The Problem of Immortality (1892), Chapter 7 by E. Petavel

THE SECOND DEATH, OR FUTURE PUNISHMENT.

I. Sin, a guilty revolt, tends towards the subversion and suppression of the conditions of human existence—

AT the Creation every substance, organic and inorganic, received from God its characteristic properties, by which it is constituted, and which it must needs retain, otherwise it changes its nature and loses even its name. For example, water if it loses its liquidity becomes ice or steam; a temperature between 32° and 212° Fahr. is the condition of that liquidity. Exposed to the action of fire, wood ceases to be wood and becomes smoke and ashes. No creature can escape from these conditions of existence, which in science are called laws. The aim of science is the knowledge of these laws.

Man, the king of nature, is himself subject to laws. Of these some are physical or physiological, chemical or dynamic, understood by the hygienist and the physician; some, too, are psychological, governing the spiritual part of man's being, and it is the business of the moral philosopher to study and to define these higher laws.

The possession of immortality is also dependent upon obedience to certain laws; unhappily, as we have had occasion to show, philosophy left to itself has failed to discover these laws. In order to become acquainted with them we have had to consult revelation. What does the Scripture teach as to the conditions of a permanent life? It presents to us a saying from Deuteronomy and a saying from Leviticus, brought together by Jesus Christ in the Gospel: To love self, to love God more than self, and to love the neighbour as much as self, that is the triple basis of the laws by which "man shall live." 1

Man was intended, by a supreme love to God, to maintain uninterrupted communion with the source of life, and so long as that communion existed he could not die. But in the day when, by an act of rebellion, man broke the bond of love that united him to the Creator, the perishing process began.

“This bond is for him like the fibrous root of the plant whereby it draws sap and life from the soil in which it grows. For man, to live is to be united to God; so soon as that union ceases he is like the river cut off from its source. Sin carries death in itself, as the grain of wheat carries in itself the ear, as a principle carries its consequence. Essentially it is death, because it separates us from the author of all grace, from him who said, "I am that I am," who is the absolute Being, the Being without whom nothing can exist. James has admirably exhibited to us this genealogy of evil in the profound saying, "Lust when it hath conceived beareth sin, and sin when it is full grown bringeth forth death." 2

There is a law, universal, necessary, "sovereign, which destroys all who resist and vivifies all who conform to it." 3 The docile subject of that law continues and grows; he who transgresses it, compromises his own existence, withdraws himself from the source of being and brings about his own decay in the proportion of his deviation; he becomes liable to complete destruction if he persists in his aberration.

1 Lev. xviii. 5; Ezek. xx. 11. Cf. Luke x. 27, 28; Deut. vi. 5; Lev. xix. 18.

2 Edmond de Pressense, Essai sur le dogme de la Redemption, p. 73; Paris, Meyrueis, 1867.

3 A. Gratry. La morale et la loi de l'histoire, vol. i., p. 297. Paris, 1868. See also in Supplement No. IV. the observations of Prof. Charles Secretan.

When a branch, broken by the tempest, is detached from the tree that bore it and falls to the ground, it yet retains for some days its rich foliage. It is full of sap, and the fruit that is on it may even ripen in the soft rays of an autumn sun; but its maturity will be imperfect, and whilst the branches that are left on the tree will be covered with leaves and flowers in the ensuing season, the branch separated from the trunk will be nothing but dry wood, the prey of worms or fire.

Worms and fire, these are images frequently employed in Scripture.

Separated from the source of life, the sinner is advancing by a slow and funereal march towards eternal death. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," says the prophet Ezekiel. "If ye live after the flesh ye must die; the wages of sin is death," says St. Paul. "Sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death," says St. James, the death which kills only the body, then that which will kill the whole man, the second death spoken of in the Apocalypse. 1

1 Ezek. xviii. 4; Rom. vi. 23; viii. 13; James i. 15; Rev. ii. 11; xx. 6, 14; xxi. 8. What is death but the cessation of life, and what is life but a combination of action and sensation? Death, in its absolute sense, must, then, be the cessation of all action and all sensation. That such is the meaning of the word appears from the use made of it by the apostle when he exhorts the believer to mortify or make dead the lusts of the flesh or sin, in themselves: thanatoo, stauroo, nekroo (Rom. viii. 13; Gal. V. 24; Col. iii. 5).

These passages relate to "the annihilation of the evil element in man, of sin and the flesh." Professor Reuss, Histoire de is theologic apostolique, vol. ii., p. 163; 1852.

The ruin of the body, according to the Scripture, is but a symbol and a sort of prelude of the destiny of the impenitent sinner. It is a progressive and irresistible decadence, a continuous diminution of the two factors of human life, sensation and action. The dimmed eyes wander in increasing darkness, the dull ears have only an indistinct perception of sounds, the enfeebled stomach refuses nourishment, the knees give way under their burden, all the vital functions are retarded, a moment arrives when they are altogether interrupted and the man is no more.

But all does not perish with the body. The Old Testament in more passages than one, the New Testament in the most explicit manner, reveal to us a prolongation of existence beyond the tomb.

