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-/ I
THE ^
STATE OF THE IIPENITENT DEAD.
t
BY
ALYAH HOYEY, D.D.
PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY IN THE NEWTON THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION. . . , «
' O man, who art thou that repliest against Ck)l^ ,a" "'..5;b?JiflB^ir', tO. ', Heaven and earth shall pass away, butlh^ wor^ shall not pass away,'
Matthew xxiv. 35.
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PREFACE.
At the request of Christian brethren, who are familiar with the topics of religious inquiry now before the community, and therefore now^demSiD+iing special treatment, this !^8§ay is,^yen f,o ""thfe 'ptiDlic* It is an attempt to set forth' i:i tn'if thV.Scriptural testimony for a momentous doctr-i^e', aM'.tb •remove certain popular objections to that doctrine. It does not profess to exhaust the evidence in support of the view which is maintained, nor does it undertake a
* The Essay was read before the Conference of Baptist Ministers of Massachusetts, at their annual meeting held in Worcester, Oct. 26, 1858. Subsequently, the Conference " voted unanimously that it would be exceedingly gratifying to them if the Author would give the Essay to the public in any manner most agreeable to him- self."
6 PREFACE.
reply to all tlie assaults upon that view; but it simply aims to present the decisive considerations, the cardinal points of the argument, so that one who pursues the question no further may have at least good and sufficient reasons for the belief which he entertains. And if, by the blessing of Him whose " word liveth and abideth forever," this object is gained, the desire of the writer in committing these pages to the public will also be accomplished.
:.:•■;.•••.•..• A. H.
Newton CJentre, DKTc.'ie, HKS/ ; '* * ••• **.••' I *!
CONTENTS.
SECTION I.
BODY AND SOUL.
ORIGINAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BODY AND THE SOUL, THE FORMER BEING MADE CORRUPTIBLE, THE LATTER INCORRUPTIBLE, — HENCE, AN ORIGINAL DIFFERENCE OF RELATION TO ENDLESS EXISTENCE, THE FORMER BEING, AND THE LATTER NOT BEING, ADAPTED TO THE SAME. — THIS ADAPTATION MADE MANIFEST BY THE PROPERTIES OF THE SOUL, 11
SECTION II.
DEATH AND LIFE.
NATURE OF DEATH, THE PENALTY OF SIN, AS INDICATED (1) BY THE NARRATIVE IN GENESIS ; (2) BY THE USE OF THE TERM DEATH IN THE NEW TESTAMENT; AND (3) BY THE USE OF ITS OPPOSITE, THE TERM LIFE, 28
8 CONTENTS.
SECTION III.
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE.
PROOF OF CO>SCIOUSNESS IN THE IXTERMEDLVTE STATE — (1) FROM THE WORDS OF CHRIST ; (2) FROM THE WORDS OF peter; (3) FROM THE WORDS OF PAUL; (4) FROM THE "WORDS OF CHRIST. — OBJECTIONS TO THIS— (1) FROM SCRIP- TURE ; AND (2) FROM REASON, 53
SECTION IV.
THE FINAL STATE.
EXTRACTS FROM JOSEPHUS AND TACITUS. — TESTIMONY OF CHRIST AFTER HIS ASCENSION. — HIS TESTIMONY WHILE YET ON EARTH. — REPLY TO ANOTHER INTERPRETATION OF HIS LANGUAGE, 74
SECTION V.
BIBLICAL OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.
(1) "death," the EXTINCTION OF CONSCIOUS BEING. — THE- ORY OF HAM. — THEORY OF HUDSON. — (2) " DESTRUCTION," THE EXTINCTION OF CONSCIOUS BEING. — SUPPORTS OF THIS VIEW. — OBJECTIONS TO IT, 93
CONTENTS. 9
SECTION VI.
FURTHER OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.
(1) THE DEAD PRONOUNCED UNCONSCIOUS BY OLD TESTA- MENT WRITERS. — REPLY TO THIS STATEMENT. — (2) THE LANGUAGE OF THE APOSTOLICAL FATHERS AND EARLY APOLOGISTS CONFIRMATORY OF THE PRECEDING OBJEC- TIONS. — THIS ASSUMPTION SHOWN TO BE INCORRECT, . . . 124
SECTION VII.
RATIONAL OBJECTIONS.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. — OBJECTIONS (1) FROM THE OM- NIPOTENCE OF GOD. — REPLY. — (2) FROM THE RIGHTEOUS- NESS OF GOD. — REPLY. — (3) FROM THE BENEVOLENCE OF GOD. —REPLY. — CONCLUSION, 142
THE
STATE OF THE DIPENITENT DEAD.
SECTION I.
BODY AND SOUL.
ORIGINAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BODY AND THE SOUL, THE FORMER BEING MADE CORRUPTIBLE, THE LATTER INCORRUPTIBLE. — HENCE, AN ORIGINAL DIFFERENCE OF RELATION TO ENDLESS EXISTENCE, THE FOR- MER BEING, AND THE LATTER NOT BEING, ADAPTED TO THE SAME. — THIS ADAPTATION MADE MANIFEST BY THE PROPERTIES OF THE SOUL.
No topic within the range of human thought is approached by the majority of good men with greater reluctance than the topic of this essay. Many indeed prefer to avoid, if possible, all refer- ence to the final state of unbelievers, and some- times, it maybe feared, shrink from a careful study of the language employed by the sacred writers to describe that state. It will therefore occasion no surprise, if we say that the following pages
12 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
owe tlicir existence, primarily, to the claims made upon the writer by his employment ; for other- wise, so awful is the doom which seems to be denomiccd by the word of God upon such as re- main impenitent, he might have been led to defer still longer a protracted examination of the ele- ments of that doom. Hence, too, the general form and style of this essay, the occasional insertion of a Greek word or clause, and the fresh translation of a passage now and then from the original text, may remind our readers of the use to which it was first applied, but will not obscure the course or diminish the value of our investigation. It need scarcely be said, that we undertook the discussion of our theme, not only with con- scious reluctance, from a sense of duty, but also with a deep conviction of its unrivalled solem- nity and importance ; feeling that it would be wronging the character of God, on the one hand, to represent him as threatening and inflicting a heavier penalty upon sinners tlian he lias really threatened, and, on the other hand, that it would be wronging his character no less to represent him as annexing a milder penalty to transgres- sion than he has really annexed ; feeling that in this case, as in every other, it is our duty to abide by the testimony which God has given,
BODY AND SOUL. 13
leaving every difficulty and mystery to be cleared by the light of an after life.
We shall therefore endeavor to ascertain, by an appeal to the word of God, the true meaning of the term death, when used by sacred writers to denote the penalty of sin, and then to examine the principal objections to this meaning. This investigation will lead us directly to the ultimate object of our essay, namely, a knowledge of the state of the impenitent dead. And we may open our way to the Biblical use of the term death by observing, —
I. That the Scriptm'es recognize an original and important difference between the soul of man and his body. God is said to have created man in his own image ; ^ and this image or likeness of God must be found, we suppose, in the rational and moral properties of the human soul, as it came from the hand of God. If the resemblance of man to his Maker be not found in this part of his nature, it seems impossible for him to obtain any distinct and trustworthy conception of God. If he can- not transfer from his own spirit to the infinite One the generic ideas of knowing, of feeling, and of willing — if he cannot assume that his own soul is in some proper sense a copy of the divine
1 Gen. i. 26, 27.
14 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
mind; though on a scale infinitely reduced, he. may well despair, not merely of knowing as he is Rnown/ but of ever being assured that his worship is paid to the living God, instead of a phantom originated by his imagination. For certain it is, that wc can form no conception whatever of a personal Deity, without ascribing to him cognitive, emotive, and voluntary powers, that is to say, the fundamental powers of the human soul.
In another place we are told that " the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,*"^ — language which appears to distinguish the vital, informing principle of human nature from its material part, pronouncing the former to be more directly from God, and akin to him, than the latter ; and it may be doubted whether one reader in a thousand, if left to himself, would take any other view of the case.
Again, the Almighty describes himself as "Jehovah which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him ;"3 — words which seem plainly to recognize the soul as distinct in nature from the body, and to assign it
1 1 Cor. xiii. 12. = Gen. ii. 7. « Zech. xii. 1.
BODY AND SOUL. 15
a dignity and worth far beyond that of any mate- rial organism. It was the forming of man's spirit which the prophet looked upon as the crowning work of Jehovah, and cited, along with the crea- tion of heaven and of earth, as a proof of his almighty power.
The language of Paul belongs also to our argument. '' I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago — whether in the body I know not, or out of the body I know not, God knoweth — such an one caught up into the third heaven," ^ etc. Now if the apostle, as he undoubtedly affirms, was distinctly conscious of having been caught up into paradise, and of having been permitted to hear words which it is not lawful for a man to utter, while at the same time he was uncertain whether his whole nature, body and soul, or only the latter, was caught up, is it not manifest that he deemed it possible for the soul to be conscious and active, apart from the body? Is it not manifest that he esteemed the personality of man separable from a material organism, and capable of ecstatic joy in a disembodied state ?
If, now, we add to these passages the testimony of Solomon, " Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, but the spirit shall return to God
1 2 Cor. xii. 2. seq.
16 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
wlio gave it;i the prayer of Stephen, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit; "^ and the words of Chi-ist, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul,"^ the conclusion be- comes inevitable, that the Scriptures do recognize an original and important difference between the soul of man and his body. It may be well to observe, —
II. That th is original difference between the nature of man'' s body and that of his soul underlies a difference of relation to endless existence. For the body of Adam seems to have been mortal, even before the fall. It was made of the dust of the ground ; it was XoCyt6gj earthy, and therefore in its nature corrup- tible. And so tlie immortality of man, as a com- plex being, was conditioned on his eating of the tree of life. This was made the pledge, if not the means, of a process by which his animal body might be exchanged for a spiritual body, and this corruptible put on incorruption. Thus much may be inferred, we think, from the language and the action of God after the great apostasy in Eden : " And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever — therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from
1 Ecd. xii. 7. 2 Acts vu. 59. « Matt. x. 28.
BODY AND SOUL. 17
whence he was taken." ^ In the natural course of events, had not sin intervened, Adam would surely have eaten of the tree of life, and have become immortal. The fruit of that sacramen- tal or life-giving tree would in due time have secured to him perpetual vigor, and have made him meet in bodily organism for an inheritance "incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away."
This view of the original and natural mortal- ity of the body is confirmed by the language of Paul. For he not only teaches that our bodies, as now constituted, are animal and corruptible, but also that " the first man, Adam, was made a living soul,"^ when God breathed into his nos- trils the breath of life ; and from the context it appears that the apostle understood the phrase "living soul " to denote a being whose body was psychical and mortal, a body of flesh and blood, which could not inherit the kingdom of God. He then proceeds to announce a general law : " The spiritual is not first, but the psychical (or natural), afterwards the spiritual." ^ The lower precedes the higher ; the imperfect the perfect ;
1 Gen. iii. 22, 23.
2 1 Cor. XV. 45. Cf. the commentaries of Hodge, Alford, Meyer, and De Wette on this verse.
3 1 Cor. XV. 46.
2^-
18 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
and this general law of development was to be illustrated according to the plan of God, in the bodily nature of man. With this view agree the remarks of Meyer on a subsequent passage : " The first man is of the earth, earthy — ;/oi>oj. Since the body of Adam is thus, as in v. 45, characterized as a tpv/iicop aCJ.ua^ or psychical body, and since a psychical organism involves mortality (v. 44), it is clear that Paul, in perfect agreement with Gen. ii. 7 ; iii. 19, considers Adam not as created immortal. Nor does this conflict with his doctrine that death came into the world through sin} For had not our first parents sinned, they would have remained in paradise, and would have become immortal by eating of the tree of life, which God had not forbidden them.2 But ere they had eaten of this tree,^ they were driven out of paradise, and so, also, according to the narrative in Genesis, death came into the world by sin."
It may be suitable to add, that the same view is proposed and defended by Augustine. " Sic et illud corpus jam erat mortale ; quam mortal iiatc?n fucrat abswnptura mutatio in ceternam incorrup- tioncm, si in hominc justitia, id est obcdientia, per-
1 Rom. V. 12. 2 Gen. iii. 22; ii. 16, 17. s Gen. iii. 22.
BODY AND SOUL. 19
maneret ; sed ipsum non est factum mortuum, nisi propter peccatum.^^ ^
Let us then bear in mind the fact that Godj anticipated the apostasy of our race, and fore-j shadowed the same by giving to man a corrup-' tible body. The material part of human nature \ was preadjusted to a sinful condition ; its doom } in case of transgression was provided for in its original constitution. To say the least, it was not adapted to endless existence. It gave no intimation of perpetual vigor. Forces from without must be applied to change its nature, before it could bear the weight of immortality.
But how was it with the soul of man ? Do the Scriptures anywhere intimate that this also was mortal by virtue of its original constitu- tion ? Do they mention any ab extra appliances by which its primeval nature was to be changed, before it could enter upon a life without end ? Instead of this we find expressions in the sacred record which seem to favor an opposite view.
For our present purpose, it will be sufficient to adduce Paul's remarkable chapter on the resurrection, — Quod unum instar est omnium. And let it be remembered that the apostle in
1 De Pec. Mer. et Remis, I. 5.
20 STATE OP THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
that chapter fails to drop even a liint of the need of any change in the natural properties of the human spirit to prepare it for endless being. He plainly avers the unfitness of our bodily na- ture for the eternal world, but refrains from any such testimony respecting our spiritual nature.
Now if Paul believed the soul of man to be corruptible and mortal like his body, his silence on this point, in a chapter that treats so fully of the resurrection, is not a little surprising. For if the Corinthians deemed the spirit of man to be adapted in its nature to a higher and endless state of being, and if this belief was in Paul's opinion erroneous, why did he not rectify their error, check their confidence in a vain philos- ophy, and teach them that of the soul, no less than the body, it may be said, " This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality ? " Why did he not remind them of their folly in proposing the skeptical question, " With what hodij do they come ? " while they neglected the parallel question, " With what spirit do they come ? " But if, on the other hand, the Corinthians looked upon the soul of man as related to deatli and the resurrection in the same way as his body, and were troubled with similar doubts respecting it, why did the
BODY AND SOUL. 21
apostle restrict his discussion to the body merely, and neglect to intimate, by a single remark, that the spirit is also to experience a no less essen- tial and glorious change at the resurrection? We therefore submit the opinion, that Paul's si- lence as to any change of the properties of the soul at the resurrection is a sound argument against its natural mortality, and in favor of its original and present adaptation to endless exist- ence.
We may, however, proceed a step further. In the chapter before us we find another reason for supposing that the apostle regarded the human soul as originally fitted to exist forever. After contrasting the body laid aside at death with that which we shall possess hereafter, in several particulars, he says : " It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body."^ Whether the word spiritual here describes the essence or the office of our bodily nature after the resurrection, it is plain that the spirit is conceived of as adapted to a future life. For if the body is to be made incorruptible by being made spiritual in its nature, then must the spirit itself, to which it is assimilated, be incorruptible and immortal. Or if the body is to be made incorruptible by
U Cor. XV. 44.
22 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
being made the proper and permanent organ of the spirit/ it is scarcely less evident that the latter is incorruptible. " The servant is not greater than his lord."
But there is a grave objection, it may be said, to the argument now presented, to wit : the apostle has in mind the resurrection of believ- ers only, and the souls of believers receive at the moment of regeneration a principle of life which prepares them for endless being. With- out this principle, they are as incapable of eter- nal existence as the body.
The plan of our essay will soon bring us to the investigation of what is meant in the word of God by spiritual life ; and this investigation will furnish a reply to the objection just stated. It may, however, be observed, in passing, that regeneration is not only characterized by the sacred writers as a creative act, by wliich the subject of it becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus, and a generation from above, by which the soul is brought into a new spiritual life ; but "1 also as a washing, a batliing effected by the Holy Ghost, by which the polluted spirit is cleansed ; as an illumination, by which it is filled with the
1 See the commontarics of Dc "Wettc, Clever, Olshausen, Alford, Ilodgc, and liuckhcrt, ou the passage cited above.
BODY AND SOUL. 23
knowledge of God and qualified to appreciate spiritual things, and as a change of mind, involv- ing sorrow for sin and love for holiness. The eye of conscience is clearedj the desires and af- fections are reversed and flow into new channels, and the selfish views, prejudices, and motives which formerly reigned in the soul, are super- seded by faith, love, and hope, resting in Christ and leading to every good work. The entire spirit is readjusted morally ; its aspirations, ten- dencies, and relations to God are rectified, and it enters, so to speak, upon a new life.
But all this pertains to the moral condition and experience of the soul, affording no evidence that its essence has been changed, that any fac- ulty or constitutive element has been added, any fresh vigor or new principle of existence infused. And until such evidence is furnished, the objection to our argument from the language of Paul is without force.
It will not be irrelevant to add, that those beings who are represented by the word of God as dwelling in the invisible and eternal world are frequently called spirits. God, " who only hath immortality," is affirmed to be spirit. The holy angels are described as " ministering spir- its. " Demons are spoken of as evil spirits.
24 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
And departed saints, dwelling in paradise and awaiting the resurrection, are denominated '' the spirits of just men made perfect." It seems, therefore, that all who inhabit the eternal world are either simple spirits, or are spirits clothed with bodies which are perfectly adjusted and assimilated to their spiritual nature. Now it would doubtless be rash to draw from this fact- alone the conclusion, that, because human souls are frequently called spirits in the word of God, therefore they must have been originally fitted for endless existence ; but when we bear in mind the process by which words relating to earth and to man are transferred to beings or events of a higher sphere, the fact noted by us may well serve to strengthen our confidence in a deduction from other and surer premises. TVe proceed to remark, —
m. That the original adaptation of the human soul to endless existence may he inferred from its rational and moral jirojKiiies. For, first, it is brought by these properties into conscious person- al connection with the infinite and the eternal. It is put en rapport, so to speak, witli the one abso- lute Personality, with the immutable principles of right, and with the idea of causation, binding the creature to the Creator, the conditioned to
BODY AND SOUL. 25
the absolute. And; secondly, it is rendered by these properties capable of action without wea- riness, and delight without satiety. We do not hesitate to trace all the fatigue which results from intense and protracted thought to the ma- terial organ of the mind. Our best intellec- tual processes never flag until the brain begins to suffer. It would be easy to illustrate and confirm the position now taken by many inter- esting phenomena of dreaming. Again, our ra- tional and moral tastes are never satiated. What- ever is truly sublime or beautiful, answering to the normal susceptibilities of our spiritual nature, " is a joy forever." Bodily appetites are soon glutted, and we are even made to loathe, for a time, the objects which just before were craved ; but our spiritual relish for the true, the beauti- ful, and the good, is never diminished by the fullest gratification. Who was ever satisfied to loathing with the grandeur of Niagara, the sub- limity of Mount Washington, or the majesty of the ocean ? Who was ever made to turn away with a sense of satiety from the sight of a sun- set sky, or of a beautiful landscape, or of a del- icate flower? Or, still more to our purpose, who was ever conscious that the mental vision of a geometrical figm^e, the admiration of an act 3
26 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
of moral heroism, or the exercise of a right affection, however protracted, had produced in him even a temporary disrelish of those objects ? Is it not a fact, that the soul is so made as to be capable of permanent delight in whatever corre- sponds with its normal tastes ? — so made, that its pleasm*e in the apprehension of a suitable object is not necessarily intermitted or transi- tory, but may be at once complete and peren- nial ? And does not this peculiarity of the soul qualify it for endless existence, and even fore- shadow such existence ? It seems to us that but one reply can be made to these questions. And, thirdly, the soul was evidently adapted in the beginning, by its rational and moral proper- ties, "to glorify God and enjoy him forever." And notwithstanding the terrible shock and change which it experienced in the apostasy, it has a religious nature still, and is still called upon evermore to worship him who is God over all, blessed forever. AVe discover, or seem to discover, in this religious nature of the soul, this innate testimony for the ever-living God, this silent call and command, issuing from the very centre of the spirit, to engage in his worship, a qualification for, and a prophecy of, immortality. To unfold tliis argument, however, would detain
BODY AND SOUL. 2T
US too long, and we therefore bring these prelim- inary observations to a close.
