a
shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump
of God ; and the dead in Christ shall rise first ; then we
which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together
with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air : and
so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort
one another with these words."
But we forbear to speculate upon the state of the dead.
We have no desire to dispute with those who entertain
other views from those we have expressed on this mysteri
ous subject, much less to reproach them. It is not a ques
tion which it is necessary for us to argue here, for it is not
vital to the main topic we are discussing. Christians may
perhaps never in this life be able to agree concerning it.
We can well afford to wait till it shall be .made plain in
our own glorious experience.
But of this we may be sure, that the hadean world,
whether a world of darkness and silence, or of life and
activity, is but a temporary resting-place of the dead. It
is not our eternal abode. Our Lord hath gone to prepare
a more glorious habitation for His people, and He will
come again to receive us to Himself, that where He is we
may be also.
He holds the keys of (hades) hell and of death, and,

284 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
though he tarry long, He will come as He has promised
and unlock the gates of this dark prison house, and all
that are in their graves shall come forth ; death and hades
shall deliver up the dead which are in them ; the sea also
shall deliver up the dead which are in it, and they whose
names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life shall be
welcomed into their everlasting habitations, and whosoever
shall not be found written in the Book of Life shall be cast
into the lake of fire ; and death and (hades) hell also shall
be cast in with them, that they may be consumed together.
" This is the second death."
" So when this corruptible shall have put on incorrup-
rtion, and this mortal shall have put on immortahty, then
•¦shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death
is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting,
O (hades, hell) grave, where is thy victory ?" (1 Cor. 15 :
-54, 55.)
Reference is here made to the words of the Prophet, " I
will swallow up death in victory." (Isa. 25 : 8.) H this
word hades had been rendered hell, as it is uniformly ren-
- •dered in the ten other places in which it is found in the
-common version of the New Testament, the popular notion
of an eternal hell, perpetually and forever victorious over
those whom it is supposed to hold in its tormenting fires,
would have been seen to be, as it really is, utterly incon
sistent with the teachings of Scripture ; and therefore, in
order to sustain this delusion — for we can conceive of no
other reason — this word hades, in this passage where a
•complete and final victory over hades is declared, is not
allowed by the translators to mean hell, as they have made
it mean in every other place in the New Testament, but it
must be made to mean simply the " grave," from which
the bodies of all, both good and bad, will rise in the last
^resurrection ! ! But the popular idea concerning the souls

Sec. 8.] hell. 285
of the wicked, that they go down into hades, a dark prison
house of misery and despair, from which they shall never
be delivered, a place that is as permanent and abiding as
heaven itself — this idea, false as it certainly is, must not
be disturbed, but the Scriptures must be so translated as to
sustain it

TOPHET AND GEHENNA.
We come now to the examination of an entirely different
word. For these two words, like sheol and hades, are sub
stantially one ; the former is found only in the Old Testa
ment, and the latter in the New.
To the south — some say to the S. W., and others to the
S. E. — of Jerusalem there is, or was, a ravine which in
early times went by the name of the Valley of Hinnom.
A portion of this valley seems to have been designated as
the Valley of the Son of Hinnom. It was afterwards
called Topheth, or Tophet, or Toph ; and subsequently, in
the time of our Lord, Ge-Hinnom, or under the Greek form
of spelling, Ge-Henna.
Although Bible scholars all agree in understanding these
words as proper names, and as designating one place, they
differ somewhat as to the precise location of this valley,
and the details of its history, and the origin of the various
names by which it is called.
Dr. Young, in his Analytical Concordance, says :
"Hinnom — A person of whom nothing is known but
that he had a son, whose name is not given, from whom a
valley, that lay to the W. and S. W. of Jerusalem, was
named, and in which human sacrifices and filth were
burnt"

286 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
" Tophet — A place in the Valley of Hinnom where sac
rifices were offered and the dead bodies burned or con
sumed." A writer in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible describes the
Valley of Hinnom as —
" A deep and narrow ravine, with steep, rocky sides, to
the S. or W. of Jerusalem, . . taking its name, ac
cording to Professor Stanley, from some ancient hero, the
son of Hinnom having encamped in it. . . On the
southern brow, overlooking the valley at its eastern ex
tremity, Solomon erected high places for Moloch, whose
horrid rites were revived from time to time, in the same
vicinity, by later idolatrous kings. Ahaz and Manasseh
made their children ' pass through the fire ' in this valley,
and the fiendish custom of infant sacrifices to the fire-gods
seems to have been kept up in Tophet, its S. E. extremity,
for a considerable period. To put an end to these abomi
nations, the place was polluted by Josiah, who rendered it
ceremonially unclean by spreading over it human bones
and other corruption, from which time it appears to have
become the common cesspool of the city, into which its
sewage was conducted, to be carried off by the waters of
Kidron, as well as a laystall where all its solid filth was
collected. Most commentators follow Buxtorf, Lightfoot
and others in asserting that perpetual fires were . kept up
for the consumption of the bodies of criminals, carcasses of
animals, and whatever else was combustible."
In commenting on Isaiah 30 : 33, " For Tophet is or
dained of old, yea, for the king it is prepared ; he hath
made it deep and large ; the pile thereof is fire and much
wood ; the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone
doth kindle it," Mr. Barnes says :
" The sense is that the army of the Assyrians would be
completely destroyed, as if it were a great pile of wood in
the valley of Hinnom that should be fired by the breath
of God. The language is all figurative, and is designed to
denote that the army of the Assyrians would be totally

Sec. 8.] hell. 287
overcome and destroyed. The word "Tophet" denotes
properly what causes loathing or abhorrence ; that which
produces disgust and vomiting (from the Chaldee Tuph,
to spit out.) . . It is applied to a deep valley on the
south-east of Jerusalem, celebrated as the seat of idolatry,
particularly the worship of Moloch. The name of the
" Valley of Hinnom " was given to it ; and hence the name
Ge-Henna as denoting the place of future punishments,
of which the valley of Hinnom or Tophet was a striking
emblem. This valley was well- watered, and was formerly
most fertile and delightfully shaded with trees. It was
early selected, however, as the seat of the worship of Mo
loch, where his rites were celebrated by erecting a huge
brazen image, with a hollow trunk and arms, which was
heated, and within which, or on the arms of which, chil
dren were placed as a sacrifice to the horrid idol. To
drown their cries, drums were beaten which were called Toph
or Tophim ; and hence many suppose the name Tophet was
given to the place. The name, the ' Valley of Hinnom,'
or Gehenna, was probably from the former possessor or
occupier of that name. In subsequent times, however, this
place was regarded with deep abhorrence. It became the
receptacle of all the filth of the city ; and hence, in order
to purify the atmosphere and prevent contagion, it was
needful to keep the fire there continually burning. It be
came thus a striking emblem of hell-fire, and as such is
used in the New Testament."
The word Hinnom occurs 13 times, and the word Toph-
eth or Tophet 10 times in the Old Testament. As they are
never translated, but only transferred as proper names to
our version, we need not cite the passages where they
occur, but will simply refer the reader to them, as follows :
Hinnom — Josh. 15 : 8, twice ; 18 : 16, twice ; 2 Kings
23 : 10 ; 2 Chron. 28 : 3 ; 33 : 6 ; Neh. 11 : 30 ; Jer. 7 :
31,32; 19:2,6; 32:35.
Tophet— 2 Kings 23 : 10 ; Isa. 30 : 33 : Jer. 7 : 31, 32 ;
19 : 6, 11, 12, 13, 14.

288 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
GEHENNA.
Gehenna occurs in the New Testament 12 times, and
is translated " Hell " every time, as follows :
Matt. 5 : 22, "Thou fool," shall be in danger of H. fire
5 : 29, thy whole body should be cast into H.
5 : 30, thv whole body should be cast into H.
10 : 28, able to destroy both soul and body in H.
: 9, having two eyes to be cast into H. fire
: 15, make him two-fold more the child of H.
: 33, how can ye escape the damnation of H ?
: 43, than having two hands to go into H.
: 45, than having two feet to be cast into H. fire
: 47, having two eyes to be cast into H. fire
: 5, hath power to cast into II., yea, I say
: 6, and is set on fire of H. (the tongue.)

18

23

23

Mark

9

9
9
Luke
12
Jaa.
3
NOTES AND CONCLUSIONS.
1. It is to be observed that Gehenna is not a common, but
a proper noun — the name of a place ; and no good reason
can be given why it should not have been transferred as
such to our version ; certainly, no good reason why the
word " hell," by which hades is rendered, should have been
put in its place. It is true that all names of places and
of persons among the Hebrews had some significant origin ;
thus, Jerusalem means a possession of peace ; Bethlehem, a
house of bread ; Kidron, obscurity ; Gethsemane, a valley
of oil ; etc. These meanings, however, are not substituted
in the place of these words by our translators. But what
is worse in this case, the original of this word is not sub
stituted, but a new meaning has been forced into it. It
simply means the "Valley of Hinnom." Why, then,
should it have been called anything else ?
Sec. 8.] hell. 289
An able English writer (S. F. Pells) in commenting on
this word, says :
" The word Gehenna is derived from the words Ge Hin
nom, the valley of Hinnom, located just outside of Jerusa
lem, on the south-west, flow it came to be translated
" hell," I cannot understand, seeing it is the name of a lit
eral place in Palestine, as much the name of a place as
Jerusalem or the Mount of Olives. The LXX (the Sep-
tuagint translators) did not translate it from the Hebrew
to the Greek, and it is not translated in Griesbach's New
Testament, nor in Rotherham's, nor in the French Bible ;
and why it is translated " hell " in the common English
version, I cannot tell. I know of no other instance in
Scripture where any other literal phrase is thus trans
lated." 2. This was a name of local and limited application in
the time of our Lord : a place, however, well-known to all
the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and, perhaps, to all the Jew
ish people. Hence our Lord (as we find recorded in Mat
thew, Mark and Luke) refers to it on several occasions in
speaking to them. It is nowhere else referred to in the
New Testament, excepting once by James (3 : 6) in his
epistle " to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad."
And yet, to all who were acquainted with it, Gehenna
was a place of bad associations. It came to be significant
as the receptacle of whatever was worthless, vile, abomin
able, and fit only to be cast out and destroyed ; and not
only this, but destroyed in the most disgraceful and fearful
manner. It took a figurative application in this sense.
Our Lord Himself, no doubt, employed it in this figurative
manner when speaking of the final rejection and destruc
tion of the wicked. It was a place where in former ages
parents had been accustomed to burn their children alive
in sacrifice to Moloch ; and where, in later times, all the
filth and garbage, the carcasses of dead animals and the

290 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
bodies of criminals who had been put to death, were cast,
to be consumed by the worms that fed upon them, and by
the fires that were kept continually burning for this pur
pose, and to purify the atmosphere. It does not appear
that it was a place where criminals were punished before
death, or where they were executed, but it was a place
where their bodies were cast in disgrace after they had
been put to death. There seem to have been three
degrees of punishment, according to the criminality of the
offender, as implied by the words of Christ (Matt. 5 : 22),
"Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause
shall be in danger (1) of the judgment; and whosoever
shall say to his brother, ' Raca,' shall be in danger (2) of
the Council ; but whosoever shall say, 'Thou fool,' shall be
in danger (3) of (Gehenna tou puros) the Gehenna of
fire,"— that is to say, — of the most ignominious destruction,
as though he were cast into this abominable place to be
" utterly consumed." Then He goes on to say (verse 29),
" And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it
from thee ; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy mem
bers should perish, and not that thy whole body should be
cast into Gehenna." And again (10 : 28), "Fear not them
which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul" [who
can cause physical death, but cannot deprive you of that
future, endless life which God only can give or take away],
" but rather fear Him who is able to (apokteinai, put an end
to and utterly consume) destroy both soul and body in
Gehenna." These words of our Lord are given as follows
in Luke 12 : 4,5, "Be not afraid of them that kill the body
and after that have no more that they can do. But I will
forewarn you whom ye shall fear ; Fear Him which after
He hath killed, hath power to cast into Gehenna." This,
as in the case of the criminal whose vile body is cast out
into this loathsome valley, to be disgracefully consumed,

Sec. 8.] hell. 291
will put a wretched and final end to all whom God shall
destroy in that Gehenna, or place of fire, which He hath
prepared for the devil and his angels.
3. It is to be especially observed, that whenever our
Lord speaks of Gehenna, whether literally or figuratively,
it is not as a place of torment, but of destruction, of igno
minious, fearful, complete and final destruction. Although
torment may accompany the destruction, this is not the
primary idea. Indeed, it would appear to be the place in
to which bodies are cast after the loss of life and sensation.
At any rate, our Lord never speaks of Gehenna as a place
for the souls of men, apart from the body ; but rather for
the body and soul united, that both may be — not tor
mented, but — destroyed together.
Nothing can be more evident than that the object for
which these vile carcasses were cast into Gehenna was that
they might be consumed — not preserved, but utterly de
stroyed. This was the object for which these fires were
kept burning, to burn up these putrifying materials and (by
pur, fire) to purify the atmosphere. And when used
tropically, with reference to the wicked whom God shall
cast out, it must have the same application.
What if these fires were kept constantly burning from
year to year and from generation to generation ? it was
only because there was a constant supply of new material
for them to prey upon. What if these devouring worms
never died ? it was not because they were forever feeding
upon the same identical carcasses, but only because a con
stant succession of dead bodies was given to them. We
know not but that the fire of God, which He has prepared
for the destruction of the devil and his angels, may be, as
it is called, an " everlasting fire." We know not but that
the agencies employed for the destruction of that which is

292 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
vile and worthless, and for the purification of His universe,
may be everlasting in their existence. They no doubt will
be, if they are forever needed for this purpose. We can
not say what new creations and what new destructions
there may be in the revolving cycle of the infinite future.
But we cannot suppose that He will be eternally engaged
in destroying the samethings, and that, too, without accom
plishing His purpose ! !
But the inference, that because the fire of Gehenna is
said to be everlasting and unquenchable, and the devour
ing worm is said not to die, therefore they are tq prey for
ever upon the same identical victims, and that, too, not for
the purpose of devouring, but for the sole purpose of tor
menting them, is an atrocious perversion of the figure em
ployed. It is not only at war with the spirit and teaching
of Scripture, but it outrages reason and common sense, and
nothing but the exigencies of that heathen philosophy
which teaches that man is so noble a creature that he can
not be destroyed — a doctrine that has nothing but assump
tion to rest upon — could have undertaken to subordinate
these passages of Scripture to its use.
The very nature of fire, and the legitimate end for which
it is employed, is to consume. Though fiendish persecutors
have sometimes employed it to torment their victims, and
have been anxious to intensify and prolong the agony as
much as possible, yet the greater the suffering, the more
speedily death comes to end It. The two are, in the very
nature of things, inseparable. Fire only torments as it de
stroys. It is only fed by the consumption of that upon
which it preys. The ignis sapiens of scholastic theology —
the fire that continually renews that upon which it feeds-
is an impossible fiction. That fire is unquenchable which
cannot be arrested or extinguished till it has accomplished its
work of destruction, and then it necessarily goes out of it-

Sec. 8.] hell. 293
self, unless new material is supplied to it ; and by the worm
that dies not, can only be understood the worm that will not
leave its work of destruction unfinished, and is continually
feeding on the carcasses that are continually given to it. If
one should foolishly attempt to prove from these vivid pic
tures of corruption and destruction, that there is a species of
worm that has immortality — that never actually dies — he
would be as far as ever from showing that the bodies upon
which it was forever feeding were also inconsumable and
fm mortal.

4. It is in this way, and to sustain the fiction of a
heathen philosophy, as to the indestructible nature of man,
that the teaching of the Word of God on this point, as
well as on many others connected with it, has been com
pletely reversed.
By the use of this word Gehenna, in a tropical sense,
our Lord intended to teach the Jewish people, who were
familiar with the locality to which He referred, and us,
who know its history, that all the worthless, the wicked,
the abominable and vile shall be cast out of the glorious
kingdom which He is setting up, and that they all shall be
consume^, burned up, and utterly destroyed, like the re
fuse of Jerusalem, by the worms and fires of Gehenna-
But instead of this, scholastic theology, under the guidance
of pagan philosophy, has represented Him as teaching just
the opposite, namely : that all this refuse, worthless and
vile as it is, shall not be consumed nor destroyed, but con
served and preserved forever ; that these figurative agents
of destruction shall be employed, not as their types in nature
to accomplish this end, but for the very opposite purpose of
preservation and perpetuation and torment forever and ever t
And this is the philosophy and the theology which the

294 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
I
Protestant world have accepted by tradition from the cor
rupt and apostate church of the dark ages.
The translators of our common version of the Scriptures
gave what aid they could to this doctrine — for they bad
been taught to believe it — by their rendering of this word
Gehenna. It is hardly safe for one who would be accounted
" orthodox," even at this day, to question the propriety of
their rendering. But the day is evidently at hand when
the teaching of Scripture with respect to Gehenna, as well
as sheol and hades, all of which are translated " hell," shalL
be better understood. If the Committee of Revision shall
have the fairness and the courage to transfer these words
to their revised edition, as we trust they may, without at
tempting to translate them, it will mark one long step in
this direction.

TARTAKOS OR TARTARUS.
This is a word that belongs to heathen mythology, a word
of the poets. Virgil, Horace, Lucretius, Statius, and other
poets employ it to designate what was understood to be the
infernal regions. Pluto, who was supposed to be the
reigning deity of these regions, is called Tartarus Pater,
Father Tartarus. This word Tartaros occurs but once in
the Bible; namely, in 2 Pet. 2 : 4, "For if God spared not
the angels that sinned, but cast them down (Tartarosas) to
hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be re
served unto judgment." Had not this word also been
translated " hell," we should have no occasion to allude to
it in considering the doom of wicked men ; for it will be

Sec. 8.] hell. 295
perceived that it does not refer to the abode of wicked men,
but only to the place of the temporary confinement of the
wicked angels, until the time when they should be judged
and destroyed.
"Neither wicked men nor fallen angels receive their
punishment before the judgment. Tartarus, then, is not
here used to denote a place of torment (but of detention).
Where Tartarus is, we are not informed, and we should not
attempt to. be wise above that which is written. Many
eminent critics have supposed that the Apostle used this
.term to denote the aerial regions that surround the earth.
The fact that the chief of these angels is called "the prince
of the power of the air," may be thought to give some sup
port to such a supposition. According to Bloomfield, Tar
tarus is an intensive reduplication of the very old word tar,
which in the earliest dialects signified dark. The parallel
text in Jude 6, seems to express the idea that Tartarus is
a region of darkness : ' The angelS which kept not their
first estate, but left their own habitation, He hath reserved
in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment
of the great day.' . . . The modern notion that Tarta
rus is an apartment of hades, a sort of underground dun
geon of torture, is based solely on heathen fables, and has
not a syllable of Scripture for its support. The attempt to
make a pagan of Peter will not succeed with those who
prefer the authority of inspiration to that of Greek myth
ology." (Doctrine of Immortality.)
The final conclusion to which we come, after a careful
examination of all the words which are translated hell in
our common version of the Bible, and of all the passages
where this word is found, is not that there is no hell, and
no future punishment for the wicked, but that the Scrip
tures do not afford us any warrant for believing in such a
hell as heathen mythology has taught us to conceive of,
nor in any such future punishment of never-ending tor
ment as the traditional theology of barbarous ages has per
petuated in the creeds of the Christian church; and, fur-

296 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
thermore, that these various words, sheol, hades, gehenna
and tartaros, all of which are translated " hell," are by no
means synonymous. The effect of rendering them all by
this one English word, has been to increase and perpetuate
the popular delusion and confusion of ideas on this ques
tion of future punishment.
The words sheol and hades mean " hell," or rather what
this word hell originally meant — a place that is covered
up and concealed — that place or state into which all mor
tals go when they die, whether good or bad, there to re
main as it were asleep, till they shall be awakened by the
" voice of the archangel and the trump of God " at the last
day. The only reason why these words cannot now be
properly translated " bell," is that this word has lost its
original meaning, and has come in our popular theology to
represent an entirely 'different class of ideas — 'ideas bor
rowed from the heathen world, and not from the Bible.
The best that now can be done with them in the revision
of the Scriptures, is simply to tranfer them, and let them
speak for themselves.
The punishment that awaits the wicked after death, is
well represented by the devouring worm and the consum
ing fire of Gehenna — not the punishment of eternal pre
servation and eternal torture, but of complete and utter
destruction and extermination, "in that day when the Lord
Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty an
gels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know
not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction,
from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His
power, when He shall come to be glorified in His saints.
and to be admired in all them that believe."

SECTION IX.
The Great Salvation.

[Reprinted from the "Church Union."']
FROM WHAT DOES CHRIST SAVE USf
No. 1.
In an excellent article, entitled " Salvation from Sin,"
in the Church Union of last week, it is well said :
" There is a practical theology afloat in the church which
confines the meaning of the word ' salvation ' to our deliv
erance from hell, and that looks upon Jesus as our deliverer
from punishment and eternal ruin. He is this, it is true,
but the piety which can only say, ' Jesus Christ is my
Savior from hell,' is of a very low grade, and far inferior
to that piety which can say, ' Jesus Christ is my Savior
from sin.' The former kind has very weak conceptions of
what the Lord has actually done."
But is not this article, while it shows a higher apprecia
tion of the work of Christ than the popular theology it
criticises, open to the same criticism ? Does it not stop
short in its estimate of the greatness of His work in our be
half? So it seems to us. The virtue of Christ's saving
power is not exhausted in merely saving us from sin. He
does infinitely more — He saves us from death — not from
dying, but from the dominion and power of death, which is
the end of sin, " when it is finished."
One's estimate of the greatness of our salvation depends
very much on his conception of the doom to which we are
exposed, and from which we are saved. H he conceives it
to be not death, as the Scriptures teach, but simply a "state
of sin and misery," as our catechisms teach, endlessly per
petuated, and which we have been taught to call " death,"
that we may not too violently contradict the Word of God,
then our salvation must be held to consist in being rescued

298 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
from this state and restored to holiness and consequent
blessedness forever. If all who are not thus rescued must
remain without hope and forever in this " state of sin and
misery," then surely the salvation of those who are rescued
may be well called a great salvation. But how much
greater is that salvation by which we are rescued from
death itself?
That misery follows hard upon sin, and ever will and
must, so long as sin itself shall exist, is too evident to be
argued or questioned. By the law of our being, as well as
by the providence of God, sin and misery, like holiness and
happiness, are forever inseparable. But what authority
have men for assuming and teaching that they are alike
eternal? that under the ordering of One who is infinitely
wise and good, the good and the bad are equally stable
and enduring ? Nay, are we not expressly told that sin is
an intruder, and that its miserable career is short, and its
destiny sure. Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death;
not misery merely — this is its companion ; not alienation
from God simply— this is from the very first — but death.
" The end of those things is death." So are we told every
where throughout God's Word. Sin in the soul is likened
to disease in the body. The pain or misery that accom
panies and follows it is not its final result. It is only symp
tomatic — it forewarns us of the end to which it leads. We
belong to a corrupt, and consequently to a transitory race.
The poison of sin — like that of leprosy, to which the Scrip
tures liken it — in the blood, is sure in time to develop it
self in every child of Adam. The immortality that was
promised to our first parents, on condition of perpetual
holmess, has been forfeited. We are all, as their children,
involved in one common doom of mortality — and that, too,
without respect to our individual character. The infant
that is snatched from life before it knows what actual

Sec. 9. j the great salvation. 299
transgression is, as well as the hoary-headed sinner and the
ignorant heathen who never heard of the true God or of a
Savior, are all alike under one common sentence of death
— not surely of eternal sin and misery. This is their lot
while they live ; but their end is death. This the doom
from which Christ would save them. This was the very
object of His coming and of His death. He did not come
to save us from sinning, nor from suffering, nor from dying,
for we go through all these experiences — He Himself went
through them, excepting He was without sin, and so had
no reason for the suffering and death He endured in Him
self; but He died that He might give us life — eternal life.
He suffered precisely the same death to which we are all
appointed, being made one with us in our humanity. But
it 'was only His human life that He laid down ; He was
" put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit."
That spiritual and Divine life which is in Him, and which
is His peculiar attribute, could not suffer death. It was
with this life that He rose from the dead. This is the life
He offers to all who will receive Him as their Savior. It
is offered, not as a reward of merit, but as the gift of God.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begot
ten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not per
ish, but have everlasting life." "The wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord." " Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift "
— the gift of eternal life through His Son our Savior ; not
of eternal holiness merely, nor of eternal blessedness, but
of that which is above all and includes all — of Eternal
Life. This life is not the old life reformed and restored. It is
another life, infinitely higher, and better, and more endur
ing than the old human life which we lay down. Our
Adamic life is earthly at the best ; and corrupted by sin,

300 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
it is necessarily transitory. But the life He gives us in the
new birth is spiritual and pure — even His own life com
municated to us — and hence, incorruptible and eternal.
He offers to do more and infinitely better for us than to re
pair the damage done by sin, and save us from its conse
quent misery, so long as our natural life shall be prolonged.
He offers to give us a supernatural life ; to lift us entirely
out of our animal and human condition as earthly crea
tures ; to transform us into spiritual and heavenly creatures ;
to take us into fellowship with Himself, and make us heirs
of His everlasting kingdom, and partakers of its blessed
ness and glory forever.
Christ is, indeed, our Savior from — or, rather, out of—
our sins and our miseries consequent on sin. This is surely
a great salvation, for which we cannot thank Him too fer
vently. But this is not all. He does infinitely more. He
gives us Eternal life — even his own peculiar life — with all
that is implied in this wonderful gift. And when we think
of these higher gifts of His love and grace, the representa
tions that stop short of these and are confined to the lower,
¦- seem to be meagre and stinted, and in a sense dishonoring,
as withholding from Him the praise that is His due. We
cannot but say with the Psalmist, " O give unto the Lord
the glory due unto His name." This is the reason why we
protest so earnestly against the final supplementary clause
that is added to the platform of principles that is given at
the head of this otherwise very catholic and acceptable
i paper.* It limits the passage of Scripture, which it im
perfectly quotes, to a very partial and imperfect statement
of Christ's work in our behalf. Indeed, it perverts its
meanmg, and constrains all who accept of this platform as
* " Christ — the only name given under heaven among men
•whereby we may be saved from sin and eternal punishment."

Sec. 9.] THE GREAT SALVATION. 301
a brief statement of their belief, to adopt the limitation and
the perversion as their own. Christ is truly " the only
name given under heaven among men whereby we may
(must) be saved." Ii the platform ended here, where the
text ends, all evangelical Christians could accept it. But
the added clause — " from sin and eternal punishment " —
by which it is limited and accommodated to the dogmatic
views of a portion only of Christ's people, however numer
ous they may be, adds no force to it, even in their own ,
minds, while it is an offence to those of us who entertain
larger and more glorious views of Christ and His work in
our behalf. It has no other effect, and seems to have no
other object, than to make the platform too narrow for us
and others who entertain similar views — the number of
whom is rapidly increasing — to stand on it.
It seems strange that a paper whose object is to unite all
evangelical Christians, and which is so Christian and cath
olic in its spirit, should insist on retaining, or feel con
strained to retain in its platform anything so contrary to
its real spirit and purpose, and so much opposed, as we
think, to its own interest as well as that of the cause it
would promote. j. h. p.

No. 2.
My recent article in the Church Union, "From what
does Christ save us ?" was intended to be as brief as possi
ble. As your very kind reply, in the same number, is
¦mainly on an issue I did not attempt to make, and appar
ently misconstrues the real point I did make, I beg you will
allow me a few words more — not with any design or desire
to carry on a controversy on this question in your paper,
but rather by way of, supplement to what I have already

302 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
That Christ saves us who sin " from sin and eternal pun
ishment," is certainly true, provided we do not mean by
this the doom of eternal sin and eternal torment, as is com
monly taught, but from sin while we do live, and from the
punishment of everlasting destruction. (2 Thess. 1 : 9.)
But there are others who do not sin as we do, " after the
similitude of Adam's transgression. (Rom. 5 : 14.) They
certainly do not deserve, nor have they incurred the doom
of everlasting torment in a life to come. Does not Christ
save them ? He saves- them, if at all, from the common
doom of their mortal state into which the whole race of
Adam have come — from death. But your th eory would ex
clude all these from salvation, or else save them without a
Savior, or it would rather affirm that they need no Savior,
having never sinned. But "there is no difference" between
them and us as regards the impending doom of death which
overhangs the whole race. Your error is, as I conceive, in as
suming that this death does not mean death according to
the ordinary understanding of the word, but means an
eternal existence in sin and misery. It is this false assump
tion that gives rise to the perplexing inquiry (among the
many other difficulties it creates) as to the salvation of
infants, and of others who die without a knowledge of the
Gospel, which is, indeed, discussed in the same number of
your paper, by a writer who seems to contravene both the
law and the Gospel in his efforts to show how they can be
saved. Were the words deaih and life permitted to have
the same meaning when applied to man, as to all other
creatures to whom God has given life, this difficulty, and
many others to which we cannot now allude, would be
cleared up, or rather would not exist at all. Of course, in
fants who have never committed actual sin ; and others
who have not sinned after the similitude of Adam's trans
gression, but who are subject to death, may be saved by

Sec. 9.] THE GREAT SALVATION. 303
Christ — but not from a doom to which they are not ex
posed, but from death, as the Scripture declares.
It is not necessary that we should be able to define that
mysterious term life, and to tell all that is included in it, as
you would teach, before we can understand the meaning of
its opposite — death. For death is the negative of life, what
ever that life is, or rather its extinction. Life is something
positive. Death is negative. It not only denies the ex
istence of life in the thing spoken of, but it imphes that the
life it once possessed has been lost.
The distinction you endeavor to make between " being,"
in the sense of existence, and "life," so far as I am able to
understand your argument, seems to me to be fallacious.
That there can be existence or being, as you term it, with
out life, is true enough with respect to things simply
material, but in a living creature or organism, life is the
chief thing that gives it any personality or being as such.
It is the sine qua non. When an animal dies, it is no lon
ger that animal, nor an animal. The dead body or carcass
may still exist, and be long in going to decay ; and the
vital force that animated it, whether directly from God, the
source of all life and being, or whether a distinct entity,
may have suffered no annihilation, yet the animal, as an
individual organism or creature, no longer exists. What
ever the constituents of a living being, whether man or
animal, if it could have a beginning — if it was created — it
can have an end ; it can be uncreated. We have no more
reason to deny the latter because we cannot understand
what becomes of the elements, than we have to deny the
former because we cannot tell how it was created. The
fact is, your argument, if it is good to prove the continued
conscious existence of man after death, is equally good, to
prove his conscious existence in a previous state. This was
Plato's doctrine. His logical mind perceived the necessity

304 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
of assuming the eternal pre-existence of all souls, in order
to make good his philosophy of the eternal future ex
istence of all souls. But Christian philosophers, while re
jecting the former as essentially atheistic, have endeavored
to hold the latter, without the assumption of an eternal
pre-existence to give it plausibility, and in spite of the
plainest declarations of Scripture, by which we are assured
that eternal life is given to the righteous only, and is the
gift of God through Jesus Christ the Savior.
And furthermore, so far as I can understand your argu
ment with respect to the continuance of life after death, it
is just as applicable to all animals and things that have life,
as it is to man.
But this dogma of the indestructible nature of man, not
withstanding he is a creature, that he inherits from his
mortal progenitor a life that is absolutely interminable,
which he cannot forfeit by sin, and which his Creator- will
never take from him, however much he may abuse or de
spise the gift, has so interwoven itself into the philosophy of
the world and the theology of the Church, and is so flattering
to the pride of man, and so assuring to the sinner, who can
not but hope that the great mercy of God will find some
way to save him — if not in this life, in the endless hfe of
the world beyond — that it is no welcome task.for anyone to
call it in question. Most persons, indeed, regard any ob
jections to it, however reasonable they may seem to him
who offers them, or however enforced by Scripture, as an
attack upon the foundation of their faith. Nothing but
the clearest conviction that I have the truth of God with
me, and that the doctrine of eternal life in Christ alone is
the true doctrine of the Gospel, and that no child of Adam
can have any reasonable hope of immortality apart from
Christ the Savior, and that I am contending for the faith
once delivered to the saints, but now sadly obscured by the

Sec. 9.] THE GREAT SALVATION. 305
teachings of a false philosophy, could have induced me to
expose myself to the suspicions, reproaches and misrepre
sentations of Christian brethren whom I love, by opposing
a sentiment they so fondly cherish. But I am sure that
if they could be persuaded to read the Word of God uninflu
enced by any philosophical theory with respect to the soul,
and to yield their minds simply to its teachings on this
question, they would see how utterly vain is the hope of
man for immortal life, excepting through Christ the Savior ;
and seeing what light this view throws on questions hither
to dark and mysterious, how it better honors the justice
and mercy of God, and exalts the work of Christ, who died
that we might have eternal life — they would thank me for
this humble service, and exclaim with me, with a heartier
zeal and stronger love, " Thanks be unto God for his un
speakable gift." J v »•

SECTION X.
The Unspeakable Gift.
There are many and various Divine gifts spoken of in
the Scripture ; as, the gift of prophecy ; the gift of faith ;
the gift of Jesus Christ ; the gift of the Holy Spirit ; spir
itual gifts, etc. Indeed, all favors are the gifts of God.
" Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above."
But among all these gifts is there not one so pre-eminently
great and precious as to be properly designated " the
gift of God ?" Is not this what the Apostle Paul meant
when he exclaimed, " Thanks be unto God for his unspeak
able gift " ? If so, what is this gift ? The many gifts of
God contributing to our salvation may, in one sense, be re
garded as one gift, for they all are connected with each
other, and any one of them, when regarded by itself, may
well be considered as great and unspeakable. But looking
at them in their order, there seems to be one that is chief
among them all, and around which all others cluster in
subordination, and to which they are tributary. It is this,
we think, to which the Apostle refers. What is it ? Or
rather, is it not the gift of Eternal life?
We know it is quite common to call the Gospel the gift.
We have heard eloquent discourses preached from this
text, in which the excellency and glory of the Gospel were
set forth as the special theme suggested by#t. But the
Gospel is only the proclamation of the gift. It is not the
gift itself. The word " Gospel " means good news. What
is the good news which the Gospel proclaims ? It is this
that makes it so excellent and precious. It is nothing at
all apart from its theme.
But the gift spoken of is more generally understood to be
Jesus Christ Himself. Commentators have quite commonly

Sec. 10.] THE UNSPEAKABLE GIFT. 307
assumed this to be so, without any question. Preachers
have almost universally made this text the foundation of
their discourses on the glory of Christ. It is so customary
among Christian people to take this view, that they are
hardly prepared for any other. But after carefully con
sidering the passage in its connection, and especially in
comparison with other similar expressions, we are strongly
inclined to think he had something beyond this in view; that
it was not so much the person of Christ, as what God has
given us through Christ, that he denominated as the un
speakable gift.
In one sense, and an important one, Christ may be said
to be the gift of God, for He came by the will of God. He
came also of His own will, and " gave Himself for us."
But whether we consider him as given by the Father or by
Himself, it was for a purpose. It is to His errand in com
ing, and not simply to His coming, that our attention is
directed. " God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son " — our thoughts do not rest here, but on what
follows — " that whosoever believeth in Him should not per
ish but have everlasting life." This, then, is the gift
through Christ — Everlasting Life. Or, if we consider the
gift as from Christ Himself, it is the same. He gave Him
self to redeem us from death. He laid down His life for
us — not to save us from the punishment of never-ending
misery, but to redeem us from death. He came to die that
we might live, and live forevermore. He came to lift us
out of the perishing condition into which sin had brought
us, and to make us meet to be partakers of the inheritance
that is " incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not
away " — to impart to us His own life, a spiritual life which
is infinitely higher and better and more enduring than the
life received by natural birth. He came not as the ulti
mate gift of God's love, but rather as the medium by which

308 bible terminology. [Chap. IL
that gift — the gift of eternal life — is communicated to us.
To illustrate : When some years ago the people of Ire
land were perishing by famine, we generously sent them, as
a gift, a whole ship-load of provisions in a government ves
sel. The good news of our bounty sounded in the ears of
perishing men, like the Gospel message of salvation. The
stately ship, by which the gift was sent, bearing the flag of our
Union", and accompanied by our government officers, ap
peared beautiful and glorious in their eyes. But the good
news was not the gift itself, nor the good ship that bore
it, for that comes back, but rather what was brought by the
ship. And while, in thanking us for our munificent bounty,
they could not be unmindful of the kindly disposition that
prompted it, and the illustrious manner of its bestowment,
it was for the gift itself, and the relief and salvation it
brought them, that they were especially grateful. Had
they not really needed it, or had it been a meagre gift, no
matter what the splendor of its accompaniments, it would
have failed to receive so hearty and grateful a recognition.
So is it with God's " unspeakable gift " to perishing men.
We deem it the more important to insist on this view of the
passage, from the fact that it is so common to coyer up its
real significance, while descanting upon the excellency of
the Gospel and the love and mercy of the Savior ; to over
look the gift itself, in the splendor of its accompaniments ;.
to deny, in part, man's perishing condition, and so to con
strue the Gospel and the works of Christ in his behalf, as
greatly to depreciate their value, and even to render the
gift itself a ground of offence to those for whom it was in
tended. If man already possesses immortality as an inde
feasible inheritance from Adam, then surely he needed no
such " gift of God through Jesus Christ." If man never
forfeited his life by sin, then surely Christ did not die, or
need not to have died, to redeem him from death. If all

Sec. 10.] the unspeakable gift. 309
men are already immortal, it is but mockery to urge them
to seek for immortality under the promise of Eternal life
through Christ.
H the glorious Gospel is construed to mean nothing more
than the proclamation of a way of escape from a doom that
is absolutely incredible ; if it be offered with an alternative,
which no right-minded man can accept or ought to accept
as the just desert of the whole human race at the hands of
their Creator, it will be as it, alas, too often is, brought in
to contempt and made of none effect. If men be told that
Christ, the Son of God, died to save them from what they
believe to be a fictitious and imaginary peril, however much
they may praise the self-sacrificing kindness of the Son,
when contrasted with the infinite injustice of the Father,
they will turn away from His overtures with indifference
and unbelief. The high-sounding phrases in which Christ
as the gift of God is set forth by those who are sent to offer
Eternal Life to dying men through a crucified Savior,
will pass for idle words in the ears of those who have
been taught to discredit their perishing condition, and
to depreciate the work of Him who died that they might
live. But let them be assured, as God's Word plainly teaches,
that they are born of a mortal race, and are hastening to
death ; that it is not in the power of morality nor of good
works to translate them into the kingdom of God, which is
the only everlasting kingdom, nor to give them that spirit
ual life which is necessary to enter it, and which is the only
life that is eternal ; that it was the special mission of the
Son of God to bring this kingdom down to earth, and to
introduce mortal man into it by a new spiritual birth, and,
as the One "who only hath immortality," to give them His
own eternal life, that they might live and reign with Him
forever ; that this is the gift which God's love provided, and

310 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
which He Himself came to bring us ; and that He even gave
His life to ransom us from the power of death — our com
mon inheritance— and to make us "heirs according to the hope
of Eternal Life;" and that now this heavenly boon is offered
freely in the Gospel to every man, without money and with
out price ; and who can fail to be touched by such wonder
ful love and grace, and to exclaim with the Apostle,
" Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift " — the gift
of Eternal Life to perishing mortals.
This would seem to be the meaning of Paul's explana
tion. He is endeavoring to stir up the Corinthian Chris
tians to a liberal contribution in aid of their suffering
brethren. What more natural than that he should call to
mind God's amazing love in translating them from the
power of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son, and
in making them, who were born of a mortal race, heirs to
gether with Him of Everlasting Life? And what more appro
priate than that he should enforce his appeal by the
remembrance of this unspeakable gift !
But we need not, surely, hesitate to accept this view,
when we see how repeatedly Christ Himself designates this
Eternal Life, which He came to impart, as " the gift of
God." In His conversation with the Samaritan woman at
the well, He says : " 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 the
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."
To the unbelieving Jews who were hoping for salvation
as God's special favorites, through obedience to the law,
and who spurned the gift at His hands, He said : " Search

Sec. 10.] the unspeakable gift. 311
the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have Eternal Life."
(But they encourage no such hope excepting through Me
as your Savior.) " They are they which testify of Me.
And ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life."
Again, referring to this gift, in His intercessory prayer He
says : " Thou hast given Him power over all flesh that He
should give eternal life to. as many as thou hast given Him."
But why is it needful to cite the many other passages bear-
ing on this point, when it is expressly declared, in words
that can hardly be misconstrued, that the gift of God, which
is pre-eminent among all His other gifts, and which includes
them all, is the gift of Eternal Life ? " For the wages of
sin is death ; but the gift of God is eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. 6 : 23.)

SECTION XI.
Discarded Scriptural Terms.
In order to bring this unscriptural doctrine of the inde
structible nature of man into an apparent harmony with the
teachings of the Word of God, and to give it greater
plausibility, its advocates have found it " convenient
and, indeed, indispensable" not only to change the
meaning of certain Scriptural terms, but to employ others t
in this relation not to be found in the Scriptures.
The term Creature, so often applied to man in the
Bible, has been supplanted by the word Being. The word
Death, by which the final end of the sinner is described
in the Bible, is represented by the word Existence, to de
note a supposed conscious state of sin and misery, eternally
perpetuated. And for the Bible word Destruction,
which has been vacated of its true significance — by the no
tion that man is necessarily immortal — the word Annihil
ation must be used to characterize, or rather to caricature
the true Bible doctrine for which we contend
Let us examine these terms :
1. BEING for CREATURE.
Being, in its broadest sense, may be predicated of any
thing that is, or exists, whether it have life or not. In this
sense every individual thing in the universe of mind and
matter, as well as its Creator, may be said to have being.
But in a more definite and restricted sense, and especially
when used as a personal noun, it implies life, and is pre
eminently applicable to the great Source of all life and be
ing, whose existence is absolute and independent. He is
the Being that is over all, and upon whom all things,
whether animate or inanimate, depend : who is and was
and ever shall be, from everlasting to everlasting, without

Sec. 11.] DISCARDED SCRIPTURAL TERMS. 313
beginning or end. All other life or being, from the high
est to the lowest, is from Him, and subject to His supreme
will. It is necessarily dependent and conditional. He be
stows it and takes it away where and when He pleases.
" He sendeth forth His Spirit, and they are created. He
taketh away their breath, and they die and return to the
dust." Hence, He is called the Being, the Almighty Be
ing, the Self-existent Being, the Great I Am, or I Be.
This is just what the term Jehovah (Hebrew Yehovah,
sometimes contracted to Yah) means. It is employed sev
eral thousand times in the Old Testament. But, unfortu
nately, it is translated Jehovah only four or five times.
Our translators, for some reason or other, have chosen to ren
der it almost always The Lord. As a personal noun, the
word being is never applied to any creature whatever, how
ever high in the scale of being. In only the three following
instances is it used impersonally in the whole Bible, viz.: "I
will sing praises unto my God while I have my being."
(Psa. 104 : 33.) " I will sing praises unto my God while I
have any being." (Psa. 146 : 2.) " In Him we live and
move and have our being." (Acts 17 : 28.)
Throughout the Scriptures, Being is the peculiar appella
tion of Jehovah Himself. But in the interests of that
pagan philosophy which claims for man an eternity of be
ing, both in the past and in the future, it has become quite
common to call men " beings " also — " human beings,"
" rational beings," " immortal beings," etc.
It is true, Christian men no longer hold to that part of
Plato's postulate which asserts the eternity of man's past
existence, which that philosopher thought to be necessary
to justify the second, viz., the eternity of his future exist
ence. They admit that man was created, and thus had a
beginning to his being ; but they still hold to the eternity
of his future being ; hence they continue to call him a

Sl4 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
being. There might perhaps be no special objection to this
in a loose way, were it not for the implication involved.
This is seen in its restricted application to man alone of all
earthly creatures. We do not speak of "brute beings." We
call them animals, or creatures. It is said, for example, "There
are fifty human beings and one hundred head of cattle Or
brute animals on the vessel." We do not complain of the
distinction that is made between men and brutes; but of the
terms in which it is made. Man is not distinguished from
the brutes in that he is a being, and they are not beings but
only creatures. They are all alike creatures. Man is never
called a being in the Word of God, but a living creature,
or a living soul ; and precisely the same identical terms
are used, in the original, to designate all the animals which
God created. This common, modern usage has grown up
under the influence of a false philosophy, which teaches
that man is naturally and necessarily immortal ; a philoso
phy which has perverted and subsidized to its purposes all
the familiar words of our language, that are used in this
discussion. Our opponents express surprise that we should object to
it, and say that we are hypercritical. But we cannot allow
them, by the use of this word, in its restricted application
to men alone, to prejudge the whole question, to change the
base of the argument from the negative to the positive side ;
to assume silently the very thing to be proved, and then
demand of us to prove the negative of their assumption.
It is to this latent begging of the question, in the very
outset of the discussion, that we object. As men are never
called beings in the Scriptures, but only creatures, we pre
fer to use this term ; and as they agree with us in believ
ing man to be a creature, they cannot reasonably refuse to
use it in discussing the question of immortality with

Sec. 11.] DISCARDED SCRIPTURAL TERMS. 315
us, instead of the term being, which is open to such serious
objection.

2. EXISTENCE for LIFE.
The word existence, like the word being, is made to serve
the purpose of the advocates of the necessary immortality of
man, by the ambiguous and sophistical use that is made
of it.
They cannot but admit that death is the penalty of sin,
for this is too positively declared in the Scriptures to be
denied. Nor can they deny that Life and Death are an
tithetical terms, and that death implies the loss of life. Life
and death cannot both, at the same time, be predicated of the
same person. And so, instead of saying that the sinner lives
after he is dead, which would be a manifest contradiction of
terms, they say he " exists," for existence is a broader and
more comprehensive term than life. But if you ask them what
they mean by the existence of the sinner after his life has
been taken from him, and he has been punished with death,
they will reply that it is a state of sin and misery, which is
to be endlessly perpetuated ; but what is this but a sinful^
wretched life ? A dead creature can neither sin nor suffer.
Such a state of sin and suffering may be set over against a
state of holiness and happiness, but it is one of life in both
cases. The antithesis is here found in the conditions of the
life that is common to both. It is one and the same Hfe,
whether it be sinful and wretched, or holy and blessed. The
term existence is no more applicable 'to one condition than
to the other. But that it is applicable at all to that con
dition of actual death, which the Scriptures declare to be
the end of sin when it is finished, we deny. It is only em-

316 bible terminology. [Chap. H.
ployed in this sense, by these advocates, to accommodate
two conflicting doctrines — that of Plato, which teaches that
man cannot die, and that of the Word of God, which de
clares that if he sins he shall die. So this ambiguous word
is introduced, which really allows all that Plato claimed,
and yet does not seem to contradict the express words of
Scripture, though it actually contradicts them as flatly as
the words of the tempter, when he said, "Ye shall not surely
die." Of course, existence is a more general and comprehensive
expression than life, and is equally applicable to things with
or without life. But the fallacy lies in using this expres
sion in a specific and general sense at the same time,
•or rather of vaulting from one to the other, as the necessi
ties of the case shall require. That the Deity always ex
isted, and always will exist, no Christian man will deny.
And some hold that all the materials and forces now exist
ing in the universe, are also eternal in their existence, both
in the past and in the future. This we need not now affirm
or deny. But whether this be so or not, it is impossible to
predicate any such eternal existence of the creatures and
things that are formed of these materials, for they are con
stantly changing, coming into existence, and going out of
¦existence, as'specific individual units, before our eyes.
The combination of certain elements is essential to the
•existence of individual things. Some are vastly more com
plex than others. So long as the combination of these
essential elements is maintained, the thing exists. When
this combination is dissolved, the thing itself ceases to ex
ist It has no more being than before its formation, ex-
-cepting in its history and in the chain of events with which
it was connected.
Water is composed of two gases, oxygen and hydrogen.
When these two gases are combined in due proportions,

Sec. 11.] DISCARDED SCRIPTURAL TERMS. 317
water is formed. It continues to exist so long as the com
bination is maintained. But let these two gases be sepa
rated, and the water ceases to exist. There are certain
objects into which a mysterious principle must enter to
constitute them what they are. For example : A magnet
is a piece of iron or steel to which the principle or force of
magnetism has been imparted. Let this be taken away,
and it ceases to, be a magnet. * The magnet no longer exists,
though the piece of iron may continue to exist as before, ,
and this magnetic force may still exist in other combina
tions. The combination of many elements is requisite to con
stitute an animal, and in addition to all these, life is
absolutely essential. Without this, however perfectly
formed the body may be, the animal does not exist. This
is implied in the word itself : animal, from anima, mean
ing soul, life, etc. Hence Webster defines an animal to be
" an organized, living being, endowed with sensation and
the power of voluntary motion." We may not be able to
tell what that mysterious principle or force is, which we
call the life or the soul of the animal ; nor what becomes
of it when it ceases to act or manifest itself in the animal,
but when it is extinguished, the animal is not only dead,
but has ceased to exist. The body or carcass may still ex
ist. It naturally goes to decay; though we may take
measures to preserve it entire for a long time. But the
carcass is not the animal. The life, or the animal soul, which
is an essential constituent of the animal, and of any and every
animal, is wanting. Even could we show — as we cannot —
that this life force, this animal soul, still existed in some
other combination, or as a separate entity, this would not
be the animal. It takes body and soul or life together to
constitute an animal, and when these are actually and per
manently separated, the existence of the animal is at an

318 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
end. If anyone thinks otherwise, let him try to tell when
the animal does cease to exist, or what would put an end
to its existence. The elements and forces all were in exist
ence before the animal came into existence ; and they all
may continue in existence after the animal has gone out of
existence. The same general principle' must hold good in the case
of man, as well as of every other living creature. When
ever those elements, material and spiritual, that are essen
tial to the existence of man, are combined, he begins to exist
and not before, and whenever the combination is effectually
and finally and forever broken up, he ceases to exist as a
man, whatever may become of the . elements. Man was
formed by his Maker out of the same material elements as
other animals, though the highest of all earthly creatures.
God breathed into him the same breath of life which He
breathed into them, and he, like them all, became a living
soul, or living creature.
But God had a higher end in view in the creation of man
than in the creation of any other living creature. He pro
posed to exempt him from the lot of death to which all
other earthly creatures are subject ; to give him a perma
nent and unending existence — if he should prove himself
worthy of it or fit for it ; to lift him up, perhaps, after
having undergone a successful trial here below, into a higher
sphere, where, like the angels, who neither marry nor are
given in marriage, and who never die — as He expressly
tells us — he should live in closer communion with his
Maker, immortal and blessed forever. But this could be only
on condition, as He most explicitly declares, of perfect and
perpetual holiness. If he should sin he must die, must surely
die, and become a mortal, transitory creature, like all other
earthly creatures. And when he did sin, the doom of

Sec. 11.] DISCARDED SCRIPTURAL TERMS. 319
death and extinction was pronounced upon him by his
Maker, in language that would seem to be too clear and
positive to be misunderstood or explained away, excepting
by boldly contradicting it, as did the tempter, who said :
" Ye shall not surely die." And he still continues to con
tradict it in fact, though under a more adroit and sophisti
cal form of expression. He now says, " Ye shall not cease
to exist," by which he means the same as before — "Ye shall
live forever."
Let us once more listen to the words of Him who cannot
lie : " But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou
shalt not eat of it ; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou
shalt surely die:" or, more literally, "Dying thou shalt
die"; by which we understand that, though vthe process
leading to death be a gradual one, and full, as it must be,
of sorrow, it shall surely end in death. All this is reiter
ated and confirmed when the sentence is pronounced.
" Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife
and hast eaten of the tree which I commanded thee, saying,
Thou shalt not eat of it ; cursed is the ground for thy sake ;
in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life . . till
thou return unto the ground ; for out of it wast thou taken ;
for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. . . And
all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty
years ; and he died."
Now, had it not been God's purpose to redeem man from
this death, and to give him the offer of another life — one
that is higher and better and more secure, through an Al
mighty Savior — this death would have been the end of
Adam, and so would death be the end of every man,
as it is of every other earthly creature. It is only
because Christ has died to redeem us from the power
of death, that we look for any life beyond through a resur
rection from the grave ; and it is only because He offers to

320 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
give to all who beheve in Him, His own Eternal Life,
that we hope to live forever with Him in His glorious
kingdom. As for those who do not accept Him as then-
Savior, they must perish in their own corruption — die the
second death, from which there is no second resurrection.
Neither Science, Reason, nor Revelation affords any war
rant for the Platonic notion that man naturally lives after
he is dead, or, to change the expression, that he continues
to exist in a state of consciousness and activity after he has
ceased to live, and has actually been resolved back into
his original elements. Nor indeed did Plato assert any such
absurdity until he had first laid down the principle that
man never was created, never had a beginning ; and then
it followed, of course, that as he had always existed, he
would always continue to exist. But nothing can be more
absurd than to predicate perpetual existence of any crea
ture-, however high, when the organism which constituted
him such is completely and forever destroyed, and the very
combination that is essential to his existence is broken up
and resolved into its original elements.
This is the destruction that will be visited upon all who
die the second death, and would be even in the first — for
there could be no other — were it not for the miraculous
interposition of Divine power, by which all are preserved
and reserved to the day of judgment, For "it is appointed
unto men once to die, but after this, the judgment."
We do not propose here to inquire into the nature of the
intermediate state between the first death and the resurrec
tion ; nor in what way the identity of every man is main
tained, nor even in what this identity consists. We might
not be able to give any satisfactory answer to these ques
tions, should we inquire. But all that is needful for our
present purpose is to know that the identity of every in
dividual will be preserved by the power of God ; that it

Sec. 11.] DISCARDED 1JCRIPTURAL TERMS. 321
is not a final state, but one altogether provisional and ab
normal and temporary. Hence it is very commonly spoken
of in the Scriptures as a " sleep." " Many that sleep in the
dust of the earth shall awake." " Them also which sleep
in Jesus will God bring with Him," etc.
In this sense we understand the reply of our Lord to the
question of the Sadducees (Luke 20 : 27-38). They be
lieved that all men perished and ceased to exist in the first
death ; and they had reason and science on their side. But
they erred, as Christ told them, " not knowing the Scrip
tures nor the power of God." The dead had not yet passed
entirely out of existence — nor would they, not even the
wicked, till after the resurrection.
" Now, that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at
the bush, when he calleth the Lord, the God of Abraham
and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob ; for He is not
a God of the dead, but of the living, for all live unto
Him." Mr. White, in his Life in Christ (p. 308), remarks on
this point as follows :
" Nearly ^very presumptive physical argument is on
the side of iftse who think that death ends consciousness and
terminates the spiritual individuality, and that the survival
of the thinking power in the dissolution of the humanity is
contrary to the analogy of the living creation to which man
belongs. Death, too, as- the original penalty of sin, was
doubtless death in the absolute sense of the term. If, then,
any element survive in the first death, it must be attributed to
the supernatural action of redemption alone, which operates
to the abnormal preservation of the spiritual essence, in the
dissolution of man, both for judgment and reward. So much
even Delitzsch concedes.
" But I venture to think that the large preponderance of
argument is on the side of those who do not rely on this
presumptive analogy against survival, but rather on the
New Testament Revelation, which compels us to beheve

322 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
that, in the death which men now die, the curse is executed
in such a manner (in the survival of the soul) as to allow
of its reversal by the resurrection of the same man to life,
or of its second infliction under the irremediable condition
of extinction of both soul and body in hell."
In this view I most fully concur. This no doubt is what
our Lord meant when He said :
" Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to
kill the soul ; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy
both soul and body in ( Gehenna) hell." (Matt. 10 : 28.)
It is rendered thus, in Luke 12:4:
" Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that
have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you
whom ye, shall fear ; fear Him who after He hath killed
hath power to cast into ( Gehenna) hell ; yea, I say unto
you, fear Him."
That is to say : It is not in the power of man to put you
out of being — to extinguish your existence. He can kill
the body. He can thrust you down to hades, the tempor
ary abode of all the dead, but he can do no more. He can
not prevent you from being raised in the resurrection, he
cannot destroy you utterly in the second deatiw This, God
alone can do. He is able to destroy both souHind body in
( Gehenna) hell. Fear Him.
But whatever may be the condition of those who " sleep
in death," previous to the resurrection, whether they are
conscious, as some believe, or unconscious, as we think, or
whether they pass entirely out of existence, only to be re
stored by the power of God, as others think, of
this we are well-assured, that there is neither con
sciousness, nor sleep, nor existence in that second death
to which the irreclaimably wicked shall be doomed in the
day of final judgment. This is the death that especially
concerns us in this argument — the death which sinners are

Sec. 11.] DISCARDED SCRIPTURAL TERMS. 323
warned to fear, the death which is the end of sin when it
is finished. For they shall be punished with everlasting
destruction. " 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 book, according
to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were
in it, and death and (hades) hell delivered up the dead
which were in them ; and they were judged every man
according to their works. And death and (hades) hell were
cast into the lake of fire. This is the Second Death. "
(Rev. 20 : 12-14.)

3. ANNIHILATION for DESTRUCTION.
*It is quite common to characterize the Christian doctrine
of Immortality, for which we contend, as the doctrine of
Annihilation. If it were our main purpose to prove the
destruction of the wicked, this term would be quite objec
tionable, for reasons which will soon be stated. But when
it is understood, or should be, that it is not our special pur
pose to inquire into the doom of the unsaved — through
what suffering they pass, and the manner in which the ex
treme penalty of the law, which is death, is inflicted upon
them — but rather to inquire into the " life and immortal
ity " which are " brought to light in the Gospel," and to
consider what this great boon is, for whom it is intended,
and by what means it is secured, it will be seen that there
is a double wrong in employing this term to characterize,
or rather, to caricature this doctrine.
And yet there are not a few among our opponents who
cannot be persuaded to use any other term, or to consider
the subject in any other light. Dr. S. C. Bartlett, the

324 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H,
most conspicuous, perhaps, of them all, employs this term
in the alternative title of the volume which he has written
to oppose our doctrine of eternal life in Christ only. It is
entitled, "Life and Death Eternal; a Refutation of the
Theory of Annihilation." He has woven it into the cap
tion of several of its chapters, and he rings the changes on
this word in every possible way, throughout the book. And
yet, he unblushingly makes the following confession in the
Preface, "We are aware that many of them object to the term
as not being fully expressive of their mode of stating and
arguing the case. We would only say that we cannot be
debarred the use of a convenient (?) and indispensable (?)
term, out of deference to their preferences."
It may be a very " convenient " term for our opponents
to use, indeed " indispensable " " to their mode of stating
and arguing the case," but is it fair ? is it honorable ? is it
honest, to misrepresent the position of Christian brethren
when professing to argue against their views? What must
we think — we will not say, of those who intentionally do
this — of the merits of a cause that needs to be upheld by
such methods ?
We object to the use of this term because :
1. It changes the issue to a subordinate, though correla
tive point, and in this way ignores and shuts out of view
the real question, viz., What is the Immortality which is
brought to light in the gospel, and which we are urged to
lay hold of? Are we immortalized by our natural birth,
or by a new spiritual birth ? Is the " eternal life " which
is offered us in flie Gospel, "the gift of God through Jesus
Christ our Lord," or the inheritance of all men through
Adam ? If we believed in the final salvation of all men —
as we cannot, without doing violence to the teaching of
Scripture — we should still, in opposition to the false teach
ing of the present day, recognize Christ, and not Adam, as

Sec. 11.] discarded scriptural terms. 325
the source of our Immortality, according to His own word
— "I give unto them eternal life."
2. But were the fate of the unsaved our main theme, we
should object to this term, as expressing more than we de
sired to express, or, at any rate, as ambiguous and mislead
ing. Not that we do not believe in the actual death and de
struction of those who fail of eternal life, according to the
testimony of God's Word ; but this term raises a ques
tion concerning the essential elements of their being,
which we do not undertake to discuss, which confuses the
mind in regard to the fact of their destruction. What are
the essential elements of matter or spirit out of which liv
ing creatures are formed when they come into being, and
into which they are resolved when they pass out of being
and become extinct as living creatures ? — we know not,
nor need we inquire. It is sufficient for us to know, and
this is all we affirm, that the composite creature is dis
solved, and, as an individual, is destroyed and becomes ex
tinct ; that what God has made He can unmake ; what He
has created He can uncreate or destroy. This, indeed, is
what He is constantly doing before our eyes, throughout
the whole realm of nature. We believe, and affirm, be
cause the Scriptures so teach, and observation confirms
their teaching, that man, as a sinner, is no exception to
this universal law of nature, and that, if he shall fail to be
come reconciled to his Maker, and to be brought into union
with Him, and thus to be made immortal, he too must
cease to live, and be resolved into the elements from which
he was created.
But this word annihilation, which they would force upon
our unwilling acceptance, and insist on using to character
ize our position in spite of our disclaimers, has a further
apphcation or implication, of which they at once avail
themselves. For one of their chief arguments against what

326 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. LL
they declare to be odr position is that nothing is ever an
nihilated, and having demolished the doctrine which they
have postulated for us, they seem to suppose that they have
•demolished our own doctrine, which their arguments do
•not even touch.
3. We also object to this term, not only because it with
draws the mind from the main issue and even expresses
too much with regard to the related question wliich it
puts in its place, but, because it is not known to the Scrip
tures ; and the implication is, that we believe in an un-
scriptural doctrine, when on the contrary, it is just the
Scriptural doctrine for which we are contending, and the
terms of Scripture, " 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; or rather,
we believe just what they express ; no more and no less.
We cannot consent to be driven out of the Bible to find
terms to express our belief — which do not express it, to
accommodate our opposers, who wish to appropriate these
Bible terms to their own peculiar and exclusive use, as
meaning something less than what they do actually mean.
4. We further object to the use of this term, because it
gives our opposers the benefit of a position in the argument
to which they are not entitled. It is a virtual assump
tion of the very point to be proved ; and by assuming that
we are contending for the doctrine of annihilation, they
would throw upon us the onus probandi, which really rests
upon themselves.
Their assumption is this : That man is naturally and in
evitably an immortal being ; that he is excepted from the
universal law of mortality that takes hold of everything
else in this world ; that, notwithstanding he has separated
himself from God, the Source of his life and of all life, and
in spite of the condemning sentence of God's Word, and the

Sec. 11.] DISCARDED SCRIPTURAL TERMS. 327
analogies of nature, in dying, be does not really die ; he
only changes his mode of life — or of existence, as ttey now
would say, in order to avoid a too evident conflict with the
Word of God — and continues on, and on, the same con
scious, active, sensitive creature as before his death, and
will so continue as long as God Himself shall live ; and
that nothing short of Almighty Power can put an end to-
his conscious, individual being ; and some go even so far
as to say that it is out of the power of God Himself to de
stroy this creature man, so that he shall cease to be.
We quote the following astounding paragraph, from a
popular book by a celebrated English author :
" There need not be any hesitation in reverently declar
ing that God cannot annihilate a moral agent. If He could,
would He not have annihilated the devil that vexed His
beloved Son in the wilderness ? So far as we can gather from
the sacred writings, what has been the attitude of God in
relation to the devil ? He has degraded his position in the
universe; He has taken away the lustrous robe with
which he was originally clothed ; He has caused him to
wither into the most awful and repulsive deformity ; on
every side the most tremendous pressure has been brought
to bear on him ; but no force can touch the life. Diabol
ism is nothing but abused divinity, and can God be anni
hilated ?
"All creatures are such by virtue, of a divine element in
their nature. But cannot God withdraw the divine
element? Let us pause. What would He make of it
after He had withdrawn it ? Could He absorb the poisoned
element which for a lifetime had been given up to the
devil?" (Ecce Deus, p. 219.)
We will not trust ourselves to comment on the above.
We have no doubt the distinguished writer himself, with
his changed views, is heartily ashamed of it. But the same
sort of blasphemous nonsense is still uttered by men in high
repute for their learning and piety.

328 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
In the Church Union, May 10, 1879, is an article from
the pen of Dr. Howard Crosby, from which we clip the fol
lowing words :
"When He made our souls, He also made the possibility of
eternal misery : for by its very origin the soul may be eter
nal and cannot die. '" God could not make a free agent and
not make it capable of choosing and responsible for its
choice — may it not be also that he could not make an im
mortal soul and then extinguish it ? I put the question."
Of course, God could not make an indestructible thing
and then destroy it. But this is just the question to be
proved — not assumed — Did God make man absolutely im
mortal ?
Having assumed all this, without a particle of proof,
either from Nature or Revelation, but in conformity with
that philosophy which seeks to subordinate both to its
teaching, it becomes quite " convenient, indeed, indispensa
ble to their mode of arguing the case," to characterize the
doctrine of those who do not accept of their philosophy as
ihe doctrine of annihilation, and we are expected to make
good the doctrine which they have postulated for us.
But the doctrine for which we are contending is- some
thing quite different from what our opponents declare.
We ought certainly to be permitted to state it for ourselves.
It is briefly this :
Man, though the highest of all earthly creatures, is, hi
his present state, like all earthly creatures, mortal, and sub
ject to the universal law of death and dissolution. So much
Nature teaches us. Revelation teaches us the same
truth, and tells us how and why he, with the whole race to
which he belongs, has become mortal and transitory. He
was made capable of a spiritual union with God, which, if
perpetuated, would have given him exemption from the
transitory lot of all the animal races beneath him. But

Sec. 11.] discarded scriptural terms. 329
separated from God, man has no higher principle of per
petuity than they. This, then, is the present lot of every
man wh is born of mortal progenitors, irrespective of
•yhat his personal character may be. The fountain can
not rise a.ny higher than its source. The rewards and pen
alties that may be due him for his own individual conduct
ire another consideration, of which we need not now speak.
But there i3 something within man that tells him that ho
was made for a higher end than any he reaches in this life,
and the Word of God confirms this sentiment, and reveals
to him just what that end is, and how it may be reached.
This is the very object for which this divine revelation has
been given him. It is by a Divine Savior, who takes up
on Himself our mortal nature, dies our death, and, through
the living energy of His own Spirit, which cannot die, He
rises again, with an incorruptible body, and in this way
qualifies Himself to be the Savior from death of all who
will believe on Him. By this same Divine Spirit, a new
life — a spiritual life — His own peculiar life is begotten
within them ; they are raised from the dead by His al
mighty power, clothed with new spiritual and incorrupti
ble bodies, like unto His own glorious body, and lifted up
to that higher, purer and perpetual life in His heavenly
kingdom, which is specifically designated in the Scriptures
as The Life Everlasting.
Now, it is not with respect to the fact of another hfe be
yond the present, that we differ from our opposers, but with
respect to the nature and source of that life. They hold that
death is no interruption to the natural life of man, that
death simply marks a stage in that life, and that so fai
from putting an end to the life of man, it inten ifies it, and
enlarges his sphere of action ; and that, whatever be his
condition hereafter — whether of holiness or sin, happiness
or misery — he will continue to live, by a certain natural vis

330 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
vita within him, or by the almighty power of God sustain
ing him, to enjoy or suffer forever. We, on the contrary,
hold that, since the fall, death terminates the natural life
of every man, and that the life hereafter is not natural, but
supernatural ; that it is only through the death and resur
rection of Christ that there is any resurrection or life what
ever for man hereafter ; that " if Christ be not raised, then
[not only the wicked, but] they also who are fallen asleep
in Him are perished."
Do they believe in the resurrection of the dead, and all
the dead ? We hold to it, also, and even more strongly
than they do. We believe it to be a great miracle, entirely
supernatural. But many of them, led by their philosophy
concerning the natural life of the soul hereafter, are quite
inclined to deny it, or to put such a construction on it as to
make it an unmeaning pageant.
Do they believe in the doctrine of a general judgment,
both of the righteous and of the wicked ? So do we, and
yet more strongly than they ; for, under the influence of
that same philosophy, many are calling it in question, or
denying it altogether.
Do they believe in the absolute finality of the judgment?
So do we, and even more strongly than they ; for they are
led almost irresistibly to seek for some way of escape from
the terrible, and even incredible conclusion which their
philosophy concerning the deathless nature of the soul
forces upon them ; and hence many of them would fain
hope for another probation after this life ; and others still,
more than half believe in Origen's doctrine of the final re
storation of all sinners. But if they would accept with us
the teaching of the Scriptures concerning the destruction
of the wicked in the second death, there would be no room
to question the finality of their doom, nor any occasion to

Sec. 11.] DISCARDED SCRIPTURAL TERMS. 331
invent any hew and unscriptural hypotheses to relieve that
doom of its incredibly horrible features.
And finally, do they believe in the life everlasting
of the righteous through Christ the Savior? So do we,
with a belief fuller, stronger and more complete than it is
possible for them, with their philosophy, to entertain. For,
holding as they do to the essential vitality of all souls, it is
not life itself whichx Christ confers upon His redeemed
people — but only a certain pure and blessed condition of
life — which indeed will continue forever, because their
natural life will last forever. But we hold that it is, first
of all, and highest of all, life, life, ETERNAL LIFE^
that He gives to His people, and that purity and blessed
ness are the necessary conditions and accompaniments of
that life. It is pure and blessed and immortal, for it is
His own life that He gives them.
We have been the more particular to state in detail, and
to emphasize this point, because it is flhe essential point of
our difference, and because it is too often obscured or
ignored in their replies to what they would represent to be
our doctrine. Rarely, very rarely, in all their multiplied
arguments on this question, do we find any notice taken of
this, the main point in the controversy. It may be more
" convenient, and indeed indispensable " for them to raise
the question of annihilation, and to discuss this as their
main issue ; but if they think us to be heretical, and would
meet and expose our heresy, they must meet us just here
and contest this simple question— Whether we are immor
talized by Christ in the new birth and in the resurrection ?
or by our natural birth from Adam ? Is " the gift of God
eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord "? or is it
merely eternal purity and blessedness, for them who are
immortal without a Savior t

SECTION XII.
Eternal, Forever, Etc.
The meaning of the Greek word aion, in the various
forms and combinations in which it is found in the Scrip
tures, has been made the subject of much learned criticism
and dispute by the advocates and opposers of the doctrine
of the natural immortality of man.
As a question of philology or of exegesis, all this may be
well enough, but it has never seemed to us to have any im
portant bearing on this question. For whatever interpre
tation is given to it — whether that of endless duration, or
of an mon or age — it is never employed in the Scriptures in
any such connection as to be decisive of this question.
If aion or aionios had been predicated of the (psuehe)
soul or life of man, it might be important for us to inquire
whether it meant endless duration, or only an annial or
age-enduring period ; but it is never, in any of its forms
throughout the Scriptures, used as an attribute of the soul
or natural life of man. It is indeed — and with constant
repetition predicated of the' new (zoe) life, the spiritual life
: which man receives only by regeneration by the Spirit of
1 God, and which is emphatically declared to be peculiar to
those who are " born not of blood, nor of the will of the
iflesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." While in con
trast with this new life, the old life, the natural life, which"
man receives from Adam, i. e., the soul — for the word
psuehe stands for them both in the Scriptures — is every
where and under every form of expression represented as
being transitory, evanescent, and of brief duration.
If aionios had been predicated of that death which the
Scriptures declare to be the penalty of sin, and which the
believers in the deathless nature of the human soul assume

Sec. 12.] ETERNAL, FOREVER, ETC. 333
to be, not the cessation of hfe, but only a forlorn, sinful,
miserable state of existence, which they term spiritual
death, then it would be important for them to show that
this sort of wretched conscious existence will be abso
lutely without end, and it would be important for us to
show — if we accepted of their definition of this word death,
which we do not — that the aionios predicated of it means
a period of limited duration. But it will be a surprise to
many, perhaps, to learn that aionios is never, throughout
the entire Word of God, predicated of death. Our tradi
tional theology has adopted this form of expression, and
nothing is more common in religious discourses than to
hear of " eternal death," " everlasting death," " the death
that never dies," etc.; nothing like this, however, can be
found in any part of the Bible. One of the standard books
in advocacy of this unscriptural doctrine of an endless life
for both the saved and unsaved, is entitled, " Life and
Death Eternal." The implication of the title is as false
and misleading as the doctrine of the book itself. A book
on this question, in order to be true to the teachings of
Scripture, should be Death — and Life Eternal. Life is a
state of existence which may be sinful or holy, miserable
or blessed, brief or long, or even endless, if it shall please
God to perpetuate it. But death is an event — a
finality in itself, and needs no qualifying epithet. And this
is the death that is denounced upon sinners. "Sin
when it is finished, bringeth forth death." Were it not for
the miraculous resurrection of the dead through the al
mighty power of God, there would be no life of any sort
beyond. This is true of that " second death " which fol
lows the judgment of the wicked. From this there is no
resurrection ; there can be none, for they are utterly de
stroyed. It is of the new life, the spiritual life, the divine
life upon which the people of God then enter, that this

334 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
epithet aionios is predicated, and of no other life. This is
(zoe aionios) the life everlasting. So far, then, as the
doctrine we maintain is concerned, we have no interest in
putting any limitation upon the significance of this term,
aionios. If the Scriptures presented to us any such contrasts as
we find in many of our church creeds,* homiletical dis
courses and exhortations and hymns of worship, in which
an eternal life of joy and blessedness, and an eternal life
of sin and sorrow — or, to preserve the use of a Scriptural
word after it has been robbed of its meaning and another
sense put into it, an eternal death oi conscious sin and
sufferings — then the definition of this epithet aionios, whether
limited or unlimited, would be a matter of the utmost im
portance in this controversy. But there is no such con
trast drawn in the Bible, in which the epithet aionios is
predicated of both conditions alike.
There is one passage in the Old Testament (Dan. 12 : 2)
which says : " And many of them that sleep in the dust of
the earth shall awake, some to (olam) everlasting life, and
some to shame and (olam) everlasting contempt." It will
be seen that the Hebrew word Olam in this passage, which
is the equivalent of the Greek aionios, is predicated, first
of the " life " of the righteous, and then, not of the "shame"
of the wicked — for shame is a subjective sentiment, and im
plies consciousness on the part of those who feel it — but
only of the " contempt " in which they shall be held by
others. This contempt is objective only — so far as the wicked
are concerned — and is felt towards them and not by them.
And yet our opponents, in quoting this passage, are, many
* "We believe in the resurrection of all the dead ; in the general
judgment, and in the future life of eternal happiness'or eternal pun
ishment." {Confession of Faith of Central Congregational Chwch.
Philadelphia, Pa.

Sec. 12.] ETERNAL, FOREVER, ETC. 335
of them, in the habit — thoughtlessly, we hope — of quoting
this passage in proof of their doctrine, as though it read
" everlasting shame and contempt," and thus making the
inspired writer say the very thing he refrained from say
ing. Dr. Bartlett, in his Life and Deaih Eternal, is guilty
of misrepresenting it as follows :
" 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.)
We cannot believe that this learned author, with all his
earnest partizan feeling, would be guilty of deliberately
and intentionally misquoting Sacred Writ, (though we
might refer to other errors of his of the same kind*) ; but
as this is the only passage throughout the whole of the Old
Testament that can well be made to seem to afford any
support to the doctrine that the future life of the wicked is
equally enduring with that of the righteous, it seems, no
doubt, to its advocates, especially important to make as
much of this as possible.
There is a passage in the New Testament, also, to which
* In a series of articles on Endless Punishment, furnished to the
Christian Union in 1878 by the same author, and now published in
a little tract entitled The Future Slate, referring to the following
text, "As many as have sinned without law, shall also perish without
law," this popular advocate quotes it thus :
"Concerning the final award we read that, 'as many as have
sinned without law (the written law) shall also be punished without
law, and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the
law.' Eom. 2 : 12. What can I reply," says he, 'against such
declarations." Verily, what can anybody reply to such declarations, or what
other reply is needed, excepting this ? — They are not found in th*
Word of God. *

336 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H
many persons have given a similar construction. But it is
only by mistaking the real contrast that is drawn between
the awards of the righteous and of the wicked that any
apparent support has been found in it for this doctrine. It
is the scene described in the closing verses of the twenty-
fifth chapter of Matthew's Gospel.
As nothing is here said of the resurrection of the dead,
nor of regeneration, it is thought by many to be descriptive
of the judgment — as the text says — of the " nations," rather
than that of individuals after death. But accepting it asa
literal description of the last judgment and of the final
awards of the righteous and the wicked in that day ; as the
same epithet aionios — though translated in one case " eter
nal," and in the other " everlasting " — is predicated of both,
it is hastily concluded that the misery of the wicked must
be as enduring as the happiness of the righteous, and if the
one is endless, the other must be also. This would be a valid
argument if the contrast were between the misery of the one
class and the blessedness of the other. But there is no such
contrast instituted in this passage. Herein lies the fallacy
which many fail to perceive. The confusion arises from
assuming the very point to be first proved, and upon which
the whole conclusion rests. What is it, then, of which
aionios is predicated ? On the part of the righteous, it is
" Life " — (zoen aionion) eternal life. Nothing is here said
about their happiness or joy. It is undoubtedly a joyful
and blessed life, for it is a holy life, and purity and blessed
ness are inseparable ; and this is the only life that can be
permanent. It is this " Life," which is said to be eternal,
and the blessedness and joy are its accompaniments and
attributes. On the part of the wicked, it is not their sinfulness nor
their misery of which aionios is predicated, but of their

Sec. 12.] ETERNAL, FOREVER, ETC. 337
punishment. It is this that is eternal, as the text reads —
kolasin aionion, " punishment eternal."
Now, it is not to be assumed that the (kolasin) punish
ment here threatened consists solely in the infliction of
positive pain, and that the punishment can be no more en
during than the life of the victim. This may be the bar
barian's notion of punishment ; but it is to be presumed that
anyone, who is sufficiently enlightened to read these
pages, need not be told that punishment may consist in the
forfeiture of what might otherwise be enjoyed, in the de
privation of privileges, in being cut off from certain pleas
ures and enjoyments, as well as in the infliction of stripes.
Indeed, the highest kind of punishment under the laws of
all civilized countries, at the present day, is death, and that,
too, with the infliction of as little actual pain as possible.
It is tho penal deprivation of that life which might other
wise have been enjoyed. Kolasin will bear this interpreta
tion quite as well as any other. And when we find
death declared to be the penalty of sin everywhere in
God's Word, from Genesis to Revelation, and when it is
declared yet more explicitly, if possible, that the wicked
" SHALL BE PUNISHED WITH EVERLASTING DESTRUCTION,"
how can we dare to attempt to substitute any other
penalty ?
Here, then, is the contrast in this scene — not between
the happiness of the one party and the misery of the other
— but between the life which is awarded to the righteous,
and the cutting off — the deprivation of that life, the death
and destruction, the capital punishment of the other —both
of which are declared to be equally final and irrever
sible. Much stress is laid by many on the fact that the fire in
to which the wicked shall be cast, is declared to be (aid-

338 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
nios) " eternal." The same expression is used in Matt. 18 :
8 ; (eis td pur td aionion) " into everlasting fire."
But the more common epithet applied to this fire is (as-
beston) unquenchable. This word does not mean a fire
that " never shall be quenched " — as our translators have
taken the liberty of saying (Mark 9 : 45) — but a fire that
is so irresistible and fierce that it cannot be arrested in its
progress. It will surely accomplish its work of devouring
whatever it preys upon. This is the sense in which it is
evidently used in the Scriptures. This is the sense in which
the classic Greek writers used it. The early Christian
writers do not hesitate to call the fire which consumed
the bodies of martyrs an unquenchable fire. Eusebius. tells
us in his sixth book of History, that Cronion, and Julian,
and Epinachus, and Alexander, were cast into unquench
able fire to be burned. Homer speaks of a fire of this sort
that broke out in one of the Grecian ships ; and, what is
worthy of notice, as showing how indefinitely this word
asbestos was used, we are afterwards informed that the fire
was actually extinguished before the ship was consumed.
But, let it be granted that the fire into which the wicked
will be cast is actually an " everlasting fire," a ftre that
shall never cease to burn. This predicates nothing of
those who are cast into it. As an element it may be eter
nal in its existence, for aught we can know to the contrary.
What may have been its uses in the eternal past, or what
they may be in the eternal future, in burning up the chaff
and whatever is useless, or vile, or unworthy to be pre
served, in cleaning, in purifying — that is cleansing by
(pur) fire as the word imports — this universe, we are unable
to say. But be it, that this element is perpetual and eter
nal in existence, and ever ready to do the bidding of the
Supreme Ruler, if one wishes to so understand the meaning

Sec. 12.] ETERNAL, FOREVER, ETC. 339
of this expr sion, " everlasting life," he has no warrant for
transferring this epithet to the vile and worthless material
that is cast into it to be consumed. The fires of Gehenna,
in the Valley of Hinnom, are said to have been continually
burning ; but this was only because there was fresh occa
sion for their use, and they were continually supplied with
new material to consume.
So far, then, as these passages are concerned, we have no
inducement, for the sake of the argument, to limit the
meaning of the word aionios ; tor if we give it the mean
ing of absolute endlessness which our opponents claim for
it, nothing is decided with respect to the existence of the
wicked in endless sin and suffering.
We know of no other Scripture passage, where this word
is employed, that calls for any notice, as having any appa
rent bearing on the question of the endless existence of the
wicked in sin and suffering, but the two familiar passages
found in the Apocalypse (viz., 14 : 10, 11, and 20 : 9, 10).
We say " familiar passages," for there are no passages more
often quoted, nor upon which more reliance is placed to
support this doctrine, than these two. It would be difficult
indeed for the advocates of this doctrine to draw out even
a plausible argument for their view without them. Hence
they are cited over and over a^ain, and every possible
change is rung on them, in all their discussions of this ques
tion. The author of Life and Death Eternal, put 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 make up for the lack of other
passages to supply his urgent need ; and yet, all the seem
ing force they have, comes from the sound of the words in
the ears of those who have already assumed the point they
wish to establish, and the false association that is given to

340 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
4
them, and the erroneous interpretation that is put upon
them. The former of these two passages refers to the calamities
and miseries which shall come upon mystical Babylon
(generally supposed to symbolize the Papacy) and read*
thus :
" If any man worship the beast and his image, and re
ceive 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 without mixture into the cup of His indignation ; and
he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone, in the pres
ence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb-
and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up (eis aionas
aidnon, to ages of ages) forever and ever ; and they have
no rest day nor night who worship (i. e., who are worship
ers of ) the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth
the mark of his name." (Rev. 14 : 9-11.)
The other passage describes the destruction of Gog and
Magog, and Satan, their leader, and reads as follows :
" And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and
compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved
city, and fire came down from God out of heaven and de
voured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast
into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the
false prophet are [were cast ; for we are told in the previ
ous chapter, 20th verse, that they were cast into this lake
of fire 1,000 years before] and shall be tormented day and
night (eis tous aionas ton aidnon, to the ages of the ages)
forever and ever." (Rev. 20 : 9, 10.)
As we shall have occasion to notice these passages in an
other chapter, we can only now remark briefly :
1. The language of this book is entirely symbolical.
2. The scenes described are mundane and temporal, and
anterior to the general resurrection and final judgment of
individual sinners. The final consummation of all these

Sec. 12.] ETERNAL, FOREVER, ETC. 341
earthly conflicts is described further on (20 : 12-15), where
after these powers and organized systems of evil that have
opposed the establishment of the kingdom of Christ, shall
have been overcome and completely destroyed, Death it
self and (hades) hell shall also be destroyed in the same
lake of fire. " This is the Second Death."
3. The " torment," or rather tormenting death or de
struction here spoken of seems to be predicated more espe
cially of organized systems or forces ; and though these are
composed of individuals, it is not affirmed, as even Barnes
admits (see Notes in loco) " that their individual sufferings
would be eternal, since it is only a declaration that the
smoke of their torment ascends." Indeed, in the second
passage cited, we are expressly told that " fire came down
from God out of heaven and devoured them " — that is, the
numerous followers of Satan who are symbolized as " Gog
and Magog ;" and then, after this, " the devil that deceived
them was cast into the lake of fire — the same lake into
which the beast and the false prophet had been previously
cast — to be, in like manner, tormented day and night, for
ever and ever, or more literally (eis tous aidnas ton aidnon)
to the ages of the ages, till the end of time, and the con
summation of all things, when death and hell shall both be
cast into the same lake, and the old earth shall pass away
and the new heavens and the new earth shall appear — in
which " 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 : 4.)
4. The imagery here employed is taken from the Old
Testament, where olam, which is the Hebrew synonym of
aionios, is frequently predicated of the temporal calamities
and judgments that are inflicted on the wicked.
Of the destruction of the cities of the plain (Gen. 19),
Jude says, " They are set forth for an example, suffering

342 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
the vengeance of (puros aionion) eternal fire." Of the de
struction of Idumea, Isaiah says (chap. 34) :
" 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 to generation it shall lie waste ; none shall
i through it (lenetsach netsachim) forever and ever."

This Hebrew phrase is as strong an expression to denote
perpetuity and endlessness as any that could be used ; it is
certainly as strong as the corresponding Greek eis tous
aidnas ton aidnon, by which the fearful and remediless de
struction of Satan and his followers, and all the powers of
evil, by whatever name they are called, is described in the
Apocalypse. And yet, as all commentators admit, this emphatic lan
guage of the prophetic poet has its application to the affairs
of this world and to temporal events. Indeed, this predic
tion in regard to the land of Idumea, in its spirit and fuU
import has already been fulfilled, and the fires of destruc
tion have gone out, and the" smoke has ceased to ascend.
Nor is there any reason for giving to the highly-wrought
prophetic language of the Apocalypse, which describes
other temporal scenes and conflicts and destructions yet to
be fulfilled on this earth, any other application, except the
necessity of finding something in the Scriptures to justify
the pagan doctrine of endless sin and endless torment.
" No traveller finds, in the present condition of ancient
Idumea, the literal fulfilment of Isaiah's poetic prediction.
Desolate indeed is the land ; totally ruined are the cities ;
but they are not now sending up the smoke of their burn
ing. And yet the poet-seer is no false prophet. That doom,
which in the highly-wrought language of poetry he fore
told, has overtaken those cities. We behold in it a de
struction which is not only total, but ever-continuing ; and

Sec. 12.] ETERNAL, FOREVER, ETC. 343
so fitly symbolized by the ever-ascending smoke of their
burning  What, then, is the import of this
established symbol? As we learn from Isaiah's use of the
figures, it calls attention to the unending nature of a de
struction already accomplished. As applied in the Revela
tion to the fate of the irretrievably lost, it tells us that this
fearful ending of existence, whenever it rises before the
minds of the surviving beholders, is as if the smoke of that
burning were still ascending before one's actual vision. As
it is figuratively said of Abel, " He being dead yet speak-
eth," — he speaks to us whenever we think of him ; so, in
memory, that fate of the lost abides a warning to the re
deemed, ever-continuing, against any turning to that sin
which has brought about such hopeless, perpetual destruc
tion." (Bible Doctrine of the Soul, p. 176.)
There is nothing peculiar in the Scriptural use of these
Hebrew and Greek terms. We have no desire nor occa
sion to limit their meaning. We make no special plea for
this purpose. And yet, in the interest of truth and exeget-
ical fairness, it ought to be said that these forms of expres
sion, like similar forms in our own language, and in all
languages, are necessarily used with more or less latitude
of meaning, and their true significance can only be deter
mined by the nature of the subject spoken of.
The use of these terms in the Bible, is no more restricted
to that which is necessarily perpetual and endless in its na
ture, than in the ordinary language of common life. In
deed, olam and aionios are over and over again predicated
of things and events and processes that are earthly and
transitory, as well as of those that belong to the future
state, and the translators have often given it the limited
significance which the connection implied. They could not
do otherwise.
The noun aion, under its various forms occurs nearly
one hundred times in the New Testament. In some forty

344 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
of these instances it is so evidently used in a limited sense,
that they have translated it " world," " this world," " the
world to come," " before the world," "from the beginning
of the world," " while the world standeth," " ages," " ages
to come," etc., etc. The same is true of the adjective
aionios and of olam. Though they have more often been ren
dered eternal or everlasting, their application to transitory
and temporal affairs is too obvious to require any remark,
did not our opponents insist with such pertinacity upon the
sense of endlessness as their true meaning.
When the Scriptures speak of the everlasting hills, or of
everlasting earthly arrangements or processes, of everlast
ing doors and chains, or burning, or fire, or of punishment
by destruction, or of any transient thing, the word is lim
ited by the nature of the thing spoken of, and by the com
mon sense of those to whom they speak, and there is no
need of misunderstanding their meaning. When this is
predicated of that which in its own nature is absolutely in
corruptible, 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
things, to limit the term. It takes all the force of which
it is capable. Hence it is equally proper to speak of an
everlasting inheritance on earth, and of an everlasting in
heritance in heaven, though reason assures us that one is
transitory, and the Word of God assures us that the other
will be enjoyed without end.
But perhaps the chief difficulty in opposing this monstrous
doctrine of sin and torments that are absolutely endless, lies
in the very vague and superficial way in which men are
apt to speak and think of the infinite. With many per
sons anything that is beyond this life, is eternal, and any
thing that is indefinitely extended is infinite. They use

Sec. 12.] - ETERNAL, FOREVER, ETC. 345
these terms, infinite, eternal, immortal, and the like, very
flippantly, without stopping to consider the depth of their
meaning. There can be no real comparison between what
is finite, whether in space or in time, and that which is
absolutely infinite. Nor can the one be used to measure
the other by any number of repeated multiplications.
The number of particles of dust composing this earth or
the whole universe — if the universe may be supposed to be
finite — might be stated in a row of figures of very limited
extent. But were this row of figures to be extended over
the whole surface of the earth, and the face of the sky, and
to reach to the farthest conceivable limit of space, this
would not begin to express an infinite number. And were
these particle-s of dust to be taken one by one, each after an
interval, expressed in ages by these figures, the whole might
be exhausted without measuring any appreciable portion of
eternal existence, nor could any conceivable number of
figures, each representing the largest conceivable duration,
express it, or any fractional part of it.
Infinity of being is an attribute of Jehovah alone — the
great I Am — who is, and was, and ever shall be. He "only
hath Immortality dwelling in the light which no man can
approach unto." It cannot be the attribute of any living
creature, or he would be equal to his Creator. God may
make creatures in His own image and likeness ; but He
cannot make them equal to Himself in any of His infinite
attributes. He can make them to have wisdom, intelligence
and power, and other attributes of free agents, but from
the very fact of their creation, they must be dependent on
Him for all they are and have. He may give life, but this
life must, at best, be inferior to His own. He may prolong
the life that He gives, indefinitely — or even without end,
if He shall please to do so. But this life must necessaril)
He conditioned on His will and pleasure. It cannot be an

346 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
independent life. The Immortality — " The Life Ever
lasting" which He has promised to those who are united to
Himself — is His own peculiar life in them, and is everlast
ing because they are united to Him. It is not absolute, but
conditional. It is assured to them only as their union to
Him is assured. " I give unto them Eternal Life" — says
Christ — " and they shall never perish, neither shall any
pluck them out of my hand." It is because He keeps
them that they are immortal.
In the minds of many persons, any life beyond the pres
ent life is an immortal life, and hence if the wicked live at
all, or live again after death, they leap to the conclusion
that this life will be endlessly perpetuated. But the Scrip
tures assure us that the wicked are raised to be judged and
destroyed with an everlasting destruction, which is the
Second Death. There is not the least particle of evidence
from the Scriptures that the wicked live to sin and suffer
after their everlasting destruction — much less that this
miserable, hopeless life of sin and suffering, like the life of
the redeemed, is to be perpetuated forever and ever — as
long as God Himself endures.
We may very properly use these terms in the loose and
indefinite way which is common to all people and lan
guages, with reference to the affairs of time ; but in discuss
ing the future destiny of man, we must be more definite
and precise, for the discussion turns upon just this point,
whether the life of the wicked is equally permanent and
enduring with the life of the righteous, and whether they
all, irrespective of their character or condition, shall live
as long as God Himself shall live.
We wish it to be understood that, in claiming for the
righteous only, that immortality and eternal life which are
promised to them as their peculiar portion in the world to
come, we do not deny, or understand the Word of God to

Sec. 12.] ETERNAL, FOREVER, ETC. 347
deny to the wicked any life at all beyond the present ; but
we do deny that that life, however long it may endure — and
wretched it must be so long as it endures — is an endless
life. It will and must come to an end when God, upon
whom all creatures depend, shall withdraw His supporting
hand. For nothing can live when entirely separated from
Him in whom all creatures " live and move and have their
being." Much less can they continue to live when He has
judicially destroyed them with an everlasting destruc
tion. This is the Second Death, from which there is no
resurrection.