According to the Bible, souls after death fall into two principal classes, the first of which includes those who have had faith in the divine pardon and have lived in the practice of good works. These, reconciled with God, confiding in his great love, especially as manifested in the sacrifice of his only Son, regenerated, having returned to the constituent principle of their being and submitted themselves to the rule from which for a time they had departed, live for ever in happiness. 1

The second class is divided into two categories: irreconcilable sinners, and those who have never heard or have not understood the good news of the remission of sins. These latter naturally find themselves on the way to perdition, but various declarations of Scripture allow us to believe that they will be subjected to a new test, and that a special gospel message will be addressed to them. We shall have occasion to recur to this point in our tenth chapter. For the present we need only consider what will be the fate of the incorrigible sinners.

II. Biblical symbolism of the fire and the worm, two agents of destruction

According to Scripture, it is fire that in the end is to destroy God's enemies, 2 fire, the symbol of utter destruction, which converts the diamond, hardest of substances, into a subtile vapour, breaks the granite, melts the rocks and transforms them into lava.

1 Hina zoen echete, John v. 40; xx. 31—that ye may have life. Such is "the final aim of the divine economy, and, as it were, the keystone of John's theology." Reuss, op. cit., vol. ii., p. 453. It may be added that the whole biblical revelation tends in the same direction.

2 The water of the deluge, whereof baptism is a memento, is, as we have seen, another symbol of destruction often employed in Scripture. Water and fire are, in fact, two kinds of environment incompatible with human life; but whiIe water buries the dead who have perished therein, fire causes a yet more radical disappearance of its victims. We believe that the fire of hell spoken of in Scripture is only an image of the destructive effects of sin.

With these terrible natural phenomena in view, Isaiah, when speaking of the fire that will consume impenitent sinners, might well exclaim: "Who among us can dwell with the devouring fire, who among us can dwell with the eternal burnings?" 1 The implied answer is "None!" There is no life that is compatible with fire; but, according to the Scripture, the final lot of the wicked is destruction by fire, for "behold, the day cometh, it burneth as a furnace, and all the proud and all that work wickedness shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch." 2

To the horror of this burning the Apocalypse adds the suffocating vapour of brimstone, another agent of destruction that would hasten the end of living beings exposed to it.

In a dozen passages of the New Testament the last sojourn of impenitent sinners is called Gehenna, a word which, as is well known, means the valley of Hinnom, in allusion to the ravine below the southern wall of Jerusalem. It was in the part of this valley called Tophet, or the valley of burning, that some kings of Judah had burnt alive their own children in honour of Moloch. Josiah, when he came to the throne, devoted this valley to infamy; he made it the sewer of the city, a place for refuse into which were cast all the abominations of the capital, the dead bodies of beasts of burden and of executed criminals. A fire constantly burning consumed these corpses; hence the expression "the Gehenna of fire." 3 Such were the images evoked by the expression Gehenna employed by Jesus to make his hearers understand what a terrible final destiny was threatening impenitent souls. He said, "Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna." 4

1 Isa. xxxiii. 14.

2 Mal. iv. 1 [iii. 19].

3 Gehenna tou puros. See 2 Kings xxiii. 10; Jer. vii. 32, 33; xix. 2, 6; Mark ix. 48. This same valley became a field of battle when the Romans besieged Jerusalem. Afterwards the victors heaped up in it the dead bodies which were strewn over the ruins of the city. Josephus, Wars, vi. 8, § 5; V. 12, § 7. Cf. Jer. vii. 32. The French word gene (constraint), which at first meant torture, is derived from the Hebrew substantive Ge-hinnom, in Greek Gehenna.

4 Kai psuchen kai soma apolesai. Matt. x. 28. It has been said that although God can destroy a soul, he will never do so. That is to change the solemn warning of Jesus Christ into an empty threat. Philosophy suffices to show that God can destroy a soul that he has created. "I am not able to demonstrate that God cannot annihilate it [the soul], but only that it is of a nature entirely distinct from that of the body."—Descartes.

Total destruction is then, according to the Scripture, the final lot of obstinate sinners. They are sheep which, having strayed away from the shepherd, are exposed to the wolf's jaws, to the pangs of hunger and thirst, to the agony of a miserable death. Authors of their own ruin, the rebels will "perish as mere animals destined to be taken and destroyed." 1 "They shall be as though they had not been;" 2 "as a vanishing cloud;" 3 "as a dream when one awaketh;" 4 "like a potter's vessel dashed in pieces;" 5 "as ashes under the feet," 6 "in smoke shall they consume away." 7 "The workers of iniquity... shall be destroyed for ever." 8 Jesus compares them sometimes to fruitless vine branches, sometimes to bundles of dried tares, which are burnt up. 9

This punishment is eternal insomuch as it is definitive. Those who have neglected the poor and afflicted will go, Jesus says, into an eternal punishment. 10 We note in passing that the expression eternal sufferings (Fr. peines eternelles ) is not biblical; there is nothing to warrant the introduction of that plural, which inaccurate revisers substituted for the singular eternal chastisement, as retained by Olivetan. 11

It should be observed that when the word eternal qualifies an act, the eternity is the attribute not of the act itself, but of the result of the act. It then denotes theperpetuity of the effect produced by the act or by the agent. Thus, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Jesus is said to have obtained an eternal redemption; a redemption eternal in its effects, although the act by which it was obtained was accomplished in one day upon the cross. 12 In the same Epistle an eternal judgement 13 is spoken of.

1 2 Pet. ii. 12.