We have seen that the body of man was made in the beginning comijptible, and that bod- ily death, a penal result of sin, was provided for in his original constitution. We have also seen that the soul of man was made originally incor- ruptible, adapted to endless existence. And this difference, we submit, establishes a valid pre- sumption that the penal result of sin to the soul does not consist in its dissolution or extinction. The strength of this presumption will of course depend almost entirely upon the view which is entertained by each individual of the eternal purpose, order, and harmony of the divine gov- ernment. We can but think it is entitled to great consideration ; and the more, because it will be found that provision was made in the original structure of the soul for a penal result of sin, which is called death in the word of God.
SECTION II.
DEATH AND LIFE.
NATURE OP DEATH, THE PENALTY OF SIN, AS INDICATED (1) BY THE NARBATIVE IN GENESIS, (2) BY THE USE OF THE TERM DEATH IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, AND (3) BY THE USE OF ITS OPPOSITE, THE TEEM LIFE.
To ascertain the nature of death^ the penalty of sm, we may first examine the language of Jehovah to Adam before the fall : " Of the tree^ of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely dic."^ Here Adam is threatened with certain death in case of disobe- dience. The verb is made emphatic by repeti- tion; as if God had said, Death, death, certain death, shall be the reward of transgression.
But this threatening, however emphatic and ominous it may be, does not in itself indicate the nature or contents of death. God, to be sure, may have explained its nature to om- first
1 Gen. ii. 17.
DEATH AND LIFE. 29
parents ; but, if so, his explanation was not put on record for our instruction.
Yet there is a clause in the verse before us, which may perhaps furnish no little aid to those who would discover the contents of this threat- ened death. " In the day of thy eating of it, thou shalt surely die." Disobedience was to be fol- lowed by immediate punishment. '^
If, now, we examine the narrative in Genesis, we shall discover the first fruits of the fall in the soids of Adam and Eve. Shame at their own nakedness, and dread of Jehovah's presence, both springing from guilt, began at once to be felt. Thus it was the soul which experienced the first stroke of retributive justice. Its fel- lowship with God and consequent blessedness were lost. And for this result, so fatal to the well-being of man, ample provision had been made in the properties of his spiritual nature. The ministers of divine justice had been sta- tioned in every part of the town of Mansoul, and no sooner was sin admitted, than they began to frown upon the guilty place, filling it with terror and confusion.
But this great penalty, following close on the heels of transgression, and provided for in the original constitution of the soul, was not the ex- 3^
30 STATE OP THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
tinction of conscious being, but the extinction of conscious well-being — was not the loss of exist- ence, but rather the loss of true spiritual life, which is the normal and blessed working of a moral nature. It was a dissolution of man's spiritual relation to God ; a separation far more disastrous than that of soul and body in physi- cal death.
And when " in the breeze of the day " God called the guilty pair before him, what was the sentence which he pronounced? Upon the woman birth-throes and subjection to man, and upon the man wearisome toil until his body should return to the dust. Nothing is here said of death, except in the final words, " Until thou returnest to the ground," etc. ; and no one will pretend that these words comprise all the evil which was threatened as the penalty of sin, when God said, "In the day that tliou catest thereof, thou shalt surely die." For if we may interpret the threatened punishment of trans- gression by the recorded effects of it upon the feelings and conduct of our first parents, this penalty had two elements, suffering and loss, and took effect, chiefly at least, in the soul rather than the body. On the positive side, there were shame and remorse, followed by toil
DEATH AND LIFE. 31
and pain ; and on the negative side, there were the loss of fellowship with God, and of the fruit of the tree of life, together with all the advan- tages of paradise.
And what better terms than life and death could have been chosen to characterize the dif- ferent states of the soul before and after so dreadful a catastrophe. Love, light, fellowship with God, gave place to bitterness, alienation, darkness.' The normal and blessed action of the spirit was reversed forever. The moral magnetism, which should have drawn it ever- more towards the Centre and Source of all good- ness, was destroyed, and like the arch fiend in Milton's sublime epic, it " took its solitary way into the realms of Chaos and old Night." It was lost, separated from God; and this, we think, was the all-comprehending and tremen- dous penalty of sin. Bodily death was but the shadow of this spiritual ruin. Like birth-pangs and oppressive toil, it fitly accompanied the more dreadful doom of the soul.
We do not, however, claim that all this is indubitably taught by the narrative in Genesis ; but we do claim that, according to this narra- tive, the chief penalty of sin was inflicted upon the soul and not upon the body. And from the
32 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
words, "in the day that thou eatest thereof," interpreted by the subsequent history, we also conclude and maintain that the clause, " thou shalt surely die," was not employed to denote extinction of being, but to denote a forlorn and miserable existence ; that is to say, we hold that the term death, when used by sacred writ- ers to signify the penalty of sin, refers to the destruction of well-being rather than of simple existence.
But is there anything in the word of God, apart from the history in Genesis, to confirm this view ? Is there any evidence that the term death, when applied to the soul, may signify something else than a termination of its con- scious life ? Any proof that the affirmation of eternal death may virtually be the affirmation of eternal existence ?
In reply to these queries, we first appeal to these words of Christ : " Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead^ ^ Here the first toi)? vFxqov; refers to those who are spirituaJhj dead, that is, to unbelievers in Christ; while the second refers to those who are physically dead. This view of the words is taken by nearly all
1 Matt. viii. 22.
DEATH AND LIFE. 33
respectable interpreters,^ and it gives not only the most obvious meaning of terms as here employed, but a meaning which has also borne the test of repeated and severe scrutiny. No other view so well accords with the manifest scope of the passage.
We pass next to the language of Christ to the church in Sardis : '^ I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou Uvest, and a?t dead."^ The seven churches of Asia were addressed by the Saviour, through his apostle, in order to rekindle their zeal for God, and make them watchful against error and steadfast in the faith. Some of them had lost their first love. Some of them observed the formal duties of Christian- ity, but had little or no spiritual life. Their works did not spring from faith, and were there- fore dead.3 The church in Sardis was thus dead. It had the form of godliness, but not the life and power. This is the only natural interpre- tation of the passage, and is sustained by the judgment of the great body of careful exposi- tors.* Yitringa remarks, that many of "these
1 Eg. De Wette, Meyer, Olshausen, Stier, Alford, Ripley, and others.
2 Rev. iii. 1. 3 See Heb. vi. 1; ix. 14.
* Eg. Robinson, De "Wette, Meyer, Hengstenberg, Stuart, Ebrard, and others.
34 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
Asiatic churches now presented, as to their major part, rather the lurid aspect of death than the vivid expression of life — inagis luridam mor- tis, qiiam vividam vita specicm.^^
Turning now to the writings of Paul, we find him saying to the Colossians : ''And you, being dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him ; " ^ and to the Ephesians : " You who were dead in tresspasses and sins — hath he quickened." ^ The obvious teaching of these passages is that both the Ephesian and the Colossian Christians were, previous to their regeneration, morally dead, and that by regeneration they had ob- tained spiritual life. Says Calvin : " Dicit mor- tuosfidssc : et simid cxprimit mortis causam, ncmpe pcccata. No7i intclligit sohimfuisse in mortis per- iculo : sed real cm mortem sig^iijicat ac prcesentem, qua jam erant opprcssi. Nam spiritvalis mors nihil aliud sit, quam alienatio a?ii?nce a Deo, omncs mortui nascimur, et mortid vivimus, donee efficiamun virt(c Christi jmrticipcs.^^ On the word vexoovc, in the passage from Ephesians, Alford remarks : *' The whole of the subsequent mercy of God, in his quickening them, is spiritual, and therefore of
1 Col. ii. 13. 2 Eph. ii. 1, 5.
DEATH AND LIFE. 35
necessity the death also. That it involves physi- cal death is most true ; but, as I have often had occasion to remark, this latter is so subordinate to spiritual death, as often hardly to come into account in Scripture." Ellicott takes the same view of this word, and says that " the proleptic reference to physical death seems irreconcilable with the context."
Moreover, in his first letter to Timothy, Paul makes use of this expression : " She that liveth riotously is dead while she liveth;"^ literally livinor, she is dead. Death and life are here predicated of the same person, at the same time. By using the form le&t^ijxsv^ which signifies has died, and so is dead in the present tense, the apostle declares that being dead is compatible with being at the same time alive. But the life here spoken of is plainly one of conscious exist- ence ; and hence the death referred to cannot involve a negation of such existence. It must rather be the opposite or negative of some high- er life, some better condition, and finer flow of being. That is to say, it must be spiritual death, ) the insensibility, darkness, and misery of a soul alienated from God.
On the words to which we have now called
1 1 Tim. V. 6.
36 STATE OP THE DIPEXITENT DEAD.
attention, Schtittgen remarks, " The Jews often employ this oxymoron in their writings. In gen- eral, all the impious are thus denominated by them." He proceeds to cite from the Rabbins such expressions as follow : " ' The ungodly, even in this life, are pronounced dead. The ungodly man, who walks not in the way of truth, is said to be dead.' i ' I praised the dead, who died before.' From which it is evident that they of whom the verse speaks are alive, and yet are said to be dead. ^ ^ For the living know that they must die, but the dead know nothing.' By the living, are to be understood the just; by the dead, the unjust." Again: " Those are meant who, even in death, are called living. ' And the dead know nothing ; ' here the ungodly are meant, who, even in the activity of life, are called dead." ^
However erroneous may be some of these interpretations, they illustrate the use of the term death to signify a moral condition of the soul, and we cite them merely to prove this use of the term by early Jewish writers. A thorough survey of Rabbinic testimony would not, we suppose, fail to justify the general statement of Schottgcn, introduced above.
1 Eccl. iv. 2. 2 Eccl. ix. 5.
8 Sec Scliottgcn's IIorjE llcbraioro, T. pp. l'vl,377.
DEATH AND LIFE. 37
Witli the passages already considered might be associated many others, ^ in which some form or derivative of S-vr^ay.o} {to die) is applied to the unregenerate in this life ; but it would be super- fluous to accumulate evidence on the point. It can hardly be denied, that " death," "being dead," " dying," etc., are by the Scriptures predicated of the soul no less than of the body, and that, when affirmed of the former, these terms do not generally, if ever, involve an extinction of con- scious being. And this application of the word death to the conscious spirit of man, in other parts of the sacred record, confirms our exposi- tion of the penalty denounced upon sin in Gen- esis.
This exposition is also sustained by the use which is made of the term " life," in many pas- sages of the inspired volume. For this word is employed by the New Testament writers to de- signate the kind of conscious being possessed by Christians, rather than the mere fact of exist- ence, a blessed life in fellowship with God, rather than simple being. We begin with the language of Christ.
On a certain occasion, he pronounced' it necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up,
1 Eg. Rom. vi. 13; xi. 15; Eph. v. 14, etc.
4
38 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
" that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life'^^ — e/^ Cwi" ulihvtov. Xb)i)v aiibi'ioi', says Meyer, who " is, perhaps, the best commentator on the New Testament, of modern times," 2 signifies the eternal Messi- anic life, which, however, the believer already possesses — s/r] — in this uim'^ that is, in the tem- poral development of that moral and blessed life which is independent of death, and which will culminate in perfection and glory at the com- ing of Christ." And Liicke, whose commentary on the gospel of John is one of the most thorough and attractive in the German language, says that the toi) rxithyio;, which is the exact op- posite of un(i)).6iu (^destruction), or d^dn'aiog (death), is the sum of Messianic blessedness. It is plain, we think, tliat the life here spoken of as the present possession of every believer in Christ is more than endless existence ; it is life in the full- est and highest sense of the word, the free, holy and blessed action of the whole man, that is to say, the proper, normal living of a rational and moral being. The germ, the principle of this life, exists in the heart of every believer; it is a present possession. '' Whosoever," says Christ,
I John iii. 15. 2 Dr. Ilodirc, of Princeton.
DEATH AND LIFE. 39
"drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a fountain — nr^Yi) — of water, springing up into everlasting life." ^ In another place our Saviour utters these words : " He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath eternal life, and shall not come into condemnation, but has passed from death mto Ufe " ^
fUETa^^^r^xsv ex tov S^avdiov eig triv ^wtjV. Here,
again, the believer is said to have eternal life, even now ; for he has passed from death into life. Ingens saltus, remarks Bengel, with his customary brevity and graphic power. We translate a part of Liicke's ample and instructive note on this important verse.
" The words, ^ Has passed from death into life,' determine that £/et (hath) must be taken as a strict present. For the verb fiTjTudi^Tjxsv (has passed) affirms that the transition from death into life took place with the hearing and believ- ing. Only if an impossible thought were thus expressed, could we consent, as in a case of ex- treme necessity, to understand the present I'/et and the present perfect fisia^^^rjxsv as futures. And then we should be compelled to say that
1 John iv. 14. 2 John v. 24.
40 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
John had expressed himself very strangely. But if a higher kind of life, a resurrection process prior to bodily death, is represented by ' hath,' and ' hath passed,' then t&j^ and ^wt) uiibviog are not to be understood of a life commencing after bodily death, but of the true and eternal Messi- anic life or salvation, beginning even here. This life does not, to be sure, exclude natural death, but neither does it first begin after this death. ^ Even so S^divaxog cannot be understood of bod- ily, but only of spiritual death, of lying in the darkness of the world. This interpretation would be justified here, even ii^iLvaxog elsewhere in the New Testament denoted uniformly nothing but bodily death. But the metaphorical idea of death stands out clearly in 1 John iii. 14; v. 16, 17; John viii. 51, 52; 2 Cor. ii. 16; vii. 10. Similar, also, is the use of the words x^avarovv^ Bom. vii. 4 ; viii. 1 3 ; and v£y.Q6Q, vexoovp, dTro&vr^axsiv^ Matt. viii. 22; Eph. v. 14; Heb. vi. 1; Col. iii. 5; Gal. ii. 19."
With the passage now examined may be com- pared a statement of the apostle John to the same efibct, namely, " We know that we have passed from death into life, because we love the brethren ; he that loveth not; abideth in death. "^
1 Cf. V. 40. 2 1 John iii. 14.
DEATH AND LIFE. 41
This language, explained with a due regard to the preceding context, speaks, evidently, of spir- itual death and life, of a passing from one moral condition into another and opposite one. To say that this new moral condition and blessed state is to endure and improve forever, may doubtless be to utter an important truth, but one which does not conflict in the slightest de- gree with its present existence. It begins in. this life ; it continues forever and ever.
Again, we find our Saviour saying : " He that believeth on me hath everlasting life ; " "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you;" and, "The words that I speak unto you are spirit, and are life."^ By these verses we are taught, once more, that the Greek terms which denote life and death, living and dying, were applied by Christ to op- posite moral states of the soul. For, observe, (1) he more than intimates that his words, his doctrines, are the source of present life to those who receive them, and that, by eating his flesh and drinking his blood, he signifies a reception of his words, and so of himself as the Lamb of God. And (2) he declares that one who
1 John vi. 47, 53, 63. 4^
42 STATE OP THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
believes has eternal life ; that one who eats of the true bread shall not die but shall live for- ever, and that one who does not eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man hath not life in himself.
Is it not plain that the words life and death, as well as the words bread, flesh, and blood, eat- ing and drinking, are here used in a spiritual sense ? Is it not plain that Jesus here speaks of something in the believer's soul which is nourished by Christian truth, and which is at the same time called life ? But it is the function of truth to quicken thought and feeling, to deter- mine the modes of conscious life, the character or moral condition of the human soul ; and, hence, the rejection of it may involve the utter want of certain spiritual qualities and blessed emotions, but not the want of personal existence. In still another place we read, " Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life : he that believ- eth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die." ^ Christ here afi&rms that every be- liever is exempted from death. And it matters not for om' present purpose whether the word
1 John xi. 25, 2G.
DEATH AXD LIFE. 43
^wv, translated in onr version "livetli/' refers in this passage to pliysical or to moral life. K it re- fers to physical life, then our Saviour pronounces the Christian to be already, in timC; delivered from the power of death, and in possession of a true and immortal life. But if it refers to moral life, Christ declares that whoever pos- sesses this life, whether in the body or out of the body, is delivered from the power of death ; that is, his union with God and delight in him, which alone constitute the normal living of the soul, shall never be interrupted : ov fu-q d.7io&(!tprj eig rbv uiwpa — he shall never die.
Yet the words just cited have been said to signify "shall not die forever ;'^ that is, shall not suffer eternal death ; and, thus explained, have been urged in support of the doctrine that death involves the extinction of conscious being. ^ The purpose of this essay permits us to test this novel interpretation, by referring to some of the passages which contain the phrase Big tup
aiibvoc.
According to Matthew, Christ said to the fig- tree, " Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward
15am (J. p.), in "Bible Examined," vol. YU. p. 74: "' Shall not die forever; ' he shall die for a time, but not forever ; he shall rise again."
44 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
forever; " ^ and, according to Mark, '^ Let no man eat fruit of thee hereafter /orerer." ^ Would it express the meaning of Christ, in this instance, to render the phrase in question cternalhj, or in eternity, instead o^ forever, implying that the tree might bear fruit for a while in time ? Again, Christ is reported to have said, " He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness." ^ Does this language merely nega- tive the prospect of eternal forgiveness, while it leaves undisturbed the hope of temporal for- giveness ? Is God one who really forgives the blasphemer for a time, but cannot forgive him for eternity ? Once more : In the gospel written by Luke, Mary is represented as saying, "He hath liolpen his servant Israel by remembering mercy, (as he spake to our fathers,) to Abraham and to his seed /were?-." ^ Did not God show mercy to Abraham and to his seed in time as well as in eternity ? Was he not to remember mercy from the time of Abraham onward for- ever, instead, perhaps, of being severe in time, and then gracious in eternity ? Again, Jesus says to the Avoman of Samaria, " AYhosoever drinketh of tliis water shall thirst again — nuUv
1 Matt. xxi. 19. 3 Mark iii. 29.
2 Mark xi. 14. •« Luke i. 54, 55.
DEATH AND LIFE. 45
— but whosoever shall drink of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a fountain of water, welling up into everlasting life."^ Here, evidently, it is not asserted that whoso- ever receives the true water of life shall not thirst forever J though he may for a time, but from the reception of this water onward forever he shall not thirst. In another place Christ de- clares, "If any man eat of this bread," — his own body in contrast with the manna, — "he shall Hyg forever;^' 2 ^nd likewise, "he that eateth of this bread " — again in contrast with the eat- ing of manna and dying — "shall live forever." ^ Still later Christ says, " The servant doth not abide in the house forever; the son abideth for- ever; " that is to say, the abiding of the servant is merely transient, while that of the son is permanent. And in the same chapter we read, " If- a man keep my saying, he shall never see death."* The meaning associated with this form of expression by the Jews is made known by their response: "Abraham died, and the prophets, and thou sayest. If a man keep my word he shall never taste of death." Again, Christ says
1 John iv. 13, 14. 3 John vi.58.
2 John vi. 51. ^ John \iii. 35, 51.
46 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
of his sheep, "I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish." ^ Did our Saviour mean to say. They may perish, or be plucked from my hand for a time, but they shall not perish for ever ? Once more : " The people answered him, We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth /o?-ei"er ; and how sayest thou the Son of Man must be lifted up ? " 2 Evidently the idea of abiding forever was not equivalent in the minds of these men to abiding in eternity or eternally, the termhuis a quo beginning in a future world; but it was equivalent to abiding per- petually, from the time of his appearance miward forever. Again, Peter is represented as saying to Christ, " Thou shalt never wash my feet." ^ Would it give the exact sense of this passage to translate it thus : ^- Thou shalt not wash my feet forever, though thou mayest now ? " And, finally, Christ tells his disciples, "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another com- forter, that he may abide with you forever.''
