Satan is a sort of sublime Guy Fawkes, lurking in the infernal cellar, preparing the train of that stupendous Gunpowder Plot by which he hopes, on the day of judgment, to blow up the world-parliament of unbelievers with a general petard of damnation. Will the King connive at this nefarious prowler and permit him to carry out his design?

The doctrine of eternal damnation, as it has prevailed in the Christian Church, appears to the natural man so unreasonable, immoral, and harrowingly frightful, when earnestly contemplated, that there have always been some who have shrunk from its representations and sought to escape its conclusions. Many of its strongest advocates in every age have avowed it to be a fearful mystery, resting on the inscrutable sovereignty of God, and beyond the power of man's faculties to explain and justify. The dogma has been eluded in two ways. Some have believed in the annihilation of the wicked after they should have undergone just punishment proportioned to their sins. This supposition has had a considerable number of advocates. It was maintained, among others, by Arnobius, at the close of the third century, by the Socini, by Dr. Hammond, and by some of the New England divines. All that need be said in opposition to it is that it is an arbitrary device to avoid the intolerable horror of the doctrine of endless misery, unsupported by proof, extremely unsatisfactory in many of its bearings, and really not needed to achieve the consummation desired

26

Others have more wisely maintained that all will finally be saved: however severely and long they may justly suffer, they will at last all be mercifully redeemed by God and admitted to the common heaven. Defenders of the doctrine of ultimate universal salvation have appeared from the beginning of Christian history.27 During the last century and a half their numbers have rapidly increased.28 A dignified and influential class of theologians, represented by such names as Tillotson, Bahrdt, and Less, say that the threats of eternal punishment, in the Scriptures, are exaggerations to deter men from sin, and that God will not really execute them, but will mercifully abate and limit them." Another class of theologians, much more free, consistent, and numerous, base their reception of the doctrine of final restoration on figurative explanations of the scriptural language seemingly opposed to it, and on arguments drawn from the character of God, from reason, and from morals. This view of the subject is spreading fast All independent, genial, and cultivated thought naturally leads to it. The central gospel necessitate it. The spirit of the age cries for it. antagonistic dogma must fall and perish from respect.

principles of the Before it the old Dr. Spring says,

26 This theory has been resuscitated and advocated within a few years by quite a number of writers, among whom may be specified the Rev. C. F. Hudson, author of "Debt and Grace," a learned, earnest, and able work, pervaded by an admirable spirit.

27 Ballou, Ancient History of Universalism.

28 Whittemore, Modern History of Universalism.

29 Knapp, Christian Theology, Woods's translation, sect. 158.

in reference to the hopeless condemnation of the wicked to hell, “It puts in requisition all our confidence in God to justify this procedure of his government."'30

A few devout and powerful minds have sought to avoid the gross horrors and unreasonableness of the usual view of this subject, by changing the mechanical and arithmetical values of the terms for spiritual and religious values. They give the word "eternity" a qualitative instead of a quantitative meaning. The everlasting woe of the damned consists not in mechanical inflictions of torture and numerical increments of duration, but in spiritual discord, alienation from God, a wretched state of being, with which times and spaces have nothing to do.31

32

How much better were it for the advocates of the popular theory, instead of forcing their moral nature to bear up against the awful perplexities and misgivings as to the justice and goodness of God necessarily raised in them whenever they really face the dark problems of their system of faith, resolutely to ask whether there are any such problems in the actual government of God, or anywhere else, except in their own "Bodies of Divinity"! It is an extremely unfortunate and discreditable evasion of responsibility when any man, especially when a teacher, takes for granted the received formularies handed down to him, and, instead of honestly analyzing their genuine significance and probing their foundations to see if they be good and true, spends his genius in contriving excuses and supports for them.

