CHAPTER XLII.

THE PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED WILL BE EVERLASTING EXCLUSION FROM GOD'S PRESENCE, TOGETHER WITH

UTTER MISERY AND WRETCHEDNESS.

Physical Death does not End Conscious Existence, but is a Birth into a World of Eternal Realities.-It Alters the Surroundings but not the Character.-The Final Judgment, which Declares the Future of Each and All, will not take place until After the Resurrection.-The Object of this General Judgment.-Between the Death of the Body and this Great Event is an Intermediate State.-During this Interval, Christians are in Communion with their Saviour, their Condition being that of a Quiet, Joyful Anticipation of Heaven.-The Opposite State is that of the Unbeliever, passing as he does into a Dungeon, which Gives him a Foretaste of Hell. -No "Purgatory" for the Atonement of Sins, no "Second Probation" for those who have Willfully Rejected the Offer of Salvation.-The Gospel of Christ will be made Known to All Men before the Final Judgment and will constitute its Criterion.-Christ himself, more than any Apostle, Inculcated and Impressed upon Men's Minds the Certainty of Everlasting Punishment.-The Cross of Christ is Found to be a more Powerful Incentive, both to Conversion and Holiness, than the Fear of Damnation.

By Rev. AUGUSTUS SCHULTZE, President of the Moravian Theological Seminary, Bethlehem, Pa.

THE Church known as the Unitas Fratrum (Unity of the Brethren), or the Moravian Episcopal Church, is the child and heir of the ancient evangelical Church of Bohemia and Moravia, which was founded one hundred years before the Reformation of the sixteenth century and which sealed its faith in the blood of martyrdom. When the "renewed Church" was quickened into life by a gracious outpouring of the Holy Spirit, it recognized its chief mission to be that of "preaching Christ and him crucified," as a bond of union among Christians of all denominations, and of carrying the gospel of saving grace to the heathen. Hence it did not

consider it necessary or expedient to formulate a denominational creed in the sense of a complete system of theology covering every point of Christian doctrine. Its confession of faith, although very explicit and emphatic with regard to certain cardinal truths of religion, the acceptance of which is considered necessary to salvation, is exceedingly brief, not to say incomplete, with regard to other points which are held to be of minor importance, or which are regarded as "mysteries of Scripture," not sufficiently revealed to be formulated by the Church.

This principle applies particularly to questions of eschatology, and accounts for the fact that not until the last General Synod convened at Herrnhut, Saxony, in the year 1879, was the following article added to the "facts and truths clearly attested by the Holy Scriptures," viz.: "The doctrine of the Second Coming of the Lord in glory; and of the resurrection of the dead, unto life or unto condemnation." In addition to this short, positive declaration, the Results of the General Synod, in an appendix containing "points not of general importance," has the following negative injunction: “In the Brethren's Unity it is forbidden to teach either the doctrine of the final salvation of all men, or of the annihilation of the wicked, and it is hereby pointed out that no brother is justified in seeking to gain over other souls to a belief in these doctrines, which are, at all events, not clearly taught in Scripture, and the latter of which contradicts our Church manuals of doctrine."

The "Easter Morning Litany," to which the Results of the General Synod point as to the "confession of faith which has been annually declared by the whole Church for more than a hundred years,” briefly refers to the question of future punishment in these words: " (Christ) went also by the Spirit and preached unto the spirits in prison," and "the Lord will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, to judge both the quick and the dead," but it does not speak of the

fate of those who do not inherit eternal life.

Not that the Moravian Church has ignored this question alto

gether. The Confession of Faith, which the ancient Unitas Fratrum presented to the emperor of Austria, in 1535 (article xx., De Tempore Gratia), contains the following declaration: "Docent insuper certissimum cuique esse debere, quod si absque pœnitentia et fide Evangelii, in peccatis suis decesserit, animam suam a morte, veluti impii illius divitis, cui jam nulla reliqua erat gratia, æterni judicii ream fieri. Qui sic impænitentes vita hac defunguntur in extremo conclusionis die, suis auribus horribilem Dei vocem audient; 'Discedite a me, maledicti, in ignem æternum, qui paratus est Diabolo et Angelis ejus.'"*

And the Renewed Church of the Brethren expressly avows its substantial adherence to the doctrines taught by the orthodox evangelical churches, and especially to the "Augsburg Confession, with its twenty-one doctrinal articles, as being the first and most general Protestant Confession," adding, however, the proviso: "Yet we do not desire thereby to infringe upon the liberty of conscience of our members."