"We have now brought forward all the passages in the gospels which contain the phrase, d; ibv ui6)va^ either alone or modified by a negative particle ; and we believe it must be clear to all,
1 John X. 28. 2 John xii. 3-4. 8 John xiii. 8.
DEATH AXD LIFE. 47
that this plu^ase never signifies eternally as the opposite of temporalbj ; never refers exclusively to the future and everlasting state. On the other hand, it uniformly starts in time and denies any future limit. The phrase occurs but rarely in the remaining books of the New Testament, and always in the sense given above.
From this partial digression we return to our examination of the term life. "And this is life eternal," says the Great Teacher, "that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. "-^ The best ancient and modern interpreters hold this verse to be a definition by Christ himself of the expression " life eternal," so often used by him according to the record of John. De Wette says : ^^And this is (therein consists) the life eternal; not, this is the means of the eternal life ; for the vital knowl- edge of God and Christ is itself the eternal life which begins even here, and penetrates the whole life of the human spirit." Meyer trans- lates thus : " Therein consists the eternal lifej'' and says, " This knowledge, willed of God, is the ^ eternal life,' inasmuch •as it is the essential subjective principle of the latter, its enduring,
1 John x\'ii. 3.
48 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
eternally unfolding germ and fountain, both now in the temporal development of the eternal life, and hereafter when the kingdom is set up, in which faith, hope, and charity abide, whose es- sence is that knowledge."^ The same view, substantially, is presented by Olshausen, Liicke, Bengel, Alford, and many others.
The passage before us may, therefore, be taken, as conclusive evidence that the idea of simple life, of personal existence, was not that which Christ intended to express by -fi tcori and t,(oii aiihviog, as applied by him to Christians. Hence, also, there is ample reason for supposing that he did not mean by the word d-uraw;, as the opposite or negative of these words, literal death, or an end of conscious being. Both terms have rather a spiritual sense, and are used to designate the moral condition of those to whom they are applied.
It is further to be noted, that the work of re- generation which takes place confessedly in the soul of man, is called by inspired teachers a resurrection. " Therefore," says Paul, " we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the
1 For 7va before a defining clause, see John vi. 29; iv. 34; 1 John iii. 11,23; iv. 21; 2 John vi.
DEATH AND LIFE. 49
glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. ^ And a little further on he uses this language : " Yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the deady ^ In another epistle he remarks, "And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, did He quicken — or make alive — with Him ; " ^ and, after a few verses, " If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above; "^ adding, presently, that they had "put off the old man with his deeds, and had put on the new, renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that created him." ^ And, in yet another epistle, he says that " God, who is rich in mercy . . . hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together, and seated us together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." ^ From this class of passages we venture to conclude that the term " resurrec- tion" is sometimes applied to the soul, and refers to the change effected by regeneration. But if the new birth is a resurrection of the soul from the dead, it is evident that the term death, when predicated of the soul, does not mean precisely
1 Rom. vi. 4. 3 Col. ii. 13. 5 Col. iii. 10.
2 Rom. vi. 12. 4 Col. ui. 1. 6 Eph. ii. 4, 6.
5
50 STATE OP THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
the same as it does when used of the body. As a predicate, its meaning is modified by the nature of its subject.
It should also be borne in mind that several other terms are so applied to believers in the New Testament as to confirm our explanation of the words " life," " eternal life," and '' resur- rection," when predicated in the present tense of genuine Christians. They are said to be " begotten again," '- begotten from above," to be " the workmanship of God, created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works."
These expressions characterize believers as those who have been made new by the spirit of God. Their personal identity remains undis- turbed, their conscious existence flows on with- out interruption, their mental and moral faculties are still the same ; yet all things have become new ; unreason has given place to reason, spiritual blindness to insight, unbelief to trust, selfishness to love, alienation from God to fel- lowship with him ; the spirit has been purified and established in harmony and peace and God; gales from heaven breathe upon it, divine influ- ences pervade it, angels of light minister unto it, and God circumfuses and fills it with his pres- ence. This is the normal and proper life of a
DEATH AXD LIFE. 51
rational being. Hence the beloved disciple could saj; " In liim was lifC; and the life was the light of men;" for spiritual life, light, and blessed- ness are almost equivalent terms. Hence, also, the new condition of the believer — the light, and love, and trust of his soul, are said to be formed, created, begotten, by the Father of Spirits. Hence, too, our final reply to the ob- jection, which was named on a previous page, to our inference from Paul's language in the 15th of Corinthians. And hence, lastly, a justi- fication of the view which we have taken of death, the penalty of sin.
To recapitulate : We have found reason to believe (1) that the soul of man was made orig- inally incorruptible, and his body con-iijjtible ;
(2) that the penal results of sin, which are ex- pressed by the term death, were provided for in the original constitution of both soul and body ;
(3) that these results consisted of suffering and loss, the soul experiencing the evils which attend and follow moral darkness and separation from God, and the body those which accompany the process of dissolution ; (4) that the all-comprehend- ing penalty of sin was, however, the ruin and misery of the soul, the dissolution of the body
52 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
being no more than the attending satellite of the great and central evil ; and (5) that the death of the soul took place immediately after the fall, being a state of misery which naturally and normally culminates in eternal woe.
SECTION III.
THE INTERMEDLITE STATE.
PROOF OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE INTERMEDIATE STATE — (1) FROM THE WORDS OF CHRIST ; (2) FROM THE WORDS OF PETER ; (3) FROM THE WORDS OF PAUL ; (4) FROM THE WORDS OF CHRIST. — OBJECTIONS TO THIS— (1) FROM SCRIPTURE; AND (2) FROM REASON.
Haying learned from the word of God that death, the penalty of sin, falls chiefly upon the soul, and consists, for the present, in separation from God rather than extinction of conscious being, we must now carry forward our investiga- tion to the state of unbelievers during the period which elapses between the dying and the rising again of the body. The Scriptures teach, as we believe, that the souls of impenitent men con- tinue still, in the transitional state to be conscious and miserable ; and it will be our duty in the present section to exhibit, partially at least, their testimony on this point.
In our Lord's account of the rich man and Lazarus, it is said : '- And it came to pass that 5^
54 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom ; the rich man also died and was buried ; and in hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torments," etc.^ The limits as- signed to the present essay do not permit us to review and estimate in detail the various hypoth- eses which have been made respecting the im- port of this passage ; but the result of a some- what careful survey is simply this: that the most obvious meaning of Christ's language is its real meaning ; that no amount of ingenuity, no keenness of spiritual vision, can discover any occult sense in this language, or dissipate the impression which it makes at once upon a thoughtful mind. Says Dr. Whately of the pas- sage : " It seems to imply, indeed, very plainly, that there is a future state of rewards and pun- ishments, . . . and also that those who have been devoted to the good things and enjoyments of this world will have no share in those of the world to come, and will regret, wlicn it is too late, their not having ' laid up for tlicmselves treasure in heaven.' "^ Very true ; but is this all ? We think not. If it teaches so much, it teaches still more ; it endorses the well-known doctrine of the Pharisees as to the conscious
1 Luke xvi. 19-31. 2 Whately's Future State, p. 57.
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 55
existence of human souls after death^ making no distinction at this point between the righteous and the wicked. Nor is the testimony of our Saviour weakened by supposing his words to be a parable; for the dialogue between Dives and Abraham, the positive misery of the former and the implied blessedness of the latter, are too prominent features of the supposed parable to be reckoned mere drapery without any spe- cial significance. It will not be extravagant to assert, on the strength of this parable, that pre- vious to the final day the impenitent dead are fully conscious, are in a state of suffering, are beyond the reach of help, and have no valid plea to offer against the justice of their doom. For, according to the representation of Christ, the rich man had brothers living upon earth ; he was able to converse with Abraham; he spoke of being " tormented in this flame ; " and his seem- ing reflection upon the goodness of God was repelled by the significant words : " If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead."^
1 We would here call attention to an excellent article on " The Place and Condition of the Departed," by Prof. Griffin, in the Bib. Sac. vol. XIII. p. 153, sq.; to an article on "The Intennediate State," in the Chr. Rev. vol. XX. p. 381, sq. ; to an article on " The Intermediate State and the Punishment of the Wicked," in the
56 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
To destroy the force of tins passage, great stress has sometimes been laid upon the fact that both the rich mau and Abraham are repre- sented as having bodies, wliich is quite incon- sistent with a proper idea of the intermediate state. But it may well be doubted, whether they are represented as having bodies in any other way than God is said to have hands and feet, and nearly all the members of a human body. If, however, they were, this could hardly, with our limited knowledge of the future life, be pronounced inconsistent with the proper idea of an intermediate state. " If, when parts of the body are removed, we still believe that we pos- sess those limbs, and feel pain in them, why may not the disembodied spirit still subjectively exist in, and feel the sensations of, that corporeal system from which it is temporarily separated ? "^ And besides, it may be questioned, whether those who assume the existence of the human soul, or of any created intelligence, apart from a material organ, as simple spirit like God, do not go beyond the record. It certainly behoves
Meth. r.cv. vol. XXXIV. p. 240, sq.; to Ilertzog's " Real-Encyklo- pscdie fur prot. Tlicolosie und Kirche," Bd. V. s. v. Hades; and to Prof. Stuart's " Essays on Future Punishment," p. 76, sq.
1 Alford, s?/Z> loco. See, on this passaj^e, the commentaries of Cal- vin, De Wette, Meyer, Bengel, and Kiplcy.
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 57
every man to speculate with great caution on a matter which is not distinctly treated in the word of God, and which lies altogether beyond the range of our experience in this life.
Turning now to the language of Peter, we ob- tain additional evidence that unbelievers are con- scious during the intermediate state. He speaks of Christ as '' being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit; in which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison " — iv (pvlax-fi. To pass over the questions still in liti- gation respecting the import of this text, we believe all the best interpreters agree in hold- ing the spirits here mentioned to be the souls of departed men, probably the souls of those who perished in the Noachian deluge. Now it seems to us scarcely less than absurd to speak of unconscious spirits as under guard, in prison. Nothing short of an express declaration, made by an inspired teacher, that a state of profound unconsciousness was itself the prison in which they were guarded, would seem to justify such an exposition.
But we are not restricted in this part of our essay to those passages which speak of the im- penitent dead ; for it is commonly admitted that both the righteous and the wicked are conscious,
58 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
or both unconscious, between death and tlie re- surrection. Hence every expression of the Scriptures, which proves the consciousness of believers during the period in question, proves that of unbelievers also.
Let us then consider the words of Paul in his second epistle to the Corinthians : " Being confi- dent then alwavs, and knowino: that while at home in the body we are absent from the Lord ; for we walk by faith, and not by sight; we are confident, I say, and arc well pleased rather to migrate out of the bochj, and to dwell at home icith the Lord.'"^ The apostle had already, in a pre- vious verse, expressed his desire to be clothed upon with a celestial body. And he goes on to say, in the verses cited by us, that even though he should not be permitted to enter at once, after death, upon the blessedness of the final state in his glorified body, he was nevertheless well pleased to leave this present body, and dwell at home with the Lord. And it is certain tliat unconscious existence, or virtual non-exist- ence, would not have been described by Paul as a dwelling with the Lord — ivdi]uriaai nQo; top Kininr. Alford, wlio tliiiiks the second cominoc of Christ was anticipated by Paul as possible in
1 2 Cor. V. 6-8.
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 59
his OTm day, paraphrases thus : '- Even if a disso- lution of the body be imminent, — even that, though not according to our wish, does not destroy our confidence ; for so sensible are we that dwelling in the body is a state of banish- ment from the Lord, that we prefer to it even the alternative of dissolution, bringing us, as it will, into his presence." If the apostle pre- ferred a state of absolute unconsciousness to life in this world, merely because he would have no sense of the lapse of ages, but would seem instantly to awake with Christ, he plainly disre- garded his own best good and the best good of mankind. For, " by continuing in life, he would have made further proficiency in the Christian life, would have done more for the honor of God, and for the kingdom of Christ, and there- fore would have been entitled by promise, to a greater degree of happiness in the resurrection state; and this greater degree of happiness would have been extended to all eternity. So that, in reality, the apostle would have been an infinite loser by death at that time. He would have lost a certain degree of happiness, doubt- less equal to the whole heavenly happiness of some saints ; and this degree of happiness, run- ning through eternity, would be a sum of happi-
60 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
ness as truly infinite as the whole eternal hap- piness of some real saints. As, therefore, those saints, by the loss of their whole heavenly hap- piness, would sustain an infinite loss, so would the apostle, if he had lost that additional degree of happiness to which he would have been enti- tled by his continued life and usefulness. We can make nothing of this text but upon the sup- position that his soul died not, or did not fall into a torpor with his body." ^ And, again, his removal by death would put an end to his direct efforts for the good of the church. Bands of Christians, looking to him for counsel and en- couragement, had been formed in various parts of the Roman Empire ,* and never were his per- sonal services more necessary to their establish- ment in truth and spiritual progress, than when he was writing this very epistle. Yet, accord- ing to the hypothesis of unconsciousness during the intermediate state, the magnanimous apostle was quite willing to leave these lambs, which had been entrusted by the Great Shepherd to his care, for the sake of seeming to be sooner with the Lord ! nothing more.
And this remark bears the mind away to another passage in the writings of Paul, where
1 Works of Edwards the Younger, vol. II. p. 530.
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 61
he distinctly recognizes the value of his pres- ence to the churches. Writing to the Philip- pians, he uses these words: "Because for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if to live in the flesh — if this is to me the fruit of labor, — then what I should choose I know not. Now I am perplexed by the two, having the de- sire to depart and to be with Christ, for it is much more than better ; but to abide in the flesh is more needful for you." ^ In his manuscript notes upon the epistle to the Philippians, Pro- fessor Hackett says of the word uvulvuai [to dejMrt) : " It is strictly a nautical term, mean- ing ' to cast loose,' to ' weigh anchor,' in order to put to sea." The manner in which avv Xqigto) eiPUL follows this term, would lead us to suppose that the apostle regarded the one event as im- mediately subsequent to the other. It is not easy to see how he could have expressed him- self in a way more inevitably suggesting that idea, than the one which he has adopted here. Had he believed that an interval of unconscious- ness was to elapse after death before the soul was to be present with Christ, would he not be likely, in such a connection, to have intimated that belief, or at least to have avoided language
1 Phil. i. 21-24.
62 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
SO liable to mislead the reader ? And on the whole passage he makes the following remarks : " It may be well to notice here the nature of the struggle in Paul's mind, between his desire to depart and be with Christ, and his anxiety to labor for the spiritual welfare of men. It is difficult to see how he could have experienced any such struggle, unless he believed that death, which released him from the toils of this life, was to introduce him at once to the presence of Christ and the bliss of heaven.
" On the supposition that he expected after death to remain, for an indefinite time, uncon- scious in the grave until the resurrection, how, with his characteristic zeal for the salvation of men, and his contempt of trials and dangers in the pursuit of that object, could he have hesi- tated for a moment to wish to live as long as possible, since the longer lie lived the more he would be able to accomplish for the cause of the Redeemer, and since he could gain nothing of a permanent nature by an earlier death which he would regard as worthy of a moment's com- parison with the value of his labors to his fel- low-men ? On the contrary, if we suppose that he regarded his attainment of the rewards and the joys of heaven as simultaneous with his
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 63
departure from life; we have then a natural ex- planation of his perplexity. He might well desire that a consummation fraught with such gain to himself personally might arrive soon, and feel that nothing could reconcile him to the idea of remaining longer absent from Christ, except the importance of his ministry in preparing others for the same glorious destination."
To the testimony of Paul may be added the language of Christ himself. When one of the robbers who were crucified with him offered the prayer, " Lord, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom," the Saviour replied, "Verily, I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in paradise."^ Comment on this de- claration seems to be almost superfluous. To suppose that Christ, in reply to such a petition, merely reminded the dying robber that they were both to pass that very day from the land of the living into a state of total unconscious- ness, of virtual non-existence, is most unreason- able. We can hardly divine the process by which any one can be led to endorse such a view. Moreover, the primary sense of the word paradise, namely, a "park" or "pleasure-gar- den," and the use of this term by Josephus, by
1 Luke xxiii. 43.
64 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
tlic Seventy, by Paul, and by John, are utterly inconsistent with such a view of our passage. Indeed, it is quite certain from the language of Christ, that the believing robber was to enter, that very day, immediately after death, upon a state of conscious blessedness in the presence of Christ. Dr. Whately appears to concede this, but undertakes to destroy the value of this concession by suggesting that, by reason of his extraordinary faith and the peculiar time of his death, the converted robber was permitted to anticipate the resurrection. ^ With similar in- genuity he advances the suggestion, that Moses did not actually die, but was translated, like Enoch and Elijah. But these conjectures seem to be unsupported either by reason or by the word of God, and are advanced, it is not severe to say, for no other purpose than to save a doc- trine which is not, we suppose, taught in the New Testament. -
"If, however, it be said the meaning is, that, as the thief would be conscious of nothing between death and the resurrection, his being with Christ at the resurrection would seem to him to have
1 Future State, p. Gl sq.; 247 sq.
2 In addition to tlie passages considered above, see also Matt. xvii. 3 ; cf. Mark ix. 9 ; and liev. vi. 9-11.
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 65
been the same day on which he died, or imme- diately after his death, I answer, this would be to talk without example, and in a manner not intelligible to mankind in general. Would it not be unintelligible, and without example, to tell a man who had been a whole day in a sound sleep, and who was wholly ignorant of the time which had elapsed during his sleep, that it was but a minute since he had fallen into sleep ? Or would there be any propriety or truth in saying, that Lazarus, who lay dead four days, was raised on the same day, and even immediately after his death ? Not an instance of such language can be found in all the Scriptures, nor in any ap- proved uninspired author. Yet this would have been just as true and proper, on the ground of this objection, as our Lord's telling the thief on the cross, ^ To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.' Lazarus, on the hypothesis now under consideration, would no more have per- ceived any time between his death and resurrec- tion, than the thief would have perceived time between his death and the general resurrec- tion, "i
But a plausible objection to the view now pre- sented has been drawn from Christ's language
1 Edwards' Works (the younger), vol. II. p. 531.
6*
66 STATE OP THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
to tlic Sadducccs: "As touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." ^ Dobney remarks on this language : " Observe, the question just then opened was not concerning the scjyaratc and con- scious existence of the soul after death; and, there- fore, it was not to prove this that he showed that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had not utterly ceased to be. His argument, to be satisfactory against that particular class of objectors before him and demonstrative of the point he had undertaken to prove, shows the living again, which he predicted, to be dependent on a resur- rection. To deduce from the title God had assumed, that, therefore, since he is not the God of the dead but of the living, the patriarchs were still existent, in a separate state, would not have met the case at all, iuiless the living after death be itself the resurrection. His argu- ment, strictly logical when correctly stated, is this : As God is not the God of the dead, of those who liave finally and forever ceased to be,
1 Matt xxii. 31, 32; Cf. Luke xxi. 38.
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 67
there must be a resurrection of tliose of whom he calls himself the God." ^
The Sadducees, it will be remembercdj held that " there is no resurrection, nor angel or spirit;"^ and that "the souls of men perish with their bodies." ^ It was a central dogma of their system, that man is entirely dependent on bodily organization for conscious existence ; so that when the corporeal frame is dissolved by death, he really ceases to be. And, according to Mr. Dobney, this was also the doctrine of our Saviour ; otherwise his statement, " Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush," was a mistake, and his reasoning fal- lacious. But we cannot see that he has made good this position. For it must be borne in mind that the doctrines of a separate existence of the soul after death, and of a future resurrec- tion, were always united in the Jewish mind; that the Pharisees and Essenes affirmed both these doctrines, while the Sadducees denied them both ; that Christ and his apostles are nowhere in the New Testament represented as agreeing with the Sadducees, even in part, and that the
1 " The Scripture Doctrine of Future Punishment," etc., by H. H. Dobney, p. 154.