SECTION XTTT.
The Second Death.
The Divine Revelation is dualistic in substance as well
as in form. By means of two so-called Testaments, the Old
and the New, we have reVealed to us : two worlds ; two cov
enants ; two progenitors ; two births ; two kingdoms ; two
classes of people ; two Divine advents ; two destinies ; two
lives ; and two deaths.
It is the object of Divine Revelation to set before us, first
the one, and then the other, in this series of couplets, and to
show the contrast between the two, and how much superior
the latter is to the former in excellency, power and glory,
or in duration.
On the other hand, it has been the aim of human philos
ophy to ignore and make void these distinctions, or to
mystify and confound them ; and not only the world has
come under the influence of its teachings, but the Chris
tian Church has also come under it, so far as to construct
her systems of theology, and model her creeds, in a way
to perpetuate this confusion ; and to regard and treat as
enemies to the truth, and heretics, those of her number who,
disavowing allegiance to a false, anti-Christian philosophy,
would insist on these Scriptural distinctions, and hold fast
to the faith once delivered to the saints.
We might review this category of couplets — and the
series might be greatly extended — and show how the lines
of distinction, so sharply drawn in the Word of God be
tween the first and the second, the temporal and the eter
nal, have, in our traditional theology, become almost
obliterated, or entirely removed, in obedience to the de
mands of that philosophy to which the Christian Church
has surrendered herself; but as it is our object in this place

Sec. 13.] the second death. 349
to speak more especially of the last two mentioned, thefi-st
and second death, or rather of the second death, we can
only advert to -the other points very briefly, that it may be
seen how the whole system of Divine truth has fallen under
the same baleful, perverting, blinding power of human
philosophy. 1. We have in the beginning of the Old Testament, an
account of the creation of this lower world, with a descrip
tion of an earthly Paradise, where indeed all things were
very good according to their nature, but in which all were
material and physical, and hence necessarily transitory.
We have hints and glimpses of a brighter and better
world above and beyond, all through the Sacred Volume,
growing more full and clear to the end. But it is only in the
very closing chapters of the New Testament, that the world
to come is discovered to us in all its beauty and glory as a
spiritual world and a second Paradise, of which the first
was but a faint type, into which nothing that defileth can
enter, nor flesh, nor blood, but only that which is pure and
spiritual, and of consequence, in its own nature, incorrupti
ble and eternal.
2. We are told how, at first, " The Lord God formed
man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nos
trils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul" like
the other animals beneath him, which God had previously
formed, but with this difference : there was in man the
capacity, the possibility of a higher life and an unending
existence, provided he should show himself worthy of it.
But he must be tested ; and in that trial, failing to secure
the boon, he became mortal like every other earthly crea
ture, and the progenitor of a mortal posterity.
It was not till after this that God revealed His purpose
to give to man another, better, higher and more enduring

350 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. II.
life ; the former is natural (the psuehe life), and therefore
transitory. The latter is spiritual (the pneuma life), and
therefore incorruptible and eternal (zoe aionios). Hence
another progenitor is provided, a "second Adam," even
" the Lord from heaven," and there must be another birth,
the " new birth," by the power of the Divine Spirit ; and
man must become a "new creature," "which after God is
created in righteousness and true holiness." " That was
not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural;
and afterwards that which is spiritual."
3. The first covenant was a covenant of works. "Do this
and thou shalt live." It was entirely legal. Its rewards
and penalties, its motives, though pure, were earthly, and
appealed to man's psuchical nature. It could never " make
the comers thereunto perfect ;" that is, complete. " For
if the first had been faultless, then should no place have
been sought for the second."
But the second covenant was a covenant of faith, an im
plicit trust in an Almighty Savior — one "who is made, not
after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the
power of an endless life." Its appeals are to that higher
nature, now begotten within the new man by the Spirit of
God ; its motives, its 'rewards are spiritual, heavenly, eter
nal (see Heb. 7th, 8th and 9th chaps.)
4. And so mankind come to be divided into two classes in
this world — and only two — although they are designated by
a great variety of names and epithets, such as " sinners " and
"saints;" " the wicked " and the "righteous ;" " unbeliev
ers" and "believers;" "reprobates " and "heirs;" "enemies
of God " and " friends of God ;" " the foolish " and " the
wise ;" " the tares" and the " wheat ;" "the dross" and "the
gold ;" " the children of this world," " of the wicked one,"

Sec. 13.] THE SECOND DEATH. 351
"of wrath," etc., and "children of God," "of the Highest,"
"of the kingdom," "of the light," etc., and by scores of
other titles.
The first class are carnally minded ; live after the flesh ;
are controlled by worldly motives ; seek for worldly gain ;
aod have all their good things in this life, and which per
ish with the using ; and when this world is destroyed, they
must perish with it, for they have no inheritance beyond.
The second class are spiritually minded ; are led by the
Spirit of God ; through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of
the flesh ; are controlled by spiritual influences ; seek those
things that are above, that are pure, that are permanent
and eternal ; their choice is the good part that shall never
be taken away. They, and they only, have eternal life.
5. Hence there are two kingdoms : the one of this world,
over which the great adversary of God and man bears
rule, as the prince of this world ; a kingdom of evil, of disor
der, of sorrow, of darkness and of death ; a kingdom that is
doomed to be overthrown, and utterly and forever destroyed.
The other is the kingdom of God, of heaven, of our Lord,
a kingdom of light and glory and power, a kingdom of
righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, which,
established by the Son of God, shall endure forever as His
Everlasting Kingdom.
6. To lay the foundations of this kingdom, the Son of
God came in the flesh as the Son of man, to live under the
law, to suffer and die ; and then, victorious over the power
of death, He rose and ascended on high, "leading captivity
captive, and giving gifts unto men."
We have the assurance that He will, in due time, come
again, to gather in the fruits of His victory, to raise the
dead, to judge the world, and then Jo destroy it with all

352 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
that is worthless and vile, and make all things new. "And
unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second
time without sin unto salvation." (Heb. 9 : 28.) And in
the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness, He shall reign over His ransomed people
forever and ever.
7. In harmony with this Divine dualistic economy which
is revealed to us in the Old and New Testaments, two
deaths and two separate destinies are also revealed to us.
The first is the death to which all the children of Adam
are subject, irrespective of their character and conduct as
individuals. It is the doom of the whole race, and of every
thing earthly. Had man proved himself worthy of ex
emption from this common lot of earthly creatures, capa
ble of keeping ahd enjoying under the law, an inheritance
that was incorruptible and undefiled, he might have held
it forever. But when he chose the lower and temporal
good, he lost all claims on that which is higher and eternal,
and lost it forever, so far as he himself had any power to
regain it. He was cut off from the Tree of Life. Hebe-
came a mortal creature, like all the other creatures beneath
him in the scale of being, and subject to the same death.
Though he might linger here for a time, it would be in sor
row and pain, and though he might tarry long and strug
gle against the enemy, he must yield at last to death and
dissolution. " Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou re
turn," is his inevitable doom. And here nature leaves
him. She has no power to reconstruct and restore him.
Had it not been for the intimation of God's gracious
purpose to raise man again from death, to give him another
life through the intervention of an Almighty Savior — an
intimation, though early, yet vaguely given at first,
but made more full and clear as we come down the long

Sec. 13.] THE SECOND DEATH. 353
succession of ages until Life and Immortality are fully
brought to light in the Gospel — man could have had no
assurance, no hope of anything beyond the grave.
These Divine intimations, so early given to keep the race
from utter demoralization, have gone like dim rays of light
into all parts of the world, and have been handed down by
tradition, from generation to generation, to the present
time. Here we have the true source of those notions of the
future state which prevailed throughout the Old World in
ancient times, before the Gospel was given, and which now
prevail even where the light of the Gospel has never pene
trated. Under the constraining influence of hope and of
fear, and led on by those yearning desires which God has
given to every man, for something better and more sub
stantial than this lifp actually affords, even to the most for
tunate, men have given free reins to their imaginations, and
have translated these Divine hints into a thousand fanciful
forms. But in the Gospel of Christ "we have a more sure
word of prophecy, whereunto we do well that we take heed
as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day
dawn, and the day-star arise in our hearts."
In that "sure word of prophecy," we are told that the dead
shall live again, that there shall be a general resurrection
of the dead, both of the just and the unjust — a resurrection
in two instalments ; that of the righteous, which, by way
of pre-eminence and because it precedes that of the wicked,
is called " the first resurrection," " the better resurrection,"
" the resurrection," and that of the wicked, " the resurrec
tion of damnation." "But the hour is coming in the which
all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of
man and shall come forth ; they that have done good unto the
resurrection of life" — when they shall receive their spir
itual bodies, and enter upon that higher, better, and infi
nitely more glorious and enduring life, which the Lord shall

354 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. H.
give them, in the heavenly Paradise so beautifully de
scribed in the closing chapters of the Apocalypse, and again
eat of the tree of Life, and live forever — " and they that
have done evil to the resurrection of damnation " — or
rather, of condemnation, which consigns them to a Second
Death, from which there is no recall ; for it is the death of
" everlasting destruction."
Although the Word of God, from the very beginning,
and throughout its whole course, from first to last,
emphatically declares this to be the final end of sin, when
it is finished, yet this end, as the "Second Death," is more
distinctly brought to our notice, as we might expect, in this
closing book of Revelation — in which the final issue of the
conflict between Christ and His enemies, and the final con
summation of all things, are so vividly described — than in
any other part of the Sacred Volume.
Like the doctrine of the resurrection, intimations of
which were early given, but which becomes clearer and
clearer as we come down to the close, so this doctrine, not
merely of death in consequence of sin, but of a death com
ing after the resurrection — of a (deuteros thanatos) second
death for all who are adjudged unworthy of eternal life, is here
still more plainly and emphatically revealed. Four times in
this book of Revelation is this expression repeated, and
always in contrast with the hfe everlasting, which is given to
the righteous.
"Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown
of life. . . . He that overcometh shall not be hurt of
the Second Death." (Rev. 2 : 10, 11.)
"Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resur
rection ; on such the Second Death hath no power." (20 : 6.)
"And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on
it, from whose face the earth and heaven fled away ; and
•here was found no place for them. And I saw the dead,

SeC. 13.] THE SECOND DEATH. 355
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. And
the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and
hell delivered up the dead which were in them ; and they
were judged every man according to their works. And
death and hell were cast 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." (20 : 11, 15.)
Then, after a glowing description of the beauty and glory
of that heavenly Paradise, where God shall dwell with His
people, and " wipe away all tears from their eyes, 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 ;" the Revelator again says :
" But the fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable,
and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and
idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake
which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the Second
Death." (21 : 8.)
There can be no second death without a first death, and
the second must be like the first, or there can be no pro
priety in the use of the term second.
What the first death is, the Word of God declares in the
very outset, in terms as clear and definite as language
is capable of furnishing. It is the death to which all earthly
creatures are subject. Exemption from this was offered to
man alone of all the creatures of earth, and to him, only on
condition that he should live without sin. And when he
sinned, he forfeited the offered boon, and became,likethem,
mortal, and exposed to the common doom, " Dust thou art
and unto dust shalt thou return." This was the ending of
man's natural life, and would have been the final ending,
had it not been for that Divine interposition which is made

356 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
known to us in the Gospel, by which another life was
offered to him through an Almighty Savior, by a resurrec
tion from the dead. But there is a resurrection, not only
to life everlasting, but to condemnation and to a second
death. The first death is the common lot of all men from
Adam. " For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall
all be made alive." The second is the doom only of those
who fail of the great salvation that is offered in the
Gospel. It is only because of this second death, which is conse
quent upon the resurrection and judgment of the irreclaim-
ably wicked, that the Adamic death is to be called the first
death. We are all born to die once ; but we must be born.
a second time, by a heavenly, spiritual birth, if we would
live forever.
As the first death puts an end to a man's earthly life, and
remands him back to the dust from which he was formed,.
so the second death puts an end to the life beyond, and re
mands those who fall under its doom, both body and soul,
to that condition of darkness and silence from which they
were first called. If they will not live in harmony with
their Creator, and with all that is good, and true, and pure,.
and lovely in this glorious universe, which its Almighty
Creator is filling with holy and happy subjects ; if, having fal
len away from Him through temptation, they refuse to be re
stored to His love and favor, then they cannot live at all ;.
they must die, and give place to others who shall be wor
thy to live, and live forever. For what else can He do
with them, when " in the fullness of time He shall gather
together in one all things in Christ" — when He shall "make
all things new " — when there shall be but one King and one
universal kingdom, and " every knee shall bow, and every
tongue confess Him Lord, to the glory of God the Father ?"
What else can He do with irreclaimable rebels against His-

Sec. 13.] THE SECOND DEATH. 357
righteous government, when "He shall send forth His
angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things
which offend, and them that do iniquity," but to "cast them
into that furnace of fire," which shall burn them up, and
" leave neither root nor branch," as He has declared ? "His
fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor,
and gather His wheat into the garner ; but He will burn
up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
As to what may be the varied circumstances attending
this second death ; how long those who are adjudged to it
may be in dying; what pains, what lamentations, what
gnashing of teeth on the part of those who sinned against
great light and high privileges, and rejected the multiplied
offers of mercy in the Gospel ; of "what sorer punishment"
the apostate shall be thought worthy ; what fiery indigna
tion shall devour him " who hath trodden under foot the
Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant
wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath
done despite to the Spirit of grace ;" what may be the "many
stripes," and what " the few stripes," that shall be inflicted
upon the condemned in view of their various degrees of
guilt ; and how long this process of dying may be extended
in any case ; and how close the resemblance between the
first and second death may be, we forbear to speculate.
We know nothing beyond what we are taught in the Word
of God, and by this analogy it has given us for our infor
mation. But of this we may be confident : it is as surely
death in one case as in the other, or there can be no anal
ogy between the two. Death may be instantaneous ; it
may be painless, or it may be long-protracted and full of
anguish ; but the process of dying — whether brief or pro
longed, whether painless or agonizing — is not death ; the
end of the process only, is death.
It is not the process, nor the circumstances, we are now

358 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
called to consider, but the final result. " The end of those
things," says Paul, " is death ;" — " the enemies of the cross
of Christ, whose end is destruction."
Now this cannot be admitted by the adherents of that
philosophical theology which asserts that man cannot
actually die ; that he was created inherently and necessa
rily immortal in the outset. Some other meaning must be
found for this word death, both in its first and second ap
plication. And what shall it be ? We know fyhat death
is in the case of every other living creature. It is the ex
tinction of life, of all life, and the end of the individual
thing itself. Nothing remains of it but the elements of
which it was composed, and these disintegrateand fall back
to their original condition. Such according to the Scrip
tures is the death of man. " Dust thou art, and unto dust
shalt thou return." But, no, says this philosophy ; death in
the case of man means simply the separation of the soul
from the body. But the body is not the man. It is only
the garment he wears. Th man is as much alive as ever,
and even more, for he now comes into greater freedom and
activity. The man, then, does not die. But, in order to
save their philosophy, and, at the same time, to bring it in
to an apparent agreement with the express declarations of
Scripture that the man himself shall die, another sort of
death, a metaphorical death, which is no real death at all,
is predicated of what is called the soul of man, that is, of
the man himself. This is what is called " spiritual death."
This is a state of sin and misery, a state of separation from
God, a state of guilt which every man inherits from Adam
and which is aggravated by his own personal sin. This
state of guilt and misery, if eternally perpetuated, becomes
the penalty of " everlasting destruction." And so, accord
ing to this philosophy, the guilt and the punishment amount
to the same thing : and this is the death which was threat-

Sec 13.] THE SECOND DEATH. 359
ened as the penalty of sin. As for the second death it
means — why — it means— just nothing at all ; only this first
metaphorical death is judicially confirmed and perpetuated
eternally in a life of sin and misery, and in an eternal sep
aration from God who is the Source of all life and blessed- «
ness. Such is their philosophy of death.
The fact is, these theologians, while they have had a
world of trouble in defining the meaning of the first death,
and giving it such a turn as to save the life of the sinner
who "dies, have had still more trouble with the Second
Death. They are quite unable, according to their philos
ophy, to give it any sensible interpretation whatever. Let
the reader refer to any popular commentary he may have
at hand, and he will see how these good men, under the
blinding influence of this delusive lie of the adversary, "Ye
shall not surely die," " darken counsel by words without
knowledge " when endeavoring to explain the "mysterious
meaning " of the words " Second Death," which, but for
their own false philosophy, would be. as clear as the noon
day sun.
Barnes, who had more spiritual insight than the majority
of these commentators, but who labors under the same phil
osophic delusion, says (in loco), " Death cuts off from life —
and so the Second Death cuts off from eternal life ; death
puts an end to all our hopes here, and the Second Death
to all our hopes forever ;" — very true, but he goes on to
say — " death is attended with terrors and alarms — the faint
and feeble emblem of the terrors and alarms of the world
of wo." In this last comparison, he glides away from the
real point in issue.
The " terrors and alarms " which attend the first death
are not the death itself; they are only the precursors and
accompaniments of that death, and so " the terrors and
alarms of the world of wo," of which he speaks, are not the

360 BIBLE TERMINOLOGY. [Chap. IL
Second Death. Terrors and alarms may precede and at
tend both the first and second death, even to the end ; but
there comes an end to all these when death itself shall in
tervene to close the scene. It is of the death that we are
speaking, and not of the terrors and alarms which attend
it. However great may be these terrors and alarms, and
however long protracted, they cannot be called death in
either case, until the sufferer actually dies, and then we
may say that he died an "awful death," a "sudden death,"
or a " lingering death," as the case might be.
But gome of our opponents object to the emphasis we lay
upon these words, " Second Death," because they are found
only in the Apocalypse, which is so full of figurative ex
pressions. But although this precise phraseology, deuteros
thanatos, is not used in any other part of the Bible, this
Second Death is spoken o'f again and again in multitudes
of instances throughout the whole inspired volume, and
sinners are warned against it, and urged to avoid it. What
other death could Moses have alluded to, when, in his fare
well address to the children of Israel, he set before them
life and death, and urged them to choose life that they
might live ? "I call heaven and earth to record this day
against you, that I have set before you life and death,
blessing and cursing ; therefore choose life that both thou
and thy seed may live." (Deut. 30 : 19.)
What other death could the prophet Ezekiel have meant
when, commissioned by heaven, he cried in the ears of the
rebellious, fault-finding children of Israel, "O wicked man,
thou shalt surely die ;" and again, when beseeching them
to turn from their iniquities and live, he is instructed to
say, " As I live, saith the Lord, 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 ?" (Ezek. 33 : 8-11.) Surely, he

Sec. 13.] THE SECOND DEATH. 361
was not mocking them. He could not have meant a mere
national death, for he addressed them expressly as individ
uals, and promised life to such of them as should repent
and " do that which is lawful and right." He could not
have meant the death of the body, for no one of them
could hope to escape that, whatever he might do. He could
not have meant what the theologians call "spiritual death,"
for in this sense they were already dead in trespasses and
sins. What else could he have meant but that second
death which follows the first, which is, indeed, more clearly
revealed under the Gospel, as is also the future life .of the
righteous, but concerning which the Old Testament speaks
in no ambiguous terms, and in view of which the wicked
were taught to tremble, as were the righteous to hope and
exult in view of the life to come ?
And this was the very complaint which God brought
against the false prophets of the olden time, as it is against
their followers of the present time, that they preached the
Tempter's lie for the Word of God, and flattered sinners
with the idea that they were immortal, that they were
such noble creatures that they could not die, and that God
could not, or would not, ever put an end to their existence.
And so they were made bold in iniquity, as men now are,
with the fallacious hope, that through the great mercy of
God they shall somehow escape the death with which they
are threatened, " Because," says the prophet, " with lies
ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have
not made sad, and strengthened the hand of the wicked,
that he should not turn from his wicked way, by promis
ing htm life." (Ezek. 13 : 22.)
But as the second birth, and the new life — the life ever
lasting, which Christ gives to his people — are more
clearly brought to light in the Gospel, so this Second

362 bible terminology. [Chap. II.
Death, which completes the destruction of the sinner, is
more distinctly declared in the New Testament. What
other death but this Second Death could Christ and His
disciples, who preached in His name, refer to in their warn
ings, and expostulations, and entreaties with sinners, and
especially with rejecters of the Gospel ? They are told
that they shall die, shall perish, shall perish in their own
corruption, shall be destroyed, shall not see life, etc.
" Fear not them," says our Lord, " which kill the body "
— this is the first death ; it must come sooner or later to
all — " but are not able to kill the soul ; but rather fear
Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in (Ge
henna) hell." What kind of a destruction can that be
which destroys nothing ? The first destruction kills the
body. How can this be a greater destruction which
neither destroys nor kills even the body, much less the soul,
but leaves them both to live and sin and suffer forever ?
The sinner is said to destroy his own soul by sin ; but this
is a destruction by God Himself. What can it be but
actual destruction ?
The Apostle Paul says, " If ye live after the flesh ye
shall die ; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds
of the body, ye shall live." (Rom. 7 : 13.) Of course, he
does not mean physical life, nor physical death, for the
former, all to whom he wrote were enjoying, and the latter,
none of them could avoid. Nor did he speak of any pres
ent state of spiritual life and death ; for it was of the
future, something yet to come, and to come as the result of
their conduct here. He could refer to no other life but
that which is given from above, and which is everywhere
declared to be everlasting. Nor could he refer to any
other death than that Second Death, to which a course of
sinful, carnal living, here in the flesh, must inevitably lead.

Sec. 13.] the second death. 363
" For the wages of sin is death ; but the gift of God is eter
nal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord."
But it is needless to multiply citations from Scripture.
This philosophy which teaches that man is a deathless be
ing, and that whatever his character and conduct here, he
is destined inevitably to live forever hereafter, must have
some way to evade the force of the Scripture testimony on
this question, however explicit and complete it may be
shown to be.
It fails to recognize the distinction between the first and
second death, because it denies that man is liable to any
real death whatever. But its pernicious influence does not
stop here. Its dark shadow is thrown over the whole
evangelical system. Those antithetical distinctions and
contrasts to which we alluded in the beginning, which
abound in the Word of God, are all of them more or less
confused, or entirely broken down, to bring the system of
revealed truth into an apparent harmony with the delusive
fiction of the great adversary.
1. The distinction between the life that now is, and that
which is to come, the psuehe life, which is transient in its
very nature, and the zoe aionios life, which, as the divine life
in man, is necessarily pure and eternal, is broken down.
For, according to this view, the first life never comes to an
end. It. suffers no interruption even in what is called death
— but continues right on ; and the only change to which it
is subject is in the circumstances under which it is perpet
uated. It is the same old Adamic life in both worlds.
2. The new birth, which the Scriptures declare to be so ab
solutely essential to the enjoyment of this life of God in the
world to come, is a mere opus operatum, dispensed by the
priest in baptism, or, at most, a change of purpose, a re
formation of character, wrought by the individual himself.

364 bible terminology. [Chap. II.
and not an absolutely new creation, ingenerated by the
Spirit of God, as Christ Himself affirms.
3. The real distinction between the natural man and the
spiritual man, so emphatically drawn in the Word of God,
becomes, under the teaching of this philosophy, a distinc
tion in degree; and not in kind ; both are endowed with
" the power of an endless life," and the difference between
the two classes is, that the one class possess a better, purer,
and more blessed life than the other. But the lives of both
are alike equally stable and enduring.
4. The old covenant of works is held to be still in force, so
far that, if any child of Adam were to live without sin, he
would need no second Adam from heaven to beget within
him any other life ; that we are indebted to Christ the Savior,
not for imparting to us His own divine life, but only for
the renewal of our old life, and for saving us, not from the
dominion and power of death, but from the pains and pen
alties that are due on account of sin.
5. The doctrine of the resurrection, of which the early dis
ciples made so much, and upon which they rested all their
hopes for any future life whatever, is virtually denied, or
so explained away by the disciples of this school of philos
ophy, as to be of no practical importance. Many of them
say, with Hymeneus and Philetus, " who concerning the
truth have erred," " that the resurrection is already past "
in the case of all who have died, and that every one
rises as he dies, and there is to be no future gen
eral resurrection, nor indeed any general judgment at
the second coming of our Lord, nor indeed any such
second coming at all, as is described in the Scriptures.
Their philosophy has done away with these great future
events which are so vividly described in the Word of God,
or, rather, their philosophy can really find no place for
them, excepting as unmeaning pageants, and so they ane

Sec. 13.] the second death. 365
to be dispensed with, and explained away as metaphors,
oriental forms of speech, and as the poetic drapery in which
the truth is clothed, and which it is the part of science
and true philosophy to discard.
6. Finally, we are told that the warfare now going on be
tween these two kingdoms that are now contending with each
other for the possession of this earth and its inhabitants, so
often brought to our notice in the Scriptures ; as the king
dom of Satan, " who ruleth in the hearts of the children
of disobedience," and " the kingdom of our Lord and Sav
ior Jesus Christ," shall never come to an end. But if we
accept the Scriptures as our guide, we are not left in doubt
as to the final issue of this conflict.
As in the beginning of the Old Testament we have given
us by the pen of inspiration, an account of the beginning
of Satan's kingdom on earth, and of the ruin which his
malice and cunning achieved in this fair world ; and in
the opening of the New Testament, an account of the lay
ing of the foundation of Christ's kingdom, yet to be estab
lished, and of the principles that are to govern it — so in the
closing chapters of the Sacred Volume, we have a prophetic
picture of the last struggles, and the closing scenes of this
earthly drama. As we read the Word of God, the victory
of Christ is to be no partial or uncertain victory. The con
flict between Christ and this arch-enemy of God and man,
is to be complete and final. It is to issue in nothing short
of the utter and everlasting destruction of Satan and all
his hosts. They are to be burned up with fire, to be abso
lutely and forever exterminated. This earth, which he has
claimed for his own, and over which he has tyrannized with
such fearful power, is to be reclaimed and restored to more
than its original purity and glory. It is to be purified by
(pur) fire, which shall consume, as chaff, every unclean
thing. And in that new heavens and new earth that shall

366 bible terminology. [Chap. II.
be, "the tabernacle of God shall be with men. And God
shall dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and
He shall be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears
from their eyes ; 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 this philosophy we are opposing, cannot consent to any
such complete victory as this. It teaches that Satan shall in
deed be overthrown, and subjected, and tormented; but he
will not be destroyed. He cannot be. He has as good a claim
to an eternal existence as Christ Himself, and so have all his
followers. This earth, which has been the theatre of the
fearful conflict, shall never witness its end. The scene is
to be adjourned over into the world to come. The king
dom of Christ shall never become a universal kingdom.
But He must needs partition off a portion of His kingdom
for the special residence of His enemies, whom He cannot
destroy. He can indeed torment them, and give to the hosts
of the heavenly world the awful and perpetual exhibition
of His power, and His wrath in heaping torments upon His
prostrate enemies ; but they can still blaspheme His name, •
and defy His power to harm them further. There, safely
entrenched, we seem to hear their great leader, like a
mighty fallen angel, still unsubdued in heart, defiantly
crying :
"Let Him then work His horrible pleasure on me,
Wreathe His black, curling flames, tempest the air
With volleyed thunders and wild warring winds,
Bend from its roots the firm earth's solid base,
Heave from the roaring main the boisterous waves,
And dash them to the stars. Me let Him hurl,
Caught in the fiery tempest, to the gloom
Of deepest Tartarus ; not all His power
Can quench the ethereal breath of life in me."
— The Prometheus of jEschylui.

Sec. 13.] the second death. 367
And the Almighty Conqueror, as He sits upon the
throne of glory, and sways the sceptre of love over the in
numerable hosts of His ransomed people, shall, with them,
look down upon the raging hosts below, and listen to their
groans and blasphemies, as the smoke of their torment as-
cendeth up forever and ever — and "shall see of the travail of
his soul and be satisfied!!"
In the course of our review, which we must now bring
to a close, as we have followed the trail of this delusive fic
tion of the great adversary throughout this whole volume
of Divine revelation, as interpreted by our traditional
theology, and have seen how it has insinuated itself
into all the doctrines of our holy religion ; how it has
perverted and subverted the meaning of its clearest utter
ances, vacated its most emphatic terms of their true signi
ficance, and given to them another sense that would tally
with its object ; how it has established itself at the very
foundation of the Christian system, as one of its fundamen
tal truths, and thrown its baleful shadow over all the super
structure^ — two things have excited our continual wonder
and astonishment.
First, we have been filled with astonishment at the al
most infinite cunning and unlimited resources of the adver
sary. When we see how he seduced our first parents to
their ruin, by this specious, flattering, confident assertion,
" Ye shall not surely die," how he has infused this same
delusive falsehood into the philosophy, and literature, and
religions of the world, and even into the creeds of
Christendom, and subsidized even the Church of Christ
to the advocacy of his falsehood, the reason why we are so
earnestly and repeatedly warned to beware of his devices
is quite apparent. The Scriptures tell us that " he was a
liar from the beginning ;" that when the sons of God came to
present themselves before the Lord, Satan came also among

368 bible terminology. [Chap. IL
them ; that " he deceiveth the whole world," that he is able
to " transform himself into an angel of light," that as " the
god of this world he hath blinded the minds of those which
believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ,
which is the image of God, should shine unto them." For
the influence of this subtle, delusive fiction, in obscuring
the glory of the Gospel, and weakening its power ; in flat
tering the pride of the sinner, and luring him on to death ;
in denying to Christ His chief glory, as the only true source
of life eternal ; and in belittleing His work in our behalf,
can hardly be overestimated.
And then, again, we have been astonished at the won
derful power and energy of the Divine Truth. Not that
it should triumph and flourish in the face of the fiercest
opposition, so much excites our wonder or attests its ex
cellency and power ; but that neither the cunning perver
sions of the adversary, nor the teaching of a false philos
ophy, nOr the traditions of an apostate church, nor the con
ceits of its professed friends, with which it has been overlaid
and loaded down, should have been able altogether to
quench its light — though they have sadly dimmed its lus
tre — nor wholly to stay its progress in the world — though
they have greatly hindered it— this does indeed excite our
admiration and astonishment, and assures us that it is pos
sessed of a living force which nothing can extinguish.
If under all these repressing and obscuring and smother
ing influences, such blessed fruits have followed in its train
wherever it has gone in the earth, what must be its real
power when it shall be permitted to shine forth in all its
heavenly effulgence, and to what a speedy and universal
triumph must it go forth throughout the world, when this
" glorious Gospel of the blessed God," as the simple mes
sage of Life, Life, Eternal Life, shall be permitted to
run, and have free course, and be glorified ?

Bible Eschatology.

WHAT SAITH THE SCRIPTURE?

Introductory Remarks.
The Bible is not an argument : it is a Revelation. It
utters truths. It states facts and principles. It does not
undertake to prove them. We may exercise our reasoning
faculties upon its utterances, and endeavor to formulate
them into a rational system ; we may attempt to bring
proofs of what it says from other sources ; but whether we
can do this or not — if we honor the Scriptures a3 the Word
of God — we are supposed to accept its plain and unequiv
ocal declarations as a sufficient and ultimate authority for
our belief.
If on any point its utterances are vague, or appear to
be inconsistent with each other, or in conflict with other
known facts, we must, indeed, exercise our reason in solv
ing the difficulty. For it is evident that all truth, whether
natural or supernatural, must be self-consistent and har
monious ; and so it will be found when cleared of human
errors and misconceptions.
But so far as its teachings are plain and explicit, and
especially in regard to those truths that are beyond the
reach of unaided reason, we have nothing to do but to
receive them with implicit faith. Surely, no human phil
osophy or scheme of doctrine, however plausible it may

370 bible eschatology. [Chap. HI.
seem, is to be brought into antagonism with the Oracles of
God, or to be made a test by which to judge of their trust
worthiness. Our simple inquiry should be, and shall be in this dis
cussion, as to the nature and destiny of men, What saith
the Scripture? not, what ought Scripture to say, nor, what,
by a forced construction can it be made to appear to say?
But, what does it actually say? And whatever it shall be
found clearly, unequivocally, and uniformly to say, on this
question, as on all others, we shall hold to be the truth of
God, and accept it as such, and insist on its acceptance by
all who acknowledge the Divine authority of the Scrip
tures — human philosophy, or traditional theology or popu
lar sentiment, to the contrary notwithstanding.
It is not proposed to argue, in this place, the question of
the inspiration of the Scriptures. We assume it. For we
address what we have to say to those who, with us, admit
their Divine authority, whatever theory of inspiration
they may have adopted. Nor is it a question of this or
that translation or revision that especially concerns us.
One version may express the idea of the original text
more clearly and correctly than another. The new Revi
sion, a portion of which has just been given to the pubhc,
should be, and is, in many respects, an improvement on
the old version ; and we are thankful for it ; for it fully
sustains our criticisms on the text in the forgoing chapter
on Bible Terminology, which Were in type before this revi
sion was published. Indeed, all of the changes in the
text relating to this question, so far as they go, are in the
direction of the views we maintain, and tend greatly to
enforce and confirm them, as will be seen as we proceed.
But our main inquiry is, not how shall this word or that
word or clause in the original be rendered into English,
but in what sense is it to be taken whether translated or

Chap. III.] INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 371
not. Our controversy with our Christian brethren does
not so much turn on translations or renderings, as on the
interpretation of the text itself, and the sense in which it
is to be taken. Are the Scriptures to be read and inter
preted like other books, according to the ordinary laws of
language, or in a .sense that is unusual and peculiar to
themselves ? Are the historical, descriptive, and didactic
portions of the Bible — its commands and exhortations ; its
threatenings and promises — to be understood as meaning
what they seem to mean, according to the ordinary use of
language ; what they actually say, or in some ideal and
mystical sense ? Are its parables and poetic figures — for
it abounds in such — to be explained in harmony with its
didactic and sober utterances, or in a way to contradict
them and to reverse their meaning ? In short, how are
we to receive the Word of God ? Was it intended for the
instruction and edification of the common people, or only
for the diversion of speculating theorists, and poets, and
philosophers ? Was it meant that the masses should read
and believe what it says, or was it given only to delude,
bewilder and mislead them?
Here, then, is our real difficulty in discussing this ques
tion. We complain — and with reason, we think — of the
manner in which the Word of God has been treated by its
professed friends. Philosophers have brought their specu
lations ; metaphysicians their ideal theories ; poets their
fancies ; and theological partisans of every name, their
multiform hobbies to this Sacred Book, and have sought
to find support for their various notions in its teachings.
They have read, or tried to read, their own ideas into its
language, and have twisted its words to suit their purpose.
The result has been to divide the Christian world into a
great variety of parties, each differing from the others in
almost every possible way, and yet all appealing to the

372 bible eschatology. [Chap. IIL
Scriptures in confirmation of their own peculiar doctrines.
And unbelievers have had great occasion to say, that the
Bible is a very uncertain guide; it can be made, like the
oracles of the heathen, to say nothing, or anything, or
everything that men may wish.
This is especially true as regards the question now be
fore us. That Grecian system of philosophy, usually ac
credited to Plato as its chief expounder, which claims for
man an ever-living, indestructible nature, early found its
way into the Christian Church, and gradually corrupted
and modified its teachings — as we have shown in a previ
ous chapter — and finally controled them entirely, and was
installed as the chief corner-stone of the Christian religion.
The doctrines of the Word of God were modified to accord
with this system of philosophy. Indeed, the philosophy
itself, so far as relates to the eternal pre-existence of all
souls, and on some other minor points, was modified, so as
to conform to a Christian theism ; but the conclusion which
was based on the assumption of man's eternal pre-exist
ence ; namely, that the nature of man is indestructible,
and that he will necessarily live forever, was insisted on as
an axiomatic truth. The language of the Scriptures was
changed, if not in form, in the construction put upon it —
which amounts to the same thing — so as to teach and sus
tain this dogma. A new meaning was put into all the
words of Scripture relating to the nature and destiny of
man. The people were taught to understand them, not in
their ordinary and natural sense, but in a new, mystical,
religious sense. This sort of instruction has been perpetu
ated by scholastic reasoning, persistent theological teach
ing, and ecclesiastical authority, to the present time. And
now, throughout Christendom — with occasional protests,
which are happily becoming more and more frequent and
emphatic — the principle of interpreting the Scriptures, not

Chap. III.] INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 373
according to the laws of ordinary language, but according
to the behests of this heathen philosophy, is accepted and
practiced as the proper thing to do. And those of us who
insist on treating the Word of God honestly, and who be
lieve that He meant what He said, when he threatened
death and destruction as the sure and final end of all per
sistent sinners, and promised eternal life through Jesus
Christ the Savior and through Him alone, are looked upon
as heretics and disturbers of the peace of the Church !
It must be evident to every one, that, if the language of
the Bible is to be understood in its ordinary sense, the doc
trine for which we are contending is sustained beyond all
controversy. Our opponents have no ground to stand on.
For it declares most explicitly, and emphatically, and re
peatedly, that all sinners who are not saved shall die; shall
perish ; shall be utterly destroyed ; that the time is coining
when they shall not be, etc., etc. And it declares, with
equal emphasis and reiteration, that eternal life is the por
tion of the righteous ; and that they and they only shall
live forever.
What can be more direct and positive than such declar
ations as these, which abound throughout the Scripture ?
" The soul that sinneth it shall die ;" " Sin, when it is fin
ished, bringeth forth death ;" "The wicked is reserved for
the day of destruction;" "Whose end is destruction;"
"Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction;"
"They shall be destroyed forever;" "They shall utterly
perish in their own corruption ;" etc., etc. ? or such texts
as these ? "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God
is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord ;" " 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;" " This is the record (witness) that God
hath given to us eternal life ; and this life is in his Son.

374 bible eschatology. [Chap. III.
He that hath the Son hath (the) life, and he that hath not
the Son of God,. hath not (the) life."
We all know what these words, life, death, destruction,
etc., mean in common usage, when predicated of all other
creatures and things. Every scholar knows that they
have the same meaning in the original language. It is
well known and acknowledged, that Plato used them in
their ordinary sense when treating of the nature and des
tiny of man ; when he declared that the soul of man could
not die, could not perish, could not be destroyed, that it
would naturally and necessarily live forever. But now
that the Bible declares most positively that it shall die,
shall perish, shall be destroyed, unless it be recovered from
the power of sin, and that an endless life is the portion
only of those who are in Christ, it would seem that these
adherents of Plato must give up either their philosophy, or
their Bible which so flatly contradicts their philosophy :
but they have shown themselves equal to the exigency, by
changing the meaning of all these crucial terms. They
have given to them a new meaning, which is peculiar to
the Scriptures. They attempt to justify and sanctify this
new sense, by calling it the religious or theological or spir
itual sense of these words. Now we are told, and taught
to believe, and educated from infancy into the habit of
thinking and believing, that death, in the Bible, when pre
dicated of man, does not mean actual death as it does
when predicated of any other living creature. It means
only the separation of the soul from the body ; or the
separation of the sinner from God ; or a state of sin and
misery ; or a kind of spiritual paralysis, in which the sin
ner lives on to sin and suffer forever ; or, indeed, almost
anything but just death itself, which puts an end to all
conscious life. So also with the words, to perish, to be de
stroyed ; the radical and primary meaning is taken out of

Chap. HI.] INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 375
them, and another meaning, which will save their philoso
phy, is put into them. They mean the loss of well-being,
and not of being itself; the destruction of happiness, and
not of life or personality; or, indeed, anything and every
thing fearful, but just what they do actually say.
So the word life, which is everywhere promised, as the
peculiar portion of the redeemed, is emptied of its essential
signification, and made to mean purity and blessedness. It
is allowed to mean everything good and desirable but just
life itself; but, as for life, it is Recording to this philosophy,
equally the attribute of all men. With the righteous, it is
eternally perpetuated in joy and blessedness, and with the
wicked, it is also eternally perpetuated in sin and wretch
edness: for, according to this philosophy, the essential
principle of life, conscious, sensitive, active life, is the ina
lienable attribute of all men alike.
Origen, and his followers, revolting at the idea of end
less sin and suffering, carried this method of accommoda
tion so far, as to make the Scriptures predicate death and
destruction, not of the individual sinners themselves ; but
only of their sins, and hence, they arrived at the comfort
ing conclusion, that this better life — the eternal life which
is promised to believers only — will eventually be the por
tion of all men.
This practice of accommodating the language of the
Word of God to the popular philosophy of the day, of
"spiritualizing" its terms, has become so common and
thoroughly established, that the great body of the Chris
tian world accept it as a matter of course. It seems to be
the proper thing to do, in studying the Scriptures. Hence,
the great need of commentaries, and Biblical notes and
expositions, to tell the people what is the spiritual and
Scriptural sense of the words they are reading. Hence,
the testimony of the Word of God on this question, and

376 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. > [Chap. HI.
indeed on other points, when opposed to the popular the
ology, is nullified, or completely reversed. As in the time
of Christ : " It is made of none effect through their tradi
tions." The people read it with little or no conception of
the real nature of the doctrine it teaches.
This practice of spiritualizing away the substance of
God's Word, is having a remarkable revival in our day.
Not only those doctrines that have their foundation in the
literal interpretation of the term "life" and "death" are
deprived of their real significance and force, but all the
other correlated doctrines of the Gospel are spiritualized
away in the same manner. If there be no actual death,
there can be no actual resurrection ; nothing but the body
perishes in death ; the real man who had been dwelling
therein from his birth, is now released and rises at once
into greater freedom and activity. And even this change
— which is called a resurrection in order to make some use
of Scripture terms — is not due to Christ, but is a natural
process, which is common to all the children of Adam.
In the same way the great and glorious doctrine of the
Second Coming of Our Lord, upon which the early Chris
tians rested all their hopes of any life beyond the present,
is explained away. These early disciples were entertain
ing delusive hopes, and the Apostles themselves were mis
taken, when they encouraged this expectation. Even the
two angels did not mean what their words seem to mean,
when they said : " This same Jesus which is taken up from
you into heaven, shall so come in like manner, as ye have
seen him go into heaven." He shall not so come. His
coming is spiritual and invisible. Indeed, He has come
already, and is coming more and more every day, and this
is all the coming these angels meant. As for a future
judgment, when the destinies of the righteous and the
wicked shall be fixed, and definitely declared, of which

Chap. III.] INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 377
the Word of God speaks so plainly ; there is to be actually
no such day. " God hath not appointed a day in which
he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man
whom he hath ordained." All days are judgment days.
It is a continuous process which is now going on, and will
continue, till the consummation of all things.* Our reli
gious teachers — men who are ordained to preach the Gos
pel — are proclaiming such doctrines as this. Their ortho
doxy is unchallenged ; their preaching is very popular ;
their books are highly praised by the religious papers, and
eagerly sought after and read with pleasure.
But we protest against this method of Scriptural inter
pretation as subversive of all true doctrine. " If the foun
dations be destroyed what can the righteous do ?" If men
are to be allowed, without rebuke, to " accommodate the
language of Scripture," to suit their own fanciful notions,
we have no certain standard of Divine Truth ; no defence
against error; no credible authority for any doctrine what
ever. We are liable to be " tossed to and fro and carried
about with every wind of doctrine, and by the slight of
men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to
deceive." We might as well, yea, better, throw aside the
Scriptures entirely, and every man adopt that scheme of
doctrine which pleases him best. It is but a solemn
mockery to prate about the " Sacred Scriptures," and to
talk of their " inspiration," and to call them the " Oracles
of God," if they are not allowed to speak for themselves,
and are not to be accepted as meaning what they say. It
is bad enough to bribe a human witness to testify falsely ;
but what shall we say of the crime of extorting a false
testimony from the Divine Word, and claiming its testi
mony in behalf of errors it denounces?
*8ee the Gospel of the "Reeu rrection by James M. Whiton, Ph. D.

378 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. HI.
" Behold 1 am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that use their
tongues and say He saith. Behold I am against them that prophesy-
false dreams, and do cause my people to err by their lies and their
lightness. They speak a vision out of their own heart, and not out
of the mouth of the Lord. The prophet that hath a dream let him
tell a dream, and he that hath my word, let him speak my word
faithfully." We have, in the foregoing chapter on Bible Terminol
ogy, considered somewhat in detail, all the principal words
of the Bible relating to the nature and destiny of man,
such as, Soul; Spirit; Life; Death; Hell; The Second
Death; Punishment; Everlasting Destruction; The Life
Everlasting; The Great Salvation; The Unspeakable Gift,
etc. We have insisted that these words should be accepted
and understood, in all ordinary cases in the Bible, as in
other books ; that their plain, usual, literal sense should
be given to them, unless some good reason can be shown
why they should be taken in some tropical or extraordi
nary sense. We have shown, also, that no good reason
can be given for changing and reversing their meaning
in the great majority of cases where they occur, as tradi
tional theology insists upon doing, nor, indeed, any other
reason at all, but just this : that it is demanded by the
popular psychology of the world, which is essentially pagan
and anti-Scriptural, which, though attributed to the Gre
cian philosophers, had its origin in the tempter's lie, " Ye
shall not surely die." The grand Gospel distinction be
tween the righteous and the wicked, that of Life, Eternal
Life through Christ, and Him only, is acceptable neither
to the moral philosopher, nor the infidel scientist. The
one asserts that all the children of Adam are endowed
with the power of an endless life in their own right ; the
other asserts that we all perish at death. But here they
join hands in rejecting Christ as the only source of life
from the dead, as did the Pharisees and Sadducees, and

Chap. IH.] INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 379
Herod and Pilate, and cry, "All men are immortal or
none ! all or none ! As for this Christ, away with Him,
crucify Him. Not this man, but Barabbas." And alas,
the Church of Christ, so-called, has learned to reiterate
their cry. "All men are immortal or none. All or none.
Not this man, but Adam ; he, if any one, is the source of
eternal life — not Christ." And so this Christ, who gave
His own life to redeem us from death, comes to His own,
and His own receive Him not. But as many as receive
Him, to them He gives power to become the sons of God,
and heirs of Eternal Life.
It is our special object in this chapter to review the tes
timony of the Word of God, not the testimony of men, as
to this^question of the Life Everlasting; to inquire, " What
saith the Scripture ?" not what saith philosophy or science,
or scholasticism, or tradition, or orthodox theology, so-
called ; but, What saith the Scripture — the Word of God ?
not what men have thought it should say, nor what they
have tried to make it say ; but what does it say ?
We are Veil aware how useless this labor may be, as re
gards those who may read the passages which we shall cite,
with a determination to make them favor their own psy
chological views, whatever they may be ; or to harmonize
with the traditional, or popular theology, in which they
have been educated ; who insist on giving to the language
of Scripture, what is called its " spiritual sense," whenever
its literal import does not please them ; for in this way the
force of any words, however explicit, may be turned, and
they may even be made to mean anything whatever the
partisan may choose to make them mean. No array of
passages, however emphatic and explicit, or, however
numerous, would avail to convince such a reader of his
error, " neither would they be persuaded though one rose

380 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. IH.
from the dead." Nothing but the Almighty power of the
Spirit of God is able to persuade an unwilling mind to
receive the truth.
But, we trust that there are not a few sincere, honest
inquirers after the truth, who are endeavoring to bring,
so far as they know how, an unprejudiced and teachable
mind to the study of the Scriptures ; who are anxiously
longing to find their way out of the mists and fogs, in which
tradition, scholasticism, and human conceit have involved
them ; who do not care so much to know what is popular,
or what the schoolmen of the dark ages have taught, or the
Church has decreed, or the Pharisees and Rulers of the
present day believe, as what the Scriptures say, To such
we address ourselves ; fully satisfied that the doctrine for
which we contend is none other than the doctrine of the
Word of God, plainly, explicitly, fully, and uniformly set
forth in every .portion of the Sacred volume, from Genesis to
Revelation ; and with the assurance, that this will be made
evident to every willing mind.
It is proposed to show in the following sections of this
chapter that the Word of God teaches, directly and indi
rectly, positively and negatively, implicitly and explicitly,
that: 1. Holiness is the fundamental law of God's moral gov
ernment ; all creature life must be, and continue to be, in
union and harmony with God Himself, the great source of
all Life, or it cannot be perpetuated ; it must sooner or
later, if not recovered to holiness, either by its own irregu
lar working or the positive infliction of Divine wrath,
come to an end.
2. When man fell under the power of sin, he necessarily
incurred the doom of mortality, from which there was no
possible way of escape but by Divine interposition, and a
supernatural ingeneration of a new life— a spiritual life—

Chap. IH.] INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 381
which is the only life that is pure and everlasting ; for it
is the peculiar life of God Himself, who only hath immor
tality, dwelling in the light.
3. The special object of the incarnation and death of
Christ the Savior, was to redeem mortal man from the
power of sin and death, and to immortalize him by impart
ing to him His own peculiar life, and bringing him into
union with God, who liveth forever. "And this is the life
eternal that they might know thee the only true God, even
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."
4. This is the great alternative presented in the Gospel ;
Death or Life Everlasting through Jesus Christ the Savior,
and this is the outcome or issue of the probation through
which God is taking men in this life, and this is the grand,
distinguishing difference between natural men and spiritual
men. The former, as children of Adam, are mortal and
going down to Death ; the latter, begotten of God, are
heirs of the Life Everlasting. " This is the record, that
God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is His Son.
He that hath the Son hath the life, and he that hath not
the Son hath not the life."
5. The conflict now waging between good and evil, or
holiness and sin, will finally issue in the complete triumph
of the good, and the utter discomfiture and extinguishment
of all evil of every sort : "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."

SECTION I.
The Fundamental Law.
1. Holiness is the Fundamental Law of God's moral gov
ernment ; all creature life must be, and continue to be, in
union and harmony with God Himself, the Great Source of
all Life,or it cannot be perpetuated ; it must sooner or later,
if not recovered to holiness, either by its own irregular work
ing, or by the positive infliction of Divine wrath, come to an
end. If, as we believe, God be pure and good, we might rea
sonably suppose that whatever He should create would, at
the outset be pure and good, and that if He should create
living intelligences capable of knowing and loving and
obeying Him, He would create them in His own image and
likeness ; that is, pure and good, and that He would place
them under a law of holy obedience, and insist on their
continuing to live in harmony with Himself and with each
other, and in obedience to His holy will, as a condition,
not merely of His favor, but of their continued life. That
if any of them should rebel against His righteous govern
ment, oppose His will and bring discord into His otherwise
holy and happy family, He would not merely punish them
according to their deserts, but that, if they could not be
reclaimed to obedience and love, He would withdraw from
them His sustaining hand, and let them drop out of exist
ence, and give place to others, who would live in harmony
with Himself and each other.
H created with free wills, they would, of course, be capa
ble of sinning against Him ; but it would not seem to com
port with infinite wisdom, goodness, and power, for Him to
give to them freedom of choice and action, and, at the

Sec. I.] FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 383
same time, to place Himself under the necessity of sustain
ing them in all the wretchedness of rebellion and sin and
strife forever. We cannot conceive it possible, that He
should even be able to create beings whose existence should
be independent of His sustaining power ; much less, that
He should guarantee to any a continued and perpetual
existence in rebellion and sin ; nor that, if He were able to
put an end to their miserable, forfeited lives, He would
content Himself with surrendering a portion of His other
wise holy and happy universe to their perpetual occu
pancy, where they might continue to rage and suffer and
curse Him and each other forever and ever. If He were
able to create a universe of holy and happy subjects, it
seems reasonable to suppose Him to be able to maintain
its integrity ; and if sin should come in through the exer
cise of the free agency of His subjects, He would, in -some
way, be able, not merely to confine it within certain limits,
but to eliminate and eradicate it entirely, so as to preserve
the integrity, unity, and blessedness of His universal king
dom. We can readily believe that, in the infinity of His
wisdom and power, He would be able, not merely to sub
due any outbreak of rebellion, but that He would be able
to cause it to redound to the enhancement of His own
glory and the security of His loyal subjects.
Indeed, it seems reasonable to suppose, that He would
not only guarantee to the obedient His favor, and the per
petuation of their lives, so long as they should persevere
in holiness, but that He would make holiness pleasurable
in itself, and the means of perpetual enjoyment, as a mo
tive to its continuance ; and that He would also make sin,
not merely destructive of happiness, and the source of pain
and sorrow while persisted in, but self-destructive and ac
tually ruinous in the end ; that, not merely the loss of His
favor, and the loss of happiness, but the loss of life itself

384 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
would be the final result of sin persisted in. But we can
not reconcile it with our ideas of a God of infinite wisdom,
justice, goodness, and power, that He should make holiness
and happiness, sin and misery equally stable and* enduring;
that He should, willingly or unwillingly, perpetuate them
both alike and forever ; that He should create all things
very good in the beginning, and then suffer a disturbing
evil to come in, which should continue forever, because He
could not, or would not, extirpate it.
The old Manichsean philosophers held that good and
evil are both eternal principles — eternal in the past, and
that they will be eternal in the future ; that they have al
ways been struggling with each other, and that the strug
gle will go on forever without any decisive victory on either
side. The Word of God teaches us that all things were very
good in the beginning, and that they will be very good in
the future; that evil has come in as an episode; that it is
transient in its very nature ; that it cannot successfully
defy the power of the Almighty, but that " He will cause
the wrath of man to praise Him and the remainder of
wrath He will restrain ;" and that He is able to make it
accomplish His own wise and benevolent purposes of good,
and then to extirpate it root and branch, and that He will
do this in His own good time and way ; that by the very ,
constitution of God's righteous government, if not in the
very nature of things, good only has the elements of sta
bility and perpetuity ; that evil has not the elements of
stability and perpetuity within itself; it is disorganizing,
self-destructive and ruinous, and cannot endure forever.
But our traditional, so-called Christian theology teaches
neither the one thing nor the other, but a mixture of both
It is Christian so far as it teaches that God created all
things good in the beginning ; but it is essentially heathen

Sec. L] FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 385
in its doctrine of evil. It allows that evil is an interloper,
but now that it has come into God's holy and happy uni
verse — whether by the Divine will or in opposition to it —
there is no way to get rid of it. It has so become an inte
gral part of this universe that, so far from extinguishing
and exterminating it, God proposes to set apart one realm
at least, of His otherwise universal kingdom, where His
enemies shall have their own way, and live on, and rage,
and defy His wrath, which is powerless to silence or destroy
them, and that they will be able to do this so long as He
Himself shall live and reign. For, while Christianity does
not allow its advocate to believe, with the heathen philoso
phers, that evil is eternal in the past, or that man is an
uncreated being, it has so far come under the influence of
their philosophy as to adopt their conclusions as to the
future. Hence we have a mongrel theodicy, which is
neither honorable to God, nor just to His creatures, nor
consistent with pagan philosophy, or true Christianity, or
with itself. If man is an absolutely immortal being, as
Plato taught, then, whether holy or sinful, whether happy
or miserable, he must be continued forever in being; if he
cannot be preserved forever in holiness, nor restored after
he has sinned, then nothing remains but to let him sin and
suffer the wrath of God forever. This is the sort of the
ology which a paganized scholasticism has undertaken to
read into the Word of God, and which the traditions of
the Papal Church have handed down to the present day.
This doctrine brings such evident reproach upon the
wisdom, justice, and goodness of God, that many thought
ful Christian men, at the present day, are endeavoring to
find relief, as Origen did, by hoping for the utter extinc
tion of evil in the final restoration of all men to holiness
and Divine favor ; and others, in the equally unscriptural
doctrine of the pre-existence of man and the eternity of

386 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. HI.
evil, both in the past and the future. A clerical friend
writes us from London, that he himself heard Rev. Joseph
Cook, in one of his recent " audacious lectures," in Brad
ford, England, argue the doctrine of eternal sin and suffer
ing in the future, on the ground that evil, for aught we
know to the contrary, always did exist. " Who can show,"
says he, " that evil ever had a beginning ?" This is down
right Manichseism!
But we do not so read the Scriptures. We understand
them to teach explicitly and uniformly, that holiness, or
in other words perfection, is the law of God's moral gov
ernment. It is the law of perpetuated existence ; whatever
shall lose that pure nature which is given to it in the be
ginning, if it cannot be restored, must eventually perish ;
that sinners cannot have their lives forever perpetuated in
sin ; that sin brings, not merely punishment and suffering,
but in the end — if persisted in — absolute destruction.
Why ! scientists, and even ordinary observers, have dis
covered this same law in the natural world. It is the law
of the "Survival of the fittest." The inferior races, whether
of men or of animals; if they cannot be brought up to the
level of the higher, gradually die out, and give place to
those which are more fit to live. Hybrid natures have not
the power of continuous propagation. Plants and fruits
which are bruised, or worm eaten, or otherwise injured,
hasten to decay ; it is only those that are sound that come
to a perfect maturity. Disease, or disorder in any organ
ized structure, if it cannot be removed, will sooner or later,
bring it to ruin. It not only works disaster, while it con
tinues, but it works actual destruction at last. The pains
which we suffer from physical disease are not the full fruit
of the disease ; they are symptomatic, and prophetic of the
death that must ensue in the end, unless some remedy shall
be found.

Sec. I.] FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 387
That most fearful and incurable of all diseases, leprosy,
which, when it has once seized hold of its victim, however
gradual its working, never releases its grasp, till it has ac
tually devoured him, and taken life itself, has been divinely
selected and appointed to represent the sure and fatal
working of sin, as its most fitting type.
The animals themselves, as though taught by their
Maker, Know how to prey upon their weaker fellows, and
especially to destroy those of their own number that are
diseased, puny and weak. We have every reason to infer
even from analogy, that this law of the Survival of the fittest
would obtain in the spiritual as well as in the natural
world ; that holiness, or perfection, would be the law of
God's moral kingdom ; that in the very constitution of
things, as well as in His providence, He would give to it
the elements of health, vigor, stability and persistency ;
and that He would cause sin to be essentially weak, disor
ganizing, and self-destructive, wherever it should be per
mitted to enter ; so that sin might, in its own nature, be
transitory, and holiness alone immortal.
Now, when we come to the Scriptures, we find that this
is just what God has declared to be the law of His right
eous government over man ; that He endowed man, of all
the creatures of earth, with both a physical and moral na
ture ; the one He placed under such physical laws as are
common to all earthly creatures, and the other under such
moral laws as are common to all spiritual creatures : both
natures united in one, both very good in the outset, and
both under the same law of purity and perfection, with the
alternative of death. Nothing, but this miserable figment
of a heathen philosophy and of Satan's cunning, prevents
the Christian world from seeing and accepting this truth.
This is the purport of the law under which man was

388 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap, HI.
placed in the beginning «of his career, and of the alter
native penalty.
Gen. 2 : 16, 17. "And the Lord God commanded the man, say
ing, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat ; but of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it ; for
in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
Or, as more literally rendered in the margin, Dying thou
shalt die. His life was immediately forfeited ; that very
day, he was judicially dead; the process of death at once
began, which would surely end in death. It does not read,
Thy body shall die, and thy soul shall be separated from
God, and so be miserable forever. This is human, or rather,
satanic sophistry. It reads, thou thyself shall die. As
for separation from God, this is, indeed, implied ; for sep
aration from the source of all life is death. It is impossi
ble for any living creature to maintain his own life for a
single moment, when completely separated from God, "see
ing He giveth to all life, breath and all things." As for
misery, this is the inevitable result of sin. Every sinner
must be miserable, so long as he continues in sin ; but "sin,
when it is finished, bringeth forth death." This is just the
sentence God pronounced upon Adam the very day he
sinned. Gen. 3 : 17-20. " Cursed is the ground for thy sake ; in sorrow
shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall
it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat of 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 and unto
dust shalt thou return."
Furthermore, in order to take from him the hope of any
possibility of immortality in sin and misery, though he
might be permitted to linger in his downward way to
death, the very sign or pledge of immortality, or the means
by which it could be secured or assured to him, was now
withdrawn.

Sec. I.] FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 389
Gen. 3: 22—24. "And the Lord God said, Behold the man is become
as one of us, to know good and evil. And now lest he put forth his
hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever ; there
fore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till
the ground from whence he was taken. So He drove out the man ;
and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden, Cherubim, and a.
flaming sword, which turned every way to keep the way of the tree
of life."
No other possible reason can be assigned for God's un
willingness to allow Adam to eat of the tree of life after he
had sinned, than this, which lies on the surface of the nar
rative, that God was determined that he should not live
for'ever in sin and misery. And here we see the great
goodness and mercy of God, as well as His truth and jus
tice. If this " tree of life " was intended to prefigure that
new way of life yet to be revealed in the Gospel, as well as
to serve as the pledge of life in the way of original holiness
maintained, man could only have access to it again by a re
storation to holiness. And so it was, as we shall see in the se
quel. Hence the tree was not destroyed. It was permitted to
stand till such time as he should be redeemed from death
by the blood of Christ and made holy again by the " wash
ing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit,"
and then, he might again " have right to the tree of life,"
and enter in through the gates into the city, where nothing
that is unholy is permitted to enter, and where there is no
more pain nor sorrow nor death, for there is no more sin.
So, in the very opening and closing portions of this Divine
Revelation, we have the Tree of Life, as the symbol and
pledge of immortality, of which man shall be permitted to
eat only as he shall be holy as God originally formed him,
or be restored to holiness through His grace.
No doubt, had it not not been for God's gracious purpose
of redemption, faintly hinted at first, but afterwards more

390 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
fully made known, Adam and Eve would have died at
once and forever on the very day of their sin, as did Nadab
and Abihu in their disobedience. But this plan of redemp
tion began at once to operate, so far as to give them a
temporary respite, and the opportunity to lay hold of the
Salvation provided. It did not offer them exemption from
death ; for their lives had been forfeited by sin. It did
not propose to save them from dying ; for they had now
already become mortal through sin. But it did propose to
recover them from the power and dominion of death, and
to give them a new life, a higher and better life, a life that
should be purely spiritual, the Divine Life of their Ever-
living Lord, which should never fail. And this is the life
that is now offered in the Gospel, to all their posterity, if
they will accept of it through Him. Having become mor
tal themselves, they became the progenitors of a mortal
posterity. The stream can rise no higher than its source.
This same doom of death ha3 come upon the whole posterity
of Adam. We are born to a mortal estate irrespective of
our personal character. Even those who have not sinned
after the similitude of Adam's transgression, must die, and
it is only as they are restored to life, and made holy and
immortal through an ever-living Savior, that they can
have the assurance of Eternal Life.
But this line of thought belongs to a subsequent section,
and we pass on to observe that : —
This is the purport and burden of all the commands and
exhortations and threatenings of God's Word. This is the
real point of contrast between the holy and the unholy.
The real issue that distinguishes them from each other is,
not one of well-being or ill-being, but of life and death, of
well-being forever, and of ill-being while life lingers, and
of death, as the final result.

Sec. I.] FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 391
Lev. 19: 2. " Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy."
Matt. 5 : 48. " Be ye therefore perfect, even as yonr Father which
is in heaven is perfect."
Heb. 12 : 14. " Holiness, without which no man shall see the
Lord."
Psa. 36: 9. "For with thee is the Fountain of life, and in thy light
shall we see light."
Prov. 8 : 35, 36. " Whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain
favor of the Lord ; but he that sinneth against me wrongeth
his own soul. All that hate me love death."
Prov. 29 : 1. " He that being often reproved, hardenth his neck,
shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy."
Psa. 34 : 21. " Evil shall slay the wicked."
2 Tim. 3:3. " Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse,
deceiving and being deceived."
2 Pet. 2 : 12. "And shall perish in their own corruption."
Phil. 3 : 19. " Whose end is destruction."
Matt. 25 : 29. " For unto every one that hath, shall be given, and
he shall have abundance ; but from him that hath not [im
proved his talent] shall be taken away even that which he hath.''
James 1 : 15. "Lust when it hath conceived bringeth forth sin,
and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death."
Thousands of passages of like import are scattered all
through the Word of God, asserting the holiness of God,
and demanding holiness on the part of man as a condition,
not merely of His favor, but of life ; and reiterating in a
great variety of forms, that sin not merely provokes God's
anger, but that.it is ruinous, destructive in its operation,
and will sooner or later bring its victim to death. Right
eousness is also called " the way of life," " the way ever
lasting." Sin is also called " the way of death." By the
promise so often repeated in the Old Testament, that " the
righteous shall prolong their days," something more is evi
dently meant than that they shall live to an old age. It
is endless perpetuity of life that is promised to them. It
is the "life everlasting" that is more clearly revealed in the

392 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
Gospel. There are numerous other portions of Scripture,
in which the safety, stability and permanent existence of
the righteous are contrasted with the sad, ruinous and
transitory career of transgressors, as in the First and
Thirty-seventh Psalms, and in our Lord's parable of the
wise man who builded his house upon a rock, and the fool
ish man who builded it upon the sand.
This is the spirit of the prayers of the Bible, and of its
many devotional utterances, " Arise, O God, judge the
earth." " Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly." This is the
real meaning of the vehement expressions of the impreca
tory Psalms, such as,
" Let sinners be consumed out of the earth and let the wicked be
no more."
" Let their name be blotted out of the book of the living."
" Let death seize upon them ; let them go down quick into hell."
Believers in the doctrine of an eternal hell of sin and suf
fering for the wicked beyond this life, have interpreted
these earnest utterances, as breathing a vindictive and
merciless spirit — the same that they attribute to God —
and they are obliged so to understand them, if their doc
trine be true. But in the light of the truth, as we under
stand it, they are prayers, not for the eternal torment of
the wicked, not for the eternal perpetuation of their sin
and misery in a future hopeless state of unending woe ; but
for its speedy termination ; for the establishment of truth
and righteousness, and the ending of all sin and sorrow ;
for the full and final accomplishment of God's gracious
purposes of love and mercy in the extinction of all evil,
and in the complete establishment of His glorious kingdom
of holiness, on the earth. Indeed, this is just what we all
pray for when we say, as Christ has taught us: Thy
Kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

SeC. I.] FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 393
This is our real ground of hope and confidence in our God ;
not that He is so much stronger than all his enemies, that
He will at last succeed in defeating them, and getting
them all into prison where He will be able to torment them
forever to His heart's content ; but that He is able to ut
terly exterminate them, " root and branch ;" not that He
will at length sweep them off from the face of this earth,
only to transfer their rage and their wretched hopeless
struggle to another sphere, where it shall never, never end ;
but that He is able to crush them out entirely, so that they
shall never more disturb the peace and harmony of His
universal kingdom — so that, as the prophet Jeremiah says
(51 : 39), " They shall sleep a perpetual (olam eternal)
sleep and not wake."
There is a remarkable passage in point in the book of
Proverbs (24 : 20), the full force of which is greatly weak
ened, and almost entirely lost in the translation. It reads
thus: " For there shall be no reward to the evil man ; the candle of the
wicked shall be put out."
But this word acharith, which is rendered " reward,"
means "futurity," and the passage literally rendered should
read, " For there shall be no futurity (or no hereafter) to
the evil man, his light (wer) shall be put out." And this
accords with the uniform voice of Scripture teaching. The
time is coming when the wicked "shall not be," not merely,
shall not be on this earth, but shall not be anywhere; they
shall be extinguished. The strife which is now going on be
tween good and evil, is no dubious strife. The victory which
our glorious Leader will achieve is to be no partial victory.
He will not share the spoils with His adversaries, even in
ever so unequal proportions. His kingdom will be a uni
versal kingdom, and He will rule over all. " There will

394 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
be nothing to hurt or destroy in all his holy mountains ;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as
the waters cover the sea." " In the dispensation of the
fulness of times he shall gather together in one all things
in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on
earth." And " in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow,
of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under
the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord to the glory of God the Father."
So we believe and pray, and work and wait, till the
coming of that perfect day.

SECTION IL
Death by Sin.
II. When man fell under the power of sin, he necessarily
incurred the doom of mortality, from which there was no pos
sible way of escape, but by Divine interposition and a super
natural ingeneration of a new life — a spiritual life, which is
the only life that is pure and everlasting, for it is the pecu
liar life of God Himself, who only hath immortality dwelling
in the light.
There is nothing in the Divine record of man's creation
to justify the assumption that he was originally endowed
with an immortal life ; nor anything to suggest the infer
ence, to one who reads it unbiased by any theory of his
own on this subject. That he was made capable of immor
tality by having uninterrupted access to the Tree of Life,
or of being made immortal, if he should live without sin,
and become confirmed in holiness, is evident. But whether
this would have been under the physical conditions in
which he was first formed, or whether, according to the
intimation of Paul, as "that was not first which is spiritual,
but that which is natural, (psuchical) and afterward that
which is spiritual, he would in due time have been changed
and lifted up into that higher spiritual condition which is
now promised us under the Gospel, it is not important for
us to inquire. Even this possibility of exemption from
death, was made expressly contingent on his perfect obedi
ence, and his continued access to the Tree of Life ; and
when he violated the conditions under which he was
placed, he forfeited the boon that was offered him, and be
came subject to death, as we are expressly told, and was
debarred further access to the Tree of Life.

396 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. ILL
There was nothing in the nature of the material out of
which he was formed, to constitute him immortal ; for he
was "formed out of the dust of the ground," like all other
earthly creatures ; nor was there anything in the pecu
liarity of his organization, however exquisitely formed, to
constitute him an organism of perpetual motion, certainly
not, unless its normal and regular working could be main
tained. God breathed into him the breath of life, as He
did into the lower orders of animals, and he, like them,
" became a living soul," or animated creature. For, as we
have abundantly shown, this same term nephesh chayah,
though variously translated, is used to designate all living
animals from the highest to the lowest.
Some have endeavored to find an irrevocable charter of
immortality, in the fact that man is said to have been
made in the " image and likeness " of his Creator. But (
surely this does not mean that He was constituted equal to
God in any one of His attributes, and certainly not in the
highest and most peculiar of all His attributes, that of in
dependent existence.
We are told that, " He only hath immortality." We
know that He has chosen this attribute of immortality as
His special title, Jehovah, which means, The ever living
one ; the I am that I am. God gave to man power to a
certain extent, intelligence, a free will, and a moral nature
like His own ; but He did not make him all-powerful, nor
all-wise, nor everywhere present, nor ever-living. He in
vested him, likewise, with a kind of sovereignty over all
earthly creatures and things, somewhat like His own uni
versal sovereignty ; for He gave him " dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl, of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping
thing that creepeth upon the earth." But in all these

Sec. IL] DEATH BY SIN. 397
tilings, he was dependent upon his Maker and subject to
His will.
And perhaps we are to understand the phrase, "the
image of God," in a yet higher sense, as some think, as in
dicating the actual, visible form in which the Divine One
always manifests Himself; that corporeal form which is
eternally peculiar to Him as the Son of God. For the
word " image " implies a substantial visible form. If this
be so, then man was most truly made in the image
of God, and our Lord, whenever He has manifested
Himself to man, has manifested Himself in His own
peculiar form, as well as in that of man, and when He
came to suffer and die, He came in the form of the Son of
God, as well as that of the Son of Man, and now that He
has ascended to glory, we may think of Him as still bear
ing that glorified personal form which belongs alike to
Himself and His ransomed people, and which, purified and
made entirely spiritual, they shall take on at the resurrec
tion, to wear with Him forever. In this sense they con
strue the Eighth Psalm — not " What is man," but —
" How great is man that thou art mindful of him ? and the Son
of Man that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little
lower than (Elohim) the Son of God, and hast crowned him with
glory and honor ; thou hast made him to have dominion over the
works of thy hands ; thou hast put all things under his feet." etc.
And so there may be a literal truth in the poetic vision
of man's future exultation and glory :
" Nearest the throne and first in song
"Shall man his Hallelujahs raise,
" While wondering angels round him throng,
" And swell the chorus of his praise."
This view may, indeed, enhance our idea of the dignity
of man, and may help explain the mystery of redemption.
But, while it lifts man to the very highest rank among all

398 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. HI.
the creatures of God, he is still a creature, and subject to
the law of his Creator, and even so much the more liable
to the penalty of that law, if he shall fall from the high
estate in which he was created.
Philosophy and Science, Poetry and Sentiment may
speculate in regard to the origin, nature and destiny of man.
They may set forth their various psychological systems,
their hypotheses, and their fancies, which may seem to the
world more or less reasonable, and which, indeed, may
contain elements of truth ; but from the very nature of the
case, they cannot penetrate the mystery of our being, or
give us anything definite or authoritative upon which to
rest our faith. This can only be given us by a Revelation
from our Creator Himself. This was shown in our open
ing chapter, and will be made yet more evident in the one
that is to follow ; but our attention at this time is espe
cially directed to the Revelation He has given us. For
we hold that God has not only given us such a Revelation
in the Holy Scriptures, but that it has been given us ex
pressly for this very purpose ; to teach those great truths
. respecting our being and destiny that we most need to
know. As honest inquirers, and more especially as Chris
tian believers, we must rest our faith on the declaration of
God's Word, and make it the test by which to try the
philosophies of men. If human investigations, apart from
His Word, serve to throw any light on* this Word, we ac
cept their aid. Whenever they offer us conclusions that
are in apparent conflict with that Word, we endeavor by
careful inquiry and honest dealing with that Word to re
concile these differences as best we can. But whenever the
express teachings of God's Word are flatly contradicted by
the teachings of scientific speculation, or the traditions .of
men, however popular and attractive they may be, we have

Sec. II.] . DEATH BY SIN. 399
nothing to do but to take our stand upon the Word of
God, and abide by its teachings.
And here we do take our stand, and boldly declare,
without fear of successful contradiction, that, so far from
teaching or sanctioning in any way this popular traditional
dogma of the natural immortality of man, which has taken
such fast hold of the world and the Church, the Word of
God explicitly and uniformly, and in every way possible
from beginning to end, sets forth just the contrary doctrine,
and assures us that there is no possibility of immortality
for any child of Adam, but by a new birth, and a Divine
Savior. This is seen:
1. In the utter silence of the Scripture, respecting the
natural immortality of man.
We must distinguish between a nature that is endowed
with an actual and indefeasible immortality, which cannot
be lost or forfeited by any mischance whatsoever, and a
nature that is made capable of immortality under certain
conditions ; between a boon that is offered to the hopes of
man as a motive to holy obedience, and one that-is already
secured and pledged beyond the possibility of forfeiture.
It is by overlooking this distinction that man has come to
claim an actual and indefeasible immortality for himself
as a natural and inalienable endowment. It is not so
strange that those who have no revelation to instruct them,
by misinterpreting those 'sentiments and longings which
God has given to us all, as a motive to strive to secure
this prize, should fall into this error of supposing it to be
already secured to them by natural inheritance ; but it is
astonishing that any one with the Word of God in his
hands should be able to come to any such conclusion. For
— not to speak now of its most positive declarations to the
contrary which we will consider hereafter — there is no
hint, in all the Word of God from beginning to end, of any

400 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
such nature in man. We are, indeed, told how man might
have become immortal by persevering in holiness; and
surely it will not be inferred that he made himself immor
tal by sin : for we are expressly informed, that he became
actually subject to death by sin. We are also told how,
by God's grace and mercy, he may yet attain to the life
everlasting through Christ ; but only by a new birth and a
resurrection from the dead. But the Scriptures contain
no hint of any other immortality for man.
Our popular theology teaches that we are all " immortal
beings," destined to live in happiness or misery, as long as
God Himself shall live; that every infant that is born into
the world has "an immortal soul," "a soul that never dies."
This is the stereotyped phraseology of the pulpit and the
Sabbath School, and of our religious literature. Our ears
have become so familiar with this kind of teaching, that
it seems right and true. But we find nothing of this sort
in the Bible. It comes not from the Bible, but from the
philosophy which tradition has tried to read into the Bible.
We do not fear to challenge those who use this sort of
language to find one single text or phrase, or word, in all
the Scriptures that will warrant it. They cannot do it.
The doctrine of the natural immortality of man is not to
be found in the Word of God. We mistake — there is one
text that asserts it, see Genesis 3 : 4, " Ye shall not surely
die." But if we read the context we shall find it was the
Tempter that said this in direct contradiction of God's
Word. But he was a liar from the beginning. None of
God's prophets or faithful messengers can be quoted as
saying any such thing.
This is so obvious that those who insist on teaching this
doctrine of the deathless nature of man, as a religious truth
not to be questioned, are accustomed to account for this
silence by saying that it is sufficiently taught by nature it-

Sec. IL] DEATH BY SIN. 401
self, and so evident that it needs not to be set forth in the
Word of God. Dr. Bartlett says this in his Life and Death
Eternal (see p. 191 et al.). But the Scriptures are not
silent in this way with respect to the deathless nature of
God Himself. His immortality is continually asserted.
"The Jjord shall endure forever;" "Whose years have no
end ;" " He only hath immortality ;" " I lift my hand to
heaven and say I live forever," etc. This is made His dis
tinguishing attribute, — His special title — "Jehovah," "The
ever-living One." If it is needful to assert the immortality
of God with such emphasis and reiteration, it is incredible
that the Scriptures Would be utterly silent in regard to the
immortality of man, if he has any such nature. The na
tural immortality of the creature cannot be so much more
evident than that of the Creator, as to need not one word
to set it forth.'
But it is said to be assumed and implied, instead of be
ing directly taught in the Scriptures. This is, indeed, a
facile method of proof. But is it honest? In this way
any doctrine which one may please to thrust into the Scrip
tures, may be said to be there. What right or reason have
men to say that the Scriptures teach a doctrine concerning
which they are utterly silent ? Our religious teachers at
the present day, who assume this doctrme, are not thus
s-ilent in regard to it. Nay, they are constantly proclaim
ing it, and insisting on it as one of the fundamental truths
of our holy religion. Why, then, should not Moses and the
prophets of the Old Dispensation, and Christ and His dis
ciples of the New, have said something about this all-im
portant doctrine ? Was it not as true and as important
then as now? But not one word or hint of it, can be
found. Let us not be misunderstood. A Resurrection from the
dead ; a Judgment to come ; the Destruction of the wicked

402 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. HI.
in the Second Death, and the Life Everlasting of the
Righteous are indeed revealed. But these are not natural,
but supernatural events ; they are a part of the system of
Redemption, which is but imperfectly revealed in the Law,
and only fully brought to light in the Gospel. But whether
perfectly or imperfectly revealed, it is only and •every
where, because of redemption, that man lives again ; and
not because he is naturally immortal ; and only by a re
storation to holiness, that he may hope to " prolong his
days " or " to have everlasting life."
2. This same truth is taught in the Sacrificial System.
The practice of offering animal sacrifices to God, of
which so much is said in the Old Testament, and which we
know came early to prevail throughout the whole heathen
world, was not of human, but of Divine origin. We have
reason to believe, it was God's first appointment after the
fall, for immediately after the sentence of death was pro
nounced upon our first parents, and the promise of a Savior,
in the then mysterious assurance that the seed of the wo
man should crush the serpent's head, the very next thing
that God did, as we are told, even before driving them out
of the garden, was to clothe them in the skins of animals
(Gen. 3 : 21) — animals, which we may well suppose, they
had been directed to offer in sacrifice, as typical of the
great sacrifice that was yet to be offered for their redemp
tion. We are confirmed in this view, when we see how (4 : 4)
" the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering ; but
unto Cain and his offering He bad not respect." And no
other reason is given, or is apparent for this distinction,
but that Abel offered the life of an animal in sacrifice, and
Cain only brought of the natural " fruit of the ground."
Still further, no one can fail to notice what remarkable

Sec. IL] DEATH BY SIN. 403
prominence is given to this rite in the worship of the early
patriarchs, and in the worship of His ancient people under
the ceremonial law, and that too, by the special direction
of God Himself. It took precedence of all other rites and
ceremonies. They all, indeed, centered in this. No ac
ceptable worship could be offered without killing an ani
mal, pouring out his blood and extinguishing his life, and
then the humble offerer could hope for the forgiveness and
blessing of God. We are astonished at the multitude of
these animal victims, and at the vast expenditure of prop
erty and of life which these numerous sacrifices made
necessary. It is not enough to assure us that they were
typical of that great sacrifice yet to be offered on Calvary,
to which they all pointed the faith and the hope of the
worshiper. This is evident enough. But why was this
great sacrifice offered ? Why must the Lamb of God be
put to death, His blood be poured out, His very life be ex
tinguished ? There is but one answer that can solve the
mystery. Our lives have been forfeited by sin. We are
condemned to die by the holy law of God. The Son of
God laid down His life (His psuehe, not His Zoe) to redeem
us from death. He died with Us, and for us, and rose
again, that we too, though dying according to the law,
might rise again and live with Him forever more.
Let it be distinctly observed that these animal victims
were not maimed, nor tormented, nor imprisoned, but were
put to death; and so was Christ the great Antitype. He laid
down His life for us. It was not by His sufferings, but by
His death, that we are redeemed from death. Had it not
been for His death, there could have been no adequate
atonement. He did, indeed, suffer in the manner of His
death; but His sufferings were comparatively brief. It
was not from these that He shrank, but from the death to
which they led. It was only by His death that man could

404 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
be redeemed from death. All sin brings suffering, but it
also brings death in the end, and this is pre-eminently the
penalty of sin. In this view, these animal sacrifices, and
this great atoning sacrifice of the Son of God are full of
meaning;* they are eminently significant, luminous, and
radiant with Gospel truth. But to those who insist that
there has been no forfeiture of life and being, but only of
well-being, because we are naturally and necessarily im
mortal, these sacrifices must be full of darkness and mys
tery, and subject to the vain and unsatisfactory specula
tions which this false theology, in.striving to sustain itself,.
has put upon them.
3. The same doctrine, of death to the wicked, is taught
yet more emphatically and positively, if it were possible,.
in the sanctions of the moral law.
Whether we view the sanctions of the Mosaic law as
applicable to the individual in this life, or to the Jewish
people collectively in their national capacity, or as having
a deeper application to the life beyond, the rewards and
penalties are one and the same ; the same words Life and
Death are employed to express them. It is not always
easy to tell in which of the three senses to apply them ; nor
does it seem to be intended that we should apply them ex
clusively in one sense. The mass of these ancient people, in
their darkness and ignorance, gave to them, at first no
doubt, a temporal application ; but under the instruction
of Moses and the prophets and God's inspired teachers,
they came gradually to see and feel that they had a
broader and deeper signification than lay on the surface.
These words, " life " and " death," which were constantly
uttered in their hearing, became pregnant with meanmg.
They seemed to reach beyond this present world, and were

Sec. IL] DEATH BY SIN. 405
full of hope and cheer to the righteous, and equally full of
fearful forebodings and of terror to the wicked.
(1) If we look at the Mosaic law in its temporal and
physical aspects only, we cannot fail to notice how promi
nently this penalty of death is set forth. Imprisonment,
torture, or other methods of punishment common to other
nations, are hardly known, or if known at all, are reserved
for trivial offenses. But for all the more flagrant crimes,
and, indeed, for some that are hardly punishable at all at
the present day, death was the penalty. Death was the
penalty for Adultery ; Death was the penalty for Blas
phemy ; Death was the penalty for Bearing false witness ;
Death was the penalty for Idolatry ; Death was the penalty
for Incest; Death was the penalty for Man-stealing; Death
was the penalty for Sabbath-breaking; Death was the pen
alty for Rape ; Death was the penalty for Unchastity ; Death
was the penalty for Witchcraft. Death was such an almost
universal penalty, that this code is regarded by those who
do not consider its significance, as unreasonable and bar
barous. The mystery can only be explained by the fact,
that Jehovah was not simply their temporal ; but their
spiritual Ruler; and that the penalty of death had a
double significance, and was meant to have an application
to both the life of this world and the life of the world to-
come. (2) The same is true when we contemplate the fearful
penalty of sin in its national application. While the bless
ings of continued life and prosperity under the favor of
God were promised to the Jewish people, so long as they
should be loyal and obedient to Him, the severest curses,
ending in national death and utter extinction, were threat
ened in case they should turn away from Him, and reject
Hi9 righteous authority, and government. These curses,

406 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. IH.
calamities, and miseries that should come upon them, and
continue until they should be utterly destroyed and extin
guished as a nation, are set forth in fearful array, in the
closing chapters of the book of Deuteronomy. The cata
logue is too long to be transferred to these pages. We
have room for only a few citations:
" But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the
voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all His commandments
and His statutes which I command thee this day ; that all these
curses shall come upon thee, until thou be destroyed, and until thou
perish quickly. The Lord Bhall smite thee with consumption, and
with fever, and with inflammation, and with extreme burning, and
with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew ; and they shall
pursue thee until thou perish. The Lord shall make the rain of thy
land powder and dust from heaven; from heaven shalt it come
down upon thee until thou be destroyed. It shall come to pass that
as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply yon,
so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you and bring you to
nought." Let it be distinctly noticed that the awful calamities
and miseries that should come upon these disobedient peo
ple were not the full measure of their punishment ; they
were but the preludes, the means by which their destruction
should be accomplished. They all pointed and led to that
final result, which was to be utter ruin, and extermination,
and extinction.
(3) But many of the threatenings of the Bible, both of
the Old and the New Testament, are too broad and inclu
sive to admit of any mere physical or temporal applica
tion. They are directed to the sinning individual in the
totality of his being. They include, most evidently, all
that he has or is, both corporeal and spiritual, both for
this life and the life to come. But the same language is
employed, in any and in every case. Death is the penalty

Sec. IL] DEATH BY SIN. 407
of God's law, whether we regard it as a civil, a natural, or
a spiritual law ; whether we regard it as applying to this
world, or the world to come.
In the interpreting of these passages, one thing should
be insisted on; that, as life and death are antithetical
terms ; death must be the loss or ending or destruction of
whatever life is in question. If mere physical life is spoken
of; then death must mean the ending of all physical life.
H national life is spoken of; then death must be the loss
of national life. If psychical or spiritual life is spoken
of; then death must mean the destruction of all psychical
or spiritual life. If the life of this world is spoken of;
then death must be the loss of an earthly life. If the life
of the world to come is spoken of; then death must mean
the loss of the life of the world to come.
All this is so reasonable and evident, that it would seem
quite unnecessary to say it ; but we are obliged to insist on
it with particular emphasis, because this is just where the
advocates of the deathless nature of man endeavor to break
the force of these passages, and escape from the conclusion
to which, if honestly accepted, they would inevitably bring
them. They cannot but admit that death, when predicated
of the body, implies the complete loss of all sensitive ani
mal life. But when the very same thing is predicated of
what is called the human soul, and the very same word is
used, it cannot mean the same thing, they say ; and why ?
Simply because they have a theory of the deathless nature
of the soul, which forbids them to understand it in this
sense. It compels them to put some other meaning upon
this word. It means " loss of Divine favor ;" " irregular
functional action ;" " devitalizedness ;" " a state of sin and
misery," etc., etc. ; anything and everything that is bad,
but just what it does mean — Death — the end of whatever

408 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
voluntary, conscious, sensitive life the soul naturally pos
sesses. In the name of truth and honesty, we protest against
such wresting of the Sacred Scriptures to accommodate a
pagan philosophy, which is so evidently opposed in its
spirit and teaching to the true Word of God— though it
be, alas! so popular and common."
Let us look at some of the many passages of Scripture,
scattered along everywhere throughout the Sacred volume,
in proof of the mortality and transitory nature of sinful
man. Such utterances as these are found in the book of Job :
" 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 con
sumed." " He shall perish forever 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." " He cometh
forth as a flower and is cut down ; he fleeth also as a shadow and
oontinueth 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 giv
eth up the ghost and where is he ?" "As the waters fail from the
sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and
riseth not : till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake nor
be raised out of their sleep." "If a man die shall he live again ?"
Without a revelation from God, which alone brings life
and immortality to light through Jesus Christ, there is no
ground of hope of living again, or of~any Ufe at all after
death, for this is not a natural, but altogether a super
natural event.