In the "Synodical Writing" which prefaces Count Zinzendorf's twenty-one discourses upon the Augsburg Confession (translated by F. Okeley, London, 1753) we find this passage :—

"That our Lord Jesus Christ will at the last day come to judgment, and will raise up all the Dead, to the Elect and to Believers will give eternal Life and everlasting Joy, but will condemn wicked Men and Devils to Hell and eternal Punishment, is also true. To teach that Devils and damned Men shall not have eternal Pain and Anguish is so much as directly to contradict our Saviour's Saying, 'The Wicked shall go away into everlasting Punishment'; which is still the more carefully to be avoided, in that our Saviour has heighten'd the Punishment of eternal Fire with another farther Idea, namely, that

"They teach, furthermore, as a most certain truth, that, if any one die in his sins, without repentance and without the faith of the gospel, his soul, like that of the ungodly rich man, shall after death be subject to eternal judgment. Those who depart this life thus impenitent shall, on the last day of the conclusion of all things, hear with their ears that awful voice of God: 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels.""

it shall be Cruciatus non intermittens, an unintermitting Torment. In the mean while, this Subject has not been treated upon among us for several Years; nor do we know one Brother in all our Congregations, to whom the Consideration, how much Pain Sin hath cost his Saviour, and that it grieves the Holy Spirit, is not Argument sufficient to make him beware of it."

Zinzendorf himself, in his usual vigorous and genial manner, expresses his views in the tenth discourse in this way:

"It is a Truth quite incontestable, that our Saviour himself seemed, more than any Apostle, to desire to have the Eternity of Hell-Torments inculcated and impressed upon Men's Minds. The entire Notion of their Release is a Philosophical Whimsey; they find (it seems) an insufficient Proof of the Love of God in the Death of our Saviour, and in the only begotten Son of God being offered up, and imagine therefore that they ought to ransack for more Arguments, in order to afford a stronger Proof of Love and Mercy. And here now, among other Things, this steps in to their Relief, they will have all Creatures finally saved. That which I have to object in general against this Doctrine, is this: The People, who are for spreading this Doctrine, are mostly Persons as dead as Stones, who are only concerned how it will turn out in the Upshot with the Wicked and the Devils; about which, in my Opinion, nobody at all ought to concern himself, and the Children of God least of any: For these ought by all Means to put Body and Soul upon their full Stretch, in laboring, that no one might, if pos sible, go at all to the Devil; but that all People might get acquainted with the Lamb of God and his Wounds, and then there would be no Fear, about either temporary or eternal Damnation."

Bishop Spangenberg, whose Idea Fidei Fratrum, or "Exposition of Christian Doctrine, as taught in the Protestant Church of the United Brethren," is still regarded as a standard of Moravian theology, treats of the subject "of everlasting life and damnation," at some length, but with great cautiousness, confining his statements to the plain testimony of Scripture. Dr. Herman Plitt, the

most prominent theologian of the Moravian Church, in recent times, in his Evangelische Glaubenslehre, and in his Gnade und Wahrheit, follows in the footsteps of Spangenberg, although, in conformity with the demands of the age, he devotes much more attention to eschatological questions.

None of the works referred to, however, are recognized by the Church as authoritative, or "binding the conscience." As the Results of the General Synod declare: "The (Moravian) Church esteems it neither necessary nor profitable to construct a creed formulated with regard to all individual points of doctrine, thus binding consciences and quenching the Spirit. Yet just as little can the Church suffer any one within its borders to teach and preach anything opposed to Holy Writ, and particularly to those statements which we, according to our understanding, consider to embody the leading doctrines of Holy Scripture."

Thus, the boundary lines within which Moravian teaching and preaching are confined, are very wide, but plain enough to allow of a practical unanimity of belief. Once or twice have the authorities of the Church found it necessary to remove a ministerial brother from his office and place him on the retired list, for teaching and preaching either the final salvation of all, or the annihilation of the wicked; but, considering the fact that the Moravian denomination is so widely scattered over the whole face of the globe, there is a remarkable agreement with regard to the question of future punishment, as well as with regard to all other points of Christian doctrine. Hence the views presented in the following dissertation, though merely an individual expression of opinion, may be considered as substantially embodying the teachings of the Moravian Church upon this subject.

I. CONTINUED EXISTENCE AFTER DEATH.

We believe then, in the first place, that there is a future punishment reserved for the sinner, and that physical death does not end conscious existence. Philosophical arguments for the immortality