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JUL 22

S E E M 0 If

LIBRA fn

OTON THE

REASONABLENESS OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE FUTURE ETERNAL
PUNISHMENT OF THOSE WHO DIE IMPENITENT;

I

. ' ' . PREACHED IN THE
PINE STREET OIIUROH, IN BOSTON,
ON SABBATHS, JUNE, 20 AND 27, 1868.
BY >-':
REV. H. M. DEXTER.
PUBHSHUb BY SBQUBST.

BOSTON:
JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY.
CLEVELAND, OHIO :
H. P. B. JEWETT AND COMPANY.

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SERMON

UPON THE

REASONABLENESS OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE FUTURE ETERNAL
PUNISHMENT OF THOSE WHO DIE IMPENITENT ;

PKEACIIED IN THE

PINE STREET CHURCH, IN BOSTON,
ON SABBATHS, JUNE 20 AND 27, 1858.

BY
REV. H. M. DEXTER.

PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.

BOSTON:
JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY.
CLEVELAND, OHIO :
H. P. B. JEWETT AND COMPANY.
1858.

CAMBRIDGE :
ALLEN AND FARNHAM, PRINTERS.

SERMON.

LUKE 20: 16, 17.

AND WHEN THEY HEARD IT, THEY SAID: GOD FORBID. AND HE BEHELD THEM,
AND SAID: WHAT IS THIS THEN THAT IS WRITTEN?
Two sermons have lately been preached and printed among
us, discussing the reasonableness of the, doctrine of the end
less punishment of the wicked.
The first affirms that it is reasonable. After seeking to in
tensify upon the mind the conception of the evil of sin, as
antagonist to God and good, and developing the earnestness
of God, in Christ and by the Holy Spirit, to bring men, dur
ing probation, to repentance and reconciliation, the question
is stated as being: What is reasonable for those men to expect
who persist in their repugnance to God, and go into the next
world unsoftened by these influences of mercy ; — further ef
forts to reclaim them, or that they be given up to the sin they
have chosen, and its consequences? It is then argued that
what has been commonly held to be the doctrine of the Bible,
that eternal punishment will be the doom of all such incorrigi
ble offenders, is reasonable, because there are no valid objections
against its reasonableness. The objection that eternal punish
ment is too long a penalty for the sins of a short life is an
swered by saying, that none but God can judge with regard to
that, and by the suggestions that the transgressor has been
duly notified ; that men never complain that it is unjust when,
by their own carelessness, they lose a voyage which may change

the entire course of life ; that a crime which may justly de
mand imprisonment for life, or even capital punishment, may
be committed in a single hour; that if life is too short to merit
eternal punishment, it is too short, also, to secure eternal sal
vation ; and that if we dwell upon this vague idea of eternity,
in this way, as John Foster did, we shall destroy all our confi
dence in the government of God here, as weU. The objection
that a finite sin cannot merit an infinite punishment is an
swered by the suggestion that it is not one act of sin, but a
life-habit of sin which God will punish, and that there can be
no little sin against Jehovah. The objection that it is libellous
to God to believe that he can punish his children eternally, is
set aside by the plea, that, if this reasoning is good, it is
equaUy libellous to him to believe that he can permit such
wholesale and horrible disasters as that of the " Central
America ; " that God is King and Judge as weU as Father,
and that, therefore, the analogy between divine and human
parentage is imperfect. It is suggested, moreover, that while
God's judgments are a great deep, there are yet so many to
kens in Sabbaths, and providences, of the divine sincerity in
persuading men to be reconciled to Him in this life, by the
Arery argument that there is no reconciliation beyond it, as to
settle it that God does all for his vineyard here that he can do
for it, and make it reasonable to believe that those who per
sist in impenitence to the end of life, will be eternally excluded
from heaven.
The sermon then passes to several misceUaneous considera
tions. It is said that we are not the judge of the heathen, and
that we shall either find them in heaven, if we get there, or
find good reason for their exclusion. The idea that literal
fire is revealed as being the element in which the future pun
ishment of the wicked will be executed, is repudiated. It is
then affirmed that the threatening of future punishment to the
wicked, has been a powerful element in the success of the
Gospel thus far; and it is urged that the doctrine of eternal

punishment is logically and necessarily connected with the
whole stupendous system of Gospel truth, so that its truth
must stand or fall with that system. Christ died to deliver us.
from the wrath to come, therefore his death demonstrates our
infinite ruin without it. If God has affixed less than an infi
nite punishment to sin, he must regard sin as less than an in
finite evil. Yet all the lost will perish voluntarily. Affection
ate persuasions to believe that the wages of sin is death, and
to shape the life by such belief, receiving Christ as the Saviour
from everlasting sorrow, conclude the appeal.
Such is as fair an outline as I,am capable of giving of the
first discourse — preached at Essex St., and again at Hollis
St., to which I allude.*
The second — coming, subsequently, from the eloquent lips
of the minister of the church last named — puts the question
thus : Is it reasonable to believe that God has ordained that
the whole future of souls shall be determined by the state of
heart, or by the attitude toward a theological system of re
demption, in which human beings are found at the time of
their death ? This question is considered in the light of the
principles of natural justice, of analogy, and of the privileges
affirmed to be offered to men in the Gospel, and rejected by
them. It is denied that it would be in accordance with natural jus
tice for God to consign all men who are impenitent at death
to an eternal hell: — in the first place, because God established
this whole system, and no necessity, extraneous to him, can be
conceived of whieh could compel him to make a moral system
with such a disadvantage, if he made any, and if he made it
such it can only be defended as just, by making justice merely
synonymous with the Divine choice, whatever it may be ; in
the second place, because sin is not necessarily an infinite evil,
* The Reasonableness of Future, Endless Punishment, by N. Adams, D. D.,
Pastor of the Essex St. Church, JBoston. Boston, Gould and Lincoln, 1858
1*

6
simply on the ground that God, against whom it is committed,
is infinite, — if it is an infinite evil, then our good acts are an
infinite good and would balance it, — and if sin is an infinite
evil, it will still rest with God's choice whether to visit upon
it an infinite penalty or not ; in the third place, because we
have not been consulted about taking our place in such a sys
tem, and life cannot be a boon on such terms — Albert Barnes
and Edward Beecher being quoted in proof that the common
Orthodox view — when realized, is a gloomy one ; in the
fourth place, because " eternal salvation " is not the conse
quence of this brief life, but.the consequence of eternal good
ness and fidelity ; in the fifth place, because if sin is the great
est evil in the universe, it is unreasonable to suppose that God
will place the impenitent under such circumstances that they
cannot help sinning forever ; in the sixth place, because eternal
punishment cannot be simply God's permission to the will
of the wicked to remain wicked forever, because that supposes
that their freedom of will is eternally continued, which implies
the eternal possibility of their repentance ; and, in the seventh
place, because it is unreasonable to presume that the inhabi
tants of heaven need the eternal sight of the torments of the
pit to keep up their sense of the beauty of holiness and their
zeal in the praises of God.
It is further argued that there is no defence for the doctrine
of future punishment on the ground of analogies like those of
the man who loses his passage on a steamer, who gets impris
oned for life for the crime of one moment, &c, because it is
affirmed that the analogy is too feeble to bear the weight of
the argument. It is urged that God's drowning or burning
men here does not imply that he will punish them hereafter,
and, in general, it is replied to all such reasonings that they
fasten upon what is exceptional, rather than upon what is ele
mental and permanent in the Divine government in this
world. It is, next, denied that future punishment is implied in any

threats of doom, and offers of rescue which are found in the
Bible ; while it is urged, that, even if the Bible did teach eter
nal punishment, that would not make the doctrine reasonable.
It is affirmed that the Old Testament in no passage asserts that
the penalty of God's law is everlasting pain ; that Eden nor
Sinai never heard of it ; David nor Isaiah never hinted it. It
is affirmed that " the idea of eternal punishment came into the
Jewish mind and literature from heathen sources." It is
affirmed — as had been maintained at large in a previous dis
course — that Christ's language (when translated from poetry
to prose) never reveals it ; and that the only real basis for the
doctrine is " an obscure parenthesis of the apostle Paul, in the
fifth chapter of Romans, written twenty years after the cruci
fixion." Further, it is stated that future punishment is not implied
in the doctrine of the cross. The speaker declares his own
personal disbelief in the supreme deity of Christ, but still
doubts whether those who believe that doctrine can logically
urge that it implies the punishment of the wicked. He doubts
the philanthropy that would not put on its coat and hat to go
out of a winter's night to save a man from the commission of
a crime with a penalty of ten years' imprisonment, simply be
cause it is not imprisonment for life. He thinks if God can
forgive our sin to-day, he can forgive it ten thousand years
hence ; and that if eternal punishment is to be the portion of
those who die impenitent, Christ is merely a mask for God's
mercy during this brief life, " which he tears from his face when
we pass beyond the tomb."
The sermon closes by an appeal against the doctrine which
it resists ; by consistently saying to the sinner : — " You may be
alien from God, may resist him, and deny him, and curtain
yourself from him by the thick blankets of your passions. But
he cannot hate you. ... Do not believe that his justice can
ever be your foe ; " and by adding, " it is heathen to ask for an
interest in Christ, in order to be shielded from God's law. If

you are a sinner, seek deliverance from yourself, but not from
God's law, or from God ! " *
I have referred to these discourses, thus, at length, because
they were delivered a short time since, in our immediate neigh
borhood, under circumstances somewhat peculiar ; were after
ward repeated ; have since been printed ; and now stand
before the community as, in a sense, respectively representa
tive of the opinions of the religious denominations out of
which they sprang, on the subject which they discuss. I greatly
respect the ability which characterizes them, and the spirit
which, in the main, animates them ; but, for one, I cannot feel
that they exhaust the subject, — hardly that they even touch
it, in its gravest and most fundamental aspects.
I believe that the doctrine of the eternal punishment of the
finally impenitent is, on the soundest principles, a reasonable
and true one, — yet those principles, it seems to me, lie deeper
down among the foundations of things than either of these dis
courses has gone, with its analysis or criticism. It is with the
great sphere of truth as with the great globe of the earth ; va
rious, and sometimes apparently clashing and contradictory
strata are apt to lie on, and just under the surface, — but under
neath, at last, you come to the solid substratum granite every
where. If we. wish to know securely which way the tide sets*
we must get our answer from the movement of the deep body
of the sea ; not from the biassed motion of side eddies, nor the
surface-drift of emptying streams. So if we wish to know
whether a thing is reasonable or not, we must take it down
into the presence of the great fundamental laws of the reason,
and patiently decide its aspect toward them — not make pop
ular appeals as to the way in which men are struck by this or
that aspect of the discussion.
* The Doctrine of Endless Punishment for the Sins of this Life; Unchristian
and Unreasonable. Two discourses, delivered in Hollis street church, by
Rev. Thomas Starr King. (Published by request.) Boston : Crosby, Nichols,
& Co. 1858.