Sec. II.] DEATH BY SIN. 409
We find many such passages as the following in the
Psalms :
"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 (sheol) hell,
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 do Bpring 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 I for lo 1 thine enemies shall per.
ish." " For yet a little while and the wicked shall not be." " His
breath goeth forth ; he returneth to the earth ; in that very day his
thoughts perish." " The redemption of their (nephesh, life) soul is
precious and it [whether "it" refers to the nephesh or to the redemp
tion the thought is the same] ceaseth forever." " None of them
can by any means redeem his brother, or give to God a ransom for
him, 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. Their inward thought is
that their houses shall continue forever and their dwelling places
to all generations ; 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 domin
ion over them in the morning." [It is possible that there may be
a hint here, as in other places in theOld Testament, of a resurrection
and of an eternal life for the righteous, but surely, of no such life
for the wicked, for the Psalmist goes on to say:] " He shall go to
the generations of his fathers, they shall never see light." " Man
that is in honor and understandeth not is like the beasts that perish."
" Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked
be no more."
Solomon says in the book of Proverbs :
"The lamp of the wicked shall be put out." " His destruction
cometh as a whirlwind." " He that speaketh lies shall perish."

410 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
" He that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly
be destroyed, and that without remedy." "The expectation (tikvah,
the thread of life) of the wicked shall be cut off." " There shall be
no reward (or literally acharith, no hereafter, no futurity) to the
evil man ; the candle of the wicked shall be put out."
The Prophets tell us:
"The soul that sinneth it shall die." "The destruction of trans
gressors and of sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the
Lord shall be consumed." "Tbey shall be as though they had not
been." "They shall be as nothing. They that strive against thee
shall perish." "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."
Some of these threatenings may be understood as having
a mere temporal application ; but it is impossible to inter
pret them all in this superficial way. We who are accus
tomed to read the Old Testament in the light of the New can
see a deeper meaning in them than those, perhaps, to whom
they were immediately addressed; but even they must
have known and felt that their meaning was not exhausted
this side of the grave.
When the law of God was revealed to them in such
awful terrors from Mount Sinai, and Life and Death were
set before them, and Moses exhorted them to choose hfe
that they might live : when, again, the twelve tribes were
set over against each other, half of them on Mount Ebal,
and half on Mount Gerizim, and the one party was made
to utter the blessings, and the other, the curses of this law,
and each to respond to the other, Amen : when Jeremiah
the prophet, solemnly exhorts and warns them, in the
name of the Lord, and says : " Behold I have set before
you the way of life, and the way of death ;" when again

Sec. IL] DEATH BY SIN. 411
Ezekiel expostulates with them, saying, by Divine com
mand, "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?" and when on numerous other occa
sions, substantially the same language was addressed to
them; they must have known and felt that something
more than mere temporal life and temporal death was
meant. In that case, such words would have been mere
mockery, for none of them could hope to avoid this death ;
but there was a death beyond, which they could escape.
Something more than mere national death was meant, for
they are expressly told that they are addressed as indi
viduals, and that every one would be held responsible for
his own sins. So that under the ministry of God's ancient
messengers, even before the coming of Christ, through
whom life and immortality were brought to light, the
righteous came to anticipate that " some better thing " —
that blessed life beyond, yet to be more fully revealed to
them ; and sinners to tremble in view of a judgment be
yond this life, and another death — called the second death
in the book of Revelation — which would extinguish their
every hope.
It is certainly only in this fuller, deeper sense that these
threatenings under the Gospel can be construed as exhaust
ing their meaning. ^
Matt. 3 : 10-12. " Now also the axe is laid unto the root of thp
trees; therefore, every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, is
hewn down and casi into the fire. 12. Whose fan is in his hand and
he will thoroughly purge [cleanse] his floor and gather his wheat
into the garner ; but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable
fire." [This fire is not a preserving element, but it is an unquench
able fire, one that cannot be arrested or put out ; but will surely do
4

412 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
its work. It is evidently for the very purpose of utter consumption
and not preservation, that these useless trees, this vile chaff is cast
into it.]
10: 28. "Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to
kill the (psuehe) soul, but rather fear Him which is able to destroy
(apolesai) both soul and body in (Gehenna) hell." [This gehenna,
as we have shown, is the synonym of complete destruction. It was
the place into which the offal of the city, and the bodies of dead
animals, and of criminals were cast, not to be tormented, but to be
consumed ; the idea of torment is one that has been read into it
by a heathen philosophy.]
Mark 8 : 55. " For what shall it profit a man if he gain the
whole world and lose his own (psuehe life) soul ?" [In Luke 9 : 24,
this same word is translated " life," in verse 25 the word is rendered
"lose himself or be cast away," and in the new version more prop
erly, " lose or forfeit his own self." This cannot mean to forfeit
one's happiness or well-being, but one's own very self.]
Luke 13 : 1-5. " There were present at that season, some that
told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with
their sacrifices. And Jesus answering said unto them: Suppose ye
that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because
they suffered such things ? I tell you nay ; but except ye repent,
ye shall all (osautos apoleisthe) likewise perish. Or those eighteen
upon whom the tower of Siloam fell and slew them ; think ye that
they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell
you nay, but except ye repent, ye shall all (omoios apoleisthe) like
wise perish." [This cannot mean the loss of life by the cruelty of
Pilate, or by the falling of another tower, for in this case the threat
was not fulfilled. Something more than ordinary natural death is
¦also evidently meant. It cannot mean anything but literal destruc
tion.] 9 : 56. " For the Son of Man came not to destroy men's lives,
but to save them." [Not to save them from dying an ordinary
natural death, but from the loss of the life hereafter.]
Acts 8: 20. " Thy money perish with thee." [The same ex
pression, eii eis apoleian is applied to both Simon the sorcerer and
diis money, and with the same literal meaning.]
Bom. 2 : 12. " For as many as have sinned without law shall

Sec. IL] DEATH BY SIN. 413
also perish without law." [Not, "shall be.pimished without law," as
Dr. Bartlett quotes it, but shall perish. We are not punished for be
ing the children of Adam, nor for unavoidable ignorance of God's
law. We are to be punished only for our individual sins ; but we
all come under the doom of death, we all, as children of Adam,
must die — must perish, excepting as we have salvation through
Christ.] 1 Cor. 15 : 17. "If Christ be not raised — (even) they also which
are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." [This is the common lot
of all men, and it is only because Christ died and rose again that
any; even the righteous, are saved from utter death.]
2 Cor. 4:3. " But if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that
are lost." [Or, in other words, They from whom this Gospel is
hidden are lost or perishing.]
Phil. 3 : 19. " Whose end (telos) is destruction." [What can be
more final than the end ? Whatever miseries come upon sinners in
the pathway of sin, the end of it is destruction.]
James 1 : 15. " Sin, when it is finished bringeth forth death."
[Not simply misery ; this is its more immediate effect, but, like a
fatal disease, it leads down to death, and this is its final result.]
James 5 : 20. " Let him know, that he which converteth a sin
ner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and hide
a multitude of sins." [If unconverted souls are exposed to death,
they cannot be immortal.]
Heb. 10 : 26. "For if we sin wilfully after we have received the
knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin,
but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation
which shall devour the adversaries." 12 : 19. " For our God is a
consuming fire." [Pur katanaliskon : this is as strong an expression
as could possibly be used to signify utter and complete destruction.
It does not mean torment, but absolute consumption by fire."]
2 Pet. 2 : 12. " But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be
taken and destroyed, shall utterly perish in their own corruption."
2 Pet. 3:7. " But 'the heavens that now are, and the earth, by
the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against
the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men."

414 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
1 John 3 : 15. " No murderer hath eternal life abiding in him."
[There is no immortality for him ; he must die.]
Bev. 20 : 12. "And I saw the dead small and gfleat 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.
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it ; and death and
hell (hades) delivered up the dead which were in them ; and they
were judged every man according to their works. And death and
hell (hades) were cast into the lake of fire. This is the Second death.
And whosoever was not found written in the -book of Life was east
into the lake of fire." [Even were we to suppose the Hadean state to
be a state of conscious suffering for the wicked — here is the end
even of death and hades ; and all are cast together into this all-
consuming lake of fire. And then to assure us that this is the
meaning, we are told in the verses immediately following,! that
there is " no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall
there be any more pain ; for the former things are passed away."]
The above are but a few of the many passages of Scrip
ture in point, that might be cited. The doom of the
wicked is very frequently spoken of in contrast with the
lot of the righteous ; to some of these passages we will call
attention in a subsequent section. But in whatever con
nection, and whether in the Old Testament or the New, it
is one and the same — Death and extinction.
4. That this is the meaning of these texts is still more
evident, from the images and figures that are employed to
set forth this doctrine. , They are quite inconsistent with
any other interpretation but that of complete and utter
destruction. The wicked are not only said to die, to be destroyed, to
perish, etc. ; but also to be burned up like chaff, or like
stubble; to be utterly consumed root and branch; to be
dashed in pieces as a potter's vessel ; to be ground to pow-

SeC. H.] DEATH BY SIN. 415
•
der ; to wither like a branch that has been cut off; to be
thrown down like a house without foundation ; to consume
away into smoke like ihe fat of rams ; to perish like brutes
in their own corruption ; to become as ashes under the feet
of the righteous ; to be devoured ; to be as nothing ; to be
as though they had not been ; to be no more ; not to be,
etc., etc. While these fearful figures may express pain,
suffering, extreme anguish, as was doubtless intended, and,
in some cases, perhaps, prolonged agony, they express more
than this ; they express death, and utter destruction as the
end and grand consummation of all these inflictions of
Divine wrath.
It is impossible to limit them to the expression of the
doctrine of the eternal preservation of the wicked, in a
state of sin and suffering, without destroying all their force
and appropriateness, and actually reversing their true sig
nification. And no one would ever have thought of trying
to do this, Were it not for this inexorable anti-Scriptural
doctrine of the natural and necessary immortality of the
wicked. But with such a theory to sustain at all hazards,
the -ingenuity of man is capable of devising any sort of in
terpretation he may need. These passages of Scripture,
however formidable they appear to others, or however nu
merous, are nothing more to him — as a friend suggests —
than the paper-covered hoops to the equestrians in the cir
cus ring ; they fearlessly jump through them, and come
down again upon the back of their steeds, as before.

SECTION IH.
Life Eternal Through Christ.
III. The special object of ihe incarnation and death of
Christ, the Savior, was to redeem mortal man from the power
of sin and death, and to immortalize him, by imparting to
him His own peculiar life, and bringing him into union
with God, who liveth forever : "And this is the life eternal,
that they might know thee, the only true God, and (even)
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."
In the foregoing section we have been considering the
destructive effect of sin, and the necessary mortality of sin
ful man ; not because this is our main theme, but as a kind
of background to our main theme, which is, that of Life
Eternal through Christ. This was the more important, in
asmuch as the great traditional error of immortality for
all men without a Savior, has painted this background in
such false and lurid colors, as greatly to damage and ob
scure the Gospel picture, which rests on it, and to depre
ciate the work of Christ in our behalf, and almost obliter
ate the real distinction between the lot of the holy and
the unholy, which is pre-eminently one of Life — Life without
end, a Life of purity and blessedness through Christ, and
with Christ, in His everlasting kingdom.
It is only as we come to recognize the true condition of
sinful man, and his consequent destiny, as one, not simply
of suffering, but of death and destruction, that the Gospel
of our Salvation, which is a proclamation of Life through
a crucified Savior, stands out in its real brightness, and
glory. Hence, the Word of God spreads before us, in the very
beginning, an account of the fall of our first parents from

Sec. HI.] LIFE ETERNAL THROUGH CHRIST. 417
their original holiness, and the sad, sorrowful and mortal
doom, which they brought upon themselves and their pos
terity, as a kind of background upon which the glorious
Gospel of Our Salvation is to be painted. First, we have
the law with its fearful penalty of death, and then, the
Gospel with its offer of Life.
But even in the sentence of condemnation, there were
intimations of mercy. Behind the dark cloud, there were
streaks of light ; and voices of hope and cheer were heard
mingling with the thunders of Sinai. The darkness of the
long night that preceded the dawning of the day was re
lieved by the shining of the stars, in the firmament ; and
long before the rising of the Sun, there were many who
waited and watched for his appearing. But his real efful
gence is only seen in contrast with the darkness he alone
could dissipate. *
The New Testament is not simply a fuller and clearer
revelation of Divine truth than the Old. It is all this,
but more. It is a New Revelation. As in Nature, we
find one stage following another in the work of creation,
each higher than the one to which it succeeds ; so is it in
the revelation of Divine truth. And as in Nature, each
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 arid higher
truths which distinguish it as a New Revelation.
And still further ; as every inferior grade overlaps that
which is to follow, and foreshadows its peculiar character
istics, 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 prophecies and prom
ises, hints more or less clear, of the truths yet to be revealed

418 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
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.
If it be asked, What is that " something more," that
higher truth, which is peculiar to the New Testament and
which gives it pre-eminence over the Old? We reply
without hesitation : It is the revelation of Life and Immor
tality for mortal man, by a new birth and a resurrection
from the dead ; and the destruction of all evil through the
almighty power of the Son of God our Savior.
This is The Gospel. It is not only a new and higher
revelation, but the LifeTitself that it reveals 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, and that he now forsakes his
old way of sin, and begins to regulate his life by a higher
standard of morality,_and to seek and find his enjoyment
in higher things. It means all this, but vastly more. He
is actually a new creature.
The beginning of a new life, which is spiritual and un
dying, is begotten within him by the Spirit of God. His
old Adamic life is natural, or rather psuchical, and hastens
to death. " That is not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural (psuchical) and afterwards that which is
spiritual" This new life may be faint and feeble at first,
like the life of an unborn infant, but when this body of
corruption shall be cast off, it will take to itself a new
spiritual body, and rise to a life of immortal blessedness in
the kingdom of heaven.
There are many hints of this life scattered all through
the Old Testament. The hope of it sustained and encour
aged the faith of the patriarchs ; Moses and the prophets

Sec. HI.] LIFE ETERNAL THROUGH CHRIST. 419
¦exhorted to obedience and trust in view of it ; David and
the other psalmists made it the theme of their songs and
praises and prayers. Take for example the LXXHI
Psalm. "Thou wilt guide me with thy counsel
And afterward receive me to glory. ,
Whom have I in heaven but Thee?
And there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee.
My flesh and my heart faileth,
But God is the strength of my heart,
And my portion forever."
" But in no single instance do we discover in the book
of Psalms, or in the poetical books, or in the books of col
lected Proverbs or weighty sayings of the wise, or in the
prophets, the expression of the Socratic hope of eternal life,
founded on man's essential nature as eternal. The hope of
Life is restricted to righteous men ; to the true servants of
God. There is not one ray of hope of an eternal future
which shines on the head of a rebel in the' Old Testament.
The immortality of the nephesh was a speculation unknown
to the saints and prophets. 'All the wicked will he de
stroy.' ' When the wicked do spring as the grass, and
all the workers of iniquity flourish, it is that they shall be
¦destroyed forever.' No man lives forever but in God."
(Life in Christ.)
It is not important for us now to consider the many inti
mations, more or less distinct in the Old Testament of this
glorious truth which was yet to be revealed in the Gospel,
when we have the Gospel itself to refer to. It is this life,
as it is revealed in the Gospel that claims our special
attention. Christ came, not merely to reveal this Life, but to com
municate it to us by the spirit dwelling in Him, and pro
ceeding from Him. He came, not as John, to exhort to

420 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. IH.
repentance and newness of life, but, as "the Way, the
Truth and the Life," the very source and Fountain of this
Life. " In Him was Life and (the) Life was the Light of
Men." Adam was, at best, but a creature, a mere living
soul. " His breath was in his nostrils." As our progenitor,
he could give us only a natural life ; but our spiritual pro
genitor was the Ever-living Creator Himself; and we who
are begotten by Him, and live in Him, must live forever.
" Because He lives ye shall live also." " The first man
Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam a quickening
(life giving) spirit."
This is the doctrine our Lord would have taught Nico-
demus in the very beginning of His ministry.
John 3 : " Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. That which is born of
the flesh is flesh ; 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 jip ; that whosoever believeth in Him should not
perish, 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 bad, like the Pharisees generally, vague no
tions of a life beyond the present, but it was only the pro
longation of man's natural life into another state, not a
new life, but the old life of the soul after it had escaped
from the body ; such a kind of ghostly life as the philoso
phy which they had imbibed from the heathen world had
taught them to believe in, and such as this same philoso
phy teaches at the present day. But he had no conception
of that new spiritual life, which comes only by a new spir
itual birth, and which is the only foundation of any good
hope of immortality. He was destitute of that spiritual
principle by which he could conceive of it ; and so are

Sec. IH.] LIFE ETERNAL THROUGH CHRIST. 421
the great mass of men, and even many of our so-
called " masters in Israel " at the present day. " The
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God
because they are spiritually discerned. For they are fool
ishness unto him ; neither can he know them."
This is the doctrine our Lord taught to the woman of
Samaria at the well. But her carnal mind, unillumined
by the Spirit of God, could not rise to the apprehension of
these spiritual and eternal verities. She could understand
the figures .by which Christ would represent it, only in
their literal sense, or in some such mystical^ unreal sense,
as all carnal minds now put upon them. But these figures of
Scripture are employed to represent realities and not other
figures, and this spiritual life of which Christ spoke in a
figure, is not an unreal life, but an actual life, and even
more real and substantial than the natural life of the
body. John 4 : "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that
Haith unto 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."
It was of this Life that Christ spoke in His discourse
with the Hebrews, after healing the man at the pool of
Bethesda ; but their minds were too dark and gross to ap
prehend His meaning.
John 5 : "For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth
ihein, even so the Son quickenth whom He will. Verily, verily I
say unto you, He that heareth my words, and believeth on Him
that sent me, hath Everlasting Life, and shall not come into con
demnation ; but is passed from death unto life. For as the Father

422 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. HI.
hath Life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have Life in
Himself. Marvel not at this : for the hour is coming in the which
all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come
forth ; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of Life, arid
they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation [or of
condemnation to death]. Search the Scriptures ; for in them ye
think y« have eternal life [or rather the assurance of eternal life,
but you will find no assurance of it there excepting through me as
your Savior from death] for they are they which testify of Me ; and
ye will not come unto me that ye might have Life."
We desire to call especial attention to the passage just
quoted, as 'absolutely conclusive of the doctrine for which
we are contending, Eternal Life only in Christ. The doc
trine of a future life was not unknown to the ancient He
brews. It was so far revealed in their Scriptures that they
all came to accept it ; but, under the influence of the Gre
cian philosophy, by which their own religion had become
corrupted, they had come to accept it as a philosophical
doctrine of the natural inheritance of all men by their phy
sical birth — a doctrine which has always been popular — or
if in any special sense, as their peculiar inheritance through
Abraham, and not as the special gift of God's grace
through Jesus Christ, and only to be received by a new
birth. Hence, when Christ showed them how false were
their hopes of immortality excepting through Himself;
and that there was nothing in their own Scriptures, the
Divine authority of which they conceded, to justify then-
hopes, they were offended ; as men now are offended ; but
if they will search the Scriptures they will find no doctrine
of immortality for man but through Christ, neither in the
Old, nor in the New Testament.
The same truth He preached after the miracle of the
loaves and the fishes.
John 6 : " Labor not for the meat that perisheth, but for the

Sec. IH.] LIFE ETERNAL THROUGH CHRIST. 423
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 thirst.
And this is the will of Him that sent me, that every one that 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 fcnto you,
He that believeth on me hath Everlasting Life. Iam 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 a 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 (zoen) in you. 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 quickeneth'; (giveth life ;) the flesh
profiteth nothing ; the words that I speak unto you ; they are Spirit,
and they are Life."
Our Lord is not here speaking of happiness and misery
hereafter, nor of holiness and sin, but of Life (zoen) and
Death. As the life of the body is sustained by natural
fpod, so that higher spiritual life which He offers to them
must have its spiritual food. But this natural life cannot
always be maintained even by food supernaturally given
to them as was the manna in the wilderness. They must
die if they have not a higher principle of Life ingenerated
within them. This life is received from Him and main
tained only by the closest union with Him. To such a life
there is no end. This whole chapter is remarkable for the
constant reiteration of this one great truth. But, alas,
they could not, or would not receive it. The idea of a nat-

424 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. HI:
ural immortality had taken such firm hold upon their
minds, as to close them utterly to this great Gospel truth
of Life and Immortality through a Divine Savior. Not
merely the Scribes and Pharisees were offended, but many
even of, His followers were offended at His doctrine.
"From that time many of his disciples 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."
How many there are of Christ's so-called disciples even
now, alas ! and of those who profess to preach His Gospel,
who cannot, or will not accept of this teaching. It is too
humiliating to their natural pride. It is too directly in
conflict with their psychological notions of the nature of
man ; it is too much opposed to the popular traditions of
the world, and the Church, to be accepted by them. They.
are quite willing to receive Christ as a great teacher sent
from God ; as a Savior from eternal sin and misery ; as a
giver of purity and joy and blessedness forever to immortal
man ; but not as a Savior from actual and eternal death ;
not as the giver of Eternal Life. How shall they be made
to understand, or rather, to receive this great and glorious
truth excepting by the Spirit of God ? May it please God
so to bless our humble efforts to this end, that with us they
may be able to say, " Though we have known Christ after
the flesh, yet now henceforth we know Him (so) no more."
John 8 : " Then said Jesus unto them again, I go my way, and
ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins. Whither I go, ye can
not 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, ye shall
die in your sins ; 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 say
ings he shall never see death." [That is death eis ton aidna — death
forever more, the second death from which there is no resurrec
tion.] /

Sec. III.] LIFE ETERNAL THROUGH CHRIST. 425
/
Again He teaches the same truth under the allegory of
the good Shepherd and the door :
John 10. " I am the door ; by me, if any man enter in, he shall
be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture. The thief com
eth not but for to steal and to kill and to destroy. I am come that
they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.
I am the good shepherd and know my sheep, and am known of
mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father, and
I lay down my life (psuehe life, not zoe life) for the sheep. And
other sheep I have which are not of this fold ; them also I must
bring, and they shall hear my voice ; and there shall be one fold
and one shepherd. My sheep hear my voice and I know them, and
they follow me. And I give unto them Eternal Life ; and they
ehall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand."
This was theSburden o£ His instruction to Mary and
Martha at the grave of Lazarus. They were not entirely
ignorant of the great doctrines of the Resurrection, the
Judgment, and the Life to come : for they had been under
the direct teaching of the Master ; but their notions were
very imperfect and confused. They had no true under
standing of these doctrines. So when Jesus said to Martha,
"Thy brother shall rise again," Martha said unto Him, "I
know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last
day." Jesus said unto- her, "I am the Resurrection and
the Life ; he that believeth on me, though he were dead,
yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth shall
never die." [Shall not die eis ton aidna forever.] Both
those who are dead, and those who are alive at the -second
coming of Christ,v shall live again and Hve forever. " On
such the second death hath no power."
The same doctrine is expressed in His intercessory
prayer. John 17. " These words spake Jesus and lifted up His eyes to

426 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
heaven and said : Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son, that
thy Son may also glorify thee. 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 and (even) Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."
The above citations are from the Gospel of John. There
are still others that we might give from this Gospel, and
from the other three Evangelists, but John is more full on
this subject. This is the prominent theme of his Gospel,
and, indeed, of his Epistles also. In the first six chapters
of his Gospel, he repeats it over and over, no less than
twenty-eight times, and more than fifty times in all his writ
ings, that Christ is. ihe source, the only source of Eternal Life.
If these citations already given do not suffice, no array of
texts would be sufficient to prove our doctrine that there
is no Eternal Life out of Christ the Savior.
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 men, V> provide
which, He gave up His own life, and which He so freely
offers to all who will believe on Him— is not after all truly
Eternal Life, but only a certain condition of life — a pure
and blissful condition it is true, — but, as for the life itself,
it is equally the portion of all men ? Can it be that He
meant no more by these high sounding words, than that
He would engraft upon the immortal life of His people, a
condition of purity and blessedness that should endure for
ever, while those who refused to believe on Him would
have to spend their immortal life in sin and misery ? Can
it be possible that any true believer in Christ, or any one
who accepts His words as true, should claim as his own
natural inalienable prerogative this immortahty, which
He " who only hath immortality," purchased for them by
His own precious blood?

Sec. III.] LIFE ETERNAL THROUGH CHRIST. 427
This doctrine of Life and Immortality through Christ,
which illuminates every page of God's Word, is, indeed,
humiliating to the pride of man ; but it is full of honor,
and glory to Christ, and full of comfort and joy to those
who receive it, and full of hope for dying man.
0, my brethren in Christ ! why will you any longer
agree with the enemies of your Lord to rob Him of
His peculiar glory as the giver of Eternal Life to
His people? You, indeed, love and cherish Him, a3
you well may, as your Savior from sin and misery;
but He is infinitely more; He gives you Immortality,
His own immortality: an Eternal Life of purity and
blessedness in His Everlasting Kingdom. "Give unto
the Lord, O ! ye His people 1 Give unto the Lord the
glory due unto His name." And you whose privilege it is
to preach His Gospel, preach it in no meager, stinted way ;
but in all its fulness, as the Gospel of Salvation ; not from
sin and misery merely, but Salvation from death itself;
preach as did the Apostle, "The wages of Sin is Death, but
the gift of God is Eternal Li%, through Jesus Christ our
Lord." It was not until after the Holy Spirit had been poured
out with power upon the Apostles and early disciples of
our Lord, that their minds were opened to receive this
truth ; but when they clid receive it, and " knew the power
of His resurrection," they were lifted completely out of
their former condition, and filled with a zeal and energy,
which nothing could withstand. This was " the unspeaka
ble gift of God," which they burned to make known to
their fellow men.
This is what the Angel told the Apostles to preach,
when he had released them from the prison at Jerusalem.
" Go 1 stand and speak in the temple to the people, all

428 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
the words of this Life." And they gladly obeyed. This
is what Paul and Barnabas preached at Antioch, first to
the Jews, and when they refused to accept of Jesus as the
giver of " this Life," they turned to the Gentiles, saying :
Acts 13 : 46. " 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, lol we turn to the
Gentiles. For lo 1 so hath the Lord commanded us, ' I have set
thee to be a light of the Gentiles that thou shouldst be for Salvation
unto the ends of the earth.' 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, and the immor
tality of all men, they scouted the idea of a resurrection
from the dead, and of Eternal Life through Jesus Christ
alone. Had he preached to them the doctrine of an after
life, of future rewards and penalties, and the endless life
of all men, either in blessecftess or misery, they would not
have called him " a. setter forth of strange gods ;" for this
was just what they believed. But the doctrine of " Jesus
and the resurrection," and of Eternal Life through Him
only, was no more popular with them than it is with the
Platonists of the present age.
This is the leading truth that runs through all the Epis
tles 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, for all
had sinned and come short of the glory of God. Those
who had sinned without law, must perish (not be punished
as Dr. Bartlett quotes the passage — not be condemned to

Sec. III.] LIFE ETERNAL THROUGH CHRIST. 429
sin and suffer forever, but perish) without law, and those
who had sinned under the law, should be judged by the
law ; that death reigned over all the children of Adam by
nature. But by the grace of God there was hope. The
Gospel which he preached was the power of God unto Sal
vation to every one that believeth in Christ.
To those who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory
and honor and immortality, [God would render] Eternal Life.
" That as sin hath reigned unto death even so might grace reign
through righteousness unto Eternal Life, by Jesus Christ our Lord."
"What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now
ashamed ? for the end of those things is death. But now being
made free from sin and become the servants of God, ye have your
fruit unto holiness and the end, Everlasting Life. For the wages of
ain is death, but the gift of God is Eternal Life through Jesus Christ
our Lord."
God is a Sovereign both in the natural and in the spir-
tiual world, in the bestowment of spiritual as well as na
tural life. As natural generation is not spontaneous, self-
effected, neither is regeneration. They were begotten by
God Himself. The new life which they received from
Him is a spiritual life. It concerns itself, not with carnal
and perishable things, but with Spiritual and Eternal real
ities. They who possess it are led by the Spirit of God.
They will not come into condemnation to death. Nothing
will be able to separate them from the love of God, in
whom and to whom they are henceforth to live, as the
chosen 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 impossible it
is for human reason to attain to any true knowledge of the
Gospel; how foolish the > truth it reveals, of Eternal Life
through a crucified Savior, seems to natural men ; " For
the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of

430 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he
know them because they are spiritually discerned." But
he was " determined to know nothing among them but
Christ and Him crucified." " Eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things
which God hath prepared for them that love him." " The
fashion of this world passeth away" ; the prizes that natural
men seek, are 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 taken away, they would be
the most miserable of all men, for then they would have
no hope of any life beyond the grave ; all those who had
fallen asleep in Him had perished — not gone to a state of
endless sin and misery — but perished — become extinct.
He attempted to explain, or illustrate the nature of the
spiritual bodies, which they will take on at the resurrec
tion — how glorious and incorruptible they will be ; how
entirely different from those gross fleshly bodies which are
fitted only for carnal souls, and which could not possibly
inherit the kingdom of God, and how, simultaneously, with
the resurrection of the dead, the bodies of those who are
alive at Christ's coming will be changed.
" In a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, for the trumpet shall
sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be
changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this
mortal must put on immortality — and death be swallowed up in
victory. O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy
victory?" The Second Epistle is equally8full of Christ and Him
crucified ; the source of Life, Eternal Life to all who be
lieve. He is determined to know nothing else among

Sec. III.] LIFE ETERNAL THROUGH CHRIST. 431
them ; waiting anxiously for the time when his mortality
shall be swallowed up of Life. And so is it in all his
other Epistles — our quotations from which must be cut
short. This is. his chief central theme :
Christ our Life. " In hope of Eternal Life." " Lay hold of Eter
nal Life." " Your Life is hid with Christ in God." "When Christ
who is our Life shall appear then shall ye also appear with him in
glory." Peter, James and Jude follow in the same track, "Hold
ing forth this word of Life " — exhorting all to " Fight the
good fight of faith and to lay hold on Eternal Life" —
" The Crown of Life which the Lord hath promised to all
that love Him."
The Epistles of John, like his Gospel, are full of the
same theme, His first Epistle opens with these words :
" That which was from the beginning which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and
our hands have handled of the word of Life — for the Life was
manifested and we have seen it and bear witness and show unto you
that Eternal Life which was with the Father and was manifested
unto us."
2 : 25. "And this is the promise that He hath promised us even
Eternal Life."
3 : 14. " We know that we have passed from death unto life,
because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother
abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a -murderer ;
and ye know that no murderer hath Eternal Life abiding in him."
What could be more explicit and conclusive than the
following passage?
1 John 5 : 10. " He that believeth not God hath made him a
liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of His Son.

432 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. IH.
And this is the record, that God hath given to us Eternal Life and
this Life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hatb the life, and
he that hath not the Son hath not the life." ¦
How is it possible for any stronger assertion of the doc
trine for which we contend, to be framed than this, or how
is it possible to bring any better or more trustworthy au
thority for it ? The only way in which its force can be
turned is to deny that Life means life. And this is just
what those who hold to the natural immortality of all men
without a Savior are doing. Life here is made to mean
"true functional action," and the passage should read, they
say, " He that hath the Son hath true functional action,"
and he that hath not the Son hath nbt " true functional
action." But if one shall be at liberty to change the
meaning of God's Words to make them conform to his
own philosophy, nothing can be proved from Scripture.
This is the end of all argument. His controversy is with
God, and not with us. But let him remember that this
passage is introduced with this remarkable utterance, " He
that believeth not God hath made Him a Liar, because he
believeth not the record (or witness, as it is more properly
rendered) of His Son."
Finally, in the Apocalypse, there is given a panoramic
view of the struggle between the great Life giver, and him
that " hath the power of death," on this earth, to the end
of the age. We are permitted to see Christ as "the Lamb
of God "that was slain," victorious over all His foes; and
Satan and his hosts, bound, judged and punished with
everlasting destruction. And the redeemed from among
the children of Adam, a mighty company whom no man
can number, "whose names are written in the Lamb's
Book of Life, from the foundation of the world ;" clothed
in white robes, are seen walking the golden streets of the

Sec. HI.] LIFE ETERNAL THROUGH CHRIST. 433
Celestial Paradise, with crowns on their heads, and harps
in their hands, and singing praises to Him who bought
them with His own precious blood. And they shall again
"have a right to the Tree of Life " and " the Lamb which
is in the midst of the throne shall feed them and lead them
unto living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away
all tears from their eyes."

SECTION IV.
The Great Alternative ; Death, or Life Everlasting.
IV. This is the great alternative presented in ihe Gospel ;
Death, or Life Everlasting — through Jesus Christ the Savior.
This will be the final outcome or issue of the probation
through which God is taking man in this life ; and this is
the grand distinguishing difference between natural men and
spiritual men, the former as children of Adam are mortal
and going down to death; the latter begotten of God are
heirs of the Life Everlasting. "This is the Record that God
hath given unto us Eternal Life, and this Life is in His
Son. He that hath the Son hath the Life, and 'he that hath
not the Son hath not the Life."
In the two foregoing sections, our attention has been
directed to two classes of Scripture texts ; First, those
that represent the mortal and perishing condition of all
the children of Adam by nature, and threaten special

434 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
wrath and destruction to persistent rebels against God, and
rejecters of the Salvation offered in the Gospel ; Second,
those that proclaim Salvation from death and destruction
through an atoning Savior ; and promise Eternal Life to
all who love, trust, and obey Him. Both these classes of
texts are very numerous, and they are so clear, distinct
and harmonious in their utterance as to seem to render it
impossible to make them mean anything else than just
what they say — that there is no possible hope of immor
tality for any child of Adam, excepting through an Al
mighty Savior; but that by the grace of God, such a
Savior has been provided, and that now, Eternal Life is
offered to all men through Him. This is the Gospel of our
Salvation : not simply Salvation from that " state of sin
and misery into which the fall brought mankind," nor
from punishment due to one's own sins, nor from the power
of sin itself, but more than all this, from the death and de
struction to which all sin inevitably leads.
But, as if to put these two great doctrines of the Bible
beyond all controversy, and to make them stand out as
clearly as possible, they are not presented to us merely in
isolated texts, or by themselves, in such passages as we
have cited, but are more often brought into juxtaposition
and contrast with each other. These two classes are set
over, the one against the other ; their separate characters
and destinies are put in opposition to each other, and what
is affirmed of the one is denied to the other.
Natural men are shown to be, like their fallen progen
itor, 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, those that had been begotten anew by the
Spirit of God, are like their spiritual progenitor, holy,

Sec. IV.] THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE. 435
heavenly minded, seeking those things that are above, and
becoming more and more like Him, who is the source of
their Life and the chief object of their desire and hope.
Though these two natures, the old and the new, mingle
for a time and struggle for the mastery in the same body,
hke the infants Esau and Jacob, the last born shall finally
supplant 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."
It remains for us now to give our attention to some of
these antithetical passages. It is not in the Gospel that
this contrast is first instituted. From the time when God
first began to choose to Himself a peculiar people out of
the 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
apprehended : for it is only in the Gospel of Jesus Christ
that Life and Immortality are fully brought to light.
Though a very prominent place is given to temporal bless
ings, in the good that is promised to the faithful, yet they
finished their earthly course, under an impression, more or
less distinct, that they had not exhausted the promises.
Something more was meant by the oft repeated assurance,
that they should " prolong their days." Their faith lighted
up the dark valley, and dissipated its chief terrors. The
way to the grave became brighter and brighter, as the Gos
pel day began to dawn. While to the wicked, these shad
owy terrors that came up from sheol to meet them as they
went down into its dark chambers, became more and more
terrible.

436 bible eschatology. [Chap. Ill-
There is much that is mysterious, even in the utterances
of the Gospel, with respect to the issues beyond this life,
nor can we in our present state fully comprehend them.
But even though the mystery was greater under the law,
the Words of God throughJlis prophets were felt to be
pregnant and full of meanmg, and the rewards and the
penalties of His law, which were put into such fearful con
trast, were felt to have more than a mere earthly signifi
cance. In the giving of the law from Mount Sinai, where God
proclaimed Himself as "visiting the iniquity of the fathers
upon the children, to the third and fourth generation of
them that hate me — and showing mercy unto thousands of
them that love me and keep my commandments ; " in
the responsive utterance of blessing and cursing from
Ebal and Gerizim ; in the farewell address of Moses to the
children of Israel ; " I call heaven and earth to record this
day against you, that I have set before you blessing and
cursing ; therefore choose life that both thou and thy seed
may live," there is to us, who read these solemn words in
the light of the Gospel, a deeper significance than lies on
the surface,- and even they, to whom they were spoken felt
that they were fraught with a deeper meaning.
In many of the Psalms, this- contrast is drawn out at
length. In the First Psalm, "The godly man is like a tree
planted by the rivers of waters that bringeth forth his
fruit in his season ; his leaf also shall not wither, and what
soever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so,
but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away." In
the Second, we have a vivid picture of the King in Zion
possessing the uttermost parts of the earth with His loyal
people — while all His enemies "are dashed in pieces like a
potter's vessel." So, also, in the Seventh, Ninth, Tenth,
Eleventh, and, indeed, in a large part of the Psalms, this

Sec. IV.] the great alternative. 437
contrast between the reward of the righteous and of the
wicked, is more or less distinctly drawn out. It must
suffice to make one citation, more at length.
Ps. 49. " They that trust in their wealth and boast themselves
in the multitude of their riches — none of them can by any means
redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him (for the re
demption of the soul is precious and it ceaseth forever), that he
should still live forever and not see corruption. For he seeth that
wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person, and leave
their wealth to others. Like sheep they are laid in the grave :
death shall feed upon them r and the upright shall have dominion over
them in the morning, and their beauty shall consume in the grave
from their dwelling. But God will redeem my soul from the power of
the grave : for He shall receive me. 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."
However vague some of these expressions may be, the
contrast is plain enough. It cannot possibly be anything
else than that which is more fully set forth in the Gospel ;
the Life Everlasting for the righteous, and death, and utter
extinction for the wicked.
These contrasts abound in the writings of Solomon. The
First Chapter of the book of Proverbs closes with a very
impressive picture of this sort. We find such antithetical
passages as the following throughout the whole book :
" The light of the righteous 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 [in the-
sense in which the righteous will prolong theirs] which are as a
Bhadow, because he feareth not before God."
"The fear of the Lord prolongeth days — but destruction shall be-
to the workers of iniquity." " The hope of the righteous shall be
gladness — but the expectation of the wicked shall perish." " Tha

438 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. IH.
righteous shall never be removed — but the wicked shall not inhabit
the earth." "As righteousness tendeth to life — so he that pursueth
evil, pursueth it to his own death." " Whoso findeth me findeth
Life, and shall obtain favorof theLord— but he that sinneth against
me, wrongeth his own soul ; all they that hate me love death."
In the prophetical books, the same significant contrasts
are drawn.
In Isaiah 21 : 11, 12, the present life is represented as a
scene of conflict, of mingled darkness and light ; the in
quirer, anxious for the day, cries out from Seir : " Watch
man, what of the night?" And the cheering response
sounds out from him who stands on the watch tower : "The
morning cometh, and also the night," — the morning of vic
tory and joy to the people of God, the night also of deeper
darkness and of death, to His enemies. " If ye will in
quire, inquire ye; return, come."
This same prophecy closes with these notable words ;
they are the more worthy of notice because our Lord Him
self (Mark 9 : 43-48) quotes and applies them :
Is. 66 : 24. " For, as the new heavens and the new earth, which
I will make shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall yonr
seed and your name remain. 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 ; and they shall
go forth and look upon the carcasses [pegarim, dead corpses] 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 unto all flesh."
Strange, that those who understand this passage as de
scribing the future prosperity and happiness of God's peo
ple on the earth, and the complete destruction of all the
wicked, should, when quoted, evidently in the same sense
by our Lord, interpret it as meaning just the opposite ;
namely, the eternal preservation of the wicked in sin and

Sec. IV.] THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE. 439
suffering, and take these agents of their sure and utter de
struction, to be the symbols of unending torture !
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 not equal and just in
condemning them all to death for the sins of their
fathers, as they had come to interpret His Word and His
providences in view of the evils that were pressing upon
them ; that it made no difference whether they themselves'
were righteous or wicked ; for they must all die alike. The
prophet declared it was not so ; that God had no pleasure
in the death of any one. It was His will that the wicked
should turn and live. " Turn ye, turn ye for why will ye
die?" They could not understand Him here as using these
words, "Life" and " Death," in a mere physical and tem
poral sense ; for it would have been nothing but mockery,
had he meant no more. The full significance of these
words may not have been as obvious to them, nor even to
the inspired prophet, as they are to us ; yet there is in
them an implication of a life and a death to come, of which
they could not be wholly ignorant.
Daniel, looking forward in prophetic vision to the time
of the Second Advent and the First Resurrection, says, as
rendered in the revised version of Dr. Tregelles:
Dan. 12 : 2. "And many from among the sleepers of the dust
shall awake, these [alluding to such as are written in the Book of
Life spoken of in the preceding verse] shall be unto Everlasting
Life — but those [the rest of the sleepers, those who do not awake at
this time,] shall be unto shame and everlasting contempt [not ever
lasting shame and contempt as many misread it — but shame, and
everlasting contempt or abhorring. The same word (deraon) here ren
dered "contempt," is rendered abhorring in the passage from

440 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. HI.
Isaiah 66: 24, just cited, and is predicated of (pegarim) dead car-
cassses.] "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."
Malachi closes 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, both root and branchy and shall be
come as ashes, to be trodden under the feet of the right
eous, in the coming day of the Lord.
. It is impossible to take these Old Testament passages in
a mere temporal sense, or to construe the distinction be
tween the lot of the righteous and the wicked, so emphat-
.cally and constantly drawn in such decisive language, as
one of mere happiness and misery in the life to come, with
out doing violence to the letter, as well as to the uniform
current of the Divine Word. Nothing but life, actual life,
prolonged without limit under the favor of heaven, on the
one hand ; and death, actual and utter death and destruc
tion, can satisfy the demands of the terms employed.
Now comes John the Baptist, like the' day-star before
the sun, or a herald in advance of a king, to prepare the
way of the Lord ; 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 the
trees, every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is
hewn down and cast into the fire " — to be kept there for
ever ? No. But to be burned up. " His fan is in His
hand and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather
His wheat into His garner ; but He will [gather into an
other garner to be kept forever by itself? No, not so, He
will] burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
The phrase " unquenchable fire " (asbestos pur), which

SeC. IV] THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE. 441
was a common expression to denote a furious raging fire
that could not be repressed, no more implies the eternal
preservation of sinners who are said to be cast into it
(Mark 9 :), than it does the eternal preservation of this
chaff to whom they are likened — and yet our common ver
sion is made to give some apparent color to this idea in
that passage, by the rendering of this same expression,
asbestos pur, " the fire that never shall be quenched ! "
At last, in the fulness of time the King Himself comes
down, bringing with Him to earth, in His own person the
Kingdom of Heaven. He comes to make a beginning of
setting it up in this lower world, and to call all men into
it. But all men are by nature earthly, carnal and under
the domination of temporal things. This is purely spir
itual, and eternal. Hence they are not fitted for it. They
must be born again. They must become new creatures, if
they would enter it. Their natural birth gives them only a
low and transitory life. But the new life, which He shall
give to His followers, shall never pass away. It is His
own peculiar life. " 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 destruc
tion (not simply to misery, but apoleian destruction) is
broad and therefore many go in thereat ; and because the
gate that leads to life (zoe) is straight and narrow, there
are few that find it ; 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 (not, simply become miserable; but go to
naught), but have Everlasting Life." They, who build
on any other foundation, will be completely overwhelmed
when the final test shall come ; but they who build on
Him, like the man who builds on a rock, will never fall.
Treasures laid up on earth will be lost ; those that are laid

442 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
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 material bread — even the manna that
was miraculously given in the wilderness — can nourish
only for a little time. Their fathers who ate of it are
dead ; but those who shall eat of the Bread that He shall
give them, shall never die. He gives the water of Life.
Natural water is transient in its effect ; but the water He
will give, shall be in those who drink it, a well of water
springing up into Everlasting Life. He is the true vine.
His people are the branches and live, by their union to
Him, as long as He lives ; but the branches that are sev
ered from Him, must wither and die. They are fit only to
be gathered up and burned. " 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 the good into vessels, but cast
the bad away." It is like to a field of grain : The good
wheat is gathered, in the time of harvest, into bundles and
laid away in the garner ; but the tares — are not gathered
into other bundles, to be kept in a separate garner,
they — are burned up ; or, it is like a marriage festival, to
which only those who have on the wedding garment are
admitted. The wise virgins, whose lamps are full of oil
and bright and burning, go in with the bridegroom to the
marriage, but the foolish virgins, having no oil in their
lamps, are excluded and their lamps go out. Commen
tators, and theological teachers, who hold that the lamp of
life, once lighted up, can never be extinguished, have been
greatly puzzled to explain this parable, and to tell what is
meant by these lamps, but when we once admit that all
human life is evanescent and must eventually go out, and
that it is only the Divine Life in man that endures forever,
this parable is luminous and self-explanatory.

Sec. IV.] THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE. 443
By these, and a great variety of other illustrations, our
Lord sets forth in contrast the perishable nature of 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 primary, fundamental idea that runs
through all His teachings, Carnality, sin and death — Spir
ituality of mind, holiness and Life Everlasting — this is the
contrast He is continually holding up before the minds of
all men. . This, indeed, was the grand object of His mis
sion, to rescue man from sin and consequent death, and to
lift him up into that higher plane*1 of purity, in which only.
he could hope to live forever ; in the place of his old
Adamic, natural, carnal life, which cannot be perpetuated,
to give him a new spiritual life — His own peculiar life,
which is a life of immortal blessedness. This is the great
Salvation He offers in the Gospel.
The moral law, which had been given by Moses to the
Israelites, was holy and perfect, even in its adaptation to
their earthly life, though none of them had been able per
fectly to keep it. Its penalty of death, was a righteous
penalty. But now He uncovers a new and spiritual sense,
of which they had hitherto had no conception. It is shown
to be equally adapted to the wants of His Spiritual King
dom. It needs no change. Everything belonging to this
world, is gross, sensual, transitory, and perishable. It
must soon pass away. They, who set their affections upon
it, and pursue its trifles, must pass away with it. Every -
¦ thing belonging to His Spiritual Kingdom is pure and in
corruptible, and consequently abiding and eternal. This
new life of His people is not their old life simply purified,
but a new life, a spiritual life. They are new creatures.
Their desires, their affections, their motives of action, the
hopes that animate them, the instruments they use, their

444 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. IH.
weapons of offense and defence are all spiritual. Their
bodies are yet fleshly, and the old life yet lingers in them.
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
with bodies that are pure 'and incorruptible. For flesh
and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom 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 shad
owy, unsubstantial, unreal is meant. There cannot be a
greater mistake. This new spiritual life, and these spir
itual things, are as much more real and substantial, than
the old life and tiie things of the 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, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.
'They are not to labor for the meat that perisheth ; but for
that which endureth unto Eternal Life. Whoso mainly
.-seeks to save his natural life (psuehe) shall lose it, but he
who lightly esteems it, in his higher aim, shall keep it unto
(eden awnion) Life Eternal. They are not to fear men,
who can only kill the body, but cannot put an end to the
soul, or the man himself; but rather to fear Him who can
destroy him body and soul altogether in (Gehenna) Hell."
The word here • translated " Hell," is not Hades, the state
into which all men go at death, but Gehenna, the place
where dead carcases were cast, to be devoured by worms
or utterly burned up with fire. It is a most impressive
symbol of complete destruction, and cannot be interpreted
otherwise, in the above passage, without reversing its
meaning. At the final judgment, or the judgment of the nations,
At His second coming, He will gather all men into two

Sec. IV.] THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE. 445
classes, and only two ; placing the good on His right hand,
and the bad on His left ; and then, to the good, He will
say, " Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world;"
and to the bad, He will say, " Depart ye cursed into ever
lasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels," and
these shall go away into (Kolasin aionion) eternal pun
ishment, but the righteous into (zoen aionion) Eternal
Life. . As an extended comment on this passage will be
found in another place, it needs only now to be remarked,
that the antithesis here is not between the happiness and
misery of these two classes, as many have erroneously sup
posed ; but as everywhere else, it is between Eternal Life
on the one hand, and the punishment of eternal excision
on the other, which can be nothing less than Eternal
Death. In fixing our attention upon the prominent points in
this contrast between these two classes into which the whole
family of men is to be divided, and the final issues of each,
Life and Death ; we are not losing sight of what our
Lord said, at other times, of the rewards and penalties that
would be distributed to every one according to his deserts ;
of the different stations of honor and trust that shall be
accorded to those who have been faithful over many
things, and those who have been faithful over a few things;
of the varying harvests which they shall reap who have
sown bountifully or sparingly, on the one hand, or of the
many and the few stripes that shall be inflicted upon those
who deserved them, on the other. There will be ample
room, and ample time, in His everlasting kingdom for all
the various gradations of honor to which His loyal subject
may be entitled. There will be ample time for the inflic
tion of all the stripes which His justice may require, and
for the weeping and lamentation of His enemies, and the

446 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
rejecters of an offered Gospel, when they shall see His
chosen ones coming, from the North and the South, and
the East and the West, and entering His heavenly king
dom, and themselves thrust out. How long the severed
branches may be in withering, before they are gathered up
and cast into the fire, we know not ; nor, indeed, how long
the fire may be in consuming them. But if there is any
meaning in the figure He uses, the branches cannot live
forever after they have been completely severed from the
living vine, nor can they forever resist the fury of the fire
that burns them up. )
But let it be remembered, that the varying rewards of
the righteous, are not the Life itself which is promised in
the Gospel ; nor are these varying inflictions of pain and
suffering, the Death itself which is threatened to the
wicked. They are but the accompaniments of the Life,
and of the Death, spoken of. Life Eternal is not the re
ward of obedience, and those who conceive of it as such,
have no true conception of the Gospel. It is not earned,
or bought. It cannot be. It is the free gift of God
to all who will receive it as such. Neither is death
the penalty of individual transgression. It was, indeed, to
Adam ; but it is the common lot of all his posterity,
whatever be their moral character. It must not be con
founded with the additional punishment which every sin
ner is to receive according to his own personal deserts.
Pre-eminent among all the dreadful accompaniments of
death is Death itself, from which the Gospel offers to de
liver men ; and in addition to this, there is provision for
the forgiveness of all their own individual sins, however
many or few, through the infinite merits of the Savior.
So, also, is the Life which is begotten within every true
believer, pre-eminent and distinct from the reward of his
faithful services, whether many or few, upon the earth. It

Sec. IV.] the great alternative. 447
is by confounding these two issues, the Eternal Life, which
is the gift of grace, and is common to every believer, with
the varying rewards which every one receives according to
his merits in the kingdom of heaven; and this Death,
which is the common inheritance of all men from Adam,
with the penalties which every sinner must receive accord
ing to his deserts — an error into which those who hold that
the soul cannot actually die, are prone to fall — that the
whole Gospel plan of Salvation has been thrown into inex
plicable confusion.
We have room for but a few of the many citations in
point, that might be made from the Epistles and other
portions of the New Testament. No careful reader of the
writings of Paul can fail to notice how often he brings the
natural and the spiritual man into contrast, and shows the
respective destinies of each. It is not a destiny of eternal
blessedness for the one, and of eternal sin and misery for
the other. No such contrasts can be found instil of his
writings. It is uniformly Life in Christ — a life of blessed
ness and joy forever ; and Death, Death and destruction.
Scarcely ever, in all his Epistles, does he speak of Life,
but he speaks also of Death, in the same connection ; or of
Death, but he speaks of Life also. These two words, Than
atos, Death ; and Zoe, Life ; or Zde aionios, Life Everlast
ing; are found side by side, in contrast in all his Epistles:
Bom. 6 : 21. " What fruit had ye then in those things whereof
ye are now ashamed ? For the end of those things is deaih. But now
being made free from sin and become the servants of God, ye have
your fruit unto holiness, and the end Everlasting Life. For the
wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is Eternal Life through
Jesus Christ our Lord."
8: 6. "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually
minded is life and peace." 13. " For if ye live after the flesh, ye

448 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. HI.
shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the
body ye shall live."
Gal. 6:8. " For he that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh
reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit
reap Life Everlasting."
* The same contrast between the temporal and transitory
lot of all who choose this world for their portion, and the
enduring inheritance of those who are the children of God
by a new birth, is found in the Epistles of Peter and of
John: 1 Pet. 1 : 20. " Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of
incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth for
ever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the
flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth
away. But the Word of the Lord endureth forever."
1 John 2 : 17. "And the world passeth away, and the lust there
of; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever."
5 : 11. "And this is the record that God hath given unto us
Eternal ]»fe, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son
hath the Life, and he that hath not the Son hath not the Life"
The antithesis here is not between happiness and misery,
but between Life and Death, Eternal Life and Death. If
by death had been meant sin and misery forever perpetu
ated, then why should not the epithet aionios, eternal, be
attached to Thanatos, death, as well as to Zoe, Life. But
this is never found in the Scriptures. The epithet aionios
is reserved for Zoe alone. This Life which is from heaven
endures forever. But as for thanatos, death ; or the deu
teros thanatos, the second death, to which all sin leads, and
in which, unless taken away, it will, when finished, find its
certain end — it is a finality of itself, and needs no such
qualifying adjective. But, most certainly, if it meant sin
and misery forever perpetuated, we should expect to find

Sec. IV.] THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE. 449
it somewhere spoken of in the Word of God as Thanatos
amnios, everlasting death, as we so often do in modern
theological teaching. But the familiar phrase Eternal
death has no place in the Word of God. It has' been
framed to meet the requirements of that false theology,
which teaches that Life and Death alike are conscious
states of existence ; and that the only difference between
them is that the one is a state of purity and blessedness,
and the other a state of sin and misery, and that they are
both eternal.
This false assumption is the chief source of the perplex
ity and confusion that all these Platonic theologians show,
in trying to understand and explain the extended parallel,
which Paul draws in the Epistle to the Romans, Fifth
Chapter, and again in the First Epistle to the Corinthians,
Fifteenth Chapter; between Adam and Christ, or the First
and the Last Adam. Bringing with them to the Word of
God, their false theory of the deathless nature of the hu
man soul, they have been obliged to interpret this word
" Death," which is the real key to the whole argument, not
as meaning death, but a state of conscious sin and suffering.
No wonder, that under such limitations, they find it diffi
cult to make good sense out of the Apostle's argument,
without impugning the justice of God. Hence they have
invented the monstrous doctrine of imputed sin, and its
consequent desert of punishment, and of imputed holiness,
and its consequent merits, and have resorted to various
contrivances and special pleas, to relieve the difficulty,
which their own error has created, and to vindicate the
reasonableness and justice of God, in consigning the whole
human race to endless misery from birth on account of the
original sin of our first parents ; a doctrine which has
never been justified to the moral sense of any man, and
never can be. But let any one come to the Word of God,

450 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
in the simplicity of his heart, without any theory on this
subject, which forbids him to give to these words, " Life "
and " Death," their true and proper meaning, and there is
no difficulty whatever in understanding this argument of
the Apostle. It is self-explanatory.
We are charged by our opponents with limiting tie
meaning of these two words ; but it is they, and not we,
who limit them. They no doubt wish to give them as full
and inclusive a meaning as their theory will allow. But
while they hold that immortality is the common inheri
tance of the saved and unsaved alike, they cannot give to
these words their true, literal sense.
We hold that this word (Zoe) Life, or the Life, as it is
in the original, so frequently spoken of by our Lord and
His Apostles, is emphatic, and as the Divine Life of God
in man, the Eternal Life, it includes and carries with it to
the righteous, every conceivable blessing; and that the
word Death, when put in opposition with the Life, is not
only the negation of these blessings, but of the Life itself
which includes them. They hold, on the other hand, that
these words mean all that we say, except the Life itself,
and the Death itself. That is, they reject the main idea
from them both. It is the play of Hamlet, with Hamlet
left out. But surely the accompaniments of life, however
joyous, are not life itself, nor are the accompaniments of
death, death itself.
There is no one basis of Life — or of continued conscious ex
istence, which is only another name for life in a lower form
—that is common to them both. It cannot be possible that
the Bible should echo these two words, from one end to the
other — the two most important words in all the Scriptures,
— when neither Life itself, nor Death itself is really meant,
but only a certain condition of life — blessed indeed on the
i >ne hand, and miserable indeed on the other — but as for

Sec. IV.]

THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE.

451

Life itself, it is not to be held as the peculiar gift of God to
His children through Jesus Christ the Savior, as He says,
but as the common inheritance of all men through Adam ;
and as for Death itself, it is not the wages of sin, nor the
end of sin, ai He says, but only the perpetuation of sin,
and of ceaseless misery ; for there is no such thing as ac
tual death to man. Any theory of man that requires such
wresting of God's Word to sustain it, can have no founda
tion in Truth.
For convenience of reference and comparison, we append
a condensed synopsis of Bible teaching, with respect to tho
future lot of the righteous and the wicked, arranged in par
allel columns. It is taken from one of our former works,
{ entitled Homiletical Index, published by D. Appleton &
Co., New York. 1878.

THE FINAL DESTINY OF

THE RIGHTEOUS.
They shalt.
Appear with Christ in glory. Col. 3: 4.
Awake to everlasting life, Ban. 2 : 2.
Awake in his likeness and be satis
fied, Ps. 17: 15.
Be as the angels, Luke 12 : 25.
Be caught up in the clouds to meet
theLord when he shall come again,
1 Thes. 4: 16.
Be changed in the twinkling of an
eye, and clothed with spiritual bo
dies which can never decay, 1 Cor.
15:52-54.
Be for ever with the Lord, 1 Thes.
4:17.
Be where Christ is, with him, and
behold his glory, John 14:3; FhU.
1 : 23
Be like Christ, 1 John 3: 2.
Be glorified with Christ, Bom. 8 :
17-18.
Be joint-heirs with Christ. Bom. 8 :
17.

THE WICKED.
Fiery indignation shall devour them,
Heb. 10: 27.
Fire from God out of heaven devours
them, Bev. Jo : 9.
Sudden destruction shall come upon
them, 1 Thes. 5 : 2-3.
Their lamp shall be put out, Prov.
13: 9.
Their lamps go out ; for they have no
oil in them, Matt. 25 : 8.
Their end is to be burned, Heb. 6 : 8.
The reward of their hands shall be
given them, Is. 3 : 11.
They treasure up wrath against the
day of wrath. Bom. 2 : 5.
The day cometh that shall burn them
up, that it shall leave them neither
root nor branch, Mal. 4: 1.

452

BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY.

[Chap. III.

THE BIGHTEOUS.
They shall
Be partakers of the inheritance
amon£ them that are sanctified,
Acts 20: 32 ; Acts 26 : 18.
Be received into mansions prepared
for them by Christ, John 14: 2-3.
Be raised incorruptible, 1 Cor. 15 : 52.
Be pillars in the temple of God, and
go no more out for ever, Rev. 3 : 12.
Behold God's face in righteousness,
Psa. 17 : 15. Eat of the tree of life
in the midst of the paradise of God,
Rev. 2 : 7.
Eat the fruit of their doings', Is. 3 : 10.
Erjjoy everlasting light and the days
of their mourning shall be ended,
Is. 60: 19-21.
Enjoy pleasures evermore at God's
right hand, Ps. 16 : 11.
Enjoy what eye hath not seen nor
ear perceived, Is. 64 : 4.
Enter into life, Matt. 18 : 8 ; Matt.
19: 17.
Enter into the joy of their Lord,
Matt. 25 : 21.
Enter into the kingdom of heaven,
Matt. 7 : 21.
Enter into rest, Heb. 4 : 1-6.
Enter in through the gates into the
city, Bev. 22: 14.
FiDd rest to their souls, Matt. 11 : 29 .
Find life, Matt. 10 : 39 ; Matt. 16: 25.
Have in heaven a better and endur
ing substance, Heb. 10 : 34.
Have a house eternal in the heavens,
2 Cor. 5: 1.
Have given to them the hidden man
na to eat, a white stone, and a new
name, Bev. 2 : 17.
Have life through Christ, John 20: 21.
Have a treasure in heaven, Matt. 19 :
21 ; Luke 18 : 22.
Have length of days forever and ever,
Ps. 21 : 24.
Inherit all things. Bev. 21 : 7.
Inherit everlasting hte, Matt. 19 : 29.
Inherit the kingdom prepared for
them, Matt. 25 : 34.
Inherit the promises, Heb. 6 : 12.
Live with Christ, 1 Thes. 5 : 10.
Live because he lives, John 14 : 19.
Live by Christ, John 6 : 57.
Live and not die, Bom. 8 : 13.
Live, Luke 10: 28: John 11: 25:
John 14: 19.
Live in the New Jerusalem with God
himself. Bev. 21 : 3-4.
Never hunger, never thirst, John 6 :
35 ; Rev. 7 : 16.
Not die, John 6 : 50.
Not be hurt of the second death, Bev.
2:11.
Not have their names blotted out of
the book of life, Rev. 3 : 5.

THE WICKED.
They shall
Be blotted out of God's book, Ex. 32:
33 ; Bev. 3 : 5.
Be burned up as chaff with un
quenchable lire, Luke 3 : 17.
Be cast bodUy into hell, Matt. 6 : 29.
Becastoutinto outer darkness : there
shall be weeping and gnashing of
teeth, Matt. 8: 12.
Be cast into a furnace of fire, Matt.
13:42.
Be cast into hell-fire, where their
worm dieth not and the fire is not
quenched, Mark 9 : 47-48.
Be cast into the lake of fire, Bev. 20 ;
14-15.
Be consumed with the spirit of his
mouth and destroyed with the
brightness of his coming, 2 Thes.
2: 8.
Be cut off from the earth, Prov. 2:
22.
Be cut down like the grass, Ps. 37 : 2.
Be cut down like a fruitless tree,
Luke 13 : 9.
Be cut up as thorns to be burned, Is.
33 : 12.
Be damned, 2 Thes. 2 : 12.
Be destroyed, Acts 3 : 23.
Be destroyed utterly, Deut. 4 : 26.
Be devoured as stubble fully dry,
Nahum 1 : 10.
Be driven away in their wickedness,
Prov. 14: 82.
Be gathered up and burned as tares
in the fire, Matt. 8 : 40.
Be hewn down and oast into the fire
Matt. 8: 10; Matt. 7: 19.
Be punished with everlasting de
struction, 2 Thes. 1 : 7-9.
Be turned into hell, Ps. 79: 6.
Come forth unto the resurrection of
damnation, John 5 : 29.

Sec. IV.]

THE FINAL DESTINY.

453

the righteous.
They shall
Obtain an incorruptible crown, 1 Cor.
9 : 25.
Receive the gift of eternal Ufe, Rom,
6: 27.
Receive life everlasting, Luke 18: 30.
Receive a kingdom that cannot be
moved, Heb. 12 : 28.
Receive an inheritance incorruptible
and undefiled and that fadeth not
away, 1 Pet. 5 : 4 : Heb. 9 : 15.
Receive an eternal weight of glory,
2 Cor. 4: 17.
Receive the end of their faith, even
the salvation of their souls, 1 Pet.
1: 9.
Remain righteous and holy for ever,
Rev. 22: 11.
Reign for ever and ever, Rev. 22 : 5.
See God, Matt. 5 : 8.
See his face and have his name in
their foreheads, Rev. 22 : 4.
See him as he is, 1 John 2 : 2.
Sit with Christ on his throne, Rev.
4:21.
Shine as the stars for ever and ever,
Dan. 12: 3.
Suffer no more curse, nor pain, nor
disease, nor death ; all tears shall
be wiped from their eyes ; sorrow
and sighing shall flee away ; they
i shall dwell with God in glory; shall
walk in the light of the Lamb,
clothed in white raiment, with
palms in their hands, and shall
need neither the light of the sun
nor of the moon to enlighten the
place of their eternal abode, for the
Lamb is the light thereof; and
there shall in no wise enter into
it any thing that defileth, but
they only whose names are written
in the Lamb's book of life, Rev. 7 :
9-10 ; Rev. 21: 10-27; Rev. 22: 1-11.

the wicked.
They shall
Consume away into smoke, Ps. 37:
20.

Die, Bom. 8: 13.
Die surely. Gen. 2 : 17.
Die in their Bins, John 8 :

24.

Fall into the hands of the living
God, who is a consuming fire, Heb.
10 : 31 ; Heb. 12 : 29.
Go to nothing and perish, Job 6 : 18.
Go away into everlasting punish
ment, Matt. 25 : 45-46.
Have their part in the lake which
burneth with fire and brimstone,
which is the second death, Bev.
21: 8.
Lie down in Borrow, Is 50 : 11.
Not see life, John 3 : 36.
Not enter God's rest, Heb. 4 : 3.
Not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Matt. 10: 15; Matt. 5: 20; Luke
13: 26-27.
Not inherit the kingdom of God, 1
Cor. 6 : 9-10 ; Gal. 5 : 19-21.
Not see (cannot) the kingdom of God,
John 3: 5.
Not be, Ps. 37 : 10.
Perish, Ps. 37 : 20 ; Ps. 73 : 27.
Perish without law, Rom. 2 : 12.
Perish in their own corruption, 2
Pet. 2 : 12.
Rise to shame and everlasting con
tempt. Dan. 12: 2.

SECTION V.
The Glorious Consummation.
V. The conflict now waging between good and evil, or
holiness and sin, will finally issue in the complete triumph of
the good, and in the utter discomfiture and extinguishment
of all evil of every sort. "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."
There is a beautiful correspondence between the opening
and closing portions of the Divine Word, which no careful
reader can have failed to notice.
In the beginning, we are told how God made all things
very good, and last of all, man, the best of all earthly crea
tures ; how He placed him in a beautiful garden, and sur
rounded him with every earthly good — "with every tree
that was pleasant to the sight, and good for food ; and a
river went out of Eden to water the garden," " and there
was gold there, and bdellium, and the onyx stone," " and
the tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and also the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
Then we learn, how the brightness of this fair morning
was eclipsed by the coming in of Satan, and sin, and shame,
and sorrow, and death.
The pages of the Inspired volume that follow, are occu
pied with a development of God's plan of recovering grace
with precepts and exhortations, and threatenings, and
promises, and words of cheer, and examples of folly and of
faith, and with the many checkered scenes of gladness and
of woe, of hatred and love, of fear and hope, of good and
evil, as one generation after another comes and goes,

Sec. V.] THE GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION. 455
groping their way down to the dust from whence they were
taken. The time may seem long to God's waiting weary people.
It is but one day in the counsels of Him, " with whom
one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as
one day." It grows brighter and brighter, as we wait, and
the words of the prophet that, " at evening time it shall be
light," are fast fulfilling before our eyes. As the sun
shines out at its going down, and all the brighter for the
clouds that had concealed it, giving promise of a fair day
on the morrow ; so, in the closing chapters of this book of
Eevelation, there is pictured for us by the pen of the Seer,
the glorious closing of this long and cloudy day, and the
ushering in of that beautiful morning, that shall grow
brighter and brighter, unto the perfect day that shall
never end. He shows us another paradise, infinitely more
glorious than the first, like a holy city coming down from
God, out of heaven. Its streets are of gold ; not only
bdellium and the onyx stone are there found ; but its walls
are of jasper, and its foundations are garnished with all
manner of precious stones. There is a pure river, of no
common water ; but of the water of life, as clear as crystal,.
proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.
And again, the Tree of Life is there, bearing twelve manner
of fruits, and yielding her fruit every month. The holy
happy dwellers there are not naked, or tempted as before ;
but clothed, and in white robes, and nothing that defileth,
or that can harm them, is permitted to enter. The great
adversary of God and man has spent his power, and been
foiled, and crushed and destroyed utterly and forever;
and the victorious Son of God is with them, as their
ever-living Savior and Friend.
The Word of God furnishes us abundant material for

456 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
drawing out in detail the contrast between the first Adam,
by whom came sin and death, and the last Adam, by whom
comes the resurrection from the dead, and life forever more ;
between the natural birth, and the spiritual birth ; between
the natural man, and the spiritual man ; between the life
that now is, and that which is to come ; but our present
purpose is to consider the final issue of the plan of redemp
tion ; and it is to this that we will now direct our special
attention. We are so accustomed to the mixture of good and evil,
in this imperfect state, 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 mid-way sphere.
Everything that is true, and bright, and lovely has its
counterpart in that which is false and dark and hateful.
It has always been so in our experience, and we naturally
come to feel that it must always continue to be so ; or, if
these extremes do not meet and mingle in the same scene
or person, they must somehow be perpetuated as cotempor-
ary with each other, and necessary to a complete universe.
It seems unnatural, from our past experience and training,
to think of a heaven without a hell somewhere ; of the
King of glory with His holy angels, without thinking of
the devil and his angels, also ; of the ransomed of the Lord,
rejoicing forever in the kingdom of light and life, without
thinking also of the lost, suffering and wailing forever in
the kingdom of darkness and death. The idea that 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 uni
verse of holy, happy creatures centering in God, and
revolving around Him, as the source of their life and all

Sec. V] THE GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION. 457
their blessedness, seems so strange and extravagant, to
those who have been trained to regard eternal sin and suf
fering as an integral part of the universe, that they are
afraid to indulge it. They look with suspicion upon any
one who ventures to express the hope of such a consumma
tion, as though he were giving up an essential part of the
orthodox faith. To most Christians, evil seems to be as per
manent a part of the universe as good ; the eternal existence
of Satan the destroyer, as certain and logically necessary
as that of Christ the Savior. Theologians have under
taken to show that this perpetual antagonism, or antithesis,
is necessary in the very nature of things, or, at any rate,
the continued existence of sin, with its consequent suffering,
is necessary to the maintenance of the holy obedience and
blessedness of God's loyal subjects.
Zoroaster and his followers held, that there are two
eternal principles ; the one good, and the other evil ; both
without beginning, and both without end, eternally in con
flict with each other : the one they called Ormuzd, the
other Ahriman. But these Christian theologians, less con
sistent than they, hold, that, while there are now two such
principles at war with each other, it is the good only that
had no beginning, and is eternal in the past ; evil dates its
origin in time ; it has intruded itself into that which was
once very good ; but now that it has come in, it must for
ever remain to mar the beauty of this otherwise perfect
system. God Himself either cannot, or will not, eradicate
it so that it shall cease to exist.
But we, in opposition to both these teachers, hold to the
Scriptural doctrine of the eternity of good alone, both a
parte ante et a parte post. Evil is transitory in its very na
ture. It is but an Episode in the development of God's
perfect plan ; as it had a beginning in time, so it shall have
an end in time ; that, however necessary it may be to this

458 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
incipient, and preparatory stage of our existence, however
useful as a foil or background to the picture yet to be, or
as a means for the display of the riches of God's grace ;
however necessary night may be, to the introduction of
day, or the knowledge of evil, to the more perfect knowl
edge of good, or the experience 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 integral and perpetual, and the time will
come when having fully subserved its purpose, whatever
that purpose may be, it shall pass away. " What is the
chaff to the wheat," that it should be garnered and pre
served forever? Why should the staging used in the erec
tion of an edifice be suffered to remain forever, after the
building 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 ?
Why should the Almighty be beholden to the devil to aid
Him in sustaining and perpetuating His righteous govern
ment over His holy and blessed subjects?
We believe that the devil and all his works shall be
utterly destroyed ; that death shall be abolished, and swal
lowed up of life ; that all evil shall give place to good, and
that the time will come when sorrow and sighing shall be
unknown, and there shall be no more pain ; that the victory
which the Son of God shall gain over all His enemies and
the enemies of His people, will be complete, and that " He
shall gather together in one all things in Christ," and that
in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in
heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth,
and that every tongue shall confess that He is Lord to the
glory of God the Father.
To us, this glorious consummation seems essential to the

SeC. V.] THE GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION. 459
idea of a perfect Deity ; one who is perfect in goodness to
desire, perfect in wisdom to plan, and perfect in power to
execute all His benevolent purposes. But we believe it,
mainly because this is what He has told us in His Word.
We believe it in spite of Manichsean or Grecian philoso
phy ; we believe it in spite of scholastic theology and tra
ditionalism. " Let God be true — but every man a liar."
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? What think ye of
His promises ? As an Almighty Sovereign and Leader,
what does He desire to do ? What has He undertaken to
do? What can He do? Is there any limit to His good
ness and power ? or any such limit as hinders Him from
destroying the devil and all his hosts, as He has threatened
to do, and of making all things new as He has promised ?
Our opponents believe, that the natural life, which was
given to man in the beginning, was an immortal life, and
subject to no conditions for its endless perpetuity. We, on
the contrary, believe that it was made conditional, in the
very outset, and liable to be forfeited and lost ; and with
no guarantee of its perpetuity, excepting as he should show
himself worthy of immortality and fitted to enjoy it.
They believe that, " all mankind, by their fall, lost com
munion 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 ;" and all this as a natural
inheritance from Adam. We believe the consequences of
the fall to be, according to God's Word : " Cursed is the
ground for thy sake, in sorrow shall thou eat of it all the
days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth

460 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. IH.
to the thee^ 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, and unto dust shalt thou return."
They believe, that God will punish the unsaved children
of Adam, in another life as well as in this, and eternally
punish them, as well for the sin of their progenitor as for
their own sins. We believe He will punish no man in a '
future state but for his own sins.
They believe that their future punishment " will consist
in intensity of suffering," and that this suffering will never,
never cease. We believe that this punishment will consist
in such suffering as each individual sinner deserves — no
more and no less — and that beyond the Second death there
is no sin nor suffering.
They believe that the chief end which Christ proposed
to Himself, in the struggle in which He is now engaged
with Satan in this world, the very object for which He
came down and died, is 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 then, as for the rest, to get them, with their leader,
safely under lock and key, where He will torment them un
ceasingly forever. We believe He had an end infinitely
higher and more glorious in view, in His humiliation and
death for man ; He came to die with man, and for man,
the just for the unjust, and then to raise him again from
the dead, and, by a new birth, to give him a new life, a
higher, purer life, a spiritual life, like His own, that shall
never end, arid to introduce him into His Everlasting
Kingdom ; and that He will do this for all who will accept
of Him as their Savior, and submit themselves to His
heavenly discipline. As for the rest — alas, that there
should be any such ! but those that are found unworthy of

Sec. V.] THE GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION. 461
Eternal Life cannot have Eternal Life — their names must
be blotted out of the "Book of Life." "He shall send
forth his angels and they shall gather out of His kingdom
all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and
shall cast them into a furnace of fire, and they shall bei
utterly destroyed ;" and there shall henceforth be "one fold
and one shepherd."
It is not according to the Divine method to reveal truth
in logical propositions, nor to reveal it all at one time, but
only so far and so fast as man can receive 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 were under His
more 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 light of these " last days,"
to be able fully to understand and describe that which is
peculiar to the dispensation yet to come — the dispensation
of an immortal and spiritual life — 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 to us, even had it been possible, a
literal, definite and accurate account of the spiritual and
eternal world that lies before us. All we can hope for
now,_is to be assured, as we are, of its actual existence, to
know what are our present and practical relations to it,
and to get such glimpses of its excellence and glory, as
shall stimulate us to wise endeavors, and cheer our hearts
and strengthen our faith in that Adorable Leader, who
has undertaken to bring us thither. All this we have in

462 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
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 foes and our foes, and of the
glorious consummation that will finally crown His self-
sacrificing work of love.
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 as we believe, meant to
be foreshadowed, 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. The enigmatical address of God to the serpent
that had seduced our first parents from their allegiance to
Him, we understand to be prophetical of the issue of the
struggle he had challenged : " I will put enmity between
thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed,
and it shall bruise (or crush) thy head and thou shalt
bruise his heel." His brief career of apparent success, was
to be followed by a complete overthrow and utter extinc
tion. The head is the citadel of life ; a crushing blow
here, as the word implies, is surely fatal, but an injury to
the heel may be repaired.
The many promises that God made to Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, concerning their posterity, and the extermina
tion of all their enemies, and especially the solemn oath
He made to Moses : "As surely as I live, all the earth shall
be filled with the glory of God," are to be taken, as we be
lieve, in no partial, restricted, temporal sense, but as giving
the assurance, that not merely the surface of the earth
shall be cleansed and become the habitation of a holy peo
ple, but that it shall be cleansed in every part, and that
there shall be no dark hadean depths within, its bowels,

Sec. V.] THE GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION. 463
into which the miserable victims of His wrath shall be
thrust, to sin and suffer forever. The book of Psalms is full of
promises, more or less explicit, of the glory to come under
the reign of Christ. We understand them, not as simply
predicting a millennial period that will endure only for a
time, but the, establishment of a kingdom that shall never
end. " His name shall endure forever," "All nations shall
call Him blessed," " Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
who only doeth wondrous things ; and blessed be His glori
ous name forever, and let the whole earth be filled with
His glory. Amen and Amen." Many of the prophets,
especially Isaiah and Ezekiel, describe, in the most glow
ing terms, the completeness of the victory over all evil, and
the fulness of the glory of His universal and perpetual
reign. There shall be nothing to hurt or destroy through
out the length and the breadth of His Universal 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 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 everlast
ing sign that shall not be cut off."
The Old Testament closes with a description of the
gathering in of God's people, as jewels into His kingdom,
and the utter destruction of all the wicked. When He
cleanses His threshing floor, it will not be to gather the
good wheat into His garner, and to heap up the rubbish
that remains, in some dark corner, there to be left to rot
and give forth its pestilential stench forever, nor will He
cast it into a fire that shall smoulder and fume and smoke,
but refuse to consume it. But " the day cometh that shall

464 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. HI.
burn as an oven ; and all the proud, yea, and all that do
wickedly, shall be as stubble ; and the day that cometh
shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall
leave them neither root nor branch ;" and we believe it.
More especially, in the New Testament this is declared
to be the express object of Christ's coming to earth ; " that,
through death, He might destroy [not imprison and tor
ment — but destroy] him that had the power of death, that
is the devil." " For this purpose the Son of God was man
ifested that He might destroy the works of the devil."
What are the works of the devil, but sin, and sorrow, and
death ? Indeed, Satan is now destroyed in every other
sense but that of His personality ; what further destruction
remains for him than the destruction of his very being?
The demons themselves were conscious of their impending
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, changing the
words, 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 everlasting chains — or chains from
which there is no escape — under darkness, unto the judg
ment of the great day — that day in which they shall be
surely and finally destroyed.
This we understand to be the burden of the preaching of
John the Baptist, as he went forth, saying, " Kepent ye, for
the kingdom of heaven is at hand." "And now the axe is
laid at the root of the trees, therefore every tree which
bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into
the fire. Whose fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly
purge his floor, and gather the wheat into the garner ; but
he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
This is what our Lord Himself taught in His sermon on

Sec. V] THE GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION. 465
the mount, and by such parables as that of the tares and
the wheat, the drag net, the talents, the weddhig garment,
the wise and foolish virgins, and in the scenic representa
tion of the last judgment, when He welcomes into His
everlasting kingdom only those who are worthy of eternal
life, and consigns the wicked to everlasting punishment,.
which, we are elsewhere told, is the punishment of " ever
lasting destruction when the Lord shall be revealed from
heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking
vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not
the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Nowhere, in all the Epistles, is there any hint that the
conflict now going on between Christ and Satan shall issue
in anything short of the complete and utter destruction of
this great adversary of God and man, "whom He shall con
sume with the Spirit of His mouth, and destroy with the
brightness of His coming."
Paul, after drawing a parallel between the first and sec
ond Adam in the Fifteenth Chapter of First Corinthians,
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 con
summation, when that which is imperfect is done away
and that which is perfect is come. In describing the resur
rection of the righteous and the glorious bodies they shall
take on, his mind is so filled with the theme, that he quite
ignores the resurrection of the wicked, which is elsewhere
foretold. " Then cometh the end, when He shall have de
livered up the kingdom to God even the Father ; when
He shall have put down all rule and all authority and
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 3, describes the com-

466 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
ing of the last day, and the complete destruction of all the
wicked in that general conflagration, "when the heavens,
being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the earth shall melt
with fervent 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, the seventh from Adam, prophesied
of these things.
But it is reserved for the last book in the Bible, as we
might naturally suppose, and especially for the concluding
portion of it, to give us the fullest description of the closing
scenes in this earthly drama, and the most perfect picture
of the world to come.
We will not attempt to follow the course of this wonder
ful vision, through its scenes of conflict and carnage, 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
of God, 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, per
sonified under every actual or imaginable symbol or image.
The grotesque imagery 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
stings, 6f angels flying through the air with vials of wrath,
or with sickles, with which to reap the harvest of the earth,
which the Seer employs ; the impossible figures he intro
duces, 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 results towards
which they all point us, namely : the overthrow and abol-

Sec. V.] THE GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION. 467
ishment of all evil and of all opposition, 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 is overthrown and consumed by fire, like Sodom of
old ; how the Beast and the False Prophet, whatever forms
of organized evil they may be held to represent, are un
ceasingly tormented, and then destroyed in " the lake of
fire and brimstone," and how, finally, the great Head
Center of all this apostasy and iniquity, the Arch Enemy
¦of God and Man, is first bound, for a season, and thenf
when his time is fully come, is judged and destroyed in the
same lake of fire with the Beast and the False Prophet.
" Then cometh the end." The Judge is seated upon His
great white throne, and before His face, heaven and earth
flee away ; the dead, small and great, stand befare Him,
and the books are opened, and every one is judged accord
mg to his works. And another book is opened, which is
the book of Life, and whosoever is not found written in
the book of life, is cast into the lake of fire prepared for
the devil and his angels. This is the Second Deaih. And
Death and Hell also are cast into this same all consuming
lake of fire, and the old earth itself, with its Sheol, its
Hades, its Gehenna, its Tophet, its Tartarus, or by what
ever name the place of the abode of the wicked, here con
fined 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 and eter
nal 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

468 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. IH.
heaven, with its jasper walls, and its golden palaces, its-
crystal streams, and its trees bearing all manner of pre
cious fruits, 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 praise unto 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, 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."
" He which testifieth these things, saith, Surely I come
quickly, Amen. Even so come Lord Jesus."

SECTION VI.

Misinterpreted Texts ; or, Texts Supposed to Teach the
Doctrine of Immortality in Sin and Misery.
It would be strange, if among all the many passages of
Scripture relating to sin and its fearful consequences ; the
miseries it brings in this life, and the! certain ruin to which
it leads, and, especially, those that depict the remediless
condition of those who reject the Gospel, some might not
be found that could be interpreted so as to seem to favor
the doctrine of endless suffering — provided one brings with

Sec. VI.] misinterpreted texts. 469
him to the search, the foregone conclusion that all sinners
are immortal. The character of the teachings of the Bible
is such ; its utterances are expressed in such a variety of
ways and connections, and they are so scattered through
out the whole volume, that, by taking isolated passages
here and there, it is not difficult to make out a plausible
case in behalf of any proposition one may wish to argue.
Hence, there has never been any notion so wild and mis
leading, or so contrary to the spirit and tenor of God's Word,
that it has not been able, by seeking for it, to find some
apparent encouragement in that Word, and to cite its proof
texts. Now, if you grant to the partisans of any doctrine, the
license to change the meaning of words that contradict
their theory, and to read their own ideas into passages,
that do not otherwise express it, and to teach others to do
the same, their case must be a very weak one, if they can
not build up a Scriptural argument in support of it.
It is admitted by all Biblical scholars, though by many
of them with much evident reluctance, that the doctrine
of the natural immortality of man is nowhere categorically
asserted in the Bible. It must also be admitted, that death
is the common lot of all men since the fall, and that the
Scriptures most positively 'declare, in a great variety of
ways, that sin leads inevitably to death ; that all sinners
Bhall be destroyed unless they repent ; that they shall be
punished with everlasting destruction; shall be blotted out
of the book of Life, and that the righteous shall have Life
everlasting. But, if those who hold to the Platonic notion of the
deathless nature of man, shall be at liberty to say, as they
do, that the reason why this doctrine is not asserted in the
Scriptures, is because it is too self-evident to need any di
rect assertion, and that, therefore, the inspired writers as-

470 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
sumed it ; and if they shall be permitted to change the
meaning of these words "death," "destruction," etc., which
so flatly contradict their notion, and to take them in that
"Scriptural sense," as it is called, which implies only "a
sinful, miserable existence," "separation from the favor of
God and the joys of heaven," etc., etc.; then, all the many
passages that speak of the fearful death that will come
upon impenitent sinners in the end of their career, of their
being blotted out of the book of life, of their eternal exclu
sion from heaven, of their punishment with everlasting de
struction, of their lamentations, when their hopeless doom
shall be pronounced, become available as proof texts of
their anti-Scriptural doctrine of eternal sin and suffering.
And what is more, if they shall be allowed, without re
buke, to take all the many texts which promise eternal life
to the righteous, and to them only ; texts in the Old Testa
ment, in which the ancient saints expressed their hopes of
a future life ; texts in the New, in which life and immor
tality are expressly declared to be the gift of God through
Jesus Christ, as so many proof texts of the immortahty of
all men by nature, as these advocates are in the habit of
doing, no wonder if they should be able to make some
show of a Scriptural argument for their doctrine.
We haye already remarked at length, upon the unwar
rantable practice of giving a new, "Scriptural sense" to such
crucial words as " life," " death," " destruction," etc., to
make them accord with this philosophic notion of the
deathless nature of man. It has become so habitual and
common, that it seems the proper thing to do, in reading
the Bible. And religious teachers and commentators em
ploy it, without thinking of the deception they are prac
ticing upon themselves and others. But we cannot but
express our astonishment, that apparently honest, Christian
men should so deceive themselves and others, as to cite

Sec. VI.] MISINTERPRETED TEXTS. 471
those passages that indicate this distinctive difference be
tween saints and sinners, namely : that the one class have
immortality by a new birth, and the other have it not, to
prove just the contrary doctrine, that they all are immor
tal alike ; that there is no difference in this respect. But
this is what our religious teachers are continually doing.
We take up for instance, Simmon's Scripture Manual,
which lies on our table, and the Index under the head of
" Immortality of the Soul " refers us to these three texts :
John 10: 27,28. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them,
and they follow me, and I give unto them (my sheep) eternal
life, and they (my sheep) shall never perish, neither shall any
pluck them out of my hand."
Bom. 2: 6, 7. "Who will render to every man according to
his deeds — to them who by patient continuance in well doing
seek for glory, and honor and immortality — eternal life."
2 Tim. 1 : 10. . " But now is made manifest by the appearing
of our Savior Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and brought
life and immortality to light through the Gospel."
Not one of these passages teach the immortality of the
natural man, they all actually exclude this idea, and predi
cate it of the saints only. The immortality of the saints is
sufficiently taught in the Bible. It is given in the new
birth ; it is given through Jesus Christ the Savior ; it is
given as the special and peculiar gift of God's grace. This
is the great doctrine of the Gospel. But it is the immortahty
of natural men, who are not born again, the immortality
of sinners, who are not saved, the immortality of the soul
of man whether saved or lost — this is the doctrine in ques
tion. There is nothing in the Bible from beginning to end
to sustain the doctrine, unless it be perverted, misconstrued
and misapplied.
When we consider the efforts that have been made by
the scholastics and theologians, and by translators and ex-

472 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. IH.
pounders of the Bible, from the time when this doctrine of
Plato first found its way into the church till now, to frame
a Scriptural argument for it, and to show by proof texts,
that the unsaved will" continue to sin and suffer forever,
we are astonished, that so few, so very few texts can be
found that even seem to admit of this conclusion. The
other false doctrines of the Papal Church, most of which
we, as Protestants, have discarded, have a show of support,
in certain passages of Scripture, and many of them have a
much better show than this. There are not a half dozen
passages in all the Bible, that would suggest the idea of
endless sin and suffering to one who did not bring with
him to its reading this thought in his own.mind. Nor will
the very few upon which the advocates of this doctrine are
accustomed to rely for support, bear a careful examination.
It is only by repeating them over and over again, and by
ringing changes on certain specious epithets they contain,
that their cause is saved from absolute beggary.
Take for example the following familiar passage which '
is often quoted to help out the rhetoric of those who are
trying to describe the torments of hell, and to give as lurid
a glare as possible to the picture:
Isaiah 33 : 14. " Who among us shall dwell with devouring
fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?"
The superficial reader may be led to suppose that it
refers to the sufferings of a future life, and that they are
declared to be unending. But let any intelligent person
turn to the chapter from which it is taken, and he will see,
that the prophet has no reference whatever to a future
state, but merely to those temporal miseries which were
incessantly inflicted upon his people, by their enemies. The
evident answer to his inquiry even in that case would be :
" No one can endure them." It is simply one of those ex-

Sec. VI.] MISINTERPRETED TEXTS. 473
travagant, impassioned outbursts, of which we have many
examples among the prophets of the Old Testament. Other
passages might be cited of a like character, but it is not
important now to refer to them.
We simply propose in this place to examine the few pas
sages, which honest men of this school are accustomed to
quote, in favor of their doctrine. We have already com
mented on these passages, as they have come in our way,
in various places in our chapter on Bible Terminology, and
to these comments we would refer the reader. But it may
serve the convenience of inquirers to have them brought
together here, and briefly examined again.
I.
Daniel 12: 2. "And many of them that sleep in the dust of
the earth sha II awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame
and everlasting contempt."
We know of but this one solitary text in all the Old
Testament, that requires notice in this category, as seeming
to favor the doctrine of eternal misery, and this only, be
cause it is mistranslated and misquoted.
This is supposed to refer to the Second Advent of Christ,
immediately after " the great tribulation " depicted in the
first verse, and as more fully described in Matt. 24 : 21-30.
If so, it evidently describes the First Resurrection — the
resurrection of the righteous dead, and not that of the
wicked, as our version would lead us to suppose. The
learned Mr. Maud, asv quoted by Mr. White in his Life in
Christ, says : " Dr. Tregelles, who will not be suspected of
any heretical bias, with many other Hebrew scholars,
translates the passage thus : 'And many from among the
deepers of the dust shall awake ; these shall be unto ever
lasting life ; but those [the rest of the sleepers who do not
wake at this time] shall be unto shame and everlasting

474 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. HI.
contempt.' The famous Aben Ezra, in his commentary
on the chapter, quotes Rabbi Saadias as declaring, that
' those who awake shall be (appointed) to everlasting hfe,
and those who awake not shall be (doomed) to shame and
everlasting contempt " (p. 171). But, however this may be,
the reader will notice how very careful the prophet is in
the use of the epithet everlasting, not to say the very thing
he is charged with saying. What is it that he declares to
be everlasting? It is the life of the righteous, and
the " contempt " (or abhorring, as the word is rendered in
Is. 66 : 24,) with which they shall regard the memory of
the wicked ; but, as for the " shame," which the wicked
themselves may feel, that is not declared to be everlasting.
It is dnly "shame, and everlasting contempt."
II.
Matt. 25: 46. "And these shall go away into everlasting
punishment; but the righteous into eternal life."
(1) It is probable that Matthew originally wrote his
Gospel in Hebrew, and that it was early rendered into the
Greek, from which our translation is made. But in the
earlier Latin versions, which were probably made from
the original Hebrew, we have — not ad supplieium odernum,
which answers to the Greek eis kolasin aionion, and to our
English version, "everlasting punishment; but — ad ignem
aternum, " eternal fire ;" and there is good reason to sup
pose that this is the true rendering, as this is the phrase
elsewhere used. But accepting the common rendering it
is to be remarked:
(2) That it is by no means certain that this scene is
intended to represent the final judgment of persons, as
nothing is said of the resurrection, or of the gathering of
individuals, but only of the gathering of the " nations "
before our Lord at His coming. It is probable that it
ought to be understood, simply as the judgment of the na-

Sec. VI.] MISINTERPRETED TEXTS. 475
tions at the Second Advent. But accepting it as it is com
monly understood, it is further to be remarked:
(3) That the same word, aionios, eternal, is predicated,
in the Greek, both of the lire of the righteous, and of the
punishment of the wicked, and should have been rendered
by the same English word in our common version ; as it
indeed is, in the Revised version. We make this criticism
because some are inclined to regard the word "everlasting"
as having more strength and force than the word "eternal."
But there is evidently meant to be a perfect parallel in
the allotments of these two classes.
(4) The word kolasin, " punishment," means something
more than simple suffering. It has an objective and ad
ministrative sense, which the advocates of the doctrine of
everlasting suffering are apt to overlook. There may be
the punishment of deprivation, as well as the punishment
of stripes. It is the barbarian's notion of punishment to
make it consist, as much as possible, in the infliction of
positive pain, and of suffering prolonged to the utmost
limit ; and during the dark ages this was the kind of pun
ishment which it was supposed that God would inflict, and
tradition has handed it down to the present day. But
under all civilized governments, now existing, punishment
is vin-di-ca-tive rather than vin-rfic-tive ; it is not so much
the object of wise and human rulers to see how much
agony they can impose upon offenders, and how long they
can protract it, but how they can best maintain the au
thority and majesty of the government. Hence, punish
ments consist more largely in the deprivation of privileges
that otherwise might have been enjoyed, in the depriva
tion of rights that have been forfeited. Indeed, the highest
degree of punishment, or, in other words, " capital punish
ment," consists in taking away the life of the criminal ;
and this is done in as summary and painless a manner as

476 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. IH.
possible.* So, under the Divine government, the sinner
who is cut off from the privilege of eternal life, adjudged
as no longer fit to live, blotted out of the book of life, and
put to death whether by being consumed, as vile refuse in
the fire, or in any other way destroyed utterly, is punished,
not merely while he is undergoing the process of destruc
tion, whether it be longer or shorter, but punished with an
everlasting punishment. This is just what we understand
as the meaning of the sentence here pronounced.
(5) The contrast here is not between the joys of the
righteous and the sufferings 'of the wicked, as is so often
asserted by those who hold to the endless conscious exist
ence of both parties ; but between their respective allot
ments ; they are final, irreversible, eternal in both cases.
To the one, it is the boon of Everlasting Life ; to the other,
the punishment of everlasting destruction.
III.
Mark 3: 28,29. "All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of
men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme — but
he that shall blaspheme against the HolyGho9t hath never forgive
ness, but is in danger of eternal damnation."
(1) The Greek text of this passage varies in different
manuscripts; some read aionion kriseds, others, aionion
Jcolasids, both signifying eternal judgment, or punishment,
or damnation, as in our common version; other texts
which are supposed to be more authoritative, have aionion
amartematos, eternal sin, and so it is rendered in the Revised
version. So Tischendorf renders it — " is guilty of (charge
able with) an eternal sin." It should here be remarked,
that not only this passage, but all the principal passages
relied on to sustain this doctrine of eternal suffering, bear
evidence of having been early tampered with. This we
fhall have especial occasion to notice again.
(2) Those who hold to the idea of a future probation,

Sec. VI.] MISINTERPRETED TEXTS. 477
and the restoration of some sinners during an intermediate
state, think they find an implication to this effect, in this
passage, and in a few others of like import. But surely
there is no implication or hint of eternal suffering here. It
is not, " guilty," or chargeable of eternally sinning, but of an
" eternal sin," eternal in its consequences, one that is never
forgiven, but inevitably brings eternal destruction.
(3) There is another passage of somewhat similar im
port, to which we perhaps should refer in this connection,
namely :
John 3 : 36. " He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting
life ; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life ; but the
wrath of God abideth on him."
That the wrath of God abideth on sinners, as long as
they continue to sin, is no doubt true, and if they live to
sin forever, then His wrath, no doubt, abideth on them
forever. But this is just the point in dispute. There is
no such assertion here, nor even an implication to this
effect. It is only as one assumes that they do live forever,
and reads this idea into this passage, that it seems to have
any bearing on the question.
The word (mend) abide, evidently has its limitation in
the object of which it is predicated. It occurs very fre
quently in the Scriptures — Mary " abode " with Elizabeth
three months ; Christ " abode " with Zaccheus over night ;
"Erastus abode at Corinth," — how long we are not told,
but not necessarily forever. We are however told, that
"He that doeth the will of God (mend eis ton aidna)
abideth forever. But it is not said that those who do not
believe on the Son of God abide forever, nor that the wrath
of God abideth on them forever. But, on the contrary, we
are expressly told, that the believers only have everlasting
life, and that the unbelievers shall not have it.