It is the very worst policy at this day to strive to fasten the dogma of eternal misery to the New Testament. If both must be taken or rejected together, an alternative which we emphatically deny,—what sincere and earnest thinker now, whose will is unterrifiedly consecrated to truth, can be expected to hesitate long? The doctrine is sustained in repute at present principally for two reasons. First, because it has been transmitted to us from the Church of the past as the established and authoritative doctrine. It is yet technically current and popular because it has been so: that is, it retains its place simply by right of possession. The question ought to be sincerely and universally raised whether it is true or false. Then it will swiftly lose its prestige and disappear. Secondly, it is upheld and patronized by many as a useful instrument for frightening the people and through their fears deterring them from sin. We have ourselves heard clergymen of high reputation say that it would never do to admit, before the people, that there is any chance whatever of penitence and salvation beyond the grave, because they would be sure to abuse the hope as a sort of permission to indulge and continue in sin. Thus to ignore the only solemn and worthy standard of judging an abstract doctrine, namely, Is it a truth or a falsehood? and put it solely

30 Glory of Christ, vol. ii. p. 268.

Lange, Positive Dogmatik, sect. 131: Die Aeonen der Verdammten. Maurice, Theological Essays: Future Punishment.

See Beecher's Conflict of Ages, b. ii. ch. 4, 13.

on grounds of working expediency, is disgraceful, contemptible, criminal. Watts exposes with well-merited rebuke a gross instance of pious fraud in Burnet, who advised preachers to teach the eternity of future punishment whether they believed it or not.33 It is by such a course that error and superstition reign, that truckling conformity, intellectual disloyalty, moral indifference, vice, and infidelity, abound. It is practical atheism, debauchery of conscience, and genuine spiritual death. Besides, the course we are characterizing is actually as inexpedient in practice as it is wrong in theory. Experience and observation show it to be as pernicious in its result as it is immoral in its origin. Is a threat efficacious over men in proportion to its intrinsic terror, or in proportion as it is personally felt and feared by them? Do the menacing penalties of a sin deter a man from it in proportion to their awfulness, or in proportion to his belief in their reality and unavoidableness? Eternal misery would be a threat of infinite frightfulness, if it were realized and believed. But it is incredible. Some reject it with indignation and an impetuous recoil that sends them much too far towards antinomianism. Others let it float in the spectral background of imagination, the faint reflection of a disagreeable and fading dream. To all it is an unreality. An earnest belief in a sure retribution exactly limited to desert must be far more effective. If an individual had a profound conviction that for every sin he committed he must suffer a million centuries of inexpressible anguish,—realizing that thought, would he commit a sin?

If he cannot appreciate that enormous penalty, much less can he the infinite one, which is far more likely to shade off and blur out into a vague and remote nothing. Truth is an expression of God's will, which we are bound exclusively to accept and employ regardless of consequences. When we do that, God, the author of truth, is himself solely responsible for the consequences. But when, thinking we can devise something that will work better, we use some theory of our own, we are responsible for the consequences. Let every one beware how he ventures to assume that dread responsibility. It is surely folly as well as sin. For nothing can work so well as truth, the simple, calm, living truth, which is a chime in the infinite harmony of morals and things. It is only the morbid melodramatic tastes and incompetencies of an unfinished culture that make men think otherwise. The magnificent poetry of the day of judgment— an audience of five hundred thousand millions gathered in one throng as the Judge rises to pronounce the last oration over a dissolving universe-takes possession of the fancy, and people conceive it so vividly, and are so moved by it, that they think they see it to be true.

Grant for a moment the truth of the conception of hell as a physical world of fiery torture full of the damned. Suppose the scene of probation over, hell filled with its prisoners shut up, banished and buried in the blackest deeps of space. Can it be left there forever? Can it be that the

33 World to Come, Disc. XIII.

roar of its furnace shall rage on, and the wail of the execrable anguish ascend, eternally? Endeavor to realize in some faint degree what these questions mean, and then answer. If anybody can find it in his heart or in his head to say yes, and can gloat over the idea, and wish to have it continually brandished in terrorem over the heads of the people, one feels tempted to declare that he of all men comes nearest to deserving to be the victim of such a fate! An unmitigated hell of depravity, pain, and horror, would be Satan's victory and God's defeat; for that is Satan's very wish, while God's essential aim must be the prevalence of blessed goodness. As above the weltering hosts of the lost, each dreadful second, the iron clock of hell ticked the thunder-word "eternity," how would the devil on his sulphurous dais shout in triumph! But if such a world of fire, crowded with the writhing damned, ever existed at all, could it exist forever?"