2 Obad. 16. Cf. Job x. 19.

3 Job vii. 9.

4 Psa. lxxiii. 20.

5 Psa. ii. 9; Rev. ii. 27; Rom. ix. 22; Matt. xi. 44.

6 Mal. iv. 3.

7 Psa. xxxvii. 20.

8 Psa. xcii. 7. Cf. 2 Thess. i. 9.

9 Matt. xiii. 30; John xv. 6.

10 Kolasin aionion. Matt. xxv. 46.

11 This alteration is as old as the Geneva version of 1588. Estienne's edition, 1556, rendered the words eternal torment, another error which has reappeared in the version of J. N. Darby, where we find eternal torments.

12 Heb. ix. 12. Cf. ver. 25, 28; v. 9; vi. 2; vii. 25. On this point Alford remarks that aionian, eternal , here answers to the preceding ephapax, once for all, in the same verse. Grimm: aeternum valens.

13 Heb. vi. 2. A nearly similar expression occurs Mark iii. 29, "an eternal sin." This rhetorical figure which assigns to an act the perpetuity of its effects is also found: 1 Kings ix. 13, "He called the cities the land of Cabul unto this day;" Deut. xi. 4, "The Egyptians destroyed unto this day;" Rev. xx. 2, "He laid hold on the dragon... and bound him a thousand years;" then he cast him into the abyss, to remain there shut in until the end of the thousand years. This principle of interpretation has been recognized by one of our honoured opponents: "When the Scripture qualifies redemption and the last judgement as eternal, the term applies to the consequences of those acts, and not to the acts themselves." E. Arnaud, Manuel de dogmatique, p. 567.

Evidently it is only the effect of the sentence that is eternal. In Jude the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are named as permanent witnesses of the divine vengeance, being the prey of eternal fire. 1 The waters of the Dead Sea cover the site of the guilty cities, which were destroyed in a moment; 2 but the fire that consumed them has been eternal in its effects, having destroyed them for ever. 3 The Dead Sea is the eternal witness of an historical catastrophe. So, too, in the passage of Matthew that is under review, the chastisement will consist in a gradual destruction, and this chastisement will be irremediable. This is a mode of speech by no means foreign to our modern languages; it is found in the expression "an eternal farewell," dire un eternel adieu, 4 synonymous with a final or supreme farewell; the chastisement spoken of by Jesus is likewise supreme and final. We therefore do not limit the duration of eternal punishment, as is sometimes supposed, but we believe that it implies a final destruction.

"The worm that dieth not" is, like the "unquenchable fire," a symbol of definitive death. So long as the corpse, which, moreover, is perfectly insensible, is gnawed by the worm it cannot live again. If the worm never dies, there will be no more possibility of life for the being symbolized by the corpse. We shall deal more fully with the meaning of these emblems in the eleventh chapter.

III. Principal characteristic of punishment in general and of future punishment in particular. Punishment essentially deprivation of a faculty; the supreme punishment will be the deprivation of all faculties

If we now endeavour to determine the essential character of future punishment, the way may be indicated by etymology.

1 Hupechousai, Jude 7. So also Libanius, speaking of Troy: Keitai paradeigma dustuchias puros aioniou. Declam. v., p. 289.

2 Lam. iv. 6.

3 Cf. Matt. xviii. 8; xxv. 41; Mark iii. 29; Dan. xii. 2.

4 AEternum vale, Ovid. See, too, 2 Thess. i. 9, olethron aionion, eternal destruction, synonymous with irremediable destruction.."One day is still left to us in which to change the severity of our eternal sentence." —Massillon.

The six dictionaries of Passow, Planche, Alexandre, Wahl, Grimm, and Liddell and Scott are unanimous in deriving the Greek word kolasis, chastisement, from a root signifying to break by striking, to cut off, curtail, dock, prune, mutilate, dismember; 1 whence our word iconoclast, one who breaks or destroys images. Kolasis, therefore, designates chastisement by means of deprivation.

On careful consideration, it will be seen that chastisement most frequently involves the idea of a loss, a deprivation: a fine is loss of money; imprisonment, loss of liberty; death, loss of life. The signification is exactly that of the Latin term castigare, the etymological meaning of which is to prune or lop, and so of the French chatier, and the English chasten. It is to cut off the sterile branches: Castigatio, amputatio, qua, arboribus luxuriantibus adhibetur, according to the definition of Estienne's Thesaurus, 2 the very operation spoken of by Jesus himself in the similitude of the vine and the branches, where he says: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh it away, and every branch that beareth fruit he cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit... If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a sterile branch, and is withered; these are gathered up and cast into the fire, and they are burnt." 3 The wicked will be for ever cut off from the trunk of humanity, their destruction will be total and final: that is the eternal chastisement. 4

1 Kolazo, frequentative of kolouo, poet., whence kolasis, mutilatio, Wahl; kolos, maimed. In the LXX. the terms kolasis or kolazo are used in relation to capital punishment, banishment, confiscation, or imprisonment, all these sentences implying deprivation. 1 Esdras viii. 24. Cf. Ezra vii. 26; Ezek. xviii. 30, Greek. When the chastisement does not imply deprivation, as, for example, when it consists in the infliction of strokes, the New Testament and the LXX. employ the word paideia, admonitive correction (2 Chron. x. 14; Prov. iii. 11; xxii. 15; Luke xxiii. 16; Heb. xii. 6, 7), or sometimes the words epitimia, elegxis, ekdikesis. An attempt has been made to distinguish between kolasis and timoria, as though the first of these words would designate rather a correction and the second a vindictive punishment; but it does not seem possible always to maintain this distinction. In French peine, punition, and chatiment are sometimes confounded, although usually chatiment is in order to the amendment of the guilty subject.