9
With no inconsiderable diffidence of my ability to do the
matter justice, and, most of all, without assuming any superior
profundity, but simply seeking — as in duty bound — to aid
you, so far as I can, to get really just views in this fear
fully important department of theology, permit me to invite
you to the consideration of this same question : — Is it reason
able that God should punish eternally those who persist in sin,
and die impenitent ? I wish to be understood, in the outset, as
admitting that this is a perfectly fair question. 1 do not sym
pathize at all with those who have spoken from among us, Avho
have, sometimes at least, seemed to decry reason as a danger
ous adviser in matters of religion ; and who have been sup
posed to take the ground, substantially, that, no matter how
unreasonable a thing is, we are bound to believe it if the
Bible asserts it. " The first principle of religion," said Lord
Bacon, " is right reason." Such is my faith. I believe noth
ing for myself, I urge no man to believe any thing, on the
testimony of the Bible, that is not supported by the soundest
action of the human reason. Our Saviour appealed to human
reason to sanction the justice of his claims and' teachings, say
ing, even reproachfully to the Jews, " Why, even of yourselves,
judge ye not what is right ? " God himself says to men's
reason: "Judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard;
what could have been done more to my vineyard that I have
not done in it ? " And it is precisely because I believe, with all
my heart, that the Bible is sustained, at every point, by reason,
that I believe it, and preach it, and urge it upon your faith-,
and commend it to your life. I make this, then, my first
answer to the question : What are the fundamental principles
which reason approves with regard to this question of the
future punishment of the wicked ? —
I. The first principle of reason, with regard to it, is that
reason herself is our first, and, in a sense, our final judge in
the matter.
This is so because reason is the faculty which God has-

10
given us for that purpose, and it would be a sin against him,
as well as a wrong done to our own souls, not to use it. As he
has given us eyes with which to see, and ears with which to
hear, and kindred senses Avith which to ascertain what are the
facts of visible nature and our duties toward them, so he has
given us reason, — which we might almost, in this view, call
a sixth and finer sense, — with Avhich to decide what are the
facts of the invisible and spiritual world, and what our duties
toward them. Here we differ widest from the brutes. They
cannot tell whether there is any need of a revelation from
God or not, for they have no reason with which to tell. It is
only by reason that we can decide this, and when it is decided,
it is only by reason that we can settle it, whether the Bible, or
the Sybilline leaves of the Romans, or the Shasters of the
Hindus, or the Koran of Mohammed, or the Book of Mor
mon, is that true revelation from God, which we need, and
should obey. And if the Bible had the contents of the Koran,
and the Koran had the contents of the Bible, we should be
justified, by reason, in rejecting the Bible, and receiving the
Koran — on the ground that reason cannot believe God to be
the author of a low, selfish, and sensual volume. But, if rea
son was given to us thus to guide us among the conflicting
claims of different volumes to be the true divine revelation, it
is plain that there is an important sense in which she is our
first and final judge in all matters of religious truth, whence
it follows not merely that we may, but that we ought to ques
tion her in reference to the doctrine under consideration.
The second principle which I submit as bearing on this
question is: —
II. Reason decides, that, while she is the first, and in one
sense final judge, with reference to the reception of any thing
which claims to be religious truth, by the human mind, she is yet
incompetent, without help, to guide that mind into all that relig
ious truth which it is needful for man to know.
This is simply because she sees that she cannot see all that

11
is essential to human safety and happiness. She is conscious
of immense reaches of truth spreading far, on every side,
beyond the circle of the horizon that shuts her in ; and, though
so far that she cannot know them, nor solve the problems
which they present, they are not so far but she can see that
those problems must have important reference to human well-
being. She therefore craves help. She looks around for it.
This is her need of revelation. She knows, that, though all
men may guess, no man of himself can know, any thing con
cerning that which lies beyond the grave. She cannot believe
that this life is to be all of human life, yet — unassisted — she
has nothing that she can make the basis of any secure decis
ion with regard to it. When cast down with troubles and
tempted to try some sudden ending, her natural language is
that of Hamlet : —
" To be, or not to be ? That is the question : —
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune ;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles.
And, by opposing, end them ? To die — to sleep —
No more ; — and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, — to sleep ; —
To sleep ! perchance, to dream ; — ay, there 's the rub ;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There 's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life :
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin ? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death —

12
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns — puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of? "
Distressed thus, with her own essential incompetency to de
cide for man some of the most important questions that clus
ter about his life, reason looks around for help. She decides
that it is not probable that that great and wise and good Being
whom she discerns at the helm of the universe, would leave
his creatures in the dark where light is so essential to their wel
fare, and this leads her to the enunciation of that principle
which I make the third, in her judgment on this subject,
namely : —
III. Reason decides that since, alone, she cannot solve the
gravest .questions of human destiny, it is both necessary that God
should, and probable that he will, make up this deficiency in her
data of knowledge, by a revelation of those facts which must oth
erwise remain beyond her reach.
In the judgment of reason it is incredible that such a Being,
as she readily perceives God in his works of creation and
providence to reveal himself to be, should permit that one of
his creatures for whose development he shaped, subordinate^,
aU material things, and in whose well or ill being and doing,
the problem of the success or failure of the universe must find
its resolution, to remain permanently destitute of any knowl
edge, the possession of which is essential to his welfare. Feel
ing, therefore, that there is much in regard to this world, and
every thing in regard to what comes after this world, the knowl
edge of which lies beyond the research of the unassisted human
powers, yet is essential to human prosperity and happiness ;
reason decides that it is to be expected that God will make a'
revelation of this needful but otherwise impossible knowledge.
To suppose that he will not reveal it, under these circumstan
ces, is to suppose that he does not wish men to possess it ; and
to suppose that he does not Avish men to possess it, is to sup-

13
pose that he does not desire them to be perfect as he is perfect ;
which is a conclusion which reason cannot accept, — especially
in the face of the teachings of a volume asserting itself to con
tain such a revelation from God.
This leads to the annunciation of the next principle which
bears upon the matter before us, namely: —
IV. When her attention is caUed to the Bible, and she has
examined its claims, reason decides that God has spoken in it,
and that its unfoldings are to be received as authentic revela
tions to man of the particulars of that knowledge which he needs
to know ; could not know without it — can know with it.
There are four great considerations which bring sound human
reason to this decision in regard to the Bible. One is, her
thorough cognizance of the fact that man needs a revelation
of truth which he otherwise has no means of knowing. The
second is, her apprehension of the fact that the Bible does actu
ally make just that revelation of truth which man needed to re
ceive, and looked for elsewhere in vain. The third is, her dis
covery that there is nothing in the Bible inconsistent with its
claims to be such a revelation. The fourth is, the assurance-
which she has that the manner in which this revelation has-
been made, and authenticated to the race, is such that there is-
no reason to doubt, but every reason to believe, that it is indeed
what it professes to be, and inwardly appears to be„ — a di
vine revelation.
This process of believing the authenticity of the Bible resem
bles that which satisfies the absent child of the genuineness of
the letter which he gets from his father at home. He needed
some money and some advice in regard to his future course..
His father knows his need. The letter contains that money and
that advice. And further, the handwriting, postmark, style, in
cidental allusions, all things are such as they ought to be if the
letter did come, as it professes to come, from his father to him.
So of man's need of the Bible ; its adaptedness to supply that
need ; and the natural fitness of its incidental circumstances..
2

14
Satisfied on aU these points, reason says it is from God; it
has come to supply the knowledge that we lacked ; it is rea
sonable for us to receive its declarations, and make them the
basis and guide of life, — even though they should, in some
particulars, be obscure, or even a little different from our an
ticipation. But here some, one may say, You are craftily begging the
very question in dispute. You now assume that reason wiU
accept the Bible as a revelation from God, even though it re
veal the future punishment of the wicked, while the very point
at issue is whether that doctrine is not, in itself, so unreasona
ble that men cannot and ought not to believe it, however re
vealed, and therefore cannot and ought not to receive, as from
God, any book that should reveal it, — on your own admission
that reason is final judge.
I reply, reason is final judge, and there are good grounds on
which she might consistently reject the Bible as assuming to
be a revelation from God, but the fact that it reveals the future
punishment of the wicked — if it be a fact — is not one of
them. The whole matter hinges on this inquiry : What would
justify reason in rejecting the Bible as from God ? I think
there are five grounds, on either of which, reason would be jus-
ified in rejecting the claims of the Bible.
1. If there were no evidence of the existence of any God, then
it would be absurd to receive any volume as his message to us.
2. If God's character were manifestly such as to make it
in the highest degree improbable that he should make any
revelation to man, then it Avould be in the highest degree
improbable that any volume should be his message to us.
3. Or, if man clearly heeded no revelation ; if he had knowl
edge enough of all kinds without one ; so as to be just as
well off in the absence of any Bible as in its presence, then it
would be absurd to suppose that any volume contained such
a needless message from God.
4. Or, if the Bible were encompassed with outward im-

15
probabilities sufficient to much more than outweigh any
inward probabilities which it might contain that it was a
revelation from God, then it would be absurd to receive it as
such. As, for example, if it were susceptible of demonstration
that the books of the Bible were written centuries after the
date claimed by them, and by others than their reputed
authors; or, if it were notorious that the persons who first
put them in circulation were bad men and public deceivers ;
or, if different copies and versions varied so as to render it
hopeless to get any consistent and reliable record ; or, if it
were clear that the book had been practically injurious where-
ever it had gone, — then reason would be justified in denying
that it came from God.
5. Or, once more, if the Bible were inwardly so improbable
as to overbalance all outward probabilities of its divine origin,
then reason would do right not to receive it as from God.
There are five inward improbabilities which I can imagine ;
either of which, to my mind, would justify reason in the re
jection of the Bible, no matter what might be the outward
evidence, provided reason could feel certain that she had posses
sion of all the facts as a basis for judgment.
(1.) If it really made no revelation ; told us nothing that we
needed to know, nothing that we did not know before, then
it would be absurd to imagine that God sent it here. For
this reason I reject the pretended revelations of Spiritualism.
I have never heard of its telling us any thing of the least
value, that we did not know before.
(2.) If it were a weak and silly volume, I should reject the
Bible, as fatally lacking the necessary dignity of inspiration.
(3.) If it were a self-contradictory volume I should reject the
Bible, for if one half its books neutralized the other half; if all
sorts of conflicting assertions were made by it, we should say
at once the book is not merely useless, but impossible to
come from a God of truth.
(4.) So, if the Bible contradicted facts obvious to sense ; if

