CHAPTER XXII. PUNISHMENT IS UNENDING, BUT THE NUMBER OF THE HOPELESSLY A CHRISTIAN PROBATION BEFORE THE FINAL AWARDS. Promise of a Better Future, or the Complete Triumph of God's Kingdom, set forth in the Scriptures.-Punishment not a Means of Reformation, but God's Vindication.The Loss of Existence to the Incorrigibly Wicked is not Extinction, but Loss of that Spiritual Life for which Man was Constituted.-No one will be Doomed to Eternal Punishment who, under Clearer Knowledge and Stronger Motive, would become a Child of God.-Erroneous Theory that " wherever there is Light there is Christ."— All such Revelations as are in Nature, Conscience, Judaism, are Inferior to that of Christianity, as the Essential Gospel of Salvation.-If the Revelation of God in Christ is not given availably to Men in this Earthly Life, it may be Presented to them after Death, before their Judgment is Fixed.-The Physical Death is nowhere Affirmed in Scripture to be the End of Gracious Opportunity.-Destiny according to the Deeds done in the Body" is Predicated of those who have had the Gospel.— To this Class is also applicable the Warning that "Now is the Accepted Time," etc. -Christ's Preaching to the Spirits in Prison, and the Preaching of the Gospel to the Dead, indicate Grace beyond the Grave to the Unenlightened and Unevangelized in this Life. By Rev. GEORGE HARRIS, D.D., Professor of Christian Theology, in the Theological Seminary, THE opinions which may properly be held concerning punishment after death depend on the views taken of the significance and scope of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is necessary first, therefore, to indicate the Christian doctrine of eschatology in general, in order to determine the intent, the nature, and the conditions of punishment after death. 1. Biblical predictions of the last things. A distinctive feature of the Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testaments, is the constant looking forward to a better future, from which existing evils will be wholly absent. This better future is the consummation of the kingdom of God. The present state and progress of the kingdom are understood in the light of its destination. The teleological character of God's government is explanatory of all its movements. Believers are assured that the kingdom will triumph gloriously in spite of all oppositions. Incidental and secondary to the complete victory which is approaching will be judgment on the wicked, who will be overthrown, condemned, and punished under the wrath of God. At length the kingdom of righteousness will be supreme in fact, as it now is in idea and potency. Evil then will have no power to antagonize good, will have no object which it can hope to gain, will be impotent and self-consuming. In many cases, especially throughout the Old Testament, these triumphs are expected in the course of earthly history, in the form of temporal blessings and of political and national deliverance, but even thus are symbolic of a final triumph which is to be universal and permanent. In the New Testament, the consummation of the kingdom of Christ is represented as complete in a heavenly state, in which the individual has eternal life and takes his place in the perfected society of the redeemed. This consummation involves the failure of wickedness and also execution of the final sentence of condemnation on those who persist in opposition to the kingdom. These predictions of the last things are not concerned with the relative number of the righteous and the wicked, but with the establishment and vindication of righteousness. In importance, however, the consummation of the kingdom is first, the downfall of evil is secondary and incidental. The condemnation of the wicked is the dark shadow which is incident to the effulgence of light. We are not taught by the Bible to think of holiness as a spot of light in the midst of surrounding darkness, but we are to think of wickedness as at the last a spot of darkness in the midst of surrounding light. The object, then, of predictions concerning the last things is to explain to believers the movements, and to assure them of the triumph, of the kingdom of God, a triumph which is represented now as the full fruition of holiness, now as the final condemnation of sin, but always as complete and irreversible. Eschatology is the realization, in prophetic vision, of that teleological character which plainly belongs to the gospel of redemption, and it furnishes the perspective in which the punishment of the wicked, as well as the slow and at times retrograde movement of the kingdom, is to be considered. 