2 In the same sense is used the phrase to chasten a composition, prose or verse.

3 John xv. 1, sq. To be in accordance with the traditional dogma, Jesus ought to have said: "They are cast into the fire, and are not burnt."

4 "In view of the contrast established in this verse between life and chastisement, the chastisement would seem to consist in an annihilation."—De Wette upon Matt. xxv. 46. We may add that if suffering were the special characteristic of the chastisement, the second part of the verse would have spoken of the eternal happiness of the righteous.

According to the Bible, life is a loan, which God takes back from him who misuses it. The Creator does not oblige anyone to remain seated at the banquet of existence; to the righteous he grants immortality; but those who presumptuously endeavour to change the laws of their being exclude themselves, they attempt an impossibility, as would a man who should attempt to live with his natural position always reversed. The wicked will not succeed in destroying the laws, which are unchangeable, but they may use their liberty as an instrument for their own destruction. Spirits, like bodies, last only so long as they deserve to last. The unregenerate soul will not eternally survive physical death; the rust that eats through the scabbard will end by eating up the blade. There is no useless torment, but the gradual destruction of an individuality that is hastening back into the nothingness out of which the divine goodness had brought it forth; a terrible agony, and then a night without a morrow. This soul has no more power of perception or of action: it was, it loved, it lived; it loves no more, it is dead, it is no more! 1

In the sacred text there are not to be found any such expressions as "perpetual torments," "endless sufferings," an "eternal hell," as there is no such phrase as "immortal souls." On the other hand, an "eternal life" for the righteous is the subject of frequent declarations. This life is "endless"; righteousness, mercy, joy, and salvation are everlasting. 2

1 On the ontological relation between moral evil and the biological decay of the creature, see Chap. XI., sect. v., and our separate Study of Evil in Supplement No. V.

2 Heb. v. 9; vii. 16; Psa. cxviii. 1; Isa. li. 6; lxi. 7, etc.

IV. Accessory and minatory character of suffering—

But what is to be our answer to a certain would-be wisdom which, assuming to be wiser than the divine word, is disturbed at the prospect of a punishment without eternal sufferings, and calls it laxity? True wisdom would urge a reform of the traditional notion of chastisement. It is thought, erroneously chastisement, the chastisement would seem to consist in an annihilation."— in our opinion, that suffering is the essential element in punishment. 1 A millionaire, upon whom a fine is inflicted, is punished, but far from experiencing any suffering, he perhaps laughs at the loss, for him altogether insignificant; he may even be proud of it as a display of his riches. Suffering may or may not accompany chastisement; 2 it may even be said that, as compared with chastisement proper, suffering is a benefit for him who is willing to profit by it. A vigilant sentinel, it protects the infant in the cradle and the wounded soldier on the field of battle. It awakes them, provokes their cries, and procures for them a salutary help. It is, moreover, the providential tocsin which makes the sinner aware of the imminence of his danger. 3

1 French: peine, from Latin paena; properly a ransom paid as damages or compensation for a crime; from the Greek poine, originally a penalty paid for homicide, and so chastisement, expiation, sometimes retribution, price, recompense, occasionally sorrow, pain.

2 As an example of a chastisement without suffering may be cited the old English law that punished the suicide by causing him to be buried at night without any religious ceremony. So, too, by the old French law, the body of a suicide or one killed in a duel was doomed to be publicly and ignominiously dragged along on a hurdle. In certain states of North America criminals about to be executed are made insensible with chloroform. And even without chloroform decapitation and hanging, as now practised by civilized peoples, are in themselves deaths less painful and terrible than the agonies of many that are called natural. If suffering were the essence of chastisement, great criminals ought to be made to suffer tortures proportioned to the number and atrocity of their crimes. Yet in most civilized countries the law appoints one only punishment for murderers of every degree of guilt—viz., deprivation of life. Is it so that theology, which should be a guide of the legislator, has now to receive from him the teachings of divine wisdom?

3 See the considerations of Professor Ernest Naville in support of this view. Le Libre Arbitre, § 108.

Anyone foolish enough to fix his eyes upon the sun would at first feel a sharp pain; if, deaf to the warning of suffering, he persists, the pain will cease, but he will have lost his sight; thus blindness will be the chastisement of which the passing pain was only the prelude.

By the prevalent notion that conscious suffering is the essence of punishment, the axis of the sphere of divine retributions has been displaced.

The total destruction of the human soul will doubtless be preceded by sufferings proportioned in duration and intensity to the native vitality of that soul; the more richly a soul is endowed, the greater the mass of its vital forces, the more poignant will be the anguish of its dissolution. In this sense, "to whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required;" but we do not see that the Bible makes the chastisement to consist mainly in the suffering.

It is worthy of note that Paul, the most didactic of the apostles, who protests that he "has not shrunk from declaring the whole counsel of God," 1 never employs an expression, even in his most terrible threatenings, which implies the pretended eternal sufferings of the damned. He seems, indeed, to have carefully avoided every image that might have been misleading in that respect. He never speaks of hell, but he has tears for those who are perishing. 2

1 Acts xx. 20, 27. Esoteric teaching is contrary to the spirit of the Gospel. Cf. John xviii. 20; Matt. x. 27. The reserve indicated in John xvi. 12 was provisional only.