478 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
IV.
Mark 9 : 43-50. " If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is
better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to
go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched ; [where the
worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.] 45. And if thy foot
offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter halt into life,
than having two feet, to be cast into hell, [into the fire that never
shall be quenched, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not
quenched.] 47. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out; it is
better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than
having two eyes to be cast into hell [fire]. 48. Where the worm
dieth not and the fire is not quenched."
(1) Before considering the meaning of this passage, it
would be desirable, if possible, to get at the original text;
but this is probably hopeless ; for this passage, like the
others, that relate to the doom of the wicked, has under
gone so many changes at the hands of transcribers, trans
lators, and others, and this work was begun so early, that
it is by no means certain how it orginally read. But the
best scholars agree in considering the clauses, which we
have included in brackets, to be spurious, and they are
omitted in our Revised version. These additions were
made, probably with no purpose of changing the meaning
of the text — nor, indeed, do they change it essentially — but
with the pious (?) endeavor to make it express more fully
and emphatically the sentiment which these manipulators
had in their own minds. Indeed, King James' translators
seem to have joined them in this effort ; for they have in
terpolated a little prophecy of their own into the text con
cerning the unquenchable fire. They have said, on their
own authority, it " never shall be quenched !" The text
from which they translated' reads, eis to pur ton asbeston,
into the fire that is unquenchable or irrepressible. And
this is the way in which these words are rendered else
where. Asbestos is composed of two parts, a privative and

Sec. VI.] MISINTERPRETED TEXTS. 479
sbestos from sbennumi, " to quench," " extinguish," or " re
press," and it no more means never shall be quenched, than
aoratos, unseen, invisible, means " never shall be seen or
be visible."
(2) The word here rendered " hell," is Gehenna, the
name of that valley outside of the walls of Jerusalem into
which dead carcasses and the offal of the city were cast, to
be consumed by the fires that were kept constantly burn
ing, and by devouring worms. It was not a place of torture
for the living, but a place for the consumption of whatever
was vile and offensive. It was not even a place of punish
ment, excepting so far as it was the ignominous disposal of
the carcasses of those who were not considered worthy even
of a burial. Hence the word Gehenna, became a synonym
of the most ignominious kind of destruction — destruction
by fire and by worms. Our Lord is to be understood as
teaching, that it is better to part with whatever is the most
dear, as regards the body, than to be led by it to utter
ruin. (3) As to " the worm that dieth not," reference is here
made to the passage in Isaiah 66 : 23, 24, which we have
heretofore commented on, where similar language is used
with respect to the miserable destruction of the carcasses
of the enemies of God's ancient people. But those who
insist on using this reference, not as the symbol of the sure
and fearful destruction of the wicked, but of their eternal
torment, find these figures too gross and revolting for their
purpose, and so they say — by whose authority no one can
tell — that this unquenchable fire means a tormenting con
science that is never quieted, and this worm that dieth
not, means the gnawing conscience that never dies, and this
conceit has been handed down from one religious teacher
to another, and so often repeated, that it is regarded by
many as the real orthodox teaching, of the Bible.

480 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. IIL
(4) Here we cannot but notice their inconsistency in the
use of this word die. They use it in two different and op
posite senses in the same connection. When predicated of
the worm, they give it its natural meaning, not of being
miserable, but of ceasing to be; but when predicated of
man, it is made to mean just the reverse, to be miserable
and to continue to be miserable forever, and not ceasing
to be.
This is the kind of exegesis by which these advocates
endeavor to sustain the doctrine of eternal sin and suffer
ing. And this they claim as one of their strongest proof
texts 1 V.
But the Parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus. Luke
16 : 19-31, is their main reliance for the support of this
doctrine. It enters into all their arguments on this ques
tion. It is present first, and foremost, and last, and
midway, and constitutes a good part of the warp and woof
of all of them. It is thought to furnish the materials for
answering all objections, and silencing all cavils. It is
taken for granted, by all who have been educated into this
belief, that our Lord intended to teach by this parable, the
doctrine of future endless torment. It furnishes the mate
rials, by the help of a lively imagination and fervid rhe
toric, for a most fearful picture of the never-ending agonies
of the lost in the world of despair. It has been employed
as the theme of more terrific discourses, and exhortations,
and appeals, than, perhaps, any other portion of Scripture.
And yet, when one carefully and honestly examines it, he
can find neither in the text, nor in the context, any good
reason to believe that it was intended to teach anything
whatever on this subject. It had altogether another pur
pose, as we shall see:
(1) That it is a parable, a prophetic parable, and not a

Sec. VI.] MISINTERPRETED TEXTS. 481
historical or biographical sketch, is quite evident. It must
then be treated as a parable, and understood as a parable.
Its metaphors, its scenic representations, its personam, are
not to be taken as real, but as suppositional. Much less,
can one take certain portions of it — such, for instance, as
may suit his purpose — as actual, and reject other por
tions — such as he cannot well use — as unreal. No
parable can be explained in this way; or rather, if
if one is allowed to accommodate a parable to his purpose,
by such practices, he ought to be able to prove anything
he may please, by ingeniously manipulating it.
. (2) The place in which this scene is laid is entirely sup
positional, ideal, imaginary, and meant to be so. It is
supposed to be in the Hadean world. It is not in Gehenna
that place of fire into which the wicked are elsewhere
represented in Scripture as being cast after the judicial sen
tence shall be pronounced upon them ; but in Hades, that
hidden place of darkness and silence, as it is everywhere
else represented to be in the Word of God, into which all
men go — both the good and the bad — at death. But the
parable is made to accord with the notions of those to
whom it is given. They had very generally adopted the
heathen notion of a ghostly state, into which all men are
supposed to go at death. Our Lord constructed His para
ble to suit their notions as He did His other parables, with
out any design of endorsing or opposing them. In the
parable, for instance, immediately preceding this, of the
calculating, tricky steward* whose shrewdness in making
friends of the " mammon of unrighteousness " his lord com
mended, Christ is not to be cited as recommending this sort
of sharp practice, in- our business dealings with each other.
It was directed to another point entirely ; and so we might
say of His other parables. It is not the drapery of a par-

482 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. HI.
able, nor the materials of which it is composed, but the
moral that is to be regarded.
(3) There is nothing in the symbolism and circumstances
of this parable that corresponds with the Scriptural repre
sentations of the future state, given us in all other parts of
the Bible. Nothing whatever is said of the moral charac
ter of the two principal persons in this drama — of the Rich
Man, whom tradition, not Christ, has named " Dives," be
cause he was rich, and of Lazarus, a very common Jewish
name, meaning without help. It is quite common to hear
the former spoken of, as proud, sensual, miserly, and every
way corrupt ; and the latter, as humble, patient, prayerful
and pure in heart. Indeed, it is not possible to adapt this
parable to the purposes of those who use it to represent the
future misery of the wicked and the future bliss of the
righteous, unless the one is shown to be a very bad man,
and the other a very good man. But they are obliged to
draw entirely upon their imaginations for all this. They
cannot find one hint in the words of our Lord, to show
that the poor man was one whit better than the rich man.
He was simply poor and suffering, and beggarly, and it
might have been — as is usually the case — on account of his
vices ; and the other was rich and supplied with every
thing to administer to his earthly happiness, and, for
ought we know to the contrary, as good as any other rich
man. After these two men are dead, as represented in the par
able, we find them still having bodies, and this, too, with
out any resurrection ; and what is more, the rich man has
five brethren still alive upon the earth. Of course, this
could not be after this world had passed away, and the
eternal state had commenced ; and still further, Lazarus
was in Abraham's bosom, not with Christ, in heaven, where
the redeemed will be. Nor does it accord with the repre-

SeC. VI.] MISINTERPRETED TEXTS. 483
sentations of Scripture, that the saved and the lost should
be within speaking distance of each other. In short, it is
contrary to reason, as well as Scripture, to suppose that
our Lord intended, by this parable, to teach anything con
cerning the rewards of the righteous and punishments of
the wicked in a future life. The context, as well as the
text itself, shows that He had a different end in view.
¦ (4) What, then, did He mean to teach by this Parable ?
It is one of a series of parables, spoken in the hearing of ¦
the arrogant and self-righteous Scribes and Pharisees, in
which our Lord sets forth the Divine displeasure towards
them for their pride, ingratitude, and unfaithfulness, in
view of the high and peculiar privileges they had enjoyed,
and God's kind regard for those whom they despised as
unworthy of their consideration.
Heavenly favors had been bestowed upon them in great
abundance. They were rich in this respect, in comparison
with the Gentile world around them. They looked upon
the people of other nations with contempt. They called
them dogs. They prided themselves as being the children
of Abraham, and heirs of the promises, to the exclusion of
all other people. They regarded themselves as the special
favorites of heaven, and other people, as aliens and out
casts, and worthy only to eat the crumbs that should fall
from their tables. They supposed it would always be so.
Our Lord intended to show them by this parable how com
pletely their condition, and that of those whom they now
so much despised, would be reversed. It is a Prophetic
Parable, and no prophecy of Scripture has been more ex
actly fulfilled than this. They have died as a nation, and
lost all their high privileges and possessions. The very
land they once possessed has gone from them. They have
no country on earth that they can call their own. They
are despised, deprived of their rights, oppressed, and perse-

484 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. IIL
cuted in all lands. No people, not even the Africans, have
suffered for so long ages, in this respect, more severely than
the Jews. The Gentiles, on the other hand, have taken
possession of their country, and entered into their high
privileges. They have inherited the promises made to the
children of Abraham. They are this day, as it were, in
Abraham's bosom, and in the enjoyment of ten thousand
temporal and spiritual blessings. There is, as it were, a
" great gulf fixed " between these Jews and all other peo
ples. They do not intermarry or intermingle as the people
of other nationalities do. The line of separation between
them and all other people, has been wonderfully, miracu
lously preserved, and they remain after two thousand years
a distinct people to this day. They are also still obstinate
in their unbelief. Missionary labors have been less success
ful among them, than among any other people. Indeed,
it may well be said : " If they hear not Moses and the
prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose
from the dead;" for they still have Moses and the prophets;
and Jesus Christ Himself, one of their own nation, and one
of whom Moses and the prophets so evidently testified, has
risen from the dead and they will not believe on Him.
But we need not draw out the parallel into other specifi
cations, though it might be done. No one should attempt
to extort special meanings, from all the details of any par
able, after its general scope and bearing have been made
manifest, as we cannot but think have been in the
present case.
How long this state of Jewish wretchedness is to con
tinue, the parable does not tell us. That it is an eternal
state there is no evidence whatever to believe. This is one
of the ideas which has been imported into it, by that spir
itualistic theology, which would make it descriptive of the
eternal separation of the righteous and the wicked in the

SeC. VI.] MISINTERPRETED TEXTS. 485-
spiritual world. But we are encouraged to believe from
numerous other prophecies, that God will yet have mercy
upon Israel ; that when the fulness of the Gentiles shall
have come in, He will restore them to favor and abun
dantly bless them.
VI.
THE APOCALYPSE.
We find nothing else, in the New Testament, that requires
notice in this connection, till we come to the book of Revela
tion, where, in the mystical and metaphorical description
of the final destruction of Babylon, and the Beast and the-
False Prophet, two or three clauses occur, which, if taken
literally, may be used to give an apparent support to the
doctrine of endless torment.
This is confessedly the most difficult part of the Word
of God to interpret and understand. It has perhaps had
more commentators, than any other part of the Bible, and
yet, no two of them are agreed in their explanation of its
incongruous allegories ; its perpetually changing figures ;
its phantasmagorical images ; its unnatural combination of
types and symbols, and its intense and intentionally extrav
agant 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 of the Seer.
But we accept it — notwithstanding the doubt that some
have attempted to throw over its canonicity — as a part of
the Divine Revelation God has given us, and as a fitting
close to the whole volume of His inspired teachings. We
believe it contains many truths which the unlearned may
understand, and from which any teachable soul may de
rive spiritual profit. But in trying to decipher the mean
ing of any part of it, one should remember, that it is quite

486 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. HI.
unique in its character ; it is neither sober history, nor
sober prophecy ; it is neither didactic prose, nor poetry, nor
was it intended to be so taken, but rather as a vision or
dream, as it really is — a dramatic representation of what
John saw, while in a trance in the isle of Patmos — a pano
ramic view of the leading events in the future history of
the world, to the end of time, or rather, of the age or cycle
of time through which this world is now passing, and, espe
cially, of the great last struggle between Christ and His
enemies ; and the final victory He gains over them. We
contend that its imagery, of word painting and hiero
glyphics, is not to be taken in the same way as we are to
take the sober, plain, didactic utterances of the Gospels
and the Epistles. We protest against the practice, so com
mon with many advocates of this doctrine, of taking half
an image in a figurative, and half of it in a literal sense,
just because it best suits their purpose to do so ; and of
picking out here and there, from the midst of a dramatic
scene, such words and sentences, and bits of sentences, as
can be made to fit into their dogma, and calling them
" proof texts," while their connection is quite disregarded,
and all modifying circumstances are ignored.
The first passage describes in brief, the fall and destruc
tion of Babylon and the Beast. This has generally been
supposed by Protestants, to represent the overthrow of the
Papacy. 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."
14 : 8-11. "And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon
is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations
drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication ; and the third
angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship
the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or
in hia hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God,

SeC. VI.] MISINTERPRETED TEXTS. 487
which is poured out without mixtures, into the cup of His indigna
tion ; 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 (eis aidnat
aionon, unto ages of ages) ; and they have no rest day nor night
who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the
mark of his name."
It should be noticed that this figurative language is ap
parently quoted from Isaiah 34 : 9, 10, where almost pre
cisely the same words are used with respect to the destruc
tion of Idumea. "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 for
ever and ever ; from generation to generation, it shall lie
waste ; none shall pass through it forever and ever."
In the following chapters, a more detailed account is
given of the destruction of this mystical Babylon, 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 merchants, and ship-masters,
and those who have committed fornication with her and
traded with her, shall bewail and lament her." Then, to
further indicate the completeness of her destruction, " a
mighty angel took up a stone, like a great mill-stone, 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.' "
19 : 1-4. "And after these things I 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 Hit
judgments, for He hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt
the earth with her fornication and hath avenged the blood of His
¦ervants al her hand. And again they said, Alleluia, and her
•moke rose up forever and ever (unto the ages of the ages).

488 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
Then, the marriage supper of the Lamb is described ;
and after this, the Lamb, under another designation, comes
tiding out of heaven on a white horse, with his garments
dipped' in blood. " Out of His taouth goeth a sharp sword,
and many crowns are on His head. His eyes are like a
flame of fire. A mighty host follow Him, all in white
linen and on white horses, and He smites the nations and
rules them with a rod of iron, and treads the winepress of
the fierceness and wrath of Almighty 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." After this John sees the Beast
combining with the kings of the earth, and gathering a
mighty host to make war against Him who sits on the
white horse.
19 : 20, 21. "And the 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 wor
shiped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake burning with
fire and 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."
The reader will bear in mind that this vision is intended
to describe, in shadowy outlines, events taking place — not
in some future state, but in this world, in which we now
live — events occurring, perhaps, in our day, at any rate,
previous to what is called the Millennium.
We have seen how complete has been the destruction of
the two great evils, or organized systems of evil personified
by the Beast and the False Prophet, that have withstood
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 Serpent,

Sec. VI.] MISINTERPRETED TEXTS. 489
which is the Devil and Satan," must be taken out of the
way, for a season, but not yet exterminated. The time for
that, has not yet come. But he is to be bound ; and now
John sees an angel come down from heaven, having the
key of the bottomless pit — or rather the (abussos) abyss —
and a great chain in his hand, and he lays hold of this
monster, and binds him, for a thousand years, and casts
him into the abyss, and shuts him up, and sets a seal upon
him, that he shall not deceive the nations any more, till
the thousand years shall be fulfilled ; and after that he
must be loosed for a little season.
" 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 earth during
these thousand years. Then Satan is loosed out of prison
for a little season. There is a general outburst of wicked
ness. God and Magog are gathered together, in number as
the sands of the sea, in battle array. They compass the
camp of the saints, and the beloved city. Fire comes
down from God out of heaven, and devours them — that is,
all these wicked hosts; but their diabolical leader is reserved
for particular wrath.
20 : 10. " The Devil that deceived them (those who have been
devoured by fire), was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where
are (or, where were cast before the millennium) the Beast and the
False Prophet, and shall (like them also) be tormented day and
night forever (unto the ages of the ages)."
It should be noted that the Greek phrases eis aidnas
aimidn, rendered in our common version "forever and
ever ;" but in the margin of the revision " unto ages of
ages" (14 : 11), and eis tous aidnas ton aionion, rendered
"forever and ever;" but in the margin of the revision,
"unto the ages of the ages," in the above passage, are vari-

490 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
ously rendered in other parts of the Bible. The noun aion,
occurs nearly one hundred times in the New Testament.
In forty or more of these instances, il is so evidently used,
in a limited sense, as a time word, that it has been trans
lated "world," "this world," "the world to come," "before
the world," " while the world standeth," " ages," " ages to
come," etc. Five times in the Gospel of Matthew it is .
translated in our common version "world," and with sun-
teleia, " the end of the world," and by the Revisers in the
margin, " age," " the consummation of the age." It might
just as well, and better, have been so rendered in these two
passages under consideration (14 : 11 and 20 : 10), for this
is just what it means. It is evidently a time word, and is
predicated of events that have their consummation in
time, as we shall see by what follows.
How soon, or how long after the Beast and the False
Prophet and the Devil were cast into this lake of fire to be
tormented to the consummation of ihe ages, the second or
general resurrection and the judgment take place, we are
not told. But this consummation, or end, is to come.
Barnes says, in his notes on this passage : " It is possible
that there will be a long period of continued prosperity
and peace between the events stated in verses 9 and 10,
and the final judgment as described in the verses immedi
ately following."
Now we have the final act in this great drama:
20 -. 11-15. "And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat
on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and
there was no place found for them. 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. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and
death and Hades delivered up the dead which were in them; and

SeC. VI.] MISINTERPRETED TEXTS. 491
they were judged, every man according to their works. And death
and Hades were cast 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."
Thus, as in a panorama, the closing scenes in this earthly
drama have rapidly passed before us. First, that great
city mystically called Babylon is overthrown, and, with
her votaries, tormented as with fire and brimstone through
out the long ages, like Idumea of old, whose burning it
was said "should not be quenched night nor day, and the
smoke thereof shall go up forever and ever;" and like
" Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them ; which
are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of
eternal fire," (or rather "as an exa;riple of eternal fire, suf
fering punishment ") Jude 7. But the final destruction is
so complete, as we are afterwards told, that " she is utterly
burned with fire," and "shall be found no more at all."
Then the Beast and the False Prophet — whatever organ
ized systems of evil they may represent — " are both taken
and cast alive into the lake, burning with fire and brim
stone." And the " Remnant " — Who are they ? — " are
slain with the sword of Him that sat upon the horse," "and
all the fowls are filled with their flesh."
After this, Satan, alias the Devil, alias the Dragon, alias
the Old Serpent, is seized and bound and locked up in the
abyss for a thousand years.
Then comes the First Resurrection, which is followed by
the happy reign of the saints with Christ on the earth dur
ing all this period. But at the end of this millennium,
Satan is again loosed for a little season, and, as he gathers
his hosts to wage war with the people of God, "fire comes
down from God out of heaven and devours them." But
Satan himself is reserved for a more fearful destruction.

492 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
Like the Beast and the False Prophet a thousand years
before, he is cast into the lake of fire and brimstone to be
tormented for long ages — even, as it would appear, to the
consummation of the age.
And now — after how long an interval, we cannot tell —
the last great act in this earthly drama is shown us. The
Judge appears seated on His great white throne; the books
are opened ; the dead are raised and judged according to
their works ; and all whose names are not written in the
" Book of Life " are cast into the lake of fire. Death and
Hades also, are cast into the same lake of fire. This is the
Second Deaih. The earth and the heavens flee away, and
there is no place left for them.
It would seem to be impossible in any form of language,
or of figure, to describe, or affirm more positively, the com
plete and final destruction and extermination of all evil,
and all systems of evil, and of all evil agencies, than is
foretold in these closing chapters of this Divine Revela
tion. Why ! not merely Satan, the great (anthrdpoktonos)
man-killer, but all his works, and death itself, and the
very prison house in which he and his hosts have been
confined — for there is now no more use for it — are all de
stroyed, burned up with fire, and this old earth, which has
been the theater of the fall of man, and of his redemption,
'and of the long struggle between good and evil, and the
victory, too, of the Son of God, now passes away, and gives
place to the new heaven and the new earth, where neither
-sin, nor sorrow, nor death shall ever be known, " for the
former things have passed away."
This same great consummation is vividly described in 2
-Pet. 3 : 7-13. " But the heavens and the earth, which are
now, are kept in store reserved unto fire against the day of
judgment and perdition of ungodly men — in which the
heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the ele-

SeC. VI.] MISINTERPRETED TEXTS. 493
ments shall melt with fervent heat ; the earth also, and
the works that are therein shall be burned up. Neverthe
less, we, according to His promise, look for new heavens
and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness."
We need to be at no loss to understand the general
truth 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, during this long
struggle, and to assure them of the glorious issue of all
these conflicts in the complete triumph of Christ and Hia
followers, and the final destruction of all evil, is quite evi
dent. No doubt, it was given in the form best adapted to
all the purposes for which it was intended. It was not de
signed to be a didactic or doctrinal treatise, like some of
the Epistles, or the discourses of our Lord. It was not
intended that we should reduce its language to logical pro
portions, or define with precision its dramatic imagery, and
bring all the details of this panorama into place, as we
would the events of 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 impos
sible to say what he will not do) think of analyzing the
wine of wrath, that is said to be poured out, or of inquiring
as to the shape of the cup, into which it is said to be
poured, or the quality and cut of the robes which Christ
and his followers are said to wear, or of criticising the
anatomy of the grotesque figures that appear in these
scenes. No sober man will undertake to prove from the
language here employed, that our Lord actually rides 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 fitted with

494 BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY. [Chap. III.
lock and key, and that an angel will bring the key in one
hand, with which to open the door, and a 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 writhing in tor
ture 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 — not merely
to the end of time, but throughout all the eternal future.
And yet, strange to say, we find pious, and otherwise
rational men, so blinded by this dogma, and so pressed for
arguments to support it, eagerly catching up such figures
and phrases of this vision as will suit their purposes, and
parading them as so many proof texts of the doctrine of
eternal sin and misery. They freely allow the unreal
character of most of these images and phantasms — those
for which they have no special use — but they hesitate not
to pick out the "fire" and "brimstone," and the "smoke"
and the " torment," and the words " forever and ever "
(erroneously translated) from the mass of other symbols,
and apply them to — what ? not merely to the personifica
tions of evil described, but to living men, women, and
children like themselves. They insist that all other texts
occurring in the didactic, doctrinal and legal parts of
God's Word, which speak of " Life " ahd " Death," etc.,
should have a metaphorical and not a Uteral sense 'given
to them ; but now, when they come to that part of His
Word that is altogether metaphorical, they insist on giving
a strictly literal sense to such fragmentary portions of it as
will suit their dogma. But what is still more strange and
inconsistent, they are not content with giving them a full
and literal application to the things of time and sense, to
which they belong — for they are evidently used with refer-

Sec. VI.] MISINTERPRETED TEXTS. 495
ence to events transpiring on this earth previous to the
consummation of all things — but they must wrest them
from their terrestrial and temporal connection, and carry
them over into the spiritual world, where, the Scriptures
tell us, there are no such material agencies, no more suc
cession of day and night, no more pain, no more death, in
order to prove that there is pain there, and death, and a
lake of fire and brimstone, and that the wicked are still
writhing there, and will writhe, in unutterable hopeless
agony, having no rest day nor night ; while the smoke of
their torment ascendeth up before the eyes of the redeemed
forever and ever!
We beheve that a more entire perversion of God's Word,
a more complete reversal of its decided and uniform testi
mony, from beginning to end, could not be perpetrated.

Rational Arguments and Objections.

Preliminary Remarks.

Our argument on the question of human immortality
rests mainly, as it must, on the teaching of Scripture. This
we have completed. It does not seem important for us to
devote much space to the consideration of the reasons and
suggestions that are drawn from other sources ; for they
are of no positive or certain value in themselves, as we
have shown in our First Chapter, and their soundness or
falsity can only be known by bringing them to the test of
God's Word, which was given expressly to teach us all we
need to know, and, indeed, all we can know in our present
state, of the future.
Science, looking at such facts as nature presents, declares
that there is no evidence of any life hereafter for man ;
and from her standpoint, she is able to give quite an array
of reasons for her conclusion. Philosophy, on the other
hand, reasoning from sentiment, and instinct, and hope
and fear, and from the intellectual nature of man, concludes
that he is naturally and necessarily immortal. This dis
crepancy is only to be reconciled by the teaching of Scrip
ture. That shows us that there is truth, hut only a par
tial truth, in. each of these two extremes.

498 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. TV.
It agrees with science in teaching that man's natural life
ends at death, and furthermore, it teaches that there can
be no hope of an after life for any man, but in a Divine
interposition, to raise him up again, and then, going be
yond the reach of all scientific research, it shows us
God's method of restoring the dead to life, and of bestow
ing upon mortals the gift of Everlasting Life.
It agrees with philosophy in teaching that God did de
sign man to be immortal ; but it furthermore teaches, that
it was for an immortality in holiness, and not in sin ; and
that it was expressly conditioned on his continuance in
perfect obedience to his Maker ; and that the forfeited boon
can be assured to him only as he shall be made fit to en
joy it, and, what is beyond all the power of philosophy to
discover, it teaches that it is only by the "washing of regen
eration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost," that he can
be made fit for immortal life, or have any good hope of
enjoying it.
We find no fault with Scientists or Philosophers as such.
Without a Divine revelation, they could not reach the ulti
mate truth, which is only brought to light in the Gospel.
But we do find fault with those scientific and philosophic
theologians, who, having this Gospel, so completely ignore
its teachings as to rest their conclusions on the findings of
Science and Philosophy alone ; and because, on the one
hand, their analysis of matter gives no evidence of a future
life, conclude there is none, in spite of the teachings of
God's Word ; or, on the other hand, because they find
within man the sentiments and instincts of a future life,
conclude not only thai there is such a life, but also,
that it is an endless life, and not only this, but that
it is the assured portion of every man, whatever may
be his moral character; while the Gospel expressly declares
that it is the portion only of those who are born again.

Chap. IV.] PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 499
It seems to us strange, passing strange, that Christian
men, who profess to honor the authority of this Divine
Word in spiritual things, should refuse the light which it
throws upon Science and Philosophy, and instead of using
it to correct and modify the partial and imperfect views
they suggest, should subordinate its higher and additional
teachings to them, as though they were supreme and ulti
mate. We cheerfully and gladly accept of all the findings of
Nature and Reason, ^or just what they teach ; but for no
more, and we cannot allow them to control in the domain of
spiritual truth, into which they cannot enter. In their
own province, they are in beautiful accord with the teach
ings of God's Word ; but in all that is supernatural and
spiritual, we must take His Divine Revelation, as our
supreme and ultimate authority, and we must insist that it
be so taken by others, who, as professedly Christian men,
undertake to argue with us this question of the Life Ever
lasting. It is then, rather because it is customary in discussing
this question, and for the sake of giving completeness to
our view, than because we deem it important, that we pro
ceed to consider, somewhat briefly, as we must, what Na
ture and Reason may have to say with respect to the
immortality of man.

SECTION I.
Nature of the Soul.
It is said that if the soul be " a simple, pure, uncom-
pounded, unorganized entity or substance," then it must be
indestructible and necessarily immortal. But who knows
that such is the nature of the soul ? It is a sheer assump
tion, without one particle of evidence to sustain it. The
argument that is founded on it amounts simply to this: If
the soul be indestructible, it is indestructible. If it be im
mortal, it is immortal. But the assumption leads to a
broader conclusion than this. The logical mind of Plato
saw it, and therefore he concluded that the soul, if such be
its nature, could have had no beginning, as well as, will
have no end. That man, so far as his soul is concerned, i&
an uncreated being ; that when a child is born, a soul
enters his body, and when he dies, it goes out again, either
to enter some other body, or to exist in a ghostly, state for
ever ; and that the number of such souls, is eternally the
same, neither being increased by new births, nor dimin
ished by death. But Christian men, who cannot but ad
mit that God created man, and that he has a definite be
ginning, by rejecting the former part of this conclusion,
vitiate the latter part ; because both parts must go together.
For it is evident, that what had a beginning, may have an
end ; what has been created, may be uncreated. If the
soul of man is not of such a nature as to exclude the idea
of its creation, it certainly is not of such a nature as to
save it from destruction.
But granting the assumption, that the soul is " a simple,
pure, uncompounded, unorganized substance or entity,"
and that it has a beginning, the question arises : When is

SeC. I.] NATURE OF THE SOUL. 501
that beginning? Are souls made beforehand and kept in
readiness to meet human demand ? or are they made to
order, and put into the child's body at birth, or at some
period before or after its birth ? We press this question
upon those, who hold that the soul is an entity separate
and separable from the body, and independent of it. It is
not an idle question, but one that it is important for them
to consider. If they are unable to answer it, let them tell
us, at least, if they can, whether it be a full grown, mature,
responsible soul, at the outset, or does it grow in strength
and maturity and. responsibility with the body. The
former supposition would be fatuous, and lead to the ab
surd conclusion that new-born infants are equally responsi
ble for their moral exercises and acts with adults. If they
take the latter supposition, then, we would ask them, why
the soul may not fall, as well as rise with the body ? How
can they show that the soul»does not follow the fortunes of
the body, but is independent of it ?
Let them show us how it is possible for such a " simple,
pure, uncompounded, unorganized entity " as they suppose
the soul to be, to carry on all the varied and complex op
eration of thought, feeling, and action within the body and
independent of it ; or, at least, let them show us that this
is possible.'
If they shall admit that the soul is, or may be an organ
ism, then it may be disorganized, and, like all other or
ganisms, its functional action ceases when this organism
shall be broken up.
But if they still insist that the soul is a " simple, unor
ganized entity," they must admit that a bodily organism is
necessary to the exercise of its functions. If the soul had no
conscious life or activity until it was united with the body ;
what evidence is there to show that it can maintain its
individual life, and fulfill its functions, after the bodily

502 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. IV.
organization is destroyed ? There is every evidence possi
ble in the nature of the case, to show that the body is as
necessary to the soul, as the soul is to the body ; and that
they are mutually dependent on each other. An injury to
the brain, through which the soul is supposed to act, affects
the soul, in the same degree ; it may cause insanity ; it may
cause insensibilty for a time ; it may cause death. Is it
reasonable to suppose that while any injury to the brain
that is not fatal, injuriously affects the soul, a fatal injury
does not injuriously affect its consciousness and activity at
all, but only gives it greater freedom of action and of
feeling ?
The fact is, the whole argument for immortality founded
on the nature of the soul, rests upon a pure assumption,
and this constitutes the only difficulty there is in meet
ing it. Indeed, it can only be a waste of words between
us and those who hold it, until they shall establish their
postulate by some show of reason.
It is said that Franklin proposed to the Savants of
France this question, Why the weight of a vessel of water
should not be increased by putting a fish into it?
After arguing the question for a long time and giving
many weighty reasons for their various views, some one
proposed to try the experiment, and see if such were the
fact. It was then " discovered that their arguments were
all worthless ; for the supposition itself was false. And so
is it with arguments in regard to the immortality of the
soul founded on the supposition that it is " a pure, simple,
uncompounded, unorganized entity." Let them show that
such is the nature of the soul, or, at any rate, tell us what
the nature of the soul is, before they challenge us to show
that the conclusion, or rather the half of the conclusion,
they are willing themselves to adopt is false.

Sec. I.] NATURE OF THE SOUL. 603
The late President Dwight, of Yale College, in his Ser
mons, Vol. 1, p. 163, says :
"Among Christians I know of but one who has regarded
the immortality of the soul as susceptible of demonstration.
Should we believe with this ingenious writer, that the soul,
metaphysically considered, is so formed, as naturally to be
immortal, we must still acknowledge, because it cannot be
denied, tbat its existence may terminate at death or at any
other supposable period. Whatever has been created can
certainly be annihilated by the power which created it.
The continuance of the soul must therefore depend abso
lutely on the will of God. But that will can never be
known, by creatures, unless He is pleased to disclose it.
Without Revelation, therefore, the immortality of the soul
must be entirely uncertain."
We may add to what has been so truly said, we never
knew one man even, who was able to demonstrate the im
mortality of the soul from the Scriptures, or to point to
one text in all the Bible that asserted or even hinted at
any such doctrine. But there are hundreds of texts, as we
have shown, that assert the contrary, and as many more,
that expressly declare that immortality is the special gift
of God and only received by a new birth.
But it should be remembered, that our inquiry is con
cerning man himself, and not concerning any one or more
of the various parts of which he is supposed to be made
up. The physical, or material elements that enter into his
composition, when they shall be separated by death, may
continue to exist in their elemental state, or may enter
into other combinations, and so continue, under one form
or another, to exist forever. Indeed, we have no evidence
that any elemental substance is ever annihilated. The
Bame may be said of the spiritual elements, or living forces
that enter into his composition, they may well be supposed

504 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. IV.
to exist forever under some form or condition or other, we
know not what ; nor need we stop to inquire, for our in
quiry does not relate to these elements, however many or
few they may be ; but to the composite creature man. Is
he immortal — the sensitive, thinking, conscious, active, re
sponsible creature that he is — is he immortal ?
The fact is, this Platonic philosophy has thrown this
whole subject into confusion. It has led us off, into in
quiries concerning one part of man and has taught us to
ignore the main question concerning the destiny of man
himself. We have come to speak of the soul of man, and
to reason about it, as though it were something distinct
from the man himself ; and ministers . preach about it, as
though it had a character and destiny of its own, and that
this is all that is worth considering. But this is neither con
sistent with the teachings of Science, nor of Reason, nor of
Revelation. Scien ce regards man as an integer ; though he is
a complex and composite creature, yet he is one creature
and not two or more. So does law, both human and di
vine ; and so does the Gospel. It was upon the whole
man that God laid His original prohibition — " In the day
that thou eatest thereof thou must surely die." It was the
whole man that sinned and fell. It was the whole man
that came under the sentence of death — " Dust thou art
and unto dust shalt thou return." It is the whole man
that was redeemed, and is to be raised, and judged and
saved or destroyed. This is the question which we most
need to have answered ; the question that Job asked, "Ha
man die shall he live again," and shall he live forever-
more ? And no answer can be given to it, either by Rea
son or in Nature. It is only answered in the Word of
God, and it is for this very purpose that a Divine Revela-
tionhas been given to us — to tell us of the Life Everlast
ing and the way of attaining to it. Why, then, should we

SeC. I.] NATURE OF THE SOUL. 505
betake ourselves blindly to heathen oracles, or to the ora
cles of the wisest of men, whose wisdom God has declared
to be foolishness, when " we have a -more sure word of
prophecy ?" Unto this " we do well to take heed as unto
a hght that shineth in a dark place."

SECTION H.
The Capacities and Capabilities of Man.
The argument for immortality from the nature of the
soul which we have just considered, so far as there is any
argument in it, would seem to apply to brutes as well as
to men. This our opponents are constrained to. admit;
but they tell us that there is this distinction to be observed ;
that while the brute seems to reach the limit of his capaci
ties in this life, man is cut short by death in the midst of
his career ; that his capacities and capabilities for improve
ment and progress are infinite ; and that it is reasonable
to suppose, that an opportunity will be given him for
further development and progress in another life. Grant
ing all this, we are not to assume, as too many do, that a
future life is necessarily an endless life. Eternal existence
is a. mystery which no finite mind can fathom. What
changes may come ; what worlds, and systems of worlds,
teeming with life, may yet be created and pass away, to
give place to others ; what seons, and cycles of axins may
follow each other in their perpetual round, throughout the
infinite future, who can know, but the infinite Creator
Himself? Reason cannot assure us that there is no possi
ble limit in the endless future, to human development and

506 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. IV.
progress, much less can it assure us that this development
and progress will be forever maintained, in the case of
every one who might be started on such a career. We are
not to assume, that every thing that is created, is sure to
reach the limit of its capacity. The brutes that are sup
posed to be limited in their capacities, are often cut short
in the midst of their career. Trees' are often blighted and
destroyed, before they are half grown ; flowers are nipped
in the bud ; the promise of fruitage is not always realized,
and who shall assure us that man shall escape all the
dangers that threaten his opening life, and reach the
farthest goal, or rather go on forever, without reaching
any goal?
But it is not true that every one continues in a course of
development and progress till his life is cut short by death.
There are multitudes, who apparently reach the summit of
their powers, both physical and intellectual, even before
they come to the end of their course ; and then go down,
as they came up, into feebleness and decay and death.
There are many who have no higher aim in life, than the
brutes that perish ; whose only inquiry is, "What shall we
eat and what shall we drink arid wherewithal shall we be
clothed ;'' and with these wants gratified, they become as
stupid and as indifferent to all higher wants, as the brutes
themselves. Yea, there are many whose development is
actually downward towards that which is low and grovel
ing ; whose thoughts, whose aims, whose desires, and pleas
ures are all carnal and beastly ; and who go down from
one degree of sottish sensuality to another, sinking far be
low the level of decent brutes, until they perish in their
own corruption. Their lamps go out in darkness. Who
shall say that they are lighted up again to burn forever ?
Indeed, how few there are, who seem to lay any solid
foundation for permanent progress hereafter?

SeC. IL] CAPACITIES AND CAPABILITIES. 507
It is a law of God's providence, which even Nature
teaches as well as Revelation, that "to any one that hath
shall be given and he shall have abundance ; but from
him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which
he hath ;" faculties that are misimproved, or that are not
improved at all, cannot be preserved ; they fall into imbe
cility and decay. Not merely God's Word, but Reason
and Nature urge us, with ten thousand voices, to the wise
improvement of what we have, if we would gain more, or
if we would even retain what we now possess. This is as
true of man's intellectual and moral nature as of his phy
sical. The mind that is uncultivated becomes stupid and
driveling ; also, the heart dies in its selfish confinement, if
not drawn out toward some object that is worthy of its
love. We were not constituted for the exercise of evil
passions ; but of those that are pure and lovely. We are
neither in harmony with the world about us, nor with our
selves, when we come under the power of evil passions and
desires. We are like a machine that is out of order ; the
_ tendency is to entire dissolution and ruin. Evil passions
within the soul, like disease within the body, tend to cor
rode, corrupt and to destroy. It is only as one rises higher
and higher towards that which is good and true and per
fect, that his progress is peaceful and joyous, or that he
has any assurance that it will be stable and permanent.
It is a heathen philosophy that rests its hopes of
immortality in the intellectual nature of man. But
what is intellect misdirected, or under the control of
evil passions ? It is driving to certain destruction. But
Christian philosophy lays its foundation deeper, in the
moral nature of man ; and it is only as he can be kept
pure, as he was designed to be, or restored to that condi
tion, from which he has fallen by sin ; it is only as he de
velops according to this law of his being, and in harmony

508 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. IV.
with himself and with his Maker, and with all that is good
and true, that he can hope to escape the common doom of
-everything that is false and imperfect. In the direction of
Divine wisdom and knowledge, there is room for perpetual
and unlimited progress. " Length of days is in her right
hand, and in her left, riches and honor. Her ways are ways
of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. She is a tree
of life to them that lay hold upon her, and happy is he
that retaineth her." " The path of the just is as the shin
ing light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
The way of the wicked is as darkness ; they know not at
what they stumble."

SECTION ITL
Human Instincts and Aspirations.
We are told that men love life and cling to it, and that
they naturally shrink back from death. This is all very
true ; but it is not true of man only. All animals have
an instinct of life. This is needful to its preservation.
This instinct, however, gives no more assurance of its eter
nal perpetuity in the one case than in the other. But it
is urged that it is more than a mere instinct in man ; it is
a sentiment, that reaches forward into the future and is
never able to find full satisfaction in any present attain
ment, or to rest content in any present possession. It is
true, man was never made to be satisfied with the good he
finds in the possession of material things, or with the grati
fication of his physical wants. He was, indeed, made
capable of higher enjoyments. But what if he will not

SeC. DU.] HUMAN INSTINCTS AND ASPIRATIONS. 509
seek them ? What if he knows not where or how this
higher good may be found ? or if it is made known to him,
what if he has no desire to seek it ? What if he closes his
ears to the voice of Divine Wisdom, and persists in seeking
his highest gratification in those things which only can in
crease his thirst but never satisfy his craving ? Is God
beholden to give him ultimate and perpetual happiness in
whatever way he shall seek it, or whether he shall seek it
or not? It might, indeed, be presumed, that God would
make known to him the way of attaining to the true end
of his being, and supply him with the means necessary
thereto. Indeed, we might suppose, that, having wandered
from their way, and lost it by ignorance, folly or sin, God,
in His great mercy, would show him the way of return,
and provide the means for his restoration. This is just
what He has done in the Gospel. But the Gospel is not a
system of compulsion. It is good news to the lost'and
wandering. It is a message of invitation, of exhortation,
of entreaty. But what if man will not listen to this mes
sage of mercy ? What if he has no desire for that kind of
good it offers him ? What if he prefers those pleasures
that are sensual and transitory? How shall his higher
nature be satisfied, or saved from perishing?
Those to whom the Gospel has never been given, might,
perhaps, be excused for fancying, in their blindness, that
they should reach the goal of their hopes, in whatever
direction they should seek it, or whether they should seek
it at all; but how can those who have this Gospel, so
misread it, as to suppose that all the good which it
promises to the obedient, the diligent, and the faithful,
will be given unconditionally to those who are not
obedient, or diligent, or faithful; and that the highest
of all boons, Eternal Life, will be bestowed equally upon"
all men whether they are fitted to enjoy it or not? And

510 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. IV.
yet, Christian men, and even ministers, so-called, of the
Gospel of Christ, do so reason, in their efforts to prove the
immortality of man, on the ground of his natural instincts.
Joseph Cook, says that " man is an organized lie " if this
greatest of all gifts is not bestowed upon him. If he means
by this, that God's truth could not be justified unless He
had put this boon within the reach of man, it is just what
we all believe, and what His Word assures us ; and is too
evident to require any such oracular assertion , but if he
means, what his argument implies, and what he is taken to
mean, that God is equally beholden to the good and the
bad, to give them all alike the highest desire of their
hearts, it is the rankest sort of universalism.
But more than this, what if man shall defy the wrath of
the Almighty, by rebelling against Him ? What if he
despises His laws, and tramples His ordinances under his
feet and scorns His overtures of mercy ? Is there no such
thing as judicial destruction under the government of
heaven ? Has God made the life of man so sacred, that
He Himself cannot take it away ? Is there no death pen
alty with Him ? Is it reserved for human government
alone, to take away the life of incorrigible offenders ; and
must the Almighty Ruler content Himself with imprison
ing and tormenting His enemies forever and ever, because
He gave them in the outset a life which He could not take
away ? Neither Reason nor Nature teaches any such doc
trine ; and what is more, Revelation flatly contradicts it.

SECTION IV.
v Analogy of Nature.
The natural world is thought to give many unmistakable
hints of a future life for man. The revival of vegetation
in the Spring, after the torpor of Winter ; the shooting up
of the fresh germ, from the seed, that has been buried in
the ground ; the transformation of the crawling grub into
the winged butterfly, as it bursts from its winding sheet in
the chrysalis ; the awakening from sleep, after the rest of
the night; all these and other processes of nature are taken
as symbols of the resurrection, from the dead and the Life
Everlasting. Let us take them for all they teach ; and
when enlightened by revelation, we shall find in them
many beautiful and important lessons. But we are to bear
in mind, that they are all natural processes of life, in its
various stages. There is no actual death in any of them.
The tree, or plant, that actually dies, does not revive in
the Spring. If the seed which we plant be dead, it does
not spring up again. The grub, when it passes into the
chrysalis state, does not die, but only becomes dormant ;
if it were to die, the pupa would not live again. Sleep,
though it be called the Sister of Death, resembles it only in
appearance; if it were death in any other sense, there
would be no natural awakening, but only corruption and
decay. Hence the inquiry of Job, " If a man die shall he
live again ?" is not answered by any of these processes.
" Man . dieth and wasteth away, yea, man giveth up the
ghost and where is he ?" Nature does not answer this
question, by any of her analogies. It is answered only by
Divine Revelation. The Resurrection of the dead is not a
natural process ; it is altogether abnormal and miraculous.

512 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. TV.
Those who undertake to argue the immortality of man by
these natural processes, confuse their minds by misinter
preting them, and instituting false analogies.
The figure which Paul uses — when describing the resur
rection of the dead in 1 Corinthians 15 — of the sowing of
seed and the springing up of new plants, is not to substan
tiate the fact of a resurrection ; for this, he expressly de
clares to be a supernatural event ; but it is only to illus
trate the greatness of the change that takes place in the
resurrection body and the power by which it is effected.
The plant that furnishes the seed, is not raised again.
Plants and animals may be propagated by living
seed, but the identical plants and animals themselves
are not reproduced ; nor, if they were dead, could they
furnish the seed for the propagation of other plants
and animals. The great question is — not, shall the man
live, as it were, in his descendents, but shall he himself
hve again, and shall he live forever?
But we should not forget that our inquiry is not simply
concerning a future life, but concerning the endlessness of
that future life. Here the analogy fails us altogether ; for
the life which is reproduced in these natural processes, is
no more permanent than the original life. We are not to
presume that all life hereafter is necessarily interminable.
The question then recurs, with as much urgency as before,
"Is man destined to an endless existence ? and what is
further, Is this true of every man?"
H these analogies teach anything they teach the very
doctrine for which we are contending, the doctrine of a
conditional immortality. It is not every tree that .revives
in the Spring, but only such as have a living root. It ia
not every seed that germinates, but only such as have a
principle of vitality in them. It is not every pupa that
bursts the cerements of the chrysalis and rises into the

Sec. IV.] ANALOGY OF NATURE. 513
winged butterfly, but only such as are perfect. Natural
ists tell us, that grubs, caterpillars and larva? of this class
are quite liable to fail of development into the second
stage, through injuries received while in their first stage
of life. Every one of these crawling grubs, is said to carry
within his first body an embryo butterfly (or psyche, as it
is called in Greek ; the very term that designates the human
soul), upon which little ichneumon flies often prey, without
doing any apparent injury to the grub while in its first stage.
It fulfils its natural larva life, and like all other grubs of
its kind, wraps itself in its winding sheet, and goes into the
chrysalis state, in the hope, as it were, of rising from it as
a butterfly. But the hope is never realized. It goes to
corruption and perishes utterly; for the butterfly (or
psyche), within, was destroyed while in its embryo state.
This higher lepidopterous state is reserved for those, and
those only, that carry with them to the end, this embryo
psyche uninjured, and fit for its resurrection life.
The parallel seems to be perfect. If it does not foretoken
and teach, what the Scriptures declare concerning the de
struction of the psuehe or soul within man by sin, while
yet in this world, and his consequent forfeit of that higher
angelic hfe, of the world to come, which is reserved for
those alone who are fit for it, then it is impossible for Na
ture to teach us anything by analogy.

SECTION V.
General Belief.
It is argued, that the general belief of mankind through
out the world, of a future state of existence, must have
some foundation in fact ; and so it has. We have no de
sire or occasion to deny it or weaken the force of any fair
argument that may be founded on it. Nor do we think,
as some have said, that this belief is altogether the effect of
education. It may be subject to the modifying influences
of education, and may take on a great variety of shapes,
such as hope and fear may suggest ; but it enters into the
moral constitution of man. It is, no doubt, implanted in
the human mind by God Himself. The guilty sinner
dreads future retribution, even though he may not know
in what manner it may come ; and the virtuous hope for
the rewards of a future life. Their fears are strengthened
by the consideration of the fact that the allotments of this
life are distributed very unequally, and not on any princi
ple of strict justice. It is true, indeed, that the general
course of Divine Providence favors virtue, and discounte
nances vice in the long run. But all mankind do not, in
their short lives apparently receive according to their de
serts, either of good or of evil. The wicked often escape
detection and punishment, in this life, and the virtuous are
unrecognized, unhonored, and even misjudged, and are
made to suffer the punishment that is due to others. It is
supposed, by those who reflect on the course of events, and
rightly supposed, that a just God will deal justly with all His
creatures, and, consequently, if men are not rewarded and
punished here on earth, they will be, in another state of
being. Those who have but little idea of the true God, or

Sec. V.] GENERAL BELIEF. 515
even of any God, are not entirely without such sentiments.
They belong to the moral nature of man. It is this that
especially distinguishes man from the brutes. It is only
the most degraded and brutish of our race that are not
influenced by them.
But future life, whether of rewards or of punishments, is
not necessarily an endless life. Our inquiry is not whether
man shall live beyond this life, but whether he shall Hve
forever, and whether all men, both the good and the bad,
are destined to an immortal life. The idea of a second
stage of life, does not exclude the idea of a second death,
even in the case of the righteous, much less in the case of
the wicked. Indeed, this second death may be the very
punishment in reserve for the unworthy. While the
Scriptures reveal this more clearly, there is much in na
ture and in reason to suggest the same conclusion, and
multitudes, even without any Revelation, have come to
this conclusion. *
But it is upon the more immediate future, that men are
apt to fix their thoughts. The great mass of mankind,
especially those who have not been trained to philosophical
thought, do not speculate upon what we call the doctrine of
immortality. The thought of a life that is absolutely end
less, is not conceived of by them. At the best, the future
of which they think and speak, is indefinite and not infi
nite. Very few, if any, of the wisest of the heathen phil
osophers, have distinctly set forth any such idea. The
Life Everlasting is emphatically a doctrine, the doctrine,
of the Gospel. Even Plato, who is generally credited with
teaching the doctrine of the indestructibility of all human
souls, both good and bad, does not appear to have had any
very clear conceptions of the doctrine of a personal immor
tality. It was rather the doctrine of an " eternal vicissi
tude " that he taught. It is doubtful whether the avms, or

516 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. TV-
so-called " eternities " of which he spoke, extended beyond
what is termed the "Platonic year" — a period of six
thousand suns.
Those who have discussed this question have not been
careful to distinguish between the sentiment of a future
life, and the sentiment of an endless future life.
There are many who leap at once to the conclusion that,
because there is a very general sentiment among men of
some kind of a future life, and because certam philosophers
have speculated upon its duration, all men will not merely
live again, but they will live forever.
This general sentiment, it is claimed, is a strong argu
ment for the doctrine of the natural immortality of man.
Even those who do not accept of this broad conclusion,
have been altogether too ready to admit of the general ex
istence of this sentiment of immortality, as it is called, be
cause others have so boldly asserted it. We ourself, in
the Theological Trilemma, written many years ago, and
before we had carefully considered this point, very liberally
conceded altogether more than the facts will warrant.
Further inquiry into the doctrines of the religions of the
heathen world, and the sentiments of those who have held
them, convinces us, that the more common behef among
mankind, so far from confirming this doctrine of the nat
ural immortality of man, is decidedly against it ; we do
not say the doctrine of a future life, but of an endless fu
ture life, of a personal individual immortahty for every
man. This never has been the general sentiment of the
world. '
To say nothing now of the millions of our race, who are
too low down in the scale of being to think or care for
anything beyond the present; and the millions more, whose
thoughts extend only to the immediate future ; and the
millions more, who beheve in the destruction of the wicked

BeC. V.] GENERAL BELIEF. 517
— that is to say — of their enemies, and the preservation of
the righteous — that is — of themselves ; the idea of an indi
vidual, personal immortality even of the righteous, has not
been the doctrine of the most populous nations of the globe.
The highest goal to which the pious Hindu aspires is ab
sorption into the universal spirit, or in other words, the
complete loss of all individual existence ; and the highest
ultimate good for which the five hundred millions of
Buddhists seek. is Nirvana, or utter extinction of conscious
being. Archbishop Whately, in his essay on the future state,
shows conclusively that a belief in any future state, much
less a belief in an endless future state, so far from being
general among the ancient heathen nations, was not the
serious belief of even the poets and philosophers who put
forth their speculations or fancies in regard to it. It was
thought necessary for prudential reasons to impose this be
hef, so far as possible upon the masses, but, among them
selves they laughed at the credulity of those who believed
in the fables they taught them.
" In reality, the doctrine never was either generally ad
mitted among the ancient philosophers, or satisfactorily
proved by any of them, even in the opinion of those who
argued in favor of it. Let it be remembered, then, when
the arguments of heathen sages are triumphantly brought
forward in proof of the soul's immortality, that when they
countenanced the doctrine of future retribution, they
taught with a view to political expediency, what they did
not themselves believe ; and that when they spoke their
real sentiments on the subject, the eternity of existence
which they expected, as it implied the destruction of all
distinct personality, amounted, practically, to nothing
at all.
" When then we find Socrates and his disciples repre
sented by Plato, as fully admitting in their discussion of
the subject, that ' men in general were highly incredulous

518 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. IV.
as to the soul's future existence ' and as expecting that ' it
would at the moment of our natural death, be dispersed
(as he expresses it) like air or smoke, and cease altogether
to exist, so that it would require no little persuasion and
argument to convince them that the soul can exist after
death, and can retain anything of its powers and intelli
gence ' — when we find this, I say, asserted, or rather al
luded to, as notoriously the state of popular opmion, we
can surely entertain but little doubt that the accounts of
Elysium and Tartarus were regarded as mere poetical
fables, calculated to amuse the imagination, but unworthy
of serious belief."
The lamentation of a Greek poet over his friend may be
cited as here in point:
"The meanest herb we trample in the field,
Or in the garden nurture, when its leaf
In Autumn dies, forebodes another Spring;
And from brief slumber wakes to life again.
Man wakes no more 1 Man, peerless, valiant, wise,
Once ehill'd by death, sleeps hopeless in the dust,
A long, unbroken, never-ending sleep."
(Mosehus Epit. Bion.)
It is remarkable, says Dr. Whately, that the northern
mythology of our Teutonic ancestors — how far it ob
tained sincere acceptance, we have no sufficient means
of knowing — represented the glories enjoyed by the brave
in the hall of Odin as of long continuance, indeed, but
destined to have an end and to last only
"Till Lok shall burst his seven-fold chain
And Night resume her ancient reign ;"
when the gods themselves, with all the heroes who were
the objects of their favor, should be overpowered by
their adversaries, and finally annihilated. The Grecian
mythology also represented the happiness of Elysium as of
limited duration.

SeC. V.] GENERAL BELIEF. 519
The ancient Egyptians, who believed in the resurrection
of the dead and held other religious views taught in the
Scriptures, believed not merely in the future torment of
the wicked, but in the actual extinction of their being,
after they had been sufficiently punished.
But granting that this sentiment so common to man, na
turally suggests the idea of an individual immortality, and
inspires the hope of it ; and that it was implanted within
the breast of every man for this very purpose ; it does not
follow that this is a compulsory, or even an unconditional
immortality. A Deity that is infinitely wise and good, is
not to be supposed to pledge Himself to perpetuate the
lives of sinners and rebels against His righteous govern
ment, or of those who contravene the laws of their own
being, or even of any, who are not found worthy of the
boon. Everything, not merely from within the Bible, but
from without, points decidedly in the other direction.
This longing after a perpetuated life, which is natural
to all men, which even sin has not obliterated, and the
hopes and fears in regard to that mysterious impenetrable
future which agitate their minds, may well be taken as an
indication of God's original purpose to exempt man as a
holy creature, from death ; and now that death has fallen
upon the whole race on account of sin, that sentiment still
lingers in man, to prompt him to seek for the restoration
of the forfeited treasure, or rather, for that new life which
it is the object of the Gospel to reveal. Here in the
Gospel, and here only, "The Way, the Truth and the
Life," are made known to perishing men. Hence our
Lord's command, to go into all the world and preach it to
every creature. This was the doctrine that Christ taught,
while on earth ; this is the doctrine taught by His imme
diate followers. Death through sin to all men ; a resur-

520 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. IV.
rection to life again, by His almighty power ; and a final
judgment, both of the righteous and the wicked ; and an
endless life, of purity and blessedness in His Everlasting
Kingdom, for all who shall be found worthy of it ; and a
second death and final destruction, for all who are not fit
for the Life that is Everlasting. The Gospel is true to all
the teachings of Nature, and Reason and Conscience. So
far from contradicting them, it confirms them all, and
then supplies that higher need, that nothing else can sup
ply. It makes known the way of attaining to that Life
Everlasting, and invites and exhorts all men to seek it
while they may.
This was the doctrine of the early church, till it became
corrupted by the Grecian philosophy, that taught the in
destructible nature of human souls because they were un
created. Rejecting this postulate, which alone gives
plausibility to the doctrine, but still holding to the doc
trine, the half Christianized pagan theologians, of that
age, taught, by way of compromise, this mixture of heathen
speculation, heathen poetry, and the Gospel of Christ, as
Christian doctrine. The simple language of Scripture
was made to take on a metaphorical and mystical sense — a
so-called " Scriptural sense," to make it harmonize with
the pagan doctrine. The plain words, Life and Deaih, so
constantly and emphatically employed in the Word of
God to designate the future allotments of the righteous
and the wicked, were emptied of their true signification,
and made to mean a state of happiness and of misery, that
was to be everlasting in the case of both alike. The Gos
pel doctrine of Life Everlasting through Christ and Him
only, was so modified as to agree with Plato's notion of the
immortality of all men by nature. So Christ was denied
His chief crown of glory, as the " Life-giver " of His ran-
Bomed people, and reduced to the lower position of a Savior

Sec. V.] GENERAL BELIEF. 521
from Hell; and the Gospel alternative of death to the un
saved, became the doctrine of eternal torment. In this
way, both the justice and mercy of our Heavenly Father
were traduced, and He was made to appear to be but little
better than the gods of the heathen.
It is this mixture of heathen superstition and Gospel
truth, that has come down by tradition through the dark
ages of the church, claiming to be, even to this day, " the
faith once delivered to the saints." O, when shall the
glorious Gospel of the blessed God be restored to its origi
nal simplicity as a message of Life and Immortality to
mortal men?
But, it is asked, how it is possible that God should have
allowed so monstrous an error, if it be an error, to take
root and prevail so generally in the Christian Church ?
How it is possible for so many learned, wise, and good
Christian men, to be so misled in regard to so important a
question as this? This inquiry would apply with more
force to the subject in hand, if no other error had ever
taken root and prevailed in the church and in the world.
But the religious history of the race, is a history of error
and delusion from the very beginning ; and even the history
of Christianity, gives sad evidence of the imperfection, and
folly and perversity of the disciples of our Lord'. The his
tory of the Christian Church, for a dozen centuries previ
ous to the Reformation, is a history of errors, of apostasy
and of corruption. Even in the churches planted by the
Apostles themselves, the seeds of error had begun to spring
up and bear their bitter fruit, before their founders had
passed away. This was one of their chief topics of pro
phetic admonition and warning. Peter, in his Second
Epistle (2:1, 2), writes : " But there were false prophets
among the people [in the days of Moses] even as there

522 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. IV.
shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring
in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought
them, and bringing upon themselves swift destruction ;
and many shall follow their pernicious ways, by reason of
whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of."
Paul, also, in writing his Second Epistle to the Corinth
ians, foreseeing this very error, as it would seem, says
(11 : 3) : " But I fear lest by any means as the serpent
beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should
be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."
Again, in his Second Epistle to Timothy (4 : 3, 4) he
writes : " For the time will come when they will not en
dure sound doctrine ; but after their own lusts shall they
heap to themselves teachers ; having itching ears ; andi
they shall turn away their ears from the truth and be
turned unto fables."
The Reformation was expressly founded on the fact, that
the Christian Church had become greatly corrupted by
false doctrines. Many of these false doctrines were repu
diated by our Protestant fathers ; but others — and among
them this great error — were too thoroughly inwrought into
their theological system to be so easily uncovered and ex
tirpated. They were left to be dealt with by a more criti
cal and enlightened age. Even now, the various sects into
which Protestant Christendom is divided, are charging
each other with serious errors of doctrine and practice,
while each defends it own, with greater pertinacity than
it defends the truths they hold in common.
When we see how men take their religious opinions one
from another; how jealously every church defends its own
peculiar symbols of faith ; how dangerous it is for any one
to question any article of the creed of the church in which
he has been reared, however absurd it may be ; and how
difficult it is to gain even a hearing in opposition to any

Sec. V.] GENERAL BELIEF. 523
popular dogma ; we cannot wonder that a sentiment so
flattering to the natural pride of man, and so plausible in
itself, having once gained a foothold in the creed of the
Christian Church, and in its theological systems, and having
been laboriously accommodated to the teaching of God's
Word, should maintain its ground with such obstinacy
and success.
But still, there have always been individuals more or
less numerous in the church, even in the darkest periods of
its history, who have nobly protested against the prostitu
tion of the Gospel to the service of heathen philosophy,
and whose voices could not be wholly silenced by ecclesi
astical authority or violence. And now, in this freer and
more enlightened day, when the number of those who are
able, and determined to investigate and think for them
selves, is larger than ever before, we find in all our Chris
tian churches, as well as out of them, a large and increas
ing multitude, who cannot reconcile the horrid conclusion
to which this dogma logically lea3s, with reason or Scrip
ture, or with an enlightened sense of the justice and good
ness of God, or of the nature of man ; and who are hoping
and praying for some way of relief from their bewildering
doubts, and from the skepticism, and even infidelity towards
which it is pushing them.
But it is not a pleasant thing for any man to disagree
with his Christian brethren, whom he loves, and whose good
opinion he highly prizes, especially when that disagree
ment is sure to bring upon him their suspicions, their re
proaches, and perhaps their sincere pity, or their scorn.
No one likes to hazard his reputation for orthodoxy or
good sense, or his social, or it may be his official position in
the church, by opposing any popular article of its creed,
and above all, so popular a dogma as this is.
There are many, who have so little confidence in their

524 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. IV.
own judgment in regard to any doctrinal question, that
they deem it altogether more prudent to allow others, whom
they humbly conceive are better and wiser, or at any rate,
who are more positive than themselves, to do their think
ing for them ; and others, to whom it seems almost like
sacrilege to call in question any doctrine that has been
sanctified by the traditions of the church, even though they
cannot justify it to their own reasons, or reconcile it with
the Word of God. And so, the doctrinal doubts of not a
few are religiously hushed through humility and self-dis
trust; and others, whose convictions are more positive,
suppress them for various prudential reasons, in the hope
that the time will come when it will be more safe to avow
them. So far as this reticence in regard to the doctrine in ques
tion is the result of real humility, and of Christian confi
dence in the superior wisdom and intelligence of others, it
is not altogether censurable, though no individual, however
humble he may be, can relieve himself of all responsibility
for his religious opinions ; but when deference to the opin
ion of others, degenerates into that servility of faith that
inquires " whether any of" the Rulers or Pharisees have so
believed," rather than " What saith the Scripture ?" or,
into that fear of losing caste, or reputation, or position of
honor and profit, which controls self-seeking and worldly
minds, or into that selfish love of ease, which hinders from
contending earnestly for the faith, or from "searching the
Scriptures daily whether these things be so," for fear of
being enlightened and forced to contend ; it is unworthy of
any true Christian disciple, and more than all, of those
who are set for the defence of the truth and the instruction
of their fellow-men in the way of Life.
In regard to any fact that can be observed, the testi
mony of intelligent witnesses is to be respected ; and the

Sec. V.] GENERAL BELIEF. 525
greater the number of such witnesses, the stronger the evi
dence in its favor ; but even in regard to facts, how often
has the careful observation of some individual shown that
the multitude were deluded ? But in regard to matters of
mere speculation, the guess or more positive opinion of one
sensible man, is as good as that of another, and the evi
dence in favor of the one or the other, is not increased by
the number of adherents he may obtain. Popularity gives
no more force to any speculative opinion, than there is
force in the reason on which it is founded. The strength
of a chain, that -hangs insecurely, cannot be increased by
adding to the number of its links, nor does any traditional
opinion gather any more real authority from the number
of generations through which it has come down to us.
This depends entirely upon the source from which it
springs. No timepiece can be depended upon, however
perfect it may be, unless it is set by a true standard. If
the town-clock be wrong, the error is not corrected, though
the majority of the timepieces in the town may have been
-set by it ; yet their united testimony may seem to counter
vail that of the few that are astronomically correct.
An incident, exactly in point, occurs to the writer, while
penning these paragraphs. Happening to compare his
watch with the clock of his host, he noticed a wide dis
crepancy between the two ; but when the host assured him
that the clock was an excellent time-keeper and must be
right, he began to fear that his watch might be at fault.
To prove the correctness of the clock, the host took out his
own watch, and found that his watch and clock both indi
cated the same time. Here two witnesses against one was .
•still stronger evidence against the writer's watch, and
would have settled the matter, had he not further inquired,
and found that the clock had stopped during the night,
and the cook had set it by guess, and then, the host had

526 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. IV.
regulated his own watch by the clock, as a sure standard.
Now, had all the guests in the house set their timepieces
hy this same standard, the evidence against the writer
would have been apparently overwhelming, but, in fact, it
would have been of no more real value than the opinion
of the cook.
This is just the case with many of the most popular
errors and delusions that have been current in the world.
They are specious and plausible enough to gain the
credence of those who do not inquire ; but when one in
quires into their origin and history, he finds that they have
no foundation in truth.
This is the case with that widespread error of universal
immortality, which we are opposing. It is so agreeable to
the wishes of man, and so flattering to his pride, that it is
well calculated to be popular ; the natural and Scriptural
arguments alleged to be in its favor may be so marshalled
as to give an air of plausibility to it ; but when one in
quires into its origin and history, he finds that the argu
ments for it are altogether specious and unreliable; and
that it has no better authority to rest upon than the assur
ances of the tempter in Eden, and the conceits of heathen
philosophers ; nor any real force whatever in face of the
positive declarations of God's Word, that " Sin, when it is
finished, bringeth forth Death."

SECTION VI.
Utility.
There are many good Christian people who object to
this doctrine of Eternal Life in Christ only, not because it
would displease them to find it true, but from fear of the
consequences of its promulgation. To them, the doctrine
of the eternal misery of the unsaved, in the belief of which
they have been educated, seems necessary to restrain men
from sin and to bring them to repentance. We greatly
respect their pious anxiety for the maintenance of God's
government over men, and fully sympathize with them in
their desire to bring sinners to accept of the Salvation
offered them in the Gospel. We also agree with them in
holding to the truism that God's law, like every other law,
must have a penalty, and one, too, that answers to the
offence, and that the Gospel will never be anything but
foohshness to tnose who neither feel nor fear the evils from
which it would deliver them. We desire not to weaken
the motives of the law or of the Gospel, but rather to give
them that efficacy they are evidently losing under the
influence of this very dogma we are now opposing, by set
ting 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 pun
ishment, nor to take from it any of its force, but rather to
establish its truth upon a firmer basis than it now rests in
the popular mind ; to show how terrible, how just and how
sure, and how remediless the future punishment of the
wicked will be.
It is not ourselves, but the advocates of this doctrine we
are opposing, who are weakening the influence, both of the

528 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. IV.
Law and the Gospel, and bringing them into contempt, by
proclaiming a doctrine, which they sincerely hope may not
be true after all ; and by endeavoring to make sinners
receive it and act in view of it, while they scarcely believe-
it themselves. Their mistake is, in supposing that there is-
no other doctrine of future punishment but that which
they have received by tradition ; that to deny the doctrine
as they have been accustomed to hold it, is to deny the
doctrine altogether. They seem to suppose, that God has.
no other way of magnifying His holy law and making it
honorable, than by threatening all transgressors with in
finite and eternal torment.
Is there nothing dreadful in the thought of being ex
cluded from the kingdom of heaven and all its joys for
ever ? of being counted unfit to live even anywhere ? of
having one's name blotted out of the book of life ? of be
ing absolutely and forever destroyed and forgotten among
the living? Is there nothing terrible in the penalty of
death under human government ? Is there no such thing
— can there be no such thing as the capital* punishment of
irreclaimable offenders under the government of God ? Is
that penal system, among men, which is the most cruel and
savage that can be devised, the one that reflects the most
honor on the government that employs it, and which the most
perfectly secures the end of justice ? Must the death pen
alty 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 agony inflicted upon criminals of the highest
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. All the fiendish tortures of the in
quisition, were thought to be justified on this ground.

Sec. VI.] utility. 529
Both the state and the church, in the dark ages of the
world, have found an example, as they supposed, and a
justification for all their most shocking barbarities in this
theory of the Divine government.
But this kind of reasoning, so far as civil polity is con
cerned, has had its day. A more enlightened and humane
and wise system of penal jurisprudence is taking the place
of the old barbarian codes that were once so popular, and
is beginning everywhere to prevail, and this, too, with
manifest advantage to justice and good government. But
in theology the old dogma lingers. The theodicy of the
dark ages yet prevails in the Christian Church. The Deity
must be represented, not as simply just, but as infinitely
vengeful and cruel. He must not actually destroy those
who cannot be saved. This would be dangerous leniency.
He must keep them in being forever, and inflict upon them
endless torments. At any rate, He must be represented as
threatening to do this, and sinners must be made, if possible,
to believe it. And then, in order to free Him somewhat
from so foul an aspersion, so that men can love and trust
Him, as infinitely just and good, it is vaguely hinted, that,
perhaps, after all, some way, yet unrevealed, may be found,
by which sinners may be saved from so dreadful a doom,
and made happy forever in His love.
Is this the way to magnify the law of God and make it
honorable ? Must He be represented as the most tyranni
cal and cruel Being in the universe, that men may fear
Him, and then, as a deceiver and too good to execute His
threatenings, that they may love and trust Him?
We do not so understand the truth. We sympathize
most fully with our pious opponents in the end they would
secure ; but we believe there is no more effectual way of
defeating it, than the method they pursue. If there is any
one doctrine of the Word of God more distinctly uttered

530- RATIONAL ABGUMENTS. [Chap. IV.
than another, and one that ought to be preached without
any peradventure, it is the doctrine of a future retribution
— of the absolutely remediless and hopeless doom of those
who die in -their sins — of the eternal and irreversible dis
tinction that will be made between the righteous and the
wicked. But the sanctions of God's law are sufficiently
impressive, without any human additions. If there is no
power in the threat of death and everlasting destruction,
or in the offer of eternal life through a crucified Savior, to
move the heart of man, the preacher cannot hope to 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 God is just, as well as terrible in His
judgments, and that He will be as true to all His threat
enings as. to His promises. But in order to do 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, hopeless agonies of
the lost, till every true sentiment of their moral nature re
volts against the monstrous injustice and cruelty of Him
whom they are told will inflict them ; they may be driven
even to madness, by such preaching ; but all this has no
tendency to produce conviction of sin, or penitence or love.
Those who have relied the most upon this kind of preach
ing and exhortation have not been the most successful in
bringing men to the embrace of the Gospel or in strength
ening the Church of Christ. It will be time enough to
insist on this style of harangue when it shall be shown to
have had any other effect than that of hardening men's
hearts, and alienating them from the religion that is sup
posed to require it or that can sanction it.

Sec. VI.] utility. 531
In those ages of darkness, when the influence of terror
was more relied on than any other to control men, the in
genuity of rulers was taxed to the utmost, to devise the
most excruciating forms of torture, and the means of pro
longing it to the utmost limit of human endurance ; and
when death intervened to release their victims, they were
assured that they were only falling into the hands of the
Divinity, in whose behalf they had been inflicted, and who
would continue them in yet severer forms forever. It was
not necessary that those who made use of these arguments
should believe them. Indeed, they often did not. They
laughed at the fears of the vulgar ; but they held that it was
necessary that the people should believe them. Even the
wisest and best of the ancient statesmen held, that it was
not only right but expedient to deceive the masses in mat
ters' of religion. Varro says, "There are many truths
which it is not expedient that the vulgar should know, and
many falsehoods which it is expedient that the people
should receive as truths." Gibbon, in his " Decline and
Fall," says that, " With the people they were equally true,
with the philosophers equally false, and with the statesmen
equally necessary." This was the doctrine of the Papal
Church, and we need not speak of the terrible use that was
made of it, in crushing out the liberties of the people, and
in subjecting them to the control of their ecclesiastics. The
penal administration of all the civil governments that were
under their influence was patterned after what they held
to be the Divine model.
Hardly a century has passed since one hundred and sixty
crimes were punishable with death, under the British code,
and death, too, in many cases, in its most horrible form.
But this system of barbarism, was found to defeat its own
end. Instead of tending to diminish the number of
capital offenses it tended to increase them. Juries could

532 rational arguments. [Chap. IV.
not be made to convict, nor witnesses to testify in such
.cases. It has been found that certainty oi conviction and of
punishment, is a much more important element in the pre
vention of crime than any threatened severity with the
probability of escape. This is as true under the govern
ment of God as under that of men. There may be a kind
of restraint, for a time, exercised over low and groveling
natures, through the influence of terror ; but it soon ex
hausts itself; .its 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 ap
pealing to their moral sentiments, to make them feel that
the penalties of law are just and necessary ; that they are
not inflicted in hate, but in pity and sorrow ; but that
nevertheless they will be surely inflicted. This is of
the first importance as regards the law of God. A religion
without confidence and love, is little better than no reli
gion. God's first demand is for the heart, even of the sin
ner. It is a sense of His goodness that leads them to*
repentance, if ever they do repent. Men may be made
Christian in name — the world is full of such — a servile
conformity to the outward form of religion may be secured
by operating upon their fears, or by presenting selfish con
siderations, but they cannot be made true Christians;
they cannot be made really obedient ; they cannot be made
pure and holy, in this way.
What, now, if men shall outgrow their early fears?"
What if they shall begin to suspect that they have been
deceived ? that their real danger has been grossly mis
represented, in order 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 hope
than before.

Sec. VL] utility. 533
This we believe to be the case at the present day. The
evil is rapidly increasing. There is no way to meet it, but
by returning to the original simplicity of the Gospel, and
presenting the truth as it is there presented, "God so loved
the wor^d that He gave His only begotten Son, that who
soever believeth in Him should not perish but have ever
lasting life." 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 pertina
cious in retaining it as an article of the creed, are unwill
ing to preach it, or hear it preached as in former times.
They who occasionally venture to touch upon it in their
public ministrations, do it with ill-concealed doubts and
misgivings, and many of our most intelligent and devoted
ministers have ceased altogether to preach it. But the
dogma of man's natural immortality, upon which the doc
trine depends, and which, if true, makes it logically certain
— if the Bible is worthy of any confidence — is as popular
as ever. The result is, the law of God is neither feared
nor honored, and the Gospel has but little of its rightful
power over the hearts and consciences of men. . The ex
hortations of those who proclaim the message of Salvation,
are comparatively heartless and feeble. Their warnings
and invitations fall upon the ears of their unbelieving
hearers, as an idle tale, or they refuse to listen at all. Sal
vation from what? From a doom which no man feels, or
ought to feel that he deserves, and to which very few, if
any, feel that they are actually liable.
Complaint is made that the pulpit is losing its power
over the masses ; that vital religion is dying out in our
churches ; that the sanctuary is comparatively deserted ;
that our educated men are becoming infidels ; that there is
a great lack of the true missionary spirit in our theological

534 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. IV.
seminaries ; that our young men and women are not offer
ing themselves, as earnestly as in former times, to carry
the Gospel message to the destitute. All this is lamenta
bly true. The cause is not far to seek. This false doctrine
of the necessary immortality of all men, even in sim as well
as in holiness, is, in fact, driving the whole community into
a skepticism in regard to the future condition of the wicked,
which is sure to end, either in blank Infidelity or in Univer
salism. Why should we be greatly concerned for the
ignorant heathen, if they will probably be saved without
the Gospel ? If these myriads of millions of human beings
are destined to an endless existence, as they are said to be,
it cannot be doubted that a just and merciful God will
provide some way of rescuing them, either here or here
after, from eternal misery. It seems incredible that He
should foredoom from their birth so large a portion of the
human race to eternal wretchedness in another life, for the
sin of their progenitors, or even for their own sins, without
giving, at least, some chance for escape, even if they should
die without a knowledge of the Gospel. It seems incredi
ble that He should perpetuate the wretched existence of
any creature, however undeserving he may be, in sin and
misery without hope and without end in the life beyond.
It is incredible.
But it is not incredible that He should create a mortal
race of men ; nor that He should give them only a condi
tional immortality founded on their fitness to enjoy it ; nor
that He should permit them to become mortal through sin,
and offer them everlasting life as a gift of grace, condi
tioned on repentance and faith in the Savior by Himself
provided. It is not incredible that He should judge and
punish all men, both from Christian and Heathen lands,
beyond this life, according to their individual deserts, some
with few stripes, and others with many stripes ; nor that

Sec. VI.] utility. 535-
there should be a Second Deaih for the unsaved, from
which there is no recovery.
The declaration of God's Word literally understood, as
we insist 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 conscience of every man, not only as
reasonable and just, but as worthy of a God of infinite
goodness and mercy. There is nothing, either in the law
or in the Gospel, apart from the traditions of men, that ,
needs to be explained away or covered up, or palliated or
excused. It is only because man, by his false philosophy,
and Satan, by his artifices, have distorted and perverted
the simple truth, that its power has been weakened and
God's ' character dishonored. Let it be believed and felt
that " Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death" —
actual death — that the whole race of Adam have fallen
under the power of sin and death ; that the Gospel is an
offer of Life — Eternal Life — to perishing men, and that
"there is none other name given under heaven among men
whereby we must be saved " but the name of Jesus Christ,
and that this offer must be tendered and accepted before
sin has finished its work, or there can be no possible 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, and perish forever ; and
there will be found to be no lack of power or motive, either
in the law or the Gospel, to move the hearts of men, and to
cause them to cry out, What shall we do to be saved ?
This is the very message of truth — the good tidings of
great joy which Christ commanded His disciples to preach
throughout the world, " He that believeth shall be saved,

536 RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. [Chap. IV.
and he that believeth not shall be condemned." This was
the truth that fired the souls of His Apostles and early
disciples, and gave them such abundant success, as they
went everywhere preaching this Gospel. This truth has
lost none of its power to nerve the hearts of His people to
their highest endeavors 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 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 " to the salva
tion of every one that believeth. When that day shall
come, as it must come, and surely, will come, the kingdom
•of heaven will be near at hand.
"The Lord hasten it in His time."

Chapter Jfifth.

Conclusion. SECTION I.
A Brief Summary of the Foregoing Argument-
Having, in the foregoing chapters, considered this ques
tion of The Life Everlasting : What is it? Whence
is it? Whose is it? in its Historical; Terminological;
Scriptural ; and Rational aspects, it only remains for us
briefly to summarize the chief points of our argument, and
to add a few other incidental suggestions which seem to
sustain our position — that this Life Everlasting is the pecu
liar life of the Deity ; that it is imparted by God Himself
as a special gift^, in the New Birth, and that it is possessed
only by those who are united to Him in Christ — and then
to bring this discussion to a close.
I. Under our Historical Sketch, in the First Chap
ter, we have seen how that, while the idea or sentiment of
a life of some sort beyond the present has been quite com
mon among men, the doctrine pf an individual, personal
immortality for all men, such as has been formulated under
the combined influence of Platonism and Christianity, is
comparatively of modern date.

538 conclusion. [Chap. V.
The heathen world has generally concerned itself> only
with the more immediate future. Among all the various,
and ever varying and fanciful notions of the future life
that have prevailed among those who have not been en
lightened by a Divine Revelation, we find no such doctrine
of Immortality as has come to prevail in Christian lands.
If we admit — what is by no means evident — that Plato,
and some few of the more astute of the Grecian philoso
phers, held to the personal immortality of all men, it is
quite certain that the masses of the heathen world have
never entertained any such doctrine.
Indeed, the doctrine of immortality which is usually ac
credited to Plato, has undergone such changes at the
hands of Christian theologians, that it may well be ques
tioned whether Plato would now recognize it as his own ;
and on the other hand, the true Christian doctrine has
been so modified and perverted, to bring it into harmony
with this system of Grecian philosophy, that it is quite as
far from being " the faith once delivered to the Saints."
The present popular doctrine, so generally accepted by the
Christian Church, is neither true to the Platonic philoso
phy upon which it is founded, nor to the teaching of God's
Word. It is a kind of compromise between them both.
While Plato taught that the souls of all men have an eter
nal existence independent of their bodies, both in the past
and in the future, and that having never come into exist
ence by creation, they will never go out of being ; revela
tion teaches that having had a beginning, they may have
an end ; having been created, they may be destroyed, and
that sin when finished will work the destruction of any
soul. But the modern doctrine, while it accepts of the
teaching of Revelation, and rejects that of Plato, with re
spect to the origin of man, adopts that of Plato, and refuses
to receive that of God's Word, with respect to the future..