16
it said that the moon shone by day and the sun by night;
that the earth is flat ; that the sea is solid ; that men are quad
rupeds, or any thing thoroughly irreconcilable with our con
sciousness of realities around us, our reason Avould be obliged
to reject it as a voice from God, whom we cannot help believ
ing to know and to speak that which is true.
(5.) So, once more, if the Bible clearly contradicted the first
principles of natural morality, my reason would reject it ; be
cause I cannot help believing that my convictions of right and
wrong were given me by God himself, that I may use them
in judging what is right in him as well as myself; what is
right in any thing purporting to be his word, as well as in the
words and acts of my fellow-man. And it would be absurd
for me to believe that any revelation which God should make
in a book can contradict that previous revelation of right Avhich
he has implanted in my breast, on purpose that I may have
some standard by which to receive or reject any document
subsequently purporting to come from him. It is much as if
a king sends an ambassador to a distant court surrounded with
hostile influences, and puts into his hands the key of a cipher
in which all his official despatches will be written. Now
this ambassador may receive many false messages from ene
mies who have intercepted the true letters of the king, and
who have tried to mislead him by their own deceptive ones,
but he always has the means of verification, and so long as he
rejects every thing which his key will not unlock, he acts rea
sonably and safely. So conscience, and our innate sense of
right, are our key by which to test every thing which claims
to be revelation, and all which it will not apply to we shall
be safe to reject. But, as I said, we must be sure that we
thoroughly understand the subject that we reject, that we
have all the facts, and that the apparent discrepancy between,
it and natural morality is not the unavoidable consequence of
want of information on our part.
The fleet of two nations is now, as I speak, laying down the

17
twisted wire of the Atlantic telegraph. Suppose some man
of science in some distant land, who had never before heard
of the proposition to lay down such a telegraph, should receive
a rumor that England and America were busy in such an
undertaking. If he were to be informed that they were lay
ing down a chain cable, or a cotton cod-line, for that distance
and that purpose, clearly he would do right at once to say,
The rumor is false ; it cannot be, for the thing is incredible.
A chain cable would cost more than two nations could pay for,
and be heavier than all their ships could carry out, and be
quite useless when done. A cod-line would carry no electric
ity, and would n't last while they were trailing it over. There
fore the rumor is false. My knowledge of science is sufficient
to warrant me in rejecting the idea as utterly absurd.
But suppose the rumor is, that they are carrying over a lit
tle rope of twisted wire covered with insulating and protecting
material, as is the fact, and he should then say, It must be
false, the thing is incredible ; my knowledge of science assures
me that it is impossible to make electricity work over so im
mense a space; and two sensible nations would never attempt
an impossibility, — the question would be, is he acting now
as reasonably as before ?
Before, he was sure he was in possession of all the facts
needful to a correct judgment, but is he sure now ? Does he
not, from want of information for which he is not to be
blamed, overlook the very facts which are most of all neces
sary to the formation of a correct judgment in the matter, —
the facts, that experiments of which he never heard, and of a
character quite new and surprising, have convinced those hav
ing the thing in charge that (by the use of a machine of
which he never even dreamed) there is such assurance of suc
cess as to make the attempt in the highest degree reasonable ?
Is it not clear, that, under all the circumstances, the truly wise
and rational course would be for him to say : This matter is
very strange ; I had always supposed it to be impossible to
2*

18
manage the electric fluid to any purpose under conditions of
so great difficulty, and I am aware of no machine by which it
could be made to carry messages across the Atlantic. At first
thought, the idea seems incredible ; and yet it never becomes
the man of science to say of any thing that is difficult, it is
impossible because it is difficult ; and, since the rumor comes
through a channel every way reliable, and even in the columns
of a copy of the London Times, I will suspend my judgment
concerning the subject long enough at least to read the whole
article announcing it, and not say, point blank, that it cannot
be a copy of the Times, because it contains this rumor. It
may after all turn out, that, from want of knowledge, I have
omitted some essential fact that would explain the whole.
And yet, on the face of it, it does still seem incredible.
I presume we shall all agree that this would be sound sense
in the case supposed; and I submit that it indicates to us
what is sound sense in regard to all questions touching the
-acceptance or rejection of the Bible as God's Word, because of
some apparent conflict of its teachings with natural morality.
If it gravely told us that God will lie, or that it would be
right for God to lie ; if it said, " thou shalt steal," " thou shalt
commit adultery," " thou shalt kill," " thou shalt not honor thy
father and mother," " thou shalt not remember the Sabbath
day to keep it holy," we should be safe in rejecting its claims
as a revelation, because we know sufficiently all the elements
involved in such a question to warrant our decision. But
suppose it tells us that God will punish eternally those who
will not accept his offers of mercy in this world, is it safe for
us to reject the Bible for that, as being against natural moral
ity ? Are we sure that we know all the facts ? The question
is broader than the Atlantic, and deeper than its depths ! It
reaches over into eternity ! May we not overlook the very prin
ciple which, if seen, would remove all our difficulty ? Does
not sound reason say here, This seems indeed very dark, yet
I feel that I am but imperfectly acquainted with the facts. I

19
am not enough master of the subject confidently to say that
a book with such a revelation cannot be from God. I will
rather examine its claims, and, if they satisfy me, I will decide
that it is reasonable to receive it, in spite of all its mysteries,
and wait for further knowledge hereafter ; for, needing a reve
lation as much as we do, it is more reasonable to receive a
volume with such difficulties mingled with its great and obvious
blessings, than to take the ground that God has made no
revelation at all to our need.
The truth in regard to such topics was well stated by Sir
Matthew Hale (Discourse of the Knowledge of God and of
Ourselves, p. 105), that " it is true that they, being above the
reach of reason, cannot be by force of reason assented unto ;
yet there is no reason against the' truth of them. Natural
reason hath a privative opposition to the knowledge of them,
namely, an absence of a necessity of assenting, not a positive
opposition, or a constraint by necessity of reason to disassent
to them."
This leads us to the next principle which reason settles,
and which has a most important bearing on the subject be
fore us, namely : —
V. Reason, having accepted the Bible as the needed revela
tion from God, and studied its affirmations, decides that it is rea
sonable to receive it, and, interpreting it on sound principles, to
make it in all particulars the guide of faith and life. Of course,
if we need it, — and, notwithstanding all its difficulties it is
what we need, — it is reasonable to receive it; and since we do
not receive it unless we make its unfolding the teacher of faith
and the guide of life, it is reasonable for us to shape all belief
and action by its voice. To have it, and neglect to live by it,
is as absurd as the throwing away of a life-preserver when one
is struggling for existence among the storm-waves.
But what are the sound principles of its interpretation ?
The Bible is a multifarious and many-sided volume, present
ing its message in a great variety of aspects. It has some

20
phase of truth for every mood of man. The parable instructs
the child ; the precept, the philosopher. The history illustrates
the precept, the biography reinforces the history, and so voices
come — from Eden to Patmos — from every page to every ear,
seemingly (sometimes, at first) variant; yet always blending,
at last, into the grand monotone of eternal truth. How,
amid this vast diversity of outward form and sound, shall
man gather securely from it its great inward and vital lessons ?
Reason has her ready answer. She suggests the following,
as obviously just principles on which to proceed in interpret
ing its words : —
1. We must take the whole Bible as our revelation, or none of
it. It hangs together, and stands or falls in the mass. Christ
vouched for the Old Testament in the same shape in which
we have it. And the New Testament is so interwoven, in its
Gospels and Epistles, that we must pass judgment upon it as
a whole. It is all reasonable and reliable, or none. That mo
ment in which Mr. Theodore Parker can reasonably say, I
don't believe such and such portions of the history of Jesus ;
I, by the same right, may say, I do n't believe in such and
such other portions ; and you, by the same right, may say, I
do n't believe in Paul; and you, I do n't believe in Peter; and
you, I do n't believe in John ; until, together, we have eviscer
ated the New Testament, and left ourselves with no Gospel
and no Bible at all. And all reasonably, if it is reasonable for
him to begin ! Because each of our reasons is as reasonable
as his ; my " I do n't like it ; it does n't commend itself to my
good-sense in this chapter and this verse," is just as good —
I mean, of course, before the tribunal of my reason — as his
before his reason ; yours as good as either. And so the Bible
is left to be kicked into useless fragments, like a cask, when,
one after another, you remove the hoops.
The truth is, it is impossible to receive the Bible as a reve
lation from God, unless you receive the whole of it as such,
for if it is only partly to be depended upon, you need a new

21
revelation to tell you exactly what portions of it are reliable,
and then a second new one to certify you how much of the
first new one you are to believe, and so on ad infinitum. Be
sides, in my judgment, all parts of the sacred volume, rightly
understood, stand on the same level of credibility; and if
there is sound reason in rejecting one page, there is the same
reason for rejecting all. So that I insist upon it as the first
rule of sound interpretation, that, if you believe any thing,
you must believe all which the Bible reveajs.
2. The second rule is, the Bible must be interpreted so as to
be self-consistent. If you find Christ prophesied in the Old
Testament as to be the Messiah, you must expect to find the
history of the NeAV revealing his coming as to fill that office.
If you find it revealed that the righteous are to be rewarded
with life and the wicked punished with death, and the same
adjective used to describe the duration of the life and the
death, you must translate it in the one part of the verse as
long as you do in the other, though it sadly teach you that the
death of the wicked will be coeternal with the life of the good.
If the revelation is not thus consistent with itself, it is not the
work of a consistent being; is not God's Word; — does not,
cannot, claim our faith.
3. The third rule of a reasonable interpretation is, that that
meaning of the Scriptures which is plainest, and most likely to
strike the mind of an unprejudiced reader of common intelligence
and culture, is likeliest to be right. This, because the Bible
is intended for the great mass, — and the great mass will always
be rude in culture, — and if the Bible is to do them any good, it
must be so shaped, that, in their hasty glances, they may grasp
its general significance; that, in their hurried and homely
perusal, though wayfaring men and — in the wisdom of the
world — fools, they need not err therein. If it is not such a
Bible as gives its genuine (though not its completest) sense
to the unskilful searching of the rudest swain, it is either be
cause God would not, or could not, make it so ; and that he

22
would not, we should affirm as reluctantly as that he could
not. 4. The fourth rule of a reasonable interpretation is, that the
Bible should be dealt with as a progressive revelation. That it
is so, is obvious on the face of it. The world was young
when its first books were written. Men were children. The
Hebrews were rude and illiterate. The sermon on the mount
would have been as unintelligible on the plain before Sinai, as
the rule of three is to the boy only half through simple addition.
The teaching the Jews to sacrifice a lamb for their sins was
all the approach to the doctrine of Christ crucified — the lamb
of God that taketh away the sins of the world — that they
were then prepared to appreciate. Fifteen hundred years after,
fifteen centuries of sacrifices had educated them so that they
could first understand the idea of the atonement through the
blood of Jesus. So, measurably, with all doctrines. We
therefore do violence to the spirit and construction of the Bible,
if we assume that all its books are on the same level of precep
tive revelation, and suspect the doctrine of the Trinity, or the
atonement, or of immortality, or of future punishment, because
we cannot find proof-texts of equal clearness for them on every
page of the Word alike.
5. The fifth rule of a reasonable interpretation is, that the
Bible is to be understood naturally, and from the stand-point of
its own speakers and audiences. This would be too obvious to
demand a word, did not men so strangely misunderstand the
Scriptures. Nobody thinks of reading Shakspeare or Spenser
as if written now, and affixing to his language the signification
now current ; but when we study old authors we endeavor to
drink in the spirit of their time, and hear them as their con
temporaries heard them, and interpret them as their friends
and neighbors did. So we ought to do with the Bible. If we
wish to knoAV what Christ really meant to teach on any given
occasion, we must try to settle it exactly what he would natu
rally have been understood to mean by those who heard him,