2 Philip. iii. 18, 19.

Is a sanction required for the law that has been broken? That sanction is guaranteed by the infallible correlation between the sin and the partial or total death which overtakes the sinner. It is not written: The soul that sinneth shall suffer, but: "The soul that sinneth it shall die." Death is the wages of sin, death with its fearful and painful accompaniments, but especially and above all death itself, the king of terrors, whose eternal silence renders to the violated law a homage worthy of its eternal majesty. The evil, the contempt of the law, is destroyed in the person of the evildoer; the serpent dead, dead is the venom; sufficiently vindicated, the law lives and triumphs for ever.

The Creator, jealous of the conservation of man, the creature of his predilection, and with a view to man's restoration, in his fatherly care has placed suffering in the dark and narrow passage that separates sin from death. It is the mission of suffering, as a vigilant guard, to make the victim of evil aware of his danger. In man, too, there is remorse, in addition to the physical and psychical sufferings of the animal world. The sinner, refusing to accuse himself, only too often makes the mistake of cursing the suffering, which is but the crook of the great shepherd who is recalling to the fold his wandering sheep.

Suffering usually forms part of chastisement; yet it is so far from being confounded with chastisement, and even from forming its principal element, that either of them may exist without the other. A criminal ignorant of his condemnation to death, to whom a soporific poison should be administered without his knowledge, would undergo his punishment, capital punishment, without being aware of it. He might die with a smile on his lips, but would it be said that he had not been punished? No, the shortening of his life, independently of the punishment beyond, would surely constitute a certain measure of chastisement. 1

But pain always denotes the existence of an evil; that is, a destruction, partial or total, in course of accomplishment. The pain of a violent blow is an indication of a contusion, or, in other words, a beginning of local death. The pain, which is essentially symptomatic and preventive, tends to disappear when the evil is cured or becomes incurable.

Sismondi, in his journal, tells of an officer of his acquaintance, Major de Besancon, who at the battle of Wagram was knocked down by a sword stroke, and then during two hours trampled over by horses; although his head was "pounded to a jelly," he said that he did not begin really to suffer until he found himself in the tent and in the hands of the surgeons.

Sismondi thus concludes: “Providence has arranged the swoon as a remedy against the most excruciating pain; all grave wounds cause a loss of consciousness, and intense suffering is hardly ever felt except when the patient has the courage to suffer; that is, when the healing begins and personal effort is made to preserve the life.” 2

1 There are dramas in which an evildoer escapes the due chastisement of his crimes; but suddenly he falls, stabbed to death, and the spectators applaud this finish; the public sense of justice is satisfied, yet the death has been so sudden that there could be scarcely any suffering on the part of the criminal. As for the future punishment, the spectators do not think of it. Perhaps, without any clear perception of it, they recognize the chastisement in the deprivation of life, the cutting off of the days which the criminal might have passed upon earth.

2 J. C. L. de Sismondi, Fragments de son journal et de sa correspondance, p. 73; Geneva, 1857.

To sum up, Conditionalism is a consolatory doctrine, which presses forward joyously towards that epoch when death will be no more than a distant memory. On the other hand, we believe that suffering will not fail to play a terrible part in future punishment.

It will be the preliminary phase of that punishment. The supreme chastisement will put an end to the individual only after a painful decay beyond the tomb. In accordance with the scientific law of continuity, the impenitent sinner will become the prey of a long and lamentable decline. There will then be "weeping and gnashing of teeth," as there is even here below, to be followed in the case of the still rebellious by that dismal silence which the Scripture calls "the second death," the death from which none returns, and which kills even that which the first death had left alive. 1

V. Admissions of several generally esteemed theologians—

Notwithstanding the long tyranny of the Churches, the notion here presented has found more than one partizan. The Bible and logic have extorted some admissions from theologians the most orthodox. Our first quotation shall be from the pious and profound theologian Beck, of Tubingen, who has been praised for his wise reserve; 2 this praise will give all the more value to his assertions, those here quoted being taken from the very book in which he recommends reserve.

1 M. George Godet sees in the second death "the definitive separation of the soul from God, the source of its life" (Chret. evang, 1882, p. 559). But he could not deny that sin is itself a separation from God (Isa. lix. 2), and he admits that sin is a spiritual death (Chret. evang., p. 505, sq.). The second death would then be only a first death continued; this is equal to saying that it has no right to the title of second death. If, on the other hand, it should be maintained, as is done by M. Geo. Godet, that the first death is physical, and that the analogy between that and the second death consists in this, that while physical death separates the body from the soul, the second death separates the soul from God, we have to make two objections: first, that physical death does not merely separate; its principal effect is to kill all activity of the body, and the analogy would require that the second death should kill all activity of the soul; second, that to make the second death synonymous with moral separation from God is to make the second death begin here below; while the Apocalypse, which alone tells us of the second death, places it at the end of the world and after the last judgement. The definition given by M. Geo. Godet is therefore inadmissible, whether regarded from the point of view of analogy or from that of the texts.