2 Acts xxiii. 8. 3 Josephus Antiq. xviii. 1-5.
68 STATE OF THE IMPEXITEXT DEAD.
only alternative allowed by our passage is, that the patriarchs were pronounced "a/ii-e," either because, tliough actually and completely dead, they had not finally ceased to be, since God would raise them into life hereafter, or because they were tndy alive and conscious, but not in their full, complex nature — which fact was really a divine prediction and assurance of the resur- rection — and, bearing this in mind, it will surely be easy for any fair investigator to decide in favor of the latter as the only just view of Chi'ist's language. And if this decision be ac- cepted, how characteristic and profound was the answer of Jesus ! His argument was far deeper and more comprehensive than the single point brought forward by his adversaries required. He replied to the Sadducees as a judge, rather than as a lawyer. He proved their system to be rotten at the core. From a passage which no mere logician would have pronounced rel- evant to the question at issue, he drew a con- clusion which destroyed their whole system, root and branch.
To present the matter in another form : The Sadducees assailed tlie whole doctrine of a fu- ture life, whether in the body or out of the body, by assailing the doctrine of the resurrection,
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 69
for the latter doctrine was an integral part of the former. To use the words of a friend, it was tacitly assumed by them and by Christ, " That there is such a connection between the resurrection of the body and the spiritual exist- ence of men between death and the resurrec- tion, that any proof of the one, is pari iiassu a proof of the other." ^ Our Saviour, therefore, first answered their cavil against the resurrec- tion of the body, by correcting their gross and false idea of a " spiritual " body, and then proved out of the Scriptures the conscious existence of Moses and the patriarchs long after their de- cease, which fact was a prophecy and pledge, and valid proof of the resurrection. ^
Further, the dead are spoken of as those
iRev- J. T. Smith, of Amherst, Mass.
2 See also the Commentaries, especially those of Meyer, De Wette, Alford, and Bengel. Says Schottgen ad Matt. xxii. 32, " Nervus hiijiis argumentntionis Christi a Tkeohgis nostris probe pcr$pectus est. Deum exim alicujus esse notat in fcedere cum ipso versari. Sic in V. T. Bens tantum erai Israelitarum Deus, in N. T. eiiam gen- tiUum. Roman. Hi. 29, hoc est, olim cum solis Jtidceis fccdus hahehat., jam vero cum omnibus nntionibus in toto terrarum orbe. Jam Deus se Deum Abrahami, Isaaci, et Jacobi dicit, longo intervallo post mortem ipsorum, h. e. fatebatur, se adJmc in fcedere cum ipsis versari, ne- cesse erat igitur, ut tunc temporis adhuc in vicis esseni, respectu sell, ad animam habito. Quia vero anima abrahami non est totus Abahamus, sed tantum pars ipsius, superest, ut etiam cor- pus SPEJi iiABEAT reviviscexdi, et Veritas JicBC verborum divinorum inconvulsa maneat. IIoc est argumenium Christi pro resurrectione mortiuyi'um.''^
70 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
" that sleep in the dust of the earth," and sleepj it is urged, involves unconsciousness. On this objection we remark, first, that men who believe in the consciousness of the soul after death, have been wont for ages to speak of dying as falling asleep, and of the dead as those who have fallen asleep, without perceiv- ing any absurdity or incongruity in their lan- guage. This fact alone is a full reply to the objection ; for Christ and his apostles used not the language of philosophy, but of common life. And, secondly, that sleep and death resemble each other ; not, however, because the soul is un- conscious in either, but because the bodily senses are closed, the windows by which the spirit looks forth upon the world, tlie avenues by which the world approaches it, the mysterious arches which in this life span the gulf between mind and mat- ter, are all gone or impassible ; so that if the mind is active, as in dreaming, this action is un- restrained by the real condition of the external world, by the true relations of the dreamer to material objects. Hence the exceeding difficulty often times of recalling the action of sleep, when the senses are refreshed and revived and re- opened. The trutli seems to be this : that the spirit is ever active, though in different states of
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 71
consciousness, which may or may not be connected here. Even Dr. Whately admits that the mind probably does not cease to think in the profound- est sleep. It is, therefore, we have good reason to believe, the body alone which truly rests in sleep ; it is the senses, the nerves, the organs of the soul for this present life in connection with the world, which are directly concerned in slum- ber ; and so it is in death. The body sleeps in the dust of the earth until the last day ; but the soul is not there ; it has passed into a different sphere of action and consciousness. ^
The fact also may be worthy of attention, that only " the dead in Christ " are said by New Testament writers to be asleep. And from this usage of our Saviour and his apostles it may be right to infer that the dead are described in the book of Daniel as those " that sleep in the dust of the earth," because the righteous were first and prominently in the speaker's mind. This view is favored by the context. And if it be correct, we are only to inquire why the 'penitent dead are spoken of as being asleep. And the answer may be this : They have passed from a
1 See a luminous discussion of "Consciousness," in Sir Wm. Hamilton's "Lectures on Metaphysics." Leo's XI. to XIX., espe- cially Lee. XVII.
72 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
State of wearisome toil and conflict to one of sweet repose, which, again, is to be followed by a more active and blessed life.
And, finally, a general judgment is foretold in the Scriptures, and this is pronounced inconsist- ent with the doctrine of human consciousness be- tween death and the resurrection. Such a state- ment we are not required to answer ; for we are by no means competent to explain the ways of God. As the heavens are high above the earth, so are his ways above our ways, and his thoughts above our thoughts. We are content to abide by the testimony of his word. Still, it may be remarked, that a ruler might certainly for wise reasons defer indefinitely the trial of a criminal whose guilt was certain, whose custody was sure, and whose hope of ultimate acquittal was nearly or quite taken away ; and so also God, for aught we can see, may properly reserve the wicked for a final and solemn adjudication, not to assure them of their guilt and condemnation, but to exhibit before all finite beings the ground of his de- cision and the righteousness of his administra- tion. We can imagine no better way for him to take in making himself and his glory known. It seems to us eminently suited to the proper conduct of a moral government, perfectly adapted
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 73
to complete the revelation of the divine char- acter, as concerned in the origin and final des- tiny of our race. And even should it prove that the wicked do not come to a full knowledge and sense of their guilt on the one hand, and to an absolute assurance of their hopeless nun on the other, until the last judgment, we do not see how this could affect materially the question at issue.'" No party would be wronged ; the guilty would be treated as such, though perhaps cheat- ing themselves still with the faint hope of deliv- erance, and the righteous would be treated as such, though not perhaps enjoying all the assur- ance and blessedness of their final state.
We have never seen any other even plausible objection, drawn from the word of God, to the consciougiiess of departed spirits in the interme- diate state, and therefore submit the following as our conclusion from the teaching of Scripture, namely : That unbelievers, as well as believers, will be fully conscious from the time of their physical death until the resurrection. And it need scarcelv bo remarked, after considerins; the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, that the former are in a state of misery, and the lat- ter in a state of blessedness.
1 Cf. Matt. vii. 22, and xxv. 44.
7
SECTiON lY.
THE FINAL STATE.
EXTRACTS FROM JOSEPHUS AND TACITUS. — TESTIMONY OF CHRIST AFTER HIS ASCENSION. — HIS TESTIMONY WHILE YET ON EARTH. — REPLY TO ANOTHER INTERPRETATION OF HIS LANGUAGE.
In the last section we had occasion to mention the well-known doctrine of the Pharisees as to the conscious existence of souls after death. Before adducing the testimony of Scripture in respect to the final state of unbelievers, it may be well to lay before our readers the account which Josephus, a contemporary of the apostles, gives of the doctrine held by Pharisees and Essenes on the point to be examined. Their opinions are of no weight per sc ; yet a knowledge of them may put us in the position of those who listened to Christ, and may thus enable us the better to understand his teaching. In so far as lie appro- priated, without explanation, the language of any large class of his hearers, when alluding to the condition of men beyond the grave, he
THE FINAL STATE. 75
thereby and to that extent endorsed their belief as correct. This will readily be admitted by all who recognize his authority as a religious teach- er, and with such only are we at present con- cerned. If any are prepared to assume that Christ had no certain doctrines to express, no well-defined and reliable truths to utter in the ears of a lost race, for them all aids to interpre- tation derived from the use of language by the Jews may be superfluous ; the pictures and visions of a poet and seer^ may be comprehended at once by the " poet's eye," or " faculty divine," but for others the help of history and philology will ever be necessary.
According to the testimony of Josephus, the Pharisees held " that all souls are incorrup- tible, but the souls of good men are only removed into other bodies, while the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punislunent." 2 Again: they "believe that souls have an im- mortal vigor in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards and punishments, accord- ing as they have lived virtuously or \aciously in this life ; and the latter are to be detained in an
1 We refer to the discourse of Eev. T. S. King, entitled, " The Doctrine of eternal Punishment unchristian."
2 Wars of the Jews, II. 8, 14.
76 STATE OF THE LMPEXITEXT DEAD.
everlasting prison, but the former sliall have power to revive and live again. . . . But the doctrine of the Sadducees is this : That souls die with the bodies," etc. ^ And, in another place : '- Smiling in their agonies, and deriding the efforts of their persecutors, they cheerfully resigned tlicir souls, assured of receiving them again. For the opinion obtains among them, that bodies indeed arc corruptible, and the matter of them not permanent, but that souls continue ex- empt from death forever : and that, emanating from the most subtle ether, they are enfolded in bodies, as prisons, to which they are drawn by some natural spell. But when loosed from the bonds of the flesh, as if released from a long captivity, they rejoice, and are borne upward. In this opinion, harmonizing with the sons of Greece, they maintain that virtuous souls have their habitation beyond the ocean, in a region oppressed neither with rains, nor snows, nor heats, but which the ever-gentle zephyr refresh- es, breathing from the wave, while to the bad they allot a gloomy and tempestuous cavern, full of never-ending punishments.
"According to the same notion, the Greeks seem to me to apportion to the brave, whom they style
1 Antiquities, XVIII. 1, 5.
THE FINAL STATE. 77
heroes and demi-gods, the islands of the blessed ; but to the souls of the wicked, the place of the impious in hades, where their legends tell that certain persons are punished, as Sisyphus, and Tantalus, and Ixion, and Tityus, laying it down, first, that souls are immortal, and deriving from thence their exhortations to virtue, and their dissuasives from vice. For the good become better in this life by the hope of a reward even after death, and the impetuous passions of the evil are restrained by the fear, that, though they may escape detection while alive, they will, after dissolution, imdergo a deathless punishment. Such are the theological views of the Essenes concerning the soul — an irresistible attraction to those who have once tasted their philosophy." ^ Moreover, Tacitus affirms of the Jews that " they deem the souls of those who are cut off in battle or by the hand of the executioner to be eternal. Hence their desire for offspring, and their contempt of death. Dead bodies are buried, after the custom of Egypt, rather than burned; there is also the same solicitude, and the same belief in respect to the under-world." ^
1 Jewish War (Traill's trans.), II. viii. 10, 11.
2 " AnIMASQUE PRrELIO, AUT SUPPLICIIS PEREMPTORUM ^TER-
VA8 putant. Hinc generandi amor, ei moriendi conteniptus. Corjpora
7^
78 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
With the light which these testimonies shed upon the belief prevalent among the Jews, at the time of Christ, in respect to a future life, let us turn to the word of God, and examine its language concerning the final state of unbeliev- ers. In the last book of the New Testament we read : " And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where also were the beast, and the false prophet, and they shall he tormented day and night forever and ever — ^auavia&r^aovTUL r]uioag xul vvxiog eig To{>g
ai^vag xdjv ai(hvu)v. Here " the beast " must be undjerstood to signify and represent real men, knit together in a body, controlled by a common purpose, and setting themselves as a great or- ganized power in opposition to Christ — a mon- archy, perhaps, yet not the less composed of actual men, because they are united together, and may be represented in the aggregate as a single power. Here, then, is no image of im- personal evil, — "for there is really no such thing as impersonal evil in the sense of moral evil," — no mere nominalistic idea set before us as a great beast, but a compact anti-christian organi- zation, made up of individuals, and which can be
condere, quam cremare, e more jEgtjptko; eademque cura, €t de in/ernis persuasio,'" etc. (L. v. c. 5.)
THE FINAL STATE. 79
in the "lake of fire " only as the individuals con- stituting it are there. A similar view is also to be taken of the " false prophet."
" And I saw," proceeds the Revelator, " a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the tlirone ; and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life ; and the dead were judged out of the things written in the books according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and hades gave up the dead that were in them, and they were judged every one according to their works. And death and hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of firey On the last words of this passage Ebrard remarks : " If death and hades were cast into the lake of. fire, and it is then said, ' This is the second death, the lake of fire,' the sense cannot be that death in the abstract is to be destroyed, so that henceforth there shall be no death any more ; also, that hades has become superfluous as an abode, and therefore will be burned up like an old box. For death's aimihilation cannot be a second death, and, besides, the second death is
80 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
a punishment for men, ^ not a means for the burning up of localities and instruments which have become superfluous. Still less can "death" and '^ hades " be two " demons " (as De Wette supposes), who were to be punished, because they had slain so many men ; for in that case " the lake of fire " itself must also be punished ! Death and hades are rather to be understood in the concrete of the men icho are found in them.^* To nearly the same effect says a writer in the Christian Review : " Death has no separate ex- istence. Hades, indeed, may be a locality as well as a condition, and may, therefore, without incongruity, be represented as being cast into the lake of fire. But as this cannot be said of death, and as the two are so intimately united, it seems preferable to treat them alike. It is not said that the dead who were in death and hades were cast into the lake of fire, but simply that death and hades themselves were cast in. Is it not, then, perfectly legitimate to consider death and hades ai standing for the dead who were in them, or, rather, the dead in whom they were ?"2 We cannot withhold our assent to this interpre- tation as the only natural and consistent one. Passing now to the next chapter of the Apoc-
1 Cf. u. 11 ; and xx. 6. 2 Chr. Kev. vol. XX. p. 397.
THE FINAL STATE. 81
alypse, we read : " But the fearful and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and ichoremongersy and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which hurneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death ]^ and further on in the next chapter, "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sor- cerers, and ivhorcmongers, and murderers, and idola- ters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie^'^ Let it be observed in passing, that the same classes of men, with hardly an exception, are said, in the one case, to " have part in the lake of fire," and, in the other, to be " without the city." To these passages should be added, as referring in our judgment to the future doom of unbeliev- ers, two verses in the fourteenth chapter of this book, namely, " If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his fore- head or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation : and he shall be tormented — Saaavia^riasiai — with fire and brimstone, in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb ;
1 Rev. xxi. 8. 2 Rev. xxii. 15.
82 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever ; and they have no rest day nor night," etc.^ Well has Bengel said of this lan- pfiiaQre, '•' Una omnhim liorrcndissima in tola Scrip- tura est hceccc comminatlo. Pcllit timorem ah in- terfcctorihus corporis timor ah Eo, qui potest ct ani- mam ct corpus perimere.'"^
On these portions of the sacred record we submit the following remarks : First, the second death, which awaits all whose names are not written in the book of life, is denominated the lake of fire. This death seems also to be re- ferred to as consisting, in part, of exclusion from the holy city and association with the vile and abandoned. Briefly, it involves extreme suffer- ing and infinite loss. Secondly, the lake of fire, called also the second death, is a designation of the final state or abode of Satan and his angels. If, then, the testimony of this apocalyptic seer is worthy of confidence, wicked men are to be as- sociated in their final state with the great adver- sary— a fact of dreadful omen in itself. Tliird- ly, the sufi'erings of Satan are to be without end. Togctlier with the beast and the false prophet,
1 Rev. xiv. 10, 11.
2 Sec also the commentaries of Ilcngstenberg, Ebrard, and Stuart, on this passage.
THE FINAL STATE. 83
he is to be " tormented clay and night forever and ever." The Greek words in this clause are perfectly unequivocal. The idea of eternity is expressed with all the plainness with which the most perfect language ever spoken could give it ; and we are unacquainted with any form of speech that would more surely convey to a mind famil- iar with the Greek tongue the idea of conscious suffering than the one here chosen. To attempt any modification of the prima facie import of such language seems to us a perilous tampering with the word of God. We rejoice, therefore, to find that Dobney, one of the ablest as well as fairest defenders of annihilation, hesitates to de- ny the eternal misery of Satan.^ Fourthly, the misery of lost men must therefore be pronounced in like manner endless. For their doom is de- scribed by the same figurative language as that of Satan. Many of them, indeed, are designated by the terms " beast " and " false prophet," who are to be tormented, it is explicitly said, for- ever and ever. And from the passage in chap- ter fourteenth we learn the doom of all who wor- ship the beast and his image ; " the smoke of his torment ascendeth up forever and ever ; and they have no rest day nor night," etc.
1 Scripture Doctrine of Future Punishment, p. 231 sq.
84 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
"We can but think tlie expressions cited above shut us up to the doctrinCj that death, the penal- ty of sin, does not consist in the extinction of conscious beino:, but in the extinction of conscious well-being. Dissolution belongs to the corrupti- ble body, " the earthly house of this tabernacle," but not to the spirit or to its resurrection body.
Let us hear now the words of Christ while yet on earth. In the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew he portrays tlic general judgment. "We quote two verses from tliis sublime description : " Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand. Depart from me, ye cursed^ into everlasting Jire J prepared for the devil aJidhis angels^ "And these shall go away into eternal inmishment, but the righteous into life eternal ^^ How perfectly does this language coincide with that in the Apoc- alypse ! The abode of lost men is also Satan's home, and is called everlasting fire and punish- ment. To resolve all this into a flame-picture addressed to the imagination, is to give up the science of exegesis, and make the word of God teach whatever the student chooses to have it. Says De Wette, the rationalist'. "Evil and its punishment have in the Father, the absolute God, and in his eternal pnr-pose, no ground, but are a
1 Matt. XXV. 41, 46.
THE FINAL STATE. 85
human work, although guided and controlled of
God The punishment of hell, which
is conditioned by sin, cannot be eternal. See, however, the opposite view, as maintained by the Rabbins, in Wetstein. The eternity of this punishment lies, indeed, in the verbal sense — Wortsinne) — but yet it is to be remarked that the term Jire is to be taken figuratively, and the word aiibviov not with metaphysical strictness ; that the idea of the eternal is irreconcilable with that of evil and its punishment, and that the object of this warning representation is not to give information respecting the eternal nature of things, but to depict visibly the idea of the judg- ment, that is, the removal of the conflict between good and evil in the kingdoui of God, by setting aside evil."