23
and, in nine cases out of ten, that is his real meaning, — where
he does not avowedly speak in parable or prophecy unex
plained. 6. The sixth rule of a reasonable interpretation of Scripture
is, that we cannot expect to understand it all, or fully. This
follows from the necessary incomprehensibleness of many of
its topics to our minds in their present stage of advancement.
God, eternity, heaven, hell, the soul, — these are themes that
run at once far out beyond any present human power of com
plete comprehension, just as the blue heavens stretch away
beyond the utmost limit of our eyesight. We may understand
them in another world. Our best interests here require that
we should have hints about them. And so God reveals some
thing concerning them. But the very attempt to bring them
down at all to our present plane of thought, brings their diffi
culties down with them, and introduces us partially to
numberless questions which we cannot answer, — ought not
to expect to be able to answer. Yet, concerning these, sound
reason says, Believe what portion you can, and trust God for
the rest ; it is not necessarily unreasonable or false because
you cannot now understand it.
A telegraph wire sings in the morning breeze before your
door. Your little child gazes at it, and asks you to tell him
about it. You say, it carries messages. But how ? he inquires.
You try and try, and try again, but find, that, at his tender
age and with his limited knowledge, you cannot make him
understand how it does it. Yet you feel that it is reasonable
for him to believe it on your word ; though it may seem absurd
to him, and — troubled by an inconsistency, that, to his little
mind, seems fatal — he keeps on saying, Father, the wire is
dead iron, how can it talk or write or carry ? You answer,
My son, you cannot expect to understand this now, — one of
these days you will.
The same is true of us, — the wisest of us, — and some of
the revelations of the Bible. As we are now we cannot ex-

24
pect to make every thing which it contains consistent with
every thing else in the Bible and out of it, — not because there
is any inconsistency, but because our minds are not yet devel
oped enough to see the consistency.
7. The seventh rule of a reasonable interpretation of Scrip
ture is, that, where there seem to be two interpretations possible,
that is often" probably truest which we naturally like the least.
I do not mean to intimate that the Bible is against our natural
instincts, or adverse to our innocent tastes, but that many of its
doctrinal teachings — being medicine for our disease of sin —
are apt to seem bitter to our spiritual palate. We are natu
rally wanderers from God, and at antagonism with him, —
our will being opposed to his will. But his Word must natu
rally contain and be saturated with his will ; and, therefore,
will be likely to express itself in terms distasteful to our will.
So that where two spiritual senses seem possible to God's
words, that sense is likeliest to be nearest his will, and there
fore truest, which is furthest from ours, and which, therefore,
we like least. We may therefore expand this into a general
principle, and safely pronounce that interpretation of the Word
of God which favors God most and sin least to be primd facie
the true one, because the very object of the gospel is to destroy
sin. If there can be gathered out of the Scriptures two theo
ries on any subject, each claiming the support of sundry pas
sages, it will nearly always be safe to conclude that that theory
which is most comfortable to the sinner is the false one, and
that theory which is strictest in its judgment, and sternest in
its condemnation of all evil, and least inviting toward trans
gression, is the true one.
8. The eighth rule of a reasonable interpretation of Scripture
is, that, where two interpretations are possible, that one is proba
bly truest which has most commended itself to the best men of
every age. It is eighteen centuries since Christianity began
to gather its system out of the Bible as we now have it. More
than twice that number of generations have rolled away, each

* 25
having its proportion, larger or smaller, of faithful, humble,
devout, godly men and women ; the savor of whose sweet
graces in a naughty world makes the record of the inward life
of the church during all those ages, in spite of its outward
troubles and shames, to be " as ointment poured fonth." Every
one of them has had communion with the mind of the Spirit,
and, with all personal imperfections and all frailties incident
to nation or station, has been divinely led into sympathy with
essential truth. Differing widely in lesser matters, they have
been mainly one in their great life and love. They have been
one with each other, because one in Christ; one in Christ be
cause one in the truth of Christ; one in the truth of Christ be
cause divinely led by Christ into one truth, — the truth of God,
which always makes men wise unto salvation. The Bible is
a practical revelation. Men have tried its precepts, and the
church has therefore prepared herself to testify : This is true
for it has proved true in our case ; we have found this precept
sound, this doctrine effective, this duty blessed.
When, then, two interpretations of any portion of the Bible
are possible, that stands a very strong chance of being truest,
which can claim the coincident faith and love of the church of
Christ during all these ages. God promised expressly that his
Spirit should lead his children into all truth, and it is not rea
sonable to suppose that he has failed, in great essentials, to
verify that promise. Therefore that version of a controverted
doctrine which good men have most loved and believed, bears
this reasonable witness of its probable truth, — especially as
against one which they have almost uniformly rejected.
9. Still another principle which reason suggests for the inter
pretation of the Bible is, where two senses are possible, that is
most reasonable which, on the whole, is safest for man. This
is not selfishness, but sound reason, — for reason always says,
In a world of danger, make the best provision for your own
safety that you can. If, of two commercial ventures which
are equally profitable, one has large contingencies of loss
3

26 *
which the other wholly avoids, no sane merchant would risk
his all upon the uncertainty, when the certainty was equally
at his disposal. No wise traveller selects a route where it is
quite probable that he may meet with disaster and death, in
preference to one, every way as inviting, which promises abso
lute security. If, then, for our eternal travels into the cloud-
curtained and mysterious future, we can classify the great
biblical guide-book into the indication of two possible paths,
one of which, if, too late, there should prove to be any mistake
about our understanding, will endanger our final wreck, while
the other by no possibility can do so; sound reason will,
at once and instinctively, select that which gathers most of
security about that after-world which has in itself the ele
ments of so fearful a mystery, and say, This must be the way,
— walk ye in it.
Thus, now, I sum my argument thus far : It is reasonably
settled that reason is our first, and, in an important sense final,
judge in matters of religion ; and therefore it is perfectly fair to
ask her decision in reference to the question of the future pun
ishment of the wicked. And, when interrogated, reaching vainly
toward the vast invisible on every side, she replies that she is
incompetent, without help, to guide the mind into all truth ;
but that she confidently anticipates that God will help her by
making known such truth as she cannot otherwise receive. It
is settled that she finds that help in the Bible, and remits us to
its pages for her final answer. It is settled that it is reason
able to believe, and take as the guide of our* faith, whatever
we find recorded there. And it is settled, that, if we search the
Bible, taking the whole of it into account, interpreting it con
sistently with itself, preferring its plainest sense, dealing .with
it as a progressive unfolding of truth, taking its words natu
rally and in the spirit of their land and time, not expecting to
understand it all, so that no room for doubt or question will
remain ; but selecting that interpretation always which favors
sin least, which good men have most loved, and which will be

27
safest in its eternal results, we may look for a fair and rea
sonable answer to our inquiry.
That search we will now attempt. And may that great
God of infinite wisdom who knoweth,with an eternally per
fect knowledge, — not only the right answer to this question,
but the vast import to his honor and our own welfare, of our
gaining that answer, with all the difficulties that lie in our
path toward it, — be mercifully pleased to guard us from error,
and to conduct us to that conclusion which shall be right in
his sight, for the sake of him who, promising to men the
spirit of truth, to guide them into all truth, laid down his own
life that he might bear witness to the truth !
In endeavoring to ascertain the actual testimony of the Bible
upon this question of eternal punishment, it seems to me that
it will be fairest, and every way most convenient, for us to
consider, in the first place, the teachings of the Old Testament ;
secondly, those of our Saviour ; and thirdly, those of the
apostles, whose writings make up the rest of the New Testa
ment. Such an arrangement will, at least, facilitate our
endeavors to comply with the fourth and fifth rules which we
have laid down to aid in a reasonable interpretation, namely,
that we regard the Bible as a progressive revelation, and that
we interpret it from the stand-point of its writers and speakers.
We shall thus also most easily hope to avoid that danger,
— which threatens the arguments of all who search indiscrimi
nately for proof-texts of any doctrine, guided merely by the
apparent appositeness of the language used, — of unconsciously
affixing to some such passages a sense greater, or less, or other
than really belongs to them,'when studied in their connection,
and balanced by all the counterpoising elements which natu
rally inhere in their normal intention and relation.
Let us, then, proceed to inquire : —
I. What is the doctrine of the Old Testament in regard to the
future state of those who die impenitent ?
As we open the book, almost on its first page we read, — the

28
voice of God to Adam, in reference to the fruit of the tree of
knowledge, — "thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that
thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die" (Gen. 2: 17);
rrttofi rrifa — dying thou shalt die. This is a very strong ex-
piession, and its sense is not exhausted by supposing it to be
merely a threat of corporeal dissolution. Adam could not yet
understand it fully in any sense, for all ideas of death were as
yet without illustration from his experience. But that the
conviction gradually dawned upon his mind that this meant
more than the cessation of bodily life, — that it projected a
dark, mysterious threat over into the shadowy future, — I think
no careful student of the language and the facts can doubt.
But grant that here, in this first experience of the race, is
laid the corner-stone of the revelation of the doctrine of
future punishment, the question at once arises, Why does not
the superstructure immediately follow? I answer, there is
something more than poetry in the idea that the life of the
race resembles the life of individuals. History is full of illus
trations of the fact, that the* nations have their childhood, when
their ideas are crude and their capacity for knowledge limited.
The children of Israel were at first incapable (as the savage
now is) of understanding abstract and advanced truth, and
needed to be led from weakness to strength, and then from
strength to strength, by the simplest picture lessons. Ac
cordingly we find that God, for centuries, dealt with them as
with children, gradually advancing from milk to strong meat,
as they were able to bear it. And the Bible contains the
record of this advance, with the means used to accomplish it.
Now, as we are not accustomed to secure the obedience
and moral advance of our young children by appeals to a dis
tant and future retribution, but by immediate and tangible
discipline ; so God did not, at first, rely for the training of the
Hebrew mind upon the idea of a future life, and of heaven and
hell, with their rewards and punishments, but sought rather to
stimulate obedience by motives appealing to their immediate