2 Geo. Godet, Chret. evang., 1882, p. 563.

If he speaks, it is doubtless with deliberation and full perception of the force of his words. He says: “There is a death which dissolves the union of soul and spirit. 1... When death thus pervades the whole being, the personality comes to an end, apoleia (Luke ix. 25). It is not absolute nonentity, but absolute passivity in the powerlessness and misery of death, a cessation of the soul's personal and spiritual independence and power of activity, nothing being left but a life of dependent and powerless impulse and sensation, and that materialized as mere animal existence.” 2

We need not inquire what would be the use of a perpetuation of this impersonal residuum, nor what could be the eternal usefulness of these bacilli and vibrions of moral decomposition. It is enough for our purpose to show that in Professor Beck's view the personality no longer exists. The personality is the ego, and it is with that alone that we are concerned. Therein we see the very image of God, a reflection of the divine ego. When that image is obliterated, whatever remainder may be left is beyond the range of our present inquiry, and it matters little to us whether it consists of destructible or indestructible elements.

We have been asked what we mean by annihilation. We answer: the gradual diminution of the faculties possessed by the individual ego, and the final extinction of that master faculty by which we take possession of the other faculties. 3

1 On this distinction between soul and spirit see Chap. V., sect. i., and Chap. III., sect. iii., p. 86.

2 "Als Auflosung des seelisch-geistigen Verbandes... In dieser Durchdringung des ganzen Seyns vom Tode geht die Personlichkeit (Luke ix. 25) im. Sterben auf (apoleia); es ist nicht absolutes Nicht-seyn, aber absolute Passivitat in Todes-unmacht und Todes-jammer, ein Ausleben der geistigpersonlichen Selbststandigkeit und Selbstbethatigungskraft der Seele, wobei ein unselbststandiges impotentes Trieb und Empfindungsleben fortdauert, aber materialisirt als blos animalisches Existenz. Matt. x. 28; xvi. 25, 26; Luke ix. 60; James V. 20; Heb. x. 39; Off. (Rev.) xx. 14, 15; xxi. 8; xxii. 14, 15; xiv. 10, 11; Mark ix. 42, sq."—Umriss der biblischen Seelenlehre. Stuttgardt, 1871, Kap. I., § 15.

3 See Chap. I., sect. vii.; Chap. III., sect. iii.; and Supplement No. III.

Once more: without the conscient ego there is no immortality worthy of the name; who can wish for a life without personality? The perception of ourselves is that which raises us from the animal to the human sphere. The infant has not the perception of his personality, and it is only in adult age that it acquires distinctness. In its nature precarious, it vanishes every day in the time of sleep; it becomes perverted in dreams, in the hypnotic trance, in mental aberration, in drunkenness, in second childhood.. Without the loss of reason it is possible for an individual to possess alternately the consciousness of two distinct identities apparently independent of each other. 1 If the ego, which has been thought to be essentially indivisible, can thus become twofold, and by that very fact be for a time eclipsed, there can be no great difficulty in admitting that it might also definitively disappear. That which has had a beginning may also have an end; that which comes to an end may not begin again. Suppose that a human ego has deliberately involved himself in a state contrary to the conditions of his existence; that he has both perverted and consumed himself in a persistent rebellion against God; that the last effort of his expiring will has rejected the gracious offer of help; in a word, that he has by degrees lost all moral and even biological reason for his existence: how, why should he arise out of that inconscient state into which he has plunged himself? Is it conceivable that God will recall into rational existence one who has voluntarily thrown away his reason? Is there to be found an argument in support of this hypothesis of a magical restoration? We have not succeeded in finding one.

1 M. Azam. On the duplication of the personality in somnambulism. Revue scientifique, 2 Aug., 1890. [See also an article by F. W. H. Myers on Science and a Future Life in the Nineteenth Century for April, 1891, p. 636.]

From the point of view of the moral sanction, the shipwreck of the personality might be considered as punishing the abuse of a conditional prerogative.

But let us now return to the admissions of theologians.

It has been said of Professor Nitzsch that "never was an exquisite delicacy of religious sentiment united to a judgement so solid and so sound." The following lines will show to how great an extent he, too, departed from the traditional theory. He says:

“The sinner invokes, provokes, and invites death. It is certain that the question is not one of purely spiritual death, but of the fact that evil tends towards non-existence, to the violation and suppression of all life.... The soul is dependent upon the Creator, it has not an absolute immortality. 1 It is certain that it has been created and constituted with a view to obtaining an eternal life; but it loses the life that is personal to it in the measure in which it becomes a stranger to the truth, to love, and to salvation. It follows that with the progress of sin the soul advances towards the destruction that awaits it in hell; in other terms, towards its death.... There is nothing in the Word of God, or in the conditions of the kingdom of God, to require the admission of the perpetual existence of the damned, the indestructibility of an individual incapable of becoming holy and happy.... The notion of annihilation is evident in the passage which represents death and hell as being cast into the lake burning with fire and brimstone. There, in fact, death and hell cease absolutely to exist.... Further, as the first death puts an end to the existence of the body, the analogy implies that the second death is the cessation of the existence of the soul.”