This evidently is not interpretation, but spec- ulation; its basis is philosophy, and not the word of God. Meyer's note, on the other hand, seems to us full of truth : " The absolute idea of eternity, in respect to the punishment of hell, is not to be set aside by an appeal to the popu- lar use of aid)viov, nor by an appeal to the figura- tive term Jire and to the inconsistency between the idea of the eternal and that of evil and its punishment, together with the teaming object 8
86 STATE OF THE IMPEXITEXT DEAD.
of the description ; but it stands fast exegetically by reason of the contrasted 'coji^p u'uhvioy which sig- nifies the endless Messianic life."
With the passages already adduced may be compared the following : " If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out ; it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than hav- ing two eyes to be cast into hell, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." ^ " I say unto you, that many shall come from the cast and the west, and shall sit down with Abra- ham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven ; but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness : there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." ^ "The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity ; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire : there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." ^ ^ So shall it be at the end of the world : the angels shall come forth and shall sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire : there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." ^ ^- Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness :
1 Mark ix. 4T, 48. s :\ratt. xiii. 41, 42.
2 Matt. viii. 11 12. 4 Matt. xiii. 49, 50.
THE FIXAL STATE. 87
there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." i "But he shall say, I tell you I know you not whence ye are ; depart from me all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnash- ing of teeth when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves cast out." ^
It will be observed by the careful reader that the final abode of the ungodly is variously rep- resented by Christ. He speaks of their being cast into a " furnace of fire," or " unquenchable fire," into " outer darkness," or simply " out of the" kingdom of God." But the effect is always the same ; nowhere destruction of consciousness, everywhere misery, " weeping and gnashing of teeth." While we have no more right to pre- sume that unbelievers will be immersed in the element of fire hereafter than we have to con- clude that literal darkness, or an actual worm that never dies, will be the source of their an- guish, we are authorized, and indeed required, to believe that their condition will be one of in- tense woe.
Yet this doctrine has been of late assailed, and the opinion has been advanced, that fire is not an emblem of torment, but of destruction,
1 Matt. XXV. 30. 2 Luke xiii. 27, 28.
bo STATE OF THE IMPENITEXT DEAD.
and, hence, that all the passages cited above point us rather to the extinction of personal existence than to a state of penal suffering. Several instances may, no doubt, be produced from the word of God which seem at first sight to favor this opinion. But if we narrowly ex- amine those expressions which set forth the fu- ture condition of unbelievers, it will be found, we suppose, wholly untenable. For (1) the wicked are said to be in torment. This fact is almost always indicated, as if it were the char- acteristic feature of their condition. Now if fire were in these passages an emblem of de- struction, the accompanying terms would be al- most certain to adjust themselves to this leading idea, and thus place it in the foreground. If virtual annihilation is to be the jmnislwient of sin hereafter, and if this was meant to be sym- bolized by immersion in fire, it is strange that this fact does not appear, as the fact of suffering now does, at every turn in the language of Christ ; it is strange that the rich man in hades is made to shrink from pain only, and not rather, above all, from destruction of consciousness, the real penalty of sin, the culminating point of his doom. But if the termination of personal being is not in reality the imnishmcnt of sin, but rather the
THE FINAL STATE. 89
end of punishment, the coveted release from it, then surely this virtual annihilation cannot be " death," " the wages of sin/' the penalty annexed to it from the beginning. Alas ! when we read that Dives after death lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and said, also, I am tormented in this flame, that Satan and his angels are to be tor- mented in the lake of fire, which is the second death, and that unbelievers are sentenced with appalling precision of language to the same state, it is but too certain that fire is here em- ployed to symbolize a source of suffering, instead of non-existence. And (2) the impenitent dead are said to be in protracted, endless woe. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to express the idea of endless misery more unequivocally than it is given in several passages to which we have referred. To transcribe again language so inexpressibly solemn and fearful seems to be unnecessary. Let the reader who feels any doubt at this point turn back and examine once more the testimony for himself. But how long does fire, as a destroying agent, spare its vic- tim ? How many hours, or even minutes, would a human being survive in a flame so intense as to be called, for that reason, unquenchable ? In a previous section we have shown that human 8^
90 STATE OP THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
souls are conscious during the interim between bodily death and resuiTcction. But for many of our race, how long must this period be ! Who can measure the interval which connects the frat- ricide of Cain with the sound of the last trum- pet ! Yet, according to our Saviour's account of "the rich man," the lost in hades survive what is signified by the action of fire, until the last judg- ment ; and if they endure it for so long a time, there is no reason to believe it will ever put an end to their personal existence. Think of the wicked as being exposed after death to some power which destroys them, as fire burns up the chafi", and what becomes of Christ's language, " For all are alive to him," ^ and again, through the Revclator, " They shall be tormented day and night forever and ever."^ Its appropriate- ness and significance disappear at once, and we are compelled to wonder at his use of language. And (3) the impenitent dead are described as being in " outer darkness," "without the city," and " without the kingdom of God." But dark- ness, however thick and terrible, is by no means, according to the popular belief and nsns loqucndi, a destructive energy. It is rather suggestive of gloom, terror, helplessness and desertion, than
1 Luke XX. 38. 2 Rev. xx. 10.
THE FINAL STATE. 91
of extinction of being. Much more is this true of the other expressions. To be excluded from the holy city or the kingdom of God is simply equivalent to being fixed irrevocably in a state of spiritual death, the state in which unbelievers now exist. For these reasons, in brief, we must reject the opinion that fire is spoken of in con- nection with the impenitent dead as a symbol of destruction, and must adhere to the view obvi- ously required in almost every case by the adjimcts and context, that it is a symbol of torment.
Our conclusion, then, is this : That the con- scious existence of unbelievers will have no end.^ Those who reject Christ are destined to survive the rolling together of the heavens as a scroll, and the melting of the elements with fervent heat, — are destined to survive the searchings and terrors of the last day, when they will be ready to say to the mountains, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb ; for
1 It has not been deemed necessary to examine afresh, as if the matter were unsettled, the import of aluivtos and the phrases which signify eternal. See, however, Stuart's "Essays on Future Punish- ment," p. 5, sq. ; Meth. Rev. vol. XXXIV. p. 257, sq. ; "Immortal- ity: The Argument from Scripture," by Rev. T. M. Post, D.D. ; New Englander, vol. XIV. p. 161, sq. — a manlj^ and powerful dis- cussion ^ ElUcott on 2 Thess. i. 9; Ebrard on Rev. xx. 10; and the commentators generally on the passages noticed in this essay.
92 STATE OP THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand ? — are destined to survive their flight into the outer darkness, where there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth, their descent into the bottomless pit, where they will have no rest day nor night ; and are destined, in this abode of outer darkness, to suffer, with all the foes of God, " eternal punishment." This, according to the Scriptures, to which we must add nothing, from which we must subtract noth- ing, will be their dreadful but righteous doom. This is the second death. 0 that all who read these pages may be delivered from it by accept- ing the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord ! And may God in his tender mercy give us grace to believe on his Son before the day of our trial is past, and our doom assigned us with hypocrites and unbelievers I
SECTION Y.
BIBLICAL OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.
(1) "DEATH," THE EXTINCTION OF CONSCIOUS BEING. — THEORY OP HAM. — THEORY OF HUDSON. — (2) " DESTRUCTION," THE EXTINCTION OF CONSCIOUS BEING. — SUPPORTS OF THIS VIEW. — OBJECTIONS TO IT.
Against the doctrine now presented, several objections have been raised, some of which de- serve our careful attention. It is our purpose to examine in this section the most considerable of those which are drawn professedly from the word of God. And, —
I. The penalty of sin, the final doom of unbe- lievers, is frequently called death ; hut death is an event which puts an end to conscious existence. The whole matter turns of course upon the pro- per definition of the term " deaths In support of the definition here given, we are reminded that Adam must have looked upon death as the extinction of conscious being, and hence that he was not fairly treated, if it signified anything worse than this in the threatening, " Thou shalt
94 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
surely die." Says Mr. Hudson, " The advance of geological science has proved that animals had lived and died for thousands of years before the creation of man. Did Adam not know of their mortality, when he was told that he might die ? And if he did, must he not understand by death just such an expiring and decay as he saw among the brutes around him ? . . . Was he fairhj treated, if that was only the prelude of death, and if, without a word of express warn- ing, he was still liable to endless woe ?"i Dob- ney expresses the same argument. " I submit," he says, "that Adam could never have under- stood the sentence to include what the popular belief finds in it, unless the words had been so ex- plained to him ; of which, as there is no account, so it may not be taken for granted in order to make out a theory. . . . There is nothing indeed on which it more behoves, or in fact so much behoves, that there should be perfect and trans- parent cxplicitness, as in a sentence denouncing evil in case of transgression. One who is in any danger of violating law ought to be able by due painstaking to understand the threatened consequences of voluntary ill-doing. It would not he righteous in a liuman lawgiver to threaten ten stripes and inflict a thousand, or to threaten
1 Doctrine of a Future Life, p. 170.
BIBLICAL OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 95
a day's imprisonment and then commit to the galleys for life, or hand over to the executioner. This, amongst men, would be properly denounced as most flagrant tyranny. Let the man whom it is wished to deter from a criminal act know ex- plicitly the full legal consequences of crime." ^
On the correctness of the position here taken, that the righteousness of a punishment depends upon the criminal's knowledge of it beforehand, or in other words, that it is the knowledge of consequences, and not the knowledge of right and icrojig in conduct itself, which makes man re- sponsible to God and deserving of reward or punishment, we shall have something to say in the sequel. For the present we simply remark, that neither science nor revelation assures us that Adam had observed the phenomena of death in the brute creation before the fall, and had thus been taught to regard this event as an extinction of being. There is perhaps no more reason to suppose that he had anything like a correct idea of physical death without divine instruction, than that he had a somewhat dis- tinct idea of shame, remorse, and spiritual ruin by means of direct instruction from God. The narrative in Genesis suggests quite as readily the presence of Jehovah as the presence of death
1 Scripture Doctrijie of Future Punishment, p. 128.
96 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
in the garden, knowledge derived from commun- ion with God as knowledge derived from the study of expiring animals.
In support of this view, it is also said that the soul of man is itself material, or at least de- pendent for its conscious existence upon material organization. And to prove this we are again reminded of Jehovah's language to Adam : " In the day thou catest thereof, thou — not thy body — shalt surely die," and further along in the narrative, ^^ Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." But here the original text does not permit us to emphasize the pronoun and paraphrase thus — tJiou as a ijerson, a self-con- scious being — tJiou as to the very centre and principle of thy rational nature — art from the dust, and shalt return to the same. No such thought can be fairly evoked from the passage. We are told, liowever, that other portions of the sacred record authorize us to find this meaning in the words of Jehovah to Adam. Let us look at one or two of these passages : —
And first we may look at the words of Balaam : " Let my soul die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his," ^ and then at those of Samson : " Let my soul die with the Philis-
INum. xxiil. 10.
BIBLICAL OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 97
tines." 1 Death, we are assured, is here predicat- ed of the soul, and hence the soul is regarded as dying with the body. We have at least the opinion of Balaam and Samson that it comes to an end with its earthly house. But to this we may reply, that the expression, " my soul," appears in both these cases to take the place of a pronoun, and differs from the latter, if at all, only by way of emphasis. Hence the common version is correct in sense, and nothing is here affirmed of the death of the soul per se. But should this use of the expression, " my soul," be challenged, the frequent choice of the word, trans- lated by us "soul " to signify merely the animal life, the anima, xjiv/r^j cannot be called in question for a moment, and this signification, be it ob- served, suits the design of each passage, and is selected for each by Gesenius.^ Accordingly we say again that neither of these texts should be adduced to prove the death of the soul per se. The former suo^oiests rather the idea of a life be- yond the grave. For why, otherwise, should Ba- laam wish to die the death of the righteous ? Was it because the wicked suffer more pain in articulo mortis than the righteous ? Such an
1 Jud, xvi. 30.
2 Cf. Ex. xxii. 23 ; 1 Kings xix. 3; with Odys. xix. 423.
9
98 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
hypothesis does not accord very well with the rapt condition of the seer, if, indeed, it be not too trivial a thought for any man who is antici- pating the close of life. Or was it because he knew of the resurrection, the final judgment, and the second death, from the last of which he would fain be delivered to enjoy eternal life ? This view is inconsistent with tlie acknowledged fact, tliat very few references are made in the Old Testament to the doctrine of a resurrection, while references to a future life are not infre- quent. To us it is manifest that Balaam was looking forward to a conscious existence beyond the grave, depending for its blessedness or mis- ery upon his character in this life.
It is needless to examine other passages of this class; for no one of them teaches that natural death involves the extinction of man's rational spirit or conscious being ; while, on the other hand, the words of Christ, '- Fear not them that kill the body," etc., prove beyond a reason- able doubt that it involves no such extinction.
Again we are told by Mr. Hudson, that all the passages which we have referred to spiritual death, together with the account in Genesis, lead naturally to a very difTcrent view, namely, that men are pronounced dead in these instances,
BIBLICAL OBJECTIOXS CONSIDERED. 99
prolepticalhj, or by way of anticipation, because they are as good as dead, are virtually dead, that is, are sentenced to death, and perhaps are even now in the process of dying. As illustra- tions of this figure of speech he cites a passage in Genesis : " But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold thou art a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken ; " ^ another in Exodus : " And the Egyp- tians were urgent upon the people that they might send them out of the land in haste : for they said. We be all dead ; "^ and another in Num- bers : " And the children of Israel spake unto Moses, saying. Behold we die, we perish^ ive all 'perishy ^
But these texts are by no means similar to the expression in Genesis which they are said to elucidate. For ( 1 ) the prolepsis is here quite self-evident. In each case the language plainly refers to natural death, and cannot be supposed to signify anything else. Yet those who are alive in the flesh are pronounced to be now dead or dying. Here the verb or participle is in the present tense, and a declaration is made which cannot even be imagined true, except by way of anticipation. That which is conceived
1 Gen. XX. 33. 2 Ex. xii. 33. s Xiim. xvii. 27.
100 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
of as certain, just at hand, and as good as done, is spoken of as now actually accomplished. How different is this from the deliberate pre- diction of an event which is to occur in the future ! How different from the same language when the context leads us to think of the moral rather than the physical nature of man ! And (2) the passages adduced by Mr. Hudson are preceded b}^ narratives which prepare the reader for emphatic and impassioned language. From the circumstances related, he is led to expect the utterance of deep emotion, of severe indignation and frantic alarm, in words fitted to express not so much a historical fact as a feeling of the heart. But nothing of this can be imagined in Jehovah, when he forewarned Adam, yet sin- less, of the sure and penal reward of transgres- sion, nor in Paul when he reminded the Colos- sians that previous to conversion they "were dead in their sins and in the uncircumcision of their flesh." They speak with the deliberation and precision of a lawgiver and a historian, and there is no reason to assign a prolcptical import to the language. But Mr. Hudson appeals with still greater confidence to the words of Pharaoh, " Get thee from me ; take heed to thyself; see my face no more ; for in that day thou seest my
BIBLICAL OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 101
face, thou shall die.''^ And to the words of Solomon, "Build thee an house in Jerusalem and dwell there, and go not forth thence any- whither ; for it shall be that on the day thou goesC out, and passeth over the brook Kedron, thou shalt know for certain that thou shalt surely die^ 2 Yet these passages, in our opinion, make against the view advocated by Mr. Hud- son. For it cannot well be doubted that both Pharaoh and Solomon meant to he understood as threatening the death of Moses and of Shimei, respectively, on the very days indicated. The warning depended, no doubt, in a great measure, upon this circumstance for its force. There shall be no delay, no reprieve, but immediate death — this was the meaning of both these princes. Had Solomon passed a formal sentence of death upon Shimei, when the latter had re- turned from Gath, but deferred the execution of it ten, twenty, or forty years, no man would hesitate to ascribe this delay of execution to some change in the views or the feelings of the king — no man would pretend that he had done as he meant to do when he uttered the warning, or as he wished Shimei to understand him as resolved and pledged to do.
1 Exod. X. 28. 2 1 Kings ii. 36, 37.
9 ^
102 STATE OP THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
We conclude, therefore, that Mr. Hudson has not justified his interpretation of the words in Genesis, " In the day of thy eating of it thou shalt surely die," by a single passage from the word of God, which does not refer to the ques- tion in debate, and hence we must either pro- nounce it untenable in philology, or assume that on this one theme, the penalty of sin, in- spired writers use a figure of speech with great frequency in a quite extraordinary, and, indeed, unprecedented manner.
If, now, we reflect that the spirit of man was made originally incorruptible and fitted to exist forever ; that the fall did not result in a speedy termination of his conscious being, but rather in a moral separation from God, often called death, and that the terms "death" and "life" are sometimes used by the sacred writers to denote the opposite spiritual conditions of those equally alive in the flesh, — all presumption in favor of the annihilation of unbelievers, arising from the use of the word " death " to describe their final punishment, vanishes away. And if, moreover, this term, when applied in the Scriptures to the final state of unbelievers, is surrounded by ad- juncts which naturally imply conscious existence, these adjuncts must be taken as full proof of
BIBLICAL OBJECTIOXS CONSIDERED 103
such existence ; for there is nothing in the word '^ death " to impair their force. This has been already shown in a previous section. Yet it may be well to add, that if it is proper to say of a man who has lost his fellowship with sin and with a sinful world, that he is dead to sin, ^ or dead to the rudiments of the world, ^ it is equally proper and even more natural to describe one as dead unto God when he has lost all fel- lowship with him, and the faculties of his soul reason, conscience, affection have ceased to perform their noblest function, to unite him con- sciously with the Father of Spirits and make his existence truly normal and blessed. When we shall have attained such conceptions of life and death as are taught by a sound philosophy and by the word of God, these terms will no longer be confounded with " personal existence," or " non-existence.*' ^
But we pass on to another objection, namely, —
II. The final doom of unbelievers is often
called ^^ destruction^'' or " perditio7i,^^ in the New
1 Rom. vi. 2. 6, 11.
2 Col. ii. 20. Sec also iii, 3, where the word "dead" is to be un- derstood in the same sense. Compare the learned and accurate commentary of EUicott on these passages.
3 See the Meth. Rev., vol. XXXIV. p. 250 sq., for some discrim- inating remarks on this point.
104 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
Testament; hut the xcord^ thus rendered in our version signifies the extinction of conscious being, that is, when applied to man or to any being possessed of consciousness. If the meaning here assigned to "destruction" and "perdition" be correct, this objection is valid and decisive j for we readily admit that wicked men are fre- quently threatened with destruction both in this world and in the world to come. But we do not find this definition sustained by the law and the testimony. It will, therefore, be suitable for us to examine briefly a few passages which are said to justify and even require it ; and then several others may be noticed which seem to call for a different explanation. If we do not select those passages in the former case which are clearest for the objection, our failure to do so will spring from oversight or ignorance, not from design.
Christ is represented by Matthew as saying, " 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." ^ It has already been observed that this verse dis- tinguishes between body and soul, affirming that one may be killed without destroying the other.
1 'ArdAAufii and its derivatives. 2 Matt. x. 28.