Sec. I.] summary of the argument. 539
P\£k) founded his doctrine of the future life on the inde
pendent nature of the soul. Hence he conceived of it as a
ghostly, shadowy, ever-changing state. Revelation rests
it on the work of Christ in redemption, and the resurrec
tion of the body. Plato based his philosophy of immor
tality on the intellectual nature of man ; and so he held
that the good and bad were equally immortal. Revelation
bases its promise of immortality on man's moral fitness to
enjoy it, and hence it is declared to be the portion of those
only who are made fit by "the washing of regeneration and
the renewing of the Holy Ghost." But our modern philo
sophical Christianity takes Plato's view of the nature of
the soul, and founds its doctrine of immortality on his
philosophy, and so, in spite of the teachings of Revelation,
holds that immortality is an attribute of nature and not
the gift of God through redemption in Christ.
We have seen also — what so perplexes the teachers of
our modern theology, but just what might be expected,
according to the view we advocate — that the ancient He
brews, who were more immediately under Divine instruc
tion, had no idea of the immortality of man by nature, nor
indeed, of any future life of any kind for him, excepting by
a miraculous resurrection from the dead, nor of the per
petuation of that life beyond the grave for any, excepting
such as should be approved by God as worthy of this boon.
It was only after these Divinely instructed people had
fallen away from the teachings of Moses and the prophets
of God, that came after him, and their religion had be
come corrupted by intercourse with other nations, that
they began to entertain the false and fanciful notions of
the future state that prevailed among them in latter
times. We have seen how this almost universal sentiment of

540 conclusion. [Chap. V.
the heathen world, in favor of a life of some sort, hereafter,
so far from sustaining the philosophical doctrine of the
natural and necessary immortality of all men — when cor
rectly interpreted — powerfully confirms that for which we
are contending ; as taught in the Word of God ; namely,
that there is, indeed, a life for all men beyond the present,
by a resurrection from the dead, for the purpose of judg
ment and retribution ; but it is a resurrection to the Life
Everlasting for those only who shall be fitted for such a
boon ; and those who shall not be found worthy, after be
ing judged and condemned, will perish in the second death,
from which there is no recall. This sentiment, which so
excites the hopes and fears of men, and which has been
wrought into so many fanciful forms, shows just this, and
no more: that God made man capable of immortality;
that He desires and intends to give him eternal life, if he
shall be fitted for it ; but not otherwise. It is the very
object of a Divine Revelation to make known to man the
way of eternal life ; and this sentiment was intended to
operate as a powerful incentive to seek to learn that way,
and to accept of the conditions of Life as made known to
him in the Gospel.
It is not surprising that the ancient philosophers, to
whom this Revelation had not come, should have inter
preted this sentiment as an assurance of present immor
tality ; nor that the tempter should have been able to be-
jjuile men in their ignorance and darkness, as he did our
first parents, into the belief that death is not the penalty
of sin ; but that those to whom this Revelation has been
given, making known so clearly both the penalty and the
remedy; namely, "The wages of sin is death, but ihe gift
¦of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord," should
ignore its teachings on this great question of the future
life, and go back to the heathen philosophers for their

Sec. I] summary of the argument. 541
arguments, and accept of their erroneous conclusions — this
may well excite astonishment. "Be astonished, O ye
heavens at this, and be ye horribly afraid ; be ye desolate,
saith the Lord ; for my people have committed two evils ;
they have forsaken me the Fountain of Living waters, and
have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can
hold no water."
This was the great central truth that Christ taught
when He came ; that it was only through Himself that
any child of Adam could have Eternal Life: "I am "the
Resurrection and the Life ;" " He that believeth on the
Son hath Everlasting Life, and he that believeth not the
Son shall not see the Life." This was the only doctrine
that was preached by His disciples and immediate follow
ers for the first one hundred and fifty years or more of the
Christian Era.
But the philosophy of Plato had come to prevail very
generally, even before the coming of Christ, and we have
seen how, at the time of His advent, the whole Jewish
people had fallen more or less under its influence.
This was one of the sources of corruption against which
the infant Christian Church had to contend, and against
which the Apostle Paul especially warns them ; " I fear,"
says he, " lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve,
through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted
from the simplicity which is in Christ." And again, " Be
ware lest any man spoil you through ^philosophy and vain
deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of
the world, and not after Christ."
For a time, in poverty and persecution, the simplicity
and purity of its faith were in some good degree main
tained. But as the church increased in numbers, and
wealth, and power, and especially, as men of learning and

542 conclusion. [Chap. V.
influence allied themselves with the professed followers of
Christ, its simple forms of doctrine and worship were modi
fied, and accommodated to their philosophical notions, and
their tastes. These men were elevated to positions of
influence and authority in the church. They became its
teachers and leaders. Many of them had been educated
in the schools of Grecian philosophy; some had been
teachers of this philosophy before their conversion, and
continued to teach it after they had professed to embrace
Christianity. It was no difficult matter in that age of
comparative ignorance among the masses, for them to
mould and shape the doctrines of the Gospel system into
an apparent agreement with their own philosophical sys
tem; for there were, as we have seen, many points of
agreement between them.
This was not done, indeed, without protest or opposition
on the part of those who were faithful to the doctrines of
Christ. But before many centuries bad elapsed, all open
opposition had been silenced, by authority, if not by argu
ment ; and the Christian doctrine of Immortality through
Christ only, had become completely subverted, and the
Platonic doctrine of the immortality of all men by nature,
had taken it place, and had been declared, by the Lateran
Council, to be the true doctrine of the Christian Church.
It was declared to be Heresy to deny it.
Many of the grosser errors of the Papal Church were
exposed and rejected by our fathers in the Reformation ;
but the work of reform was only begun ; it was not com
pleted. It could not be, in one generation, and in that
age. They did all that earnest Christian men under their
circumstances could be expected to do. Indeed, we are
rather astonished at the amount of work they did accom
plish, than that they should leave anything for tiieir sue-

SeC. I.] SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT. 543
cessors to do, in restoring the Church of Christ to the
simplicity and purity of its primitive faith and practice.
This philosophical error had so entrenched itself at the
very foundation of the Christian system, and so insinuated
itself into all its essential doctrines ; entering by education
into all their forms of religious thought and expression,
that they could not be expected to see it as clearly, and
extirpate it as easily, as they could see and lop off the
superficial branches of error, that had sprung from the
same source. Yet Luther, and others of his time, did see
it, and protest against it ; and so have many since his
time. But the work of thoroughly exposing and extirpat
ing this great fundamental error — the most popular and
widely-prevalent of any that has ever opposed itself to the
Gospel of Christ — has naturally, and perhaps necessarily,
been left to try the faith of a more enlightened, critical and
thoroughly Christianized age.
And now, in the progress of thought and inquiry, this
has come to be one of the chief religious questions of the
day. Indeed, the great conflict that is now waging between
Science and Religion, Truth and Error, Faith and Skep
ticism, the Evangelical System and Infidelity, centers right
here in, What is the nature of man and what is the char
acter of the Deity? Is man a Being, or a Creature? Does he
possess Immortality in his own right, by nature, or does he
need a Savior to give him Eternal Life ? Has Evil be
come an integral part of the Divine Economy, and is it to
be forever perpetuated in the sin and misery of an unsaved
portion of His creatures ? or is it but an incident, an Epi
sode, to be made to redound to the praise of the riches of
His grace in the Salvation of all who will be saved, and of
His justice, in the destruction of all the irrecoverable, and
of his power and goodness, in the eventual extinction of all
evil persons and things?

544 conclusion. [Chap. V.
The prevalent philosophy which affirms the former, and
denies the latter of these alternatives, and which is still
embodied in our church creeds as fundamental to the
Christian system, and made the test of orthodoxy in theo
logical circles, is now seen to be so inconsistent with the
wisdom, justice, and goodness of God, that the masses are
repelled from the sanctuary where it is taught ; the Sacred
Scriptures, into which it has been imported by interpreta
tion and comment, are sneered at and scouted by thought
ful men, because they really, but erroneously, suppose it to
be there ; and thousands on every side are turning from
the God of the Bible — as they have been taught to regard
Him — to the God of Nature, and demanding a theodicy
that is not abhorrent to the moral sense, or none. Our
best Christian scholars are driven by the absurdities and
contradictions of their traditional theology, to a critical
examination of the Word of God, and of the foundations
of their faith, as never before.
While there is much to be feared in regard to many,
there is much also to be hoped for, as the final outcome of
the present unsettled state of religious thought : for the
truth of God is mighty and will prevail, though this may
not be, till after a fearful struggle, which shall prove dis
astrous to many.
There is more independent thought and inquiry at the
present time, than ever before. Human conceits, and tra
ditional errors, that have been read into the Word of God,
like noxious weeds sown by unfriendly hands in an other
wise beautiful garden, are being uprooted and cast out :
good and thoughtful men, through much opposition and
fear and hesitancy at first, as is natural, are coming in in
creasing numbers to the discovery and joyful acceptance
and acknowledgment of the truth as it is in Jesus— that
Life and Immortality are the gift of God's grace through

Sec. I.] SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT. 545
a Savior and not the natural inheritance of sinful man by
birth. The time is evidently not far distant, when this
will be the orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church,
when hesitating inquirers will see the truth clearly and
boldly proclaim it, and many of those who are now oppos
ing it because it is so unpopular, will say with equal sin
cerity, " I always thought so."
II. Under the head of Bible Terminology we have
carefully examined all the cardinal words of Scripture re
lating to this question, and have endeavored to restore to
them that true and natural signification of which they
have been robbed by our traditional theology in its efforts
to bring the Word of God into a seeming harmony with
human philosophy.
By an exhaustive collation of all the passages of Scrip
ture bearing on this point, it has been shown, that the
words nephesh and psuehe, which have been so capriciously
rendered, sometimes "life" and sometimes "soul," and by
more than forty other English words of various meanings,
in our version, designate that principle of life in man,
which he possesses in common with all animals ; that the
word Soul is never used, in the Scripture, in that higher,
spiritual sense which is now so common, to designate an
immortal principle or entity which is peculiar to man. It
is never spoken of in the Scriptures as deathless, or inde
structible ; but always, on the contrary, as frail, perisha
ble, and evanescent. The phrases, "immortal soul,"
never-dying soul," "ever-living soul," "deathless soul," "in
destructible soul," etc., which have become so common
under the teaching of this false philosophy, are not to be
found, nor anything like them, in any part of the Bible.
Nor is the word Soul ever used as synonymous with the
word Spirit, in the Bible, as is so common in our religious

546 conclusion. [Chap. V.
literature. The Hebrew and Greek words nephesh and
psuclie, which are used to designate the former, are never
confounded with the words ruach and pneuma, which desig
nate the latter. Soul and Spirit are as distinct from each
other as they are, each of them, from the body. Spirit is
that which is communicated to the creature, directly from
the Creator Himself, when life is given, and it is that
which is surrendered back to Him when the life or soul is
quenched in death ; and in that specific and special sense,
in which it is so often employed in the Bible, it character
izes the Divine inspiration which is peculiar to the chil
dren of God.
There is also a special word employed in the Scripture
to designate that higher life which is given by the Spirit
of God in regeneration, and . which is peculiar to His chil
dren. It is zoe, which is always translated " life." It is
especially to be distinguished from that other word, psuehe,
which is also sometimes, but not always, translated " life."
It is to zoe and never to psuehe, that the adjective aionios,
signifying eternal, is attached. It is unfortunate for the
ordinary reader, that we have not two separate words in
our language, as in the original Scripture, to designate
these two kinds of life, the psuehe life or soul, which mau
receives by his natural birth and which is perishable, and
the zoe life, which is given by God's Spirit in the new
birth, and which is so constantly declared in the Scripture
to be eternal ; for they are confounded with each other in
the popular mind. The great truth so emphatically set
forth — especially in the New Testament — that Immortality,
or Eternal Life, is given only by a new birth, and is the
peculiar possession of God's children, is greatly obscured
by this double service that is put upon our English word
Life.

Sec. Il] SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT. 547
We have shown that the words Death and Life, as
indicating natural phenomena, need no explanation ; that,
like all other phenomenal words, they may be used in a
tropical sense, is not to be questioned. But, that they
should always have a mystical, unusual, tropical sense put
upon them in the Bible, when referring to the destiny
of man, no reason can be assigned; but, that the
Platonic philosophy forbids them to have their ordi
nary natural meaning. For nothing is more evident than
that, if they are allowed to retain their ordinary sense, the
doctrine for which we contend is established beyond all
question. For the Scriptures most emphatically declare,
and with constant and uniform reiteration from Genesis to
Revelation, that Death is the penalty of sin and Life Eter
nal (zoe aionios) is the special gift of God's grace through
Jesus Christ the Savior.
It is only by changing the meaning of these two words,
when they refer to the final destiny of man, and making
the penalty of sin, which is declared to be death, to be
only a certain forlorn, miserable, sinful condition of life,
and not actual death, and the gift of God's grace through
Christ, to be only a certain pure and blessed condition of
life, and not actual life itself, that the Scripture can be
made to seem to agree with that philosophy, which it really
contradicts. If this word zoe of itself means endless purity
and blessedness, as some have endeavored to show, it would
be tautology to call it, aionios zoe — everlasting endless
purity and blessedness ; for this adjective is attached to it
scores of times in the New Testament : that it means some
thing more than purity and blessedness, without regard to
its continuance, as others have contended, is evident from
the fact that while it is always employed, whenever such a
life is spoken of, it is sometimes used to designate life itself
without any reference to its character or condition — as, for

548 conclusion. [Chap. V.
example, Luke 1 : 75 ; Acts 8 : 33, and 17 : 25; 1 Cor. 15 :
19 ; 2 Tim. 1:1; James 4 : 14. (See citations, pp. 123-5.)
So also, in regard to thanatos, death ; if this word be em
ployed to designate synply a forlorn, miserable, sinful con
dition of life or existence, then there is no reason why the
word aionios, signifying " eternal," should not be united
with it, as with zoe. But this is never found in the Scrip
tures, though the phrase " eternal death," which has been
coined to suit the new meaning given to the word, is very
common in our theological literature. But death, the
death which is the penalty of sin, when it is finished, is a
finality of itself apd needs no helping adjective.
The word "Hell" literally signifies a place of conceal
ment: as such, it is the common receptacle of both the
good and the bad, when they die. The ideas that are now
commonly associated with it, making it a place of eternal
torment for the wicked, have their origin, not in the Chris
tian religion, but in heathen superstition.
The Hebrew word Sheol, and the Greek word Hades,
which are so often, but not uniformly translated " hell " in
our common version, originally had the same signification,
and are so employed in the Bible to designate that dark,
hidden place, into which all men go at death, irrespective
of their character. The criticisms made in a previous
chapter, on the translation of these words in our common
version, have been justified by the Revised version of the
New Testament, which has been given to the public since
that chapter was in print. In order to avoid the heathen
associations connected with this word " hell," the revisers
have uniformly dropped it, and given us the Greek word
hades untranslated in its place. They will doubtless do
the same with the word sheol in the Old Testament. It is
very much to be regretted that they could not have had

SeC. I.] SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT. 549
the independence to treat in the same way the word
Gehenna, which they have continued to translate " hell."
This is entirely a different word and has a most fearful
import. It is used to designate the place into which the
wicked only are cast to be forever destroyed. It evidently
indicates a place of awful, penal destruction. But it is u
proper noun, the name of a place, and not a common noun
like sheol or hades. Its translation should not have been
attempted — certainly not by the word " hell," which car
ries with it, in the popular mind, so many erroneous asso
ciations. But we are thankful that some advance has been
made, in the way of allowing the Word of God to speak
the truth to its English readers on this question.
The word and combination of words, usually translated
Forever, Eternal, Everlasting, etc., in the Scriptures
require no special pleading or explanation, to bring them
into accord with the doctrine for which we contend. We
have no occasion to limit their signification. While they
are often unquestionably limited, by the objects or events
of which they are predicated, it ought not to be denied
that they are also used, in many cases, to designate time
that is without limit or end.
If the word kolasis, rendered punishment, with which
aionios is once, and only once associated in the Scriptures,
instead of being understood exclusively in a subjective
sense, as those who hold to the doctrine of endless sin and
suffering would confine it in this place (Matt. 25 : 46), be
taken, as we think it should be, in an objective and demon
strative sense, to imply a cutting off, or a deprivation of
that eternal life to which the righteous are called, then it
may well be termed everlasting or eternal ; for the exclu
sion of the wicked is equally irreversible and perpetual
with the inclusion of the, righteous.

550 conclusion. [Chap. V.
Finally it was shown, under this head of Terminology,
that the Second Death implies a First death, and that
the second must be like the first, or the adjective (deuteros)
second has no application. The First death, to which the
whole family of man, both good and bad, are subject, is
in its nature final, and would have been actually final, had
it not been for redemption in Christ. It is only on this
account, and by a miraculous resurrection, and not by any
natural Vis Vitce of his own, that man lives again, after he
has once died. But it is only those who are found worthy
of Eternal Life, who never die again. One must be born
the second .time in order to live forever. As for the rest,
whether many or few, there is a second death for them,
from which there is no recall, for they are destroyed "with
an everlasting destruction."
III. Clearing these cardinal terms of the false and mys
tical signification which tradition has put upon them, and
taking them in their ordinary and proper sense, we come,
under the head of Bible Eschatology, to the inquiry,
" What saith the Scripture ?" From this, as the only in
fallible and authoritative teacher on this great question,
we learn:
1. That Holiness is the fundamental law of God's uni
versal government; that sin is not only productive of
misery, but, in the end, of death. It is in its very nature
episodical and transient. Nothing but the good and the
true has the elements of stability. All else must pass away.
2. That man was created under this law of holiness, and
that his immortality was expressly conditioned upon his
conformity to it, and that by disregarding it, he became,
through sin, subject to death. But in pronouncing his sen
tence of condemnation, intimations of hope were given,
that God, in His great mercy, would provide a way by

Sec. I.] SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT. 551
which he might be restored to life, and the enjoyment of at
blessed immortality.
3. While the Scriptures preserve such an absolute
silence in regard to the natural immortality of fallen man,
that not one hint of it can be found in them all from be
ginning to end, they are full of hints, intimations and
assurances of a Divine interposition in his behalf, which,
though very vague at first, grow more and more full and
clear till, in the fulness of time, Life and Immortality are
brought to light in the Gospel through Jesus Christ the
Savior — brought to light, we say, not however as a natural
fact, hitherto hidden, but as a miraculous provision made for
man by Divine grace. Christ came not simply to proclaim
this great truth, but to make it possible for man to have
the boon, to procure it for His people, to proclaim Himself
as its Author and Giver, and to make known the condi
tions of its bestowment.
4. The system of offering animal sacrifices, which was
so early instituted and rigorously insisted on by Divine
command throughout the whole dispensation preparatory
to the coming of Christ, becomes in the light of this truth.
eminently significant and full of meaning. In any other,
it is arbitrary and mysterious. These innocent animals
were not imprisoned nor tortured ; but put to death, and
offered to God for His acceptance, in token of the sinner V
forfeiture of life, and of his hope of obtaining mercy, and
the restoration of the forfeited boon, through the offering
of the Great Sacrifice which God Himself had promised to
provide. 5. That sinful man has become a mortal and transient
creature is shown, not simply by the silence of the Word.
of God with respect to any natural immortality possessed
by him ; we find in them something more than a negative
testimony to the doctrine we are contending for. They

552 conclusion. [Chap. V.
assert most positively, and with constant reiteration, under
every form of language and figure of speech, that he has
by sin incurred the penalty of death — not simply misery,
but death; that he must die, must perish, must be destroyed
utterly and forever ; and that there is no possible way of
escape for any one, but by a Divine interposition, as made
known in the Gospel.
6. Then again, the Scriptures are seen to be equally full
of passages giving assurance of " immortality," " eternal
life," " length of days forever and ever," under a similar
variety of expression, to all who shall seek His forgiveness
and favor, in the way of His appointment, by a new birth,
and resurrection from the dead.
7. Still further, as if to put this question of death on
account of sin, and immortality only by redemption and a
new birth, beyond the possibility of doubt or controversy,
these two classes, the saved and the unsaved, and their
respective destinies of life everlasting, and of remediless
death, are put into opposition and contrast with each other,
and what is affirmed of the one class, is denied of the other,
in other collated passages of Scripture equally numerous
and various.
8. Finally, we have intimations and assurances running
through the whole Sacred Volume, and growing fuller and
. clearer as we come to the close, of the glorious issue of the
struggle now going on between Holiness and sin, good and
evil, life and death, in the final destruction of all evil
agents and agencies, and systems and persons, and things
of every sort, and the complete purification of this universe
— so complete that neither " root nor branch " of evil shall
remain ; that "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge
of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea,"
and that " in the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, of
things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under

Sec. I.] 'summary of the argument. 553
the earth, and that every tongue shall confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father."
9. But among all the thousands of passages, under all
the various forms of utterance employed in the Scriptures,
it would be strange if some utterances could not be found
upon which human philosophy might put another con
struction — passages which by misinterpretation or misappre
hension might seem to contradict the general sentiment of
the whole. The Bible is no more exempt from such mis
construction, than any other document. Indeed, from the
nature of its utterances and for many other reasons, it is
peculiarly liable to misinterpretation. Hence controver
sialists and partisans of every name, have sought support
for their various conflicting views, in the Scriptures. And
they have never failed to find what they sought, in certain
passages or phrases more or less numerous, which could
easily be construed to suit their requirements.
It is not denied that there are certain passages which
may be interpreted so as to favor the doctrine of Plato,
that man is immortal by nature ; that the wages of sin,
instead of being actual death, is a state of sin and misery
endlessly perpetuated ; that the peculiar gift of God to the
redeemed is not eternal life, but only a happy condition of
that life, which needs no Savior to make it perpetual ; that
this universe of God shall never be purified, but that sin,
having entered it, shall never be dislodged ; that it shall
always be divided into two antagonizing kingdoms, the
Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Hell, and that,
while the one shall be filled with purity and blessedness
and glory, the other shall be filled with sin and misery and
cursing, and that both shall run parallel with each other
to all eternity. But these texts are very few; some of
them ambiguous, and others misinterpreted and'misapplied.

554 conclusion. [Chap. V;
We find but just one, in all the Old Testament that will
bear any such construction, and this only by being misread
(Daniel 12 : 2).
In the New Testament there are two or three quotations
from the prophets, which, if taken in a sense entirely dif
ferent from that in which the prophets employed them,
may be made to appear to sustain the doctrine of eternal
torment, and one parable, which, if interpreted, not as a
parable, but as a sober, historical fact, may be used to sus
tain the same doctrine.
The book of Acts and the Epistles are found to be re
markably free from any passage or expression which, by
any semblance of fair interpretation, can be construed as
teaching or implying that there is any immortality for sin
ful man in himself, or that any other doom awaits the im
penitent, but that of everlasting destruction, or that there
is any hope of Eternal Life for any one, but by a new
birth, a resurrection from the dead and union with Christ
the Savior.
But in the Apocalyptic vision of the conflict between
truth and error, holiness and sin, Christ and Satan in this
world, and of the final victory of our Lord — among all its
highly wrought figures and expressions — there are two pas
sages, both evidently quoted from the prophets, which, if
taken literally, and carried over into the world beyond,
where they have no application, where it is expressly de
clared there is1 to be no sin or sorrow, or pain or death,
may be made to appear to contradict the whole tenor of
the Scripture, and to sustain the doctrine, that Satan and
his hosts shall live forever, and that sin and misery shall
be eternally perpetuated.
When we consider the effort that has been made to find
support for this miserable heathen doctrine in the Word of
God, and the way in which this Word has been handled

SeC. I.] SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT. 555
by its advocates, we are astonished, not that they should be
able to find so many proof texts, as they are called, in
favor of their doctrine, but rather that they should be able
to find no more. We verily believe, that there is no con
siderable error of the Papal Church, that cannot make a
better showing from the Word of God than this, the most
anti-Scriptural of them all.
IV. It has not been thought important to devote much
space to the consideration of the Rational Argument for
or against this doctrine of the natural immortality of man.
For the Divine Word is, and must ever be, our only au
thoritative and reliable source of knowledge on subjects
hke this. Indeed, it has been given to us for the purpose
of making known truths that are beyond the reach of hu
man wisdom. No man has ever been wise enough to tell
us what the Soul is, much less, without a Divine Revela
tion to foretell its destiny.
It would be folly, then, to attempt to base any solid
argument on the guesses of heathen philosophers, as to the
nature and destiny of man, or to spend our strength in
showing their fallacy, when we have the sure Word of
God upon which to found our faith.
1. It might be inferred from the voice of Nature within
man, that he was intended by his Maker for another life,
but whether that life is to be, in any case, an endless life,
or how the life everlasting can be secured, he cannot know
without a Revelation. Indeed, there cannot be any such
life without a Divine Savior. It is the fatal defect of Plato's
philosophy that its foundations were laid in the intellectual
nature of man. The Bible tells us that the only sure
foundation is in his moral fitness, which only can bring
him into union and fellowship with God.
2. It is not in the instincts of man, nor in his capacity

556 conclusion. [Chap. V.
for progress and improvement, but in the direction in
which that progress is made, that determines whether he
shall reach the goal of his hopes. "To him that hath shall
be given and he shall have yet more abundantly ; but from
him that hath not, shall be taken away, even that which
he hath."
3. The analogy of Nature, instead of sustaining the
argument for the natural and necessary immortality of all
men, affords the strongest presu mpti ve argument that Nature
can possibly give, for the survival of the fittest only.
4. Popular and traditional belief upon speculative ques
tions carries no more force than there is force in the evi
dence upon which it is founded. So far as it foretokens
another life beyond the present in which there shall be
judgment and retribution for the deeds done in this life, it
may well be regarded as the voice of God within man ;
for this is just what His Word declares. But this Word
also declares that this future life shall issue in " length of
days forever and ever " only in the case of those who are
fitted for it by Divine grace, and that all the unworthy
shall perish in a second death from which there is no re
covery. This popular belief rarely concerns itself with the ques
tion of immortality. It simply concerns itself with the
immediate future. The doctrine of a personal, individual
immortality, as it has been formulated by Christian phi
losophers of the Platonic school, has not been the general
doctrine of the heathen world, but rather the doctrine of
complete absorption into the Divine essence and the loss of
all individual being after various transmutations and trans
migrations — a doctrine rather of annihilation than of
immortality. Some of the ancient heathen, like the
Egyptians, held to the doctrine of the actual destruction
of those whom the gods did not receive, and to the immor-

Sec. L] SUMMARY OF the argument. 557
tality — so far as they held to any actual immortality — of
those only who enjoyed the Divine favor.
5. The argument that it is improbable that God would
have suffered such an error as the one we are opposing —
if it be an error — to become so popular and to prevail so
extensively throughout Christendom, would have some
plausibility if no other error had ever been permitted to pre
vail. But the history of the world, and even of the Church,
has been a history of conflict between truth and error, in
which the truth has often been overcome and suppressed for
long ages. It was against such errors as this, and, indeed,
as we think, against this very philosophical error, that the
early Christians were especially warned. In fact, its popu
larity is one of the strongest evidences against it. The
simple Gospel of Christ was not popular in his day and
has not been since. It is in its very nature humbling to
man's pride, in that while it brings him good news, it also
shows him his perishing need of a Savior to whom he must
be under such infinite obligation. No wonder that he
should be willing to reduce his obligation to the minimum,
and welcome the assurance that he holds in his own right,
as a man, that greatest of all boons, which the Gospel tells
him he can possess only as an unmerited gift of God's sov
ereign grace through Jesus Christ His Son.
6. The argument from utility might be urged with some
show of reason, if this doctrine of future punishment, as
tradition has given it to us, were operating to promote a
higher regard for the majesty of the Divine law, and for
its Author as a God of justice, goodness and truth ; if it were
operating to restrain men from sin, and to make them feel
the need of a Savior. But: its operation is just the reverse.
It is driving men into antagonism to the Bible, which is
supposed to teach it, and a denial of the God of the Bible.
It is one of the prime sources of the skepticism, infidelity,

558 conclusion. [Chap. V.
and the various forms of unbelief that are prevailing more
and more throughout the Christian world.
Men are as ready as ever tp believe the traditional
dogma upon which the Church of Christ still insists — that
every child of Adam has a soul that is absolutely immor
tal, because it flatters their pride. But the logical and
necessary conclusion to which this dogma inevitably leads
all believers in the Bible, with respect to the unsaved, they
cannot and will not accept. Hence they are turning
for relief, in increasing numbers, to some form of Univer
salism or Restorationism. Thoughtful men are forsaking
the sanctuaries where this doctrine of endless sin and misery
is preached. Indeed, the clergy very generally have ceased
to preach it, and not a few of them, to believe it. And
yet, what shall they believe ? What shall they preach ? If
this dogma is accepted, there are but two alternatives.
One of them casts such reproach on the character of God,
is so opposed to the spirit of the Gospel, and so at war
with the moral sense of every man, that it cannot be en
tertained ; the other is so flatly contradicted by the letter
of God's Word as to require no little ingenuity and special
pleading and wresting of the Scriptures to make them
seem to favor it. No wonder that intelligent Christian
men, in such a dilemma, are willing to call themselves
agnostics, though they would refuse to own the harsher
name of infidels or unbelievers. No wonder that those who
look to their bewildered guides for religious instruction, are
all at sea in their faith, and know not which way they are
drifting. There can be no consistent nor safe religious teaching till
we come back to the true starting point, and accept the
testimony of God's Word as to the nature and destiny of
man. This is every way credible, though it be humbling
to man's pride ; it is every way honorable to God ; it mag-

Sec II.] incidental and indirect evidences. 559
nifies the riches of His grace in the Gospel ; it gives to
Christ the Savior the crown of glory, which He claims as
the only Bestower of Eternal Life, and is the only foun
dation upon which any sinful, perishing mortal can build
bis hopes for eternity. .
Nor will the masses be again recalled to the house of
God, which they have forsaken, nor will the Gospel itself
recover its ancient power over their hearts and lives, until
this burden of a false philosophy with which it has been
so long encumbered is thrown off, and it is again preached
and received as the message of eternal life to dying men.

SECTION n.
Incidental and Indirect Evidences.
We had intended to add to the foregoing summary in
this closing chapter a variety of miscellaneous conside
rations, which may properly be called indirect or inci
dental evidences tending to corroborate our main position ;
but the unexpected proportions to which this volume has
already grown, and the space that must yet be given to
the articles contributed to our Symposium, constrain us to
touch upon only a few of them, in the briefest possible
manner, and to omit the others altogether. This we do the
more willingly, in view of the fact that some of them will
be made the theme of remark in the contributed papers
that are to follow.
Whenever any Christian doctrine is found to be in con
flict with itself and with other doctrines known to be true,

560 conclusion. [Chap. V.
and to lead to incredible conclusions, we ought to infer
that it is either wholly or partially unsound. On the other
hand, whenever any doctrine is found to harmonize with
itself, and with all other known truth, and to throw much
light on many dark places in the. Word of God, and to
solve for us mysteries otherwise inexplicable ; all this — if
not to be taken as an absolute proof of its soundness —
ought certainly to commend it to our favorable considera
tion. This describes, as we think, the case as it stands be
tween the two doctrines brought into comparison in this
discussion. 1. Thedoctrine of the unconditional and necessary immor
tality of man, however agreeable it may be to the instincts
of our nature, or flattering to our pride, is encompassed by
many difficulties. No one pretends that it can be demon
strated from reason or nature that man, even as a holy
creature, possesses the power oi an endless life ; and now
that he has fallen from his normal condition by sin, the
Word of God, as well as His providence, certainly seems
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 with any sort of
plausibility, a new and forced construction must be put
upon the entire testimony of Revelation. Its language
throughout, when referring to the destiny of man, must be
taken in an unnatural and mystical sense. It leads di
rectly to conclusions concerning God and the character of
His government that are appalling, and that shroud Him
in terrible gloom ; and which bring different parts of His
Word into conflict with each other. It throws a mystery
over many of its doctrines that would otherwise be clear
and intelligible. 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

Sec. II.] incidental and indirect evidences. 561
creature would be able to comprehend a complete system
of Divine truth, and to fathom all its depths, and solve all
its mysteries, in any case, or that under the most correct
representation, the natural heart of the sinner would be
made to beat in sympathy with the Holy Character of God
and the doctrines of His Holy Word. But all truth, so
far as it is discoverable, whether in Nature or in Revela
tion, should harmonize with itself, and no man, whether
sinful or holy, ought to be expected to accept of doctrines
that are at war with his reason and moral sense.
Dr. Horace Bushnell well says in the preface to his
Nature and Supernatural, that " any view which takes in
easily all the facts of the subject must be substantially
true." This is what may be said with emphasis of the
view we are advocating. It gives a unity, beauty and
glory to the Christian system which are in astonishing con
trast with the mediaeval system of theology, which tradi
tion has given to us. Scholastics, and metaphysical theo
logians and philosophers of the Platonic school have
labored through long ages, and vainly labored, to bring
their theodicies and their theologies into harmony with the
written Word, and to make them agree with the moral
sense of the Christian world, or even with that of the
heathen world. Our Christian missionaries find the same
difficulty in explaining away the hard, and we may say,
the abominable features of the system they professedly hold
and sometimes attempt to unfold to their hearers. They
are frequently confounded and silenced by the stunning
objections which the acute heathen controversalist brings,
to what they may well call the " weak points " of their
system. A missionary in India who has recently come to our
view of the truth writes :
" Years ago, and before God had brought me to receive

562 conclusion. [Chap. V.
Scripture teaching as I now receive it, I was often sorely
pressed in arguments by these men of brains around me
(especially those known as Brahminists) in relation to the
Christian doctrine oi unending suffering ; in vindication
of which dogma I was necessitated to resort to a species of
argument which I felt to be as sophistical to my own mind
as it was evidently unsatisfactory to my questioners. I
have now, however, to bear testimony to a new and differ
ent kind of experience. Caviling Hindoos still ask me the
same set of questions concerning the nature and extent of
God's vengeance ; the triumph-twinkle in their eyes indi
cating that they have anticipated my answer and are only
politely waiting to hear my words confirm their anticipa
tion before launching out into a strain of cutting satire or
assumed virtuous indignation at Christians attributing
such a character to God. Their pent-up eloquence, how
ever, rarely finds its desired vent. A minute or two spent
in repudiating the doctrine, as it is usually preached, and
five minutes more in laying bare to view the essence of
Christianity, as set forth by our Lord Jesus Christ Him
self (John 3 : 16-36) gives to the whole matter such a rea
sonable and unobjectionable aspect, that in the vast ma
jority of cases it leaves neither room nor desire for pro
tracted discussion." — (Extract from letter of Missionary
Hobbs, of Sewry, India.)
K the heathen, whose moral sense has been blunted by
the worship of gods as corrupt and as cruel as themselves,
cannot be made to credit the abominable injustice and
cruelty which these Christian missionaries attribute to this
new God of whom they preach, much less can the masses
in Christendom be made to credit them, or to accept of a
religion of which this very dogma is made a necessary
part, and one of the chief excitements to feeling and
action. No wonder there has been a reaction, and we have
such occasion to mourn its disastrous effects in promoting
skepticism and all sorts of unbelief and disbelief.
A converted Roman Catholic Priest gives his experience
with this doctrine as follows :

Sec. H.] incidental and indirect evidences. 563
" My extensive experience for twenty years as confessor
to thousands, whilst Apostolic Missionary in most of the
large towns in England, in many portions of Ireland, in
part of Scotland, and also in France, 4s, that excepting in
stances I could count on my fingers, the dogma of hell,
though firmly believed in by English and Irish Roman
Catholics, did no moral or spiritual good, but rather the
reverse. It never affected the right persons; it fright
ened, nay tortured, innocent young women and virtuous
boys ; it drove men and women into superstitious practices
which all here would lament. It appealed to the lowest
motives and the lowest characters ; not, however, to deter
from vice, but to make them willing subjects of sad, and
and often puerile, superstitions. It never (except in the
rarest case) deterred from the commission of sin. It caused
unceasing mental and moral difficulties, lowered the idea
of God, and drove devout persons from the God of hell
to Mary. When a Roman Catholic, I, on different occa
sions, conferred on this subject with thoughtful friends
among the clergy, who agreed with me in noticing and
deploring the same sad results. From the fear of hell we
never expected virtue or high motives or a noble life, but
we practically found it useless even as a deterrent. It
always influenced the wrong people and in a wrong way.
It caused infidelity to some, temptations to others, and
misery without virtue to most. The Roman Catholics are
very sincere and real ; and we found it difficult to avoid
violating the conscience, when we told them to love and
revere a God compromised to the creation of a hell of
eternal wretchedness for his own children ; a God perpe
trating what would be scorned as horrible by the most
cruel, revengeful, unjust tyrant on earth ; and yet we can
only think of God after the similitude of the most perfect
man." — (An address by Rev. R. Suffield at a meeting in
Sion College.") i
The effect of preaching this doctrine among the more
enlightened classes of the Protestant Christian world has
been found to be still more disastrous, if it were possible,
than among the Roman Catholics. We have inherited from

564 conclusion. [Chap. V,
their Church their medieval theodicy and their views of the
endless suffering of the lost, with little or no modification.
But our clergy have learned to preach these doctrines in
a more covert and cautious manner, or to ignore them
altogether, while they have nothing to put in their place
but such surmises, or guesses, or perhapses, as robs the
Gospel of its effectiveness and greatly " strengthens the
hands of the wicked that he should not return from his
wicked way."
2. The vulnerable point of the Christian system is in
this dogma, which is in truth no part of it, but has
been imported into it from the heathen world and claimed
to be by its would be defenders " one of the very corner
stones of the Christian system." It is against the logical
and necessary deductions from this dogma that skeptics,
infidels and opposers, of every name, level their shafts of
ridicule and their most telling arguments. In short, we
might say that all that is really assailable with any plausi
bility or any success has its roots in this dogma. Take
this away and there is little or nothing that they can say.
So long as the would-be defenders of the Gospel undertake
to maintain this embarrassing dogma, they go into the
contest so handicapped and weighted that they can never
expect to win a decisive victory for the truth.
3. The arguments of Universalists and Restorationists
against the doctrine of eternal sin and suffering have no
significance or force but in the assumption that the saved
and the unsaved are both alike immortal. This is the
very apple of discord between the two conflicting systems
of Origen and Augustine. Both were founded on this
Platonic dogma, and all that is atrocious in the one or
weak and fallacious in the other is due to the false postu
late on which they are based. Origenism is the natural
protest against the conclusions with respect to the unsaved

Sec. II.] incidental and indirect evidences. 565
to which the logic of the Augustinian school inevitably
leads. Its revival in our day is due to the same cause.
Nor can its rapid and alarming prevalence be checked,
until the Church takes her stand again upon the founda
tion of the prophets and apostles, Christ himself being
the chief corner stone, from which she has departed, and
proclaims again the doctrine that " length of days forever
and ever " is the peculiar privilege of the saints.
4. The doctrine of purgatory, of prayers and penance for
the dead, invocation of saints, and most, if not all of the
grosser errors of the Papal Church, have their roots in this
dogma, and draw all their strength and support from it.
5. So also of the doctrine of Ghostism, which is having
such a remarkable revival in our day, and is becoming so
popular and prevalent under the various forms and phases
which it assumes, is the natural offspring of this spiritualistic
philosophy — that death is not the end of life, but only the
release of the imprisoned soul ; that instead of being the
natural enemy of man, it is his friend and deliverer, and
leads him up to a higher, freer state of hging.
No wonder that under the influence of this delusion the
great Gospel doctrines of the Second Advent, the Resur
rection of the Dead, and the Judgment, are losing their
place in the Christian system, and men are beginning to in
quire: Why should Christ have died to redeem man
from death, if man does not die at? all ? Why should there
be a general Resurrection of the Dead, if man naturally
rises himself? Why should Christ come again to call His
people, if when they leave this life, they go at once to
meet Him ? Or, why should there be any Judgment of
the Dead, if men glide into their own appropriate sphere
in the spiritual world when they leave this ? And so our
popular religious teachers are telling their delighted hear
ers that these great events of the future are but myths.

566 conclusion. [Chap. V.
They are writing books to explain them away, and our
" orthodox " journals are flattering them with words of
praise. One of them, in the course of a commendatory
notice of Dr. J. M. Whiton's recent work entitled The
Gospel of the Resurrection, says :
" This book teaches that as each one passes out of the
body having life from Christ, that life is found to be supe
rior to the power of death, and without any loss of time
the spiritual body is received and the spirit rises into the
felicity which is proper to its condition, judged as it has
been before by its own presentment of itself; and apart
from this there is no resurrection and no judgment. Res
urrection is a continuous reality, not a spectacular event ;
a development, and not a miracle. Scripture is made to
teach this by a process of spiritual interpretation, and the
difficult passages are all met and made to harmonize
readily with this view."
6. This is the fulcrum upon which the Socinian places
his lever for the overthrow of Evangelical Christianity.
Man is too high and noble a being, in his estimation, to
forfeit his life 0> Divine Justice. Hence he needs no
Divine Deliverer from death. He may need a superhu
man teacher, guide, friend, and, in this sense, a Savior,
but in no higher sense. But let him see the truth, as it is
revealed in the Scriptures, that man, however high he
might have stood before the fall, has become a mortal
creature, and that there is no immortal life for him except
ing as the Divine Life of God Himself be given him by a
new birth, that he needs, not simply to be reformed and
made better — he needs to be made a new creature, and
then he will begin to see that this must be the work of a
Divine Savior. To improve or restore what already exists,
might be the work of a man; but to communicate to
dying creatures the Immortality which God alone pos
sesses is the work of a Divine Being only. As in the first

Sec. II.] INCIDENTAL AND INDIRECT EVIDENCES. 567
miracle of Christ, it was not good wine that was made out
of that which was poor, but good wine that was made out
of what was no wine at all ; so in the miracle of regene
ration, He does not simply make men more pure and more
blessed, and so lift them up to heaven, but He makes them
new creatures and gives them another life, which, like His
own, is pure and blessed forever.
7. In the presence of this traditional dogma the doc
trine of Redemption is encumbered with serious difficul
ties, if not rendered quite incomprehensible. Christ re
deemed us from the penalty of the law, or He did not.
We hold that the penalty was death — literal, actual death
— not merely physical death, so-called, but the death of
the man himself, the whole man. And that Christ, in
dying the very same death that is denounced against the
Binner, paid the full penalty of the law and so redeemed
us from death. He does not save us from dying, but re
covers us from the dominion and power of death, by raising
us from the dead and by giving to us another life, even His
own immortal life. ?i
But if the death which was threatened as the penalty of
the law is to be understood as merely an eternal separa
tion from God, a forlorn existence in sin and misery with
out end, then He did not redeem us from death, He did
not pay the penalty of the law ; and all the ingenious hy
potheses that have been contrived to show how the infinite
dignity of the sufferer and the infinite agonies He suffered
were a complete counterpoise for the endless sufferings of
all the redeemed, serve only to confuse the mind and to
involve the question in still deeper darkness.'
8. Still further, what shall be said of Infants who have
not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression?
Are they under the curse of the law, or are they not ?
Paul says they are. What, then, is the curse of the law ?

568 conclusion. [Chap. V.
It is death. If by this, actual death is meant, as we con
tend, then nothing can be urged against the justice of God
in introducing all the children of Adam into this life as
mortals ; for He could be under no possible obligation to
bestow immortality upon any creature as a natural endow
ment. It is evidently an act of grace for Him to redeem
them from this death and to bestow upon them another
life which shall be pure, blessed and endless. But if this
death is to be taken as an inheritance of endless sin and
misery to which all men are born in consequence of the sin
of Adam, then we may well ask, where is the justice in
exposing men to so horrible a doom through no fault of
their own ? It does not relieve the difficulty by saying that
Christ has redeemed us from so unjust a doom. Even under
the supposition that the salvation of the entire race were
assured, Redemption would not be an act of grace, for
which we should be thankful, but what every creature
might claim, as a simple act of justice.
But modern theologians of this school are less logical than
their fathers, who held to the eternal damnation of non-elect
infants. The orthodoxy of the present day does not re
quire men to be logical ' or consistent in their theology,
with respect to infants. They certainly are not ; for
it is denied that they are exposed even by their
descent from a guilty ancestry to this death, or that
they come under this curse of the law for anything
but their own sins. Then infants are not redeemed. Dying
before actual sin, they are saved without a Savior, and
there will be two classes in the coming kingdom of our
Lord. Only a part of our race will be able to sing the
new song : " Thou art worthy, for thou wast slain, and hast
redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and
tongue and people and nation, and hast made us unto our
God kings and priests; and we shall reign on the earth."

SeC. IL] INCIDENTAL AND INDIRECT EVIDENCES. 569
9. The doctrine of Infant Regeneration by Baptism
springs naturally outT>f this error, and derives all its plau
sibility from the notion that unregenerate infants are ex
posed to eternal damnation. Why should not this facti
tious doom be met and parried by a mere perfunctory act ?
The one is as efficacious as the other is imminent. But
neither of them has any ground of reason or Scripture on
which to stand.
10. Here is the real root of the difficulty which the Armin-
ian finds with those hard doctrines of the orthodox system
which are sometimes denominated Calvinism. It is not so
much of the doctrine of God's sovereignty that he com
plains, as of 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 the Almighty first
imperiled the eternal welfare 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 even 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 weal or eternal woe, but of life and death ; that
is, of immortality or mortality that was decided in Adam ;
and that every member of this fallen race, though a mor
tal by the condition of his birth, is answerable at the bar
of God for his own sins only, and that God exercises His
sovereignty, as indeed He must, in giving this higher life
'—His own peculiar life, the life everlasting — as He does
in giving any kind of life, to whomsoever He will, and no
man can call His justice or goodness in question, or say
unto him : " Why hast thou made me thus?" " Hath not
the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make
one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor ?"
11. There is nothing in the doctrine for which we con-

570 conclusion. [Chap. V.
tend that is opposed to the teachings of Reason or Nature;
but, on the contrary, it accords with -all their utterances,
and when we get away from the shadow of this great
dogma, we find that the teachings of Revelation are in
complete harmony with the teachings of Reason and
Nature. This truth agrees with the sanction 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 aspersions and
accusations of cruelty which the doctrine of compulsory
immortality 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 distinction be
tween the natural and the spiritual man, and 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 utterances of
Scripture that have long been regarded as dark and in
comprehensible. It is the key to many, if not to most, of
the questions that have been in dispute among Christians
in every age. It sets the believer on a vantage ground,
from which he may triumphantly meet the attacks of infi
dels and scoffers against the Bible as the Word of God.
12. Let that most peculiar and distinguishing privilege
of the saints, namely, " length of days forever and ever,!'
be conceded to all men in their sins, and the main argu
ment by which the Gospel is to be urged upon the world
is thrown away, and other and inferior motives must be
substituted — motives which are too often powerless, be
cause they commend themselves neither to the hearts nor.
consciences of men.
Let natural men be assured by the heralds of the Gos
pel, as Christ and His immediate followers assured them,.

Sec. II.] INCIDENTAL AND INDIRECT EVIDENCES. 571
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 also final and inevitable destruction as members of
a mortal race, and you have laid the foundation in truth,
for the presentation of the Gospel of Life, through an
atoning Savior, which, however humbling it may be to
their pride, they will find it hard to gainsay or resist.
13. When all Christians come to understand and accept
the truth on this question, the pccasion for most of their
doctrinal differences will be taken away.
The Church has ever been prone to frame her philo
sophical dogmas into articles of faith, and to insist on
making them, and not the simple faith of the Gospel, the
test of orthodoxy. The farther she has wandered from
the true foundation, the 'more pertinacious has she ever
been in insisting upon creeds and long-drawn formulas of
faith. Large branches of the Protestant Church to this
day are unwilling to take the simple Word of God, or a
condensed statement of its doctrines in the language of
the Bible, as their platform — but they must have books of
their own, into which the wood, hay and stubble of the
schoolmen have been gathered, to be mixed in due propor
tions with the Word of Inspiration, as their rule of faith
and ultimate appeal.
Richard Baxter well says :
" Two things have set the church on fire, and been the
plagues of it, above one thousand years : (1) Enlarging
our creed, and making more fundamentals than ever God
made. (2) Composing, and so imposing our creeds and
confessions in our own words and phrases.
" When men have learned more manners and humility
than to accuse God's language as too general and obscure
(as if they could mend it), and have more dread of God and
compassion on themselves than to make those to- be funda-

572 conclusion. [Chap. V.
mentals or certainties which God never made so ; and when
they reduce their confessions (1) to their due extent, and
(2) to Scripture phrase, that dissenters may not scruple
subscribing, then, and, I think, never till then, shall the
church have peace about doctrinals. It seems to me no
heinous Socinian motion which Chillingworth is blamed
for, viz.: Let all men believe the Scripture and that only,
and endeavor to believe it in the true sense, and promise
this and require no more of others, and they shall find this
not only a better, but the only means to suppress heresy
and restore unity. — (Practical Works, Vol. xxii., pp. 237,
238.) 14. Every true doctrine will bear examination and the
closest scrutiny. The more it is looked at and thought
upon, the more beautiful it will appear. But it is not so
with this traditional error which has been incorporated
into our church creeds. It needs to be covered up, apolo
gized for, or explained away, while it is still insisted on as
a necessary article, yea, as one of the corner-stones of the
Christian system.
This is the rock upon which thousands have made ship
wreck of their faith, only to go down into the dark waters
of doubt and disbelief. It has ever proved a great stum
bling-block to sincere believers and a source of untold
anxiety and perplexity to all thoughtful Christians. It
leads them to conclusions their hearts cannot accept, and
yet they must believe what they are assured by their
teachers is a part of Divine truth. The more they think
of it, the more hideous and repulsive does it become.
Their only remedy is to stop thinking, and try to exercise
a blind faith. They wish to love God, they try to love
Him, indeed they do love Him ; but He is not the God of
their creeds. Their spiritual instinct leads them to a
better God than their philosophy allows them.
15. In the light of the truth for which we contend, the
otherwise unaccountable omission of any mention of a

Sec. IL] INCIDENTAL AND INDIRECT EVIDENCES. 573
future life for the sinner in the Old Testament, or of the
natural immortality of man in either the Old or the New
Testament, is explained. Life and Immortality are brought
to light only in the Gospel, and there, not as the inherit
ance of all men by nature, but as the peculiar portion of
believers in Christ. The Law, in its spiritual and higher
application, was unknown. It was carnal, as the Apostle
says. It was received and understood only in its lower and
temporal import by those to whom it was first given. Under
Moses men were all treated as mortals, and approved and
rewarded, or condemned and punished, according as they
observed or disregarded its precepts.
Warburton devotes a large part of his learned work on
the Divine Legation of Moses to the proof of this propo
sition, to which every Bible scholar must give his assent :
That ihe doctrine of a future state of rewards and punislir.
ments is not to be found in, nor did it make a part of the
Divine legation of Moses.
Archbishop Whately maintains the same assertion in his
Lecture on The Scripture Revelations concerning a Future
State. He contends that if man had been on trial as to
the weal or woe of an endless existence, and if the sanc
tions of this law were actually eternal blessedness on the
one hand and eternal misery 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 commis
sioned lawgiver. When, however, we once recognize the
fundamental truth of both the Law and the Gospel, that
the eternal life which is brought to light in the Gospel is
the gift of God's grace through Jesus Christ to His people,
and not the reward of obedience to the Law, this mystery
vanishes at once, and we see the necessity there is for both
the Law and the Gospel. The Law, once broken, may still
remain as the rule of life and the schoolmaster to bring us

574 conclusion. [Chap. V.
to Christ, but it can afford no relief to those who have in
curred its penalty of death.
This great truth of life eternal through Christ is brought
to- light in the Gospel, not as a truth that had been kept
hidden from the world, but as a new fact that had no ex
istence, and could have none, but as the result of His
death and mediation. It was not a fact to be revealed,
excepting as the Savior who is the only source of this life
is also revealed.
16. But both this life, and the Savior through whom it
was to come, were typically foreshadowed in the sacrificial
system of the preparatory dispensation. Why those inno
cent animals should be put to death, rather than tortured,
or why they should be offered at all, is utterly inexpli
cable ; or what other possible significance this rite, so rig-
•orously insisted on as necessary to any acceptable ap
proach to God, could have had, but to set forth this great
two-fold fact, of man's forfeiture of life, and of redemp
tion through the blood of the greater Sacrifice yet to be
offered, no one can tell ; but this heaven-appointed reli
gious rite becomes luminous and full of significance in the
light of this view.
17. This view also helps us to explain certain passages
of Scripture which cannot be understood under any other.
For example, when Moses prayed God to " blot him out
of the book of life " which He had written (Ex. 32 : 32),
that he might die with the Israelites, if God should refuse to
pardon them ; or when Paul said he could wish that he
himself were " accursed from Christ, for his brethren and
kinsmen in the flesh" (Rom. 9 : 3), we cannot understand
them as being willing to be made forever sinful and
wretehed in company with those whom they so dearly
loved, if they could not be saved ; as we must, if we hold
to the doctrine of the immortality of the'lost. But we can

Sec. IL] incidental and indirect evidences. 575
only understand them to mean just what they say and
no more: that they could willingly sacrifice their own
lives for the salvation of their people, or perish with them,
if they must perish. In this they illustrate the self sacri
ficing spirit of our Lord, who gave Himself to redeem us ;
who died that we might live.
There are other passages, such as those that foretell the
destruction of the last enemy, Death, (1 Cor. 15 : 26,) and
the casting of Death and Hell (Hades) 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 this apostate race. But there is really no diffi
culty whatever but such as their own dogma imposes.
Mr. Barnes, in his notes on the latter passage, says :
" The idea is that death, considered as the separation of
the soul and body, with all the attendant woes, will exist
no more! The righteous will live forever, and the wicked
will linger on in a state never to be terminated by death !"
The editor of the Cottage Bible says :
" What is meant by ' death and hell,' or the grave, or
invisible world, ' cast into the lake of fire,' is not so clear.
We apprehend with Mr. Lohman that it is designed to in
timate 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."
Other commentators follow in the same track. How
completely they contrive to ignore the truth that lies on
the very surface ! And yet this is the way they " darken
counsel by words without knowledge," when they come
across any passage that conflicts with their notions about
the eternal perpetuity of death and hell, and sin and
misery.

576 . conclusion. [Chap. V.
18. Finally, this view throws much light on the great
question of the ages : The Divine permission of sin, or the
existence of sin in the universe. We may not be able by
searching to find out God, to find out the Almighty to per
fection. 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 in,
or which has come in without His permission, never can,-
or, at least, 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 over some portion of the field ; that He will per
mit the rival that rose up against Him in heaven, though
cast down to hell, to retain a portion of his prey and to
reign over them forever ; that He will concede to him and
all the victims of his wiles one province, at least, 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 king
dom of sorrow, a kingdom of praise and a kingdom of
cursing — running parallel with each other to all eternity.
No wonder that the wise and good in all ages have con-
" fessed themselves amazed and confounded by the enigma,
and utterly unable to see the goodness or wisdom of God
through the clouds which their own 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

Sec. III.] closing appeal. 577
the morning, when the sun shall shine forth in his strength ;
that it is, in some sense, preliminary and preparatory to
the coming in of the perfect day in its noontide splendor ;
that it is but an incident, an episode in the development
of His infinite plan — necessary, perhaps, to its complete
perfection, but not an integral part of 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 knowl
edge of the glory of God." That the very object for
which the Son of God came in the flesh, was to destroy
Satan and all his works, and He will surely accomplish the
object of His mission and "see of the travail of His soul
and be satisfied." " For He must reign till He hath put
all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be
destroyed is Death," and in the new heavens and the new
earth that shall follow " there shall be no more death,
neither sorrow, nor crying; neither shall there be any
more pain ; for the former things are passed away."

SECTION III.
Closing Appeal.

My dear Christian brethren: Suffer me in closing to
come nearer to you, and to address you, not in the formal
terms of authorship, but personally as one of your num
ber. I have endeavored to set before you earnestly, faith
fully, and with such ability as God has given me, what I
am well persuaded is the truth upon this great question of
life and death. I have written, not in the spirit of fault-

578 conclusion. - [Chap. V.
finding or bitterness, but with the earnestness of convic
tion and deep feeling, with a full sense of responsibility to
God, and with a supreme desire to honor the Savior and
His Gospel, and with love for all His people. I would that
my work were more worthy of the cause it advocates and
better deserving the attention of those to whom it is ad
dressed. But most of it has been written amid many dis
tractions, and under a burden of secular duties that have
heavily taxed my time and strength, and left me no oppor
tunity for continuous thought or elegant composition ; in
feebleness of body, and in the deepest affliction, and with
the conviction that I am rapidly approaching the end of
my career. I have been especially desirous of com
pleting this, my last work, before the Master shall call
me. Though I have written in haste, with the type-setter
close behind me, much of the time, as he now is, the
thoughts and sentiments which I have but poorly expressed
are not crude and hasty thoughts. They have been ma
tured by a careful study of many years. I have no
apology to make for them. I would rather commend
them to your serious attention.
After a service of forty years in the ministry of the
Gospel, during the first half and more of which, I preached
the traditional doctrine — the falsity of which I now see
and oppose — and preached it earnestly and boldly, because
I had been taught, as you have, to believe it to be true — .
may God forgive me, for I did it ignorantly — I think I
can appreciate the perplexities and embarrassments under
which you labor. God forbid that I should harshly cen
sure you for holding it, as I did ; but let me beseech you
to carefully and prayerfully examine the foundations on
which this traditional dogma rests. I am sure you will
not find it in the Word of God, but in opposition to
both its spirit and letter, and one of the most fruitful

Sec. III.] closing appeal. 579
causes of the skepticism and infidelity of the present day.
I know the almost insurmountable difficulty you will
experience in endeavoring to examine the question with
an independent mind. This traditional dogma has been
so inwrought into your mind, by education from infancy,
that it has become a part of your intellectual furniture.
It is held as an axiom. Your theological training has all
been based upon it. It has long been held as one of the
fundamental supports of the Christian system. The creeds
of your church, ecclesiastical surveillance, and popular
favor all forbid you to question its soundness. I can well
remember, not only how confidently I preached it, but how
I publicly debated it with those who called it in question,
and how I called the doctrine I now advocate, nothing
better than indirect Universalism, when, in fact, it is, as I
now see it, the only real antidote to this error.
I used the common arguments which are so familiar to
you, which I need not here repeat, as I have considered
them in the foregoing pages. I did not see their fallacy,
as many of you probably do not now.
Had I not, by the good providence of God, been car
ried to a foreign country, and freed from the pressure of
adverse surroundings and ecclesiastical restraints, and had
granted to me the time, the opportunity, and more than
all, the disposition to carefully examine the Word of God
on this question with an independent mind, relying on the
guidance of the Divine Spirit, which is promised to willing
inquirers, to lead them into all truth, I should, in all prob
ability, have been still holding, with you, this soul-darken
ing, God-dishonoring, anti-Scriptural dogma of heathenism,
which denies to Christ the Savior the glory of being the
only source of life and immortality to dying men.
There are two ways by which men are arriving at the

580 conclusion. [Chap. V.
truth on this question. The one is by an indirect, reductio,
ad absurdum process ; the other is by coming directly to
the Oracles of God, and inquiring, not of philosophy,.
nor of science, nor of tradition, but of Divine Revelation :.
What saith ihe Scriptures?
As an example of the first method, let me ask your
attention to Dr. Butler's letter in our Symposium. Any
intelligent, thinking man, when he follows out this dogma.
of the natural and necessary immortality of all men, to-
its logical result, connot avoid the conclusion, if he be
lieves the Word of God, that all the lost children of Adam
must be doomed to an eternity of sin and misery. If he
have within him a loving Christian heart, if he be jealous
of the honor of God, he naturally tries to escape from so
dreadful a conclusion — one which casts such reproach
upon the wisdom, justice and goodness of his Maker, and
which becomes more and more incredible when he comes
to suppose it to be real in the case of any fellow- creature,
however undeserving and vile he may be. And then,
when he sees what brutal, fiendish use has been made of
this doctrine in the Papal Church, and how even Protest
ant divines have pictured the unending horrors of the-
damned in that world of despair to which they consign all
unbelievers, all that is good and true and Christ-like within
him revolts at the doctrine. In this way many have been
driven over into some form of Universalism, in spite of
the manifest teachings of Scripture that sin when it is
finished bringeth forth death. Others have gone beyond,.
into the cold and dreary region of Infidelity and Agnosti
cism. This is the process that is rapidly going on at the
present time. But others, more faithful to the truth, and
less hasty in their conclusions, have been, like the brother
above referred to, set upon a more careful examination of
the Scriptures, to see whether they do really teach any such

Sec. III.] closing appeal. 581
doctrine. And if they examine them with any good degree
of care and independence, they soon make the heart-
relieving, joyful discovery that there is, in truth, no such
doctrine in the Scriptures ; that a false and heathen phi
losophy has ingrafted it upon them, and warped and per
verted its plainest terms to make them subserve her
wicked purpose ; that, instead of teaching any such horrid
doctrine, they teach just the opposite in the plainest lan
guage, when their language is taken in its obvious and
natural sense : " This is the record : That God hath
gtven to us eternal life, and this life is in His
Son. He that hath the Son hath the life, and he
that hath not the Son hath not the life."
The other, or the more direct way, was the one by which
I was led out of the hazy atmosphere, which my religious
and theological education had thrown round me, into the
clear light in which I now rejoice. On reading the Scrip
tures more carefully than ever before, I was struck with
the great emphasis that was laid on the doctrine of Life,
Eternal Life, in and through Christ the Savior. Espe
cially in the Gospel and in the epistles of John, I noticed
the constant reiteration of this truth. Turning to the
original Greek I found, what I had never before noticed,
that whenever this Divine life was referred to, whether in
Christ Himself or in His people, the word Zoe, and not the
word Psuehe, which is also rendered life as well as soul,
was used. I notice, still further, that the epithet aionios,
eternal, was constantly joined with this word Zoe, and never
in one single instance with the word Psuehe. I had been
taught that this word " life," when predicated of the people
of God meant simply a state of purity and blessedness, and
that its opposite, " death," when predicated of the wicked,
meant simply a state of pin and misery. But I found that

582 conclusion. [Chap. V.
this epithet aionios, eternal, was never joined with the word
•death. If these were two opposite states of conscious ex
istence, there seemed to be no reason why the same epithet
implying eternal should not be used to characterize the
one as well as the other. Still further, I found that this
word Zoe, signifying life, was sometimes used in the Scrip
tures in such a way as to forbid any such figurative under
standing of it. The inquiry then readily suggested itself,
why should such a figurative and exclusive use be given
to it when predicated of the righteous ? Why not under
stand it literally to mean life ? and if the Divine life of
the Savior in the soul of man, it would necessarily be a
Messed life, and also eternal. I could find no reason why
this figurative and restricted sense should be put upon this
word Zoe, life, when predicated of Christ and His people ;
nor any reason why the word death, when predicated of
sinners, should be taken in any other than its natural and
ordinary sense, but just this : If they were to be taken to
mean just what they say, and commonly, outside of the
Scriptures imply, then this Platonic dogma of the natural
and necessary immortality of all men through Adam and
not through Christ must fall to the ground, and Christ the
Savior must be admitted to be the only Source and Giver
¦of Eternal Life ; and death, not simply misery, must be
the final end of all the unsaved. They must actually per
ish in their own corruption. Here I found the key that
unlocked many a dark ward in the Christian system that
had hitherto been impenetrable, and let in a flood of light
that greatly surprised me, and relieved a thousand perplex
ities. Instead of losing anything out of the Christian
system of doctrine, I found all that is really orthodox and
dear to my heart, clarified, confirmed, and rendered incon
ceivably more precious. A black cloud was rolled away
from the face of my Heavenly Father, Christ the Savior

Sec. III.] CLOSING appeal. 583;
appeared to be an infinitely greater Savior than ever
before, and the Gospel infinitely more full of love and.
power; and the great doctrines of Redemption, Re
generation, Resurrection, and the Life Everlasting were
clothed with a new meaning and force. I wondered to
think that the Church of Christ and the world could have
remained so long under the enveloping cloud of error,
and have failed to discover this great truth that was
spread all over the surface of the Gospel. This I find to
be the experience of all my Christian brethren who have
come into this view with me.
Coming back to my own country I felt that I must make
known these clearer, richer views of Divine truth into-
which the Spirit of God had been pleased to lead me, and
it did seem as if they might be made equally clear
and precious to others. But I found that they were every
where regarded as heretical, dangerous to the peace of the
Church, and deserving of her severest reprobation. I
found that I could not preach Christ as the only hope of
life and immortality to dying men, as He Himself did and
as did the apostles after Him, in any of our so-called or
thodox churches, unless I did it by stealth. The periodi
cal press, the religious quarterlies and monthlies, and the
weekly organs of our various religious denominations were-
closed to any discussion of this great question, excepting
on the popular side, with now and then a sneer at any
foolhardy zealot who might venture to oppose himself to
the popular current and the tradition of ages.
The great book-publishing houses that had a reputation
for orthodoxy or sobriety to maintain, would not consider
for a moment the idea of publishing anything written in
advocacy of this pernicious doctrine of Life only in
Christ. I had no other resource left but to publish and
circulate at my own expense, with such scanty means as I

584 conclusion. [Chap. V.
could secure by labors outside of my chosen profession and
could spare for this purpose. Still further, kind-hearted
members of the ministerial body with which I had long been
connected, warned me of the danger I was incurring, and
advised me to silently retire from their communion by the
back door, lest I be made an example of, if I any longer
remained. When I respectfully declined — on the ground
that I was true to the polity and all the essential doctrines
•of my Church ; that I loved her institutions, her simple
modes of worship, and her fellowship, and that I held to
every article of her creed that had its roots in the Bible ;
and that I differed from my brethren only in believing
in the Word of God, and in the deadly ruin by sin, and in
the great salvation by Christ more fully than they did,
and that if I was to be cast out, they must take the initia
tive and the responsibility — a committee was appointed to
examine my book, The Theological Trilemma, which I
had issued, and to report to the body what action should
be taken. They brought in a verbal report of heresy in
general, with a resolution of summary dismissal. I in
sisted on a bill of particulars. As no one felt willing to
attempt to specify any one doctrine of the whole evangeli
cal system which I held in contravention of the Word of
God upon which we all profess to stand, and which is our
ultimate appeal, I was gently let down by a resolution dis
claiming any sympathy with the atrocious doctrine which
I advocated in my book, without specifying what it was,
and another dismissing me at my own request and recom
mending me to a sister body, which I was proposing to join,
and have since joined, as a worthy Christian brother of
irreproachable character. I have nothing but the kindest
feelings toward them all. They no doubt felt that they
were performing an important and dutiful though painful
act. I only hope it may prove as great a blessing to them-

Sec. IH.] CLOSING APPEAL. 585
selves as it has to me. I make no complaint, nor do I
boast of any peculiar hardships which I have experienced
in this cause ; but I cannot but rejoice, that I have been
counted worthy to suffer somewhat for my fidelity to this
great Gospel, though unpopular, doctrine of Life and Im
mortality in Christ alone.
My experience has not been rare, even in the present
day ; much less as regards the history of the past. Thou
sands have been called to suffer the loss of all worldly
good and of life itself for Christ and His cause. But the
day of supreme devotion to the traditions of the Church,
in opposition to the teaching of Scripture, and of eccle
siastical intolerance, is fast passing away. Even now,
in some of the branches of the Protestant Church, espe
cially in those that are more thoroughly organized and
guided in their faith and practice by their traditional
books rather than by the Word of God, it might not be
possible for any man, especially for a minister, unless he
should be one of commanding influence, to avow his belief
in this doctrine and remain in good and regular standing ;
but in the other branches, the day has already gone by
when it would be easily practicable to discipline and dis
miss any one simply for holding this doctrine, however
much he might suffer in his reputation for soundness and
in eligibility to any important position.
It is well, perhaps, that these hedges are set about our
Church creeds, and that there should be a conservatism in
the protection of even the errors that are mingled with the
truth. Men need to have the strength of their faith and
their sincerity tested. There is apt to be crudeness and
distortion in the perception of any new truth, or old truth
newly uncovered. It is not given to any one man, nor to
one generation of men, to formulate any. such truth in its
completeness. Every advance in the right direction must

586 conclusion. [Chap. V.
be contested, and it is not until all its weak points have-
been searched out, and its strong ones presented in their
due proportions, and in co-ordination with each other, and
in subordination to those that are higher, that they are
allowed to stand.
I do not presume to suppose that I have been so fortu
nate as to set.forth this great truth without any admixture
of error, or that I may not have laid myself open at some
unguarded points to lynx-eyed criticisms. But I do know
that I have come upon a great, precious Bible doctrine
that has long been covered up by the accumulated rubbish
of the ages, and I have been trying, in company with a
few scattered coadjutors, to uncover it and bring it to light
again. I have done what I could, and I must lea,ve it for
others to carry on and perfect the work.
A very extensive correspondence, with Christian brethren
of different denominations in this country and abroad, has
made me acquainted with the popular mind toward this
question, and enabled me to form some judgment as to the
prospects for the future. That the Gospel doctrine of im
mortahty through Christ alone has already been accepted
by not a few of our best Christian scholars in this and
other countries, and that it is fast gaining converts from '
among those who are careful to examine it with any degree
of earnestness and independence of thought, no one who
is informed on the subject will deny. But it is certainly
true that the great majority are still actually or profes
sedly holding on, with various degrees of tenacity, to the
old traditional doctrine of immortality apart from Christ
the Savior. Of these there are several classes :
1. There always has been, and always will be, a large
class of conservative men, who stand with their faces to
the past and their backs to the future, and will never let
go of any old traditional notion, however musty and rot-

See. III.] closing appeal 587
ten it may be, nor advance one step toward the opening
light of a better day, until absolutely compelled to do it,
and forced along by the rush of the passing current. It
is not likely that this volume will attract the attention of
any of these men, unless it be to excite their contempt or
anger. Indeed, nothing but the Spirit of God will dis
pose them even to consider, much less to accept the truth
which I have been endeavoring to set forth in these
pages. Indeed, I shall deem myself fortunate if they do
not so misrepresent it: as to deter others from considering it.
2. There are not a few earnest, faithful men, who, be
lieving in the natural and inevitable immortality of all
men because they have been taught to believe it, and be
cause others believe it, accept the dreadful conclusion with
respect to the lost, because they must, and not because they
love the doctrine. It is to them a logical necessity ; they
try to believe it, and sometimes think that they do, and yet
they secretly hope it may somehow not be true after all.
They preach it out of a sense of duty, but with reluct
ance, and as seldom as possible, and with ill-concealed mis
givings, and with an apologetic manner and tone. They
preach that God is to be loved, notwithstanding His ap
parent cruelty and injustice ; that the Scriptures are to be
believed, notwithstanding the dark and apparently unrea
sonable doctrines they utter concerning lost men. They try
to make their people believe as they do. They are often
very much in earnest in setting before their unbelieving
hearers the dreadful doom that awaits them in the endless
life that is to come. They try to rouse their believing
hearers to activity and prayer, in view of the awful danger
to which their impenitent friends are exposed. And some
times they succeed in stirring them up to spasmodic efforts ;
but in general with very meagre results. Saints and sin
ners alike are seen listening to their most earnest warnings

588 conclusion. [Chap. V.
and exhortations in view of the fearful and interminable
agonies of the lost in the world of despair — into which the
unconverted are daily declared to be dropping— with
calmness, if not with stolid indifference. The fact is,
their hearers do not truly believe these fearful utterances,
any more than the preacher himself. _ They will not, they
cannot believe them.
I well remember how I used to try to make the good,
moral men in my congregation, who were confessedly with
out any true love to God, believe that God would be just
in inflicting upon them and their children unmitigated and
eternal torment in the world to come ; but I could never
make them see it. That I might impress them with the
authority of a great name, I remember once reading from
the pulpit, instead of a discourse of my own, President
Edwards' terribly horrible sermon: The Sinner in the
Hands of an Angry God ; but it certainly produced no
good impression. It had no tendency to draw them
toward God, or to dispose them to seek an offered
Savior. But I am sure they could have been made to see and
feel, had I believed it myself, as I now believe it, and had
this been the doctrine of our churches, as it is of the Bible,
that they were having the reward of all their morality and
goodness, as they were passing along in this life, the only
reward they were seeking; that Infinite justice would
punish them in a future life for no sins of which they were
not guilty, nor beyond their personal deserts ; but that
they were unholy, mortal, transitory creatures, and desti
tute of that pure and blessed life which is Eternal ; a life
that is given only through Christ the Savior ; and unless
they were born again, and united to this ever-living
Savior, they must perish; but, that "God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoso-

Sec. IH.] closing appeal. 589
ever believeth on Him should not perish, but have ever
lasting life."
3. There are others who have already seen the absurdity
and untenableness of the position to which the old dogma
holds them. But they are so wedded to it, and so re
luctant to give up the idea of the necessary immortality of
all men, that they are in danger of sacrificing the Scrip
tures to their philosophy, and are endeavoring to frame
for themselves a satisfactory system of theology, under the
guidance of their reasons and instincts. These men are
fast becoming Restorationists and Universalists, and it is
to be feared that many of them will go still farther from
the truth as it is revealed in the Word of God.
I would fain hope that some of these men may be induced
to examine with some candor the arguments for the truth
which I have endeavored to set before them, or some better
exhibition of it than I have been able to give. But I have
long been persuaded that the precious truths of the Gospel
are not brought to the acceptance of men through their
reasons, by argument, but only through their wills, their
consciences and their hearts. In order to facilitate the
discovery of truth, men need not to become philosophers,
but children. " I thank Thee, O Father, that thou hast
hid these things from the wise and prudent, and bast re
vealed them unto babes."
4. There is another large class of Christian ministers —
not now to speak of the laity — who are all afloat in their
eschatological notions. Many of them are of a gentle,
loving spirit ; some are but imperfectly educated, and have
no ability to read the Scriptures in the original Hebrew
and Greek ; others of them have no taste for controversy,
and perhaps are deficient in the argumentative faculty.
Their views of the wisdom, justice and goodness of their
Heavenly Father will not allow them to accept of tho

690 conclusion. [Chap. V.
doctrine of eternal sin and misery ; their loyalty to the
Word of God forbids them to believe in the ultimate sal
vation of all men ; their respect for the learning and piety
of their fathers and grandfathers in the faith, will not
suffer them to think that they could have been in error in
respect to so important a question as the universal immor
tality of all men from Adam ; nor can they believe that so
many of the wise and good of the present day — mento whom
they look for instruction and guidance in religious doctrines,
the celebrated commentators, and expositors, and profession
al expounders of the Scriptures, and theological systema
tizes — can be so woefully mistaken on a point like this,
and so their minds are in suspense. They know not what
to believe, nor what to preach. They spend their strength
in uttering Gospel platitudes and generalities. They
preach biographical, historical, topographical, and descrip
tive discourses. They inculcate morality, temperance, the
Christian graces, the observance of the appointments of the
Church, and the reading of the Scriptures ; but they rarely
hear any one of their people inquiring : " What shall I do
to be saved ?" Indeed, they would hardly know what more
to tell such an inquirer ; nor could they give him any defi
nite idea of what it is to be saved, or what he needs to be
saved from, or to what he needs to be saved. The Gospel,
at their hands, has little or no convicting or saving power.
Those who come into the Church in a formal manner under
their ministry, because they have been taught that it is
the proper thing to do, are weak and worldly-minded, and
there is little to distinguish them from those that are with
out. " Thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that
hath a pleasant voice, and can play on an instrument;" but,
my brother, you have something more to do in the Gospel
ministry than to amuse your hearers and gratify their

SeC. III.] CLOSING APPEAL. 591
aesthetic tastes, or improve their morals. You are to watch
for souls. You are to try to save perishing men, " pulling
them out of the fire," which will otherwise devour them.
" The prophet that hath a dream let him tell a dream, but
he that hath my Word, let him speak my word faithfully.
What is the chaff to the wheat ? saith the Lord. Is not
my Word like a fire ? saith the Lord ; and like a hammer
that breaketh the rock in pieces."
Oh ! if you could only see the real beauty, glory and
power of this Gospel of our salvation ; how it offers not
merely blessedness, but Life, Eternal Life, the Life of God
Himself, to mortal, perishing men, through an Almighty
Savior ; how your fellow- men, however moral or amiable
or lovely they may be, without this Divine Life in their
souls, or any vital union to the Savior, are actually perish
ing, going down, not to eternal torments, but to death —
remediless death ; and that unless brought to Christ and
saved before they die utterly, they must fail of an inheri
tance in His Everlasting Kingdom and of Eternal Life,
there would be no lack of earnestness nor of point in your
preaching, nor of effect upon those who hear.
5. There are not a few — how many I do not know, but
I have good reason to believe that the number is quite
large now, and I know it is rapidly increasing — who are
fully persuaded that the old traditional notion of the
compulsory immortality of sinning souls has no founda
tion in truth ; that it leads to conclusions that cannot be
harmonized with the spirit and teachings of the Gospel ;
that it brings dishonor on the character of God, and is
actually one of the prime causes of the spirit of skepti
cism that is springing up and spreading widely throughout
Christendom. They, indeed, wish well to us who are en
deavoring, with what they regard as imprudent zeal, to pro
mote a better understanding of this question; they hope

592 conclusion. [Chap. V.
the time will soon come when the spirit of opposition Will
cease, when it will be comparatively safe and easy for them
to speak out their real sentiments, and to preach this doc
trine of Eternal Life only in Christ, as it is set forth in
the Gospel. But they themselves are so situated just now,
their circumstances are so peculiar, that it seems the part
of prudence for them to say nothing, either one way or the
other, at present ; to wait a little while ; to preserve — as a
certain politician said — " a masterly inactivity," or, as the
Bible more curtly says, to be " dumb dogs " in regard to
this movement.
(1.) One is just leaving the seminary, and is a candidate
for the pastoral office. No respectable church would be
likely to want him, if his real views were known. If he
should be invited to the pastorate of such a church, he
would need to be examined by a council, or conference,
or church officials before being inducted into office. If
they should suspect him to be shaky on so important a
principle of orthodoxy as this, they would no doubt press
him severely, and it would surely go hard with him.
Would it not be better to give a kind of evasive or am
biguous response to any inquiries touching this delicate
subject ? to " trim " a little ; as the prophet says, " Why
trimmest thou thy way to seek love?" and then, after
he shall have become firmly established, why, if it
should appear to be expedient, he can speak out more
plainly. (2.) Another has already obtained an eligible position.
He is the pastor of a united and flourishing city church.
His ministerial brethren delight to honor him. He is re
garded as a capital preacher. His influence is extending.
It would be a great pity to have these pleasant relations
disturbed ; his position and means of livelihood endan
gered, and his influence and prospects for future use-

Sec. III.] CLOSING APPEAL. 593
fulness all blighted by the unfortunate advocacy of so
unpopular a movement. Indeed, some of his unguarded
expressions have already excited suspicion and unkindly
criticism. He needs to be especially wary. He must
" hide himself for a little moment until the indignation be
overpast." There are enough other topics upon which he
can preach without offending the prejudices of his con
servative friends.
(3.) Another, in addition to his pastoral charge, is en
gaged in the preparation of a work which he is hoping
soon to publish. It has cost him a great deal of labor. It
is on a topic of common interest. It would operate
very much to the prejudice of the book, and greatly injure
its sale, if it were to be known that he was at all tinc
tured with this heresy. We, who are engaged in pro
moting it, have his hearty good wishes. He prays for our
speedy success. Anything that he can do anonymously
to aid us he will gladly do ; but he feels that he must
"keep dark " himself for the present.
(4.) Another occupies the important and responsible
post of Professor in a Theological School, where young
men are trained to preach the Gospel. It was not without
difficulty that he got the position. There were some who
questioned his soundness ; but he resolutely accepted the
conditions imposed upon him, and solemnly promised to
hold and to teach the creed, the whole creed, and nothing
but the creed, for the maintenance of which the school
was founded. It is a very comfortable and respectable
berth. He is assigned to a department in which it is not
necessary to trench upon this theological question; nor
would it be courteous for him to express opinions in con
flict with those held by his associates ; and besides, it
would injure the reputation of the school were it known
that any of the Professors were not loyal to all the old

594 conclusion. [Chap. V.
traditional doctrines of the Church. And so duty — as he
fain would think — requires him to be silent.
(5.) Another still, is an Editor of a religious paper and
pecuniarily interested in it. It is designed to circulate
among good, orthodox people. Its orthodox character
must be maintained, or its best supporters will drop off.
Subscribers to religious papers are very fastidious. It will
never do to run counter to their prejudices, even if they
are in the wrong. They must be humored and retained.
Indeed, the paper must be made as popular as possible,
that its subscription list may be increased. The greater
the number of its patrons and readers, the greater its in
fluence. Said paper did make a timid experiment, some
time since, of showing some little favor to the doctrines of
"this sect which is everywhere spoken against," and with
which the editor esoterically sympathizes ; but the protests
of its indignant patrons soon reduced it to submission, and
now it voices with great boldness the sentiments of its sat
isfied clients.
These are not hypothetical cases. They are actual, and
are adduced as specimens of a multitude of similar ones that
might easily be given, if it were proper to betray the con
fidence of private and personal communications. I will
not sit in judgment upon these fearful souls. I will not
even reproach them. I will leave that to their Master and
to their own consciences. I will not call them " dumb
dogs that cannot bark ;" I will let the prophet say that of
those to whom it may apply. But if my voice could reach
them I would say :
My dear Christian brethren : Have you duly considered
whose servants you are, or profess to be? Have you
thought of the account you will be " called to render of
your stewardship when the Lord shall come ?" You have,
indeed, the right to sell, or give away, or keep, or use

Sec III.] closing appeal. 595
whatever is your own, as you may choose, for your own
profit or pleasure; but the precious treasure of truth
which the Lord has committed, to your stewardship is not
your own, and He will hold, you to a faithful reckoning
for the improvement you make of it. Beware how you
hide it in a napkin, or pervert it to your own service. If
you assume to speak in His name as His messengers, woe
be to you if you .are not true to your mission. " You are
to preach the preaching" which he bids you, "whether
men will hear or whether they will forbear." He has not
promised to His followers positions of ease and profit and
honor in this world. It is enough for the servant that he
is as his master. He asks : " Can ye drink of the cup
that I drink of, and be baptized with the baptism
that I am baptized with?" He has promised you no
exemption from the common lot of those who are faithful
to Him in this sinful world; and if you seek it by shun
ning to declare unto your fellow-men " all the counsel of
God," you do it at your peril. You need not expect, in
this age of the world, to suffer martyrdom, like those who
have gone before you. But you must have the same spirit
that they had, or you need not expect to be fellow-inheritors
with them of the promises. If John Baptist had been pru
dent enough to hold his tongue, he might have saved his
head; but he would have thrown himself away. Had
Stephen cautiously humored the prejudices of the people,
he might have long enjoyed his deaconry; but he could
hardly have expected, at death, to see "the glory of God,
and Jesus standing at the right hand of God " to welcome
him, as "a good and faithful servant," to his reward in
heaven. You will never find it perfectly safe and conve
nient and popular, in any age of the world, to stand up
faithfully for Christ and His Gospel.
Do not think to excuse yourselves by pleading ignorance

596 conclusion. [Chap. V.
or inability to discover what is truth, nor by attempting to
throw the responsibility for you errors upon others whom
you call wiser and better than yourselves. For it is not
man's wisdom that you are to proclaim, but God's. You
are not to receive your message at the mouth of fallible
men, but from the Master Himself. He has promised to
enlighten and guide you into all truth, and He will do it
if you will sit at His feet and open your hearts and minds
to the teaching of His Spirit. It is not because of the
feebleness of their intellects that men have gone astray in
regard to this great doctrine of Life in Christ or any other
Gospel doctrine; but because of their own intellectual
pride, and their unwillingness to receive the truth as little
children. " I thank Thee, O Father, that Thou has hid
these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed
them unto babes."
0 sirs, if this were a matter of rites and ceremonies, or
of vestments, or a question of tithing " mint and anise and
cummin," I would not urge it upon your attention with
such earnestness. It takes hold of the character of God,
and the honor and glory of Christ, and is intimately con
nected with the success of His Gospel in the world, and
the salvation of men. This pagan error throws such a
frightful cloud over the face of the Heavenly Father, that
multitudes are turning away from Him as from the horrid
monsters of heathen superstition. It changes God's pen
alty for sin into such an incredible doom of endless tor
ment, as at first to shock the moral sense of every sincere
seeker after truth, and then to drive multitudes of them
into a rejection of the Word that is said to proclaim it;
and not a few of them, into a disbelief of any severe pen
alty whatever, beyond this life. It not only robs the
threatenings of God's holy law of their legitimate terror,
but it has so entwined itself about the whole Gospel system,

Sec. HI.] closing appeal. 597
as to throw an air of mystery and uncertainty about its
most precious doctrines, and to render the Gospel an un
meaning message. The skepticism that is spreading so
fearfully among our youth, and that has already subverted
the faith of thousands, has its chief source in this great
philosophic delusion.
Well did our Lord inquire, in view of the apostasy of
these last days : "When the Son of Man cometh, shall He
find faith on the earth ?"
Our churches — many of them — have an outward pros
perity. They vie with each other in the beauty and mag
nificence of their temples. The preaching is often elo
quent, and according to the rules of rhetoric taught in the
schools ; the music is artistic and popular, and all the ap
pointments of the church are in excellent taste. Much
attention is paid to the amusement of the children and to
their instruction in the letter of God's Word. But alas !
that Word seems to have lost its power over the hearts
and consciences and lives of those who hear. Its most
stirring truths are as idle tales; and it is to the mode of
their presentation, rather than *to their substance, that
attention is directed.
If I were urging you to lower views of Divine truth ;
if I were endeavoring to cast suspicion on the supreme
authority of the Scriptures ; if I were derogating from the
terrors of God's law, and questioning the ill desert of sin
and the certainty of its punishment ; if I were expressing
doubts of the necessity of the new birth, or endeavoring
to unsettle your faith in any of the great doctrines of the
Gospel — you might well resist my importunity, and " hold
fast to the form of sound words " which you have received
by tradition. But it is to higher views of Divine truth
that I would urge you ; to a more implicit reliance upon
the authority of the Scriptures. I would more thoroughly

598 conclusion. [Chap. V.
impress you with the absolute holiness of God's law, the
deadly nature of sin, and its fearful, certain and remedi
less punishment. I would show you more clearly the
necessity of the new birth, and the reality of the second
coming of our Lord, and the resurrection of the dead, and
a general judgment, and the Life Everlasting which is
promised to all His true people, and of the Second Death
which will surely fall upon all His persistent enemies. I
would enhance, if it were possible, a. thousand fold, your
estimate of the power and honor and glory of the Son of
God, the Life-giver of the world, and of the preciousness
of His gospel as our only hope for the life to come.
If you shall turn away from these views, or lightly re
gard them, yours must be the responsibility. I have en
deavored, in all fidelity and love to you, as Christian
brethren, whom I believe to be in error, and in obedience
to the clearest convictions of duty to my Master, before
whom I hope shortly to appear, to urge them upon your
attention. Nor would I confine my appeal to the clergy and those
holding positions of honor and trust in the Church. This
doctrine of the Life Everlasting through Christ is equally
important, and should be equally precious to the laity.
Your responsibility for others may not be as great, and
yet you cannot innocently nor safely devolve your own in
dividual responsibility for the knowledge of the truth, nor
for its maintenance, upon your official guides and teachers.
Let me urge you to "search the Scriptures daily," like the
Bereans, "to see whether these things be so;" to "fight the
good fight of faith and to lay hold on Eternal Life " for
yourselves ; and to say to every one within the reach of
your call, " Come and go thou with' us, and we will do you
good ; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel."
And should these last words of mine meet the eyes of

Sec. III.] CLOSING APPEAL. 599
any inquirer after the truth who is not conscious of any
union to the Savior in faith and love; who feels, in
deed, that he is a sinner, as all men are, but cannot feel
that he has merited eternal torment at the hands of a just
and holy God ; who is hoping to make amends for the past
by his future morality and his good deeds, and to gain
heaven and everlasting bliss at last through the great
mercy qf God — let me say to you that a just and holy
God will never punish you, nor any other man, for sins
you have not committed ; but that you were born a mortal
man with no guarantee of an eternal life of any kind,
much less of citizenship in His spiritual and everlasting
kingdom. Had you been entitled to it by heirship from
Adam, your own sins would have vitiated your claim. All
sin is an offence to God; but to despise the riches of His
grace in Christ must inevitably cut you off from all hope
of entrance into His glorious kingdom.
As for jour good deeds — such as they are — you have
received, are receiving; and will receive the full measure
of your reward. But Eternal Life is not the reward of
merit; it is a gift of grace, through redemption in Christ,
and you mustTeceive it as such, or not at all. "There is
none other name under heaven given among men whereby
you must be saved." There is no other possible ground of
hope that will not prove fallacious ; " for the wages of sin
is Death ; but the gift of God is Eternal Life through
Jesus Christ our Lord ;" " this is Eternal Life, that they
might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ
whom Thou hast sent."
This is no Gospel of my own devising. It is the glo
rious message of my Divine Master, which He has com
missioned me to deliver to my fellow-men, and I dare not
add to it or take from it; nor would I, for "it is the
power of God and the wisdom of God unto the salvation

600 conclusion. [Chap. V.
of every one that believeth." This is the message. I pray
you to heed it :
" That God hath given to us Eternal Life, and
this Life is in His Son. He that hath the Son
hath the life, and he that hath not the Son hath
not the Life."

-A. Symposium :
SUPPLEMENTARY
to the volume entitled
THE EIEE EVERLASTING :
What is It?
Whence is It? Whose is It? «
BY
J. H. PETTINGELL, A.M.
In which Twenty represeniative men of various Evan
gelical Churches, in Europe and America, have
united to set forth their own views of the
question discussed by the Author.

"In necessabiis unitas; In non necessabiis libebtas; In
omnibus c abit as." — Augustine.

CONTENTS.

I. The State of the Question  607-609
Leonabd W. Bacon, D.D., Norwich, Conn.
II. Notes of My Experience  610-617
Rev. Edward White, London, Eng.
III. The Revised Version on the Wages of Sin. . . 618-626
Rev. Samuel Minton, A.M., London, Eng.
IV. " Length of Days Forever and Ever." . . . 627-630
Rev. Geoboe R. Kramer, Wilmington, Del.
V. Is Immortality Compulsory ?  631-638
Rev. Joseph D. Wilson, A.M., Chicago, 111.
VI. Is Man by Nature Immortal ?  639-650
Eev. A. A. Phelps, A.M., Rochester, N. Y.
VII. Glad Tidings  651-654
A. M. B. Gbaham, D.D., Little Rock, Ark.
VIII. The Unity of the Faith  655-6'63
William R. Habt, Philadelphia, Pa.
IX. The Life the Light  664-670
William Lease, D.D., London, Eng.
X. Evil: Its Nature, Relation and Final Extinction
through the Work of Jesus Christ. . . 671-688
Prof. E. Petavel, D.D., Geneva, Switzerland.
XI. No Necessary Conflict between the Bible and Science
on the Question of Man's Personal Identity
in the Resurrection  689-703
Prof. J. H. Kellogg, M.D., Battle Creek, Mich.
XII. Man's Constitution and Destiny : A Few Hints from
Facts, Reason and the Bible  704-711
Prof. D. H. Chase, LL.D., Middletown, Conn.

604 symposium.
XIII. A Letter. — The Question among the French Chris
tians. .,  712-716
Bev. Charles Byse, Brussels, Belgium.
XIV. Despoiled through Philosophy. . . . ; 719-731
M. W. Stbang, Glasgow, Scotland.
XV. The Conditional Immortality Controversy in Scot
land  732-735
William Laing, Edinburgh, Scotland.
XVI. A Letter to the Author  737-738
Prof. Hermann Schtjltz, Gottingen, Germany.
XVII. A Letter to the Author  739-741
Prof. C. M. Butler, D.D., Philadelphia, Pa.
XVIII. A Letter to the Author  742
Prof. Matson Meieb-Smith, D.D., Phila., Pa.
XIX. A Letter to the Author  743-744
Canon H. Constable, London, Eng.
XX. The Teachings of the Book of Common Prayer as
to Life in Christ. (A Note borrowed from
Conditional Immortality.) .... 745-749
William R. Huntington, D.D., Worcester, Mass.
XXI. In Memoriam, with extracts from the letters of
Rev. C. R. Hendrickson, D.D., Jackson, Tenn. 750-800

In neetssariis unitas, in non neeessariis libertas, in omnibus earitat.