Nitzsch concludes by setting forth a fourfold alternative:

“Eternal damnation is an hypothesis that supposes either the absolute necessity of universal salvation, or an absolute nonentity, or, thirdly, an inconceivable existence in nonentity, or, lastly, an individual existence accompanied by a purely passive and privative sentiment of redemption and of the kingdom of God. Incapable of action, either right or wrong, the sinner would be nothing but a ruin.” 2

When the ruin is complete it puts an end to the existence of the ruined object. 3

According to the celebrated commentator Delitzsch, the wicked who "return to Sheol" return very nearly to the state of passivity and inertia that is anterior to existence here below. 4 Professor Twesten, who was a colleague of Nitzsch in the University of Berlin, admitted for the lost a state of suffering, of internal corrosion, resulting in a sort of consumption, a dulness, and finally an annihilation of the personal consciousness. The punishment would become eternal through its definitive and irreparable character, but it would not at last cause any sensation.

1 1 Tim. vi. 16; Eccl. xii. 7.

2 System der christlichen Lehre, 5th edition, §§ 121, 122, and 219.

3 This may serve as a reply to Professor J. A. Beet, who, in his articles on New Testament Teaching on the Future Punishment of Sin, in The Expositor for 1890, insists strongly on this notion of dilapidation, which he places in opposition to that of destruction. The traditional dogma being dislodged from its old positions, tries to find a refuge in the midst of these "eternal ruins."

4 Commentary on the Psalms, ix. 18, sq.

Rothe, the famous dogmatician, Ritschl, and their followers have reached analogous conclusions; the same may be said of a large number of Conditionalist theologians. Such is also the case of several representatives of traditional evangelism. Among the chief of these may be mentioned Professor F. Godet, who has paid special attention to the point in question. 1

The Roman Catholic clergy are unhappily in bondage under the heavy chain of tradition. All the more significant, therefore, is the avowal of a priest of the Oratory. It is Father Gratry who says:

“Since man does not exist by his own power, is not his own origin, has not inhimself the source of his life, but, on the contrary, needs always to be sustained by God, if he should separate himself from his source, so as to have no source outside himself, it is clear that he must speedily be exhausted, must decrease and go down towards nonentity. Therein lies the whole question of life and death.” 2

This conception is in such close conformity with the nature of things that it sometimes slips into the writings of those even who are opposed to it, as for example in the following passage from the last work of the late Frederic de Rougemont:

“The spirit, seduced by the flesh through the allurement of sensuous enjoyments, vegetates in a deadly powerlessness, which would result in its death and annihilation if it were not indestructible.” 3

Does it not seem that this pretended indestructibility comes in at the end of the sentence like a deus ex machina in order to rescue the eminent author from the claims of logic?

1 For quotations which leave no doubt as to the view of the venerable Neuchatel theologian, see Chap. XI., sectt. i. (at end), iv. (§ 2), and ix.

2 Connaissance de Lame, vol. i., ch. 6. See also our Chap. I., p. 38, note 2.

3 Un mystere de la passion, p. 397.

VI. § 1. SPIRITUAL DEATH. § 2. PROLEPTIC DEATH. § 3. PUTATIVE DEATH. § 4. EVERYWHERE AND ALWAYS DEATH MEANS THE CESSATION OF AN ACTIVITY.

We are now about to penetrate the principal entrenchment of traditional exegesis. It opposes us with certain passages of the New Testament wherein death seems to mean a life, since those of whom it is predicated still exist, perceive, and act. This state has been called spiritual death. This death, which is treated as synonymous with perverted life, is the condition of impenitent sinners, and it is said that it may be prolonged to eternity. Eternal death, which is not a biblical phrase, would designate a perpetual life in endless sufferings.

For example, the words of Paul to the Ephesians are quoted: “Ye were dead in your trespasses," 1 and it is argued thus "The death of the unconverted Ephesians was a spiritual death; that death had not destroyed them; therefore the victims of spiritual death may live for an indefinite time." To this we reply: Every death is the cessation of vital functions, every death kills. Spiritual death kills the spiritual life. When that life is extinguished, physical and psychical life may still exist, but only provisionally; having no guarantee of immortality, the physical and psychical life will perish in their turn. Man without spiritual life is an incomplete being; if sin destroys in him the aptitude to receive that life, man becomes a monstrous being, and nature teaches us that monstrosities are incapable of long life. Tortoises have been seen to move some time after their heads were cut off; but decapitation was certainly not for these reptiles an assurance of longevity. The palm-tree of which the top withers will surely die; so, too, spiritual death, so far from excluding the complete death of the individual, is really its sinister prelude. Spiritually dead, the Ephesians were on the way to absolute nonentity. 2

1 Eph. ii. 1, 5; Col. ii. 13. These texts, and others similar to them which we shall presently mention, were embarrassing to Olshausen and Nitzsch, who were otherwise very favourable towards Conditionalism. We shall soon see that at the bottom of their latest scruples there was in reality only the subtile and tenacious a priori of inalienable immortality. To many a theologian habit has become a second nature.

2 As to the ontological consequences of spiritual death, see Chap. III., sect. iii.

It is high time to renounce that traditional illusion which, by a fatal confusion of categories, makes life a synonym of happiness, and death synonymous with suffering. It will have to be admitted that these terms never lose their specific and ontological meaning. Everything allows, and even commands, that their fundamental notion should be left to these words. It will never be "absurd," nor "quasi disloyal," it will always and everywhere be reasonable, honest, and obligatory, to respect a rule of interpretation which is the basis and the very reason of the existence of evangelical Protestantism.