BIBLICAL OBJECTIOXS CONSIDERD. 105
And if we look at the parallel record made by- Luke, it will be found to go still further, and im- ply that bodily death does not injure the soul : ^^Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do ; but I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear : Fear him, which, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell ; yea, I say unto you, fear him." ^ Dr. Whately is unable to perceive any connec- tion between these verses and the subject of the soul's consciousness after death. ^ To us the con- nection seems to be most obvious ; for if men, by killing the body, extinguish the soul's con- sciousness until the resurrection, they do, to all intents and purposes, kill the soul no less than the body. For a soul minus consciousness is no more a human soul than a corpse without life is a human body. Consciousness organizes and holds together the faculties of the soul, as the principle of natural life does the elements of the body — the one is as necessary to per- sonal being as the other is to animal existence. Hence, we say, if men put an end to conscious- ness, until the resurrection, by killing the body, they do ipso facto kill the soul as well. Both,
1 Luke xii. 4, 5. 2 « Future Life," p. 64.
106 STATE OF THE IMPEXITEXT DEAD.
as such, arc rendered ])y tins act virtually non- existent, and, indeed, apart from the interven- tion of God, forever so. Both must be raised again by divine power, or remain forever desti- tute of their characteristic being. We are well aware that various analogies have been urged agamst this view, as, for example, that the soul is unconscious in deep sleep, or after a stunning blow, etc. But these analogies are worthless ; for many well-attested facts make it probable, if not certain, that the soul is not, in such in- stances, really unconscious. Even Whately af- firms that "the mind, certainly for the most part, and probably alivays, continues active during sleep, though iii a different manner, and though the confused ideas occurring in 'sleep, which we call dreams, are but imperfectly remembered." ^ If the mind is active during the profoundest sleep, when the brain, utterly exhausted, refuses to obey the will, why may it not be active when the brain is disturbed by a blow, and its power to serve the mind suspended ? True, it must be active " in a different manner ; " and hence, doubtless, the fact that its action is not recalled when the normal connection between the mind
1" Future State," p. 82.
JBLICAL OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 107
and its organ is restored. But, leaving this point, we desire to know precisely how the final destruction of the soul by God is supposed to differ from its exinanition at the death of the body ? If the result is really the same in both cases, then it must be granted that not only God, but man also, is able to kill the soul ; though it may depend upon the will of God whether the soul remain dead forever, or rise again. But this, manifestly, is not the import of the text. The text asserts that man is unable to kill the soul ; and this, we repeat, is equivalent to say- ing that the soul continues alive when the body is slain.
But to the main question: Does the word ^TtoXiatti (to destroy) here signify "to put an end to?" We reply in the negative, (1) because the parallel record by Luke gives us instead of this expression the equivalent words "to. cast into hell;" and we have seen , that the latter phrase does not imply ; extinction of being. (2) Because the essential distinction between soul and body here intimated, and the selection of different terms to express the danger to which they are respectively: exposed, suggests, to say the least, a diversity of peril, and not one common danger. SajsEengel: dnoUaai, (jperdere). Nan
108 STATE OF THE IMPEXITEXT DEAD.
dicitur occiderc. Anima est inimortalis. ^ And (3), because the Greek Avord here rendered "to destroy " is often used, as Tve shall presently show, m a different sense, precisely adapted to this passage, and quite in harmony with other declarations concerning the final state of un- believers.
We pass on to the words of Christ, " He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it."^ This verse teaches, it is said, that the man who preserves his personal existence in this world by declining to follow Christ, shall forfeit the same for the world to come ; while, on the other hand, whoever loses his life here for Christ's sake, shall have, by means of the resurrection, eternal conscious- ness hereafter. Doubtless the language of Christ is in itself alone capable of this interpretation ; but it is also equally capable of another, more in harmony with the greater part of God's word. For nothing is more natural than a play upon the term xpvx/i (life), using it now in a lower and then in a higher sense. In the latter, it is equivalent to the term ;-w7|, as used, by the disciple whom Jesus loved, to designate that
1 See Meyer, De Wette, and Alford. 2 Matt. x. 39.
BIBLICAL OBJECTIOXS CONSIDERED. 109
spiritual life which begins in time, but reaches its bloom and perfection in eternity. So that one who declines the service of Christ has his re- ward in this world — a life of ease, and indulgence, and temporal safety; but he forfeits all inter- est in the world above, where the true life of the soul culminates in eternal joy, where fellow- ship with God is perfect, the spirit seeing as it is seen, and knowing as it is known.
Again : the passage, " Then, also, those who fell asleep in Christ perished,"^ is insisted upon as proving beyond a peradventure that destruc- tion is an event which terminates conscious ex- istence. Says Ham : " The apostle, in this con- cise piece of reasoning, distinctly affirms that if there be no destruction of the dead, then there is no future life. He shows, also, what was his doctrine of the intermediate state of believers — ' They which have fallen asleep in Christ,' not they which are in a state oi disembodied con- sciousness and activity in glory. But can the orthodox of the nineteenth century agree with Paul in this affirmation, that if the dead rise not. Christians who have departed this life are iier- ished? No, they say; 'if the dead rise not,' the soul lives on — its life does not depend upon
1 1 Cor. XV. 18.
10
110 STATE OP THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
the resumption of the body. . . . Let criti- cism and exegesis (on the part of the orthodox) be consistent, and we have the following as the signification of the passage before us : ' Then they which are fallen asleep in Christ are per- ishcd,^ they have gone to Gehenna, to endure the endless torments of the unquenchable fire. This is the theological sense o^ perishing. I need not characterize such an interpretation as most awfully and insultingly absurd. AVhat ! the holy and self-denying followers of Christ, because the dead rise not — a hope which they had fondly cher- ished— to be consigned to endless misery ! Paul never meant this."^
To this it may be replied in a word : Paul teaches that all men have sinned, even " the holy and self-denying followers of Christ; " that all, without exception, arc guilty and condemned before God ; that the penalty or wages of sin is death, and pre-eminently the second death, the lake of fire, eternal punishment ; that eternal life or blessedness is the gift of God, through Jesus Christ, and him alone ; and that Christ cannot be the true ]\ressia]i, unless he rose from the dead, according to tlie Scriptures. Hence, to set aside the resurrection of Christ is to set
I "Man in Death," p. 81.
BIBLICAL OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. Ill
aside the whole economy of grace. Well, then, may the apostle say to believers in Jesus, " If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins^ If the doctrine of the ortho- dox were this, that the followers of Christ are to be saved because of their holiness and self- denial, there might be some force in Ham's ap- peal ; but since, in their judgment, the most ear- nest and self-sacrificing Christian has no title in himself to the favor of God, but is to be saved in consideration of Christ's work alone, there is in it no force at all. Says Dr. Hodge : " Per- dition, according to Scripture, is not annihilation, but everlasting misery and sin. It is the loss of holiness and happiness forever. If Christ did not rise for the justification of those who died in him, they found no advocate at the bar of God, and have incurred the fate of those who perished in their sins."
This evidently is the apostle's meaning in the verse before us ; and it perfectly agrees with the representations which he everywhere makes of the way of life. There is therefore no reason for rejecting the " theological sense of the word perish^ as most awfully and insultingly absurd," for this passage.
We may notice, in the next place, the words,
112 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
" Who shall be punished with everlasting de- struction from the presence of the Lord; and from the glory of his power." ^ We first inquire what is the relation here expressed by dn6. (1) Some have said it is a temporal relation; the word here signifies aftcrj and marks the terminus a quo, the date from and after which the pun- ishment is to be suffered. But the instances in which (irro refers to time are in the first place very rare, and in the next quite unlike the one before us, since from the nature of the genitive following it, it is known to designate a terminus a quo. 2 This interpretation may also be consid- ered well nigh obsolete. (2) Others have said it is a causal relation ; the punishment is repre- sented by unb, etc., as proceeding from the face, or presence, and from the glory of God, as its source or efficient cause. But they arbitrarily explain the expression '^ from the face of the Lord " as synonymous with " from the Lord," or they explain ngoawnov of an angry or darTc counte- nance, which is no less arbitrary. (3) Others, still, have said it is a local relation ; utto here expresses the idea of separation or absence, and tlie thought is, " away from the presence of the
1 2 Thcps. i. 9.
2 Rom. i. 20, dr-d Kritrfuf tcda^ov (from the foundation of (he world), and Pliil. i. 5, ari rrjjTfxj.^rr fiucpar {from thefrst day.)
BIBLICAL OBJECTIOXS CONSIDERED. 113
Lord, and the glory of his power." This expla- nation gives to TTQoawTvov its full significance, for the face or presence of the Lord is a well-known Biblical designation of the source of true bless- edness, ^ and separation therefrom of misery. Besides, this interpretation best accords with the following verse. It is advocated by Alford and Lunemann, ^ given by Robinson in his Lexi- con, and preferred by Olshausen. Ellicott closes his examination of drro by saying, " We therefore adopt the simply local translation, according to which Ccnd marks the idea of ^ separation from/ while 7TQou6nov jov -/.vQiov retains its proper mean- ing and specifies that perennial fountain of bless- edness to be separated from which will consti- tute the true essence of the i^oena damni.'''' This view we deem correct; and if it be so, the "everlasting perdition" spoken of results in part, if not chiefly, from a want of fellowship with God, and pre-supposes the continuance rather than the extinction of conscious being.
In his first letter to Timothy, Paul speaks of " foolish and hurtful lusts, which plunge the men into destruction and perdition ; " ^ that is to say, into utter and irretrievable ruin. The second
1 The able continuator of Meyer's commentary.
2 1 Tim. vi. 9. i
10*
114 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
noun seems in this place to be more emphatic than the first — (inwAf/a than oled^oo; — although elsewhere New Testament writers employ either of them, and indiscriminately, to denote the final doom of unbelievers. Now, let it be observed, that there is nothing in the context which re- quires us to understand these terms as denot- ing an extinction of being. If they signify this, it is purely vi termini, by virtue of their inherent force, and not by virtue of any associated word or clause, which favors such a signification. The same, also, may be said of every passage thus far examined ; none of the adjuncts point to extinction of being, and determine this to be the meaning of ^ destruction,' or ' perdition,' when predicated of the soul. Two of them naturally suggest a different meaning. We are therefore bound to inquire whether the words have not another sense equally adapted to these passages, and at the same time consistent with all similar statements in the word of God.
It may be remarked, in the first place, that the New Testament, as well as the Old, gener- ally employs the language of common life. Its style is popular, and therefore figurative. Instead of defining its leading terms beforehand, and then using them always with philosophical
BIBLICAL OSJECTIOXS COXSIDERED. 115
accuracy in the same sense, it freely adopts the vital and elastic speech of real life, and abounds in metaphor, comparison, and parable. The af- fluence of its imagery is truly oriental. But this imagery rests upon definite truth, unbending real- ity. The point of difficulty, then, lies in ascer- taining the exact idea which is represented by a particular metaphor or parable. To do this it is often necessary to compare difi"erent repre- sentations of the same idea, event, or process, as e g. the different pictures of the state of the lost hereafter.
It may be remarked, in the second place, that nearly all words have a tropical as well as a lit- eral use. A resemblance, perhaps, in but a sin- gle point, is perceived between that which a word literally signifies and something else quite different in other respects ; yet the word is ap- plied for want of a better, or for the sake of vi- vacity. A poet is said to soar on the wings of imagination, and a report to fly through the city j thoughts are said to be dark or bright, and af- fections to be cold or warm. On the same prin- ciple, Christ is called a lion, a lamb, a shepherd, a vine, a root, a branch, &c., and the further back we trace the history of any language, the great- er shall we find to be the number and variety of
116 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
meanings given to a word by the context. This results from the fact, that in the order of nature and development, thought goes before speech.
It may be remarked, in the third place, that the manifold use of the term "death" in the word of God leads us to anticipate a similar use of the sim- ilar term " destruction." The latter is no more precise or descriptive in its meaning than the former ; and if it were, this would afford no argu- ment against a figurative use of it. Hence, if the adjuncts of the term "death," when applied to the final state of unbelievers, justify us in attributing to them conscious being in that state, they cer- tainly justify us in doing the same, although de- struction, or eternal destruction, is predicated of unbelievers in that state. These adjuncts, we mean to say, are sufficient of themselves to estab- lish a tropical use of the leading terms, had we no other instance of such a use in the New Tes- tament.
It may be remarked, in the fourtli place, that the Greek root, which, together with its deriv- atives, is often represented by the words to "de- stroy," "destruction," and "perdition," is used not unfrcquently in the New Testament, apart also from the case under consideration, wlien the object of which they are affirmed continues to
BIBLICAL OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 117
exist, and is conceived of as existing. The im- portance of this statement will be at once recog- nized, and the propriety of illustrating its truth admitted.
We commence with the words of Christ: ""Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, verily, I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward." 1 It would not, perhaps, be a very great refinement of criticism to say, that the object of the verb; the reward, is here con- ceived of as belonging, in a certain sense, to the subject ; it is his by promise, or in equity, and therefore he may be said to lose it. Yet it is equally probable that anoUari means " to lose," in the sense of "to fail of." The compound word is not intensive, as some have averred, for Christ surely did not mean to intimate that the benefactor described might partially, though not utterly^ lose his reward. But we would invite special attention to the fact, that (xnoUar] does not here signify to destroy or put an end to its object, but rather to lose — loose — let go that object, or, what is equivalent, to fail of hav- ing and holding it. This verb, which is relied
1 Matt. X. 42. : cf. Mark ix. 41.
118 STATE OP THE DIPENITEXT DEAD.
upon to prove the extinction of personal being, simply marks in this place the sundering of a con- nection, the dissolving of a relation. The ob- ject of it may still exist, but the tie which binds together object and subject is no more. To put the matter in another and more usual form: Destruction involves loss ; hence the verb signi- fying to destroy has also the meaning to lose, a derived sense, and may be used where the ob- ject in question is not itself destroyed.
Again, we read as follows : '- What man of you, if he have an hundred sheep, and lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost ? " ^ Here verb and participle are both employed, signifying " to lose " and " lost." The lost sheep is still in existence, and is eagerly sought by the shepherd. But its connection with the latter is sundered, and for this reason it is declared to be lost — dcrtoXojlo;. Passing now from the parable to the thing signified, Christ represents sinners as lost or destroyed. By wandering away from God, they have destroyed themselves ; by send- ing them away from himself, God will ultimately de^roy them. In both cases, it is the separation
1 Luke XV. 4.
BIBLICAL OBJECTIOXS CONSIDERED. 119
of the soul from God, the sundering of the con- nection and communion which normally bind them together, that constitutes the destruction or the loss of the soul. When the King shall say to those on his left hand, " Depart from me," and '-these shall go aicaij into everlasting pun- ishment," then will the final perdition ^ of the soul be brought to pass.
Another passage in the same chapter will re- pay examination : " This my son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found." - It is to be distinctly noted, that the father of the prodigal does not seem at any time to have lost sight of his son, or to have supposed him physically dead. ^' He speaks," says Euthymius Zigabenus correct- ly, " of the dcadness and destruction which flow from sin, and of the reviving and finding which flow from repentance." ^ He speaks as God would speak of the sinner ; for " God loveth all men, and counts that as " lost " in itself which he cannot feed and bless, and save forever." When we hear in this parable a father saying of his son, now in his house : " This my son was
dead — ^j/ vexod; — and was lost — -^i/ c/TroAwAw; " —
1 Compare the word a-6U.vni with its synon}Tn ptrdcre^ in the Greek Lexicon of Liddell and Scott and Latin Lexicon of Andrews; and note especially the use of ptrdilus in a moral sense.
2 Luke XV. 2-i, 32. 2 Quoted from Meyer, in loco.
120 STATE OF THE DIPEXITEXT DEAD.
a fact in the past, and also bear in mind that the father had known all aloni? the conduct of his son,^ and therefore could not speak of him as dead, in this sense merely, that he had supposed him to be so, we must be convinced that the words "dead" and "lost" refer to moral char- acter, to the total separation in spirit of the son from the father, in a word, to his spiritual death ; and at the same time we must be convinced that the words "death" and "destruction" do not, when predicated of the soul, involve its ex- tinction.
Again, an "unclean spirit" is said to have cried out to Jesus : " Hast thou come to destroy us ? " Are we, then, to conclude that this demon was in fear of immediate annihilation ? Or may we believe that he was in fear of penal confine- ment ? The language of a passage in Matthew may assist us in replying to these questions. For the demons are there reported to have said, "Hast thou come hither to torment us before the time ? " etc. 2 The verb employed by them, Buaavioai^ reminds us at once of the rich man, " who in hades lifted up his eyes, being iv Suadcvoig,^^ (in torments.) So, also, we are told in Luke, ^ that
1 Sec verse 30. 2 Matt viii. 8, 29. 8 Luke viii. 31.
BIBLICAL OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 121
the evil spirits besought Christ not to send them away into the abyss. And by examining the use of u^vaaog in the New Testament it will be found to denote a place of darkness and torment, the abode or prison-house of Satan and his angels. ^
Now, if fallen spirits were spoken of in the Scriptures as being at present in a state of blessedness, or even of freedom from misery, we might easily account for their dread of annihil- ation ; but if they are represented as being now in a state of woe, and if annihilation is so much less appalliug than endless suffering as we are told, it is not so easy to account for their de- precating the final hour and the eternal sleep. Besides, the language, "Hast thou come to tor- ment us before the time ? " implies that fallen spirits look forward to a predestined epoch of special suffering — a time when Christ shall, in a very eminent degree, affiict them. The word ^acraviaat refers to the infliction of suffering upon a coiiscious being, and does not accord with the idea of extinction. It is one thing to annihilate, and quite another thing to " torment" a spiritual being.
1 Rev. ix. 1, 2, 11; xi. 7; xvii. 18; xx. 13; 2 Pet. ii. 4. 11
122 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
And, still further : " The angel of the bottom- less pit " is called in the Hebrew tongue Abad- do7i, and in the Greek Aj)olhjo7i, both words sig- nifying destroyer; chiefly, we think, because he perverts and morally destroys the souls of men ; certainly not because he annihilates their con- scious being, nor indeed because he inflicts upon the ungodly their final doom. It is not quite clear to our mind how those who insist so much upon the literal sense of words, and who main- tain that death and destruction, whether affirmed of body or of spirit, signify extinction of being, are to explain the name Abaddon, and yet assert that "the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power" will, at the last, flash unconscious- ness into the souls of the wicked, and petrify them forever. Whom is Apollyon to destroy if Christ puts an end to the impenitent ? But, on the other hand, if the great adversary is to blot out the soul hereafter, then, doubtless, the words of Christ, according to the dismal inter- pretation of Stier, warn us to fear the devil, " who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell," though very few, we think, will be able to bear this interpretation.
The result of our examination is this : That the words " destruction," " perdition," etc., need
BIBLICAL OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 123
not, when predicated of the spirit, be supposed to assert, vi termini, or by reason of their in- trinsic force, the extinction of its conscious being; and that the adjuncts employed with these words prove that they do not involve or affirm such extinction. And it may be added, that the use of the Greek words thus translated by classical writers corroborates the result just given. We rest, therefore, with a strengthened conviction of its truth, in the long-established belief of Christendom that the impenitent dead will be forever conscious and miserable. We rest in this doctrine, not because reason teaches it, or feeling welcomes it, but because it is clearly revealed, as we judge, by One who is just and true, as well as benevolent, and who declares, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." ^ It is a great and terrible doctrine, not to be received with any due sense of its solemnity except by him whose conscience feels the unspeakable guilt of sin, and whose heart says with Job : " I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee ; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." ^
1 Matt. xxiv. 35. 2 Job. xlii. 5, 6.
SECTION YI.
FURTHER OBJECTIONS CONSmERED.
(l)T4iE DEAD PRONOUNCED CNCONSCIOCS BY OLD TESTAMENT VTl ...eRS. — REPLY TO THIS STATEMENT. — (2) THE LANGUAGE OF THE APOSTOLICAL FATHERS AND EARLY APOLOGISTS CONFIRMATORY OF THE PRECEDING OBJECTIONS. — THIS ASSUMPTION SHOWN TO BE INCORRECT.