In Limine.
The papers which follow in this series were written — nearly all
of them — at my request, and expressly for this Symposium. A few
of them, however, are made to serve a double purpose, and have
been, or may be, published in another form.
The writers will be recognized as leading, representative men in
the several churches with which they are connected. They have
been selected from various parts of this country and Europe, and
from various evangelical denominations, out of a much larger num
ber whom I would gladly have entertained around this triclinium,
had there been room. Indeed, the present number is much larger
than was originally intended, and I have been constrained to omit
several valuable papers altogether, and to limit those that follow,
to a much smaller space than I could have desired ; for this volume
has already grown to unexpected proportions.
These papers have not been taken because of their agreement
with each other or with my own views upon minor points, but
rather because the authors were known to differ in their modes of
viewing this question, while there is a substantial agreement among
us all upon the main question of Immortality in Christ only. My
object has been to give as great a diversity in unity as possible.
No one is to be held responsible for any sentiments upon collateral
or subordinate points which he does not himself express. It will
be seen that the writers of these papers have carefully' studied this

606 symposium.
question, and that they are able to do their own thinking, and w>
express their own thoughts ; and, also, that the main doctrine upon
which they bo well agree is not peculiar to any one class of men,
nor any one church. They represent nearly all our evangelical
denominations. If there be any, so-called, orthodox church that
has no representative here, it is simply because that church does
not permit its representative men to speak their sentiments on this
Gospel doctrine of Eternal Life in Christ, or does not suffer them
to remain after they have spoken them.
But this day of traditional bondage and dogmatic tyranny is fast
passing. It was the remark of an eminent professor in the Uni
versity of Cambridge, that, in the progress of science, every ques
tion has had to pass through three stages: First — "It is ridicu
lous," and only to be sneered at ; Second — " It is contrary to Scrip
ture," and to be denounced as heretical; Third — "We always
thought so," for it is now the popular doctrine.
The same is true of theological science. This question of Life
Eternal in Christ only has already passed through its first stage.
It cannot any longer be sneered at as the wild notion of certain un
learned and foolish men. It is now passing through the second
stage, with many who have not examined it ; but it cannot long
reBt here, in this age of inquiry ; for, instead of being contrary to
Scripture, it will surely be found, by all who take the trouble to
search for themselves, to be the very doctrine of the Bible. It is
already entering upon the third stage, and it will not be long
before those who have so bitterly opposed us — or, at least, their
successors — as well as those who have been discreetly silent will be
heard boldly declaring, " We always thought so."
J. H. Pettingell.
Philadelphia, January, 1882.

I.
The State of the Question.

By LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON, M.D., D.D.,
Nobwich, Conn.

[Note.— Dr. Leonard W. Bacon, the Pastor of the Park Congregational
Church, in Norwich, Conn., is the son of Dr. Leonard Bacon, Professor in the
Theological School of Yale College, New Haven, Conn. He is too well known,
both in 'this country and Europe, where he resided for several years, to
need any special introduction to our readers. Like his venerable father, who
la the Nestor of the Congregational churches in the United States— Nullvut
addiclus jurare in verba mugislri — he has never feared to do his own thinking,
'nor to be loyal to his own convictions. Let hlm open the question for bis hon
orable associates at this Symposium. ]
It is with confusion of face that I present myself aniong
the honorable guests at this Symposium in a haste and un
dress wholly unworthy of the occasion. But I have no
other choice but either to come thus or not to come at all.
It seems to me that the argument as to the nature of
man's tenure of future existence has lost much (while it
has gained something) by being needlessly complicated
with certain applications of it.
Let it be fairly understood, on all hands, that the doc
trine of future existence as conditional upon the act of
God, is not incompatible with any of the theories of the
future life current in modern Christendom — with Univer
salism, Kestorationism, with the opinions called orthodox,
or even with the wretched despair of those who know no
life to come at all. The one thesis to which, if I were a
disputant on the subject, I should try to stick and to com
pel all my diverse antagonists to stick, until it was decided
one way or the other, is this : That whatever future exist-

608 SYMPOSIUM.
ence men shall have after death, be it blissful or miserable,
be it unending or transient, be it the lot of all souls or only
of a part, they will have it as being conferred by the act
of God who raises from the dead, and not by the soul's
intrinsic tenacity of life.
Disembarrassed of unnecessary complications, it does
not seem to me that this bare thesis would be difficult to
hold against attack from any quarter. Certainly orthodox
opinion has no point d'appui against it. The exegetical
argument of orthodoxy is good only against certain appli
cations of this thesis. And its a priori argument is good
for nothing, any way. My deepest impressions on this
last point were got in boyhood from reading Butler's
Analogy. The greatest of all theological reasoners is re
duced to the argument that a spiritual existence is inde
structible as being a simple essence and therefore incapable
of dissolution into elements ; forgetful that the same argu
ment would prove the soul uncreateable — eternal a parte
ante; forgetful, also, (as I remember my father's remarking
at the time I read the Analogy,) that the same argument
would prove the immortality of the life principle of a
turnip. This thesis, which concludes nothing beyond itself, being
accepted, we are in a position of advantage for studying
the various views of the future life which may claim to
hold under it. It is perfectly competent for orthodoxy to
bring forward its formidable exegetical argument and its
argument ab inconvenienti to show that this positive act
of resurrection is exercised upon all the dead, and the gift
of eternal existence conferred, or inflicted, upon every one,
for bliss or torment. But it will be obvious at once that
while the theory remains entire, a large part of the custo
mary argument, whether of theologians or of preachers, is
gone. Especially of late, orthodox preachers have been

LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON. 609
disposed more and more to "justify the ways of God " by
representing eternal future punishment, not as a Divine
act, but as a natural consequence of certain antecedents
in a life that goes on of itself. Let me cite, by way of
illustration, Mr. Moody's sermon on the text, " Son, re
member." Orthodoxy may hold to its tradition without
bating a word ; but it must give up this method of evading
full responsibility for it, and must revert to the less
squeamish methods of the earlier theologians.
So Universalism, in its various forms, is competent to
make the claim, under this thesis, that the act of God in
terferes to bring back to life the wicked of all grades and
classes for an eternity of bliss ; and it may maintain this
view by whatever arguments of reason or Scripture it finds
available. But it will have to get along without that
convenient major premise, that the wicked will have to
exist forever any way ; and without the immense advan
tage of having the customary old-fashioned orthodoxy as
the only alternative of its tenets.
Finally, the advocates of what my valued friend, M.
Petavel, calls the tenet of " optional immortality " (F im-
mortalite facultative) have the field cleared for them. The
acceptance of the maxim that life — existence — is the gift
of God, is the beginning of their argument, not the end
of it. The lists of theologie debate are fairly open to
them ; and may the truest reason and the clearest Scrip
ture win !
Leonard "W. Bacon.

n.
Notes of My Experience.

By Rev. EDWARD WHITE, Ministeb op St. Paul's Chapel,
London, England.

[Note. — For more than thirty-five years Mr. White, in the face of much oppo
sition and misrepresentation, has Btood up boldly— and for the first half of that
period almost alone— for the Bible doctrine of Eternal Life in Christ only. But
much of the bitterness of the earlier opposition has given way before his
Christian spirit, and the learning and ability with which he has maintained his
cause ; and now, by the blessing of God, a large and increasing number of in
telligent and scholarly men from different evangelical Churches have come to
his aid.
He published his first volume, entitled Life in Christ, in 1816. After thirty
years he revised and greatly enlarged, and republished it, under the same title.
It is, no doubt, the coinpletest and ablest work on this question hitherto given
to the public. It has recently been translated into the French language by
Bev . C. Byse, of Brussels, one of the expected contributors to this Symposium.
During nearly the whole of this long period, Mr. White has remained the
beloved and successful pastor of the same church in London. As a token of the
estimation in which he is held both for his ability and orthodoxy, it may be
stated that he has been selected the past year to succeed the late Dr. Baleigh as
lecturer to the "Ancient Merchants' Guild."
Let me ask the careful attention of our opponents to his very just complaint
of the manner in which they have so persistently mistaken our doctrine of
Eternal Life in Christ only, and misrepresented our efforts to maintain it.]
I gladly add a few notes of my experience, during the
last thirty-five years, in the English discussion of the
question so ably managed in America by Mr. Pettingell.
1. We have found the greatest difficulty in obtaining
from orthodox Christians a correct • representation of the
breadth and general drift of this theological movement.
Perceiving that one part of this controversy is directed to
the establishment of the Scripture doctrine on the Second
Death, the leaders of orthodoxy have nearly universally
insisted, for the space of a whole generation, on the repre
sentation that this is the principal object of the movement,

EDWARD WHITE. 611
and have fastened on us the title of Annihilationists; with
the result of successfully hindering even the elementary
consideration of the question by the generality of their
followers. In the earlier stages of the discussion this con
troversial mistake was perhaps pardonable. After so
many years of patient explication of our general views,
and by such men, I, do not hesitate to denounce this
procedure, if still persisted in, as dishonest. In theo
logical and ecclesiastical matters, mankind are, I fear,
frequently as unscrupulous as they are in politics.
And whenever they have some profitable superstition to
maintain they seem oftentimes, as we say in England, to
"stick at nothing." I am unable to believe that our oppo
nents are at this time quite sincere in their endeavors to
stifle Christian inquiry by. the battle-cry of " Annihilation-
ism !" or the " Miserable doctrine of annihilation I" It is
quite inexcusable any longer to represent this movement
as chiefly an agitation on the single question of future
punishment. It is that ; but it is vastly more than that.
Right or wrong, it is a movement in vindication, not of
any novelty in exegesis, but of the orthodox philological
law of interpretation in relation to all the most important
topics of revelation. Bight or wrong, it is a movement for
the redistribution of the motives of hope and fear in the
domain of religion. It is a movement for the reconstruc
tion of Christian Anthropology and Theology from one
end to the other, — a movement which has for its chief aim
to draw attention to the Scripture doctrine on the nature
and fall of Man, on the object of the Incarnation of God,
and on the very- nature of salvation as the gift of eternal
life; yet one which will, as we believe, issue in there-
establishment, on a firmer foundation, of all that is essen
tial in the Evangelical teaching, both of the Apostles and
the Reformers; and moreover, in the enforcement of a
doctrine of "judgment to come," real, near, credible, and
tremendous for a skeptical generation.
1 trust you will have an earlier success in America than
we have had in England in prosecuting the discussion on
the basis of a true statement of the question to be consid
ered. Every art of misrepresentation has been employed
against us for years, by the saints, in the attempt to conceal

612 SYMPOSIUM.
the main argument for Life in Christ, by steadfast allega
tions that our zeal is prompted by the single desire to
establish the doctrine of Extinction in Hell. This con
spiracy of pulpit and religious press is at last breaking
down in England, and men are wisely studying the real
question of immortality in the light of the Incarnation of
Deity. 2. We have been greatly discouraged in England by
the reserve of men who are thoroughly convinced on the
main doctrine which it is sought to proclaim to the world,
but who shrink from an avowal of it "for fear of the
Jews." As for the numerous persons in eminent positions whor
being convinced of the truth of the doctrine of conditional
immortality, with its consequences, yet conceal their belief
from regard to their " usefulness," there is surely very
little to be said that is honorable to thero. What can such
men understand by usefulness, or by loyalty to God?
Why, if it were commonly reported that any reader of
these lines that is a father, was in the habit of holding
his less instructed offspring, for their faults, on the rack or
before a blazing fire for hours together, so that by that
report his character was utterly blackened and ruined ; so
that his neighbors shunned him ; so that no one had the
slightest faith in his professions of justice or benevolence ;
what would we think of a friend who knew thoroughly
well the untruth of the report, who, from a regard to his
" usefulness," refrained from uttering a word in his vindi
cation and defence ? Would you not denounce him as a
coward and a traitor, and remind him that his true useful
ness as a man would be to be honest and straightforward,
and boldly to tell the truth in a case like this ? But what
must the Eternal Justice and Love think of His sons who,
in order to maintain their " usefulness," will allow to pass
uncontradicted far fouler calumnies — which assist in alien
ating from Him nearly the whole thinking section of man
kind ; who leave to a difficult and isolated battle the few
who have " counted all things but loss," that they might
remonstrate against the vilification of God ; and who
allege some great unsettlement of mind, or equilibrium of

EDWARD WHITE. 613
judgment, as to the question whether or not it ought to be
taught throughout heathendom that the God of love and
righteousness will inflict suffering throughout an endless
duration of being on the bodies, or souls, of countless mill
ions of Pagans now living, or unsaved in the ages fore
gone ? We will leave such persons to the meditation of
their own consciences, and to the style of usefulness which.
they prefer.
3. I wish, on the basis of my own experience, to press
the main argument of Mr. Pettingell's book on the atten
tion of the .churches of America, as a most powerful weapon
of spiritual warfare in the conviction and salvation of mate
rialists of all schools.
For, first of all, the doctrine of immortality by recrea
tion and resurrection meets, on its own ground, all the
many-sided materialism existing in the world, and enables
it to believe in God and a Gospel of Salvation. The ordi
nary preacher evidently feels that, with his " Gospel," he
can do nothing for materialists. He must have a meta
physical battle with them first, and compel them to change
their ideas on human nature, before he can persuade them
to believe in Christ. Now that was not Apostolic Chris
tianity ; nor is it ours. The apostles evidently went forth
with a message which could save without delay Epicureans,
Materialists, and Sadducees, without insisting first on a
psychological conversion to faith in man's natural immor
tality and possession of a " never-dying soul."
This is precisely our position. We who hold this doc
trine are not necessarily materialists. I myself am not
one, but am strenuously opposed to that form of opinion.
But the "Gospel which we preach" is adapted to meet,
on their own grounds — "just as they are " — materialists of
every grade and type, with the moral certainty of a glo
rious result as to multitudes of them. Materialism is
a creed which comprises many different ranks of capacity
and respectability. There are the bad kinds of material
ists, who have resolved that they are only a superior sort
of organized animal matter, in order to give an air of phi
losophy to their much worse than brutal excesses. But
there are, also, many far better types of materialism. You

614 SYMPOSIUM.
have the scientific materialists who are not atheists, such
as some of our noblest men of research and discovery ;
and these hold ideas of Matter, as the effect of Energy,
so exalted as to include within its possible combinations
any degree of created intelligence, without resorting to the
hypothesis of a second substance, such as Mind or Soul.
With these thinkers, Matter seems only another name for
something like Spirit, so pure and so transcendent are
their conceptions of its nature. Some of the most distin
guished philosophers of past and present ages have ad
hered to this line of thought, without surrendering their
faith in God as the Supreme and Everlasting Energy and
Life of this universe. Of this opinion was Milton him
self, as is proved both by the explicit argument of his book
on the " Christian Doctrine," and by the following lines
from the fifth book of the " Paradise Lost :"
" To whom the winged hierarch replied :
Oh, Adam, one Almighty is, from whom
All things proceed, and up to Him return,
If not depraved from good, created all
Such to perfection ; one first matter all
Endued with various forms, various degrees
Of substance, and in things that live, of life.
But more refined, more spirituous and pure,
As nearer to him placed, or nearer tending,
Each in their several active spheres assigned,
TUl body up to spirit work, in bounds
Proportioned to its kind." — Bk. v.
Of the same opinion still are not a few of the ablest
thinkers in all parts of the world to-day, — theist s they are,
notwithstanding. Then, next, there are the materialistic
scientific and literary men, who are really Atheists also,
but rather preferring to be called Agnostics than Atheists;
and some of them of a character so noble, so pure, so
lovely, so sorrowfully sinking into the darkest and deepest
abysses of doubt, that Religious Faith, instead of anathe
matizing, must stretch forth a most loving hand to help
their sinking souls before they die.
_ Now the doctrine of life in Christ is a form of Chris
tianity which is specially adapted to take hold of men who
are thus convinced of the materiality of mind. It would
be a poor thing if the Gospel had no word for those who

EDWARD WHITE. 615
were Sadducees, as, well as for the Pharisees; if it could do
naught to save men who are philosophical materialists;
especially when we consider how tough and difficult an
argument is required, even from such men as Doctors Bal
four Stewart, Tait, and Martineau, to beat out of their delu
sions a Mill, a Spencer, and a Tyndal. But we find it to
be a matter of simple experience, that men of all intel
lectual grades, who, for one reason or another, have become
theoretical materialists, and who, if abandoned to the in
fluence of that philosophy alone, would be compelled to
surrender all expectation of a future state for man, are
drawn to faith in a future state, and faith in God as the
Savior in Christ, and faith in immortality by Resurrec
tion ; so that numbers of these are being trained for the
kingdom of heaven in the life spiritual. Christ, who is
the Word made flesh, exerts a power which lifts them up
to God, with a hope full of immortality.
Neither does it require much experience to show that
not a few of these " materialistic " believers in Christ are
among the most " spiritual " persons living on the earth —
men of the purest lives, of the firmest faith in things un
seen and eternal, of dauntless purpose, of heroic self-sacri
fice, of devoted love to their Savior, and of the tenderest
sympathy with mankind. They live with Christ now ;
they think that in death their whole being will dissolve,
but that Christ, whose members they are, is coming quickly
" to create them anew, to immortalize and glorify them ;"
and that they will have no sense of the interval between
death and resurrection. I ask if this can be called a
" brutalizing " result of the doctrine of Conditional Im
mortality. None can prevent the wide diffusion, in this
day, of scientific and semi-scientific materialism ; there are
millions who, led on by Spencer and Maudsley, will not
listen to the old story of the Immortality of the Soul, and
the more you preach it to them the more fiercely they
revolt, and point to the phenomena of cerebral formation
and cerebral decay ; but to us it matters not, so much as
to our opponents, how widely these ideas extend. We can
preach a credible Christianity and a present salvation to
all materialists, high and low, by preaching to them Jesus
and the Resurrection. To this they will listen. Their faith

616 SYMPOSIUM.
becomes an antidote to their philosophy, and they will,
perhaps, some day learn to think differently on the one
question which still divides us.
But we have a second answer to the charge of material
istic tendencies, which goes deeper into the real causes of
materialism. A perfectly logical materialism which, deny
ing a spiritual basis of mind in man, denies it also in the
universe, and enforces the result in a speculative positivism
and atheism, may, under certain circumstances, become a
real danger to society. It may corrupt the tone of popular
feeling as to the moral dignity of man, and of popular
faith as to his relations with an unseen Deity. It is not
we who have produced it.
But how may it best be encountered and overcome? My
answer is, not by any simply metaphysical or philosophical
process, — not by a psychology which may be riddled by the
objections of Mr. Herbert Spencer, or made to look doubt
ful even by Mr. Holyoake. It cannot be checked even by
lectures on the immortality of the soul, nor even by the
additional bribe to faith of a promise of universal disci
pline and salvation. No ; the true remedy for a debasing
materialism (for I will not admit that Milton's materialism
was debasing) is to be found in the moral rather than in
the intellectual realms of thought. It will be found, not
in a contrary theory as to the substratum of mind, or as to
the eternity of the thinking power, but in the preaching
of a credible judgment to come, and of the grace of God
in the salvation purchased by Christ.
If you wish to overcome the evil types of atheistic ma
terialism, 'you must awaken conscience, rather than en
tangle the intellect in doubtful disputations. Men's phi
losophies spring from a great depth within them, from
their spiritual states. Bid them, then, listen to the awful
voice within, the utterance of a Will above the will, which
persists in denouncing sin, and inspires an expectation of
judgment. The liar, the thief, the fornicator, the adul
terer, the murderer, knows in himself, when once awakened
to^hought, that it is not incredible that there are conse
quences beyond — and consequences of the most tremendous
character. These may be by survival or by the resurrec
tion of damnation. Whatever makes these consequences

EDWARD WHITE. 617
appear credible, near, and certain, tends to awaken such
reflections. Whatever removes the fear which an evil con
science inspires, whether it be an infinity of threatening,
which generates unbelief, or the bold assurance of a gene
ral delivery from perdition at last, is so much gain for ma
terialism. Whatever confirms the voice of the inward
witness, and points to the " great white throne " of judg
ment, as the needle to the pole star, is so much gain for a
spiritual view of life and its belongings.
But this is not the complete answer. Christ is in every
sense the Light of the world. His special message is not
of terror, but of mercy. Proclaim that mercy. Preach
the Gospel to every creature. Bring near, with a heart
that feels it, the love of God to sinners. Set before them
Christ " openly crucified for them," " bearing their offenses,
carrying their sorrows;" declare to the penitent the remis
sion of their sins — and you will wield against the bad
sorts of materialism the most powerful weapon in the
wprld. The true antidote to materialism is not found in a bold
ignoring of facts as to the generation of human nature, or
as to its structure and functions ; much less in setting up
a metaphysic which confounds survival with eternal dura
tion, and even maintains survival of the soul by arguments
which revolt the judgment of many of the foremost phi
losophers of the age. The true remedy is to overthrow
materialism by "saving" materialists, and this is precisely
what the doctrine of Redemption to Immortality by Res
urrection especially enables us to do. It presents Chris
tianity to man's conscience, judgment, and affection, disen
tangled from theories which dissipate its force by awaken
ing skepticism rather than faith in the hearers.
Edward White.

m.
The Kevised Version on the Wa.ges of Sin.

By the Eev. SAMUEL MINTON, M.A., Oxon., op London.

[Note. — Mr. Minton is a clergyman of the Church of England. He was edu
cated at Eugby, and was in Arnold's celebrated " Sixth Form," and at Oxford,
where he took a scholarship from Rugby in his eighteenth year. He has had
charge of churches in Stoke, Liverpool, and Eaton Chapel, London. This last
Eectorate he held for many years, but has now resigned it owing to the failure
of his health . He has long been known asa faithful advocate of the unpopular
doctrine of Life only in Christ, and has sacrificed much in his loyalty to truth
and the conviction of duty on this question. He has published several volumes
and many smaller tracts on this and kindred topics, among which are " The
Glory of Christ in the Creation and Reconciliation of AU Things," " The Way
Everlasting," etc.]
Every one who attaches special importance to any theo
logical view must naturally feel anxious to know how the
Revised Version of the New Testament is likely to affect
the spread of that view amongst the general mass of
English readers. Let us see, therefore, what impression it
may reasonably be expected to produce on their minds
with reference to the final destiny of those " whose end is
destruction." 1. In the first place, by the word Hades being left un
translated, and the word Gehenna being given in the mar
gin, though most unfortunately rendered Hell in the text,
much confusion is avoided as to the former, and at least a
suggestion thrown out to the unlearned to inquire what the
latter place, round which such infinite horrors have accu
mulated in the popular mind, really is or was.
It will be no longer possible for the most ignorant
reader to imagine that our Lord intended to represent the
rich man as having received his final doom in "hell."
Some years ago an excellent clergyman published a sermon
on that parable, in the course of which he said: "Some
people say there is no hell. I say there is a hell ; and

SAMUEL MINTON. 619
Christ says so, too, in this parable." If the Revised Ver
sion had been out then, his readers would have seen that
Christ does nothing of the kind ; that He makes no refer
ence whatever to any such hell as the preacher was con
tending for. The rich man was in Hades, the place of de
parted spirits ; and the parable describes, under the image
of bodily sufferings, his remorse of conscience immedi
ately after death at the thought of his misspent life. As
to what will happen to him when he is raised from the
dead at the final judgment, it says not a word.
When, however, the wicked are threatened with future
destruction, body and soul, in Gehenna, those readers who
are not absolutely blinded to the necessity for any inquiry
by the traditional ideas attached to the English word hell,
still left in the text, will naturally be led to ask the mean
ing of our Lord's own word Gehenna. And when they
learn that it was the Valley of Hinnom, outside the walls
of Jerusalem, where fires were kept constantly burning to
consume the refuse of the city, they can scarcely avoid
seeing the incongruity of making such a place an emblem,
either of an eternal abode of misery for immortal beings,
or of a purifying process whereby the wicked would be
brought to repentance. Gehenna was neither a place of
penal servitude, nor a reformatory. The refuse was not
kept there festering forever in its own corruption, neither
was it purified ; it was utterly consumed, and thereby pre
sented a striking picture of the ultimate entire destruc
tion, not of a sinner's happiness, nor yet of his sinfulness,
but, as our Lord distinctly specifies, of his " body and
soul," the component parts of his being, " himself."
From this the intelligent reader will easily see, what is
plainly suggested by several passages in the Old Testa
ment, that the fire not being quenched by no means im
plies that what is cast into it will continue burning there
forever, but rather that nothing can stop the process of
destruction until its work is completed. If the fires of
Gehenna had been put out, or let to die out, the uncon-
sumed refuse would have lain there polluting the atmos
phere; just as orthodoxy imagines that the skies of
Heaven will be eternally darkened, and the Universe eter
nally begrimed, by the smoke ascending from the torment

620 SYMPOSIUM.
of immortal souls, clothed in bodies that have been spe
cially immortalized for the very purpose of enabling them
to live . on, ever burning but never burnt up. The fires
were not allowed to be quenched, just to prevent any such
abomination. Gehenna could not become a cesspool, be
cause whatever wa3 thrown into it " utterly perished " with
a "swift destruction."
In this connection it is a decided gain to have the cor
rect translation, "unquenchable fire," substituted in Mark
9 : 43 for "fire that never shall be quenched." Many per
sons are greatly affected by the mere sound of words ; and
the old translation is much more calculated than the new
to suggest that the fire will burn on to all eternity, from
which some would infer, though it by no means necessa
rily follows, that there must always be something left
which requires its action. Homer speaks of an "un
quenchable fire" breaking out amongst a fleet of ships;
but he would hardly have described it as a fire " that was
never quenched." That in using the word "unquench
able," and saying that the fire " is not quenched," our
Lord had no intention of asserting its endless continuance,
ought to have been seen from his associating it with the
"worm" which "dieth not." Can we conceive Him to
have invented such a monstrously incongruous figure as
an immortal worm preying upon an immortal body, which
it is forever devouring, but has never eaten up ? Should
we have required the last verse of Isaiah to teach us that
our Lord was referring to two well-known means of put
ting away the dead — burial and burning — in one of which
nothing is left ultimately but the skeleton, in the other
nothing but ashes ? The worm, as it is expressed accordmg
to Hebrew custom, the worms, as we should say, go on
devouring the dead body until there is nothing left for
them to devour ; the fire burns, until not a trace is left of
. anything that ever entered into its structure. This is the
simple meaning of the worm not dying, and the fire not
being quenched. The words could mean nothing else as
written by Isaiah; they manifestly do mean nothing else
as spoken by our Savior.
The fact, which the new translation will make known to
many for the first time, that the words were used once,

SAMUEL MINTON. 621
and not thrice, at the close of that discourse related by
Mark, possesses, of course, no controversial value what
ever. But it is not unlikely to have some little practical
effect, if we may judge by the tone of triumph with which
the supposed threefold repetition has been constantly
paraded. The popular mind has probably been swayed by
a vague idea that our Lord must have meant something
frightfully horrible and extremely difficult of belief, to
have felt it necessary to repeat the statement three times
in the course of a minute or two ; and so the infinite hor
ror and absolute incredibility of the Mediaeval Hell rather
confirmed people in their impression that it was the veri
table picture, which our Lord here intended to draw. But
there was nothing hard to believe in the warning that
Jesus actually uttered. The loss, not only of "glory and
honor," but also of " immortality ;" the " death " which
is "the wages of sin," not the mere bodily death which
man can inflict, but that of the whole being — body and
soul — which only God can inflict; the "everlasting de
struction," accompanied by "tribulation and anguish," by
" weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth," which is to be
the "end " of the finally impenitent ; these are, no doubt,
depicted in colors well calculated to arrest the careless,
and to strike terror into the " stout-hearted, who are far
from righteousness." But there is nothing to put any
strain upon our faith, or to require any unnatural reitera
tion of assurances to make us believe it. All the objec
tions that have been raised against it are founded entirely
upon our ignorance of the means and the processes by
which the Divine sentence will be executed. There is no
difficulty in believing the fact that they who have "judged
themselves unworthy of eternal life " will not live forever ;
while there would be very great difficulty in believing
that beings constituted as man is, who have neglected the
great salvation offered to them in Christ, will perish by a
painless or instantaneous extinction. How it will be
accomplished, it is impossible for us to conceive ; but we
may be sure that it will be in a way which will satisfy the
conscience of the Universe, and compel all creation to say
Amen.

622 SYMPOSIUM.
2. Neither must we overlook the twofold improvement,
slight though it be, in the rendering of Matthew 25 : 46 :
" And these shall go away into eternal punishment, but
the righteous into eternal life."
Those who did not know that the " everlasting " of the
old translation in the first clause, and the " eternal " in
the second clause, represented the same Greek word, had
an impression that our Lord applied the stronger word to
punishment, because He knew that "human reason" and
"sickly sentimentality" would rebel against what they
supposed to be the punishment intended, namely, the being
stereotyped forever in obdurate wickedness, and kept alive
for the sole purpose of being tortured. It is well for such
persons to have their minds disabused even of that little
mistake. On the other hand, those who are illogical enough to
maintain that because the life to which the ambiguous
word eternal is applied will be actually endless, therefore
the punishment to which the same word is applied must
also be endless, may be glad to find the verbal identity in
dicated in the New Version. But even if that contention
were admitted, the maintainers of the theory that the
death which is the wages of sin means the endless torment
of a soul and a body that can never die, would be met by
the fact — which the Revisers emphasize by preserving the
true order of the contrasted words, "eternal punishment"
and "eternal life" — that the punishment must at least
include the loss of life ; otherwise the righteous and the
wicked would both go away into eternal life — the one into
an eternal life of happiness, the other into an eternal life
of misery. Therefore, if the punishment spoken of in
that most difficult parable is endless, it can only be so in
its effects; just as the fire, from which Sodom and Go
morrah were said to be " suffering " long after they had
ceased to exist, was called " eternal fire," though it had
long before died out, because the destruction it wrought
was irremediable. " Eternal redemption^" is not eternal
redeeming; "eternal judgment" is not eternal judging;
neither is " eternal punishment " necessarily eternal pun
ishing. It is satisfactory, also, to notice that the Revisers havs

SAMUEL MINTON. 623
adhered to the general word " punishment " as the render
ing of Kolasin, instead of changing it to correction or
chastisement, which Universalists maintain to be its only
true meaning — in direct opposition to the usage both of the
Septuagint and classical Greek writers, who constantly apply
it to the punishment of death. Its derivation, no doubt,
suggests the idea of corrective discipline ; but its applica
tion was by no means confined to that. It is rather
remarkable that certain writers should press so strongly
the derivation of this single word, as applied to future
punishment, in presence of the fact that the words paideu-
ma, paideusis, and their cognates, which mean only fatherly
chastisement, are never used of " the wrath to come ;" while
ekdikesis, timoria, and their cognates, which mean only re
tributive judgment, are employed to describe it. It is still
more curious that these should be the writers, who, when
the strongest and plainest declarations are adduced against
them from almost every page of God's Word, reply that
we must be guided by the spirit, and not by the letter, of
Scripture ; though how we are to know what it means, ex
cept by what it says, remains to be explained.
3. The most important alteration, however, in the New
Version, as bearing upon this subject, is in the translation
of Matthew 16 : 26 : " For what shall a man be profited,
if he shall gain the whole world and forfeit his life? or
what shall a man give in exchange for his life?" And in
the parallel passage, Luke 9 : 25 : " For what is a man
profited if he gain the whole world, and lose, or forfeit,
his ownself ?" It is true that to any reflecting mind, the
truth is expressed very plainly and forcibly in the Old
Version. But the traditional perversion of everything
relating to life and death in the Inspired Writings has
become so rooted in the minds of the common people that
the old words are almost certain to call up the old associa
tions. Multitudes of persons have almost every Sunday
of their lives heard the words read aloud : " When the
wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he
hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right,
he shall save his soul alive," without the smallest doubt as
to their meaning that the repentant sinner shall save hia

624 SYMPOSIUM.
immortal soul, which must remain alive forever, from end
less misery. So, when they hear of any one losing his
own soul, they instinctively understand it to mean that
God will inflict eternal torment upon a soul that, in its
own nature, can never by any possibility be lost ; and also
upon a body which, though on that supposition strangely
overlooked, will be restored to the man in an immor
talized condition, in order that he may be able to endure
more pain than would have been possible to his soul alone.
This is losing his soul. And when they hear' of a man
losing himself, the assumed impossibility of such a
thing ever taking place makes them feel it quite natural
to understand it as losing his happiness, if he ever had
any ; or, if not, losing any chance he ever had of securing
happiness. Now it may be thought that persons whose
minds are capable of performing such marvellous feats as
these, must be beyond the reach of argument; that a
change of words could be of no use to them ; for, if they
can pervert such plain language as the above, they must
be able to pervert any language. But still, new words
require a fresh intellectual effort to get rid of; and it may
fairly be expected that many will be startled as out of a
drea,m on being told, not by controversialists, who " have
a purpose to serve," but by an impartial body of eminent
scholars, that when our Lord warned certain persons that
they would lose their own souls, he actually meant what
He said — that they would forfeit their lives, forfeit them
selves, their very existence.
4. Again, our Lord's contrast between the manna being
able to keep the Israelites alive only for a time, and vital
union with Himself having power to keep His people alive
forever, is made somewhat more pointed by the rendering
of John 6 : 49, 50 : " Your Fathers did eat the manna in
the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that
cometh down from Heaven, that a man may eat thereof
and not die."
5. And once more, although the old translation of 2
Peter 2 : 12: "Shall utterly perish in their own corrup
tion," might seem plain enough, especially in its context,

SAMUEL MINTON. 625
¦ the new translation, " Shall in their destroying surely be
destroyed," gives even less excuse for the traditional per
version of the apostle's words, which makes them mean
that incorrigible offenders shall never be allowed to perish
at all, but shall be kept alive forever in a hopeless state of
moral corruption.
Against all this, there may perhaps be some still left
who will imagine that believers in Conditional Immor
tality have lost at least one of the many hundred passages
to which they usually appeal, by the substitution of "in
corruption" for "immortality" in Rom. 2:7. It cer
tainly did sound rather strange to hear of one who pos
sessed an "immortal soul," a "deathless spirit," and so
forth, seeking for immortality. No wonder that those Tra-
ditionists who just knew enough of Greek to see that
immortality was not the exact rendering of St. Paul's
word, should take refuge in the verbal criticism. But it is
just as certain that he meant immortality by that word
(aptharsia), as that he did so elsewhere by atltanasia — that
is, deathlessness. Can any one suppose that when he
spoke just before of " the glory of the incorruptible God,"
in contrast to " an image of corruptible man, and of birds,
and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things," he was refer
ring to the Creator's moral superiority over His creatures ?
or that, when he said, in 1 Cor. 15 : 43, "It is sown in
corruption, it is raised in incorruption ;" and in v. 52,
" The dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we (the living)
shall be changed," he was thinking of a moral change
then effected in the living and the dead ? Granting that
corruption and incorruption refer rather to conditions of
the body than of the soul, which may perhaps account for
the twofold assertion that " this corruptible must put on
incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality," it
must be remembered that, 'according to the popular
theory, the bodies of the condemned will be as indestruct
ible as their souls ; otherwise the worms would eat them
up, and the fire would reduce them to ashes. The diffi
culty, therefore, would remain in full force, of " eternal
life" beiDg . promised to those "who by patient continu
ance in well-doing seek for glory, and honor, and incor-

626 SYMPOSIUM.
ruption." And it is a difficulty which one would think
must sometimes have occurred to English clergymen when,
on the anniversary of the reigning monarch's accession,
they pray that God would " crown him with immortality
in the world to come." Do British sovereigns not possess
" never-dying souls ?" Must they not " live forever, either
in weal or woe?" The prayer is in remarkable accordance
with St. Paul's teaching, but as violently opposed to that
of Augustine and his followers.
On the whole, therefore, the advocates of what Canon
Farrar calls, " The spreading doctrine of Conditional Im
mortality," have cause to be thankful for the Revised Ver
sion, notwithstanding the great blot of rendering the un-
translateable term Gehenna by an old Saxon word, which
its etymology and the popular superstitions that have
gathered round it combine to make the most unsuitable
one that could well have been selected. They needed
nothing to strengthen their arguments ; for even so cele
brated, though courteous, an opponent as the writer just
named admits that " nothing can be more logical and
complete than the demolition which they have inflicted
upon the supporters of the current view — on their own
ground ;" which ground he defines to be adherence to the
letter of Scripture, but which we prefer to designate as an
appeal to the plain, direct, positive teaching of Scripture,
letter and spirit, from end to end. Still the New Version
may be expected, for the reasons already assigned, to lend
great practical aid toward procuring a more wide-spread
acceptance, in its unmutilated form, of " the record which
God gave of His Son," namely, that " He hath given unto
us eternal life, and this life " — not merely the holiness and
happiness which belong to it, but the life itself—" is in
His Son."
Samuel Minton.

rv.
1 Length of Days Forever and Ever."

By Rev. GEORGE R. KRAMER, Pastor op " The House
hold op Faith," Wilmington, Delaware.

[Note— Eev. Mr. Kramer is the eloquent and popular pastor of an Inde
pendent church in Wilmington, Bel. He was until recently in charge of a
large and flourishing church in that city, in connection with the Methodist
Episcopal Church. But he could not consent to stifle his own convictions as to
important Gospel truths, nor to preach at the dictation of others what he did
not believe, or rather what he knew to be false. He, therefore, resigned his
charge ; but a large part of his church and congregation refused to give him
up. They followed him, and, after worshiping for two or three years in a
large hall, they erected a church edifice large enough to accommodate their
increasing numbers. It was dedicated in Becember last. They now worship
In it, and the Lord is daily adding to the church such as shall be saved.]
For all knowledge of the hereafter we are dependent
upon Divine revelation. Such an important thing as
human destiny we would reasonably suppose would be —
if revealed — made known in terms which all could under
stand ; and though figurative language might be used to
illustrate the results of sin and righteousness, we would
expect that result itself to be expressed in literal terms.
The theme is too important, too stupendous, to warrant
any other mode of statement.
We must know what will become of us if we reject the
Gospel, and what blessing we shall receive if we believe.
We claim that God has in His Word made known in
plain terms the reward and the penalty to follow the
present life of probation.
We produce this shining sentence from the lips of Jesus
Christ : " God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not
perish but have everlasting life."
We believe this means just what it says.
We believe all could understand it, were it not for tra-

628 &YMPOSIUM.
ditions which prejudice the mind of the reader, and which,
though embalmed in sacred song and pulpit phraseology,
have no place in the inspired Volume.
Unfortunately for those who claim that "eternal life"
in the Bible means spiritual life in the sense of " happi
ness," " communion with God," and " holiness," this life
is not only so spoken of as to forbid any other but a lit
eral meaning, but it is actually defined.
A passage not often noted gleams upon the pages of
Divine inspiration. It is in the Twenty-first Psalm and
the fourth verse. It tells what Gospel life is.
The petitioner asks for life — not for the present natural
life, but for the Gospel life. He receives what he asks for.
What is it?
"He asked Life op Thee, and Thou gavest it
him, even length of days forever and ever."
From all theological phraseology we turn to this as the
true meaning of the eternal life promised in the Gospel.
Irenseus, the martyr and Bishop of Lyons, a great
leader of the orthodox Church in the second century,
refers to this very passage as teaching that literal endless
life is the salvation of the Gospel of Christ. Irenseus
believed no one would have a conscious being perpetuated
unless he was a follower of the Lord Jesus.
The following is from his writings, now open before me,
and from which I pen the words :
" And again he thus speaks respecting .the salvation of
man : ' He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest Him
length of days forever and ever,' indicating that it is the
Father of all who imparts continuance forever and ever
on those who are saved. For life does not arise from us,
nor from our own nature ; but it is bestowed according to
the grace of God. And, therefore, he who shall preserve
the life bestowed upon him, and give thanks to Him who
imparted it, shall receive, also, length of days forever and
ever. But he who should reject it and prove himself un
grateful to his Maker, inasmuch as he has been created
and has not recognized Him who bestowed the gift upon
him, deprives himself of the privilege of continuing for
ever and ever. And for this reason'the Lord declared to
those who showed themselves ungrateful towards Him:

GEORGE R. KRAMER. 629
' If ye have not been faithful in that which is little, who-
will give you that which is great?' indicating that those
who, in this brief, temporal life have shown themselves un
grateful to Him who bestowed- it, shall justly not receive
from Him length of days forever and ever."
Why does Massuet comment upon this passage ? If it
passed without comment, would not the reader think that
Irenseus really means what he says? He does mean what
he says. He ¦ closes this chapter by saying : " Thus far,
then, let me speak concerning the creation and the con
tinued duration of the soul."
Christ died a literal death and rose to a literal life to-
give the eternal life of the Gospel. It is of literal life He
speaks when He says : " I am alive forevermore." It is
of literal life God speaks in Deut. 30 : 11-39, 40, " I kill
and I make alive. * * For I lift up my hand to heaven
and say, I live forever." The first death is literal— so shall
be the second, for it is a death after the resurrection ; for
only the believer rises to immortality. "On such the
second death has no power." Christ speaks of literal life
when He says : " He that loseth his life — hateth his life
• in this world — shall keep it unto life eternal ;" keep just
what he hates now — literal life.
The adjective is one of duration — not "happy" life,.
" holy " life, implying there is another life parallel with it
— a miserable, sinful life ; but it is " everlasting " — " eter
nal life" — teaching that the other life is not perpetual.
That this eternal life will be a happy, holy life is certain ;
and these terms are used to show its nature, but the term
eternal is used to show its duration. No other life will be
eternal but the life of holiness and happiness.
In Ezekiel 33, the immortal God puts in antithesis His
own life and the death of the sinner. He speaks of His
own literal being as a pledge of His desire to give literal
being to a penitent. " As I live, saith the Lord, I have
no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the
wicked turn from his way and live."
Surely we cannot deny the statement (Psalm 145 : 20),.
" The Lord preserveth all them that love Him, but all the-
wicked will he destroy."
To believe in Immortality only in Christ, honors Him.

630 SYMPOSIUM.
" He that eateth me even he shall live by me." " Because
I live ye shall live also." " This life is in His Son." " Be
lieving, ye might have life through His name." "Who
soever believeth in Him shall not perish."
Man is mortal, and he receives immortality only in
Christ, upon the condition of believing in Him.
Ah ! Thanatopsis, thou art right. All the splendors of
Nature " are but the solemn decorations all of the great
tomb of man." But we look away to the shinings of the
regeneration when the Life-giver shall come; when the
effulgence of immortality shall gleam through Hades, and
when all who believe in Him shall " die no more." There
is a blessed time for redeemed man upon the regenerated
earth. Edgar Allan Poe mournfully sings :
"Lo ! 'tis a gala night,
Within the lonesome latter years ;
An angel throng bewinged, bedight
In veils and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre to see
A play of hopes and fears ;
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Out — out are the lights — ont all ;
And over each quivering form
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm ;
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, ' Man,'
And its hero the conqueror worm."
But coming years are radiant. The saints are to glow
with immortal beauty. "Thodgh worms destroy this
body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." " Virgil's dream
shall be more than realized." " The serpent's brood shall
die." The time will come when glowing wing may go
from horizon to horizon and from zenith to nadir, and find
evil nowhere. Christ shall destroy the works of the devil ;
so says the Word. There are figures in the Bible ; but
tome things there are literal, and this is one in John 2 : 17:
" He that doeth the will of God abideth forever." He has
"Length of Days Forever and Ever."
George E. Kramer.

V.
Is Immortality Compulsory?

By Rev. JOSEPH D. WILSON, A.M., Chicago, Illinois.

[Note.— Mr. Wilson was the Rector of Calvary Protestant Episcopal Church,
In Pittsburg, Pa., from 1867 to 1874. He then connected himself with the
Reformed Episcopal Church, under Bishop Cummins, and was put in charge of
Christ's Reformed Episcopal Church, in Peoria. He has been the Rector of
St. John's Reformed Episcopal Church, in Chicago, since 1879; He is the
author of Studies upon the Words from the Cross, with an Inquiry concerning
Hades, recently published.]
My attention was first called to the doctrine of Condi
tional Immortality about thirteen years ago by the late
Rev. William Preston, D.D., then Rector of St. Andrews'
Church, Pittsburg, Pa. The occasion was as follows: A
series of Lenten sermons was preached by the different
Rectors of that city, in turn. The design of these sermons
was the awakening of the impenitent. I observed that
none of the preachers had taken as a subject the wrath of
God and the fearful punishment denounced against the
ungodly. So when my turn came I took that subject. I
argued that endless misery was just, and that, in the
nature of things, it was inevitable. I was not satisfied
with my argument. Few persons, I fancy, ever have been
or ever can be satisfied with any argument in favor of a
doctrine so unscriptural ; but I supposed, whatever the
weakness of the argument, that the doctrine was true, for
so I had been taught.
I do not know what effect the sermon had upon the
people, but I shortly after discovered that my clerical
brethren were distressed by it.
"What is the matter with the sermon?" I inquired.
" Isn't the argument sound?"
" Oh, yes ; the argument was good enough and you were

¦632 SYMPOSIUM.
earnest enough, but it is — er— -er — inexpedient to preach
that doctrine."
" Why ? Is it not a truth of the Word of God ?"
" Yes, oh, yes, it would be heretical to deny it ; but it is
inexpedient." "But did not the Lord himself preach it, and His
apostles ?"
" Of course, of course ; but it is inexpedient."
I was puzzled. How it could be inexpedient to preach
a Scripture doctrine, was unaccountable to me, and so I
sought out the oldest and wisest clergyman of those present,
to learn something of the expediency which consists in
ignoring Divine truth. To my question whether any of
the clergy present doubted the doctrine of eternal misery,
Doctor Preston replied that so far as he knew they all
believed it, except himself. He then stated briefly his
view, viz., that the wicked shall be destroyed. I was
shocked. Young though I was, I ventured to tell him
how much his words distressed me, but he kindly urged me
to examine the matter for myself. I then mentioned to
other brethren the venerable Doctor's opinion. They
knew of it and were very sorry that he, so saintly a man,
could be so much in error. I suggested to one brother
that he and I should prepare ourselves and go and con
vert the Doctor, but the brother declined. " It was a pain
ful doctrine anyhow, and had better be let alone."
To fortify myself for converting the good Doctor, I
studied the question. The old error in me died hard; but
in the face of dispassionate, painstaking investigation there
was but one conclusion, viz., that the Scriptures uniformly
promise life, eternal life, to those in Christ, and destruc
tion, perdition, death to the impenitent. The more I have
studied the subject the more confident have I become that
the notion of the immortality of the wicked is a pagan
notion, which crept into the church along with other errors
when Greek philosophy saddled itself upon Christian truth.
That melancholy error has descended to us through the
papal communion, and has, I am persuaded, done great
harm. Besides raising in the minds of believers a doubt
of God's justice, a doubt whjch could be crushed only by a
strong effort of will, it has arrayed many thoughtful men

JOSEPH D. WILSON. 633
against Christianity altogether. But the saddest result of
the doctrine is its effect upon the clergy, who, recoiling
from a full and frank presentation thereof, gagging them
selves because of the " inexpediency " of preaching eter
nal torment, have muffled their voices and become insin
cere. I doubt if any error is of service to mankind ; but if, as
has been claimed, the notion of eternal misery has done
good in frightening the vicious in times past, then its day
of usefulness is ended. Nobody is frightened at it any
more. Even its adherents practically disbelieve it, and
the mass of men unable to argue, settle down into a silent
conviction that there must be some mistake about the
whole matter. The notion carries with it so frightful an
assault upon the Divine character, that good <men will not
calmly face it, but prefer to pass it by with vague allu
sions. Why should God keep a soul forever and ever in a con
dition of sin? Nothing is without Him, for by Him all
things exist. Why can He not withdraw His sustaining
hand and let the sinner perish ? All He has to do is to
take away His upholding energy, and back the sinner goes
into the non-existence out of which he came. Why should
God disfigure His universe with millions of suffering
wretches forever, and for no purpose — for what purpose
¦can be conceived? Shall Gehenna be full of agonizing
shrieks eternally .as a warning to the glorified? Surely
not! The glorified are safe, and need no such warning.
Then shall hell be kept as a spectacle to the saints, so that
they, looking upon the torments of the damned, mav feel
the happier at having escaped ? Surely not ! Christianity
makes men sympathetic, and such a spectacle would turn
heaven into a place of torment for the saved. For what
purpose then can we conceive a perpetual hell maintained ?
Nobody has ever yet stated a purpose which is not ob
viously and ridicuously out of proportion. How God can
be all in all with a mighty empire of intelligent beings
gnawing their tongues for pain and blaspheming forever,
passes comprehension.
And is it just ? The sinner is born without his own con
sent. God knows beforehand that the man will sin and

634 SYMPOSIUM.
die impenitent. Why then, if eternal woe awaits the
sinner, did God create him ? Or why did He not per
mit him to die in infancy? To say that God creates
myriads of beings for eternal agony, when He could either
forbid their birth or terminate their being, seems to me to
make Him a malignant fiend. The only escape from so
horrible a conclusion is the plea either that God cannot
forbid a human being's creation, or that, being created, He
cannot destroy him. Neither part of such a plea can
stand. God could have destroyed Adam in a moment.
He can by the operation of natural laws or by the suspen
sion thereof wipe off the human race from the face of the
earth, and could have done so at any time in history. If
it be true, as is sometimes argued, that having given life to
human souls He can never recall it, the soul being a thing
so indestructible that even Almighty power cannot termi
nate its being, then why did He not arrest the multiplica-
tion of the race ? If, as this plea seems to imply, God in
advertently started a race of beings who are destined to
eternal woe, why upon discovering His mistake did He not
prevent the further increase of that race, and thus limit to
a few the eternal suffering which He could not prevent ? It
is painful to me to ask such questions and to express
hypotheses which are shocking and irreverent, but the ad
vocates of eternal misery compel them. The irreverence
is not in these inquiries, but in those arguments for endless
woe which imply that God did not know what He was
doing when He made man, or which limit His power to
arrest the machine He has put in motion.
Against these irreverent, absurd and withal puerile
notions we seek to vindicate the Holy One. We do not
limit Him. " He can create, He can destroy."
He does' injustice to no man, not even to the vilest
wretch. He gives every man life ; and life is a blessing.
For no merit of ours, but just because He is good, He made
us and has given us the joy of being, and blessed be His
holy name. If He should permit us all to perish, He
would do no wrong. He does no wrong when He suffers
the bird to drop from its perch. What claim to persistent

JOSEPH D. WILSON. 635
life have wicked men when innocent birds have none?
But not only has He given us life on earth ; He has given
us a chance for immortality. He offers it to us for the
taking. If we will not have it, if we throw back His
offer in His face, if we prefer this world to Him, we have
it; verily we have our reward.
Or, if I am mistaken in thinking that eternal life is
offered to every man ; if, as Augustinians say, that proffer
is made to a limited number, even then no injustice is
done. All men have life here; and if to some there
comes a higher existence, then that is pure undeserved
grace. It has been said that we have no right to raise the ques
tion of justice in such a case as this ; that the culprit is a
poor judge of law. I admit the force of the statement.
But God Himself has given us our sense of justice. He
requires us to exercise it. He even descends to challenge
our sense of justice with regard to His own ways, and He
maintains that they are equal — and they are. It is prob
able, therefore, that our sense of justice is not a cheat to
delude and blind us, but is to be exercised and respected.
That sense of justice cries out against the scheme of eter
nal torment as inconceivably cruel. To create beings in
order to let them suffer forever, for no remedial purpose to
themselves, for no minatory and preventive purpose to
others but just to suffer and to suffer, shut up by them
selves, is a height of wickedness bewildering by its very
atrocity. Our sense of justice may be perverted, but
enough of righteousness is left in it to forbid any man
calmly to face this view of the matter and not shudder at
the terrible implication against the Holy One. I feel quite
sure that no adherent of the doctrine of never-ending woe
ever does face the question. His mind occupies itself with
finding flaws in hostile arguments, and in the enthusiasm
of controversy deceives itself.
I say these things with no wish to minify, or palliate, or
excuse sin. God forbid ! Sin is exceeding sinful and de
serves punishment, which it surely will receive ; but the
punishment will not be sin's enforced eternal continuance,
but its destruction.

636 SYMPOSIUM.
All theories of endless misery assume necessarily the
endlessness of sinning, and make God the minister of sin
in that He is represented as denying the agonized prayer
of the damned to be allowed to die. But why should not
God permit the lost to die ? On earth a race of sinners is
continued in order that some of the race may gain eternal
blessedness. This earthly life is a probation ; but the con
dition of the lost is an eternal condition, there is no pro
bation for them ; why then cannot they be allowed to die ?
It is safe to say that no human being, certainly no Chris
tian, would continue his fellow-beings in endless torment if
he could help it. He might punish for a while, for a long
while, perhaps ; but if he could let the wretches escape
their misery by perishing at last, he would. And if he
would not do it for mercy's sake, he would for the sake of
propriety, in order to remove from the universe an empire
of blaspheming miscreants. And shall we make God less
merciful than man, less anxious for a purified, unsinning
universe ?
In answer to this we are met by the startling assertion
that Almighty God cannot destroy a soul. The wicked
ness of this assertion is equalled only by its arrogance.
The cause which is driven to such a shift is desperate. In
Teply to it we hold up the word of the Lord Jesus : " He
as able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna," Matt.
10 : 28. The defenders of Conditional Immortality find
3io occasion to deny that or any other word of Scripture.
They find no occasion to limit Omnipotence. Their theory
¦does not assume that God has made a mistake, or that He is
powerless to correct mistakes, or that He does not mean
what He has said. They are the vindicators of a Holy,
Just, and Powerful God against the atrocious implications
of a frightful pagan fiction.
Upon what does this remarkable statement that God
cannot destroy a soul rest ? Certainly not upon Scripture,
for its testimony is all the other way, as the argument of
Prof. Pettingell in the foregoing pages abundantly shows.
Upon what does it rest? We are answered, "Upon the
soul's immortality. The soul is necessarily immortal, and
therefore God cannot destroy it." But how do we know
ihat the soul is necessarily immortal ? We do not know it.

JOSEPH D. WILSON. 637
We know, or rather we infer, that it does not necessarily
die with the body ; but even if it should outlive the body,
why cannot it perish afterward ?
Let us look into the argument for a future life, and see
what it really proves. The argument may be given as
follows :
1. Nearly all men believe in a future existence.
2. The soul is made of immaterial qualities, which do
not dissolve like dead material organisms and therefore do
not necessarily perish with the body.
3. Analogies like the sleeping chrysalis show how an
unseen germ of life may survive an outward change.
4. The inequalities existing among men — suffering vir
tue, unpunished vice — suggest a future Rectification and
Retribution. Upon these grounds men have believed in a future state.
And yet some wise men have doubted and believers in the
doctrine have confessed that much uncertainty clouds the
subject. But why should there be any uncertainty ? Are
not these arguments sufficient ? No, they are not sufficient.
What they prove is, not that man shall live after his body
dies, but that it is probable he will live. They prove, not
that man is necessarily immortal, but that he is capable of
becoming so. The soul has qualities which are capable of
exercise upon a broader field than this life. When we see
a bird in its shell, with feet, bill, lungs, wings, etc., we
argue that the little shell is not its final home. The
creature is capable of a higher life, and we believe that
presently it will break the shell of its environment and
soar away. It is a fair inference which we make. It is
just as fair for us to infer that man's high spiritual capaci
ties denote a higher destiny than earth. The inference is
fair. We do well to make it. He who denies the possi
bility of a future existence is not as wise as an unhatched
chicken. But while all this is true, it is also true that
many a bird with feet, feathers, bill and all, never emerges
from his shell. Up the trunks of trees in summer you
will see thousands of locusts, dragon flies and other insects
crawling. They are seeking a place in which to die to the
old life and emerge into a new. They are crawling insects

638 SYMPOSIUM.
now, but within their horny integuments beautiful wings
are folded. Presently the change comes. The empty
cases are left hanging useless upon the trees, while the
perfect creature merrily dances through the air. The
insect has reached his destiny.
It is a beautiful and suggestive analogy. But let us
conclude our study. Look at the trees again, and see there
among the empty shells hundreds not empty. Their
tenants, unable to extricate themselves before the rising
of the sun, have perished. They failed to attain their
destiny. Immortal life is possible for man ; but some, alas, im
prisoned by earthly things, will never find it, but perish
in their own corruption.
Joseph D. Wilson.

VI.
Is Han by Nature Immortal ?

By Rev. A. A. PHELPS, A.M., Rochbsthb, New York.
[Note.— Entering the ministry of the Methodist Church at an early age, Mr.
Phelps continued in that connection for twelve years ; preaching with great
success and acceptance till his dissent from the traditional doctrines of that
church, on the question of Conditional Immortality, brought upon him such
opposition from his superiors and brethren in the ministry, that he decided to
withdraw, that he might be free from the dictation and control of those who
would forbid him to preach Christ as the only source of Eternal Life; choosing
rather to suffer affliction with his so-called heretical brethren, than to enjoy the
favor of those who would not permit him to be loyal to his own convictions
nor faithful to the Divine Teacher.
Since then he has been preaching as an evangelist in various parts of this
country. He has written largely for the press, and was for some years editor
of The Bible Banner, a religious weekly which has for its motto, "The Bible
our only creed; Christian character our only test of fellowship."
He has recently connected himself with the Congregational church in
.Rochester, N. Y., and is now laboring and preaching as city missionary, under
the direction of the Union Missionary Society of that city.]
The question of future existence is one of marvelous
moment. Concerning it no one has a right to be indif
ferent. We live — we die. Who can help entertaining
such queries as these : Does death end all ? Is there to be
another edition of life ? Or, dops the life-stream flow cease
lessly on, while death is only an illusion? Is man by
nature immortal ? Is a life of unbroken consciousness his
birthright legacy ? If not, is immortality a glorious possi
bility ? Are we now on probation for that priceless boon ?
What are the conditions of its bestowal ? By whom and
on whom will it be conferred? When will the bright
morning of immortal life dawn upon our suffering and
dying race ?
It is commonly assumed that man is constitutionally a
dual being, made up of a material body and an immate
rial soul ; that the body is pf little account, while the soul

640 SYMPOSIUM.
constitutes the real man ; that the soul leaves the body at
death and continues to exist as a conscious personality ;
and that every man is destined to live through all eternity,
in happiness or misery.
The following definition would generally be accepted by
current theology : " The soul is an active, thinking, imma
terial substance. It is uncompounded, indivisible, intan
gible, and indestructible ; without exterior or interior sur
face ; is not extended, and can never come in contact with
matter." Such a soul is declared to be immortal. This doctrine
is regarded by many as essential to orthodoxy, if not to
salvation itself. To doubt it, is to drift into the regions of
infidelity. To deny it, is to become a most dangerous
"heretic." To denounce it, is to call down the anathemas
of the popular priesthood, and to invite dishonor, excom
munication, poverty, and persecution. Let us hope, how
ever, that the day of religious toleration has begun to
dawn ; for, while hundreds of pious and scholarly men
have suffered all manner of obloquy for daring to repu
diate the baptized Platonism of a corrupted Christianity,
hundreds more, equally " heretical," are now in good fel
lowship with various churches, and some of them are fill
ing most responsible positions with great acceptability and
usefulness. Papal traditions and papal intolerance shall
not forever prevail.
Having given the whole subject a careful and prayerful
investigation — examining alike ihe strongest rational and
Scriptural arguments used to support the dominant view — I
am compelled to reject the current doctrine of inherent im
mortality, for the following twelve reasons. My limits com
pel me to state them with the utmost brevity. Each one
of them might easily be expanded into a book.
I. It has A BAD HISTORY.
1. Satanic origin. This doctrine can be traced through
the muddy channels of a corrupted Christianity, a perverted
Judaism, a pagan philosophy, and a superstitious idolatry,
to the great instigator of mischief in the garden of Eden.
The Protestants borrowed it from the Catholics, the Cath
olics from the Pharisees, the Pharisees from the Pagans,.

A. A. PHELPS. 641
and the Pagans from the old Serpent, who first preached
the doctrine amid the lovely bowers of Paradise tto an
audience all too willing to hear and heed the new and fas
cinating theology — " Ye shall not surely die." When, at
length, death actually came, Satan patched up his system
by inventing the double-entity theory. He virtually says :
"Your friend is not dead in fact, but only in appearance.
It is only the vacated house that you behold. The tenant
has made a safe escape, and is now really and consciously
alive — enjoying a larger liberty, upon a higher plane of
existence." The bait took. The beautiful theory was
accepted. God was discredited, and Satan believed.
2. Heathen philosophy. Satan's oily argument won
easy victories among the superstitious generations that
came swarming down the stream of time. According to
Herodotus, the Egyptians were the first who formulated
and defended this doctrine. " They believe that, on the
dissolution of the body, the soul immediately enters some
other animal, and that after using as vehicles every species
of terrestrial, aquatic, and winged creatures, it finally
enters a second time a human body." Naturally enough,
other and succeeding heathen nations imbibed similar
notions. But this' doctrine was quite as much a philosophy
as a religion; and endless confusions and speculations
arose. Plato, the leading defender, coupled the doctrine
of immortality with that of pre-existence and transmigra
tion. Are modern Platonists prepared to swallow the
whole dose ? If not, why not ?
3. Jewish belief. The utter silence of the Pentateuch
(covering a period of twenty-five hundred years) on the
subject of the soul's immortality is a strong presumption of
its falsity. The Hebrew Scriptures are equally silent.
Since the Jewish people were chosen to preserve God's
truth and promote God's worship, how can such silence be
explained ? Only on the ground that said doctrine forms
no part of the Divine system. The Jews took no stock in
the dogma of natural immortality till they became cor
rupted by long association with the heathen during their
captivity in Babylon. At the time of their exit, they were
divided into two principal sects, taking strangely opposite
views. The Pharisees tried to couple the Scriptural doc-

642 SYMPOSIUM.
trine of resurrection with the pagan doctrine of natural
immortality, while the Sadducees rejected both. Each
sect was partly right and partly wrong. They were both
badly muddled, and . Jesus warned his disciples not to
accept the doctrine of either. What a pity that they
could not have found the harmony of truth, by accepting
the fact of death as a real and radical thing, and then by
accepting the resurrection according to the teaching Of
Christ as their only hope of future life!
4. Christian compromise. Jesus Christ started his fol
lowers upon the track of conditional immortality. Well
did the apostles and primitive disciples learn this great
lesson. Not a discordant note was struck for several gen
erations. The five " Apostolic Fathers " bore a clear tes
timony to the Gospel of life and death. But in the second
century theological ideas began to be somewhat mixed,
and the confusion grew worse and worse for succeeding
ages. While Theophilus, Polycrates, Irenseus, Lactantius,
and some others proclaimed life only in Christ, Athen
agoras, Tertullian, Augustine and others affirmed the doc
trine of immortality for all men and endless torments for
the wicked. This last feature was so revolting that some
regarded it as a foul slander on God's character, and set
tled down in the conclusion that all will be eternally
saved. Thus various and conflicting doctrines arose from
the commingled systems of Christianity and Platonic phi
losophy, which the church, in her too eager desire for
numerical strength, tried to harmonize. An easy door
was opened for the reception of Platonic converts to
Christianity, without requiring them to relinquish their
pagan ideas. Thus the cause of God was compromised.
The unholy leaven continued to work, until nearly the
whole lump was at last infected. Sad enough has been the
result. 5. Papal decree. The Christian church continued to
degenerate. With the lapse of ages ecclesiastical author
ity became centralized in the Pope of Rome. At his in
stigation great councils were held, and authoritative edicts
were issued, to regulate the belief and bind the conscience
of the religious world. To fix upon the dogma of natural
immortality the formal seal of the church, and thus make

A. A. PHELPS. 643
it easier to punish dissenters, the Council of the Lateran,
held A. D. 1513, under Pope Leo X, issued the following
decree. :
" Whereas, some have dared to assert concerning the reasonable
soul, that it is mortal ; we, with the approbation of the Sacred
Council, do condemn and reprobate all who assert that the intellectual
soul is mortal, seeing the" soul is not only truly and of itself and
essentially the form of the human body, as it is expressed in the
canon of Pope Clement Fifth, but likewise immortal; and we
strictly inhibit all from dogmatizing otherwise; and we decree that
all who adhere to the like erroneous assertions shall be shunned and pun*
islied as heretics."
Most of the reformers clung to the dogmas of papacy,
rejecting only a few monstrous pretentions relating to pen
ance and purgatory. They were still in a hazy atmos
phere, and often exhibited the same intolerant spirit which
inspired' their persecutors. In less than fifty years from
the Lateran Conncil, the Protestants published their Hel
vetic Confession, containing this narrow decree : " We con
demn all who scoff at the immortality of the soul, or
bring it into doubt by subtle disputations." This was
hardly less than a second edition of Rome. Too many
still linger under its dark shadow.
H. It is at variance with the scriptural account of
man's creation.
The history of man's origin will be likely to shed light
on his nature. This is the record :
"The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a
living soul." — Gen. 2 : 7.
Here is a whole system of anthropology in a nutshell.
The text does not teach that man, or any part of him, is
immortal. What does it teach ?
1. That there is a God. The universe did not create,
and does not run itself.
2. That God created man. Then man did not always
exist. Nor did he come into existence by an evolutionary
process. He was a positive creation.
3. That God formed man " of the dust." Man was then
a material organism — visible, tangible, ponderable.

644 symposium.
4. That this dust-made man was vitalized with "the
breath of life." Now the heart beats, the blood starts, the
eyes sparkle, the nerves tingle, the brain thinks. The
steam has been turned on, and the engine moves.
5. That the whole man, thus vitalized, "became a living-
soul." Not a word is said about an immortal soul. Nor
is it even intimated that the soul was a separate entity
which was put into man after he was formed. A plain
man, with no predilections or pet theories, would never
deduce the prevalent theory of man's nature from the first
two chapters of Genesis.
III. It clashes with the Bible statement of man's
FALL. Our first parents were highly endowed, and designed to-
exercise dominion over all the earth. But those' who
govern others must first learn to govern themselves. They
must be tested and developed. The chosen test was a
simple one:
" Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat ; but of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it ;
for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." — Gen. 2 :
16, 17.
Literally rendered, the last words are, "Dying thou
shalt die." In the very day that Adam ate the forbidden.
fruit he became a dying man, and through various pro
cesses of disease and decay he steadily and surely went
down to death. He was at first balancing between two
possible destinies — mortality and immortality. Had he
eaten of the tree of life, the scales would have turned in
favor of immortal existence. But he ate of the wrong
tree, and subjected himself to a death-destiny.
The Adamic penalty will be more clearly understood if
we trace the history of the case a little further. After
Adam sinned, he was driven from the Garden of Eden,
" lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of
life, and eat and live forever." God would not allow him,
as a sinner, to live forever. It was the hand of love that
pushed sinful man aside, and thus cut off all possibility of
his becoming immortal in misery.

A. A. PHELPS. 645
IV. It is opposed to the scriptural doctrine of
DEATH. Popular theology transforms death into an angel of
blessing — an emancipator from bondage — a resurrection
— a gate to endless joy — a glorious coronation. The Bible
tells quite a different story. It represents the dead as
having gone into a land of darkness, of silence, of sleep,
and of absolute unconsciousness :
"Thereis.no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in
the grave (sheol), whither thou goest." Eccl. 9 : 10. " For in death
there is no remembrance of Thee ; in the grave who shall give
Thee thanks ?" Ps. 6:5. " The dead praise not the Lord, neither
any that go down into silence." Ps. 115 : 17. " His breath goeth
forth, he returneth to his earth ; in that very day his thoughts
perish." Ps. 146 : 4. "The living know that they shall die ; but
the dead know not anything." Eccl. 9:5. " If Christ be not
raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also
which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." 1 Cor. 15 : 17, 18.
These and many other passages teach that death is a
radical change — a negation of life — a state of mental and
physical inaction. The life-current is interrupted in its
flow. The faculties are paralyzed. The heart has ceased
to beat, and the brain to perform its functions. All of
this is exceedingly damaging to the current theory that
man is immortal — that the soul survives the shock of
death and continues in uninterrupted conscious existence.
If this dogma is true, I know not how to interpret those
numerous passages that represent the dead as having
ceased to live, and as being absolutely dependent upon the
resurrection for future life.
V. ii! is equally opposed to physiological facts.
Truth in nature is just as sacred as truth in revelation.
Many facts in science and human experience show that
mind is not a separate entity, but an attribute of the living
man — the result of vitalized organization. The brain is
as truly the organ of thought as the eye is the organ of
vision. Otherwise, why were brains ever made a part of
the physical organism ? Various cases are recorded where
persons have received injuries upon the head, indenting
the skull and producing sudden unconsciousness, which

646 symposium.
continued for days, weeks, or months, till a trepanning pro
cess lifted the bone that compressed the brain, when con
sciousness was immediately restored. Sometimes weeks
have thus intervened between the beginning and ending of
a sentence — a perfect blank in personal history. Can it
be that man possesses an immortal soul, endowed with such
self-existent energy and lofty powers as are usually as
cribed to it, and yet that soul can be paralyzed, and so
practically killed that it does not know anything for
months — all by a little blow upon the head ? It is a' gratui
tous assumption to say that though one blow may reduce
the soul to a state of unconsciousness, two or three blows
will 'thrill it into a more vigorous life than it ever knew
before !
VI. Immortality is nowhere ascribed to man, in
his present state of existence.
This term does not occur at all in the Old Testament
and only five times in the New, translated twice from
aphiharsia and three times from athanasia. In the Revision,
the term " immortality" occurs only three times — translated
from athanasia — and "immortal" is not used even once.
But what is the teaching of those passages in which these
words occur, even in our common version? The term
"immortal," occurring once, is applied to the Eternal
King, and not to man, or any part of him. See 1 Tim.
1 : 17. In relation to immortality, we learn : (1) That
God alone possesses it. 1 Tim. 6 : 16. (2) That Christ
brought it to light, not as an attribute of man, previous
to His coming, but as a glorious possibility through
Himself. 1 Tim. 1 : 10. (3) That if we ever obtain it we
must earnestly seek for it. Rom. 2 : 7. (4) That "this
mortal must put on immortality." 1 Cor. 15 : 53. (5)
That we cannot put it on till the resurrection morning. 1
Cor. 15 : 54. Surely the evidence of man's immortality
is wanting. It ought to be sufficient to believe what the
Bible clearly teaches. It does not teach the immortality of
the soul.
VII. Immortality is a blessing to be sought, and
t ot a birthright legacy.
The last proposition paves the way for this, which makes

A. A. PHELPS. 647
the argument doubly strong. Jesus Christ is revealed as
the world's great Life-giver. To a race of dying sinners
He uttered this sorrowful lament : " Ye will not come to
Me that ye might have life." This implies three things :
(1) Men are dead, either in fact or in prospect. (2) Christ
is the appointed source of life, spiritual and eternal. (3)
To obtain it, men must make personal and earnest appli
cation. A multitude of passages might be adduced. I
give only two samples :
" I am the living bread which came down from heaven ; if any
man eat of this bread he shall live forever." John 5 : 26.
How, then, can man expect to live forever without, any
connection with Christ ?
" This is the record, that God hath given to ns eternal life, and
this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life ; and he
that hath not the Son of God hath not the life." 1 John 5 : 11, 12.
Here we have two facts : (1) God hath given to us
(Christians) eternal life. (2) This life is not in us, but in
his Son. God has given it to us by promise, and we now
have it by faith and hope. But if we " by patient con
tinuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and im
mortality," that endless life will in due time be ours.
VIII. The doctrine of inherent immortality is opposed to
THE SCRIPTURAL DOOM OF THE WICKED.
What is that fearful doom ?
(1) They shall die.
" For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die ; but if ye through
the Spirit do mortify the deedB of the body, ye shall live." Rom.
8 : 13. See also Deut. 30 : 19 ; Ezek. 18 : 4 ; 33 : 11 ; John 6 : 50 ;
Rom. 6 : 23; James 1 : 15; 5 : 20 ; Rev. 2 : 11; 21 : 8.
(2) They shall perish.
" 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." Ps. 37 : 20. See also Luke 13 : 3, 5 ; John 3 :
14, 16 ; Rom. 2 : 12; 2 Cor. 2 : 15.
(3) They shall be destroyed.
" The Lord preserveth all them that love him ; but all the

'648 SYMPOSIUM.
wicked will he destroy." Ps. 145 : 20. See also Ps. 37 : 38 ; Matt.
7: 13; 10: 28; Phil. 3 : 18, 19 ; 2 Thes. 1 : 7-9.
(4) They shall be burnt up.
" 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." Mal. 4 : 1. See
also Ps. 11 : 6; 21 : 8, 9 ; Isa. 66 : 15; Matt. 3 : 12 ; 13 : 40-42.
The logic of this testimony is simple and forcible. If
sinners were immortal they could not perish. But the
Bible plainly teaches that they will perish. Therefore
they are not immortal.
IX. It supersedes the necessity of a resurrection.
Those who lay much stress upon " the immortality of
the soul" lay correspondingly little stress upon the resur
rection of the body. This is a logical, sequence. These
two doctrines cannot coalesce. They are natural antago
nisms. Many try to believe both, but in the very nature
of the case their faith in the one will practically vitiate
their faith in the other. This is no new discovery. Wil
liam Tyndale saw, more than three hundred years ago,
that to send men to heaven, hell, or purgatory at death,
was to destroy the argument by which Christ and Paul
proved the resurrection. The apostles made all future
life depend upon a revival of the dead. Modern theolo
gians invest man with the power of continued existence,
and make such revival entirely unnecessary.
X. It reduces the judgment scene to a solemn farce.
If the Bible teaches anything, it teaches the fact of a
coming judgment, when the verdicts of human destiny
will be righteously rendered and faithfully executed.
" For God shall bring every work into judgment, with
every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be
evil." This does not occur at death. There are not ten
thousand judgment days scattered along the history of the
race. " God hath - appointed a day " for this work, and
" we shall all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ,"
who will then "reward every man according td his
works." But if men are rewarded in a disembodied state,

A. A. PHELPS. 649
and as soon as they die, such a tribunal would be nothing
less than a solemn farce. Why rally the glorified saints
from heaven, or the lost from a penal hell, to pronounce
upon them a verdict of approval or condemnation ? Is it
possible that any of them had gone to the wrong place ?
The Bible view of rewards and punishments, meted out at
the day of judgment, dissipates this fog-bank of error and
justifies the ways of God.
XI. It subverts the Bible doctrine of Christ's second
coming. If man has an immortal soul capable of living without
a body, there is no necessity that Christ should come to
raise and reconstruct the physical organism. If men go
to their respective rewards as soon as they stop breathing,
Christ has no need to come in the capacity of a judge.
And if saints are to find their permanent home in heaven,
and sinners in some other part of God's universe, then the
time must come when our planet will be entirely depopu
lated and practically worthless: In that case there would
be no need of Christ's coming to lift the curse and purify
the earth for the saint's inheritance. Why, then, should
He ever come ? Is it any wonder that those who adopt the
current theology should care so little about the Lord's re
turn ?
XII. It is a prolific source of error.
If we are to j udge a tree by its fruits, what must be our
opinion of a dogma that has brought forth such a hateful
harvest of pernicious errors as the one under considera
tion ? The tree of Natural Immortality has many boughs,
well loaded with such fruit as the following : Mormonism,
Mohammedanism, Shakerism, Swedenborgianism, Spirit
ualism, Purgatory, Mariolatry, Universalism, and Eternal-
tormentism. All of these systems are built upon the
assumption that dead folks are alive. This is the warp
and woof — the brains, bones, and muscles — the top, bot
tom, and center of Spiritualism. It is this that induces
the priest-ridden Romanist to pay his money to help his
dead friends through the pains of Purgatory. Convince
him that the virgin Mary has been for eighteen centuries

650 symposium.
a dead woman, and he will direct no more prayers to her.
Universalism is only a natural rebound from the doctrine
of endless torment. They agree in saying that all men
will live forever, while they differ as to the condition of
that existence. Whoever starts out with the assumption
of natural immortality, will be compelled to adopt a spir
itualizing system of interpretation that really turns the
Bible upside down and opens the floodgates of damaging
error.
A. A. Phelps.

vn.
Glad Tidings.

Rt A. M. B. GRAHAM, D.D., Little Rook, Abkansas.

[Note.— Dr. Graham, though still young, has already risen into prominence
as a preacher, writer, and active worker in the cause of Temperance and other
reformatory movements in the Southwestern States. His labors have been
largely successful. That they are well appreciated may be inferred from the
honorary degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor of Divinity that literary insti
tutions in that section of the country have conferred upon him. He is the
President of the State Christian Temperance Union of Arkansas. He is also
President of the Arkansas Christian Conference, an ecclesiastical body whose
polity is similar to that of our Congregational and Baptist churches, and whose
creed differs in little or nothing from that of other evangelical churches,
excepting on the question of the Second Coming of our Lord and of the Life
Everlasting through Him alone.]
The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are the glad
tidings of the Gospel, and as preached by the great apostle
of the Gentiles at Antioch were well calculated to cheer
the hearts and strengthen the hands of the few disciples
who were following in the footsteps of their Lord. These
were also in their humble way promulgating the glad
tidings of redemption through the name of Jesus Christ,
the only begotten of the Father, and their risen Lord.
This apostle also preached the resurrection of Jesus with
great boldness in the metropolis of Greece, and wherever
he went he fearlessly and continuously preached, "He hath
raised up Jesus," presenting it as the great central truth
upon which rested the entire Christian structure, and on
which must forever rest the hope of those who seek salva
tion through the Lord Jesus Christ.
The apostle Paul, in his first epistle to the Corinthians,
chapter 15, very plainly sets forth the fact that the only
hope for continued existence after death is in the resurrec
tion of the dead through Christ. He says : " If. there be
no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen ; and

652 SYMPOSIUM.
if Christ be not risen, then is your preaching vain ; * * *
then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are per
ished." Here is set forth most clearly the fact that man is mor
tal, and only mortal, and that he is entirely dependent
upon Christ and the resurrection for future life. If the
masterly argument and conclusion of the apostle be
correct, the doctrine of life only in Christ is true, and
those out of Him cannot live forever in any state or con
dition. The doctrine that immortality is a bestowment on the
part of God upon the obedient believer in the Lord Jesus
Christ, as taught by the apostolic ministry, is in direct an
tagonism to the popular doctrine of the immortality of the
soul, which by many is supposed to be "a fundamental
article of revealed religion." If immortality is inherent
in all men, it is very plain that it cannot be a gift of God
to the obedient.
The doctrine that the soul of man is naturally immor
tal is nowhere declared in Holy Writ, while on the con
trary it is explicitly stated that " the soul that sinneth it
shall die," Ezekiel 18 : 4, and that " the gift of God is
eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans
<> : 23.
It is a significant fact that man was created by Jeho
vah, placed under a definitely expressed law to develop a
character which should determine the character of his
existence. Obedience to the requirements of God would
have resulted in an unending life, while disobedience cul
minated in death, from which man was powerless to rescue
himself, and from which the violated law could not possibly
redeem him.
And here, at this juncture, comes from the author of
the violated law the blessed promise, " The seed of the
woman shall bruise (crush) the serpent's head." Gen. 3 :
15. Here we have the first intimation of the work which
1 Christ should do for fallen, sinful man. And this scheme
•of redemption through Jesus, the promised Messiah, was
-devised and planned by Jehovah after Adam's unsuccess
ful probation, after his failure in Eden.
The failure of our federal head, by which the race, so

A. M. B. GRAHAM. 653
far as the offended law was concerned, was doomed to eter
nal oblivion, gave rise to the redemptive scheme.
Some, however, have supposed and hold that the whole
work of redemption was arranged between the Father and
the Son prior to the fall of man, but we have thus far
failed to see the consistency of the position. An agree
ment between the Father and the Son, prior to man's fall,
that Christ should redeem man when he should fall, would
^rnost clearly indicate that, after entering into such a com
pact, it became necessary for God to create man with such
constitution and mental powers as would render him un
equal to the task and entirely incapable of yielding obedi
ence to the commands of Deity, and thus virtually compel
man to fall, in order that Christ might have an opportu
nity to perform the pre-arranged work.
This view of the case would charge Deity with giving
man a law which He knew would not and could not be kept
and then punishing him for not keeping it ; and this posi
tion would make Jehovah directly responsible for the fall
and all the sin and consequent misery in the world. The
failure of Adam brought death to the race ; the success of
Christ brought life to the race.
The promise of God that "the seed of the woman shall
bruise the serpent's head," virtually placed man under
another law, obedience to which would secure the immor
tal prize — eternal life — that Adam failed to obtain. It
should be borne in mind that Adam did not lose immortal
life ; he never had it, but simply temporal life, and that is the
reason he died — not having secured the prize of eternal life.
So far as Adam's failure affected the race unto death, to
the same extent the obedience and work of Christ affected
it unto life. " For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ
shall all be made alive." 1 Cor. 15 : 22. Man dies regard
less of moral character or standing, and he is to be brought
back to life (not eternal) regardless of his moral status.
The Scriptures clearly teach the universality of the
resurrection. Those who are Christ's by adoption into the family of
God; who accept the Lord and imbibe His spirit; who
obey His commandments and trust His grace, will be
raised to life eternal — will be clothed upon with im-

654 symposium.
mortality ; while those who reject the Son of God and will
not heed His admonitions shall be raised to life only to
realize the great loss they have sustained, and to receive
their punishment for the sins they have committed, and
perish at last and "be as though they had not been." Oba-
diah 16 v. " For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the
flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the Spirit
shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." Gal. 6 : 8.
This precious gift of immortality — eternal life — is offered
to all mankind on condition of faith in Jesus — obedience
to His requirements — a condition with which all can easily
comply. " God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should
not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3 : 16.
Every man holds his own destiny in the grasp of his
own will, and is permitted to determine for himself whether
he will or will not live forever.
Here, in this life, the saint is begotten by incorruptible
seed — by the Word of God, which begetting will, if un
impeded and unobstructed by sin, have its happy culmina
tion in the birth of the entire man from the dominion of
death, from the power of the grave to an immortal life,
when the great Life-giver shall come to gather from the
north and the south, from the east and the west, all who '
have worshiped the Father and served the Son " accept
ably with reverence and godly fear." And then in the
" new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness " shall dwell
in perfect peace forever and ever, the pure in heart.
May it be the happy lot of both reader and writer to
meet, by and by, in that "summer land of song," where
wintry blasts wither not the fruits ; where death with icy
hand bears not away into silence fond hearts that would
delight to live and love together, free from sin and its
serious results ; where j oy and peace and the sweet fragrance
of unfading flowers shall be ours to enjoy forever.
" Clouds of darkness round us press.
Would we have our sorrow less ?
All the sharpness of the cross,
All that tells the world is loss,
Death, and darkness, and the tomb
Pain us only ' till He comeF"
A. M. B. Graham.

vm.
The Unity of the Faith.

By WILLIAM R. HART, Philadelphia, Pa.

[Note.— Mr. Hart is a layman engaged in active business in tbis city. He is
a gentleman of literary taste and culture, and especially addicted to theologi
cal and Biblical studies, and of no mean attainments, as his recent volume
entitled Eternal Purpose, published by J. B. Llppincott & Co., as well as this
paper, will abundantly show.]
The Scripture doctrine of Immortality has usually been
discussed as a matter of mere speculative belief* concern
ing the destiny of the lost. This, however, is only the
reverse side of the medal. The obverse side — the positive
statement of the doctrine — tells of the reciprocal relations
existing between Christ and His saints. These relations
are based on the possession of a common Life, just as are
the relationships of an earthly family. The non-immor
tality of those who do not possess this life is a corollary,
and necessary result of the doctrine, but is by no means
the substance of the doctrine itself.
The Bible is not a compendium of abstract doctrine. It
is, rather, considered as a whole, the history of a Person.
All Scripture Truth concerns this Person.
Apart from Him, doctrinal statements are dry and pow
erless. Reduced to scientific formula, they may interest
the mind, but have no effect upon the heart. But when
these statements are apprehended as concerning the char
acter and history of One with whom we are most inti
mately connected; with whom,. indeed, we are allied by
the ties of kindred ; to whom we are indebted for untold
benefits ; whose undeserved but perfect, unchangeable, un-
forfeitable love to us we have known and believed, and
with whose eternal future our own is closely identified ;
they become personal to ourselves, living, powerful, and,

656 SYMPOSIUM.
so far as they are apprehended, dominant in the heart and
life. The truth concerning the Lord Jesus Christ is, there
fore, the beginning of the Scripture doctrine of Immor
tality. All truth centres in Him. He is the Truth ; that
is to say, He is the personal, living embodiment of all that
God has to say to His creatures. In Him all truth is har
monized, and each separate statement forms part of a
resplendent and harmonious whole. It is just here that
Christianity has missed the key to Revelation. Revelation
is about Him, and all its disclosures centre in Him. But
theologians have supposed it, instead, to be about Man;
and taking isolated statements, they have built up clash
ing and inconsistent theories. Their starting-point has
been wrong ; hence their exegesis and dogmatic induction
have led to wrong results. Hence, also, no two commen
tators, starting from the same point, have ever been able
to arrive* at the same end. The most fruitful source of
error in this respect has been the assumption that the Bible
history of man assumes his native and inherent immor
tality. " Break but one link, the whole you mar."
The Unity of the Faith which centres in Him as the
Life, as well as the Way and Truth, is shattered when im
mortality is claimed to be, instead of His possession and
His gift, the inherent and inalienable possession of the
creature. The whole divine economy as revealed in Holy
Scripture changes its aspect. It becomes merely remedial,
instead of radical. Atonement has different relations and
effects. The doctrine of God's sovereignty becomes mere
intellectual Calvinism, or is denied altogether ; or is, at
any rate, deprived of its power and blessing. Faith be
comes a work, Regeneration a mere figure of speech, the
Hope of the Church is set aside ; in brief, the popular
doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul is the foundation
of an incoherent and heterogeneous religion; while the
doctrine of Immortality derived from Christ only is a cen
tral fact in a homogeneous Christianity. Worst of all, the
former doctrine cuts up by the root the relationships,
based on the possession of a common immortality, which

WILLIAM R. HART. 657
the New Testament reveals between Christ and His saints.
The Rev. Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, recently said, in re
viewing adversely a work which advocated the truth of
Life in Christ only, " He sets forth the most precious views
as to the person and work of Christ, and as to the inti
macy and fulness and security of the believer's union with
Him, and of its blessed and glorious consequences." There
is evident surprise that such views should be held in con
nection with what Dr. Hodge calls (most incorrectly) "the
doctrine of the annihilationists;" but these views are the
necessary result of belief in an actual vital union with
Christ, and they are contradicted by the assertion of an
immortality independent of him. Many who believe the
latter doctrine do indeed gather from their Bible-reading
precious views of Christ and of His relations to His
saints, but they are fragmentary and incomplete, and are
held illogically. They cannot be fully apprehended while
the union of Christ with His Church is held to be mystical
and symbolic rather than a literaland real, although spir
itually apprehended fact.
The central fact in this Unity of the Faith is the essen
tial Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Apart from this it
is impossible to rightly understand the Scripture teaching
concerning Immortality. This teaching is based on the
fact — most fully set forth in the Epistle to the Ephesians
— that God's design in Redemption, was to manifest Him
self to His creatures. This manifestation is made in a
Person, through whom Immortality is conferred on the
worthless and perishing. Now if this Person were less
than God, He could not be the expression of God. A
Revelation may be made through a creature, but God only
can be the absolute and complete expression of Himself.
And Jesus is the " brightness of His glory and the ex
press image of His substance."
The next essential element in this Unity is that God
became Man. He who was "in the form (morphe) of God
anchthought it not robbery to be equal with God, emptied
Himself, took on Him the form of a servant, and being
found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself, and became
obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross."
The third essential is Resurrection. This self-emptied

658 SYMPOSIUM.
One came into a world of which Satan had gained posses
sion. Man had failed utterly, and the race lay in the
helplessness of moral death. It was put on trial again in
the person of this — the Second Man. As Man, and not in
the exercise of Divine power, He successfully met every
test imposed upon Him. In the power of faith in His
Father, He lived, suffered, and died, displaying through
out entire sinlessness and perfect self-abnegation. Com
mitting His spirit to His Father's hands, He went down
into death. One sin would have kept Him there, but His
perfect victory was demonstrated by His resurrection from
the dead. " Wherefore," it is said, " God also supremely
exalted Him, and gave Him the Name which is above
every name, that in the name of Jesus (a human name)
every knee should bow." This exaltation was bestowed
upon Him not as the mere rightful acknowledgment of
His Godhead, but was the reward of the victorious Man —
the Head, as we shall shortly see, of a New Race, superior
to angels, and in the likeness of Himself. The divine gift
of Essential Immortality was bestowed upon a Man, wbo
is now seated on the right hand of the Majesty on High,
"far above all principality and power and might and
dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this
age, but in that about coming." Ephesians 1 : 21.
In the fulfillment of the Divine Purpose, and in order
to the full revelation of God's character to the universe,
this gift of Immortality — the resurrection life of the Man
Christ Jesus — is imparted to other men. Worthless in
themselves, they are made the necessary medium of show
ing forth the riches of the grace and the manifold wisdom
of God. Together they constitute the Body of Christ, the
manifestation of the fulness of Him who filleth all and in
all. They are one body, because they have a common
life. This life is deathless (athanasia) ; it is incorruptible
(aphtharsia) — words never applied to man out of Christ,
nor to angels.
Running all through the Epistles of the Apostle Paul
there is a triple chord of truth, viz., Grace, Atonement,
Life. Grace is the sovereign, unpurchaseable, unchangeable
love of God which saves, immortalizes, and exalts helpless

WILLIAM R. HART. 659
and worthless sinners. It is briefly defined in the words
" The gift of God is eternal life." A gift is necessarily
gratis, on the ground of the ability and willingness of the
giver to bestow. The gift of life must in its very nature
be bestowed without antecedent choice on the part of the
recipient. Moreover, God has left nothing to chance in
the carrying out of His purposes. The future possessors
of Immortality were given by the Father to the Son in
eternity — an eternity which knows neither past, present,
nor future. Before the commencement of the first geo
logical era their names were catalogued in the " Lamb's
Book of Life."
No doctrine so excites human enmity as this, yet none
is more clearly stated in the Bible. Some vessels are made
for honor, some for dishonor ; some are of mercy, before
prepared for glory, some of wrath made up for destruc
tion, and all are out of the same mixture. Do you object
to this? The answer is: "Who art thou, O man, that
repliest against God ?" God is no more bound to bestow
immortality upon a man than He is upon an ant. Both
are the objects of His care and the recipients of His bless
ing. God gave man life, and he is morally unfit to live
forever. His life, withs all its drawbacks, is still a boon
and a blessing, but it is righteously subject to death. The
moralist may thank God for Virtue's present reward, but
he has no right to complain that God passes him by, to
bestow immortality upon a sinner.
From this very sovereignty springs the freedom of grace.
"The gift of God is eternal life." What God has to give
He gives freely, absolutely, unconditionally. Its conscious
reception is after the same manner, simply by believing
the message about the free gift. But faith is an effect,
not a cause. The consciousness of reception is not till
after the gift has been bestowed and received. The be
lieving is the first function of the new life itself.
But before the object of Grace can become its subject —
before immortality can be bestowed — Sin must have been
taken out of the way. This was done by the work effected
upon the cross. The Son of God hung there, under the
frown of Infinite Justice. But Infinite Wisdom and
Mercy had joined all the elect of God with Him in that

660 SYMPOSIUM.
transaction. They were already counted of God as one
with Christ. They were, according to God's estimate,
identified with Him, as though they really and personally
hung there too. He had identified Himself with them
and with their sins. The penalty of sin descended upon
His head ; the same penalty — the frown of Infinite Holi
ness — which will by and by utterly destroy the wicked, so
they will " be as though they had not been." The sins
were consumed, the penalty exhausted forever." In Christ,
the believer has already endured the death which is the
wages of sin. He has been judged once, and he will
never, enter into judgment again. He is justified — made
righteous — in the sight of God eternally. The conscious
reception" of this justification is (ekpisteos) in the way of
faith. The believer is not only reckoned of God as having died
with Christ, but he is also risen with Him. As thus risen,
and only because he has thus risen, he possesses Eternal
Life. This is a real life, a new principle of being, as real
as the natural or psychical life with which plants, animals,
and men are endowed. It differs from that, in that it is
incorruptible, holy, and deathless. Its source is the Second
Adam, the immortalized Man, on whom the Father con
ferred the gift of " life in Himself." Hence regeneration
is an actual thing, not a symbol. Its recipient is " born
again," born from above, born of the Spirit, and that
which is born of the Spirit is spirit. That the spirit thus
born is a real entity we learn from 1 Cor. 15 (and many
other Scriptures), where we are told that just as to each
soul or vital principle of plants, animals, and men God
has given an appropriate body, so this new life shall re
ceive in resurrection its appropriate body. So then the
doctrine of Resurrection depends on the doctrine of Im
mortality derived from Christ alone. It is Nothing more
nor less than the visible manifestation of a hidden life,
and has its analogies in the manifestation of hidden vege
table and animal life.
The Christian is now the possessor of this life, but " it
is not yet manifested." When Christ our life shall be
manifested, we shall also be "manifested with Him in
glory." The possession of this life is the basis of all New

WILLIAM R. HART. 661
Testament exhortation to holy living. The believer is ad
dressed, not as a psychical, but as a spiritual man, and it
is to his spiritual intelligence the truth is unfolded which
it is said that the " psychical man cannot receive." As
risen with Christ, he is exhorted to set his mind on things
above, not on things on the earth, and to put to death his
members which are upon the earth. False teachers are
declared to be " psychical, not having a spirit." It is said
of Christians that God " hath made us alive together with
Christ, having forgiven us all trespasses, and hath exalted
us together, and seated us together in the Heavenlies in
Him." The believer is virtually there now because his
life is there " hid with Christ in God." From that stand
point his spiritual perceptions are taught to look' down on
all earthly things, and he is thus exhorted to "walk
worthy of the calling with which he is called." He is a
child of God — a son — to wear in a little while the likeness
of Him who deigns to call Himself the first-born among
many brethren. As one with Christ, he belongs to a new
Creation, in which all things are of God ; which God has
reconciled to Himself and in which sin is not imputed.
There is now no condemnation because he is in Christ
Jesus. These facts, which have for their sub-stratum the
possession of an actual new nature, form, with their corre
lated facts, the whole basis of Christian ethics. The facts
are always stated. first, and the invariable exhortation is,
to live in correspondence with them.
Thus, also, this truth is the foundation of the true
Church. This is represented in 1 Cor. 12 as a living
organism, fulfilling, through its members, the inner law of
its being. It is not an organization held together by the
pressure of external laws and regulations. As the head
and life of this organism is in Heaven, its status is hea
venly. Here and there a little company may be found,
which, waiting in faith upon God for gifts of ministry,
manifests organic ' life in the distribution by the Holy
Spirit of these gifts among its members. This is not pos
sible where human authority, human election, and human
organization are allowed to rule.
The law of this new life is also that it always seeks its
source. Its tendency, when unchecked, is to rise to the

662 SYMPOSIUM.
level of its fountain. It loves Christ, trusts Christ, glori
fies Christ, and acts out Christ in its practical behavior.
In the same man, while in the flesh, this new or spiritual
life exists side by side with the old or psychical nature,
and is in direct opposition to it. The one is Christ-seek
ing, the other self-seeking. As the one principle or the
other holds sway, the Christian is heavenly- or earthly-
minded. As thus made one with Christ, the believer is properly
identified with Him now in earthly rejection as by and by
in heavenly glory. He sees himself separated by death
and resurrection from a Cosmos which lieth in the Wicked
One. It is, therefore, impossible that his hope should rest
in the improvement of the world, and he is compelled to
receive as literal truth the promise, "I will come again
and receive you to Myself, that where I am there ye may
be also." His Lord's return is the hope which is the anchor
of the soul, sure and steadfast. Identified with Christ, his
hope' centres on the hour of His vindication. He rejoices
in the prospect, not of his own happiness or glory, but "in
the hope of the glory of God."
The same principle of interpretation which accepts the
Lord's return as the proximate hope of the Church leads
us to believe in an immortality derived only from Him. It
is a mystery to me how any intelligent Christian can be
lieve the one without believing the other.
Finally, the doctrine teaches the ultimate destruction of
all Evil. Nothing is Eternal but Good. It tells of a
Universe re-headed up in Christ ; of a Kingdom which,
when the last enemy has been destroyed, the Son will
deliver up to the Father, that God may be all in all ; of
new heavens and new earth, in which there shall be no
more sorrow nor crying nor pain, when God declares
"behold, I make all things new." In that purified and
reconstituted Universe the saints wili be with and like
Christ, and will to all Eternity form with Him the expres
sion to its inhabitants of the wonders of the love and the
riches of the wisdom of the Godhead.