29
and temporal welfare. Length of days, peace, *wealth, arid
honor were promised to him who obeyed the laws ; while dis
aster, distress, and death were threatened as the punishment
of the disobedient and rebellious. In this, nothing was either
affirmed or denied in reference to the future world, — just as
we neither affirm nor deny any thing in reference to it, while
we are training our little ones by nearer and more obvious
considerations. Though a long time passed thus before future
rewards and punishments were at all urged upon the Hebrews
as motives of action, it is not true — as has been sometimes
argued — that they were not at all aware of the immortality of
the soul.* Their ideas were doubtless crude and dim at first,
• but the laws which Moses made against necromancy (Deut.
18 : 11), or the invocation of the dead, imply that the Israel
ites must have had some impression that dead men were not
gone into non-existence. So the record which was made" of
Enoch — "God took him" (Gen. 5: 24) — implies an invisi
ble life with God. So where Jacob says, " I will go down into
sheol unto my son (Gen. 37: 35), he suggests his belief of a
place where society is possible among the departed. And the
common phrase of one dying, " he went,"' or " was gathered to
his fathers," indorses the same belief. Job, with a brave heart,
though in speech so vague as to demonstrate that his convic-
tipns were not yet clear, points toward the future world as the
place where his Redeemer should vindicate his character (Job
19 : 25), and even inquires of his friends if they have not heard,
and will not admit, that the wicked is reserved to the day of
destruction, and will be brought forth in the day of wrath ;
* Isaac M. Wise, in his " History of the Israelitish Nation " (Vol. I. p. 1 6 5) ,
says that it cannot be supposed that Moses and the Israelites were either igno
rant of, or without belief ui, the doctrine of immortaUty and future reward
and punishment. He say? also (p. 167), " Moses never told them that there
is a Supreme Being, because they knew it ; he never told them to pray when
their heart is inclined to it, for man wiU do it without command ; so it was
entirely unnecessary to speak unto them on immortality."
3*

30
adding — in*evidence that he does not mean any day of wrath
in this world — that this will happen though the wicked man
here is prosperous, and is borne with honor to the tomb.
(Job 21 : 29-33.*)
Gradually, clearer intimations are given of the future world,
and more decided allusion is made to the separation there be
tween the righteous and the wicked. A thousand years be
fore Christ, David speaks with vastly greater distinctness and
decision. He says (Ps. 9 : 17), " The wicked shall be turned into
hell (sheol) and all the nations that forget God." So (Ps.ll : 6),
" Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and
a horrible tempest." So (Ps. 119 : 155), " Salvation is far from
the wicked." So (Ps. 73: 17), he closes a vivid picture of the
guilt and excess of bad men, and the record of his wonder that
God should permit such guilt in them, by saying that AArhen he
went into the sanctuary of God he understood " their end," and
saw that they were to be brought into desolation, and con
sumed with terrors. And (in the ninety -second Psalm) he pur
sues the same thought, " When all the workers of iniquity do
flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed for ever."
A little after, we find the author of the Book of Proverbs, and
of the Ecclesiastes, speaking even more strongly. We read
{Pro v. 14 : 32), " The wicked is driven away in his wickedness ;
but the righteous hath hope in his death." And again (Prov.
10 : 28), " The hope of the righteous shall be gladness ; but the
expectation of the wicked shall perish." And, yet again
{Prov. 11 : 7), " When a wicked man dieth his expectations
shall perish." And, again, as if to explain some of the myste
ries of life by the fact that the punishment which the wicked
deserve is delayed (Ecc. 8 : 11), " Because sentence against
an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the
sons of men is fully set in them to dolevil," — which, for its
full effect, demands to be regarded as an implication of a fu-
* See Barnes' Commentary on Job (Vol. I. p. xciii. xciv.)

31
ture execution of such sentence. So (Eccl. 12:, 14), we are
told that " God shall bring every work into judgment, with
every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be
evil," — where not only judgment, but retribution, beyond the
grave, appears to be substantially asserted. ¦
Passing on to the times of the prophets, we find Isaiah
saying (3: 11), "Wo unto the wicked, it shall be ill with
him, for the reward of his hand shall be given him ; " and Eze-
kiel (7 i 8), declaring that God will pour out his fury upon the
wicked, and accomplish his anger upon them, and judge them
according to their ways, and recompense them for all their
abominations; and (Daniel 12: 2), predicting that of them
that sleep in the dust of the earth, some shall awake to ever
lasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt ; and
Nahum urging (1 : 3), " The Lord is great in power, and will
not at all acquit the wicked."
The last verse of the prophecy of Isaiah says of that distant
future Avhen the kingdom of God shall be finally and perpetu
ally established: " And they {God's people) shall go forth and
look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed
against me ; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their
fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh."
Here is the origin of the metaphor, which we shall find Christ
often using in his fearful descriptions of the futm-e condition of
the wicked.
The history of the Hebrew word i'iairj (sheol) epitomizes well
the progress of the ideas of futurity and future punishment in
the Old Testament times. It literally means a hollow subter
ranean place, and first came into use as a name for the grave.
But as the grave is the visible resting-place of all of the dead
that is obvious to sense, it was a very easy transition that soon
after led to the application of the word to the spiritual position
of the departed, — the home of all souls, — a vast receptacle
where the life that had ceased here is continued until the re
sumption of the body at the resurrection, a*hd the day of judg-

32
ment with its decisions. Gradually, as the successive utter
ances of inspired men, and the successive books of the Bible,
imparted to the Jewish people clearer ideas of the future state,
this word came to be modified in accordance with those idea£.
Sheol, the great cavernous underworld, was divided ; its upper
portion was imagined to contain an inferior paradise, where
¦the righteous waited until the resurrection and the judgment
should remit them to heaven ; and its lower portion — the
abyss, gehenna — was supposed to retain the souls of the
wicked until the same events. Soon after, the word grew to
carry more and more distinctly the latter significance. Amos
uses it thus as the opposite of heaven (9 : 2), and David
(Ps. 9 :• 17) employs it in a sense which cannot apply to any
place, in this world or the next, where the righteous as well as
the wicked are sent. So in Proverbs (23 : 14) we find it
promised, that the father who beats his disobedient son with a
rod shall deliver his son from hell (sheol) where — from its
connection — it cannot mean either the future state alone, or
the future state of the good, but must refer to the separate
abode of the wicked.
From these various influences the Jewish people grew to
entertain the belief, that the souls of the wicked would be
punished everlastingly, which belief was held by the main body
of the nation at the time when Christ came. Josephus, born
four years after the ascension of Christ, whose learning and
opportunities of knowledge will not be questioned, described
with considerable care the philosophical and religious belief of
the nation. He classifies the Jews into three sects., — Phari
sees, Sadducees, and Essenes ; the first dividing with the last
the vast majority of the nation. Of the Essenes he says,
(Jewish War, Book II. chap. 8, sec. 11), " To the bad they
allot a gloomy and tempestuous cavern, full of never-ending
punishment." He says (sec. 14), that the Pharisees believe
that the souls of the bad " suffer eternal punishment." Of the
Sadducees he says '(sec. 14), " The permanency of the soul, and

33
the punishments and reward of Hades, they reject." These last
were the infidels of their day, and Josephus elsewhere adds
(Antiq. B. XVIII. chap. 1, sec. 4), " This doctrine is received
but by a few." So that, on his testimony, the vast majority of
his nation, when Christ came, were firm believers in the future
punishment of the wicked. We find corroboration of this
in the fact, that future punishment is appealed to as a
motive to virtue in the apocryphal books, which — although
Avithout the authority of inspiration — have yet a certain
value as witnesses of the opinion of the times which produced
them. In the second book of the Maccabees (6: 26) the
old man Eleazer is represented as refusing to be guilty of
deceit to save his life, for he says : " Though for the present
time I should be delivered from the punishment of men ;
yet should I not escape the hand of the A mighty, neither alive
nor dead." So (7 : 19) a young martyr is represented as
saying, with his dying breath, to the wicked king : " Think not
thou, that takest in hand to strive against God, that thou shalt
escape unpunished." So in the third chapter of the Wisdom of
Solomon ;we read (vs. 1 and 18, 19), " The souls of the righteous
are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch
them," while of the wicked it is said : " If they die quickly
they have no hope, neither comfort in the day of trial ; for hor
rible is the end of the unrighteous generation."
It is right that I should notice here an assertion of the au
thor of " Two Discourses " recently published, tire argument of
one of which we have already examined. He says (p. 22) : —
There is no allusion, in the Old Testament, to punishment at all in the un
seen world. So long as the Jews were under the exclusive influence of the
Old Testament literature and inspiration, they held no doctrine_ of future
punishment. Down to the time of Malachi, it had not appeared among them.
That doctrine came into their mind from heathen sources, chiefly from Alex
andria in Egypt, and their connection with Greek mythology and speculation.
It is only in the later books of the Apocrypha, approaching the time of Christ,
that the dogma is detected in their literature.

34
I have just quoted those passages in the Apocrypha to
which reference is here made, and I think you will agree with
me that they are even less decided in their tone than many
passages which we have found in the Psalms, Proverbs, and
Prophets, near a thousand years before Christ came. And it
may be doubted if there is not quite as much evidence that
Alexandria learned its doctrine at Jerusalem, as that Jerusalem
imported it from Alexandria, especially since all the passages
we have quoted from the Old Testament were matter of rec
ord hundreds of years before the first stone of Alexandria was
laid (332 B.C.).
We are prepared, then, to say, in answer to the question,
What is the doctrine of the Old Testament in. regard to the
future state of the impenitent, that, conforming to the imma
ture and only gradually advancing condition of the Hebrew
mind, it very gradually and at the best dimly, and yet with
growing distinctness, did convey to the Hebrew nation the
great ideas of immortality, and of future punishment for the
wicked and reward for the righteous. They had actually re
ceived those ideas from it, and had wrought them thoroughly
into their theology, before the Christian era. And such — with
the exception of the inconsiderable sect of the infidel Saddu
cees — was the decided conviction, though perhaps not very
intelligent or intelligible to themselves, of the Jewish people
when Christ came. We pass therefore to the inquiry: —
II. What whs the teaching of our Saviour on this question of
the future punishment of the wicked?
Here I refer — for a moment — again to the sermon to which
allusion has just been made, the great object of which is to
weaken the apparent testimony of our Saviour on this subject,
by the suggestions that our record of his views is very frag
mentary, and that, since he was of a highly poetical tempera
ment, his language ought not to be pressed to that degree of
literal interpretation which would be allowable in the construc
tion of the dry decree of a court, or the formal act of a legis
lature.

35
Grant both of these, for argument's sake, and it will still
remain imperishably true, that our Saviour did teach some
doctrine (however fragmentary in form, and however poetic) ;
and that his solicitude for men was such as to make him greatly
desire that they should -not be misled in eternal things, and
his intelligence such that he could not fail to perceive the
drift of their minds under the circumstances in which they
were addressed by him. Doubtless we shall all agree that he
both knew whether the doctrine of future eternal punishment
is true or false, and knew that it must be of consequence to
human welfare for men to know, and — being divinely honest
— we have a right to suppose that he shaped his words (how
ever fragmentary, and however poetic) in such a way that they
would not tend to mislead the multitude, whose welfare he de
sired with a desire which led him to the cross. There can be
no avoidance of the conclusion, that the Saviour was a Univer
salis!, or (for neutrality is impossible) a disbeliever in, and oppo-
ser of, the doctrine that there is no eternal hell. If he Avas a
Universalist, he must necessarily teach like one. If he was not,
he would not. And with this in mind we cannot go amiss in
our interpretation of his language.
I propose now, as briefly as possible, to glance, in chronolog
ical sequence, at every written word of Jesus having obvious
reference to the question before us.*
The conversation with Nicodemus (John 3 : 1-21) is 'the first
recorded instance of any utterance upon it. He urges upon
this rabbi of the Jews the necessity of being born again, be
cause, without it, one cannot see the kingdom of God, — a
phrase which, unquestionably, was understood by Nicodemus
to include reference to future life in heaven. And this infer
ence must necessarily have been encouraged in his mind by
Christ's subsequent remarks: that the Son of Man must be
* The order is that of Dr. Robinson's " Harmony," and Prof. Greenleaf 's
" Testimony of the Four Evangelists.''