We come now to a minor objection ui-ged against the doctrine of this essay, namely, —
III. The dead are declared to be in a perfectly inactive and powerless state j body and sold; hence death is an event which puts an end to conscious existence.
Of the many passages in the Old Testament which are alleged in support of this proposition, a few only can be submitted to brief examina- tion in these pages ; but these few will be spec- imens of the entire class, and will enable us to test the interpretation given to all.
The Psalmist, speaking of princes, of the son of man in whom there is no help, says : " His breath goeth forth, he rcturneth to his earth ; in
FURTHER OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 125
that very day his thoughts perish." ^ It will be sufficient to remark that the word in the last clause which is rendered "thoughts" signifies the counsels or plans of princes and great men. These shall all fail, and come to nought. ''Sicut,'' remarks Calvin, " i^hrenetlcus ille Alexander Macedo, quum audiret ])lures esse immdos, deflevit se nondim uno potitum esse, pernio post autem sar- cophago conteiitus fiiit.'' Again, the Preacher saith, "All which thy hand findeth to do, do with thy might ; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in Sheol, whither thou art going. ^ Here it may not be amiss to cite a paragraph from the work of Mr. Hudson. " The argument to prove unconsciousness is often based on the expressions, ^ the dead know not anything ; ' ' their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished ; ' and, ' there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest.' But these ex- pressions are evidently the conclusion of an epicurean argument, including the denial of all future life, which the ^preacher had taken up.' ^ It is certainly possible that we have in the book of Ecclesiastes a record of the perplexmg doubts
1 Psalms cxlvi. 4. 2 EccI. ix. 10. s » Futixre Life," p. 262. 11^
126 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
and fruitless speculations of a mind sorely tossed by the mysteries of Providence, and passing on through a period of skepticism to simple faith ; ^ and; if so, our passage might obviously repre- sent, not the final and correct belief of Solomon, but an earlier and lurid speculation. But it is hardly necessary to resort to this hypothesis ; for we may find a key to the whole paragraph in the last clause of the sixth verse : ^ Neither have they any more a portion forever iji any- thing that is done under the sun.^ " The writer seems to have in mind the entire separation of the dead from this earthly life and all its activities. If his language is interpreted of personal existence ^7cr sc, witliout restriction, it militates against any consciousness forever, and therefore against the plain teaching of Christ.
Again, the Lord declares by Jeremiah the prophet, in respect to the princes, sages, and mighty men of Babylon, " they shall sleep a per- petual sleep, and not awake.'' ^ Now a future resurrection, whether followed by annihilation or by misery, is inconsistent with a literal
1 See "The Preaching of Ecclesiastes," by Rev. J. A. Goodhue, Chr. Rev. 1854.
2 Jeremiah vi. 57.
FURTHER OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 127
interpretation of these words. Yet there will be, as we are taught by the word of God, a resurrec- tion both of the just and of the unjust. "All that are in their graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth." 1 Hence we must give up the truth and inspiration of the Bible, or the literal sense ;of the verse before us. And no thoughtful man, who understands the use of speech in animated prose or in poetry, will hesitate for a moment which to do. To sleep a perpetual sleep, a sleep which knows no waking, here refers to death as an ultimate closing of the eye upon worldly scenes, a sleep from which one does not presently awake to resume the business of this world, a final sleep removing princes and mighty men from the theatre of their pride into the " silent land," " that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns."
For the sake of brevity we present the fol- lowing passages in a group, appending to them a few words of explanation: "For in death there is no remembrance of thee ; in the grave who shall give thee thanks ? " " What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit ? Shall the dust praise thee? Shall it declare
1 John V. 28.
128 STATE OP THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
thy truth ? " " Wilt thou show wonders to the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise thee? Shall thy loving kindness be declared in the grave ? thy faithfulness in corruption ? Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness ? " " The dead praise not God, neither any that go down into silence." "For the grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee ; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day." ^
These and similar expressions to be found in the Old Testament do unquestionably, at first sight, and taken by themselves, suggest the idea of unconsciousness after death. They refer, also, it will be perceived, in a majority of instances, to the righteous, and, according to their lyrima facie import, exclude the prospect of a resurrec- tion.2 If it makes no difference to a good man at the point of death, whether he will continue conscious in another world, or fall asleep for a million ages to wake as from a moment's slum-
1 Ps. vi, 6; XXX. 10; Ixxxviii. 10-12; cxv. 17; Isa. xxxviii. 18, 19.
2 This is admitted by Mr. Hudson ; and tlierefore he does not rely upon these expressions to prove unconsciousness during the inter- mediate state. — p. 2G2.
FURTHER OBJECTIOXS CONSIDERED. 129
ber at the last trumpet, these " holy men of old," looking forward to a resurrection of the body, could not have used the language cited by us, nor could they have written "as they were moved by the Holy Ghost/' words which are inconsistent with the doctrine of Christ. The passages adduced cannot, therefore, be explained as a complete account of the departed, but only as a statement of their relation to this world, and to the glory of God in bringing men to a saving knowledge of the truth. They find a nat- ural explanation in the words of Paul, " For me to live is Christ," because I can thereby most signally honor his name. The inspired poets, whose language has been cited, felt that their homage and praise were eminently well pleasing to God, when offered in a revolted province of his empire, to further his holy cause by celebrat- ing " his mighty acts and the glorious majesty of his kingdom." With this plea they came be- fore God to ask for a continuance of life, espe- cially as they were threatened by the enemies of Jehovah, and their death would be the signal of triumph to his foes. The view now suggested rests, we are free to confess, upon a rapid sur- vey of the passages in question ; for it was felt that their bearing upon the doctrine of man's
130 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
existence after clcatli, must be determined by the clearer revelations made by Christ, and not the reverse ; it afifords ns, therefore, great pleasure to subjoin a different view from a careful investi- gator. " The writers of the Old Testament generally speak of death as to its effects on the physical organization, and its results in relation to the concerns and interests of this world. They speak just as we frequently do of death and the grave. We admonish our fellow-men to to work while the day lasts, because the night comcth, and that in the grave there is no knowl- edge or work ; and so did those writers. But neither they nor we, in these expressions, assert anything for or against the unconsciousness of the soul. We do not believe, and we suppose that they did not believe, that the soul is buried with the body in the grave. We thus explain the passages already cited ^ as referring to phys- ical death, and to the grave as the silent recep- tacle of the body after the soul has left it."^
It has also been claimed, —
IV. TJiat the doctrine of this essay was nnlaiown to the primitive church, and must therefore he un-
1 Job xiv. 12 ; Ps. xlix. 14 ; cxv. 17 ; Eccl. Lx. 10; and Isa. xxxviii. 18, 19.
2 Mcth. Rev. ut supra, p. 242.
FURTHER OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 131
scrijJturaL Those wlio make this clahn do not, of course, pretend that the primitive Christians fully apprehended the entire contents of Scrip- tm^e, hut only that the doctrine in question is one of which they could not have been ignorant. As a matter of fact, they say, this doctrine was gradually brought over from pagan philosophy into the creed of the church. The apostolical fathers make no certain allusion to it ; and their successors, the early apologists, have it, if at all, as the result of pagan culture. In replying to this objection we shall first speak of the apos- tolical fathers.
And it is to be lamented that they either wrote very little, or else their writings have, for the most part, perished. All the Christian liter- ature to be relied on as authentic, now in ex- istence from the first quarter of the second century, may be comprised in a small volume ; and this literature is intensely practical, touching but lightly and incidentally on points of doctrine. The authors of it were separated by a very wide interval from their inspired teachers. We may think of them as earnest, devout, practical men, repeating the simple story of the cross, occupied with pastoral labor, and encountering with noble heroism the dangers incident to their post ; but
132 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
we should greatly err in supposing them to have been distinguished for accurate knowledge or logical thought. Hence it was natural for them to present the doctrines of Christianity in the very words of Scripture, giving us often no cer- tain clue to their interpretation of the language ; and so it happens, that every denomination of Christians is able to employ their words with more or less confidence in support of its own creed. For doctrinal statements couched in phrases borrowed from the word of God, may be easily understood by the reader as he has concluded to understand the sacred record. With these remarks we pass to the testimony, and find it, as might have been expected, pain- fully meagre. Still, though meagre, it is not un- worthy to be heard.
In his letter to the Ephesians, Ignatius testi- fies that whoever " corrupts the faith of God by evil doctrine, shall go into unquenchable fiire-''^ In the epistle to Diognetus we read: "Then shalt thou condemn the deceit and error of the world, when thou shalt know the true life in heaven ; when thou shalt despise the seeming death here ; when thou shalt fear the true death which is kept in store for those who shall be
1 C. IG ; cf. his Ep. to tho Romans, c. 2 and 4.
FURTHER OBJECTIOXS CONSIDERED. 133
condemned to the eternal fire, which will torment them who are committed to it unto the end." ^ In the account of Polycarp's death we read that the martyrs, '•' giving- heed to the grace of Christ, despised earthly torments, purchasing release in one hour from eternal punishment. And the fire of their harsh tormentors was cool to them; for they had before their eyes an escape from the eternal fire which is never to be quenched," furiSsTioie a^evvv/nEvoi^ nvg. 2 From the Shep- herd of Hermas^ we extract the following pas- sages : " Again he showed me many trees, some of which were putting forth leaves, and others were dry. Those trees which are green, (said he,) are the just, who shall dwell in the future world. For this future world is summer to the just, but winter to sinners." And, a few lines below, it is said that " sinners shall be burned as dry wood."* In another place the Shep- herd compares apostates and betrayers of the church to ^" dry, rotten, and, as it were, worm- eaten branches," and, then, says : " All these are dead unto God, and thou seest no one of them exercising repentance."^ Is not the moral or
1 Ep. to Diog. c. 10. 2 Martyr. Polycarpi. c. 2.
s Written, perhaps, as late as A.D. 150.
4 L. III. Simil. 4. 6 L. III. SimU. 8. c. 6.
12
134: STATE OF THE IMPEXITEXT DEAD.
spiritual nature of man here referred to ? We are inclined to think there is no reference in this passage to the idea of personal existence as such. We cannot, of course, transcribe every expres- sion which seems to bear upon the topic of this essay; but unless we are mistaken, the most de- cisive evidence to be found in the literature of the apostolic fathers has now been presented; and according to this evidence it is not safe to affirm that they were either ignorant of, or hos- tile to, the doctrine of the eternal consciousness of unbelievers. By every impartial student their language will be understood to coincide with that of Scripture, and will therefore be inter- preted in harmony with his own views of the Scriptural doctrine.
Let us now come down to the early apologists. It is, however, but a single step ; for Justin Martyr, who opens the series, was born in Pales- tine about the close of the first century. His first apology was addressed to the Roman em- perors in the year of our Lord 138 or 139. It is an elaborate production, of unquestionable integrity, and worthy of our serious consider- ation. In this apology he says to the emperor and his associate : " If you care not for us who offer our petition and exhibit plainly the whole
FURTHER OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 135
truth, we shall not be injured in the least, since we believe, or rather are fully assured, that each one will suffer imnishment hij eternal fire accord- ing to the desert of his actions, and that he will give account to God according to the abil- ities which he has received, as Christ announced, saying, ' To whom God gave more, of him like- wise shall more be demanded.' " (c. 17.) Again, speaking of the Messiah : " The prophets fore- told two comings of him ; one which has already transpired, when he came as a despised and suf- fering man, but the other, when he will come, as we i^reach, with glory from heaven with his angelic host \ when, also, he will raise the bodies of all men who have existed, and will clothe those who are worthy with immortality, but will send the unjust, m eternal sensibility — Iv aia&y\GEt aibivva — with wicked demons, into eternal fire." (c. 25.) Once more we read as follows: "In like manner, Plato said that Eadamanthus and Minos would punish the unjust who come to them, and we say the same will be inflicted upon them, but by Christ, and while they exist in the same bodies with their souls; moreover they shall suffer eternal punishment, but not punish- ment for the period of a tho^isand years only, as he taught." (c. 8.) We add a very interesting
136 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
passage from his " Exhortation to the Greeks " : " Hence as nothing true concerning religion can be learned from your teachers, who offer to you an ample disclosure of their ignorance by their opposition one to another, I think it suitable to revert to our ancestors, who, indeed, preceded by far the times of your teachers, and who taught us nothing from their own imagination ; neither did they contend with one another, nor attempt to overthrow the doctrines of one an- other ; but without envy or dissension they received the [true] knowledge from God, and taught this to us. For it is impossible for men to know so great and divine things, either by means of nature or of human thought, but only by the gift, which then descended from above upon the holy men who needed neither the art of words, nor of speaking anything captiously or enviously, but who offered themselves in piu-ity to the energy of the divine spirit, that this divine plectrum, descending from heaven, and using the just men as a musical instrument — harp or lyre — might reveal the knowledge of divine and heavenly things to us. Hence for this reason they taught us, consistently and har- moniously with one another, as if from one voice and one tongue, respecting God and the creation
FURTHER OBJECTIOXS COXSIDERED. 137
of the world; and the forming of man, and the immortality of the human soul^ and the judg- ment which is to be after this life, and all things which it is necessary for us to know, offering to us this divine teaching in manifold places and times." (c. 8.) Mr. Hudson refers to the above, in proof, it would seem, of the following state- ment : " In the same treatise he names as truths held in common, by the philosophers and the Christians, the doctrines of the divine origin of the world and creation of man, of the soul's immortality, and of judgment after this life." ^
Turning now to the treatise of Athenagoras upon the resurrection, ^ we find these words: "Let no man be surprised if we call the life which is dissevered by death and corruption a continual existence, bearing in mind the fact that the meaning of this appellation is not uniform, the measure of continuance is not unfiorm, be- cause those which continue in being have not one nature. For if each one of those which continue to be has this continued being accord- ing to its own peculiar nature, one cannot find
1 "Future Life," p. 313. Compare Semisch's "Justin MartjT," vol. II. p. 262 sq., and p. 304 sq., liyland's translation, for a thorough discussion of Justin's belief ; also " Some Account of the Life and "Writings of Justin Martyn: By John Bishop of Lincoln," p. 102 sq.
2 Written about A.D. 175.
12-^
138 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
the same sort of continuance among those who are purely incorruptible and immortal, because the natures of the more excellent are not made equal with those which are inferior; neither is it proper to seek in man that even and un- changeable continuance of being; for wlnlc the higher natures were made from the first im- mortal, and continue without death by the will of their Maker, men have in respect to the soul unchangeable being or continuity from birth : but in respect to the body, they receive immortality by means of change — a change required by the nature of the resurrection ; and, looking to this, we not only await the dissolution of tlie body as following this life, w^hich is subject to want and deca}', but also after this we hope for continued being with immortality." (c. 16.) This passage evidently recognizes an original and important difference between the soul of man and his body, placing the former in a different relation to end- less life from the latter. In his Plea for Chris- tians he uses these words : " We are convinced that, having departed from this life, we shall live another life better than the present, and heav- enly, not earthly, (as we shall remain near God, and with God, stable and unsuffering in soul, not as fleshly beings, though we may have flesh, but
FURTHER OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 139
as celestial spirit,) or, if we fall with the rest, a worse life even by means of fire ] for God did not create us like sheep and oxen, a subsidiary work, that we should perish and vanish away; and hence we are not likely to be willfully bad, nor to deliver ourselves up to the great judge to be punished." (c. 31.) '^In the system of Athenagoras," says Mr. Hudson, "the immor- tality of the soul is certainly of nature." ^ About the same time Theophilus wrote to Autolychus, an educated pagan, in defence of Christianity, and urged him to " believe God and submit to him, lest," he says, " if thou now dis- believest, thou shalt then be convinced, being vexed in eternal punishments ; which punish- ments, having been predicted by the prophets, were stolen by the later poets and philosophers from the Holy Scriptures for the purpose of se- curing credit to their own opinions. ... Do thou, also, if it please thee, read studiously the prophetic Scriptures, and they will more clearly direct thee how to flee from the eternal punish- ments, and to secure the eternal benefits of God." (L. I. c. 14.) Again, he says, "The law and the prophets taught men to refrain from
1" Future Life," p. 321.
140 STATE OP THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
godless idolatry, and adiiltcrj; and murder, for- nication, theft, avarice, perjury, wrath, and all lasciviousness and impurity ; and that all things whatsoever a man would not have done to him- self he should not do to another ; and that who- ever is thus just in action shall escape the eter- nal punishments, and be thought worthy of the eternal life with God." (L. 11. c. 34.) It should be added, that, while Theophilus appears to have believed in the endless existence of all men, as a matter of fact, he denied the natural immortality of the soul, and affirmed that God only is immortal per se. Tatian, who wrote his " Address to the Greeks " near the close of the second century, was the first, we believe, to teach the doctrine of the final extinction of the wicked. And there is far more reason to con- sider this doctrine an independent speculation of his own, than to suppose it derived by him from the word of God. For although he was, for a time, the friend and admirer of Justin Martyr, he returned to the east, when the latter had suffered death for his loyalty to Christ, and tlicre founded a sect of Gnostics. His opinions, therefore, cannot be attributed indiscriminately to the church of that period. It must further be remarked, that in cxpoundhig the Scriptures
FURTHER OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 141
he does not exhibit even that moderate degree of care and sobriety which is discoverable m the other apologists of his day.
We may now close this survey by stating the result of our examination in these words : The records of the primitive church, prior to A. D. 200, afford no evidence that a belief in the endless exist- ence of the sold was hrought over from pagan phi- losophy into the creed of the church, and no evi- dence that the early teachers and defenders of Christianity understood the impenitent to be threatened by the word of God with extinction of conscious being as the penalty of sin here- after. As to the later Christian apologists and teachers, Clement, Origen, Tertullian, and Hip- polytus evidently regard the souls of men as destined to exist forever ; and we can but ques- tion the interpretation of certain passages in the work of IrenaBus by which they are said to teach a different belief.^
1 On this point see Duncker's desh. Irenseus Chkistologie, p. 90 seq., and Massueti Dissertatio III. Irenaji Opera, vol. II. p. 333 sq., Stieren's edition.
SECTION YII.
RATIOXAL OBJECTIONS.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. — OBJECTION (1) FROM THE OMNIPOTENCE OP GOD. — REPLY. — (2) FROM THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD. — REPLY. — (3) FROM THE BENEVOLENCE OF GOD. — REPLY. — CONCLUSION.
We have now examined briefly the leading objections drawn from the word of God to our view of the state of the impenitent dead. These objections have been found inconclusive. They are not of such a nature as to countervail a single clear affirmation of endless personal ex- istence on the part of the wicked.
Here, then, it might be well to pause ; for the Scriptures are our sole authority on this subject. As their testimony leads, or even leans, our be- lief must humbly follow. But many persons choose to begin their study of this great theme at the very point wliere we are inclined to finish. Having little reverence for the word of God, they sometimes call in question its infallibility, and often treat its language with less deference
RATIONAL OBJECTIONS. 143
than is paid to their own speculative reason. Whatever may be their theory of inspiration, they do not hesitate to interpret the sacred oracles into harniony with their limited and in- terested judgment, to adjust, by a never-ending process, revealed theology to their floating ideas of natural theology. Hence, as might well be expected in such a case, after insisting upon the unreasonahleness of the doctrine of eternal misery as the wages of sin, they make haste to repudi- ate this doctrine, and to extract from the living word some justification of their course. We propose, therefore, to review some of the argu- ments which are said to prove the doctrine of this essay to be unreasonahle.