2. The condemnation and impotence of wickedness are realized in the punishment of those individuals who have persisted in opposition to the kingdom of God. The nature of this punishment is determined by its reasons and object. It consists in the failure and wretchedness of all who remain perverse in opposition to God's great purpose for the redemption of men. It involves conditions of existence in essential contrast with the conditions under which God realizes the perfection of the individual in his kingdom. It is visited upon the wicked when the consummation of holiness is already gained, and as part of that consummation, not when the consummation is yet waiting till they shall be regained to holiness. At the final triumph of the kingdom of God, a point of separation is reached when there is to be no more commingling of the wicked with the righteous, and when there is no expectation that the wicked will be reclaimed. Hence the punishment which is pronounced on the wicked at the day of judgment is not prolonged suffering of a reformatory character and which will issue in the restoration of all the wicked to the kingdom of righteousness. The Biblical representations describe the judgment as the end of history, or of the world age, when wicked men still exist, upon whom punishment is visited, not as a means of reformation, but as part of the vindication and triumph of the kingdom of God. Neither is punishment the loss of existence. It is not represented in the Bible as the extinction, either instantaneous or by slow degrees, of the incorrigibly wicked. The death to which they are doomed is the loss of spiritual life, and deadness to all that is good, but not the cessation of existence. The representations of Scripture indicate the wicked as enduring actual suffering. Immortality is grounded in man's rational rather than in his religious life and is not conditioned on his moral character. Punishment is the loss of the individual to his intended uses, a loss which is accompanied with more or less of unhappiness. Sinners are lost, not in the sense that they are destroyed, or that it is not known where they are, but in the sense that they are lost to their proper uses. Thus, all sinners are lost, for their owner has not the use of them. Christ redeems or restores those who trust him to their real uses. Those who are not redeemed by Christ, but who refuse his restoring grace, are finally and hopelessly lost. Such loss, whether or not they are conscious of all its meaning, is accompanied by unhappiness, as every perversion of man's powers to wrong uses must be. It is scarcely possible to conjecture the thoughts and feelings of those whom hope, and perhaps desire, of recovery never stirs, and from whom the improving influences of a community including the good are withdrawn. There may be loss of sensitiveness, the dulling or deadening of feeling. It is not certain that acute remorse is a constant condition. The remorse depicted in Scripture at the scenes of the judgment is associated with the first discovery that the soul is lost. On the other hand, mental distress may continue unabated. Such regret as is felt seems, however, to be more at the prospect and continuance of misery than at the impossibility of recovery to holy character. I agree with nearly all who believe that punishment is unending, in the opinion that the number of the lost is relatively small. At the same time, the existence forever of any number of lost souls presents a disturbing problem which is only alleviated, but not solved, by the consideration that they are relatively few. 3. The inquiry of profoundest interest pertains to the subjects of eternal punishment. Who will be hopelessly lost? Under what conditions are human beings doomed to unending woe? They must evidently be those who are of a certain character. The separation is moral rather than local, or local only because essential moral differences produce separation in space. The lost are not all who have sinned in whatever degree. Not all sinners suffer punishment after death, for all men who attain blessedness have sinned. It may be that all who have sinned, however little, deserve unending punishment, but as matter of fact many who have sinned become. heirs of eternal life. The lost are those who have a character irrevocably established in unlikeness to God, and in enmity towards that which he requires, so that no truth nor motive can avail to change the disposition from sin to holiness. Those who are cast out from the kingdom are the incorrigible, the irreclaimable, the hopelessly impenitent. It can hardly be believed that one who under clearer knowledge and stronger motive would become a child of God will be doomed to hopeless despair. It is with the same meaning that some say, "God will do all that can be done for the salvation of every soul." This would seem to mean that the most influential motives will be addressed to all. The highest truth or motive which God brings to men is the revelation he has made of himself in Jesus Christ. He is thus revealed as a Being of great compassion, who at the cost of Christ's humiliation and sufferings seeks to save men from sin, and to form their characters after the likeness of his dear Son. The New Testament frequently affirms that no higher nor more persuasive revelation of God is to be expected. This we believe, not merely because it is so proclaimed, but because the person and work of Christ are the crowning manifestation of God's love. For this revelation, all that went before was preparatory both in Jewish and in heathen history. Those who prove incorrigible under the light and motive of the gospel are hopelessly lost. It would seem that God can do no more to awaken penitence and restore men to holiness. It may be that only under an actual knowledge somewhat in correspondence with the real truth of the gospel can character crystallize into its perma |