Could the saved be happy and passive in heaven when the muffled shrieks of their brethren, faint from distance, fell on their ears? Oh, no! In tones of love and pity that would melt the very mountains, they would plead with God to pardon the lost. Oh, no! Many a mourning lover would realize the fable of the Thracian poet who wandered into Hades searching for his Eurydice; many a heroic son would emulate the legend of the Grecian god who burst through the iron walls of Tartarus and rescued his mother, the unfortunate Semele, and led her in triumph up to heaven.

Could the angels be contented when they contemplated the far-off lurid orb and knew the agonies that fed its conscious conflagration? Their gentle bosoms would be racked with commiserating pangs, they would fly down and hover around that anguished world, to moisten its parched tongues with the dropping of their sympathetic tears and to cool its burning brows with the fanning of their spotless wings.

Could Christ be satisfied? he who once was rich but for our sakes became poor? he whose loving soul breathed itself forth in the tender words, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest"? he who poured his blood on Judea's awful summit, be satisfied? Not until he had tried the efficacy of ten thousand times ten thousand fresh crucifixions, on as many new Calvaries, would he rest.

Could God suffer it? God! with the full rivers of superfluous bliss rolling around thy throne, couldst thou look down and hear thy creatures calling thee Father, and see them plunging in a sea of fire eternallyeternally—eternally-and never speak the pardoning word? It would not be like thee, it would be like thine adversary, to do that. Not so wouldst thou do. But if Satan had millions of prodigals, snatched from the fold of thy family, shut up and tortured in hell, paternal yearnings after them would fill thy heart. Love's smiles would light the dread abyss where they groan. Pity's tears would fall over it, shattered by the radiance into rainbows. And through that illumination THOU wouldst descend, marching beneath the arch of its triumphal glories to the rescue of thy children! Thus wouldst thou do, O God; and we rest in hope, because we know that "Thou wilt not leave our souls in hell."

CHAPTER V.

THE FIVE THEORETIC MODES OF SALVATION.

THE Conceptions and fore-feelings of immortality which men have entertained have generally been accompanied by a sense of uncertainty in regard to the nature of that inheritance,-by a perception of contingent conditions, yielding a twofold fate of bliss and woe, poised on the perilous hinge of circumstance or freedom. Almost as often and profoundly, indeed, as man has thought that he should live hereafter, that idea has been followed by the belief that if, on the one hand, salvation gleamed for him in the possible sky, on the other hand perdition yawned for him in the probable abyss. Heaven and Hell are the light-side and shade-side of the doctrine of a future life. Few questions are more interesting, as none can be more important, than that inquiry which is about the salvation of the soul. The inherent reach of this inquiry, and the extent of its philosophical and literary history, are great. But, by arranging under certain heads the various principal schemes of salvation which Christian teachers have from time to time presented for popular acceptance, and passing them before the mind in order and in mutual lights, we can very much narrow the space required to exhibit and discuss them. When the word "salvation" occurs in the following investigation, it means-unless something different be shown by the context-the removal of the soul's doom to misery beyond the grave, and the securing of its future blessedness. Heaven and hell are terms employed with wide latitude and fluctuating boundaries of literal and figurative meaning; but their essential force is simply a future life of wretchedness, a future life of joy; and salvation, in its prevailing theological sense, is the avoidance of that and the gaining of this. We shall not attempt to present the different theories of redemption in their historical order of development, or to give an exhaustive account of their diversified prevalence, but shall arrange them with reference to the most perspicuous exhibition of their logical contents and practical bearings.

The first scheme of Christian salvation to be noticed is the one by which it is represented that the interference and suffering of Christ, in itself, unconditionally saved all souls and emptied hell forever. This theory arose in the minds of those who received it as the natural and consistent completion of the view they held concerning the nature and consequences of the fall of Adam, the cause and extent of the lost state of man. Adam, as the federal head of humanity, represented and acted for his whole race: the responsibility of his decision rested, the conse