ART. V.—ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. The Revelation of God the Probation of Man. Two Sermons preached before the University of Oxford. By Samuel Lord Bishop of Oxford. London: J. H. and Jas. Parker, and J. Murray. 1861. Notes on the Parables. By Richard Chenevix Trench, D.D., Dean of Westminster. Parochial Sermons. By John Henry Newman, B.D., Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. 1814. An Exposition of the Creed. Sermons. By George Bull, By John Pearson, D.D., Lord Bishop D.D., Lord Bishop of St. David's. The Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians, Romans. By Benjamin Jowett, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford. London: J. Murray. 1855. Scripture Revelations of a Future State. By Richard Whately, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin. London: Parker, Son, and Bourn. Theological Essays. By Frederick Denison Maurice, M.A. Cambridge: Macmillan. 1853. Essays and Reviews. London: Longmans. 1861. St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, newly translated and explained from a Missionary point of view. By the Right Rev. J. W. Colenso, D.D., Bishop of Natal. Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1861. Forgiveness after Death: Does the Bible or the Church of England affirm it to be impossible? A Review of the alleged Proofs of the Hopelessness of the Future State. By a Clergyman. London: Longmans. 1869. THE preceding list of works will at once show the nature and extent of the task which we have imposed on ourselves in the present article. We are not going to enter on any discussion of abstract theories, or on any analysis of the philosophical arguments which are brought forward in support of them. Our work is at once more simple and more urgent. The controversies which find their battle-ground in the Church of England seem to multiply almost as rapidly as the heads of the Lernæan hydra; but, like these heads, they spring from one root, and on this final question we purpose now to insist with that plainness of speech which has never been more imperatively needed than at the present time. Behind all discussions on the authority of the Bible lies the one absorbing subject of human destiny. It is better and more honest to declare at once, that on this question only one answer will be accepted by the English people; but it is no light thing, if, as we believe, it can be said with truth that the Church of England has returned this answer. In her interest, next only to that of truth and justice, we desire to speak. She is facing a great danger; but that danger arises from the progress, not of historical criticism, but of a feeling of doubt whether her voice is raised to proclaim unreservedly the absolute righteousness of God. Her authority is claimed for a vast scheme of popular theology. Among her ministers, some few openly denounce parts of this scheme, many practically ignore it; while others uphold it by arguments which would make it indifferent whether we worship God, or whether we worship Moloch. It bodes no good to a church when its lay members begin to suspect that the clergy are upholding a system of dogmas in some part of which at least they do not believe. It is a still darker sign if they come to think that these dogmas impute what, amongst men, would be called the worst injustice to a Being who is represented as infinitely merciful and loving. It becomes therefore a subject of paramount importance to ascertain what is in fact the practical teaching of the clergy on the subject of Eternal Punishment, and whether that teaching is consistent with itself and with the religion on which it professes to rest. The subject cannot possibly be put aside. The course of thought and criticism at home, the more urgent needs of missionaries abroad, will again and again demand answers to questions which all feel to be of greater moment than any other. The age, which has fearlessly scrutinised the histories of Greece and Rome, which has laid down the laws by which these are to. be judged, and has applied these laws with rigid impartiality to all researches or speculations, whether they tell for or against the orthodox belief,* will not be hindered from examining the grounds of the doctrines which fix the destinies of all mankind. It is impossible to doubt that the clergy generally are well aware of this. The old language on the subject of hell-torments is by comparison seldom heard at the present day; and the passing reference to them is commonly followed by the tranquil announcement of a just retribution for all sin. While in this The criticisms of Sir Cornewall Lewis are directed with equal severity against the reconstructed Assyrian history of Mr. Rawlinson and the Egyptology of Baron Bunsen. The former is supposed to corroborate the history of the Old Testament, the latter to upset it. To the historical critic either issue is wholly beside the question; but of course his weapons may strike that which he had no conscious intention of assailing. Minucius Felix never thought of the labours of Samson when he thrust aside those of Heracles by the famous criterion, “Hæc, si facta essent, fierent: quia fieri non possunt, ideò nec facta sunt.” country the clergy feel that any thing more would be practically thrown away, they find it at once an easier and a more worthy task to insist on those truths which neither they nor their people in their secret hearts deny. From time to time. men of greater honesty and greater courage give utterance to what is working in the minds of others, and plainly show that not merely the course of modern criticism, but our first religious instincts, make the subject of Eternal Punishment the great question of the age. Twice at least within the last ten years something like a plain answer has been given to this question. The Theological Essays of Mr. Maurice roused an opposition scarcely less vehement than that which denounced Essays and Reviews; but it was easy to see that the former lost half their force by the writer's seeming love of paradox; while the latter have been commonly regarded as the ambiguous utterances of men who felt more than they dared to put down in words. The practical needs of the missionary will not be so easily set aside. It is one thing to speak, in this country, of heathens as being destined to torments which shall have no end, and another to insist, before the heathen themselves, that all sin not repented of at the hour of death will plunge the sinner into endless misery. In his commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, the Bishop of Natal admits that the task of teaching Christian doctrine "to intelligent adult natives, who have the simplicity of children, but withal the earnestness and thoughtfulness of men, . . . is a sifting