CHAPTER XXXVII.

A RIGHTEOUS RETRIBUTION IN THE WORLD TO COME, BUT NO LITERAL ETERNITY OF TORMENT FOR ANY

CREATED BEING.

The Dogma of Eternal Penal Suffering too often Treated by Writers and Thinkers with Levity or Bigotry.-Denial of the Doctrine by Origen, John Foster, Erskine, Stanley, Farrar, and many other Eminent Scholars.-The Solemn Impressiveness of the Subject has led their Minds to this Conclusion.-The Idea of Punishment in the Sense of Arbitrary Infliction by the Divine Government not to be Thought of.— In Human Governments such Infliction comes Solely from the Necessity of Social Self-Defense.-Freedom from the Body and its Passions, by Death, is no Aid to Repentance and Spiritual Renovation.-The Full Identity and Continuity of the Soul and the Laws of its Moral Being remain Undisturbed.—God's Discipline, Loving, not Malignant, is Prolongedly and Severely Merciful. - Christ's Wisdom in not foretelling all the Divine Plan.-The Meaning of the word "Eternal," or Everlasting," as used by him, is "Age-Long," or "As Long as Sin Lasts."As in This Life, so in That Beyond, Suffering, in Accordance with God's Purposes, may Exist until Sin is Purged Away, and Happiness is thus Finally Attained.

By Rev. A. P. PEABODY, D.D., LL.D., Professor in Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

It is greatly to be regretted that punishment in the future life has become of late the subject of the same sort of discussion that prevails on topics of less sacred interest. It demands, indeed, serious inquiry from religious students and thinkers; while it is by no means an edifying theme, even from the pulpit, for very much the same reason for which lectures on the penal code of municipal law would be of no use to law-abiding citizens, and would hardly exert a beneficial influence on those inclined to evil. In recent discussions on this subject I have been disgusted and repelled, on

the one hand, by the levity of those who have written about it as if it were a great boon to have the weight of moral responsibility lifted from their shoulders, and as if it were lifted by the denial of a dogma which the better part of Christendom has virtually outgrown, and, on the other hand, by the uncompromising and gloomy bigotry with which the vanguard of orthodoxy have clung to that dogma, attaching the same vital importance to the wrath of the Almighty which St. John attaches to his love, whereas the very word wrath, though employed in our translation of the Scriptures, has since that translation was made taken on a meaning of malignant and vindictive passion, which by no means represents the righteous indignation, not incompatible with love, ascribed to the Supreme Being by the sacred writers, and justly felt by the best of men for willing and stubborn depravity. In point of fact, the denial of the eternity of penal suffering has, in numerous instances in the Christian Church, sprung from intensely solemn views of the divine retribution. This was the case with Origen, among the Christian fathers, with John Foster, by far the greatest name among the English Baptists, with McLeod and Erskine, of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, as also with Stanley and Farrar, of the English Church, and with not a few of their eminent coevals in our own country. It is one thing to suppose that a merciful God dooms myriads of his creatures to everlasting torment, and quite another to regard moral evil in the human soul as anything else than a calamity, dire and, it may be, enduring, beyond human imagination.

Let us consider the subject, first, in the light of consciousness and experience, and then in that presented by our Saviour and by those most intimately conversant with his teachings and spirit.

At the outset, I would dismiss the idea of punishment in the sense of arbitrary infliction. I cannot conceive of this under the divine government. Its necessity in human governments results solely from the necessity of social self-defense; and the humane sentiment of our age spurns vindictiveness in punishment, and at least professes to inflict only such restraint, privation, and suffering as

may be required either to arrest the criminal's vicious career or to deter others from following in his steps. Under the government of a Supreme Father punishment can be nothing else than the natural and necessary consequence of sin. Now what is the inevitable consequence of moral evil? In the sinner's own soul it is suffering, and nothing but suffering. No man ever has a clear consciousness of guilt without regret, self-loathing, inward pain,-if the guilt be great, without intense and prolonged agony. This, indeed, may be kept at bay by virtual alienation from one's self, by seeking refuge from self-communion in secular pursuits or sensual pleasures, by turning the key on one's own consciousness and on the higher realm of the selfhood which enshrines it, and living wholly on a lower plane, as one might live if he had no moral nature. Yet in such a career self-recollection is sometimes forced upon one by a break in the outward life, by illness or calamity, or by the decay of the powers of activity and enjoyment; and at such intervals we have reason to suppose that unrepented guilt is a source of unspeakable torment. Remorse and despair are almost mutually convertible terms.

Now death is a permanent break in the outward life. For him. who wakes immortal from the death-slumber there can be no intervening obstacle to full and entire self-consciousness. The soul must be its own inseparable companion. What then must it be to carry into the life to come passions that can no longer seek their low gratification, dispositions alien from God and heaven, a moral constitution which is in itself mean and vile, and which no longer has the covert of the body into which one may retreat from selfconverse, and thus forget that he deserves to be loathed and scorned? Need we the array of oriental imagery to make that condition ineffably appalling? Nay, is not the strongest material imagery inadequate to represent the dire spiritual reality?

That this is no mere fancy I think that we can all feel, when we are reminded how comparatively slight wrongs and sins will rankle in the memory, and re-appear after months and years, connecting

themselves with threads of association which we cannot break, and prophesying the time when our whole past shall hear the resurrec tion call, the entire record of memory shall be opened, and we shall be constrained to judge ourselves according to the things written in that book.

But it may be asked-must not the hour of awakening from death and of unobstructed self-consciousness be, of necessity, an epoch of repentance and spiritual renovation? This question we may answer, perhaps, from earthly experience. Here remorse is not penitence. The profoundest sense of guilt does not wash it away. Nor yet do the severest chastisements always or often avail for the cleansing of the deeply guilty soul. Sin has within itself a law of continuity. "Whosoever committeth sin," says Jesus, "is the slave of sin," forfeits his freedom, loses his power of self-help, and for very weakness continues to be what he loathes to be. Who can dare to affirm that this law of spiritual being ceases at death? If identity be retained, I cannot conceive that mere remorse can be of greater avail in renovating and reforming the soul on its entrance into the life beyond death than it has been in this world. How many obdurate sinners have had every conceivable motive to repentance urged upon them, every mode of spiritual influence exerted upon them, in vain! The resources of the divine mercy are inexhaustibly rich, and we cannot but hope that they will ultimately prevail over every stubborn and every inert will. But is there anything in earthly experience to authorize the belief that this conquest will be prompt and easy? Does not what we know here point for the obdurately impenitent to a discipline, merciful indeed, yet rendered by the necessity of their own guilt, in the strongest sense of the term, severely merciful?

Indeed, I cannot but think of punishment in consequence of sin as mercy, as the expression of God's love. If there is intrinsic excellence, beauty, loveliness, in virtue, I know not how it is to be labeled for man as possessing these characteristics, except by his full experience of the loathsomeness and deformity of its opposite.