WILLIAM R. HART. 663
Contrast with all this the theory that man is immortal ;
that Evil is eternal ; that the death of Christ is but the
partial remedy for the great misfortune that befell the
Universe when Evil began to be; that notwithstanding
this mighty sacrifice, countless millions must suffer in hell
forever ; that regeneration is a mere symbol, and all its
blessed results, in the " intimacy and fulness and security
of the believer's union with Christ," are mere figures of
speech, and tell me which of the two statements is discord
and which is harmony?
May my readers "all come in the Unity of the Faith,
and of" the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect
man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of
The Christ 1" William R. Hart.

IX.
The Life the Light.
Bv Rev. WILLIAM LEASK, D.D., of London.

[Notb.— Dr. Leask is the Congregational minister of Maberly Chapel, Lon
don. He is also editor of The Rainbow, now in the eighteenth year of ita pub
lication. He has been in the ministry forty-three years, and has published at
least a full score of volumes.]
" In Him was life, and the life was the ¦ light of men." —
John 1 : 4.
Here are two profound statements — two divine proposi
tions having an amazing depth of meaning. " In Him" —
the logos or Word — " was life." On the words " in Him "
the emphasis rests in the Greek. It is a peculiarity of His ;
among those who bear human form, He is alone in this
matter ; for it is not the evanescent animal life that is
here spoken of, but the divine life, that which belongs in
herently and exclusively to God and the Word who was
with God and was God — that life which properly denotes
immortality, and which, consequently, no creature can
have except as the wonderful " gift of God." It was in
Him, as the water in the fountain, or the light in the sun ;
it is granted to them — the free gift of infinite love — as the
irrigating stream from the fountain, or the illuminating
beam from the sun. Christ lives, and for that reason alone
those who are one with Him shall live also. He is " our
life ;" and therefore when He shall appear we also shall
appear, or be manifested as the sons of God. The life of
the Savior and the life of the saint are not two things,
but one. He lives in them (Gal 2 : 20 ; Rom. 8 : 9), and
they have not, and cannot have any independent spiritual
being apart from Him. All true Christian living and
acting upon the face of the earth is, consequently, the
living and acting of Christ through His people, the mem-

WILLIAM LEASK. , 665
bers of His body. The impulse to love one another, and
to do good unto men as we have opportunity, has its first
movement in the heart of Christ, and is communicated to
our hearts by Him.
Out of this fundamental truth of the glorious Gospel —
Life in Christ — springs the other — the Life the Light of
men. All false religions, so far as they even pretend to
reform men, and all defective views of the only true reli
gion, proceed upon a reversed proposition. The maxim is
that light gives life. The form which this maxim assumes,
when it seeks practical application, is, " Let men be well
instructed iu the creeds, or the general doctrine of the
Bible, and they will become good Christians." This
accounts for the unquestionable fact that multitudes who
conventionally pass for Christians are blind to everything
distinctively Christian. They do not see the things freely
given of God to His family, for they have not the " life "
which is an essential and indispensable pre-requisite to
spiritual vision. The natural or soulish man — the man
who is nothing more than a descendant of the first Adam
— receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ; neither
can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
He may have splendid natural endowments, vast and
varied intellectual powers, much scholastic culture, a
refined taste, and an irreproachable character ; a man, in
short, every way worthy of the respect and esteem of his
•contemporaries ; and yet there is a region of thought
which he cannot mentally enter, fields of vision of sur
passing beauty and grandeur of which he has no concep
tion. That which constitutes the very essence, and charm,
and glory of God's revelation is as dark to him as are the
attractions of an exquisite landscape or the splendors of
the firmament to a man born blind.
Is not this hard ? Has not the door which admits into
the inner sanctuary of thought and privilege been need
lessly narrowed when such a person cannot enter ? Why
should God's finest region of beauty, His land of amaran
thine flowers, be an unapproachable continent to this in
telligent and virtuous and greatly esteemed man? The
objection is very old, but the answer to it is very easy the
moment we recognize the sublime fact that the salvation

666 SYMPOSIUM.
*
the Gospel speaks of is nothing less than the bestowment
of immortality — that is to say, divine life upon persons
who, at their best estate as sons of the earthly Adam, are
only mortal, although they stand at the head of the animal
creation. And it is here that we must enter a protest
against charges which have been brought against us
because we deny the natural immortality of man. It is
said that we thus lower man in the scale of being, and rob
him of that glorious attribute which so pre-eminently lifts
him above all the other tenants of the world. We might
content ourselves by calmly replying that the degradation,
if it be such, is no work of ours. It is done to our hands
by holy men of God, who spake as they were moved by
the Holy Spirit. The natural or soulish man, psuehikos
de anthropos — " the breathing, living animal possessing ani
mal life " (Robinson's Gr. Lex.) — is the highest designation
which the Scripture has for a human being out of Christ.
If there be degradation in this matter, therefore, the re
sponsibility of inflicting it rests not with us: stronger
shoulders must bear it ; and we willingly shift it to them.
But our censors should be careful of their blows, lest, in
attempting to wound us, they hit the great apostle of the
Gentiles, and thus unwittingly reveal the awkward fact
that Plato, not Paul, is their theological tutor.
But we shall take the argument of our kind friends —
whose solicitude for our soundness in the faith we thank
fully appreciate — and use it for a purpose that did not
occur to them ; and as our heart is full of charity toward
all men, we cherish the belief that some of them will
thank us for the hint. We have not, the Scriptures have
not, lowered man in the scale of creation by teaching that
he is only mortal. Instead of degradation , it is all the other
way ; for if frail mortals of three-score years and ten can
achieve such wonders, can rise to such gigantic mental
stature, can live such grand lives, and can enrich nations
with stores of wondrous knowledge from the depth of the
-earth and the sea, and the height of the stars, as some of
our family have done, what may we not hope for during
the ages to come from men vitalized by the life and pos
sessors of the immortality of the Son of God ? The facts
of human daring and doing in all the fields open to enter-

WILLIAM LEASK. 667
prise and thought and heroism are entirely independent of
all theories concerning the nature of the soul ; there they
are, as facts, constituting the backbone, forming the very
texture of human history. Were the workers animals or
angels, pigmies or giants, demons or gods, there is the
work itself before you, some of it astoundingly bad, some
of it sublimely good ; but, bad or good, its greatness is so
manifest in the sense of power, that we say if God has
bestowed on this kingly animal such marvellous intellectual
resources, what shall he be when he stands forth in the
lustre of resurrection manhood in the life and likeness of
Christ ? We have no theory whose exigencies tempt us to
alter facts either in the way of exaggeration or diminu
tion, but if the doctrine of the non-immortality of the
soul, or life, suggests anything in relation to the present
position of humanity, it is this: if the mortal "sons of
men" can be and do what they have been and done in
this groaning creation, what shall the immortal " sons of
God " be and do when the Lord, their life, shall appear to
inaugurate his glorious kingdom, to appoint his high min
isters of state, and to introduce that system of things
which, in due time, shall culminate in the new heavens and
the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness ?
Is there a flaw in this argument ? If there be, a clearer
eye than ours must detect it. It is not man's " immortal
nature," but his intellect that makes him a naturalist, a
statesman, a mathematician, a geologist, an astronomer, a
philosopher, a poet, and it is neither his intellect nor his
morality that enables him to discern spiritual things, and
to enter into God's finest region of thought, but the life of
the risen Redeemer within him. If he receives Christ, he
becomes a son of God (John 1 : 12) ; the Life-light shines
in his heart; he is a joint-heir of the imperishable inherit
ance with the First-born from the dead ; and because his
Master lives he shall live also in the resurrection and the
glory which are to signalize and celebrate the second ad
vent of our great King.
But there is a doctrine which degrades man and dis
honors God, and makes the entire scheme of the universe
a disastrous failure; a doctrine everywhere current, which
has for ages dominated theology, driven multitudes to mad-

668 SYMPOSIUM.
ness or atheism, corrupted the Gospel, obscured the light
of revelation, and brought fearful discredit upon the in
effable character of our Father in Heaven ; the doctrine,
namely, that all human souls are deathless ; that the un
saved, in numbers without number infinite, are to suffer
and sin, and sin and suffer eternally, without the faintest
hope of either death or redemption, and that moral evil,
consequently, on a scale of enormous magnitude, is forever
to exist in the universe of the infinitely holy God. Now,
it is worthy of close attention that many good men who
cannot endure this terrible dogma — and of course it is un
endurable to any man who looks it fully in the face — but
who, nevertheless, believe in the natural immortality of
the soul, take refuge from the difficulty in the idea of
restoration. They know, as we know, from God's precious
word, that there is a time coming when there shall be
neither sin nor sorrow in the universe ; and it is instructive
to notice that the restoration for which they plead is
through, or for the sake of Christ ; so that, though they
interpose a temporary " hell " wonderfully like the papal
" purgatory," yet after all they come round to the doc
trine of eternal life only in Christ. The natural " immor
tality " notion is therefore a most perplexing element in
the scheme ; and though it has been a source of enormous
pecuniary profit to the papal clergy, and still holds a forer
most place in the theology and preaching of Protestant
ministers of all denominations, we humbly suggest that the
true way out of the difficulty is to give it up altogether as
a delusion and an impossibility, against which the Gospel
doctrine of redemption is an unanswerable argument.
The truth is, the Scripture doctrine of immortality only
in Christ is the key to the whole Bible. With this key in
our hand, its priceless treasures can be unlocked, and its
divine purpose seen in the light of infinite love. By it the
necessity of the new birth becomes obvious in a moment.
We must be born from above, born of the Spirit, if we
would enter into the kingdom of God. The natural man,
even if he were sinless, could not enter there ; for the re
gion and the associations are supernatural, and make the
supernatural qualifications essential to admission. It is
not merely because of sin and the corruption which it has

WILLIAM LEASK. 669
entailed that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom
of God. Flesh and blood are corrupt, and cannot inherit
incorruption ; this is so obviously true as to render illus
tration or proof needless ; but we see more than that in
this matter. The first man was of the earth, earthy, even
before his disobedience : that was his nature and condition
from the moment of his creation ; and though it would be
useless to speculate about the possible constitution of the
world had our first father not sinned, yet we are perfectly
certain that the position to which believers are raised by
union with the second Man, the Lord from heaven, and the
magnificent future secured to them in consequence of that
union, are immeasureably superior to anything that could
be possible to a race of merely human beings, even in the
event of its sinlessness. They argue blindly who tell us
that the object of Christ's redemption is to bring us back
to the condition of the unfallen Adam in Eden. Thanks
be tp God, its object is unspeakably greater than that !
The first man at his best estate is no model for us, and the
paradise of our inheritance dwarfs his to invisibility. We
are made partakers of the divine nature, are the children
of light, the sons of God, temples of the Holy Spirit, and
heirs of the glory which shall be revealed and the crowns
which shall be given when our Lord, our Life, returns to
wield the sceptre of universal dominion. Truly, we must
be born from above to make these things, or any one of
them, possible ! We have borne the image of the earthy,
and are not by any means proud of it ; but we shall bear
the image of the heavenly ; ana when we shall see in the
Life-light what God has done for us by His dear Son, we
would not. have the nature and history of man other than
they are ; for where sin abounded grace did much more
abound; that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so
might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life,
by Jesus Christ our Lord.
The other special teachings of revelation become equally
clear when viewed in connection with immortality only in
Christ. Take, for example, those of Resurrection and the
Second Advent. These determinations of the divine pur
pose will, it is well known, be realized together. "When
Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also

670 SYMPOSIUM.
appear with him in glory ;" or, to adopt Alford's reading,
" When Christ, who is our life, is manifested, then shall ye
also with him be manifested in glory." The appearance,
or manifestation, here spoken of can be none other than
the actual, literal coming of the Lord according to his
promise : " I go to prepare a place for you ; and if I go
and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive
you unto myself; that where I am there ye may be also."
But all this belongs to the supernatural, and proceeds
upon the principle that God's people are not a natural or
earthly, but a supernatural or heavenly family. It is the
Christ-life, not the Adamic, the divinely communicated,
not the naturally inherited, immortality that is in them.
If the,doutrine of human immortality, with its theological
branches of a happy heaven and a miserable hell of
conscious souls, were true, why the return of the Saviour
to this world ? and why the resurrection of the righteous
from among the dead ? An intelligent answer to these im
portant questions cannot be obtained from "orthodox"
theology ; for, hampered as it is by its utterly false notions
of immortality and its equally false soul worlds of glory
and of woe, the magnificent objects to be attained by the
advent and the resurrection are not discernible by its eye.
But when it is remembered that the Church is the Body of
Christ, and that he is its life, the advent and the resurrec
tion are seen to be constituent parts of a wonderful whole
every way worthy of the infinite wisdom of God and the
everlasting admiration of men. The resurrection can only
be effected by him who has given us the first fruits of his
Spirit ; but as surely as we are conscious of the latter, so
surely " shall the Lord Himself descend from heaven with
a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the
trump of God ; and the dead in Christ shall rise first ;
then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up to
gether with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the
air ; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore
comfort one another with these words.'-'
William Leask.

X.
Evil; Its Nature, Relations, and Final Extinction through
the Work of Jesus Christ.

By EMMANUEL PETAVEL, D.D., Geneva, Switzerland.

[Note.— Dr. Petavel, senior, was for many years— from 1818 to the time of his
death in 1870— one of the most eminent and influential leaders in the cause of
evangelical religion in Switzerland. His son, the writer of the following
paper, entered the ministry in 1868. " The text of my first sermon," he says
in a private note, " given to me by the President of our Theological College,
was Matt. 10 : 28— a somewhat ominous choice. I preached the traditional view
¦of an eternal hell with reluctant loyalty to what I believed to be Biblical teach
ing. Some time afterward, looking for the word apolesai (to destroy), not iu
the sophisticated lexicons of the New Testament, but in a secular dictionary of
the Greek language, I was struck by finding that the loss of the soul is tanta
mount to its extinction." Further careful study of»the Scriptures resulted in
the conviction that the traditional doctrine of immortality in sin and misery
was not warranted by the Word of God.
In 1863 he was invited to the pastorate of the Swiss church in London. He
there derived great benefit from reading the writings of Rev. Edward White ;
for before coming to England he was not aware that the doctrine of conditional
immortality to which he had been led by independent study was held by any
other man.
On his return to Switzerland he published his volume La Fin, du Mal. It
was afterward translated into English under the title of The Struggle for Eter
nal Life, and published with an introduction by Rev. R. W. Dale, D.D.
He is the author of several other works : " The Bible in France," " The Law
of Progress," " Redeem the Time," "Voice of Alarm," etc., and having been
called to defend his position by attacks from various quarters in the French
and Swiss press, he has published many able articles in the reviews and other
periodicals that were open to him.
The following profound and learned paper is longer than I could have wished,
but he had a twofold purpose in preparing it. Having been invited to prepare
an article on Le Mal for the " Encyclopedie des Sciences Religieuses," he sends his
French manuscript to that work, in which it will appear in due time ; and the
English manuscript, translated for us by Rev. Mr. Farrer, of New College, St.
John's Wood, London, he contributes to our Symposium.— J. H. P.]
The word Evil has a twofold meaning. It includes both
the wrong-doing of a responsible agent, and, by metonymy,

672 SYMPOSIUM.
the results of the wrong-doing. These two ideas, as we
shall see presently, are sometimes mutually opposed, one
to the other.
In a religious point of view, wrong-doing takes the name
of sin. Following the guidance of Scripture, we might
define sin as the foolish and guilty rebellion of a conscious,
free creature whose egoism revolts against its Creator.
There are creatures who, on their own sole and individual
responsibility, break, by pride, the bond of love which
united them to their Maker ; creatures so opposed to de
pendence of any kind as to prefer self-destruction.
Sin is foolish, for it tends to separate the creature from
the Source of its life ; it is an "effort of being in the direc
tion of non-being,"* — " something that exists without a
reason for its existence." f
Sin " is a historical fact which implies the previous crea
tion of a free agent by a Deity who is also free." J It is
the only real evil, and has been fitly called the " principle
of evil." § It is more than a mere privation of good ;" ||
it is hostility against what is good, the contrary of good,
and not merely its Spposite. ^
Sin unfolds, accomplishes, and exhausts itself in " evil
as an effect " ( Uebel as distinguished from Sunde), which
extends from the rebellious will to all the other faculties of
the sinner and to the world around him. The growing
disturbance leads to an arrest of all the vital functions,
and unless a remedy is applied, the sinner finally perishes,
body and soul.** In a practical and legitimate point of
view we may say that good is life, together with every
thing by which life is supported and fostered, "ft Evil,
then, in the sense of " ill-effect," will include ail that is
contrary to life, that hampers and destroys it; and this
evil finds its consummation in the extinction of life, death.
Evil, in man, is a recoil, culpable as well as absurd,
toward non-existence. The notion of evil, extended, takes
in everything prejudicial to the interests of the individual
man ; everything that hurts, annoys, pains, or displeases
him. The greatest of all evils is moral evil, sin with the
* Secr&an. f Astie. J Csesar Malan, iun. \ F. Pillon. || Au
gustine's view. \ Thomas Aquinas. ** Matt. 10 : 28. ff Lange.

EMMANUEL PETAVEL. 673
sense of guilt (culpa) and remorse, the most terrible of all
sufferings, the bitterness of which is peculiar and unique.
To moral evil belong crimes and vices, with that heredi
tary influence whose baneful power is perceptible in every
individual of the human race ; as well as social disorders,
wars, slavery, idolatry, polygamy, prostitution, pauperism,
etc. The term " physical evil " has been applied to the dis
orders of the bodily constitution and of the elements of
nature, earthquakes, storms, hurricanes, inundations, the
desperate and often cruel conflicts of animals in the
struggle for existence, plagues, famines, etc. The name
evil has also been given to sufferings of the body, mind,
and heart ; the tendency to degenerate ; want of fitness or
congruity, the error by which reason is shocked, the igno
rance by which it is humiliated, the ugliness which offends
the taste, and, in short, everything that is not in its place,
everything that appears to be without use or aim.
Ignorance, when it does not spring from idleness, is the
consequence of what Leibnitz calls " metaphysical evil."
Every creature is necessarily limited, and consequently im
perfect. This pretended evil is really a good. Implying
the possibility of sin, it is the very " condition of morality
for the universe," *
According to the Scriptural view, God has so ordered
the world that evils are the fruit of sin. By a reaction, at
the same time, of His justice and His compassion, the
"evil, unhappiness," becomes also chastisement. Sin,
though in principle free, appears in a certain relation to
Divine Providence. " A man's heart deviseth his way ;
but the Lord directeth his steps ; f if the movement is his,
there is a guidance from God. Suffering from the conse
quences of his fault, shocked at beholding in the mirror of
evil his own distorted countenance, the sinner under chas
tisement is stirred to repent. J The " evil, chastisement,'' is
for him an " evil beneficent." Senseless and foolish at its
starting-point, evil thus acquires an aim ; it becomes sub
servient to the conversion and salvation of the sinner. If
the offender persists in his offence, his final and complete
•Secretan. f Prov. 16 : 9, and compare v. 1. J Jer. 2:19.

674 SYMPOSIUM.
destruction will inspire salutary fear in those who survive.
Thus, whether pardoned or punished, evil serves to reveal
and to glorify both the retributive justice, and the mercy
of the Sovereign Law-giver ; the one and the other shine
brightly to the eye of faith in the cross of Calvary.
These Scriptural positions with regard to the origin,
nature, and teleology of evil commend themselves to our
religious consciousness. They put aside and take the place
of the explanations of this great problem handed down to
us by pagan antiquity. Fundamentally, all Paganism is
Pantheism more or less disguised. Now, from the pan
theistic point of view, evil has a necessary existence, for it
belongs, nearly or remotely, to the Divine nature ; if it is
necessary, it ought to be ; if it ought to be, it is good ; and
so the attempt to explain evil results in a denial of its
existence. In systems of human invention, men exculpate them
selves by accusing nature. The excuse of Adam, who
threw the blame of his sin upon the woman that God had
given him, is repeated in some sort in the Pagan doctrine
of evil. The seductions of the world are regarded as the
sole cause of sin, and evil proceeds from the nature of
things. In the Dualistic religions (as of the Persians,
Slavs, ancient Scandinavians, Paulicians and Cathari, etc.),
evil is personified ; it is God by the same right as the
good principle. In the Indian Pantheism, matter harms
by the deceitful magic of its constant transformation ; in
the Chinese doctrine of Fohi or Fo, matter is the feminine,
passive principle ; in Hellenism, it is blind and without
real existence. None the less is it considered eternal in its
resistance to the God by whom it is organized. Under this
dualistic antithesis, however, pantheistic unity lies con
cealed. The antithesis is brought about by an emanation
proceeding from the eternal principle of the Godhead ; an
emanation downwards in the Indian system of the Vedas,
upwards in the Greek theogony. With the Hindoos, the
emanation has for its starting-point the primitive light-
element of Brahm,* and precipitates itself, so to speak,
* Para-Brahma, Brabmo, or Brumho, the impersonal Godhead, the
pantheistic source and totality of being, from whom, or rather

EMMANUEL PETAVEL. 675
into the phenomenal world ; whereas with the Greeks, the
gods of Olympus proceed out of Chaos through the
medium of other, more obscure divinities.
The wisest philosophers, Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato,
were egregiously mistaken with regard to the question of
evil. According to Aristotle, evil is merely the imperfec
tion of being. Socrates imagined that " our evil actions
spring exclusively from error ;" that men are often mis
taken as to the nature of their obligations, but "that
they do what they consider to be their duty." On this
subject he might have learned a lesson of true philosophy
from his contemporary, the poet Euripides, who says :
" We know, we acknowledge that which is good, but we
do not practice it." Error and sin are indeed closely
related. But as facts they are perfectly distinct. " Error
has its seat in the intellect ; sin is an act of the will." *
This faulty element of the Socratic philosophy is accen
tuated and aggravated in Neo-Platonism. " Without the
existence of evil," says Plotinus, "the world would be less
perfect than it is ;" and that there may be no doubt what
ever as to the import of this declaration, he expressly
reckons wickedness among the elements which contribute
to the perfection of the universe.
Still, the voice of conscience has made itself heard in
the Pagan world. It finds expression in the various myths
with regard to the Fall.f In Parseeism, the fall of the first
pair, Meschia and Meschiana, is connected with that of
Ahriman, and with the evil world created by him. In the
Hindoo mythology, sinners on earth are spirits incarnate,
undergoing imprisonment as the penalty of offences com
mitted in heaven.
On the other hand, the philosophico-religious systems of
Christendom have too commonly failed to recognize the
rights of conscience. Take, as examples of this, the doc
trines of the Gnostics, the theory of Augustine and that
of Pelagius.
The Syrian Gnosticism of Saturninus, that of Marcion,
from which, the persons of the chief triad or trinity of Gods,
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, are themselves an emanation or ema
nations. * Naville. \E. g., the story of Prometheus, the Edda, etc.

676 SYMPOSIUM.
and the Manichean view may be traced to the Persian
Dualism. Basilides and Valentinus based their teaching
upon the emanation doctrine of the Indian systems, mixing
it up with ideas borrowed from Platonism. Carpocrates
went so far as to give the force of legal obligation to all
the propensities of human nature. Ophitism, the Gnosti
cism of ancient Egypt, was an Antinomianism of the most
dangerous kind ; it identified evil with the laws revealed
in the Old Testament. The Grecian Idealism, at an early
date, crept into the theology of the Fathers, and passed
through them, into Scholasticism*
The doctrine of St. Augustine was grafted on Platon
ism ; it went beyond the teaching of Scripture when it
saw in the mortal sin of the first man, the destruction, be
forehand, of all real liberty in his descendants. Pelagian-
ism, on the other side, was wrong in denying absolutely
the hereditary transmission of evil.
The conceptions of Pagan antiquity are reflected in a
good many modern systems. Some of these approximate
to Gnosticism by the hypothesis of an innate defect or
viciousness of matter. Dualism, too, has had its repre-
sentatives.f We may trace its influence in the traditional
dogma which makes Satan the head of an imperishable
kingdom of immortals bearing his likeness. Other theories
remind us of Brahmanism, by supposing a fall to have
taken place, before all time, in the intellectual world.J
Ophitism, again, was a precursor of those systems which
connect the notion of evil with the primitive life of man,
and behold in the first transgression the emancipation of a
slave. § According to M. Scherer, "evil is the necessary
condition of a spiritual development of humanity through
out the ages." In the grosser Pantheism of Spinoza, evil
is merely that which hinders us from enjoying — the old
theory of Carpocrates more systematically formulated.
With Pelagianism are connected those systems which make
evil the result of an eternal conflict between matter and
spirit. From the Rationalistic point of view, evil appears
to proceed from the domination of sensible matter over
* J. Scotus Erigena. f Jacob Bohme, Bayle, Schelling, Daub,
etc. J Kant, Steflfens, Secre'tan, etc. \ Hegel, K. L. Michelet, etc.

EMMANUEL PETAVEL. 677
the spirit, or from a want of harmony between these two
factors of the life of man ; as if evil had not its very seat
in the rebellious spirit, while the material element of hu
manity, being destitute of will, is in a moral sense neutral.
According to Schleiermacher, evil has no objective exist
ence, no reality save in the human consciousness ; it mani
fests itself in the consciousness of evil, and then, by re
pentance, the spirit triumphs over sense. Augustinism
was revived in the rigid dogmas of Protestant Supra-
lapsarians. Pelagianism is a characteristic feature of the
new Rationalism. Leibnitz's " Theodicee" may be said to
show traces of the pantheistic element of Platonism. The
nature of God takes the lead of His will : " Sin is, not
because God wills it, but because God is." The absence of
sin would impair the harmony of the universe. Augustine
had shown himself inclined towards this kind of optim
ism ; * he is known as the author of the famous and mis
chievous hyperbole, " O Felix, culpa quae talem," etc. It
was reserved for the Pessimism of the present day to iden
tify existence, life, with evil. It would have us believe
that the essence of evil lies in the "wish to live."f
Kant and Charles Secretan deserve honorable mention
as philosophers for having vindicated the supreme author
ity of conscience and of liberty. The aim of M. Secretan
has been to hold unimpaired the liberty both of man and
of God. Julius Mulier has made it evident that most of
the systems we have enumerated involve the principle of
the eternal necessity of evil. We have not space to enter
into the analysis here. We shall confine ourselves to sup
porting, by a few passages of Scripture and suggestions of
reason, the positions laid down at the commencement of
this essay; a course the more necessary because among
these propositions are some that are commonly regarded as
novel, though in fact they go back to the Apostolic age.
But in order to interpret the relevant texts in their simple,
genuine sense, "we must break, more than we have done
hitherto, with the false and inadequate teachings of Greek
tradition." J
* De Gen. ad lit. XI. 7ff.; De Lib. Arb. III. 9. t Schopenhauer,
Leopardi, Hartmann. % Ernest Naville, L'Evangile et la philosophic,
Chretien evang., Oct., 1874.

678 SYMPOSIUM.
" See," said Moses, " I have set before thee this day life
and good, and death and evil."* These four notions -are
for the faithful Israelite the cardinal points of his spir
itual horizon. In order to see our way, we must define
them in their mutual relation. It is a relation of cause
and effect : moral good perpetuates life ; moral evil leads
to death. The passage we have just quoted appears to
gather up in itself the teaching of the five books of the
Law. It enunciates the chief terms of the problem which
is stated in the beginning of Genesis.f At the first step
he takes in the path of life, Adam sees temptation start
ing up before him. The Supreme Goodness could not but
confer upon His most favored creatures the supreme good
of liberty. But liberty is not possible without the danger
of a fatal choice. Unless he is to be a mere machine, a
kind of automaton, an irresponsible being, like an animal,
an idiot, or a new-born child, man must, himself, and by
himself, exercise the power of self-determination. Being a
free agent, he is bound to make use of his freedom. Such
is the requirement of the law of liberty, which is also the
law of moral progress. What virtue could there be, if
vice were impossible ? Virtue is an object so good and so
beautiful, that, in order to possess it, it is worth while to
run the greatest of all dangers, viz., being able to attain
it, and yet not willing to do so.
The prohibition with regard to the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil ought to have lifted the minds of Adam
and Eve above the lower pleasures of sense and of vanity.
They should have learned to prefer God and communion
with Him — in other words, virtue and holiness, moral and
religious progress — to external advantages which, though
more apparent, were really less valuable. Such is the
condition of all education, and the essential purpose of the
present life. It is a time of probation to candidates for a
life eternal ; some of them, nay even the majority, slight
ing and contemning this high vocation, while a choice, but
relatively less numerous company, " by patient continu
ance in well-doing, seek for glory and honor and immor
tality." J
* Deut. 30 : 15. t Chap. 3. J Rom. 2 : 7.

EMMANUEL PETAVEL. 679
There is for every one the opportunity of choice, of self-
determination in a thousand different ways ; the only lib
erty which does not exist is that of never choosing. De
clining to choose is not only forbidden ; it is practically
impossible. Men talk sometimes of equalities which are
simply chimerical ; this is the true, fundamental, universal,
tragic equality — the equality of all men in presence of that
choice which must be made, sooner or later, between flesh
and spirit, between the old and the new man, between
progress and retrogression. Compared with this capital
equality, all temporary inequalities of strength, of knowl
edge, of fortune become trifling or disappear. The greatest
potentate, the brightest genius among the sons of men, is
not exempt from the necessity of making his election,
either to mount upwards, ever upwards, in the moral scale,
or to go downwards and to perish forever.
The Divine Fatherhood is far removed from weak indul
gence. The living God wills at all hazards the progress
of His creatures. The Spartan mother used to say to her
son, " With it, or upon it ;" bring back thy buckler with
victory, or let it serve thee for a bier ! So, too, the Divine law
of moral progress calls to every one of us, " Forward, or die !"
Honorable men respond to this call. The sluggish and
cowardly make vain efforts to withdraw themselves from
the inevitable necessity of choosing ; impotent efforts, for,
in the case of a responsible creature, not to choose the
good is itself to choose the evil. In Greek, a bad man is,
first and foremost, a cowardly* man. To this category we
might refer a poor paralytic invalid who, when a Christian
friend exhorted him to patience and a moral change of
mind, replied, " Change my disposition, take up with new
views and feelings ? I will do nothing of the kind. Why
did not God make me good at once?" What he wished for
then was the condition of the bee which yields its honey,
or the sheep its fleece, without knowing or intending it ; as
if there were not already a sufficient number of creatures
that are stationary in the degree of goodness which is
natural to them. God, on the other hand, wills the multi-
* Kakos, probably from chazo, chazomai, to draw back, hold back,
slink away from.

680 SYMPOSIUM.
plication of creatures that are free and knowingly pro
gressive. But perhaps some one will say, " The Creator might
have so ordered that the choice of evil should be followed
immediately by the death of the offender ; wherefore the
long and painful decay which precedes the final destruc
tion of the sinner ?" We reply that the creature is not
present in its matured, completed condition in every one
of its acts ; analogy shows us everywhere a gradual devel
opment, and, the succor of Divine grace being interposed,
a period of suffering and decline allows of the conversion
and recovery of the offender.
The narrative in Genesis is complicated with an element
of mystery ; the intervention of a tempter under the form
of a serpent. According to the New Testament, this ser
pent is " the Devil, who is a murderer from the begin
ning." * Probably the serpent was chosen as an emblem
of the evil power by reason of two physiological charac
teristics which belong to it. Having no eyelids, a trans
parent membrane supplying the place of these moveable
curtains, the serpent, at least in appearance, has its eyes
always open. We can thus understand how, in spite of its
very small brain, it came to pass for the most vigilant, the
most prudent, the most intelligent' of all animals. In like
manner, among the Greeks the owl was the emblem of
wisdom, because it can see in the dark. The name dragon,
a kind of serpent, signifies that which sees. Adoration,
even, has been paid to the serpent as possessing, in the
popular imagination, a Divine attribute : incessant watch
fulness without any interval of sleep. The dragon was
sacred to Minerva ; true wisdom never slumbers. The
Ophites ascribed to the serpent universal knowledge. The
serpent, again, under a harmless appearance, often con
ceals a mortal poison. Clearsightedness, malignity, treach
ery, a terrible magical power, all these attributes naturally
tended to make the creature in which they were combined
the symbol of a maleficent intelligence.
The Bible gives us little information with regard to the
personality of Satan. It brings him before us as an insti
gator of the fall of man ; the part which he plays afford-
* John 8 : 44. Eev. 12 : 9 ; 20 : 2.

EMMANUEL PETAVEL. 681
ing a motive for Divine intervention to save those whom
he had deceived. We see in him a creature who, like man
and before him, has abused his liberty to do evil, and who
is able, by means unknown to us, to put forth hurtful in
fluences. This question belongs to the region of faith ; but
leaving aside the problem connected with the personality of
Satan, may we not, from a moral and psychological point
of view, affirm that there is in every man a fatal readiness
to imagine that he will be able to do wrong with impunity,
while deriving advantage from the wrong-doing? At the
very root of a culpable compliance with -temptation lies
the illusion which denies the essentially injurious character
of every sin, "Ye shall not surely die." In fact, this
falsehood even now prevails in the so-called orthodox doc
trine of the churches. But it will not always prevail.
The day promised in the primeval gospel, the day when
the serpent's head shall be bruised, is drawing near. The
head, in Hebrew, stands also for the principle and essence
of the thing ; it contains the brain which has conceived
the falsehood and the tongue by which it has been uttered.
Whatever the value of these interpretations of detail,
we believe that what is essential in the narrative of the
Fall is based upon the very nature of things. We have
to do here with the essential conditions of good and evil,
of life and death. To know them, we must go back to
the notion of the creature and the conditions of its exist
ence. The creature, as made known to us by all analogy,
subsists only in virtue of a twofold series of relations ; in
ternal relations between its different constituent elements,
and external relations between itself and other creatures.
To preserve these relations is to preserve the creature that
is sustained by them ; if they are developed and multi
plied, it will be in the same measure developed and aug
mented ; if they are brought to an end, it will be destroyed.
The same result will be attained by substituting for the
normal relations others which are incompatible with the
nature of the subject. Disintegration and ruin become
the lot of the creature outside of its proper conditions of
existence; as a locomotive, running off the rails^ breaks
and comes to a standstill. The moral law determines the
conditions of existence for beings endowed with liberty

682 SYMPOSIUM.
There is no longevity for man without some measure of
virtue ; every excess shortens life. History shows that the
duration of empires is directly dependent on morality.
With the exception of the Pessimists, few persons will
refuse to subscribe to the principle laid down on the very
first page of Scripture : The creation of beings is a good
thing ; consequently their destruction is an evil. The
creation of man, the crown and keystone of our universe,
is a very good thing. God, after having formed man, saw
that " it was very good." * The destruction of man,
therefore, would be a very great evil ; this is why Jesus
calls Satan, the type of evil, a " murderer." f In Hebrew,
evil is primarily a " breaking," metaphorically a " corrup
tion."! Given the law of progressive development, sin in man
will consist in a refusal to develop the higher elements of
his nature, namely, reason and religious feelings. This
refusal is the beginning of self-destruction. Every sinner
deteriorates.! The palm-tree whose leafy crown is with
ering cannot but perish.
There is a deep thought, grotesquely expressed, in those
mediseval pictures which represent Satan as a man be
coming animalized ; with cloven feet, goat's horns, and a
tail like some of the quadrumana. The return towards
animalism is obvious in those grosser passions by which so
many victims are betrayed to destruction. The more sub
tile sins of ambition, falsehood, pride, religious indifference,
are equally mortal. They destroy the normal relations of
the man towards God and towards his fellows ; and these
relations being essential to human life, the egoist perishes
at last by a kind of asphyxia. " We live," says Vinet,
" in proportion as we love ; egoism is consumption, death,
suicide." ||
The notion of retribution flows naturally from that of
evil. The penalty of sin is identified with its result for
the offender, and is adequately and necessarily propor-
* Gen. 1 : 31. f Literally, a " manslayer ;" John 8 : 44. t ra'>
adj. " bad," and subst. " evil ;" from ra'a', " to break with noise."
So the French say mal may be traced back to the Sanscrit root mar
or mat, to " grind " or " pound." J Ps. 49 : 20 (21 Heb.) || .rVou-
veaux Discowrs. p. 414 ; comp. pp. 61, 62.

EMMANUEL PETAVEL. 683
tioned to the evil committed.* The ancients gave to this
retributive consequence the name of Nemesis. Sin and
its punishment, faken together, resemble those ingenious
contrivances by which certain objects suspended can be
raised or lowered at pleasure, but always maintain their
equilibrium. Evil chastises itself; it slays the evil-doer, f
Yet none the less is the chastisement the work of God ;
for it is He who has established this correlation between
sin and death. In creating, governing, rewarding, and
punishing, God acts only through instruments or interme
diaries. Natural necessity is a Divine volition ; for it is a
product of God's free working.
There are in Hebrew half a hundred roots which apply,
directly or indirectly, to the destruction of animated
beings. Nearly all of these are used in the Old Testa
ment to declare the final destiny of the impenitent. To
these verbs and nouns must be added a number of pro
verbial expressions, an array of images which sometimes
appear to contradict each other, e. g., fire, Matt. 25 : 41,
and outer darkness, verse 30 ; but which always, by asso
ciation of ideas (as fractions are reduced to a common
denominator), agree in describing the termination of the
existence both of evil and of obstinate transgressors.
The key to the problem is furnished by the narra
tive of the Fall. Man has been led astray ; yielding to
the voice of the tempter, he has stifled the voice of God
which speaks to him in the depths of conscience. The
attractions of pleasure have enticed him into the road that
leads to death. And yet all is not lost ; the mischief may
be repaired. It is possible for him to retrace his steps.
Faith, obedience, renunciation of evil, will bring him back
to the path of life. A God Almighty and All-good will
save those whom He loves and by whom He is loved. The
faithful will live again. The impenitent will be finally
destroyed. Such is the doctrine which emerges, as it were
in twilight, from the canonical books of the Old Testa
ment. The New Testament confirms and completes this teach-
*Eccles. 12 : 16; Matt. 16 : 27. fPs. 34 : 21 ; comp. 94 : 23.
Prov. 8 : 36 ; 13 : 6. Jer. 2 : 19.

684 SYMPOSIUM.
ing. Evil proceeds from the responsible will of the
creature,* seduced by covetousness, by "the whole world
lying in the Wicked One,"f and by Satan.J It consists
in the violation of the Divine law,§ and brings forth
death; || but the wisdom of God makes the effects of sin
subservient to the salvation of sinners and to His own
glory. In the greatest crime ever committed upon earth,
the slaying of Jesus Christ, the Gospel shows us the occa
sion for the highest manifestation of good, by the heroic
self-devotion of the victim, and at the same time the
means which serves indirectly for the saving of those who
believe.^f On the other hand, those who reject this scheme
of salvation will be finally lost.** Indirectly, then, sin
will serve to create a new tie between the creature and the
God who redeems him from sin ; a ground of thankfulness
altogether peculiar .ff This result once attained, "evil
must be annihilated. J J
Thus we are led to speak of the " end of evil." Faith
in Jesus Christ puts an end to moral evil by regenerating
the will, §§ and through it the whole man. ||j] The end of
moral evil will bring with it that of " physical evil,"
which exists only by reason of the former.^ Not that it
dates merely from the Deluge or from the Fall of man.
Geology and palaeontology teach us that physical or cos-
mical evil goes back to the first ages of the creation. Some
have professed to find there an invasion of fallen angels,
giving rise to the monsters of the antediluvian world.***
On some such idea is based the Lausanne version of Gen.
1:2: " The earth was desolate and a desert." M. Le Sav-
oureux.fff however, has shown that sound exegesis does
not warrant this rendering.
Hypothesis against hypothesis, we prefer to suppose that,
foreseeing the possibility of the fall of man, God, in crea-
* James 1 : 13, 14; 4 : 17. Matt. 23 : 37. John 5 : 40. fl
John 5 : 19. J 1 Thess. 3:5. g 1 John 3:4. || Rom. 6 : 21, 23 ;
8 : 6, 13. Gal. 6 : 8. Phil. 3 : 19. James 1 : 15. 1 John 5 : 16.
IT Acts 4 : 28. Rom. 8 : 28. Comp. Gen. 50 : 20. ** John 15 : 22,
24. 2 Cor. 2 : 15. Heb. 10 : 26-29. ft Eev. 5:9. %t Martensen.
Dogmatik, p. 254 of Ducros' translation. \\ 1 Pet. 1 : 22. INI Rom.
12:2. 2 Cor. 4: 16. \\ Ps. 107 : 33-36. Rom. 8 : 18-22. Mou-
linie. *** Splittgerber. tft Bulletin Theol, 1864.

EMMANUEL PETAVEL. '685
ting the world, introduced into it, outside of Paradise, in
materia viii, physical evil, sinless in itself, in order that if
the necessity should arise, it might serve for the instruc
tion and correction of the sinner. It is thus that, in an
ticipation of sickness or of possible accidents, a ship is
provided with poisons to serve as remedies ; it also carries
surgical instruments, which an uninstructed person might
mistake for instruments of torture. In this way we
should explain those passages which affirm that God
created darkness and evil.* On this view, then, " cosmi-
cal evil " was not the " effect " of sin, since, as a fact, it
preceded the latter. Rather, God created it " in view of"
the possibility of sin, as a something kept in reserve for
the correction and salvation of transgressors. Further,
in the hands of the Divine Educator, physical evil serves
to develop energy of character ; it compels the cultivation
of prudence and foresight ; it stirs up a noble compassion,
and exerts a beneficial influence in other ways.f
We emphatically refuse, however, to admit the necessity
of suffering that has no relation to sin. No, the normal
abode of man when innocent is in Paradise, the perfect
pattern of exemption from physical evil. It is after his
offence that man, banished from the privileged enclosure,
makes acquaintance with cruel hunger, weariness, and pain.|
From this point of view we can reply to the principal
* Isaiah 45 : 7. Amos 3:6. f The respective morality or im
morality of Northern and of Southern nations, in Europe as in
America, seems to indicate that physical evil may be a blessing.
The luxuries of Capua enervated the soldiers of Hannibal, whose
courage had been reinvigorated among the glaciers of the Alps.
There is no climate more delightful than that of certain islands of
the Pacific ; perpetual spring reigns, and the bread-fruit tree fur
nishes abundance of food which requires no preparation ; but the
corruption of morals is such that the native population is dying
out altogether. Let us cross now to Iceland, the birthplace of the
sculptor Thorwaldsen, one of the poorest countries of the globe.
Terrible famines have decimated its inhabitants; yet among
them one meets with neither policeman nor prison ; for centuries
they have lost the recollection of every kind of crime. See Bib-
liotheque Unwerselle, May, 1880. In Iceland, by Dr. P. Vouga.
X Gen. 2 : 16-25 ; 3 : 16-19. It is true that suffering and death
existed upon earth before the fall of man ; but in the Paradise of
Eden Adam was protected from both the one and the other. The

686 SYMPOSIUM.
objection urged by a profound thinker, John Stuart Mill,
in his posthumous essay on Religion. The prevalence
of evil in the universe is a great stumbling-block to him ;
he thinks he proves from it that the visible world cannot
be the work of an Almighty and All-good God. Our
reply is that cosmical imperfections and evils have been
expressly willed for a purpose of discipline. Even for
those who are most favored with regard to earthly bless
ings, this planet of ours remains a place of banishment, a
vast penitentiary colony, in which everything is arranged
with a view not chiefly to the comfort of the inmates, but
rather to their moral reformation, by a mingling of kind
ness and severity.
To physical evil belong those phenomena which have
been grouped together under the designation " immorality
in nature ;" the evil dispositions of certain animals. On
the hypothesis referred to, the lower animals, whatever in
other respects the mystery of their origin, have, in addi
tion to the practical utility of many, a symbolic intention.
They are types of virtues and vices ;* the tiger, the shark,
the monkey, the serpent, the dove, the bee, the sheep, etc.,
teach, " -by their very aspect," the contrasts of moral char
acter. The education of man once completed, the moral ed
ifice constructed, physical evil will disappear. A new earth
and new heavens will take the place of the actual world.f
It is a curious coincidence that at this point the Bible is
in harmony with the modern doctrine of Evolution.J An
eminent dramatist of recent date had an intuition of the
same truth, "Good is stronger than evil." He makes one
of his characters ask, " Why is it that we so often see evil
get the better of good ?" and the reply is, " Because we
do not look long enough." §
characteristic notion of Paradise is in fact the absence of physical
evil ; a temperate climate, abundant means of support, the absence
of poisons and of ferocious animals, neither briers nor thorns,
neither weakness, pain, nor death. After Adam sinned, he had at
once to contend with the cosmical evil from which he had before
been exempted. Here are two methods of instruction and disci
pline, the Becond of which is employed after the first has failed.
* Gen. 2 : 19, 20. + Ps. 102 : 26. 2 Pet. 3 : 13. Rev. 21 : 1. % Her
bert Spencer On the Oradual Elimination of Evil, French trans].,
Paris, 1875; Social Stat ws, p. 80. § Dumas, L'Etrangere, Act III.

EMMANUEL PETAVEL. 687
In describing the final destiny of the irreconcilably evil,
the New Testament uses the same terms which are em
ployed by Plato when speaking of annihilation.* The
Devil is to be destroyed.f The Wicked One no longer
existing,! rebellion having been suppressed,§ there shall
be no more curse,|| death shall have no more dominion ;^[
it has already lost its sting.** Death and the grave shall
rejoin Satan in that abyss of annihilation which is called
in the Apocalypse the lake of fire and brimstone. ff In
the whole body of those who have survived the last judg
ment, " God shall be all in all."J{ This promise affords a
glimpse of the suppression of " metaphysical evil ;" it
relates, perhaps, to an economy in which the categories of
time and space shall be done away. However that may
be, the redeemed shall live forever.§§ Sin hath abounded,
grace shall much more abound. ||||
TTn jour tout sera bien, voilit notre esperance ;
Tout est bien aujourd'bui, voila l'illusion.
Les sages me trompaient, et Dieu seul a raisonfl
" One day all shall be well ; this is our hope ;
We cheat ourselves in thinking all is well.
Wise men misled me ; God alone is right."
Emmanuel Petavel.

* 2 Thess. 1 : 9. Phil. 3 : 19.' f Heb. 2 : 14, 15. Rom. 16 : 20.
Comp. Gen. 3 : 15. J 2 Thess. 2:8. ? Rev. 19 : 20 ; comp. Dan.
7 : 11, 26. II Rev. 22 : 3. IT 2 Tim. 1 : 10. 1 Cor. 15 : 26. Rev.
21 : 4. Comp. Isaiah 25 : 8. ** 1 Cor. 15 : 55, 56. ft Kev. 20 :
14. ft 1 Cor. 15 : 28. \\ Matt. 25: 46. |||| Rom. 5 : 20. TIT Vol
taire.

SOURCES.

Ernest Naville, Le Problime du Mal, 1868.
Charles Secre'tan, Philosophic de la Libera, 3d ed., 1879 ; Recherchm
de la Mkhode, 1857.

688 SYMPOSIUM.
Moulini6, Lecons sur I'Etendue et POrigme du Maldans V Homme,
1821. Desplands, Essai sur la Nature du Pechi, 1852.
J. Pfender, Etude sur la Nat/are du Pechi, 1874.
Ami Bost, Du Sort des Mediants dans l'autre Vie, 1861.
Petavel-Olliff, La EU du Mal, 1872.
Ed. White, Life in Christ, 3d ed., 1878.
Hudson, Debt and Grace, 1862.
Pettingell, Theological Trilemma, Will Satan Live Forever? 1878.
Julius Mulier, Die Christliche Lehre von der Swnde, 5th ed., 1868.
Kym, Das Problem des Bosen, 1878.
Astig, Art. Pech$ in Encyclopedic des Sciences BeUgieuses, 1881.
A. Medwin, The Existence of EvU, 1880.
In dealing with the mythological and philosophico-religious
systems mentioned in the foregoing essay, we have taken as a
basis the article BSse, by Lange, in Herzog's Beat Encyclopiidie, at
the end of which the following list is given :
Bilfinger, De Origine et Permissione Mali, 1727.
Leibnitz, Essais de ThiodicSe, etc., 1734.
Gessner, TJeber den Vrsprung des Bosen, 1801.
Daub, Judas Ischarioth, 1816.
Herbart, Gesprache iiber das BSse, 1817.
Blasche. Das BSse im Einklang mit der Weltordnwng, 1827.
E.P.

XI.
No Necessary Conflict Between the Bible and Science
on the Question of Man's Personal Identity
in the Resurrection.

By Pbof. J. H. KELLOGG, M.D., of Michigan.

[Note.— Prof. Kellogg is the Medical Superintendent of the Sanitarium at
Battle Creek, Mich.; a member oi various American Scientific and Medical
Societies ; editor of a journal devoted to medical science, temperance, health,
etc., and author of numerous scientific, medical, and religious works. Among
the latter is his recent volume, The Soul and the Eesurrection, in which, discuss
ing the question of the Eesurrection and Conditional Immortality from a ma
terialistic standpoint, he comes to the same Scriptural conclusion with us,
though by arguments and from premises which many of us would not be pre
pared to accept.
We have had some friendly controversy with him in regard to his material
istic views ; but, agreeing with him in his main conclusion, we have invited
him to discuss the question from his own premises, and the more cordially be
cause he occupies another standpoint. We regard his paper— though longer
than we could wish — all the more valuable from the fact that as a scientific
Christian layman he reaches conclusions which we can endorse by a process
different from that which we and our clerical friends in this series of papers
are accustomed to take.]
The views which we hold respecting the nature of man,
or rather, what is commonly known as the soul or spirit of
man, have been arrived at by an attempt to satisfy the
law of consistency by harmonizing the plain teachings of
the Scriptures with the accepted teachings of science. We
accept the revelations of Nature, so far as they are clear
and unequivocal, as well as the revelations of inspiration,
as sources of divine truth. Both depend in some degree
upon human wisdom for their interpretation. When
rightly understood, each supplements the other.
In considering this subject, we shall use the word soul
with its usual significance, which renders it synonymous
with spirit, although the word spirit possesses a somewhat
narrower and inferior significance. We hold that this

690 SYMPOSIUM.
question is one which must be studied largely from a log
ical and scientific standpoint, since the Bible considers
only the general properties of the soul, giving us very
little clue to its intrinsic nature.
It must be studied, also, just as we would consider any
other scientific question, accepting as a basis for reasoning
the most probable hypothesis respecting the nature of
matter and force, and conducting our investigation strictly
in accordance with the requirements of logical rules. The
following premises will be accepted as the recognized teach
ing of physical and biological science :
1. Matter is the substratum of existence.
2. Force is an inseparable concomitant of matter.
3. Life is the result of organization.
4. The brain is the organ of the mind, and all mental
activities — in man as well as in animals — the result of the
action of nerve cells. Without a brain we can have no
thought nor mental action of any kind.
Accepting these premises, we must at once reject all no
tions of the soul which attribute to it intelligence without
materiality. It may be immaterial, but, if so, cannot be
intelligent. If intelligent, it must be material and pos
sessed of material properties. But if material and intelli
gent, it is unnecessary since it is quite as easy to suppose
that man, whom we can see and with whose properties and
intricate mechanism we are acquainted, is intrinsically in
telligent, as to suppose that he is dominated by an intelli
gent material entity. The mind cannot be the soul, as it
is but a function of the brain, a small though important
part of the whole individual. The soul, whatever it may
be, must necessarily represent the whole individual. The
use of the word by inspiration, profane history and in
common parlance attaches to it most important significa
tion, as representing the individual, or its essential part.
In tracing the numerous theories of the soul in the reli
gions of the various nations of the globe, ancient and
modern, we find amid the great diversity of views, the
details of which we cannot even hint in this connection,
agreement in only two particulars :
1. The soul is always represented as the essential, repre
sentative, or identifying part of the individual.

J. H. KELLOGG. 691
2. It is always regarded as the means by which the
present life is linked to a future existence and the imme
diate means of securing it. This, thep, may be regarded
as the universal conception of the soul, divested of all
coloring due to the influence of other theological or phi
losophical notions of every sort.
Our inquiry is now narrowed down to the question, by
what means is human identity or individuality preserved?
By whatever means this may be accomplished it must be
something which is co-existent with the individual, which
is active from his earliest existence so long as he himself is
in this life, and which is capable by some means of sur
viving the dissolution of the body, bridging over the dark
chasm of death, and securing the existence of the indi
vidual in a life beyond the grave. The preservation of
identity requires continuity of existence in the identifying
element. It must exist with the individual during this
life, without the material elements of the individual
during death, and with the reorganized or resurrected in
dividual in the future life.
Biology teaches us that the material elements of the
human body have no continuity of existence as such ; that
is, they constitute a part of the body only transiently.
The body has been very aptly^'described as " a stream of
matter Jlowing through a certain form." The form
remains, but the matter is constantly changing, like the
water of a river, or the tiny drops of water which help
compose a rainbow. At death, the material elements
of the body are dissipated, being assimilated by plants and
other animals, so that all traces of the individual seem
lost. Is it at all probable that that which during life is
so changeable, so volatile, so fleeting, occupying the body
at one moment and the subsequent moment departing
from it, evanescent as the clouds, unstable as the winds,
wholly unable during life to identify or represent the indi
vidual, becomes at death the representative of what it
during life was unable t;o represent? Does dissolution,
decay, putrefactive decomposition, dissipation to the four
winds of heaven, degradation to the rank of common dust,
give to matter a greater potency, elevate it to a higher
rank, endow it with important properties which it could

692 . SYMPOSIUM.
not possess even when animated in a human form pos
sessed of consciousness, of intelligence, of all noble attri
butes of the mind ? The answer is obvious. Matter is in
competent to constitute the soul.
But the question may be asked, why may not the atoms
which constitute the material portion of the body at death,
the dust to which the body returns, represent the indi
vidual ?
One reason has already been given* viz., that it is un
reasonable to suppose that that which does not and cannot
during life represent the person, or constitute its identity,
acquires at death so much greater importance than it ever
possessed before, and properties which its relation to the
body made it impossible for it to possess. Another reason
is well worthy of consideration. If matter by its brief so
journ in the body acquires a representative power or char
acter, why does not all the matter which ever forms a part
of a person's body during life represent it and so help
form the soul ? Such a body as that possessed by Methu
selah or any of his contemporaries would have a pro
digious representation on this plan. Considering his great
superiority in size to modern men and the great length of
his life, his representation in refuse dust could not have
been less than three thousand tons.
A still more important objection to this kind of repre
sentation is the fact that if it were true we should have
the same matter representing a great many different
bodies. It cannot be disputed that the matter which consti
tutes a human body at death may and does in subsequent
years pass into a great variety of forms — vegetable, beast,
and human. Organizable matter is continually traveling
around in this circle of existence, and we have .no evi
dence that the matter which enters into human bodies
does not follow the same law. What proof or hint have
we from any source that this part of the material universe,
subject to the same laws and the operation of the. same
forces as the rest, is switched off into another channel by
itself by some invisible, superhuman agency ? A beast
dies, his body decomposes and returns to dust. The ele
ments of which it is composed return to their original
state. The same atoms are taken up by plants from the

J. H. KELLOGG. 693
earth and air, and are organized into living matter again,
which is eaten and appropriated by animals, and thus
again becomes a part of an animal body. Thus the same
matter may be used over and over again a hundred, yes, a
thousand times. The same is true of human bodies as of
the bodies of animals ; for man is but an animal, though
certainly not -a beast. Hence we see, as before stated, that
if representation rests in the matter which composes the
body at death, we may have the same matter representing
many different individuals, since many different bodies may
contain at least considerable portions of the same matter
at death. This kind of representation would be no repre
sentation at all, since it would not be distinctive. It is
urged in opposition to these facts that God's power is in
finite ; that all things are possible with God ; that it is
possible for God, through angel agencies, to follow each
atom constituent of the human body through all its infinite
combinations, carefully preserving it from contact with
otherhuman bodies, or at least taking care that it do not
form part of any human body at death. It is also
asserted that those who believe differently are guilty of
irreverence in limiting the power of God. It certainly
would require a power infinitely superior to that required
to make a world to accomplish such a marvelous work as
this. Imagine a martyr burned at the stake. The fire
consumes his perishable body by changing the matter
composing it into other forms. At least nineteen-twen-
tieths of the whole substance of his body is converted into
gases by the process of combustion or oxidation, and,
mingling with the common atmosphere, is by winds and
tornadoes, whirlwinds, and hurricanes, dispersed from pole
to pole and from one side of the earth to the other, being
so thoroughly scattered that no two particles of the origi
nal matter remain together. The remaining one-twentieth
or less may have been also scattered to the winds, or, as
actually done in some cases, cast into rivers and carried
down to the sea to be dissolved in the waters of the ocean,
and so dfspersed over the globe. Matter of this character,
in air, water, and the soil, constitutes the food of plants.
They get most of their sustenance from the gases result
ing from animal and vegetable decomposition which are

694 SYMPOSIUM.
found in the air, taking them up by means of their leaves.
As the atoms which once composed the body of the martyr
come in contact with growing plants on the land and in
the sea, unless the divine hand is always ready to interpose
and prevent the operation of natural laws, they will be
seized upon, assimilated, and made to form a part of those
organisms which may in turn be eaten by other human
beings who would thus appropriate the same matter which
had been in a human being before.
In answer to the charge of limitation of the power of
God, we say we do not deny that it is possible for God to
send an angel to watch each minute atom which once com
posed a human body through all its multitudinous combi
nations and preserve it for restoration to the original body.
The burden of offering proof rests with those who hold
the view in question. The question is not, may God do
it ? but, does He do it? Unless the supposition can be
established by evidence, it is worthless, either as an argu
ment or as an objection. We affirm, without the slightest
fear of successful contradiction, that not one particle -of
evidence can be produced to show that there is any such
manifestation of divine power in the guardianship and
definite control of every ultimate particle of matter com
posing the human body ; while there is as good evidence
as can be adduced for the establishment of any fact, viz.,
the testimony of the perception, guided by reason, that
the Creator does nothing of the kind.
Instances of the direct appropriation of the matter com
posing one human body by others have not been uncom
mon, as in cases of cannibalism. Instances are known in
which persons have been left by shipwreck at sea in a
small boat and without provisions. By lot, one after
another of the party has been killed and eaten until there
was but one survivor, he perishing at last of hunger, or
being saved by some passing vessel. In such a case it is
evident that each of the individuals who died, with the
exception of the first, possessed in his body many particles
which had belonged to his predecessor in death. Numerous
similar cases might be cited, as in cases of siege in war
when persons have been reduced to cannibalism by famine,
and have themselves perished by the sword while subsist-

J. H. KELLOGG. 695
ing upon the flesh of comrades previously killed by the
missiles of the enemy or by their own hands. To deny
the bearing of such cases as these is to deny the value of
human observation and human testimony altogether.
Evidently we have no evidence of any material means
by which individuality or identity can be preserved. We
must look, then, for something which, while immaterial in
its constitution, is yet capable of fulfilling the purpose re
quired. But before proceeding farther in this inquiry, let
us devote a brief space to the consideration of the nature
of identity in general or the means by which the individ
uality of objects is preserved. This subject is one which
apparently has received less attention from writers on
logic or metaphysics than its importance would seem to
demand, but the omission may be due to the fact that in
no other connection is its importance so evident as in this.
At the outset it may be stated that the identity of ob
jects, or rather the evidence which the mind requires for
the establishment of the identity of objects, depends as
much upon our knowledge of the nature of things, as
upon the things themselves. An illustration of this fact
is seen in the difficulty which we experience in distinguish
ing different individuals of a strange nationality when we
first meet them, as when seeing Chinese, Indians, or negroes
for the first time. Being familiar with few of the charac
teristics of the individuals, one' is easily led to believe one
person to be the same as an other. People not accustomed
to be much with sheep are able to see little difference be
tween the members of a flock of the same breed, while the
shepherd knows each one by its face.
The great cause of confusion on the subject has been the
attempt to find a universal law respecting the identifica
tion of objects, to make the same conditions requisite in
all cases. A few illustrations will make apparent the fact
that there are two general classes into which all objects
may be divided on the basis of their relation to iden
tity. We will take for examples objects with which all are
familiar, as a rock, a river, a house, a pocket-knife, a cat
aract, a mountain, and a rainbow, as types of objects in
general. Let us examine each of the objects mentioned

696 SYMPOSIUM.
with some care, observing first, the nature of each ; and
second, the requisites for identification.
The rock we observe to be an object of a fixed or per
manent nature. It is composed of certain definite con
stituents whicH do not change by natural processes. Its
outward form is subject to great and constant changes
through the action of wind, water, frost, and other natural
agencies ; but its internal constituency remains ever the
same. The same may be said of the mountain.
The case of the house we find to be similar. It under
goes no natural change of substance. Suppose it to be
constructed of brick. We may conceive it possible that
it might be taken down and built up again, each brick
being put in its former place, thus restoring the original
house. But if the brick were exchanged for other brick,
whether all at once or one at a time, the house would lose
its actual identity. Indeed, the slightest change in the
material of the original house makes it a different one,
since no such change naturally occurs. It should be ob
served that there is a distinct difference between actual
and practical identity. An object, as a house, may remain
practically the same, because it fulfills the same purposes,
while it undergoes an actual change of identity.
The case of the pocket-knife is the same. The addition
of a new blade to replace an old one makes it another
knife consisting of the old handle with a new blade. This
is evident from the fact that otherwise one part after
another might be renewed, then upon bringing the old
parts together into a knife we should be at a loss to deter
mine what knife to designate it.
In the case of the river we see a marked difference. As
we stand upon its banks we see its waters passing swiftly
toward its mouth to be lost in some greater body of water,
and realize that the water which our eyes rest upon we
shall never see again. By its nature, the river is con
stantly changing. The matter which helps to form it
to-day, to-morrow leaves it forever; yet it remains the
same. Indeed, the river itself may disappear altogether,
as in a time of drouth; yet when the rains come the same
river returns, though not a drop of the same water.
The rainbow and the cataract are beautiful illustrations

J. H. KELLOGG. 697
of the same class of objects. The material composing
these objects may change every instant, yet the identity
does not change.
Numberless other illustrations might be given, but these
will suffice. Let us now examine these examples, after
first observing that every object may be considered as
made up of matter and form, arrangement, relation, or
organization. In the case of the rock or the mountain,
both matter and arrangement are essential to identifica
tion, though the arrangement may be modified in very
great degree. Time, tempests, and torrents may change
its outward form, round off its sharp angles, and fissure its
sides, yet it remains the same, because its constituent
matter is unchanged. The same is true of the house, the
pocket-knife, and all other objects of like character, which
naturally undergo no exchange of particles.
In the case of the river we have no such perpaanency
of particles. The only permanency is in the arrangement
and relations of the stream of matter which flows through
it. We perceive the river to be the same, even though it
disappears for months or even years and flows again, be
cause the new matter reproduces the old arrangement and
relations. So with the rainbow. As we glance at it, close
our eyes for an instant, then glance again, all its material
constituents have changed, yet its organization remains in
tact, and by this we have no difficulty in identifying it.
The same is true of the whole class of changing objects.
We think we have now established the following propo
sitions :
1. That all objects may not be identified in the same
manner. 2. That all objects may be separated into two classes re
specting their relation to identity.
3. That one class, including all objects which, like rocks
and other stable objects, naturally undergo no change or
exchange of material constituents, require for the preser
vation of identity the preservation of particles as well as
of organization.
4. That the other class, including all objects which, like
the river, the cataract, and the rainbow, naturally undergo
a constant change of material particles, do not require for

698 SYMPOSIUM.
their identification identity of particles, but only identity
of form, arrangement, organization, or relation. Indeed,
complete identity of arrangement or relation is seldom
required. Sufficient only is required to satisfy the mind
that the object is the same.
We are now prepared for the consideration of the ques
tion, In what does human identity consist or by what
means is it preserved ? Having established the principles
already laid down, the settlement of this question is a very
simple one. We have found that there are iu nature two
great classes of objects, and only two. The basis of classi
fication makes it impossible that there should be more
than the two classes named. One class is naturally char
acterized by permanency of particles, which is consequently
required for its identification ; the other class by nature
ignores permanency of matter, and requires only perma
nency of form, organization, or relation. We may settle
the question of human identity positively and beyond
chance for controversy by referring man to one or the
other of these two classes, as he must belong in one of
them, there being no third class. This we may readily do
by inquiring, does the matter which helps to compose
man's body naturally undergo change, or does it remain
fixed and permanent in his organization ? Physiology
answers this question decisively and unequivocally, as we
have already seen. A constant and rapid change of par
ticles in the human body is not only an incident of its ex
istence, but is absolutely essential to the maintenance of
life and its varied activities. He is like a river, a cataract,
a rainbow. Ever changing in substance, he remains the
same person through permanence of organization. Ever
losing his identity as a mere mass of matter, his individu
ality remains the same by the preservation of his personal
identity. Considered in the light of philosophy, man is simply a
peculiar organization represented in matter. The atoms
which compose the material part of the body are only the
vehicle of the organization. As we have seen, their iden
tity is not essential to personal identity more than identity
of drops of water is essential to the individual identity of
a river, a cataract, a lake, or a rainbow. The molecular

J. H. KELLOGG. 699
life, depending on organized matter, is constantly changing
more or less ; but the somatic life, depending on organized
life, remains the same. There is no limit to material
change. In brief, then, man is made up of two parts, matter and
organization, the first being a changing, fleeting element,.
only the second possessing any degree of permanency.
The term body really includes both elements, though
common use has made it relate more particularly to matter
than reason will justify. The term organism exactly ex
presses both ideas, including both the changeable and the
permanent part of man. It implies matter in connection
with organization, but not definite or particular matter.
Any matter of the same kind may constitute the same
living organism, provided the organization remains the
same, since identity is preserved by organization, not of
matter. We have now found the answer to our question in the
conclusion that the representative or identifying element
in man is the organization of his body. This he possesses
at the earliest period of his existence, even while yet a
mere atom of humanity, unrecognizable as a human being,
his after development being merely the unfolding and
blossoming out of the organization at first represented by
a speck of matter no larger than a pin head. What else
is man known to possess so early in his existence ? What
else is co-existent with his existence? The majority of
those who believe in an immortal, immaterial entity have
been unwilling to assert that the intelligent presiding
entity is present at so early a period as this ; but here is a
means of representation that comes into existence with
the individual and can by no means be separated from its
material counterpart so long as the latter exists. Bearing
in mind the fact already establjshed, that human identity
consists in organization, not in matter ; that organization
possesses the necessary degree of permanency, while matter
is ever changing ; and also recognizing that organization
may be preserved intact, not only during life but after
death, while matter is being dissipated ; and that organi
zation cannot be appropriated by any other individual,
while matter may be, is it not reasonable to suppose that

700 SYMPOSIUM.
in organization rather than in matter we may find the
representative of man for which we seek ? Indeed, when
we come to consider the matter and observe the fitness of
the organization to represent the person, we may well be
surprised that any other representative should be sought.
Let us notice a few points.
a. The organization represents the whole individual.
b. The organization is an exact representation of the
individual. c. The organization maintains human identity during
life, and may certainly do so in death, if, as we shall pres
ently see, it may be preserved after the death of the body.
There is evidently no room for question that the organi
zation maintains the individuality during life. Let us now
consider whether it answers the universal requirement of
the soul that it shall survive the death or dissolution of
the body and represent the individual during the interreg
num of death, until a reorganization of a material form
takes place at the resurrection. In order that the identity
of the resurrected individual shall be connected to an in
dividual in this life, there must be a continuous existence
of something connected with the individual which existed
in this life. The mind will not accept as the same the
reproduction of an individual who has ceased to exist with
no representative even for a single moment, no matter how
perfect may be the similitude, with wholly different elements.
Does not the mind naturally revert to the very means by
which the individuality is maintained during life ? Indeed,
if the organization is the means of preserving human
identity during life, it logically follows that it performs
the same service after death ; since, as before seen, the
identifying element must possess continuity of existence
from the beginning to the termination of the individual
•existence. It now remains to be shown how it is possible that the
organization, the representative of the organism or human
body, which loses its association with matter at death, may
be preserved for becoming again associated with matter in
the reproduction or reorganizing of the individual at the
resurrection. The soul, as the Bible clearly teaches, does not possess

J. H. KELLOGG. 701
natural, inherent immortality. If it is preserved, then,
and reassociated with matter at some time subsequent to
death, it must be because God has made some special
arrangement for the purpose. This arrangement we dis
cover in the perfect record of men's lives which is pre
served in Heaven, according to the Scriptures. Job says,
"My witness is in Heaven, and my record is on high."
This text proves that Job, at least, had a record in
Heaven. Dan. 7 : 10 informs us that there are books in
Heaven which are used in connection with the judgment.
"The judgment was set, and the books were opened."
From the following texts we learn that every man will be
judged according to his works ; Prov. 24 : 12, " And shall
not he render to every man according to his works?"
Matt. 16 : 27, " And then he shall reward every man
according to his works."
From these texts alone it would seem to be clearly set
tled that a careful record is made of the life-acts, thoughts,
motives, and every experience in life of every human
being. If further proof is needed, the following text will
certainly place the question beyond all room for doubt :
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." These texts certainly
establish the fact of a record. Just how this record is
kept we do not know. That is, we may not be able to
determine whether there are literal books in Heaven, in
which the record is preserved ; or whether the term books
is a figurative expression indicating only the preservation
of a perfect record in some form. This record, complete
and perfect in every detail, is in the most thorough sense a
photograph, a perfect pattern of the organization of each
individual. The character of an individual, as pictured
by his acts — including, of course, words and thoughts —
bears the perfect impress of his organization.
Since human identity consists in identity of organiza
tion, if we have reproduced in the resurrection the same
organization as that which an individual possessed at
death, the personal identity of that individual will be

702 SYMPOSIUM. •
restored. He will have the memory of the person who
died, with his individual peculiarities — leaving out defects
— and will recognize himself as the same person. Thus
the individuality of the present state will be connected to
that of the future. The dark chasm of death will be
bridged over.
It may be suggested that this kind of a soul is only an
abstraction, a mere concept. So it is. This is all it is
claimed to be ; and we cannot conceive how any different
sort of a soul could fulfill the conditions required, as
already observed. An immaterial existence must of neces
sity be abstract in character. Again, what matter if it be
an abstraction, if it is competent to perform all that is re
quired of it, viz., to represent the individual both during
life and after death, and through the resurrection secure
his personal existence beyond the grave, to enjoy eternal
bliss if the character is such as to entitle him to such a
reward, or to suffer punishment and final annihilation if
tbte record books in Heaven show such a fate to be deserved.
It is difficult to conceive how any other than an abstract
soul could perform what -is required of it. A material
soul must necessarily be subject to all the numberless mu
tations of changing matter ; while an abstract soul may
remain unchanged so long as it has a fixed representation,
as has the character representation of the soul in Heaven.
This view of the soul, as just intimated, applies equally
as well to the wicked as to the righteous. Bev. 20 : 12 in
forms us that a record of the acts of both the righteous
and the wicked is preserved in Heaven. " 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."
In this record is embodied a detailed plan of each per
son's organization, whether he be good or bad. The record
forms a perfect photograph of the individual, being, in
deed, a representation of the abstract organization which
was once represented in matter. In the case of the right
eous, after the resurrection the soul or organization be
comes immortal, as forming a part of an immortal organ
ism ; in the case of the wicked, after the judgment and

J. H. KELLOGG. 703
*
their resurrection they are destroyed "root and branch,"
Mal. 4 : 1, together with the record of their evil deeds,
with evil angels and the author of all evil, Matt. 25 : 41,
Rev. 20 : 10, and Heb 2 : 14, so that all trace of sin and evil
may be utterly blotted out of existence and God's universe
become as clean and pure as when it first came from His
omnipotent hand on creation's morn. Thus "evil-doers
shall be cut off," Psa. 37 : 9, and even their remembrance
shall perish, Job 18:17; in other words, God will destroy
the souls of the wicked in hell, so that they will be blotted
out of existence forever. The record of their lives being
destroyed, together with their bodies or organisms, there
is nothing left to represent them ; nothing by which they
may be reproduced ; nothing to connect the past with a
possible future ; nothing to preserve their identity, since
the identifying part, the organization, the soul, has per
ished with the rest.
Although to a mind trained from childhood to believe
in the soul as an entity, capable of maintaining an inde
pendent consciousness after death, this view of the soul
may at first seem vague and unsatisfactory, yet the more
thought one bestows upon it, the more beautiful, harmo
nious, and satisfactory it becomes. The mind soon learns
to recognize in the organization the true representation of
the individual during life as well as after death, and
from a careful examination of the Scripture evidence
relating to the nature of the soul we are unable to find
any insuperable objection to the theory advanced. In
deed, the testimony of inspiration agrees perfectly with
the inferences drawn from other sources, that the soul
is not an immortal, conscious entity, distinctive of man ;
but is simply the plan of his make-up, his organization,
the association of living molecules which constitutes him
a living, intelligent creature in the present life, in connec
tion with matter; and by preservation after death through
the record of the individual's life in Heaven, the organi
zation may be in the resurrection restored or again repre
sented in matter, thus reproducing and identifying the
individual, restoring to him his consciousness, recollection,
and personal peculiarities — leaving out defects — and so con
necting the present with the future life. J. H. Kellogg.

XII.
Man's Constitution and Destiny : A Few Hints from
Facts, Reason, and the Bible.

By Pboe. D. H. CHASE, LL.D., of the Methodist Episco
pal Church, Middlbtown, Conn.

[Note.— Dr. Chase, like Professor Kellogg, whose paper immediately pre
cedes thiB, is a layman of liberal culture, and like him views this question
from a materialistic standpoint. He is an educator of youth. He still retains
his connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church, notwithstanding his
heresy in honoring Christ as his only' hope of eternal life. Had he been a
preacher, like some of our other contributors, we might not have been able to
accredit him to that branch of the Christian Church. But the laity are not so
rigorously held to the traditional dogmas of the Church as are its clergy.]
Some forty years ago a well-beloved friend who was a
university graduate and teacher of ancient classics astound
ed, yes, mortified me by confessing incipient doubt of man's
possessing an immortal soul. My attachment aroused me
to an emphatic, though secret, resolve to do my utmost to
save him from what seemed to be a degrading, repellant
error. He frankly and. fully gave the reasons for his
doubts, drawn from nature and Revelation ; I strove to
overthrow them. Finding the common version of the
Bible not always critically exact, we took the Greek text.
The result was that both of us had to discard the pagan-
Platonic, " orthodox-Christian " dogma of man's natural
immortality — sometimes for brevity termed "immortal-
' soul-ism." We now hold that man is wholly mortal, un
conscious in death ; but a candidate for immortality
through repentance for sin, faith in a Redeemer, patient
continuance in well-doing, and a resurrection from the
dead. I confess that the result was to me a humbling sur
prise. Natural pride of heart decidedly opposes such a
change of opinion.

D. H. CHASE. 705
The following is the substance of a recent brief discus
sion with a scholarly LL.D., pastor of a large and im
portant church :
I. Should Guiteau's jury bring in a verdict of " guilty
of murder in the first degree," and the judge, at once,
order the sheriff to utterly destroy the fatal revolver, but
wholly ignore Guiteau, what would you think ?
He. That the judge was insane or demented.
I. What elements compose man ?
He. A soul, which is the seat of thought, affection, will;
and a body, which is the soul's instrument in executing its
will. I. What is the constitution of this soul?
He. It is an immaterial, uncompounded, imperishable
essence or entity ; .a simple, absolute unit.
I. Do you accept "Genesis" as canonical, authorita
tive? He. I do, most certainly !
I. When God pronounced sentence on Adam for his
first transgression, that sentence fell wholly on Adam's
body, which you assert to be the innocent, unconscious in
strument or tool with which the guilty soul executed its
sinful purpose; while He who is the righteous Judge
wholly ignored this guilty soul; thus, (1), "thou shalt eat
bread in the sweat of thy face until thou return unto the
ground ; (2) for out of it wast thou taken ; (3) for dust
thou art, (4) and unto dust shalt thou return." Please
notice this emphatic, fourfold repetition. For some good
reason God meant this emphasis.
He. I think this language is figurative  1 had already
reached the porch, about to end the call, and he did not
attempt further explanation.
The use of figurative language in announcing the law
to our representative head and in pronouncing sentence
upon him seems wholly improper, even were the penalty
only natural death. But if the Lawgiver and Judge
really meant by the term " death " eternal agonies in hell-
fire, then such figurative language was cruelly unjust.
God's fourfold sentence seems specially intended to an
tagonize the serpent's lie, " Ye shall not surely die ; ye
shall be as gods;" and to humble the pride which that lie

706 SYMPOSIUM.
was meant to foster. Verily, that lie has proved to be the
shrewdest, most damaging one man ever believed. Through
the centuries it has confused and obscured Bible doctrines,
made tyrants of a vast priesthood, enslaved and tormented
the laity, created numberless schisms and sects, created
fierce contests over dogma even among the learned and
conscientious, lighted the fires/ for many a martyr, weak
ened the power and hindered the spread of the Gospel.
These sad results seem to point to some lurking error in
"orthodox" dogma. To me that error seems to be the
belief in an immaterial, immortal soul as the real man.
That error naturally causes neglect of the material condi
tions of thought, mind, talent, genius ; overlooks those im
portant laws of heredity through which the race' can be
rapidly improved; lessens our charity in judging the
faults, follies and crimes of men.
In my university course, Upham's Mental Philosophy
was the text-book. Much profit and pleasure had been
anticipated from this study; but it was finished with the
saddening conviction that it had imparted no useful, prac
tical knowledge of human nature. Thinking this result
the fault of the author, and not of the metaphysical sys
tem of the day, a long vacation was given to the study of
Locke, Brown, Reid, Stuart and others, with the same
result in each case. But in the further prosecution of my
studies in mental science, I was greatly aided by a perusal
of the works of Gall and Spurzheim, which were then ex
citing considerable attention. They served to throw much
light on this whole subject, which had hitherto seemed so
dark to me. I became persuaded by much study and
observation in this direction that the general principles of
this much-opposed science of phrenology — whatever may
be thought of its minor details — are founded in truth.
Shortly after this I attended a morning service at Henry
Ward Beecher's church. His growing name then attracted
strangers. Announcing his text, he said it was his "in
tention to expound it by the aid of that new system of
mental philosophy which is called phrenology. At this
word you start and exclaim, 'What! Phrenology? Why
that leads to materialism and fatalism.' Let me tell you
that every system ever invented by man leads equally in

D. H. CHASE. 707
the same direction." He probably meant that, whatever
the entity that thinks, it is a creature of God and subject
to fixed laws; so that man cannot comprehend how it can
be free. Our resource against all logical difficulties lies
in our God-given consciousness of freedom of choice, our
knowledge of right and wrong and abiding conviction of
our responsibility.
The honored John Bell, M.D., says : " I regard phren
ology as the only system of mental philosophy which can
be said to indicate, with anything like clearness and preci
sion, man's mixed moral and intellectual nature, and as
the only guide short of revelation for educating him in
harmony with his faculties as a being of power, with his
wants as a creature of necessity, and with his duties as an
agent responsible to his Maker and amenable to the laws
declared by the all-wise Providence."
The eighth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica says:
"To phrenology may be justly conceded the grand merit
of having forced the inductive method of inquiry into
mental philosophy, and thus laid the foundations of a
true mental science." When such and kindred authori
ties publicly commit themselves on the side of brain and
matter, the Christian teacher need not feel timid.
"Orthodoxy" teaches that man is composed of soul, the
immaterial, immortal master; and oibody, its slave. Now,
note that natural generation is a purely material process
and cannot create immaterial souls. Souls of parents can
not create souls of children from naught. God only can.
Parental "souls" cannot be subdivided to furnish their
offspring; for they are pure, simple 'units, by hypothesis.
Such a soul cannot grow from the weakness of infancy to
the strength of manhood, nor decay in old age. It can
not become partially or wholly insane, having no parts, no
divisibility. Is it asserted that these phenomena are
caused by contact of soul with brain ? Then, verily, is brain
tyrant and soul a base slave, too abject, feeble, to have any
voice in determining mental phenomena. By natural gen
eration, parents often transmit to offspring their most
marked and predominant traits of mind and heart. The
facts of nature abound in proof that matter dominates
character.

708 symposium.
A healthy, compactly knit young wife, after severe and
' protracted labor, gave birth to her first babe, a boy. After
a few days she manifested a mild, harmless, religious mo
nomania. That the organ of veneration was involved was
shown by the local heat and carrying her hand often to
that organ. Soon new elements were added to her insanity.
Some important duties must be executed by her with un
flinching devotion. The organs of firmness and conscience
were involved. After a few days she began to manifest
anxiety, fear, terror. Evidently the organ of cautious
ness was disordered. At this point an attendant, who was
a phrenologist, comprehended the gradual spread of the
disorder along the surface organs of the brain and had
prompt preparations made for her restraint when the dan
gerous organs of combativeness and destructiveness should
be involved in the excitement. This crisis came duly and
was happily controlled with but little harm to patient and
furniture, none to the infant. The disorder then yielded
to vigorous medical treatment, and the recovery was rapid
and permanent. Such a case demonstrates that brain is
the seat of mind.
A young lady, on recovering from a severe and pro
tracted fever, was found to have forgotten all she .ever
knew. Being young, her education was recommenced.
After spending some months thus, she suddenly regained
all the lost knowledge and lost ail her new acquisitions.
Thereafter she alternated between the old and the new
states, and it became necessary for her to learn facts and
know friends in both states in order to know them at all
times. Now, if "soul" is the thinking element, she must
have received a second soul so strangely related to the first
as to act alternately with it and manifest itself through
the one, same body ! Brain has two hemispheres.
By the kick of a horse, young Hooker lost a bit of the
upper part of his skull. The torn scalp was replaced,
grew, and concealed the injury. Gentle pressure of one
finger on that spot would quickly render him as uncon
scious as the chair he occupied. It absolutely annihilated
all idea of time, he declared. If a little pressure on the
brain does this, what if brain be destroyed ?
In my youth, while skating alone on the Connecticut,

D. H. CHASE. 709
so swiftly as to be unable to examine the ice ahead, one
skate-runner caught in a fissure and threw me violently.
I thought I instantly sprang up. I did utter the somewhat
natural exclamation, " I guess I did not lie there long!"
I was surprised to hear a voice near by respond, "I guess
you did. I was a half mile down the river, chanced to see
you fall, and as you did not get up I supposed you were
seriously hurt, and have made my way up against this gale
to look after you, and you lying there all the time. I
thought you were dead." Looking around I found myself
the centre of quite a gathering attracted by my apparently
fatal fall. Now, if mere brain concussion does this, what
will be the natural result of its destruction? "The dead
know not anything." " In that very day their thoughts
perish." In due time " many that sleep in the dust of the
earth shall awake;" for "if the dead rise not," then
even " they that have fallen asleep in Christ have perished "
— have ceased from consciousness forever. Lazarus
"slept," "was dead" — unconscious. Had his "soul"
gone to Paradise or Heaven as the friend of Jesus (" be
hold how he loved him !"), Christ could not have been so
cruel as to call him back from his newly-found happiness
to his earthly toils. He would have comforted the sisters
With that thought. No; Lazarus slept, and his loving
Master awoke him. Thus the plain teaching of the Bible
is in harmony with the facts and laws of nature.
" Orthodoxy " accepts Genesis as authoritative. Gene
sis declares that " God formed man (not a part of him)
from the dust of the ground ;" or, as science would word
it, from elements of our globe. This purely material man
was caused to live by air impelled through his nostrils.
We often imitate this latter process in cases of recent
drowning and suffocation. Ecclesiastes asserts of man's
constituent elements and life-processes that he " hath no
pre-eminence above a beast ; all have one breath ; all go
to one place ; all are of the dust, and all return to dust
again." Adam, even when sinless, must eat the fruit of
"the tree of life" to stay the action of the law of decay
and death stamped on his constitution. He was on proba
tion. He must not touch that other, forbidden fruit.
Obedience, so long as maintained, gave him free access to

710 symposium.
his remedy against death, gave him his prize, reward of
obedience. Thus he was a candidate for immortality. If
he failed, the sentence was simply " muth, gemuth," i. e.,
"dying" by natural constitution, "death" must result.
" The wages of sin is death." But orthodoxy insists that
death means eternal torment in hell-fire. If it does, then
sheer justice (to say nought of mercy) demanded the
clearest declaration to Adam and the race. His easy
transgression hints that he had no such idea.
My reason asserts that God is incapable of either threat
ening or inflicting any such penalty ; for eternal torments
foot up into an infinite sum-total. But man is finite in
every faculty and of brief probation. He cannot incur
infinite guilt. Further, the God we love and worship
could not have created man, foreseeing that " the way of
life " would be narrow, found by few ; while " the way of
destruction " would be broad and crowded by the great
majority of the human race, doomed to eternal agonies.
No noble human bridegroom could consent to become a
parent, foreknowing that one of his offspring must be a
severe sufferer through his three score and ten.
Over fifty years ago revival services were held in Van-
dewater Street Church, New York. Professor Finney, of
Oberlin, was the chief star. Attracted by his fame, I, a
mere school-boy, went to hear him. He declared it his
belief that the sinner, dying impenitent, went to hell, be
yond the reach of grace, mercy, hope. His punishment
would be perfectly just and ought to be received with sub
mission, but would be received with blasphemy and rebel
lion. This increased his guilt and the severity of his pun
ishment. The increased suffering intensified his rebellion
and punishment, and so on forever. Said Finney, with great
emphasis, " I believe the period will come in the history of
every lost sinner when God will be compelled to exert the
utmost of His infinite power to hold the wretch in existence,
while He inflicts upon him the utmost of His infinite ven
geance." Such was the impression made on me that I
think nearly every word has been correctly given. To me
this seemed blasphemy against Him whose name is Love —
an outrage on the reason, conscience and heart of the
hearers. Angry to the core, I vowed never to listen to

* D. H. CHASE. 711
him again. It is incomprehensible how a man of culture,
of Christian profession, and in contact with the best
society could hold such atrocious views, unless a mono
maniac. The serpent's lie is at the foundation of all this
folly, as well as of the antagonistic, flattering folly of Uni
versalism. That supposititious "immortal soul " underlies
the whole. Revelation vainly declares the wages of sin
to be death ; everlasting destruction from the presence of
that God who fills all ; the sinner to " utterly perish,"
" become as though he had not been."
Paganism taught immortal-soul-ism before Christ or
Moses or Abraham. Satan taught it in Eden. It cannot
be true, else it would be incorrect to say that " life and
immortality are brought to light in the Gospel." This
Gospel declares that as Adam lost the Tree of Life for
himself and the race, Christ hath offered Himself up for
the giving of life to the world — hath become our bread of
life. " I am the true bread ; if any man eat of this he
shall not die eternally." " He that hath Me hath life ; he
that hath not Me hath not life." " Ye will not come unto
me that ye might have life." There are many texts of
similar import. While, then, " the wages of sin is death,
the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord," " who hath life in Himself, and gives to His fol
lowers to have life also in themselves."
May God bless the labors of all who are working to
eliminate the great lie from Christian creeds !
D. H. Chase.