process for the opinions of any teacher who feels the deep moral obligation of answering truly and faithfully and unreservedly his fellow-man looking up to him for light and guidance, and asking, 'Are you sure of this? Do you know this to be true? Do you really believe that?'" The Zulus of Southern Africa are not slow in drawing the logical inferences from the dogma of Eternal Punishment, as ordinarily understood and set before them; but they are more ready to question its justice than to adopt the belief which drove Antony and Macarius into the Nitrian desert. These are things on which the nation at large will soon have to make up its mind. But while the doctrine of an endless punishment for all men dying with unrepented sin is asserted judicially to be the doctrine of the Church of England, and while from time to time we have explanations of its nature which leave us in no doubt of the speaker's meaning, how are we to explain the fact that it should be less and less frequently brought before the people? A real conviction of its truth would lead men to dwell on it to the exclusion of almost every * Judgment of the Court of Arches in the case of Fendall v. Wilson, p. 44. other dogma, to enforce it by night and by day with a vehement and untiring energy. Instead of this, the Bishop of Natal asserts, and asserts truly, that the dogma "is very seldom stated in plain words in the presence of any intelligent congregation.' If prominently brought forward, it is generally before the ignorant and before children. Put in the simplest way, this doctrine asserts that the condition of every man is irrevocably fixed at the moment of his death, that, owing to the fall of Adam, the natural doom of all his children, without exception, is an unending existence of torment, that the death of Christ has indeed redeemed mankind, but procured salvation only for those who believe the Gospel and are baptised into his church,-that, further, every Christian must die in a state of penitence, and that the slightest failing not repented of at the moment of death consigns him to endless flame. Thus a sharp line is drawn which divides all mankind into two classes; and from the number of those who are saved not only all openly evil-livers are cast out, but all heathen who, having not the law, have not been a law to themselves; and among Christians, all who have not died in the faith of Christ. Thus the gates of hell close on all who may be set down as careless and indifferent, or as mere moralists, or sceptics, or philosophers, all, in short, who do not at the hour of death with true penitence place their conscious trust in the great sacrifice of Christ. This doctrine knows nothing of shades of character or degrees of guilt. It may admit the salvation of really good heathen men to whom the Gospel has never been preached, and possibly of all children dying before the commission of actual sin.* Ignorant Christians it regards as heathen, and there can be no reason to exempt them from a doom which awaits the vast mass, nay almost the whole of the latter. This dogma may of course be enforced in ways indefinitely various. It may be so put as to make God's hatred of all sin the prominent idea, or it may be clothed with the coarseness of the most vindictive passion. It may be urged with the earnestness of the saint who is ready to die for others, or with the horrible selfishness of the blasphemer who professes to see the mercy of God in the damnation of infants. But, in whatever form it may be put, the doctrine is in itself repulsive. Human nature shrinks from a penalty which it cannot comprehend, and of which it certainly cannot see the justice or the purpose. In the words of Dean Milman, "to the eternity of hell-torments there is, and ever must be, notwithstanding the peremptory decrees of dogmatic theology, and the reverential dread of so The Church of England speaks positively only in the case of baptised children who die before such commission of sin. many religious minds of tampering with what seems the language of the New Testament, a tacit repugnance."* Doubtless there are many truths of Christianity which may at first shock or startle those who have grown up in a different philosophy. The cross of Christ may be to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks an offence; but it is possible to mistake the nature of this antagonism, or to exaggerate it until it becomes a fiction. But there is no other doctrine which leaves on the mind and heart an aching sense as of irremediable pain; no other of which the real belief must throw a dark shade over all human life, and tempt the believer to gird himself with the cord of Dominic and Francis, and go forth to snatch if but a few brands from the burning. There is no other which sets the purest and most natural of human affections in direct conflict with what is held to be the revelation of the divine will. If on the night of the Passover there was not a house in Egypt in which there was not one dead, there must be many dead in almost every Christian home, unless the terms of this dogma are set at naught. There is no man living who has not loved those of whose conscious faith he can say nothing. There is not one who does not still love some, perhaps many, such, on whose bodies the grave has closed. There is not one who will not continue to love them till he himself comes to die; and in the mean while he will vainly seek to understand how after that time he can become indifferent to the doom of those whom he has loved, and feels that he must love, on earth. It is clear that only the most stringent authority will bring men to believe such a doctrine as this. Their own conception (whether innate or acquired) of divine qualities and attributes will never guide them to it; they can only receive it on the express revelation of God himself that it is really true. Christians have come to believe that He has so revealed it, and that the statement of this doctrine is found in the Bible. They have brought themselves to believe that all morality falls to the ground, if the endlessness of hell-torments is called in question; and hence to all such doubts, however faint and however calmly urged, the great barrier presented is the bulwark of plenary inspiration. The very vehemence with which all doubts are denounced as impious, seems to show that there must be something which can only be maintained by the exclusion or suppression of all doubts. The Roman church is under no necessity to assert the absolute truth even of all doctrinal statements in the Bible: she has not shown her wisdom when she has done so. The Protestant, who does not admit the existence of any living infallible expositor of truth, is compelled to rest every * History of Latin Christianity, book xiv. chap. ii. vol. vi. p. 253, cd. 2. |