36
'"lifted up," like the serpent in the wilderness, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting 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 ; adding that God sent his Son that the world
might through him be saved. Here is obviously running
through all this conversation the clear intimation of future
remediless danger, from which one course only — that of belief
in Christ — can save the world. Christ knew that Nicode
mus was a Pharisee. Even the author of the " Two Dis.-
ccurses " admits that the Jews at the time of Christ, and par
ticularly the Pharisees, did believe in future punishment,
though he thinks they got their faith from Alexandria, and not
from the Old Testament, But for this matter, it made no dif
ference where Nicodemus got his faith in future punishment ;
he evidently must have had it, and Christ must have known
that he had it, and must have known whether it was true or
false, and must have known that if it were false it ought to be
rebuked, — and yet, in the face of all this knowledge, he tells
him that if he is not born again he must perish. Now we
may call Christ incoherent, or poetical, or what we please, but
unless we call him dishonest, I think we must, under these
circumstances, admit that he did intend to encourage (cer-.
tainly did not intend to discourage) the faith of Nicodemus —
as a Pharisee — in future punishment.
Significant also are the words of the Samaritans of She-
chem when, after Christ had preached there two days, subse
quent to his interview with the woman at Jacob's well, they
said : " Now we believe — for we have heard him ourselves,
and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the
world." (John 4: 42) Had he not taught them, then, that
the world was lost without him, and so far as it should
withhold faith in him ?
The next record (John 5 : 1-47) is at the pool of Bethesda,
where Jesus healed the infirm man on the Sabbath day. The

37
act disturbed, the Jews, who raised a tumult against him. He
seized the opportunity to address them, defending himself for
saying that God was his Father, and adding (remember that
this was a crowd of Pharisees, who believed in future punish
ment, and whose error, if Christ were a Universalist, he was
bound to rebuke) : " Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that
heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me, hath
everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, &c.
The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear
the voice of the son of God; and they that hear shall live,
&c. The hour is coming hi 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 ; and they that
have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation." Now, as
I said before, we may call this poetry, or we may call it prose,
but if we call it the sincere utterance of an honest voice, we
are driven to believe that our Lord himself believed and
taught the future puuishment of the wicked.
Next comes the sermon on the mount. (Matt. 5 : 1 — 8 :. 1,,
and Luke 6 : 20-49.) Throughout, — especially when you
interpret it in the necessary recollection of the fact that Christ
Avas speaking to those who had been trained to believe in
future punishment, and must therefore have been predisposed
knnterpret his language into coincidence with that belief, — this.
sermon is veined by thoughts that look and lean that way..
The opening beatitudes, in their glorious promise of comfort
and heaven for the possessors of the virtues which they cata
logue, perpetually intimate a darker alternative for those whoi
lack them. The remark that saving righteousness must ex
ceed the strict, technical yet hollow righteousness of the
Scribes and Pharisees, in order to secure admission to heaven,.
certainly has no look like that of censure for their faith of
hell for the wicked. So all those striking precepts which
affirm and reaffirm the need of a more thorough and genuine-
excellence of character than that which the Pharisees pos-
4

38
sessed, would naturally heighten their old impression of the
uncertainty of future salvation. Then the distinct command,
" Enter ye in at the narrow gate,* — for wide is the gate and
broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there
be which go in thereat; because narrow is the gate and narrow
the way that leadeth unto life, and/ew there be that find it " —
contains — most of all to that audience — the unmistakable
announcement of our Saviour's belief in the future punish
ment of the wicked. And that revelation is confirmed by
the illustrations that follow : of the burning of fruitless
trees, of the exclusion from the kingdom of heaven of those
who merely say, " Lord, Lord ; " and by the fearful, final
image of the dreadful ruin of the house that was not founded
on a rock.
Next in chronological order occurs the healing of the cen
turion's servant, with the Saviour's remark, — called out by the
faith which he, as a Gentile, exhibited beyond any yet seen in
Israel, — "I say unto you that many shall come from the east
and west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the children of the
kingdom shall be cast into outer darkness — there shall be
weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matt. 8 : 11-13.) Doubt
less, modern ingenuity can explain this text into some refer
ence consistent with the system of Universalism. But the
real question is, What did those to whom Christ made the
remark understand by it, and how did he mean them to under
stand it, — questions whose honest answer cannot fail to give
us the passage.
Next on the record (Matt. 11 : 20-30) are those words of
upbraiding in which Christ reproached " the cities wherein
most of his mighty works were done," because they repented

* Tr/c arevTK nvtys- This adjective, oTcwf, is the epithet which Herodotus
uses (B. 7. 223) to describe that narrow and difficult pass in a rugged and
mountainous country where Leonidas fell at Thermopylas.

39
not. They are vague in their anathema, yet, as I conceive,
it must have been impossible to dissever them, in the minds
of the listening Jews, from distinct reference to the doom of
hell. Next (Mark 3 : 20-30) is the healing of the demoniac, fol
lowed by the blasphemy of the Scribes and Pharisees, and the
Saviour's consequent declaration : " Verily I say unto you, all
sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies
wherewith soever they shall blaspheme; but he that shall
blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but
is in danger of eternal damnation. And whosoever speaketh a
word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him : but who
soever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven
him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come" Does
this sound like the language which an honest Universalist
would utter in the ears of those whom he knew mistakenly
believed in future endless punishment, and whom he wished to
convert from that error to its opposite truth ?
Next (Luke 11 : 37-54) comes the discourse called out by
his dining with a Pharisee, and the discussion that followed,
in reference to their ceremonial rites. What does Christ say
now, when he expressly takes it upon him to rebuke and
denounce their errors : " Wo unto you, Pharisees, for ye tithe
mint and rue, and all manner of herbs, and pass over judg
ment and the love of God " ? Does he rebuke their belief in
future punishment as an error ? Hear him : " Fear him,
which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell, yea,
I say unto you, fear him." " He that denieth me before men,
shall be denied before the angels of God." " Except ye repent,
ye shall all likewise perish."
Next (Matt. 13 : 24-53 ; Mark 4: 26-34) we have the par
able of the tares, with its interpretation, ending, " As therefore
the tares are gathered and burned in the fire ; so shall it be in
the end of this world. The Son of Man shall send forth his
angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things

40
that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them
into a furnace of fire : there shall be wailing and gnashing of
teeth." Take away, now, as much as you please of the
drapery of this, and put it to the account of the rhetorical ten
dencies of Jesus, can you make it the doctrine of a Univer
salist ? Must there not remain, underneath all drapery, the
honest, earnest purpose to excite the sinner to alarm with refer
ence to the future ?
So also, on the same occasion, explaining his parable of the
net with the bad fish thrown away, Christ says : " So shall it
be at the end of the world : the angels shall come forth, and
sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them
into the furnace of fire : there shall be wailing and gnashing of
teeth." Next, we come to 'Christ's sending forth his twelve apostles
to teach and to preach throughout Judea. We have seen, that,
so far as the record shows, he has never yet intimated to those
apostles that the belief of the endless punishment of the
wicked in the future world which, as Jews, they had previously
held, was an erroneous one ; but, on the contrary, has always
encouraged it, and intimated that it was his own. And now
that he formally sends them out as Christian teachers, enu
merating the doctrines which he desires them to preach every
where, is Universalism one of them ? There is certainly no
precept to them to teach it. But we find more than one dis
tinct reference to its opposite as being truth. He exhorts them
— in allusion to the perils that might encompass them — " Fear
not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul :
but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and
body in hell" (Matt. 10: 28) ; and encourages them by the as
surance that "he that endureth to the end shall be saved."
(Matt. 10: 22).
We have, s.oon after this, the detail of a discourse of some
length in the synagogue at Capernaum (John 6: 22-71),
in which, in answer to repeated inquiries, our Saviour de-

41
velops his views in regard to human salvation. Yet here he
says nothing of Universalism, but everywhere guards his
words as if hell threatened all men, and deliverance from it
could only be obtained through faith in him : " Labor for that
rest which endureth unto everlasting life." " Every one which
seeth the Son and believeth on him, may have everlasting
life." " Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath
eternal life : and I will raise him up at the last day." And
when many of his disciples called this " an hard saying," and
murmured at it, Jesus did not relieve their dissatisfaction by
preaching any less distasteful doctrine, but reaffirmed his
words, and let them go. And they " walked no more with
him." .
Not long after this, Jesus said unto his disciples : " If any
man Avill come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his
cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose
it : and whosoever will lose his life for my sake, shall find it.
For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world
and lose his own soul : or what shall a man give in exchange
for his soul?" (Matt. 16 : 24-26.) From one whose previous
teaching had been what we have seen Christ's to be, to those
whose previous training had been what we are constrained to
believe that of the disciples was, how unmistakably does this
imply, and rest its whole weight upon, the doctrine of an eter
nal hell.
We next (Matt. 18 : 1-35) come to the account given of
the strife among the disciples which should be greatest in the
kingdom of heaA'en, and the rebuke of Jesus, who took a little
child and said, " Except ye be converted and become as little
children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of hesrven," add
ing, subsequently, the recommendation to avoid every obstacle
in the way of salvation, and even urging to cut off the mem
bers of the body if they cause to sin, — since it is better to en
ter maimed into eternal life, than " to be cast into everlasting
fire." 4*

42
A second time (Luke 10 : 1-16) Christ sent forth his fol
lowers — now the seventy — to teach and to preach, and in his
commission again he instructed them to exhibit the danger of
refusing to repent, and declared that Capernaum, for its neglect
of his word, should be " thrust down to hell."
We next find him reproving the unbelieving Jews at Jerusa
lem (John 8 : 12-59), and saying, " Ye shall die in your sins :
whither I go, ye cannot come," — an utterance which, to their
ears, inevitably predicted eternal punishment.
Our next record (Luke 13 : 22-35) is of Christ's answer to
one who came to him as he was journeying for the last
time toward Jerusalem, and, as if to draw him out on this
very point, in controversy among us, said : " Lord, are there
few that be saved " ? His remarkable answer was : " Strive to
enter in at the narrow gate : for many, I say unto you, will seek
to enter in, and shall not be able," and then he goes on to picture
the scene, at the end of time, when bad men shall knock at the
door of heaven for admission, only to get the answer : " Depart
from me, all ye workers of iniquity ; there shall be weeping and
gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you
yourselves thrust out." Strip this of all its poetry, if it has
any ; does it look like the honest attempt of an honest Univer
salist to preach Universalism to the Jews who believed in
future punishment as an imported Alexandrian error?
Next in order (Luke 16 : 19-31) we have the parable of
Lazarus and the rich man, in which Christ, for the purpose
of illustration, seizes hold of the current Jewish idea of sheol,
and pictures Lazarus as entering the portion assigned to the
good, and. the rich man sinking into its scorching depths, and
thus vividly depicts the contrasted results of worldliness and
piety; without indeed affirming any thing with reference to the
accuracy of this imagery, yet most certainly, in general, sanc
tioning the current Jewish idea of the impossibility of the
restoration of the wicked.