XIII.
A Letter.— The Question Among the French Christians.

By Rev. CHARLES BYSE, Pastor of Free Evan
gelical Church, Brussels, Belgium.

[Notb.— Bev. Mr. Byse is a learned French linguist. He is not only familiar
with the leading modern languages of Europe and the ancient Biblical and
classical, but also the Oriental languages. He was born in Switzerland, edu
cated in theology at Lausanne and in the Oriental languages at Berlin and
Erlangen ; was for a time minister of the Free Church of France at Paris, at
Nimes, and also at Bex. He is now pastor of the Eglise Ohretienne Missionnavre
Beige, at Brussels. He has been until recently editor of the Archives du Chris-
tianisme and of the Journal du Prolanlisme Francaise, in Paris, and is believed
to have been the first to advocate the doctrine of conditional immortality in the
French journals. Two years ago he translated into the French language Eev.
E. White's large work, Life in Christ, and published it at Paris. His letter
will be read with interest, especially his statement in regard to the question
among French Christians. I am glad to give it a place in this series. It is all
the more welcome from the fact that he differs from me, as does also his friend,
Dr. Petavel, on the question of a future probation. I will follow his letter
with a brief reply to the criticism which he makes in the beginning pf it, on a
passage in my Theological Trilemma.} I
Brussels, Belgium, )
December 3d, 1881. j
J. H. Pettingell,
1608 Wallace St., Phila., Pa., U. S. A.
Dear Sir : I am glad to send you a contribution for
your great work, as a token of warm and particular sym
pathy. I agree with almost all the ideas expressed in
your Theological Trilemma. Allow me, however, to say
that your belief in " the absolutely hopeless and remedi
less doom of those who die in their sins " (p. 263) seems
to me an exaggeration of the Scriptural doctrine. I think
there is beyond the grave another trial for those who were
not in a position to believe in Christ on earth. This hope
is founded not only on God's love and justice, or other

CHARLES BYSE. 713
philosophical arguments, but on Apostolic testimony (1
Peter 3 : 18, 19 ; comp. 4 : 6), accepted by the Church of
the first centuries, and resumed in the following article of
the so-called Apostles' Creed : " He descended into hell."
This doctrine is not to be confounded with Univer
salism, and I dare say that in Germany, France and Swit
zerland, not to speak of England, it is either professed or
silently cherished by a great majority of evangelical
divines. Our friend, Dr. Petavel, wroterecently in the Chre
tien Evangelique of Lausanne an excellent exegetical essay
on the passage above quoted. I think this subject is of real
importance ; for, in Europe, at least, a great many intelli
gent people would not he able to believe in a salvation
which were not possible to every human soul, here or here
after. May I be permitted, dear sir, to ask you and your
earnest readers to reconsider this momentous question of
a new trial after death by the light of St. Peter's Gospel ?
[See reply at the end of this letter. — J. H. P.]
I now want to show you by a few quotations how it
stands, in our French-speaking countries, with the great
truth I hold in common with you. I begin with the phi
losophical side of the doctrine — not Life in Christ, but
Conditional Immortality.
It has been advocated for many years in an elaborate
work (Le Spiritualisme et la Religion), by a deep and
original thinker, who is not a philosopher by profession,
Mr. Charles Lambert, of Paris.
" I am free," he writes, " never to cease to exist. I in
habit a body which puts me in connection, during a cer
tain time, with an inferior world, in which all its appetites
tend to retain me. But I can separate my own destiny
from that of my body, if I like. I have only to defend
myself beforehand against the blow which will strike it,
in order not to share its fate on the day when, worn out
by age and disorganized by disease, it shall cease to live."
" The world contains," he continues, " a harvest of in
numerable human beings, some of whom allow themselves
to follow the perishable destiny of animal life, while others
prepare for a superior life."
Under the influence of Mr. Charles Lambert, another

714 SYMPOSIUM.
distinguished writer, Mr. Pillon, has for some time past
accepted the new theory. In the periodical of which he
is editor (La Critique Philosophique), he has reviewed
with much sympathy Dr. Petavel's La Fin du Mal.
Since then, the most eminent, perhaps, of the philoso
phers we now possess in France, Mr. Charles Renouvier,
has gradually been brought to a point of view for which
his own tendency had admirably prepared him.
" Let us observe that the immortality in question is not
at all a forced immortality of all men. It may just as
well be a conditional immortality. There is as much room
for the weakening and extinction oi the psychical forces
adapted to an organism as for their preservation, growth
or renovation."
A little later, Mr. Renouvier, deeply alive to the sol
emnity of " the great question," speaks more positively in
favor of our belief. He subscribes unreservedly to the
remark of Kant :
" If the soul cannot perish after the manner of things
composed according to quantity, viz., by division, it re
mains subject to the condition of things composed accord
ing to quality ; in other words, it is capable of increasing
and decreasing by degrees, in all its properties and mani
festations whatever. It can therefore undergo gradual
diminution, and perish at last by extinction.
Mr. Renouvier is evidently charmed by this hypothesis,
which appears to him as a doctrine of liberty and as a
common ground on which theology and philosophy, those
two sisters so long at enmity, may be ultimately reconciled.
On both sides — for the philosopher as well as for the
Christian — " there is, at first, the same basis of moral ob
ligation. * * * Next, the future life is considered as
dependent upon the present life, especially upon the inner
life. * * * Finally, the liberty of the moral agent in
tervenes throughout ; his fate is in his own hands. * *
* The agent himself chooses between the preservation and
permanence of his personality and its final extinction."
The alternative of man's future destiny, according to
Christian eschatology thus understood, "is either life or
death. Death is the punishment threatened to sinners. If
the sufferings of the invisible world remain with their

CHARLES BYSE. 715
mysterious terror, we are free to avoid all material inter
pretation of them. At any rate, they are but temporary.
The hideous Hell of everlasting torture is put aside as one
of the most horrible fables which have defiled the imagi
nation of mankind. * * * Finally, the hope of the
resurrection of the just, superseding the metaphysical
dogma of the essentially immortal soul imparts a character
of extreme religious simplicity to a subject which, treated
by other methods, is particularly obscure and, above all,
incapable of demonstration."
In short, the head of the French " criticist " school,
without adhering completely to the great truth of Immor
tality through Christ alone, considers it as an incalculable
improvement on the awful beliefs which it seeks to re
place ; " as a return to the simple and natural expression
of Apostolic thought ;" " as the breach of the secular alli
ance between theology and metaphysics, and as the rejec
tion of a delusive science which could not but compromise
the Christian faith." As to Conditional Immortality, or
the philosophical consequence of Life in Christ, Mr. Re
nouvier sees in it the confirmation of his own system and
the most plausible solution to the problem of our destiny.
Moreover, he hails in this bold innovation the first step
towards an unexpected reconciliation and a fertile union
between Free Thought and Christianity.
On the religious side of our doctrine, I would remark
only that the publication of Mr. Edward White's Life in
Christ in French has been a real event in our theological
world. Many articles have been written about that book.
It has been analyzed and discussed in several " Pastoral
Conferences." I cannot say that a great many divines
have been persuaded to profess openly the new theory.
But I am certain a deep interest is awakened and a great
change is being wrought in men's minds about this vital
question. If we are still a feeble minority, we have the
satisfaction of seeing very good heads more or less on our
side. Let me name only Mr. Cesar Malan, of Geneva, a
son of the celebrated Dr. Malan, and a very remarkable
thinker himself. He is now one of the foremost defenders
of Immortality through faith in Jesus. Of course, the

716 SYMPOSIUM.
opposition is strong in several places, especially in Bel
gium, and some of our best friends are timid. Neverthe
less, we are of good cheer. " Truth is great, and will pre
vail !" Tuus in Nostro,
Charles Byse.

NOTE.
The passage on page 263 of my Theological Trilemma to which
Mr. Byse refers is the following : " 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 hopeless
and remediless doom of those who die in their sins — of the eternal
and irreversible distinction that will be made between the right
eous and the wicked." I presume to say that the same sentiment
will be found expressed in the foregoing pages also ; for, according
to my understanding of the Scriptures, however much I might
desire to agree with him and other European friends, I dare not
hold or teach any other doctrine than this. But I think he gives a
wider scope and application to the passage than is warranted by
the context. I was speaking especially of those to whom the
Gospel is preached. He probably agrees with me in holding that
the rejecters of the Gospel in this life can have no reasonable hope
of another offer beyond. He also agrees with me, no doubt, in be
lieving that there can be no salvation for any child of Adam but
by redemption through Christ. But I hold still further, that the
Word of God — and this is our only source of instruction on this
point — affords us no ground of hope for the salvation of any one
who " dies in his sins." But he must not understand me as saying
that no one can be saved by Christ without having heard the name
-of Christ; that the Spirit of God may not regenerate a heathen
soul; and that the measure of truth that is accorded to all men,
even Id their darkness, may not be sufficient to lead them to re
pentance, as it surely is to render them " without excuse," as Paul
expressly declares, if they reject it, Rom. 1 : 20. He says of such:
" As many as have sinned without law shall also perish without
Jaw," 2 : 12, and so I must believe. But how great is the number

CHARLES BYSE. 717
of the saved, or how great is the number of those who perish, I
dare not undertake to guess. But if I were to construe this word
" perish " as meaning they shall have another opportunity after death —
which I cannot do — I should naturally inquire, Why such urgency,
then, in giving them the Gospel in this life 1
But this sentiment — for I can call it nothing more — assumes that
" death " is not death; but that man when he dies does not die, but
only casts off his body and passes into another state of conscious
activity — that is to say, he is dead and alive at the same time.
This I cannot admit. It belongs to the Platonic theory of man
which has wrought such mischief in our Christian system. The
papal doctrine of purgatory and all the various phases of Ghost
ism and Spiritism, which are so prevalent at the present day, are
founded on this same notion. If it be admitted that the first death
does not kill the individual nor interrupt his consciousness, it may
plausibly be questioned whether the second death will.
I do not dogmatically affirm that the human soul may not have »
separate entitative existence, and that it may not be so independent
of the body as to fulfill all the functions that belong to it
here, when separated from the body ; but I have no evidence of it,
Indeed, such a supposition seems to me to be contrary to reason
and science, as well as Scripture. It is certainly opposed to all my
conceptions of the nature and functions of the human soul ; and
I must insist that those who advocate a doctrine so contrary to the
whole current of Scripture teaching as that there is another proba
tion for man hereafter, and so demoralizing, as it seems to me, in
its tendency, should have something more than a mere sentiment
or guess or the Platonic theory of man to found it on.
But were we to admit that the soul might be conscious after the
individual himself had died — which seems to me a contradiction
in terms — still we have no evidence that it would be in any condi
tion to accept or reject an offered Gospel, or to undergo any change
of moral character, much less to be regenerated and to become a
new creature.
As for the Scriptures referred to— 1 Peter 3 : 18, 19, and 4 : 6—1
do not accept of the exegesis by which they are made to teach that
Christ preached to the antediluvian rebels, after they had been
dead more than two thousand years I It is certainly a very myste
rious and obscure passage. But it is susceptible of another render-

718 SYMPOSIUM.
ing equally consistent with the laws of good grammar, which brings
it into complete harmony with the uniform tenor of Bible teach
ing. This passage is, I think, the main reliance of those who hold
to the idea of a probation after death. It is altogether too weak
and uncertain a foundation on which to build so stupendous and, as
I think, so dangerous a doctrine.
I sympathize with those who entertain large views of God's mercy
and grace. Be it far from me lo undertake to limit the Almighty
in His power or purpose to save. But I must stand by the record
He has given me. I have no other guide.
Those who still hold firmly to the Platonic doctrine of the inde
structible nature of man may have some reason for giving such a
forced construction to this passage, as will seem to relieve the char
acter of God of the terrible imputation of injustice and cruelty, in
his dealings with the unsaved, which this error casts upon Him ;
but there is no such apparent excuse for those who have succeeded
in throwing off this philosophic error so far as to reject the doctrine
of compulsory immortality. This notion of a probation after death
still savors of the old error, and draws all itB plausibility and foree
from it. Nor can any one hope to see the truth clearly, or to set
himself quite right on this question, till he has become entirely
emancipated, and has accepted of the simple Bible doctrine of the
complete solidarity of man — in this life, in death, and in the life to
come, by a resurrection from the dead.
My good friends may come to it slowly and reluctantly as I did,
because of the bias of a false education ; but I think they will come
to it at last. Indeed, they must ; for there is no other ground upon
which to stand securely, or oppose consistently this great anti-
Christian error. J. H. PETTIMaKLL.

XIV.
Despoiled Through Philosophy.

By M. W. STRANG, Glasgow, Scotland, Editor op
The Messenger.

[Note.— Perhaps the usual clerical title (Rev.) should be prefixed to Mr.
Strang's name ; for he was thoroughly educated for the ministry, and is actually
an able preacher of the Gospel. But his refusal to accept of the Platonic phi
losophy which underlies the creed of the Scotch Presbyterian Church was a
bar to his entering the ministry of that Church, and so he took his commission
from a Higher Source and preaches the word of the Lord " after the way which
they call heresy," and his name continues to be written without their ecclesi
astical prefix.
He is the editor of the Messenger, a monthly magazine which advocates " the
coming kingdom of God, the return of the Lord Jesus, and the hope of Eternal
Life," and in that capacity has written many valuable tracts and papers on
these special topics.
Of the several very excellent articles which he puts at our disposal, I am
sorry to be able to use only this one that follows. He also sends me the histori
cal sketch of his co-laborer. Mr. Laing, of Edinburgh, to which he had been
expected to make some additions. This he does in a letter which will be ap
pended to that sketch.]
The apostles of the Lord had barely finished the work
of planting the truth throughout the world, when they
were constrained to lift up a voice of warning to the
youthful churches to beware of the leaven of false teach
ing which had already begun to corrupt their minds, and
was destined to work sad havoc with the simplicity and
purity of the faith.
"There were false prophets among the people," says
Peter, " even as there shall be false teachers among you,
* * * and many shall follow their pernicious ways; by
reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of."
No department of the truth would escape the corrupting
touch of this leaven. They would " even deny the Lord
that bought them ;" while " the promise of His coming"
would become to them as a "cunningly-devised fable."

720 SYMPOSIUM.
John also warns against the anti-Christian teaching which
was even then at work — the Gnostic " deceivers," who,
while professing to be Christian disciples, denied " Jesus
Christ coming in the flesh." Not less earnestly, and even
more frequently, does Paul predict the same sad deeline.
With what solemn fervor does he beseech Timothy to be
" urgent in season and out of season," in his exhortation
and teaching ; T' for the time will come," says he, " when
they will not endure sound doctrine ; but, having itching
ears, after their own lusts they shall heap to themselves
teachers ; and they shall turn away their ears from the
truth, and shall turn aside unto fables." With what sad
surprise does he find the Galatian disciples already turned
to " another gospel " than that which he had preached.
With what tender solicitude does he seek that the Colos-
sians should be instructed only in the knowledge of Him
in whom " dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily."
" Beware," says he, " lest any man spoil you (i. e., despoil
you, make a spoil of you, carry you captive) through phi
losophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after
the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ."
The frequent and solemn warnings and predictions, of
which these are but samples, terrible as they were in their
descriptions of the extent of the corruption which would
ensue from the germs of error, already planted by the
enemy of truth, were proved ere long to be divinely accu
rate. The slenderest acquaintance with Church History
suffices to justify their terms. The very basis and vindi
cation of our modern Protestantism consists in an acknowl
edgement of the fact that for centuries, which have come
to be known as the Dark Ages, under the professed name
of Christianity, the civilized world was held in the galling
bondage of error, superstition, and cruelty, while " the meek
and modest truth " was forced to seek a refuge from bitter
persecution " in nooks obscure, far from the ways of men."
It is admitted, then, that the simplicity of the Gospel of
Christ was buried out of sight under the accumulated cor
ruptions of the Greek and Roman Churches. Have our
Protestant Reformations succeeded in restoring it to the
light of day, and to its proper place in the minds of pro
fessing Christians ? . We doubt it much.

M. W. STRANG. 721
While thankful for what has been achieved, and re
joicing in the degree of liberty to which we have attained,
it is our deliberate conviction that much remains to do.
We believe, indeed, that one gross parent error, which
serves as a foundation for nearly all the abominations of
the Papal teaching, requires still to be banished, with all
its progeny, from the creeds of Protestantism, where it
holds a place of almost equal honor as the accredited
basis of all true religion.
This error is the belief in the immortality of the
soul and the inalienable destiny of every man to live for
ever in some condition or other. This doctrine we sol
emnly declare to be no part of the doctrine of Christ, but,
on the contrary, to be opposed thereto, and to be derived
directly from that very "philosophy" against whose en
croachments Paul raised a voice of warning. We further
maintain that, owing to the allegiance which professing
Christians have sworn to this usurping theory, they have
been despoiled and robbed of a great part of their precious
inheritance of truth, and brought under the yoke of many
and pernicious errors.
The proofs of this grave indictment cannot be ade
quately presented in a brief paper. They may be found
at length in those treatises upon the question which have
grown so numerous of late years. It will be admitted,
however, that if this idea of the " immortality of the soul "
can claim no higher authority than human philosophy, its
introduction into the Christian system of doctrine could not
fail to have the most baneful effects. Let us, then, see
what Church History has to say about the contact of apos
tolic doctrine with the systems of Greek philosophy. I
say Greek because, although troubles arose from other
sources, the term "philosophy" in Paul's letter points
distinctly to this quarter. " The Greeks," he says, " seek
after wisdom (sophia)." Their eminent men were by pro
fession lovers of wisdom, or philosophers, divided into
various contending schools of thought. I might quote
from the writings of scholars who agree with us, but I
shall rather call as' a witness one who cannot be suspected
of any bias in our favor. I refer to the learned Church
historian, Dr. Mosheim, merely premising that his testi-

722 SYMPOSIUM.
mony is borne out by that of others. His "History of
the Church " during the first few centuries is full of refer
ences to the disastrous inroads of worldly philosophy into
the doctrine of Christ. But so far as the Greek philoso
phy is concerned, the corrupting influence seems to have
come almost entirely from one school, viz., that of Plato.
Writing of the second century, Mosheim says : " Towards
the close of this century a new sect of philosophers arose
of a sudden, spread with amazing rapidity throughout the
greatest part of the Roman Empire, swallowed up almost
all the other sects, and was extremely detrimental to the
cause of Christianity. Alexandria, Jn Egypt, * * *
gave birth to this new philosophy. Its votaries chose to
be called Platonics," because, " though attached to no par
ticular sect, yet they preferred the sublime Plato to all
other sages, and approved of the most of his opinions con
cerning the Deity, the universe, and the human soul."
They were known also as Eclectics. " This new species
of Platonism was embraced by such/ of the Alexandrian
Christians as were desirous to retain, with the profession
of the Gospel, the title, dignity and habit of philosophers.
It is also said to have had the particular approbation of
Athenagoras, Pantcenus, Clemens the Alexandrian, and all
those who, in this century, were charged with the care of
the public school which the Christians had at Alexandria.
* * * The Christian Eclectics had this also in common
with the others, that they preferred Plato to the other
, philosophers, and looked upon his opinions concerning
God, the human soul, and things invisible, as conformable
to the spirit and genius of the Christian doctrine."
It is important to observe how distinctly the Platonic
doctrine concerning the human soul was thus adopted by
Christian teachers. According to Dr. Mosheim, all the
other schools of Greek philosophy — Epicurean, Academic,
Aristotelian, Stoic — either flatly denied or openly doubted
the immortality of the soul. The followers of Socrates
and Plato alone made it the basis of their teaching. And
it was in this second century, then, that that dogma as
taught by Plato was for the first time incorporated with
Christianity. And with the natural result. "The vener
able simplicity of the Christian system," says Dr. Mosheim,

M. W. STRANG. 723
"was not of long duration; its beauty was gradually
effaced by the laborious efforts of human learning and the
dark subtilities of imaginary science." »
"Many examples," continues the historian, "might be
alleged which verify the observations we have now been
making ; and, if the reader is desirous of a striking one,
he has only to take a view of the doctrines which began to be
taught in this century concerning the state of the soul after
the dissolution of the body."
Time would fail me to quote at length the instructive
records of the decline which rapidly followed. Suffice it
to say that in the third century the cause of philosophy
triumphed over the objections and protests of the better
class of Christian advocates — thanks principally to " the
influence and authority of Origen, who, having been
early instructed in the new kind of Platonism already
mentioned, blended it unhappily with the purer and
more sublime tenets of a celestial doctrine, and recom
mended it in the warmest manner to the youth who
attended his public lessons" — and that, so early as the
fourth century, "those vain fictions, which an attachment
to the Platonic philosophy and to popular opinions had
engaged the greatest part of the Christian doctors to
adopt before the time of Constantine, were now confirmed,
enlarged and embellished in various ways," leading to
prayers to dead saints, worship of relics, and many other
Popish dogmas and practices.
Protestants may, with some truth, claim to have escaped
the particular forms of evil just referred to, which are
still rampant in the Eastern and Western divisions of the
Continental Church. But have they shaken themselves
free from this heathen philosophy in regard to the more
essential doctrine of immortality itself?
It was surely a cunning device of the enemy of Truth
to induce the Christian teachers to believe that Plato and
Christ could be served together. In one point the doc
trine of Plato and that of Christ were coincident. On the
, same point they both differed from the bulk of the Grecian
and Roman world. That point was this — that they both
taught men to look forward to a future and immortal life.
The chief remaining schools of philosophers had no such

724 SYMPOSIUM.
faith ; while as for the mass of mankind, Plato himself
(than whom we can have no better witness) confesses that
they " wouhi not readily assent to his doctrine," appre
hending rather that " on the very day in which the man
dies, the soul is destroyed and extinguished ; that it goes
forth and is dissipated, like a breath or a smoke, and
ceases to be."—(Phaedo, 39, 40, 58, 68.)
But while both Plato and the Christ held out to despair
ing men a hope of immortality, there was scarcely one
feature further in common between their respective teach
ings on the subject. Plato taught that death was only
apparent — that there really was for man no death, "what
seemed so was transition" — that immortality was inherent
in the deathless and indivisible soul or thinking part, and
that the manner of its enjoyment would be by the soul's
escaping forever from the trammels of the material frame
in which it had been for a while imprisoned. The Lord
Jesus Christ, on the other hand, came proclaiming : "The
hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall
hear the voice of the Son of Man and come forth,"
and that of those who should be thus resuscitated, some
should be appointed to life everlasting, but others to con
demnation and a second and irreversible destruction. He
uttered not a word — neither did his apostles — of the im
mortality of the soul. He gave no countenance to human
pride ; but he came with a message of mercy from the
God of heaven to sinners who were in danger of utterly
perishing, and offered them freely a share in the everlast
ing life whose fountain was in the Son of God.
What possible communion could there be between two
such opposing doctrines? None. And hence, no sooner
was the Platonic theory received into the Church, than a
struggle began between them for the- mastery. And in
that struggle the natural pride of men was all on the side
of Plato, and against the " humbling " doctrine of the
Cross. One natural fruit of Plato's doctrine appeared at once
in the rise, in the second century, of the Christian Mystics,
who " were ordered," says our historian, " to extenuate by
hunger, thirst and other mortifications, the sluggish body,
which confines the activity and restrains the liberty of the

M. W. STRANG. 725-
immortal spirit ; that thus, in this life, they might enjoy
communion with_the Supreme Being, and ascend after
death, active and unencumbered, to the universal Parent,
to live in his presence forever." Thus the hope of the
resurrection became dimmed and displaced, being reduced
to secondary importance, and the way was paved for its
utter denial. It was long ago pointed out by Tyndale,
the great Protestant reformer and martyr, in his contro
versy with the Papist More, that to send the souls of be
lievers to bliss immediately after the event called death
was to make void and useless the coming of Christ and
the resurrection, which were the true scriptural hope.
And this argument has never to this day been answered.
Without wishing to charge upon Protestants at large
complicity in the vagaries of extreme men, such as the
followers of Emanuel Swedenborg, yet it is right to in
quire what place the doctrine of resurrection now holds
in popular faith. It is notorious that among the Protest
ant Churches of the Continent, in Prance, Switzerland
and Germany, " the resurrection of the dead " is boldly
and widely denied, and it is even considered a debateable
question whether our Lord actually rose from the dead, or
whether His resurrection was merely what they are pleased
to call " a moral fact." And in our own country, within
recent years the same pernicious error has been propa
gated by theologians holding high rank and important
positions as educators of youth.*
Let us look into this matter a few moments. Paul
based the hope of a future and immortal life upon the fact
that Christ had risen from the dead and become the first
fruits of them, that sleep. Not so the theologies and
creeds of Protestantism. As if they feared this Divine
foundation were not secure enough to build upon, they
start rather from metaphysical theories about the dignity
of human nature and the indestructible quality of the
nobler part of man ; merely tacking on thereto a doctrine
of the resurrection, as authors are wont to relegate to an
appendix matters more curious than essential, or which-
cannot conveniently come into the body of their work-
* The same is true of the United States. — J. H. P.

726 SYMPOSIUM.
Surely this is one of the strangest things done under the
sun, that men on whom has shined a full, revelation of the
path of life should prefer to fall back upon "the rudi
ments of the world " for a guide ; that those who have a
living Prince of Life in whom to trust should seek their
solace rather in those unsatisfying pleas with which the
dying Socrates, who knew no better, sought to comfort
himself and those about him.
" Is Christ the abler teacher, or the Schools ?
If Christ, then why resort at ev'ry turn
To Athens, or to Borne, for wisdom short
Of man's occasions, when in Him reside
Grace, knowledge, comfort — an Unfathomed store ?"
A year or two ago I saw in an evangelical magazine a
frank confession that, in administering consolation to the
sick and the dying, teachers of religion were "apt to for
get to set brightly before the eyes the resurrection hope."
Apt to forget it! Why? How is this possible? Because a
false hope has usurped its place. Can we conceive the
Lord Jesus forgetting to set before the eyes in such a case
His great promise that He would raise the believer up at
the last day? Can we conceive Paul forgetting it — Paul,
who protested that all his devotion advantaged him nothing
if the dead rise not; who, in instructing the Thessolonians
as to the hopes of the Christian in death, passed by unno
ticed the Grecian guess at immortality, said not a word
about a spirit-world for the departed, but pointed forward
to the resurrection of the dead and change of the living
when the Lord Himself should descend from Heaven ? A
false hope, we say, has ousted this Scriptural one from its
place. The creeds and theologies did half the mischief;
but the hymns, which convey the actual popular hope,
have completed its dethronement. Hence we find our
friends singing,, as if they had just quitted the bedside of
Socrates, this "jargon of the schools:"
" It is not death to bear
The wrench that sets us free
From dungeon chain, to breathe the air
Of boundless liberty.

M. W. STRANG. 727
It is not death to fling
Aside this sinful dust,
And rise on strong exulting wing
To live among the just."
Truth is here, but not such as was intended, or can
profit any one. It certainly cannot be death, whatever it
is, to "rise to live among the just." Or, again;
" Welcome sweet hour of full discharge (!)
That sets our longing souls at large ;
Unbinds our chain, breaks up our cell,
And gives us with our God to dwell."
What need to multiply instances ? Are there not sown
broadcast by thousands for the use of young and old in
our land hymns such as these in which the resurrection is
openly set aside as a thing unnecessary ? Such sentiments
are rank treason against the Prince of Life, who holds the
keys of death and the grave. They would snatch from
His brow the diadem that is His, and plant it — where? —
on the forehead of Death, the last of enemies ; to save us
from whom Christ both died and rose again ! Oh, what
impiety has this " vain deceit " led pious men to utter, let
Dr. Young's daring couplet testify :
"Death gives us more than was in Eden lost ;
The King of Terrors is the Prince of Peace .'"
Dr. Mosheim mentions, as one of the early effects of
the adoption by Christian teachers of the Alexandrian
Platonism, that " a torrent of allegory " came in upon the
church which nothing could withstand. " The doctors,"
he says, " who had applied themselves to the study of let
ters and philosophy, soon abandoned the frequented paths
and struck Out into the devious wilds of fancy. * * *
Origen was at the head of this speculative tribe. This
great man, enchanted by the charms of the Platonic phi
losophy, set it up as the test of all religion and im
agined that the reasons of each doctrine were to be found
in that favorite philosophy and their nature and extent to
be determined by it." Again: "Having entertained a
notion that it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to

728 SYMPOSIUM.
defend everything contained in the sacred writings from
the cavils of heretics and infidels, so long as they were ex
plained literally, according to the real import of the terms,
he had recourse to the fecundity of a lively imagination,
and maintained that the Holy Scriptures were to be inter
preted in the same allegorical manner that the Platonists
explained the history of the gods."
It must not be forgotten that Origen was not the first in
the field, although he carried in a new direction, and to a
fresh extreme, principles which had been already for some
time in vogue. Thus, by this "licentious and deluding
art," as the judicious Hooker calls it, Christians came to
be, in effect, robbed of the very Scriptures. Do our Prot
estant friends claim to have escaped the evil effects of this
process ? Let facts decide.
Origen's motto was : " The Scriptures are of very little
use to those who- understand them as they are written."
(Stromata, Book 10). Is that a doctrine unknown to Prot
estantism ? Was it not just the other day that a learned
and eloquent Canon warned us, with an utter misapplica
tion of Paul's words, that " the letter killeth ;" while
another eminent theologian, north of the Tweed, told us
that our attempt to rest our belief in conditional immor
tality^ " upon the letter of Scripture argues a misunder
standing of the idea of Revelation !" (Principal Tulloch,
in The Contemporary Review, April, 1878.)
And are these not a fair example of the arguments
which are brought against us in this controversy ? It is no
use to call attention to the general teaching of Scripture
on the question. Our opponents are proof against any
" array of texts," and ready to shelter themselves from the
whole phalanx of Scripture terms behind the so-called
spiritual interpretation. What though the Bible never
once addresses men as immortal beings, or utters a whisper
of man's possessing an undying or indestructible spirit?
What though it speaks rather of the soul as liable to
death, as requiring to be redeemed from the grave, and
from first to last addresses sinners as those who have come
under condemnation of death ? What though it offers, to
those who will accept it, that they " shall abide forever,"
shall " have everlasting life," shall " put on immortality."

M. W. STRANG. 729
shall become like the holy angels who " cannot die any
more ;" while it threatens those who reject this offer with
being consumed; being destroyed soul and body, coming
to naught, and perishing in everlasting destruction ? These
and many similar and harmonious forms of Scripture
teaching are, by those who have set to their seal that Plato
is true, made to bend to the dogma that sinners .are all as
deathless as the angels, or as God Himself, and that man
does not require to be indebted to the Incarnate Son of
God for the bestowal of immortality. But neither does
their witness agree with itself; for, while one division finds
that destroyed sinners are destined to be preserved forever
in hopeless misery, another — following the lead of Origen
— teaches that, for a sinner to " perish " is to be saved
from his sins and find a dwelling-place among the ran
somed and the blessed !
" Thus men go wrong, with most ingenious skill,
Bend the straight rule to their own crooked will ;
And, with a clear and shining lamp supplied,
First put it out, then take it for a guide."
And thus, by this philosophy and vain deceit, the noblest
promises and most solemn warnings of the Word of God
are reduced to a series of enigmas, hyperboles, or equivo
cations !
Oh, what despite has been done to the doctrine of Christ
by this false teaching ! If, on the one hand, the follower
of Origen has robbed the preacher of the Gospel of the
salutary " terror of the Lord," or has deprived the uni
verse of a perfect moral Governor, setting up in His stead
a weak embodiment of sentimental benevolence that
threatens but does not execute, what shall we say of the
contrary doctrine of endless sin and pain — a doctrine so
monstrous and incredible that even its pledged supporters
in our day are afraid to preach it openly ? It robs the
Christian of that " Righteous Father " whom Christ re
vealed ; it casts a foul slur upon the holy name of God,
putting Him to an open shame before even the vindictive
gods of heathendom. It has alienated from Christianity
some of the best intellects of mankind ; filling some with
a fierce hate, and others with mute despair ; and has

730 SYMPOSIUM.
given, oh, how much occasion, for the enemy to blas
pheme all that is called religion !
One further point. The great promise of our Lord's
personal return to the earth to give reward unto His ser
vants and establish the kingdom of God upon the earth —
which cheered the apostles and early Christians — this, too,
has been engulfed and borne away in that torrent of alle
gory which philosophy let loose upon the Church. Nor
has our Protestantism recovered from the loss. What a
variety of fanciful fulfillments are we not still asked to
accept of " the promise of His coming ?" But not one of
them could for a moment stand were the true doctrine of
immortality restored ; least of all that worst one of them
all, which makes the death of the saint the return of his
Lord. For who that has learned that his only hope of
immortality lies in the return of the Savior from heaven
to change Ms body of humiliation and fashion it like unto
his own glorious body, could ever be satisfied with the
destruction of Jerusalem, with the endowment of Chris
tianity by Constantine, with the mystical rhapsodies of
Swedenborg, or any other stone that may be offered him
as a substitute for the Bread of Life ? Deprived of this
— the pole star of the Church's destiny — she is adrift with
out due guide, and is in danger of making shipwreck
among the rocks and quicksands of the perilous latter
days. We plead, therefore, with our beloved friends, to help
us to remove this fundamental error, that, like a mist en
gendered in some unwholesome swamp, has succeeded in
" darkening the whole firmament of truth." Restore the
true doctrine of immortality, and you have the most
potent weapon ever forged for the defeat of that Ration
alism and its twin Agnosticism which are eating the vitals
out of our modern Christianity, and every department of
the doctrine of redemption through the slain and risen Son
of God will share in the enlightening and gladdening
effects of the liberation from the chains of centuries. Be
assured it is the Lord's work this. " For every plant," said
He, " which My heavenly Father hath not planted shall
be rooted up." Rooted up this error shall be, whether we

M. W. STRANG. 731
choose to share in the honorable work or not. With the
river of life flowing freely at our feet, let us no longer be
take ourselves to the stagnant pools of human tradition
and philosophy. But if we are disposed to turn lightly
from this inquiry, let us beware lest that condemnation be
passed on us which was of old uttered against a people
highly privileged : " My people have committed two evils
— they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters,
and have hewn them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can
hold no water."
M. W. Strang.

XV-
Tne Conditional Immortality Controversy in Scotland.

By WILLIAM LAING, Edinburgh.

[Note.— Mr. Laing is one of the veteran leaders in this movement in Scot
land, is the author of numerous tracts and papers on this question, and is well
acquainted with its interior history. This simple sketch will interest all who
love the cause of Christ and pray for the prevalence of the Gospel. He did not
propose to make it complete. He expected that Mr. Strang would supplement
it, and sent it to him for that purpose. Bet as it was not possible for him to
do this in season for our use, he sends it to me as it is, with a note— a part of
which will be appended to this article.
It will be recollected that the Rev. Mr. Macrae, to whom they both refer, is
the minister whose trial and condemnation for heresy on this question created
such a stir in the religious world some two years ago. It may be added that ha
was immediately invited to take charge of an independent church in Dundee,
where he is now preaching with great success. The enrolled membership of
his congregation at its anniversary in November last was between thirteen
and fourteen hundred, and was rapidly increasing.]
51 Buccleuch Street, )
Edinburgh, Scotland, j
Rev. J. H. Pettingell,
Philadelphia.
Dear Sir. — In complying with the request to contribute
a short paper to the work you are preparing, the fittest
thing I can think of, in the circumstances, is to give a
brief statement of the history and present condition of the
controversy regarding " Life in Christ " in Scotland.
In the summer of 1848, Mr. W. G. Moncrieff, the pastor
of an Independent Church in Musselburgh, was one day
sitting pondering on what appeared to him the strange
anomaly of the merciful God, which the Bible reveals, ap
pointing eternal agony as the punishment of the unsaved.
A gentleman called in to see him, to whom he by and
by mentioned the subject of his troubled cogitations. His
friend told him of a work setting forth a view of the case

WILLIAM LAING. 733
which, if true, rendered the final doom of the wicked en
tirely in harmony with the character of Him whose tender
mercy is over all His works. The book referred to was
Mr. H. H. Dobney's work, "The Scripture Doctrine of
Future Punishment," now out of print. The work was
ordered at once, and the result was the appearance in De
cember of 1848, of the " Dialogues on Future Punish
ment," by William Glen Moncrieff, Musselburgh.
The appearance of this pamphlet of forty-eight pages
produced considerable commotion, not only in the imme
diate locality, and within the religious community with
which Mr. Moncrieff was connected, but throughout Scot
land. The result to Mr. Moncrieff himself, personally,
was far from comfortable. All his associates in the minis
try forsook him ; some of his congregation left, and he
was generally regarded as little better than an infidel.
Some said he was mad. The work, however, went on.
Early in 1849, a series of articles by Rev. John Kirk,
D.D., minister of Brighton Street Chapel, Edinburgh, ap
peared in The Christian News, a paper to which Mr. Mon
crieff used to be a contributor, defending the " orthodox
doctrine " and attacking The Dialogues. Mr. Moncrieff
sought liberty to reply in The Christian News, but was
refused. Soon, however, Mr. Kirk's papers appeared in
pamphlet form, entitled The Warning, to which Mr. Mon
crieff wrote an elaborate reply of 68 pp. 8vo., which did
much to establish the Scriptural character of "Condi
tional Immortality."
In April, 1851, Mr. Moncrieff published a British edi
tion of The Intermediate State, by Henry Grew,- of Phila
delphia, Pa., with copious notes and an appendix — an ex
cellent and effective treatise ; and about the same period a
British edition of the work, Six Sermons on an Inquiry,
Are the Wicked Immortal ? by George Storrs, of Philadel
phia, Pa., was printed and published in Edinburgh by Mr.
George Graham — a work which did much to disseminate
the "Life views " here, as well as in England and America?
In January, 1852, Mr. Moncrieff removed to Edin
burgh, where, in addition to public lectures, he published
"Soul; or, the Hebrew word Nephesh, and the Greek
word Psyche," and " Spirit ; or, the Hebrew terms Ruach

734 SYMPOSIUM.
and Neshama, and the Greek term Pneuma." These two
treatises were widely circulated, and did much to estab
lish the truths they sought to maintain.
In addition to these occasional publications, a small
monthly magazine, The Expositor of Life and Immor
tality, edited by Mr. Moncrieff, began to be issued in
March, 1853, and for sixteen months did much to dissemi- -
nate the unpopular doctrine.
In October, 1854, Mr. Moncrieff left Scotland for Can
ada, but the doctrine lived and spread. The good seed,
sown by the means just mentioned and by the labors of
others in England and America, was not all lost. So far
from that, churches sprang up in various parts of Scot
land, and now exist, one of whose distinguishing features
has been the belief and maintenance of the Bible doctrine
that immortality can only be possessed by man through
union with Him who is "the resurrection and the life."
It is with considerable regret that I notice the unbroken
silence of the Scotch pulpit in favor of our side of the
question. Two or three ministers in Dissenting bodies
have spoken out strongly against the Augustinian theory
of eternal suffering, and one such instance caused consid
erable commotion — the Macrae case; but the pleasing
fiction of endless life for all men — lost or saved — is. held
as fondly as ever. Holding to that idea, while repelled
from the common orthodox doctrine, refuge has been taken
in Restorationism in some form or another. All agree in
rejecting the truth that " he that hath the Son hath life ;
and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." The
idea of eternal torment as the doom of the lost is in Scot
land and England very unpopular ; but has only been ex
changed for another form of error, no less subversive of
"the faith once for all delivered to the saints," and those
who bear witness for God's way of salvation, for the honor
of Him who is our life have need now to assail the false
position of Origenism, which has of late appeared in the
fascinating form of " the larger hope."
While the pulpit and theological press of Scotland have
been thus silent, other voices have been heard. By public
lectures, tracts and pamphlets, the doctrine of Life in
Christ has been earnestly and without fee proclaimed.

WILLIAM LAING. 735
The Messenger, a monthly magazine "advocating the
coming kingdom of God, the return of the Lord Jesus,
and the hope of Eternal Life," published in Glasgow and
edited by Mr. M. W. Strang, of' that city, maintains its
position and increases in circulation ; so much so that the
number of its pages has been increased without addi
tion to its cost, and further enlargement is contemplated.
At the same time, The Rainbow and The Bible Standard
are read by many in Scotland, as well as elsewhere — open
ing the eyes and rejoicing the hearts of many.
In conclusion, let me congratulate you on the zealous
and noble testimony you are bearing to this most precious,
though despised truth. Even so continue. The Master
well deserves your service, and He will not forget it.
These are His words : " Behold I come quickly, and my
reward is with me, to give to every man according as his
work shall be." Believe me", dear sir,
Yours faithfully,
W. Laing.

8 Lindsay Terrace, Dowanhill, \
Glasgow, November 25, 1881. j
Rev. J. H. Pettingell, A.M.,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Dear Sir. — * * Mr. Laing wished me to supplement
this brief sketch of his, and I have detained it for a few
days with the desire to do so, but I find it will be a week
or two before my mind could, be free enough from other
labors to attempt it; and as you wanted an answer
before the end of this month, I send off the "history" as
it stands. What I thought of adding was a very short notice of
one or two aspects of the opposition to our doctrine which
have been apparent in the " Macrae Case," to which Mr.
Laing refers, and which has done as much as anything of
late years among us to " send people to their Bibles " on
this question. Perhaps, however, Mr. Laing's paper may
be quite as long as your space permits, and I willingly

736 SYMPOSIUM.
concede to his more seasoned service in the cause the place
of honor you were good enough to design for me.
I cannot conclude, however, without expressing my
agreement with Mr. Laing in his closing estimate that
however much departure there may have been among us
from the old traditional doctrine of " eternal suffering,"
we in Scotland, as elsewhere, are still unwilling to accept
the " humbling doctrine " that there is no immortality for
man apart from the Son of God. Rebellion against the
theory of " eternal misery " there is plenty ; but the true
purpose of the Incarnation is but little appreciated still.
And so I fear we are but starting upon a new career of
"spiritualizing" and making void the Word of God,
holding by old mistaken ideas of the meaning of " perish
ing," and ignoring the Scriptural doctrine of the " survi
val of the fittest." I do not think the general tendency
of modern thought, either in Scotland or elsewhere, is
healthy on this question, as it inclines still to say that God
does not mean what He says either in His threats or His
promises. The former are a brutum fulmen, not intended
to be executed; the latter are hyperboles and Oriental
figures of speech ! Believe me, dear sir,
You^ with much esteem,
M. W. Strang

XY1.
A Letter.

By Pbofessob HEEMANN SCHULTZ,
Gottingen, Germany.

[Note. — Not having the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with this learned
Professor, I can introduce him to my readers only through the following letter
which he has kindly sent me, and the volume to which he refers. This volume
was published at Gottingen twenty years ago. Its leading ideas are well repre
sented in his letter, and may be still further briefly summarized as foUows : The
common idea of immortality is the fruit of Christian hope, based on the meta
physical and pagan hypothesis of an indestructible soul. This hypothesis can
not be reconciled with the Scriptural account of the creation, nor philosophic
ally demonstrated.
The Bible and the primitive Church recognize in man only the faculty of be
coming immortal. In fact, he does not attain to this immortality till by coming
into union with God he is lifted above this world.
In this case only have the ordinary arguments in favor of human immor
tality any real significance or value. It is for us to appropriate to ourselves
this divine immortality by uniting ourselves to God by Christ. Whoever sepa
rates himself decisively from I) im, by this very act excludes himself from this
life. The idea of an existence running on forever against its own true end and
against the will of God has no sanction in the Scriptures, and is actually in
conceivable.!
Gottingen, December 9th, 1881.
J. H. Pettingell.
My Dear Sir. — I am sorry to tell you that neither my
leisure nor my knowledge of the English language will
permit me to comply with your request. I can only tell you
in a few words that my opinion as to " conditional immor
tality " is the same now as it was in 1861, when I pub
lished my book, " Die Voraussetzunger der Christliehen
LeRre von der Unsterblichkeit." *
I am quite sure that the common opinion about this
doctrine is not derived from Christian origins, but from
the dogmas of Greek philosophy which made God and the
* The Principles of the Christian Doctrine of Immortality.

738 SYMPOSIUM.
world equals, and naturally would find the source of divine
and immortal life in nature, especially in the nature of
man. The Gospel, teaching us that there is no life except
from God's will, compels us to think that there can be no
everlasting life but only in God and in those natures
which are got from Him.
When God made man His image and heir of immor
tality, He gave him a soul superior to the laws of destruc
tion which reign in natural things, and capable of His
own life. But he did not give him to have life in himself,
separated from his Creator.
He made man heir of God's own immortal life, but on
condition of his remaining bound to his Lord in love and
obedience (the tree of life in Eden). But man in his sin
ful separation from God has not this life. He is given to
death, and only for his salvation or his judgment he was
gifted with a transient life.
Only one of men has. life in himself — God's Son — in
whom He pleased to reside with all His truth and love.
Only from Him, and saved by Him, we may accept it and
have it as our own. Whoever has God's love has passed
from death to life.
Whoever has not yet accepted God's mercy has transient
life, as long as he is capable of salvation or judgment.
When he is saved he gains immortal life — in this life or
hereafter. Whoever is forever separated from God's love in Christ
is in the dominion of death. And if he remained .in ex
istence forever, it would not be from his own nature, but
only from God's terrible judgment. But the Gospel
teaches us that there will be the Second Death, and that
God will give the reprobate, with hell and death and the
devil, to the eternal flames of His wrath — i. e., that He
will destroy them as fire will destroy straw and wood
thrown into it. That is what I think to be the doctrine
of the Gospel, and I am glad to hear that this doctrjne is
now spreading fast in Christian countries.
Yours truly, - H. SCHULTZ.

XVII.

A Letter

Fbom CLEMENT M. BUTLER, D.D.,
or Philadelphia, Pa.

[Note. — Dr. Butler was for many years the Rector of Trinity Church, Wash
ington, D. C. He is now Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the Episcopal
Divinity School, Philadelphia. He is the author of Lectures on the Book of
Eevelation, Eemirticences of Daniel Webster, etc., etc. The following letter will
explain itself.]
113 South Fortieth St., )
West Philadelphia, \
November 8th, 1881. )
Rev. J. H. Pettingell.
Dear Sir. — I am much obliged to you for sending me
your book — The Trilemma. On looking at the table of
contents, I think I shall find my views in accordance with
your own in the conduct of the argument, as I am sure
that I do in the conclusion which you reach. I have long
ago, to my great peace of heart, given up the doctrine of
the eternal torture by God of any of His creatures. Since
I have reached and rested in the conclusion that the ulti
mate doom of the impenitent is death, and not eternal life
in agony, a great black cloud seems to have rolled away
from the face of God, and I see Him, not only as my loving
Father, but as the loving Father of all His creatures.
The circumstances in which this conviction came to me
were somewhat peculiar. The doctrine of endless life in
torture was always so exceedingly painful to me that I
locked it up, as it were, in my mind and labeled it " ortho
dox," and refused thereafter to take it out and use it.

740 SYMPOSIUM.
But during my three years residence at Rome, nearly
twenty years ago, I was so horrified and disgusted at the
mediaeval pictures and with the great painting of the
Judgment, by Michael Angelo, in the Sistine Chapel, and
with many other pictures which represented the doomed
in their agony and depicted fiends plying instruments of
torture in the midst of the flames, that my mind was .
forced into the consideration of the question whether that
could indeed be the doctrine of the Bible, which war
ranted these harrowing, revolting and realistic, but not
illogical horrors ? I began anew a study of the New Tes
tament, and to my immense relief I came to the distinct
conclusion that death and destruction did not mean imper
ishable life in torment. I found my mind proceeding on
several of the same lines of thought which I see you have fol
lowed, and I examined myself with anxious care to ascer
tain whether the removal of this doctrine shook my faith
in the slightest degree in the great truths of the evangeli
cal system which I had always held, and which were
dearer to me than life. On the contrary, the blessed
scheme of salvation through a God-man Redeemer seemed
to me to stand out in a light that was more glorious and
tender, as well as brighter than before. I found that the
removal of this dreadful dogma was not the striking out
of a stone from the complete arch of truth through which
we enter into the eternal life, which would weaken and
deface the structure, but rather the removal of a stone of
stumbling before that arch which prevented multitudes
from entering in.
I felt all the stronger in the conclusion which I had
reached, from the fact that I had not been reasoned into
it by reading argument upon the subject— for the question,
at that time, had not been mooted in English theology, or
if it had been, I had not known it — but that IJaad come

CLEMENT M. BUTLER. . 741
to it by the workings of my own mind against a dogma
which was indeed to me quidem horribile, but which I had
never doubted.
In my first flush of rejoicing in the conclusion, I began
a series of letters to my dear friend, the Rev. Dr. Alexan
der Vinton, with a view to publication ; but I was deterred
from completing them from the feeling that weighed upon
me of the exceeding presumption in one so imperfectly fur
nished as I knew myself to be for such a work, to contest
a dogma of all the ages, and which was accepted by all
the churches — Greek, Roman and Reformed. Moreover,
I felt that the increasingly clarified Christian conscious
ness of the church — its spiritually enlightened moral sense
— would gradually drop this dogma of eternal torture, as
it seems to be doing, and thus works like that you have
published and the one you propose to publish would show
that what loving Christian hearts so much desire to respect
has no ground in reason or in Scriptures.
Pray excuse these personal details, which I have given
in order that you may see how deeply interested I am in
your labors in this direction, and how sincerely I hope
they may result in giving peace to thousands of troubled
minds and hearts.
If I were a Rector of a church, I should do as Dr.
Huntington has done — proclaim and explain what I regard
as the truth in this matter ; but as I am a Professor in a
Theological School where the old doctrine is taught by the
Professor of Theology, I feel that it would not be becoming
in me to make myself an exponent and champion of the
opposite view. Nevertheless I feel bound in my private
capacity to express my opinion freely, when the occasion
calls for it, on this momentous question.
Very truly yours,
C. M. Butler.

XVIII. A Letter

From Eev. MATSON MEIEB-SMITH, D.D.,
op Philadelphia, Pa.

[Note.— Dr. Meier-Smith entered the ministry as a Congregationalist, and
after a pastorate of several years at Brookline, Mass., and at Bridgeport, Conn.,
he took orders in the Episcopal Church, and is now Professor of Homiletics
and Pastoral Care in the Divinity School of that church in Philadelphia, Pa.]
My Dear Sir. — * * * The publication of your book I
await with eager interest.
The subject is tremendous. Surely the corrosion of
body, soul and spirit by the canker of sin, so that man
consumes away his immortality forfeited, is death enough
and eternal death enough and unending punishment
enough to satisfy orthodoxy !
I am not prepared to place myself finally on the plat
form which you hold, and I know not that I shall ever in
this life reach conclusions other than that I balance be
tween Scripture expressions ; but I bid you and every man
God speed who in reverent spirit seeks to pour the full
light of revealed truth upon a question which is so mo
mentous, and opinions upon which are so crudely and
harshly held by unthinking good people, and I fear some
times preached by those who know not what they say.
Faithfully yours,
Matson Meier-Smith.

XIX.
A Letter

From Canon HENEY CONSTABLE,
or London, England.

[Note. — Canon Constable, formerly of Cork, Ireland, now of London, has
written much and ably on this question. He inclines more to the material
istic point of view than most of our British contributors. His volume entitled
Duration and Nature of Future Punishment, which has passed through five or
six editions and recently been rewritten and much enlarged, was reprinted in
this country about ten years ago and somewhat, extensively circulated by the
late Professor Ives, of Yale College. His volume entitled Hades has also had
considerable circulation on this side of the Atlantic.
I had hoped for a communication from him for this place till the time of
going to press, but must content myself with two or three brief extracts from
private correspondence. But au I have already made several quotations from
his works in the body of this volume, I must decline to follow the suggestion
he makes in his letter.]
34 St. Thomas Road, )
Hackney, London. J
Rev. J. H. Pettingell.
My Dear Sir. — * * * I am thankful to find fresh
advocates rising up to defend and to spread a truth which
alone is entitled to the name of " orthodox."
As to differences on minor points between us, these must
always be looked for among independent thinkers. Of
course, we each think our own views on such points the
correct ones ; but it is very narrow-minded, indeed, to fall
out about matters of this kind. Absolute uniformity of
thought is not to be had except in the negation of think
ing. I am glad to find that in some important respects
you agree with me now more than formerly.
I am very glad you have taken a decided stand against
probation in the intermediate state. Will you kindly
accept a copy of the fifth edition of my Duration and
Nature of Future Punishment? So I find that it is to you

744 sYMPOsruM.
I owe the introduction of that work to Prof. Ives' notice !
Thank you very much for it. You will find a good deal
of matter in the fifth edition which is not in the second
¦edition, which you now have.
I confess the more I study and think upon the question
the more satisfied I am that on the great outline of argu
ment I am correct. I am sometimes surprised that our
views upon the subject do not make more rapid progress.
I suppose it must be in great measure attributed to man's
natural disinclination to truth. One of our most liberal
Bishops has lately refused his license to officiate to a cler
gyman who denied the natural immortality of the soul.
I will look out for your new work, The Life Everlasting,
with much interest. With regard to my writing a brief
article to appear in it, don't you think it would be as well
for you to select some extracts from my published works,
Duration or Hades? You would be best capable of
selecting such an extract as would suit your purpose. You
have my fullest approval in making any such use of any
-of my books as you please. I remain
Very sincerely yours,
Henry Constable.

XX.
The Teaching of the Book of Common Prayer
as to Life in Christ.

By Rev. W. R. HUNTINGTON, D.D., Rector op All-Saints
' Church, Worcester, Mass.

[Note. — It is due to Dr. Huntington to say that he is not responsible for the
appearance of hia name in this place. Tbe paper which follows is a note
appended to his volume of discourses entitled Conditional Immortality (page
192). I would be glad to have had a special paper from him ; but in the place of one
I venture to insert this note, which is admirably adapted to our purpose, and
also to append to it an extract from a private letter, which will explain his
position,] It is to be observed that the Anglican formularies are not merely
patient of such an interpretation as the doctrine of conditional im
mortality would require, but that they even seem to solicit it.
Of course, it is not for a moment pretended that this result is
traceable to any conscious purpose on the part of the compilers
(or, rather, the revisionists) of Edward's and Elizabeth's day to
inculcate the belief in question. The fact stands as it does simply
in consequence of the perfectly loyal adherence on the part of
those sixteenth-century scholars to the early Christian tradition,
as that has come down embodied in the writings we call the New
Testament.- Because the Prayer-Book faithfully reflects Scripture with all its
antinomies as well as with all its harmonies ; because the Prayer-
Book is explicit where the Bible is explicit, and reticent where the
Bible is reticent, therefore, and for no other reason, is it that the
Prayer-Book presents conditional immortality as the likeliest pur
port of our Lord's teaching about the future of man. When it is
remembered how thoroughly the popular theology of the Reforma-
tion period, both Roman and anti-Roman, was committed to the
doctrine of endless torment, it seems little short of miraculous that
the revised service-book of the national Church should have been
kept clean from so great a blemish. That it was so kept is vir
tually affirmed in a judgment which whatever its status in the dim
region of ecclesiastical law, is certainly valuable as being the delib
erately expressed opinion of a select number of clear-headed men
specially trained to the careful interpretation of language.

746 symposium.
But waiving the appeal to legal precedent and authority (a poor
weapon at best in controversies about things divine), take the plain
English of the Prayer-Book, as it stands before our eyes, and con
sider what is the most obvious and natural import of so much of
it as touches the question of the final award.
Instead of assuming the apologetic tone, I am bold to assert that
were a believer in the doctrine of "endless life only through
Christ " to undertake the compilation of a liturgy such as should
best set forth, under a devotional form, the truth he desired to
teach, he could not frame one better adapted to the purpose than
that which already exists under the name of The Common Prayer.
Of course, the doctrine might be made more obtrusive in a manual
of worship contrived on purpose to express it ; but I am supposing
the case of a liturgist who is not merely a man of one idea, but
who works with a due regard to the proportion of the faith.
And this point will be the more readily conceded, after attention
has been drawn to the many instances in which the " cetemus " of
the old Church Latin has been rendered by the translators " ever
lasting," rather than "eternal." For, granting, for argument's
sake (and it is a large concession) that our English " eternal " need
not, any more than the Greek aionios, "necessarily connote
endleBS duration," it will still remain a thing impossible to say the
same of " everlasting." It is conceivable that a sound exegesis
might require us in some cases to accept the word "ungodly" as
the logical contradictory of " eternal ;" but no one will have the
hardihood to claim for " everlasting " any other logical contradic
tory than " not lasting forever." Hence, if the Prayer-Book be
found representing " everlasting life " as a thing given to us only in
Christ, it is a fair (not to say the only fair) interpretation of such
language, to infer that all life which is cut off from Christ's life is
a non-everlasting, perishable thing.
So far as direct and precise dogmatic statement is concerned,
the Prayer-Book is simply silent upon the point at issue. Having
made in the two great catholic creeds its massive affirmation of the
life everlasting,, it rests content.
No Article of the XXXIX. of the Church of England, or of the
XXXVIII. of the American Protestant Episcopal Church,so much
as touches the question.
The history of the famous Forty-second Article, in which a nega
tive view was once formulated, is well known.
The Catechism is almost equally guarded in its language,
although, by sanctioning in one of its answers, the significant
phrase (alsp employed in the Burial Office) " eternal death," it does
suggest a conclusion which, as will be shown further on, grows
easily out of its sacramental teaching.
In the face of this reserve on the part of Articles and Catechism,
we are thrown back for suggestions upon the devotional utterances
of the Prayer-Book. And here, no doubt, there occurs at once to
many minds the familiar deprecation of the Litany, " From ever-

W. H. HUNTINGTON. 747
lasting damnation, Good Lord, deliver-us," of which Mr. Blunt, in
his Annotated Book of Common Prayer, says, " If the force of this
deprecation can be evaded in the interests of Universalism, no
words can retain any meaning." But however formidable the bar
which this phrase puts in the way of a restorationist interpretation
of the formularies, it must be remembered that to the believer in
the doctrine of conditional immortality it offers no difficulty what
ever, since he accounts that to be strictly an everlasting damnation
(a poena damni ceterna) which adjudges to the offender the inevitable
loss of what is dearest to him of all things — his very existence.
But only consider the phraseology employed when it is the posi
tive side of the truth which is to be brought out (and for one word
about deprivation, the Prayer-Book has twenty about bestowal),
and the reasonableness of the strong claim that has been made will
become plainer.
Almost at the threshold of the Morning Prayer, the Declaration
of Absolution meets us with these words, " Confirm and strengthen
you in all goodness, and bring you to everlasting life ;" while in the
" Prayer of St. Chrysostom," with which we close this same daily
worship, there stand out distinctly the two requests — first, that in
this world present we may have the knowledge of God's truth, and,
" in the world to come life everlasting."
In one of ,the special prayers for use upon several occasions, we
ask that we may be led to "apply our hearts unto that heavenly
wisdom which in the end will bring us to everlasting life."
In the first of the Advent collects, we pray that now, " in the
time of this mortal life," we mey so cast away the works of dark
ness that in the last day we may " rise to the life immortal ;" while
in the second, we ask that " we may embrace and ever hold fast the
blessed hope of everlasting life which thou hast given us in our
Saviour Jesus Christ."
The whole doctrine of conditional immortality may be said to
be contained in these two collects.
In the collect for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, one
leading purpose of the manifestation of the Son of God is declared
to have been that he might "make" us " heirs of eternal life."
On the Sunday before Easter we are bidden to pray that we may
not only be led to follow the example of Christ's patience, but may
also be " made partakers of His resurrection."
At Easter, the day of all days when we should naturally look
for sure indications of the truth about the world to come, we find
the collect opening with this most suggestive invocation, "Almighty
God. who through thine only begotten Son hast overcome death,
and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life," and, again, in the
" proper preface" for Easter, in the Holy Communion, we are met
by language which, if possible, is stronger still : " Who_ by his
death hath destroyed death, and by his rising to life again, hath
restored to us everlasting life."
And now, leaving quotations of this sort, which might be multi-

748 SYMPOSIUM.
plied if there were need, and which, in a sense, are even more in
dicative of the spirit and temper of truly catholic theology than
the most precise dogmatic definitions could be, let us pass to the
Sacramental offices, and see whether there is anything in the struc
ture of them that looks iu the same direction.
Take the form for the administration of the initial sacrament of
the Church, the Baptismal Office. This, when analyzed, is found
to be built upon the contrast drawp out by St. Paul between the
first Adam and the second ; between man as he is in his natural
helplessness, and man as he is when lifted up and restored in
Christ. The idea is that the child is transferred from the state
typified by the first man which " is of the earth, earthy," to that
state now made possible under the second man, which is " the Lord
from heaven."
Accordingly we begin by asking in behalf of the child for some
thing " which by nature he cannot have," and a little further on,
we find the climax of our prayer for him in the beautiful petition
that he " may so pass the waves of this troublesome world that
finally he may come to the land of everlasting life" Let any one
who will take the trouble to do so only read the Baptismal Service
once through from beginning to end, upon the supposition that
everlasting life is the gift of God through Christ, and he may be sur
prised to find how many of the difficulties under which the language
of that formulary has been supposed to labor will disappear before
such an interpretation. It is not claimed, of course, that Baptism
imparts, ipse facto, the gift of eternal life, but rather that it intro
duces the subject of it to all those influences and helps which may
best dispose his mind " towards the attainment of everlasting sal
vation." Look in a like spirit at the symbolism of the Eucharist, the other
great sacrament " ordained by Christ Himself." Has it not, over
and above its commemorative character, retrospective of the sacri
ficial death of Christ, another aspect kindred to this and yet dis
tinct, namely, the presentation of the Son of God as one whom we
are to feed upon in order that we may be strengthened and built up
in that life which alone is permanent and abiding ? Without food
our natural bodies shrivel and perish ; is not one chief significance
of the_ Holy Communion this, that similarly our souls must starve
and die if they also are not fed ? Christ plants anew in the garden of
His Church that tree of life on which the door of the first Paradise
was shut. Certainly no plainer interpretation can possibly be sug
gested for the words of delivery :
" The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee,
preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life."
" The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee,
preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life."
And the Catechism rightly represents the purport of this sacra
ment as being twofold, for in answer to the question, " Why was
the sacrament of the Lord's Supper ordained ?" the child is taught

W. R. HUNTINGTON. 749
to reply, not only that it was " for the continual remembrance of
the sacrifice of the death of Christ," but also that it was for the con
tinual remembrance of " the benefits which we receive thereby " —
benefits afterward summed up as follows : " The strengthening and
refreshing of our souls by the body and blood of Christ, as our
bodies are by the bread and wine." Thus faithfully, in prayer, in
creed, and in sacramental symbolism, does the Anglican manual of
worship reflect the great central truth of the revelation of Jesus
Christ : " I AM COME THAT YE MIGHT HAVE LIFE, AND THAT YE
MIGHT HAVE IT MORE ABUNDANTLY." W. R. HUNTINGTON.

Worcester, Mass., May 31st, 1881'.
Rev. J. H. Pettingell,
Philadelphia.
My Dear Sir. — * * * With respect to your request, I should
be sorry to appear ungracious, but I feel compelled to decline the
participation you kindly offer me. I take no polemical interest in
the question ; but having said my say, after a very quiet fashion,
prefer to leave active controversy to other and abler hands.
My object in publishing Conditional Immortality was twofold — I
wanted to show a door of escape for the burdened hearts of such
seekers after God as could not accept the Gospel of His dear Son, if
the dogma of endless suffering were insisted on as a necessary part
of it ; and I wanted to test the right of a clergyman thinking as I
thought to keep a standing place in the ministry of the Episcopal
Church. Having accomplished the last object, and done what little I
could towards the former end, I am content.
With great respect, I am most truly yours,
W. R. Huntington.

IN MEMORIAM
OF Rev. C. R. HENDRICKSON, D.D.,
Late Pastor of the Baptist Church, Jackson, Tenn.

" Et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt." — Lucretius.
One of our number has even now finished his course and yields
his torch to us who follow close after him. Let us keep it aglow
to the end of the race.
Instead of the paper from our dear Christian brother Hendrick-
son which we were expecting, the sad tidings of his death comes
to hand. He fell asleep October 21st, 1881, at Jackson, Tenn., in
the 61st year of his age, the 42d of his ministry, and the 8th of
hiB pastorate in that place. He had also filled the pastorate in
leading Baptist churches in Philadelphia, Pa.; Norfolk, Va.j
Washington, D. C; San Francisco, Cal., and Memphis, Tenn. In
addition to his pastoral duties at Jackson, he held the office of
Chairman of the Executive Board of the Southwestern Baptist
University, which had been established mainly by his efforts;
Chairman of the Board of Ministerial Education, and other im
portant posts. He was a vigorous writer, a faithful and eloquent
preacher, an indefatigable worker, and what is more, an eminently
evangelical minister of the Gospel of Christ. He had been a great
sufferer from rheumatic gout for many years, but he remained at
hia post till his last brief illness, patiently laboring, as one who
waits for the coming of his Lord. The summons that called him
to his rest, though it came sooner than he had expected, found him
about his Master's business and ready to give an account of his
faithful stewardship.
I was brought into communication with him — having never seen
him — through an anonymous article of mine which was published in
the Christian Union four years ago on " Conditional Immortality."
Since then our correspondence on this and kindred topics has
been quite free, and to me, eminently helpful. He seemed to agree

C. E. HENDEICKSON. 751
with me more perfectly than any one I ever knew, and he greatly
encouraged me by his criticisms, suggestions and kind words.
Indeed, this volume is due more to his encouragement than to
that of any other man. There are lying before me now, more than
thirty full letters, many of them extending to ten and twelve pages,
numerous portions of which are well worthy of publication ; but
his observations are so intermingled with complimentary allusions
to my own writings, and to various personal criticisms of authors
and their works, which perhaps I should omit, that the extracts
which I can find room for here must be somewhat fragmentary.
But still, while I could wish that his valuable life might have been
longer spared, and that we could have been favored with a special
paper from his pen, it may be that these broken fragments of a
private correspondence, now interrupted, will prove as acceptable
and as useful as a more finished paper, had he lived to prepare it.
J. H. P.
" I hope your book, Theological Trilemma, may be
successful in stimulating inquiry, and in leading ministers
and people to the truth. The common people will receive it
gladly. Ministers generally will be afraid of it : for no
class of men are slower to reject an error, or embrace a
new truth. This is hard on the cloth, but it is true, never
theless. Most ministers are in bondage to ecclesiastical
systems and creeds, and they dare not aspire to freedom.
To do so endangers their standing and their bread. Truth
makes its way by the sacrifice of its votaries. The bene
factors of the world are crucified and their blood becomes
the life of men. Very few are willing to bless the world
at such a cost. Ministers will often follow their people,
when they have not the courage to lead. But truth is
destined to prevail; we have God's word for that, and
there we can trust.
" How the Divine patience has borne with men, while
the whole race has adopted the creed of the devil, ' Thou
shall not die.' And even the Divine Remedy for man's
ruin has been so adulterated that the healing element has
been almost eliminated. Instead of needing Christ as the
Life-giver ; all men ask is that He deliver them from misery,
and make them happy forever. Yet God still bears with

752 SYMPOSIUM.
men. We must do the same. Let us bless God for the
light we have : and give the light to others as they are
able to bear it. Our Lord pursued this course. He was
far in advance of His age. His own disciples were narrow-
minded, and were not in a condition to receive all His
instructions. He gave out a little here, and a little there.
Christians are in the same state, to-day. They are too
weak to behold all the glory of Christ : the truth is all
about them, but ' their eyes are holden.' They will grow
stronger by and by ; ' the whole earth shall see the glory
of Jehovah.'
" Your Theological Trilemma is the most important book
of the times. Written with singular ability, and emi
nently Christian in its spirit, it will bring relief to many
troubled minds. Indeed, I do not see how it could be
made better in any important particular. It will do great
good after you ' fall asleep in Jesus.' I am sure of that.
It is unanswerable by any fair exegesis, or manly Christian
argument. Were it otherwise, men would not resort to
sneers, false quotations, and bald misrepresentation. This
shows that your position is impregnable.
" This whole matter of the future state is agitating men
as never before. It is cropping out and coming to the
surface everywhere.
" The night I left here for Marshall, I had not been in
the train an hour before the subject was broached by a
minister from Mississippi. His mind was full of it, and
his heart in a state of unrest. I spoke of your book. * *
" When I arrived in Marshall I was assigned to a very
pleasant home, and found as a room-mate a young minister
from Virginia. In a short time, he brought up the subject,
and I found him all at sea. I also advised him to procure
your book. And both of these men will do so. Now in
neither of these cases was there any knowledge of my own:
views ! With bated breath they spoke to me as inquirers.
"The young minister from Virginia revealed to me the
sad condition of one of the most brilliant young ministers
in Georgia, Rev.  . He is in danger of going over
to Unitarianism. The future state is the disturbing ele
ment. " And so it goes. Men's moral natures revolt from the

C. E. HENDEICKSON. 753
old orthodox endless misery theory, and, with their present
knowledge, Universalism is the only alternative. And
this is the drift of the public mind. Conditional immor
tality in Christ would bring relief to vast multitudes ; as
it maintains the justice of God, as well as His mercy, and
meets all the demands of that pivotal text : ' These shall
go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous
into life eternal.'
******
" The question of immortality will soon be forced upon
the Christian world by the aggressive doctrines of scientists.
The materialistic philosophers are forcing the issue, and
good will come out of what many fear as a great evil. I
have no fears of true science. If" it become an established
fact that matter (the brain) thinks and feels, I do not see
that it will detract from the power and wisdom of God. I
don't know that it is any more impossible for God to make
matter think than it is to make spirit think. It may
damage theology terribly ; but if truth is established, man
kind will be all the better for it. Natural immortality
might receive its death-blow, but immortality in Christ,
would become more luminous, and transcendantly glorious.
*F *P *Pw sp sp «|c
" I was deeply interested in the Prophetic Conference
and gratified with the many able papers ; but to my mind
there was nothing new. I have long been familiar with
such topics, and have preached most of them for many
years. In some things I am a little in advance of the
Conference. From my study of the Scriptures I under
stand the Judgment day and the Millennial age to be one
and the same thing. The Judgment day will be a long
period, during which Christ and his immortalized saints
shall reign, exercising sovereignty, inflicting punishments,
the result of judicial processes, and destroying the incorri
gibly wicked and annihilating all the works of the Devil.
This world belongs to Jesus Christ. The Devil is a usur
per, and he must vacate these premises. All evil must be
extirpated. ' The last enemy that shall be destroyed is
death.' " Last Sunday I preached before the State Convention
in Shelby ville, on ' Sonship and Heirship', from Rom. 8 : 17.

754 SYMPOSIUM.
The theme is exceedingly rich, and although I said a good
many things that were new to many, the sermon was re
ceived with great favor. On ' Heirship ' I emphasized the
fact that we ar.e ' heirs according to the promise.' We
Bhall inherit what God has promised ; not what we may
imagine, or believe from false teachers, or false theology
or philosophy. ' To thee and to thy seed will I give this
land.' This is the germ promise ; it contains every thing ¦
that God has in reserve for His First-born Son and His
co-heirs — Resurrection, immortality, glorification, exalta
tion, supreme dominion, eternal blessedness. I can only
give you a hint. I may publish it some day and may in
flict it upon you.
******
" Whatever is done in removing errors that are hoary
with age, must be done gradually and slowly. A revolu
tion in thought and faith cannot be wrought by an earth
quake. Time is an important element in all intellectual
and moral changes. Patient labor and unremitting toil,
and prayerful consecration are the conditions of success in
the spiritual realm.
" Changes deep and wide are going on in the theological
world, especially in relation to eschatology. The old doc
trines relating to sin and punishment do not commend
themselves to the reason and conscience of this age, and
men are groping about in the dark for some ray of light.
Under the influence of the Satanic doctrine : ' Thou shalt
not die,' men are drifting towards Restorationism, as
Farrar and Beecher. To most men in their perplexity,
the doctrine of Immortality in Christ will appear like a
star amid the blackness of midnight, or rather like a
glorious burst of sunshine. It is a solvent for the pro
foundest problems that perplex the human mind, and in
vests the person and work of Christ with a grandeur
never dreamed of in our theology.
******
" The changes we hope for will go on secretly and slowly,
but effectually. Truth is slow in its conquests. As it was
in the days of the Savior, so it is now. Jesus said, ' I have
many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them
now.' The disciples came to the knowledge of the truth

C. B. HENDEICKSON. 755
slowly. Revelation was gradual. The diseased eye cannot
bear the sudden light. It needs for a while the confine
ment of a darkened room. There were secret disciples, for
fear of the Jews, so there are secret disciples now, for pru
dential reasons. The leaven was hidden in the meal, but it
worked notwithstanding. In the days of Elijah there
were seven thousand rejecters of Baal that the prophet
knew nothing about. But God did not ignore and con
demn these hidden ones.
" A few weeks ago, I was engaged with an aged Baptist
minister to dine at a mutual friend's house. Almost as
soon as he entered the carriage, the old brother said :
¦* Brother H., where do you think the saints are between
death and the resurrection ? I replied : ' They are asleep in
Jesus. They close their eyes in death, and the first thing
they know, they are with the Savior.'
" The old man exclaimed, ' O I am so glad to hear you say
so ! I have held that belief a long time, but I was afraid
to ask you, as nearly every body is carried away with the
•doctrine of the intermediate state !'
" The old man's son-in-law is a distinguished preacher
and professor of — :  , but he cannot converse with him
on this subject. It would have done you good to have seen
the joy and satisfaction in the aged minister's face, caused
by a few words spoken in a short ride. I often meet peo
ple in this way, who hardly dare whisper their hopes, lest
they meet with a rebuke. But it is in this way, I think,
that the truth will make its way among the people, and
after a while ministers and editors will follow.
" There is no doubt, that there is a strong tendency to
Universalism and Restorationism. It is a rebound from
orthodoxy. To meet this tendency, you say, 'I think we
must insist on the unconscious state of the dead.' That's
it. There you hit the nail square on the head. There I
have stood for many years. That position destroys effectu
ally all ground for Spiritualism, Purgatory, Saint worship,
Ghostly paradise, and Ghostly heaven. The popular be
lief is that man does not die : the body dies ; but the man
is more alive than ever. The phraseology of this doctrine
is radically different from the phraseology of the Bible. (
There the man is dead. David ^s dead ; Lazarus is dead ;

756 SYMPOSIUM.
Stephen is dead ; and so with the burial ; and so with the
resurrection. The person is raised, not the body merely.
There is no such teaching in the Bible as we hear in the pulpit.
"At the first blush of the subject some good souls
object, saying : ' It is so long 'to wait till the resurrection.'
But if there is no consciousness ; there is no sense of waiting
a length of time. The Scripture representation of death
as a sleep is not unmeaning. It is highly significant and
full of comfort : ' Them that sleep in Jesus will God bring
with Him, * * * wherefore comfort one another with these
words.' " The Bible has to do with man. Man is the subject of
God's government. Man is placed under law ; man sins ;
man is driven out of Paradise ; man returns to dust, as
the penalty of his transgression ; man is redeemed ; man
is born again, justified, raised from the dead, reigns with
Christ and is glorified for ever. It is man, all through
from Genesis to Revelation. The great mistake is to sup
pose and teach that the Soul is an entity, possessing a sepa
rate consciousness and an independent existence. In the
Bible the term Soul is the synonym of man. A living
man is a living soul, a dead man is a dead soul.
" In the Scriptures, the personality is always associated
with the body, even when the body is lifeless. In the case
of the Ruler's dead daughter, it is said : ' He took the
damsel by her hand and said, Damsel, I say unto thee
arise ; and straightway the damsel arose and walked.' In
the case of the widow's son : ' He came and touched the
bier and said, Young man, I say unto thee, arise ; and he
that was dead sat up and began to speak.' In the case of
Lazarus : ' He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth,'
and so in all such cases.
" In the death' and burial and resurrection of Christ,
this same truth stands out clearly. Paul says, ' Christ
died for our sins, and He was buried and He rose again on
the third day.' The angel said, ' He is not here, for He is
risen : Come and see the place where the Lord lay.' Not
merely the body, but the Lord Himself lay in that sepul
chre. Of course this is all familiar to you, but we love to
dwell on these things.
" It is very evident that the theological world is in a

C. E. HENDEICKSON. 757
state of unrest and feverish anxiety. A spirit of inquiry
is abroad, and long accepted doctrines are subject to re
examination ; men are beginning to question old theories,
and are applying the tests of a better exegesis and a
sounder logic. Many are trying to suppress inquiry, and
are bravely defending old dogmas ; but the very air is
charged with doubt, and questionings will not be quiet.
" Thunderstorms are great blessings, if one keeps out of
the way of the descending bolt. The air becomes invigo
rating, and the whole creation rejoices in the new life.
There are mists and clouds and darkness around us and
above us, but the sun of truth is somewhere, and the light
in due time will break forth. The god of this world,
' The prince of the air, shall not always blind the minds
of men to the light of the glorious gospel of Christ.' This
is a time of transition. There is much superstition, much
of old traditions in the pulpit and pew, but a wonderful
change has taken place since I begun my ministry, nearly
forty years ago. I hear no such sermons as were common
then in the pulpits of Philadelphia and New York. And
greater changes will take place in the next forty years.
And the change has been for the better. It produces a
better type of piety. Instead of slavish fear, there is now
filial confidence. God is a Father and His people are His
children. In my young days, religion was a matter of
terror. Men were driven to repentance by the horrors of
hell. I often tried to deepen my convictions and increase
my sensibility by visiting the iron furnaces and forges in
the upper part of Philadelphia. They were types of hell
to my overwrought imagination. The roar of the blasts,
the fiery illumination of flying sparks, and the activity of
the half-naked men, were means of grace to excite my
fears and stimulate me to flee from the wrath to come.
This was the natural effect vof the preaching of that day in
Methodist pulpits. But men are outgrowing such doc
trines, not because Christianity is losing its hold upon
them, but because they are coming to know what Chris
tianity is. God shall not always be misrepresented. The
lie of Eden shall not be the theology of Paradise restored.
God's truth, unadulterated, unclouded, shall yet be seen in
all its divine beauty.

758 SYMPOSIUM.
" Last Sunday night I preached on ' The Hope of the
righteous in death ;' from the text, ' the righteous hath
hope,' &c. The theme discussed was ' the Scriptural Hope
of a future life.' Of course, I defined Hope ; and made
the hope of a future life depend entirely on the word of
God— on plain and explicit promises. Any other hope was
visionary and doomed to disappointment. This hope, in
its length and breadth, and height and depth, is the Hope of
Eternal Life through and by a resurrection of the dead. In
proof I gave first the teachings of the Lord. Giving in full
such passages as, 'Thou shalt be recompensed at the resur
rection of the just.' ' I will raise him up at the last day.'
'Thy brother shall rise again ' (in the last day,) &c. 'They
who obtain that world and the resurrection from the dead
can die no more, but are equal to the angels, being the
children of God and the children of the resurrection,' &c;
and so all through the teachings of Jesus, which are ex
plicit as to the time and means of the future life.
" The second class of proofs were the teachings of the
Apostle Paul. ' Of the hope and resurrection of the dead
I am called in question.' I qupted from each epistle of
Paul. Paul knows nothing of a future Life separate
from Christ and the resurrection. ' By man came the
resurrection from the dead.' After v Paul I quoted from
Peter, James and John, all to the same effect.
" This hope is peculiar to the righteous. I made the
discussion as thorough as possible in an evening discourse.
I know it was well received and gave much satisfaction.
By way of parenthesis, I met the objection that ' it is so
long to wait from death till the resurrection.' I showed
that where there is no consciousness, there is no sense of
waiting, whether one hour or a thousand years. We close
our eyes in the sleep of death, and wake up in the presence
of our Saviour, clothed with immortality.
"On the Sabbath previous I preached on ' The Nature
and Destiny of Man,' from the text, ' Ye must be born
again ; that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that
which is born of the Spirit is spirit, or spiritual.' The
object was to show that human nature by fleshly birth is
perishably organized, and must die; and that in order for
man to become incorruptible and capable of living forever,

C. E. HENDEICKSON. 759
he must be ' born of the Spirit.' This is a very fruitful
theme. " I know of no subject that so magnifies Christ. How it
exalts His power, wisdom and majesty. ' God gave to us
eternal life, and this life is in His Son.' Redemption in
this sense is a thousand times greater than that which
merely saves an immortal soul from sin and misery. It
bestows the inestimable boon of life, as well as pardon and
bliss. This view gives a new meaning to the grand old
coronation hymn, ' All hail the power,' etc. To me it gives
a new power in preaching. It is like standing on the
Mount of Transfiguration, rather than on Golgotha — it is
life instead of death, glory instead of shame.
" Now if you would not think me an intolerable Baptist,
I would like to submit a thought to you. But, trusting to
your charitable construction, I want to throw out an idea
to which I have given considerable thought. I refer to
the doctrine of Remission of Sin. Generally speaking,
theologians and the commonality of religious people look
upon remission of sin as the sense or feeling of forgiveness,
when the sinner believes or trusts the Lord Jesus. Now
remission is a legal term, and denotes an act by which
penalty is removed. The penalty of sin, according to the
Bible, is death. As you know, there is no other penalty, —
not misery, either temporary or eternal, but death. Now
on certain gospel conditions, this penalty is remitted or re
moved. The earnest oi this remission is given to the peni
tent believer when he receives the divine Spirit in his con
version, but the actual remission takes place when he is
raised from the dead to an immortal life. When the be
liever accepts Christ, he is no longer under condemnation
to death eternal — he is pardoned — the penalty is by promise
remitted, and in the morning, after the sleep and rest of
God's saints, he awakes to everlasting life. The doctrine
of remission is the doctrine of immortality in Christ. This
vital truth of Christianity is symbolized in baptism. John
the Baptist preached the baptism of remission, Jesus com
manded His apostles to preach remission of sins in con
nection with baptism, and Peter, as the interpreter of his
Master, preached, ' Repent and be baptized every one of you
in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.' The

760 SYMPOSIUM.
same truth runs all through the New Testament. In 1
Cor. 15, Paul associates baptism with the resurrection,
which is but another word for remission or the removal of
the penalty. If there be no resurrection of the dead, as
some say, why are ye then baptized for the resurrection of
the dead ? In other words, Scriptural baptism is the resur
rection ordinance, or the remission ordinance ; therefore,
' we are buried with Him in baptism, wherein ye are also
risen with Him, through faith in the working of God,
who hath raised Him from the dead.' Col. 2: 12.
" And does not this resurrection or remission ordinance
throw light upon the baptism of Jesus ? He had no per
sonal sins to wash away, but as the sinner's substitute He
was under the penalty of death. Here was an ordinance.
of God that symbolized the remission or removal of the
penalty, and Jesus, anticipating His submission to the pen
alty and deliverance from it, said to John, ' Suffer it to be
so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.'
I hope I make myself understood in this condensed outline.
To my own mind this view of baptism, as a symbol of re
mission of the penalty by resurrection, is a strong con
firmation of our views, and with Baptists ought to have
tremendous influence. You may not sympathize with me,
but here is a vein of precious ore which you can work out
with great ^ad vantage to yourself and to truth. I hope the
day may come when we shall have able, scholarly peri
odicals to discuss these vital questions in such a way as to
command respect and general acceptance.
[The extract that follows is from his last letter. — J. H. P.]
" My Dear Brother : —
I am ashamed to write to you. Your last letter came to
hand just in the midst of commencement exercises of our
University, when I am overwhelmed with public duties.
It was laid aside for an hour of leisure, and that hour has
been slow in coming.
" All Summer, therefore, the claims upon my attention
have been incessant, until I am completely worn out. To
morrow I leave home for the Hot Springs, Arkansas, in
search of rest and health.
" I have not seen your new book, Bible Terminology. I

C. E. HENDEICKSON. 761
want you to send me a copy to Hot Springs, where I shall
have leisure to read it carefully. I have no doubt that I
shall be greatly pleased with it, as I have been with all
your writings.
" The subject itself is of transcendant importance, and
needs to be studied as never before. The theological world
is in a state of transition, swinging off from the dogmatism
of the past, and in danger of a dogmatism that is but
little less unscriptural. Restorationism seems to be the
goal of modern theological thought ; but, to reach that
foal, great violence must be done to true principles of
criptural exegesis and interpretation. The truth evi
dently lies between these extremes, and I think you are on
its track. " Life in Christ " is the Rosetta stone to reveal
the hidden mystery so long concealed from the men of this
world. But I must wait till I see your book and give it a
careful reading.
" I am quite unwell ; I have suffered much of late from
my old enemy the Rheumatism. The earthly house of this
tabernacle is quite weather-beaten and shackling. The
underpinning is beginning to give way ; the windows are
growing dim ; and other signs of decay are quite apparent.
But I have ' a building of God, a house not made .with
hands, eternal in the heavens,' or what Paul calls in
another place, 'a spiritual body.' Paul had no desire
for a disembodied state, nor have I. But I do go for an
improvement on the old tabernacle.
" I hope you have been, ere this, released from your
sufferings, or have grace sufficient to bear them.
" I shaU be absent seven weeks, and shall be glad to
hear from you, if you can find time to write.
" I hope to receive your book within a few days, and to
be instructed by its discussions of vital questions.
"Yours truly,
C. R. Hendeickson.
Rev. J. H. Pettingell, Phila., Pa."

762 (800) symposium.
[Symposium Post Sckipt.J
Rev. J. B. Heaed, of Caterham, Surrey, England,
author of The Tripartite Nature of Man, was expected to
furnish a contribution to this series, but it has been provi
dentially delayed until it is too late for our use. I regret
this the more because his views on the Intermediate State
and the Resurrection are different from my own, and also
from those of any other contributor. We have two or
three articles from an extreme materialistic stand-point, in
which the entire individual is supposed to become extinct
in death, only to be recreated and revived in the Resur
rection ; several, by those who hold with me, that the indi
vidual is unconscious between death and the Resurrection,
but that his indentity is preserved by the power of God, in
some manner unknown to us, in order to a Resurrection at
the Coming of Christ ; and others, by those who believe in
various degrees of consciousness and activity, and even in
a second probation for some, if not all, during this state.
Going1 still further from the extreme of materialism, Mr.
Heard holds that the Resurrection follows immediately the
death of the individual, not, however, according to the
infidel notion, by a natural process, but as we understand, by
a supernatural act, in virtue of the Resurrection of our Lord.
It is to be regretted that his views could not have been
briefly represented, with these other various views, in this •
place. ' As this hypothesis obviates many perplexities concern
ing an intermediate state, it would strongly commend itsel^
to us, did it not seem to be contrary to the manifest teach
ing of the Scriptures.
But, however widely this writer and the others who
have so kindly come to my assistance in the foregoing
papers may differ from me and from each other on this and
other incidental and subordinate matters, I am happy in
the assurance that we are all perfectly united in the one
supreme doctrine of Divine Revelation — that Eternal Life
is the inheritance of no sinful man by his natural birth,
but is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, by a
new spiritual birth and a resurrection from the dead.
J. H. Pettingell.
Philadelphia, Pa., February 8th, 1882.

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