Still, we rest the truth of our doctrine, be it observed, upon the testimony of divine revela- tion, and cannot therefore be required to show that it is a doctrine of natural theology, taught by unaided human reason. If it is to be found in the sacred record, all the reasons — and they are unanswerable — which prove that record to be an expression of God's will, combine to make a belief in this doctrine reasonable. Whoever, therefore, would overthrow it by the weapons of human philosophy, and thus prejudge or preclude the testimony of revelation, must take upon
144 STATE OP THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
himself the onus j)rohnndiy and prove it to be pos- itively unreasonable. He must show that the human mind may be relied upon in the premises, and that, while rightly estimating the guilt of sin as well as the supposed doom of the sinner, it pronounces the latter to be unjust or un- merciful.
And here let the difficulty of this task be noted. The human mind, has it any power to apprehend the quantitative relations of sin and punishment? Is it able in any case to deter- mine by itself the exact penalty, whether of loss or of pain, which is due to a responsible being for a given violation of right? Neither the logical understanding nor the power of rational insight in man is capable, it seems to us, of doing this — of adjusting retribution to moral wrong. Not even conscience has in itself, apart from the spirit of God, any measure or standard by which it can ascertain the quantum of penalty which is justly annexed to each different degree of human sinfulness. This, perhaps, is a kind of knowledge which God has reserved in his own power, giving to us facts without philosophy, and thus treating us for the present as little children, who arc unable to fathom the deepest questions of his moral government. Tui'ning now to the
KATIONAL OBJECTIONS. 145
actual judgment of mankind; there are some, it appears, who exclude the very notion of punish- ment from the divine administration, declaring that all suffering is preventive or reformatory. There are others who admit the reality of penal retribution, but restrict it to the loss of possible good, whether this good be defined as happiness or as conscious being itself; and there are others — hitherto the vast majority of mankind — who believe in punishment for sin, both positive and negative, in time and in eternity. Now, what- ever may be the merit of either, or of all these opinions, the simple naming of them brings up at once the query, whether human reason can be trusted in the premises, and whether an argu- ment founded upon it must not be, at least, ex- ceedingly precarious.
But, leaving this thought, let us take up the arguments which are said to prove our belief unreasonable. And, —
I. The doctrine of eternal misery as the pen- alty of sin is irreconcilable with the doctrine of God's omnipotence; for it affirms the endless existence of what is hostile to God and abhorred by him. The same objection, it has often been replied, may be urged against the existence of moral evil at all ; for it is diametrically opposed 13
146 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
to the moral nature of God, whether it exist for a day or forever. Yet moral evil is permitted ; and once actual in the universe, it is ever actual to him who is without succession, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, with whom " a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years." ^
II. Tlie doctrine of eternal misery, as the penalty of sin, is irreconcilable with the right- eousness of God ; for the penalty is altogether too great for the offence. This is true, it is alleged, whether we consider the sinner's probation as very brief, his knowledge as very limited, or his condition as very unfavorable. Let us examine, one by one, the grounds of this objection.
The sinner's probation, we are reminded, is very brief, as if God were in haste to fix his doom. There is no conceivable proportion between the longest life on earth and endless existence here- after ; but justice requires that the duration of punishment be proportioned in every case to that of the offence. Hence eternal woe cannot be the wages of sin committed in the present life. The righteousness of God forbids it.
1 See Erbkam's elaborate article "Uber d. Lehrc v. d. ewigen bcrdamniss," in the Studien ii. Kritikcn, 1838, p. 38-4 sq. ; alco T. M. Post, in the New Englander, 1856, p. 115 sq.
EATIONAL OBJECTIONS. 147
In reply to the objection thus stated, we re- mark ( 1 ), that it mistakes the length of a sin- ner's probation for the degree of his guilt; in other words, it assumes that a great moral wrong cannot be perpetrated in a short time ; but this is a palpable error. In judging men here, we do not measure the guilt of an act by the time consumed in its performance, nor do we adjust the penalty to that time. Crimes of the greatest malignity, and meriting the severest retribution, may be committed in a moment. The element of time is taken into account, simply because it may serve to reveal the deliberate malice of the offender. We also remark (2), that the omni- science of God must be borne in mind when we contrast the sinner's probation with his final doom. For this attribute of Jehovah permits us to assume that the determinate character of an individual is just as fully revealed to him by a brief period of trial as by a longer one. What advantage to justice, so far as the sinner is con- cerned, will there be gained by prolonging the trial? What principle of equity requires the Supreme Ruler to extend indefinitely the proba- tion of one who has shown himself to be fully set upon evil, and utterly opposed to holiness ?
We remark (3), that serious men of every
l48 STATE OP THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
creed accept the doctrine of eternal retribution for temporal sin. Those who believe in the final salvation of all men admit that there are dif- ferent degrees of happiness in the life to come, and maintain tliat wickedness here diminishes happiness there. This diminution is ctcr?ial loss for temporal sin, eternal detriment for evil-doing in time. The same may also be said of those who believe in the personal extinction of the wicked hereafter. For the sin of a day, they are punished with the loss of all good forever and ever. And, if this may be consistent with perfect righteousness, who shall say that what is even more to be dreaded, eternal misery, must be inconsistent with righteousness ? Is not the principle and the difficulty the same in both cases ?
Again, the sinner's knowledge is said to be very limited. He is unable to form any adequate conception of eternal blessedness or misery, and knows but imperfectly the will of God. In a word, he appreciates neither the penalty nor the claims of the " divine " law as thus explained ; and, tlicrcforc, it would be unjust to inflict so heavy a punishment upon liim.
To this form of the objection we reply: (1) That the righteousness of a law, including its
RATIONAL OBJECTIONS. 149
penalty, does not depend upon the penaltifs being known and appreciated beforehand. For if it does, then obviously a man is gJiiltij, not because he does wrong, but because he braves suffering — not in proportion to his disregard of a just require- ment, but in proportion to his disregard of self — not as one who tramples on right, and does that which, being in itself wrong, deserves punishment, but as one who ignores danger, and exposes him- self to threatened misery ; in a word, he is guilty j if we may thus abuse language, not because he is sinfid, but because he is unwise. A previous knowledge of penalties may obviously tend to prevent crime ; but it neither makes nor enhances the criminality of an act, except, perhaps, in so far as it enlightens the moral judgment of the perpetrator. It is no excuse for undue severity on the part of a ruler, to say, that his subjects were distinctly forewarned of it; for many a tyrant has pre-announced the unjust and inhuman tortures which would follow the slightest disre- gard of his will. Nor, on the other hand, is an ignorance of the penalties to be inflicted for any given crime the least excuse to the criminal for his act of sin. Theft is no less wrong in a country where it is punished with imprisonment than in one where it is punished with death. If, 13^
150 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
then, it would be just in God to sentence un- believers to eternal misery, provided they had continued such with a full knowledge and appre- ciation of their coming doom, it is equally just for him to pronounce and execute that sentence, although they have no adequate conception of the doom beforehand. And let it also be noted that neither pain nor deprivation can be truly understood or appreciated except by experience. Tell a man, for instance, of the headache or toothache, of lingering torture or solitary con- finement, who has never experienced that of which you speak, and the language employed, however suitable in itself, will be to him like the sounding brass or tinkling cymbal; it will have no true and definite meaning. Hence, were it necessary to the justice of a punishment that it should be really comprehended beforehand, there could be no just punishments in any ad- ministration, human or divine.
And (2), as to a knowledge of the divhic law, or the rule of duty, we maintain that it is within the reach of every man, not perhaps in all its breadth and spirituality, but so far forth as he is held responsible for its violation. Men every- where do what they know to be wrong. If any portion of the divine will is disclosed to them,
EATIONAL OBJECTIONS. 151
that portion they disregard and trample in the dust. If, then, we bear in mind that the inten- sity of woe hereafter is to be adjusted to the guilt of the sinner as measured by his disposi- tion, and by his means of knowledge, and that every man does know something of God's will which he deliberately contemns, the force of this objection seems to be completely destroyed. But we are also, in this connection, to bear in mind the omniscience of God. He knows the hearts of all, and the exact amount of light offered to such as have not the gospel. And, at the same time, we are to remember the words of truth : he " that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much ; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much ; '' ^ words which go far to answer some of the darkest insinuations which are made against the government of God. Once more : The sinner's condition while on trial is very unfavorable ; he is predisposed to evil from the first ; he does wrong as surely as he has an opportunity to do wrong. It cannot, then, we are told, be right to inflict so dreadful a penalty for transgression upon one whose con- dition is so unfavorable to virtue.
1 Luke xvi. 10.
152 STATE OP THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
A great difi&culty, -^c are free to confess, is brought forward in tins objection ; but, however great it may be, there is no more reason why it should be urged against the doctrine of this essay than against any doctrine which makes man responsible for his moral conduct. For the diffi- culty consists, not in the estimate which is put on the guilt of sin, but in holding one to be really and truly responsible for it notwithstand- ing the bias of a fallen nature. Whatever moral evil there is in our race must be chargeable either to mankind or to God ; for to attempt a division of the responsibility is absurd. But if we admit that men, rather than God, must be held responsible for their unrighteousness, the ob- jection under notice loses all its weight. There may be still in the case a great difficulty to finite reason — a mystery altogether above our com- prehension— but human responsibility for sin, and, indeed, for all the sin in man, is, neverthe. less, a fact attested by conscience, and affirmed by the word of God — in fact not to be evaded nor set aside without, at the same time, under- mining the foundations of all religion and mo- rality. While, then, conscience, revelation, and the common sense of mankind hold the wronc:- doer to be guilty for his deed notwithstanding a
EATIONAL OBJECTIONS. 153
native bias to evil, neither this sinful proclivity, nor any other feature of his condition in the present life, can be urged against the justice of punishing him for unrighteousness, and accord- ing to the intrinsic ill-desert of the latter.
Finally, the doctrine of eternal misery as the punishment of sin is irreconcilable with the doctrine of God^s benevolence ; for infinite benev- olence, we are assured, would have made the probation of man longer, his knowledge greater, and his moral nature better, if the period of trial was to be followed in so many instances by so awful a doom.
As to the length of man's probation, we reply, it is not too short for the exercise of repentance and faith; nor is there any probability that greater numbers would be led to repentance were the probation of man a thousand years instead of threescore and ten. Indeed, there is ample ground for believing that the brevity of his trial is a merciful arrangement. Before the lives of men were shortened, their wicked- ness became intolerable in the earth ; and such, we believe, is human nature, that men would be less likely than they now are to turn from sin, were the period of hope and grace indefinitely or even greatly extended.
154 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
In responding to the second specification, we ask for proof that any increase of knowledge would of itself have the effect of leading those men who now disregard the will of God to obey that will. The ways of Providence, it may be, are so carefully directed and so perfect, that no man has ever continued in unbelief to the end of life, who would have turned to Christ had simply his knowledge of divine truth been greater. When it is proved that some indi- vidual of our race has sought with an honest mind, but in vain, for the truth, or has had a disposition of heart which truth could mould, Sim virtiite, into the likeness of Christ, then this objection may be pronounced valid, but not be- fore ; and its cogency would depend, even then, upon the assumption that God is controlled by the principle of benevolence solehj, having no regard to right and justice, except as means to an end.
To the third specification we reply, that the infinite benevolence of God does not prevent him from holding men responsible in spite of their depraved nature for sinful conduct, nor from punishing them for it in this life. Indi- viduals and nations are not unfrequently de- stroyed for their crimes. But if punishment —
HATIOXAL OBJECTION'S. 155
if rctrilnitioii, in tlic proper sense of these terms, is not in itself inconsistent with supreme benev- olence, it is obviously impossible for us to say that retribution, 2ijp to the full demands of justice, is so. He only who knows all things can deter- mine whether any relaxation of the penalty due to sin will promote the highest good of his rational subjects. And here it may be noted, that none are more disposed to urge the plea of insanity in behalf of the murderer, than men who object to the doctrine of divine retribution in a future life. But, by urging this plea, they do tacitly admit the justice and fitness of penal retribu- tion, were there no such plea to be offered. Nor can the significance of this admission be de- stroyed without going still further, and asserting, that, just so far as one sins, is there evidence of his insanity and moral irresponsibility — a state- ment which virtually denies the existence of moral character and government, gives the lie direct to conscience, and darkens fearfully the prospect of a life beyond the grave. ^
There are, however, it is well known, many persons to whom the benevolence of God seems to be inconsistent with penal retribution in his
1 See a fuller discussion of several topics here alluded to in the Chr. RcA'., October, 1851, by the writer of these pages.
156 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
government; and who tliereforc look upon all suffering as either preventive, reformatory, or disciplinary, and boldly reject the doctrine of any limit to probation. But, in denying there is any limit to probation, they overlook, avc arc com- pelled to think, the analogy of God's government in the present life. For the laws of our bodily organization may be violated to a certain extent, and for a limited time, without permanent injury. There is a recuperative force in the human sys- tem, which, up to a certain point, repairs the injury ; but beyond that point there is no re- covery except by miracle, and the bodily pro- bation, so to speak; terminates. So, also, with character. Actions have been performed so base and malignant, especially when repeated with deliberate purpose, as to destroy beyond remedy our confidence in the perpetrator. Hence, the course of events in this life clearly suggests the doctrine of a limit to moral proba- tion. But it should be distinctly noted, that this doctrine does not represent God as at any time rejecting the penitent ; it may rather be said to affirm the final and steadfast, and criminal im- pcnitency of the lost. Not so much outward bars as inward passions shut tliem out of heaven. The limit of their probation may be marked
RATIONAL OBJECTIONS, 157
simply by a withdrawal of the spirit of God, leaving them to hasten without restraint from the fountain of all good.
Analogy, then, is against the doctrine of un- limited probation; and, hence, it may be pre- sumed that reason also, when fairly applied, will be found against it. To attempt this application may, perhaps, be rash; but we cannot wholly forbear. Let us, then, taking the position of our opponents, and reasoning from the single idea of benevolence, assume that the object of penal suffering in the divine economy is not the satisfaction of righteousness or justice, but solely the good of the offender. Let us further assume that suffering does not act as a mechanical force — as purgatorial fire, consuming, literally, the dross of evil passions, and leaving the spirit pure — but rather as a moral agency appealing to the soul, and urging it to the choice and pur- suit of holiness. And let us finally assume two facts which rest upon a wide range of observa- tion, namely, that men are now involved in sin, and that their delight in moral evil is ever upon the increase. How, then, shall God in his be- nevolence arouse the slumbering reason of man- kind, and move them by the argument from suffering to enter the path of endless peace, even 14
158 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
at the cost of present self-denial and conflict ? Is it not obvious that the earliest and the strongest consideration possible must be used to persuade them ? And how can the prospect of misery be laid before the self-seeking spirit, and made so eff'ectual for good, as by affixing a limit to probation, and making the result end- less? In what other way can so strong, and earnest, and benignant an appeal be made? How, otherwise, can so many be moved to re- nounce what they now love, and seek a higher good? And how else can God exhibit the strongest possible desire to persuade all men to forsake evil and become forever blessed ? Not assuredly by giving to mankind a longer, but still limited probation ; for, as we have before seen, this would diminish the likelihood of re- pentance and the number of the saved. Nor, indeed, by making probation endless ; for in that case no appeal could be drawn from the jirospect of evil. For the sinner would know that his present act of sin involves but the attendant sufi'ering or loss, nothing in the future really de- pending upon it. And as he loves sin now, and chooses it, notwithstanding the attendant evil, so will he, moment by moment, forever. And this surely is to eliminate from the idea of
RATIONAL OBJECTIONS. 159
punishment not merely the retrihutivey but also the preventive, element as well.
The objection now before us, it will be seen by all, rests upon the assumption that God is simply benevolent, and not distinctively right- eous ; that the only moral attribute which he has to express is goodness, and the sole object of his government to secure the happiness of his creatures. But this view appears to us irre- concilable with the phenomena of conscience, the workings of Providence, and the declarations of Scripture. These all testify that righteous- ness is a fundamental attribute of the Godhead ; that he loves rectitude for its own sake, its es- sential beauty and excellence, as well as hap- piness for its own sake ; and, hence, that it will not do for us to conclude, from the attribute of benevolence alone, what will be the process of God's moral administration hereafter. There is, we think, a great error at this point in the reasonings of those who deny the endless misery of the impenitent dead.
Here we pause. It has been shown by the certain testimony of God's word that the im- penitent dead are to be forever conscious and miserable, and that the objections to this view, whether derived professedly from divine
160 STATE OF THE IMPENITENT DEAD.
revelation or human reason, are unworthy of con- fidence. How momentous, then, are the interests which depend upon human conduct in the present life! Let not the reader, in closing this little volume, forget that good and evil, life and death, are placed before him j that now is the accepted time ; now is the day of salvation. And may God lead us all to repentance, for his Son's sake : Amen.
LIST OF AUTHORS.
For the information of those who may desire to investi- gate still further the subject of this essay, we subjoin a list of the principal works consulted in its preparatiorL
COMMENTARIES.
English.
Alexander. — On the Psalms, Isaiah, and Mark.
Alford. — Greek Testament. (3 vols. )
Bush. — On Genesis.
Eadie. — On Colossians.
Ellicott. — On the Epistles. (Galatians to Philemon.)
Hackett. — On the Acts (and Philippians in MS.)
Hengstenbekg. — On the Psalms and Revelation.
Hodge. — On Romans, 1 Corinthians, and Ephesians.
Olshausen. — On the Gospels, etc.
KiPLEY. — On the Gospels and Romans.
Stier. — On the Discourses of Jesus.
Stuart. — On Ecclesiastes and Revelation.
14*
162 LIST OF AUTHORS.
German.
Baumgartex. — On the Pentateuch.
Bleek. — On Hebrews.
Delitzsch. — On Genesis.
De "Wette. — On the New Testament.
Ebrard. — On Hebrews and Revelation.
Harless. — On Ephesians.
LifcKE. — On John.
LiJNEMAXN. — On Thessalonians.
Meyer. — On the Gospels, Romans, and Corintliians.
RiJCKERT. — On Romans and Corinthians.
TiiOLUCK. — On John and Romans.
Latin.
Bengel. — Gnomon Novi Testament]. Calvix. — In Novum Testamentum. Lampe. — In Johannem. Wettstein. — Novum Testamentum.
OTHER WORKS. English.
Abbott. — "Corner Stone," ch. v.
Blain. — "Death not Life," etc.
Calvin. — " Institutes," etc., B. I. c. 15; B. II. c. 1, 2, 3.
Edwards, (The Elder.) — "Works of," vol. I. p. 612 sq.; voL IV. p. 236 sq.
Edwards, (The Yoimger. ) — " Works of," vol. IL p. 302 sq. 428 sq.
DoBNEY. — " Scripture Doctrine of Future Punishment."
Fuller, (Andrew.) — "Works of," vol. II. p. 292 sq.
Ham. — " Man in Death."
Hudson. — "The Doctrine of a Future Life."
JosEPnus. — " Works of," Antiq. B. XVIII. c. 1; Wars B. IL C.8.
LIST OF AUTHORS. 163
Kate, (Bp.) — " Writings of Justin Martyr." Semisch. — "Justin Martyr," vol. II. p. 262 sq. Stuart. — "Essays on Future Punishment."
German.
Delitzsch. — Biblical Psycholog}^
DuxCKEE. — The Christology of Irenaeus.
Ebrard. — Christian Dogmatics, vol. I. § 212 sq; vol. II. § 576 sq.
Hahn. — Dogmatics, § 141 sq.
Lutterbeck. — Doctrines of the IST. T., vol. II.
MiJLLER, (J.)