43
Next, in the account of the rich young man (Matt. 19 : 16-
30; Mark 10 : 17-31), we find Jesus remarking upon the ex
treme improbability of the salvation of the rich, and to their
astonished query, how, then, anybody could be saved, replying
that " with God all things are possible."
So in the parable of the wicked husbandmen (Matt. 21 :
33-46; Mark 12: 1-12; Luke 20: 9-19) we find Christ strongly
urging the idea that those who reject him must be forever
lost : " he will miserably destroy those wicked men." And he
then (Matt. 22: 1-14) presses the same idea in the parable of
the marriage of the king's son, where the man who presented
himself without a wedding garment was bound hand and foot
and taken away and cast into outer darkness : Avhere shall be
weeping and gnashing of teeth, "for many are called, but few
are chosen."
On the same day we find Christ (Matt. 23: 13-39) de
nouncing the Pharisees and their opinions. But, even now,
he does not denounce their belief in the eternal punishment of
the wicked, does not intimate that it is an error ; but, on the
contrary, after rebuking their formality and hypocrisy, he thun
ders out : " Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye
escape the damnation of hell."
We come now (Matt. 24 : 43 — 25 : 46) to Christ's prediction
of the judgment-day, to which he was led by a natural transi
tion from his announcement of the impending destruction of
Jerusalem. And here he says, in preliminary parable, that
the unwatchful and unprofitable servants shall be cast " into
outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of
teeth ; " and then draws the picture of the great last tribunal ;
all nations gathered ; the angels attending ; the Judge on the
throne; the righteous on the right hand accepted, and the
Judge saying to those on the left, " Depart from me, ye cursed,
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels ; "
summing up by the observation : " These shall go away into
xolaoiv alwiov (punishment everlasting) ; but the righteous into
Ijnrjv aiamov (life everlasting.")

44
Of this adjective alanog, — here used to bound and descrfoe
both the life of the good and the punishment of the bad, — it
is enough in this connection to say, that, whatever may be its
possible constructions, our special concern is with its sense as
used by the writers of the New Testament.
There are seventy-two passages where it is employed in the
New Testament, and in four instances it is loosely used as an
adjective describing long past events, as where it is translated
(2 Tim. 1 : 9) " before the world began," &c. ; in two instances
it is used to represent a complete eternity, without beginning or
end, — once of God, and once of Christ ; in eight instances it
refers to an eternal future, as " the things which are not seen
are eterrral " (2 Cor. 4 : 18) ; in seven instances it is applied
to the future of Christ's kingdom, as (2 Peter 1 : 11), " The
everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ " ;
in forty-four instances it describes the unending life of the
good, and in the remaining seven instances it similarly de
scribes the unending death of the wicked. There is absolutely
no indication, in its New Testament use, that, in the passage
under consideration, or any similar one, it was intended to
include any limit to its significance. And, whatever that sig
nificance may be, it is clear that Christ here attaches it both
to the life of the good and the death of the bad ; so that if
one is limited, the other must be also.
In his conversation with the disciples, after the institution
of the Lord's supper, before they went out to Gethsemane,
the Saviour —7 still referring to the doctrine which he had
found in existence among the Jews, and which his teaching
had never assailed, but often strengthened — declared to them,
" If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and
is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the
fire, and they are burned." (John 15 : 6.) And in the prayer
which followed, he said of them, " none of them is lost, but
(Judas) the son of perdition" — is lost; of whom a little
while before he had affirmed, that " it had been good for that

45
man if he had not been born," — language which it seems
impossible to justify, if the feet of the apostate, after never so
weary a pilgrimage through perdition, are, at last, to stand on
the golden pavement of heaven.
On his way to the cross, Christ told the daughters of Jeru
salem that the days are coming when the unbelieving shall
try in vain to hide under the hills and behind the mountains,
from the vengeance of God. (Luke 23 : 30.)
And after his resurrection, as he was about to ascend up
where he was before, we find him reaffirming the entire teach
ing of his life on this subject, in the final command to his dis
ciples : " Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to
every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be
saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned." (Mark 16 :
15, 16.)
And John (20 : 31) afterward, summing up the whole matter,
says of his record of the teachings of the Saviour, " These are
written, that ye (all future generations) might believe that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing ye
might have life, through his name," which, is itself an assertion
of his undoubting faith that eternal life is possible only to
those who escape eternal death by faith in the mercy of God
through the crucified one ; — and yet John was the beloved and
intimate disciple, who must be supposed thoroughly to know,
and faithfully to report, the views of his great Master.
Such are the words of Jesus upon the question before us.
They are all the words of his which are recorded, bearing directly
upon it. They are all on one side of that question. They
settle the aspect of Christianity toAvard it. Not one of them
— when we remember that they were uttered to those who be
lieved in future eternal punishment, and Avhom, if wrong in
that belief, it must have been his first great desire to correct
in reference to it — is even susceptible of ambiguity. They
are scattered through all his active years, journeys, teachings.
They increase in solemn earnestness as he drew near the end

46
of his career. They culminate their distinctness and their
strength, in his final words to his disciples. If any man can
prove, from the New Testament, that Jesus Christ was a
Universalist, by the same process he may prove, from their
writings and history, that George Washington was a monarch
ist and a traitor, and Benedict Arnold a true man and a
patriot. III. Let us pass, in the briefest manner, to the consideration
of the teachings of the apostles on this subject.
We may well infer what they would be. The stream can
not rise higher than its fountain. If Christ recognized and
reaffirmed, again and again, the existing Jewish doctrine that
the persistently bad will be eternally punished hereafter, it is
not very probable that we shall find the apostles reversing his
teaching and uttering Universalism. Nor, on the other
hand, since the future punishment of the wicked was one of
the few doctrines upon which they and the Jews were agreed,
shall we be likely to find it much dwelt upon by them, except
in the way of occasional urgency of argument. Let us glance
at the record.
It is obvious, on the very face of the Acts and the Epistles,
that the great idea of Christianity, as a scheme of salvation
through Christ, was the burden of apostolic preaching ; which
implies the faith, on their part, that out of Christ man cannot
escape perdition. Peter's sermon at Pentecost presses the
point, that " whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall
be saved." (Acts 2: 21). And when, a few days after, he
addressed the people, after the healing of the lame man (Acts
3 : 23), he declared : " And it shall come to pass that every
soul which will not hear that prophet (Jesus) shall be destroyed
from among the people." And when (4: 12) he subsequently
spoke to the Sanhedrim, he said of Christ : " Neither is there
salvation in any other; for there is none other name under
heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." And
so, when, visiting Cornelius by divine command, he had

' 47
preached Christ to him, he says it was (Acts 11 : 14) that he
and all his house might " be saved ; " and then we read that
all the apostles and brethren glorified God because, contrary
to their first expectation, He had now visibly granted unto the
Gentiles also " repentance unto life."
Some five years after, we find Paul gone on a mission into
Asia Minor. At Antioch, in Pisidia (Acts 13: 14-50), he
preached to the people salvation through Christ, accompanied
with this warning, if they rejected him : " Beware, therefore,
lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets ;
behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish, &c." So, on the
next Sabbath, he preached to " almost the whole city," and,
when the Jews contradicted and blasphemed, Paul said :
" Seeing ye put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of
everlasting life, lo ! we turn to the Gentiles; " and then follows
the record, of the Gentiles there : " As many as were ordained
to eternal life believed."
Here comes in Paul's Epistle to the Galatians. Of this he
devotes a portion to an earnest persuasion to them to lay hold
upon the life and hope of the Gospel, saying — as an argument
why they should " walk after the spirit " — of those Avho were
guilty of the sins of the flesh (5 : 21), " Of the which I tell you
before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which
do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God," and
adding the solemn warning (6 : 7), " Be not deceived; God is
not mocked. For Avhatsoever a man soweth that shall he also
reap ; for he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap cor
ruption, but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap
life everlasting."
So in his first epistle to the Thessalonians (5 : 9), he en
courages believers by saying: " God hath not appointed us to
wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Chrisr'
And in the second epistle, which soon followed, he makes it a
special point to urge the danger of future punishment as an
argument, declaring (1 : 8, 9) that " the Lord Jesus shall be

48
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, who shall be punished with
everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from
the glory of his power;" adding, further on (2: 12), the as
sertion of God's pleasure that " they all might be damned who
believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
About A. D. 57, Paul first writes to the Corinthians. In
the course of his letter — denouncing certain false teachers,
and the fruits of their instructions — he says (6: 9, 10),
" Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the king
dom of God ? Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idola
ters, nor adulterers, &c. shall inherit the kingdom of God."
Some two years after, Paul writes to the Romans. It is
impossible here to do justice to the strength with which the
apostle, through that whole epistle, asserts, directly and indi
rectly, the doctrine of future punishment. It begins by a
dark picture of heathen vice, and then accuses the Jews of
similar guilt, saying (2: 3-9), " Thinkest thou this, O man,
that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same,
that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? or despisest
thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long suf
fering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth (was
intended to lead) thee to repentance ? But, after thy hardness
and impenitent heart, treasurest up unto thyself wrath against
the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of
God ; 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 ; but unto them that
are contentious and do not obey the truth, but obey unright
eousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish,
upon every soul of man that doeth evil ; of the Jew first, and
also of the Gentile." He then adds : " There is no respect of
persons with God ; for as many as have sinned without law
shall also perish without law ; and as many as have sinned in

49
the law shall be judged by the law." So, further on (3 : 5),
he asks, "Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance?" and
answers, " God forbid ! for then how shall God judge the
world?" And (chap. 5) he urges that God especially mani
fests his love in the fact, that, " while we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us," that we may be " saved from wrath through
him"; adding the assurance, that Christ's atonement is as
broad in its possibilities and offers of salvation as Adam's of
fence was in its entailment of condemnation : " Therefore as
by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to con
demnation, even so by the righteousness of one the free gift
came upon all men unto justification of life," — so that though
the impenitent, as a matter of fact, will eternally die, it is yet
possible for all men, if they would, to exercise penitence, and
gain everlasting life. A little further on he refers again to the
same familiar truth (6 : 21-23), " For the end of those things
(iniquities) is death. But now, being made free from sin, &'c,
ye have your end, everlasting life; for the wages- of sin is
death, &c." ; and again (8 : 13) he reminds them : " If ye live
after the flesh, ye shall die"; and again (9: 22) he speaks of
wicked men as " vessels of wrath fitted to destruction."
Some six or eight years after this, while in custody at
Rome, Paul writes his epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians,
Philippians, and Hebrews, to Philemon, and the second to
Timothy, all teaching no other doctrine than that so often be
fore affirmed; and which is, on fit occasions, reaffirmed in
them. Thus, to the Ephesians he said (5 : 5), of certain no
torious offenders, that no such person " hath any inheritance in
the kingdom of Christ and of God," and adds r " Let no man
deceive you with vain words, for because of these things cora-
eth the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience."
And to the Philippians, he says of the enemies of the cross
of Christ (3 : 19), " whose end is destruction." And to the
Hebrews (10 : 26, 27) : " If we sin wilfully after that we have
received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more
5

50
sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment
and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries."
So much for the testimony of Paul. With his intense devo
tion to that Saviour whom he saw " as one born out of due
time," we knew that he could not be a Universalist, and we
have found that he was not one, but that he lost no proper
opportunity to warn men, as his Master had, to flee from the
wrath to come.
The epistles of Peter and James and. Jude, and the writings of
John, remain. They all bear deep the same stamp of Christ's
doctrine. Peter says (2 Pet. 2 : 4, 9), " God spared not the
angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered
them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment,"
and " the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temp
tation, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be
punished ; " and again he declares (3:7): " the heavens and the
earth which are hoav, by the same word are kept in store, re
served unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of
ungodly men." James declares (5 : 20) that, " He which convert-
eth a sinner from the error of his ways, shall save a soul from
death ; " Jude (6, 7) repeats Peter's testimony in reference
to the doom of the fallen angels, and testifies that the sinners
of the old world are " set forth as an example, suffering the
vengeance of eternal fire," and says (13) of corrupt church-
members that they are " wandering stars to whom is reserved
the blackness of darkness forever." And John, in the Apoca
lypse (14: 11), says of the wicked: " And the smoke of their
torment ascendeth up forever and ever, and they have no rest
day nor night," and testifies of " that great city the holy Jeru
salem," that there shall "in nowise enter into it any thing that
defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a
lie ; but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life,"
and describes the law: of the future world. as being (22: 11),
" He that is unjust,. let him be unjust still; and he which is

51 «
filthy, let him be filthy still ; and he that is righteous, let him
be righteous still ; and he that is 'holy, let him be holy still."
Such — if my success has equalled my intent — is a per
fectly fair and honest digest of the opinions and precepts of
those who taught by inspiration, after Christ ascended, upon
the subject under discussion. I have not dwelt much upon
those precepts, or attempted to quote largely from them, be
cause I only desired to show that they did not depart from the
position of the Great Master. We have seen what that was,
and now see that it was theirs also.
Here I rest our inquiries from the Word of God. We have
found that the Old Testament, with as much of distinctness
as could be expected when its progressive adaptation to the
advancing training of the Hebrew nation is considered, does
reveal a difference between the eternal condition of the good
and the bad. We have seen, from the unquestioned testimony
of Josephus, that the Jewish nation, — holding this Old Testa
ment, and studying it with reverence, — with the exception of
the few infidel Sadducees, had acquired, at the time when
Christ came, a firm belief in the doctrine of the future eternal
punishment of the wicked. We have seen that Christ never
contradicted that belief ; but, on the contrary, appealed to it
perpetually as an argument why men should repent and exer
cise faith in himself, as the Saviour of the world. We have
seen that he closed his earthly ministry by commissioning his
disciples to go into all the world and preach to every creature
the Gospel which they had received from his lips, concentrating
once more its essence into that formula which asserts, " he that
believeth not shall be damned." We have seen that those disci
ples went and preached as he had commanded; their voice being
clear as his had been in the assertion, that eternal perdition must
be the portion of those who persist in rejecting the love of God
in Christ to the end of their life on earth. This gives us the
voice of the whole Bible. From the threat of God to Adam
that he should die if he disobeyed, on its first page, to the

52
t
prophetic word of his apostle, excluding unworthy men from
heaven, on its last, that voice is clear, strong, one. It testifies
that all who are inveterate in disobedience shall be forever
separated from God and from the good. It states this as a
fact. It does not apologize for it, nor philosophize about it ;
it reveals it as a matter of fact which it is of consequence
for men to know.
I say it reveals it. I know this is denied. But I insist that
it cannot be denied, except on that false principle of interpre
tation which would make the Bible merely pliant to the
pleasure of the interpreter. All sound principles of interpre
tation affirm eternal punishment for the sinner impenitent as
its revelation. To refer to those which have been laid down
in this discourse, — we cannot cull all pleasant passages which
point toward heaven, and reject all others as " uninspired,"
and so evade it, for we must take the whole of the Bible, or
none of it, and, as a whole, it affirms this doctrine. The self-
consistence of the Scriptures asserts it ; light streaming back
upon all that is obscure in the Old Testament from the blaz
ing words of Jesus in the New. It is the obvious sense of the
sacred volume ; nobody ever naturally read Universalism out
of the Bible. We find it revealed progressively, just as we
should expect from such a progressive volume. The common-
sense version of the words of the Bible, that which all their sur
roundings of time and place necessitate, asserts it. Its ob
scurity and fearfulness are only such as are reasonable, when
we remember the necessary infiniteness and obscurity of the
subject to which it relates. And as between it and the, doc
trine of Universalism, in those few passages where any doubt
seems possible, we are constrained to interpret the Bible
toward its enunciation, because it favors God most and sin
least to warn the sinner of a wrath to come, and not hold out
to him the hope of eternal impunity as a bounty on transgres
sion ; because the incalculable majority of those who have
loved God and been warmest in sympathy with him, and have

53
walked nearest to him and been most led by his Spirit, and
have therefore been likeliest to be right, have firmly believed it ;
and it offers, beyond question, the safest alternative of faith.
He who believes that the wicked will be punished eternally,
and exercises faith in Christ, so as not to " come into condem
nation," will be eternally safe, even should the future world
reveal that his faith was vain and there is no hell ; while he
who interprets the Bible toward Universalism must be lost,
unless his own belief shall bear the test of the Judgment. The
one cannot be lost in any event, while the other runs a risk
whose vastness may well make any man tremble. I claim,
therefore, on all reasonable grounds, the testimony of the
Bible as distinctly this : there will be a fearful and eternal
difference between the future of the righteous and the wicked !
Thus, then, I sum up our argument.
1. Reason is first and final arbiter on the question whether
it is reasonable to believe that the wicked will be punished
eternally. 2. She decides that, alone, she cannot grasp and settle so
great a question, and needs help.
3. She decides that she may expect that help from God.
4. She decides that he has offered that help in the Bible.
5. She decides, that, coming to her as the Bible comes, and
such in itself as it is, it is reasonable for her to take its testi
mony fairly made out on the question at issue, and — if it
asserts that the wicked will be punished eternally — to believe
it. 6. She decides that its testimony will be fairly made out
when she takes it as a whole, rejecting nothing ; in its self-
consistent, obvious, common-sense aspect; as a progressive
record ; in which obscurity is to be anticipated (as to the young
mathematician in the Principia of Newton, — but not because
it is false) ; and so interpreted as to favor God most, to win
most the assent of all good men, and to be safest for all men.

54
7. She decides that the Bible, so interpreted, does reveal
that those who die in sin will be punished forever.
8. Therefore, she decides that the doctrine of the future
endless punishment of those who die impenitent, is,, in the
highest degree and on the soundest basis of reason, a doctrine
reasonable to be believed. So she makes the voice of the
Bible her verdict.
And when she is pressed, on this side and on that, by diffi
culties and objections, her reply is, I am not careful to an
swer thee in this matter, — this is a world where we see
through, a glass darkly, and necessarily know but in part ;
and because you can ask questions which puzzle me, I will
not therefore let go of those great, fundamental principles
which bid me to expect queries unanswerable, now while I
yet cling fast to the eternal word of God. It is more reason
able for me to take the Bible and obey it, with these queries
unanswered, than to make myself wretched by rejecting it be
cause of them, — only to throw myself upon a thousand others
more torturing still.
Brethren ! is not this sound reason ? Will you not accept it
as such ? Will you not shape your faith and life by its de
cision ?
I desire to speak with utmost respect of all who hold doc
trines differing from my own. And it is without the slightest
intention of disrespect to any that I beg you never, for one
moment, to entertain the idea that it is possible for you to be
honest Universalists and consistent believers in the Bible
as a revelation from God. Many — like Theodore Parker*
* Mr. Parker says (Discourse of Religion, 4th edition, pp. 239-243), in
discussing the imperfections of Jesus : " He considers God so imperfect as to
damn the majority of men to eternal torment. Beside God he places a Devil
absolutely evil, the adversary of God and enemy of man. Hell is eternal,
and the wide road thereto is travelled well  These must believe that he
is the Messiah, and confess him before men, or suffer eternal torment 
It is vain to deny, or attempt to conceal, the errors in his doctrine — a re-

5f
and Thomas Paine — have already perceived and announced
that conclusion. The day must come when all will do the
same, " renouncing the hidden things of dishonesty, not
walking in craftiness, nor handling the Word of God deceit
fully." The world will be divided by a line — which has not
yet been sharply drawn — severing between those who hold,
and those who openly reject, the Bible as God's revelation to
man ; when those who hold it will hold it in its obvious and
honest sense, and those whose rationalistic tendencies lead
them to withdraw from it their faith will launch out boldly
upon the ocean of human speculation, leaving the Divine chart
avowedly behind. Then, to believe in the Bible will be to be
lieve that what it says — about future punishment, as well as
other things — is true.
As I love you, and long for your well-being here and beyond
the grave, I ask for no better thing for us all than that we may
believe the Bible, and the whole Bible, and follow all its teach
ings, which are able to make us wise unto salvation. I ask
this not as being a discourtesy to, but rather the very highest
recognition of, reason as the guide of life, for I believe, with a
great father of mental philosophy* that " reason is natural rev
elation, whereby the eternal Father of light and fountain of
all knowledge communicates to mankind that portion of truth
which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties, —
revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discov
eries communicated by God immediately, which reason reaches
the truth of, by the testimony and proofs it gives that they
come from God. So that he that takes away reason to make
way for revelation, puts out the light of both, and does much-
what the same as if he would persuade a man to put out his
vengeful God, a Devil absolutely evil, an eternal hell, &c. &c." To get clear
of this, Mr. Parker rejects the Bible. So did Thomas Paine, — (see Age of
Reason, 1st edition, Part I. p. 18, and passim).
* Locke, Essay on Human Understanding, (Book IV. c. XIX. sec. 4).

^6
eyes, the better to receive the remote light of an invisible star
by a telescope."
O most merciful Father, who by the glorious ministration of
the Spirit hast given us a clear revelation of thy will in the
gospel of thy Son : we beseech thee to enlighten our minds,
that we may rightly understand it and duly value it, and frame
our lives according to it, to thine honor and glory j through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.