What, in fact, is death? 1

In Scripture, as well as in ordinary language, death designates primarily and habitually the cessation of bodily life, and when it relates to inanimate existences their destruction. This is its proper meaning. 2

There are also figurative meanings of death, but these retain everywhere and always the fundamental notion of the proper meaning: they all imply the end of an action and a sensation; if the word relates to a sentiment, the suppression of that sentiment; if it relates to a habit, the suppression of that habit. In relation to human life there are, as it seems to us, six of these figurative uses, viz.

1. Spiritual death, of which we have already spoken. 1

2. Proleptic death. 2

3. Putative death. 3

4. Death personified as a destructive power. 4

5. Ethical or salutary death, synonymous with the annihilation of sin in the believer's heart. 5

6. The second or definitive death, whereof the physical and spiritual deaths are only the forerunners. 6

By spiritual death is meant the cessation of the functions of the spirit, the pneuma. 7 This expression is somewhat hyperbolic. In fact, men spiritually dead are often referred to as having still a spark of divine life; but this spark is so diminutive, so hidden under the ashes, so nearly extinct, that it is often treated as a quantity that may be neglected. Hence the expression of death for a state that is rather a lethargy, sometimes compared in Scripture to a heavy sleep. 8 We will proceed to a further study of proleptic and putative death, because the texts that speak of these, not having been properly understood, have unhappily been invoked in support of this contradiction: a living death, or death a special manifestation of life.

§ 2. PROLEPTIC DEATH.

In contrast with physical death, spiritual death might be called metaphorical. It becomes proleptic when contrasted with the second and final death. By anticipation the sacred writers sometimes use the word death to designate progress towards death. In establishing this proleptic meaning we shall not turn aside from the historic principle of interpretation. It is sufficient to open a grammar, or a manual of practical lexicology, otherwise called a dictionary; that of Littre, for example, where we read: "He is dead, sometimes has the force of the future, he will die:"

1 Matt. viii. 22; John V. 25; Rom. vi. 13; Eph. v. 14; 1 Tim. v. 6; 1 John iii. 14.

2 John v. 24; Rom. vii. 9, 10; Eph. ii. 1-5; Col. ii. 13; Rev. iii. 1, 2.

3 Luke xv. 24, 32.

4 Rom. v. 14, 17, 21; vi. 9; vii. 5; 1 Cor. xv. 54-56; Rev. xxi. 4.

5 Rom. vi. 2, 11; vii. 6; viii. 13b; Gal. ii. 20; V. 24; vi. 14; Col. ii. 20; iii. 3, 5; 1 Peter ii. 24. To this ethical death may be joined the death towards legalism of Rom. vii. 4, 6; Gal. ii. 19; v. 18.

6 Matt. x. 28; Rom. i. 32; vi. 16, 21, 23; vii. 5; viii. 13a; James i. 15; V. 20; 1 John v. 16, 17; Rev. ii. 11; xx. 6, 14; xxi. 8.

7 See Chap. V., sect. i.

8 "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from among the dead," Eph. v. 14; cf. 1 Thess. v. 6.

If in Aulis my daughter but once sets her foot She is dead....

This simple remark will be the key that will open doors of which the traditional interpretation seems to us to have forced the locks. By anticipation or prolepsis the fruit is seen in the flower, and that is looked upon as already accomplished which is about to be performed, is in the course of execution, or is merely probable. 2 Thus it may be said, for example: "He is a dead man," for: "He is, or appears to be, in mortal danger;" "Do not stir, or you are a dead man!" instead of, "You will immediately die." In Genesis, God, appearing to Abimelech, says to him: "Thou art but a dead man;” literally, "Thou, dead!" Yet Abimelech survives. So, too, Isaiah, speaking to Hezekiah, says: "Thou shalt die;" literally, "Thou, dead!" Yet Hezekiah was to have time to set his house in order, and, in fact, he had still fifteen years to live. 1

Death, indeed, always designates a destruction; but it is important to distinguish between partial and complete death, death in progress and death at its term, death at work and death finished, death latent and death patent, between virtual and actual death. It has been said that we are dying all through life, that a preacher is a dying man speaking to dying men. Death may mean a slow or sudden disappearance of life, the time during which a person is dying, or a certain mode of dying. Sometimes it is an agent, sometimes a result. The death of plants and animals is generally gradual; analogy would lead to the supposition that the death of souls is also gradual. The sinner leads a dying life, ending in the second death, which is complete and definitive. 2

1 Gen. xx. 3; Isa. xxxviii. 1. See also in the Hebrew Gen. xxiv. 13; 1. 24; and Hos. xiii. 1.

2 "To die is sometimes synonymous with to cease gradually;" Littre, seventeenth use of the word mourir. In Latin this twofold meaning would be clearly expressed by the phrases mors moriens and mors mortua, mors processus and mors eventus, the march towards a destination, and the final halt there.—In his recent Manual of Dogmatics (p. 549), M. E. Arnaud identifies spiritual death, eternal perdition, the separation of the soul from God, and the second death. Like M. Geo. Godet, he forgets that the second death takes place only after the last judgement, when the rejected are to be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, a symbol of final annihilation. Rev. xx. 6, 14; xxi. 8.

As we have seen, if the death of the soul were that which is asserted, the second death would be found identical with the first, which it would only perpetuate. But it is said that the rejected will be "cast into the lake of fire," which "is the second death" (Rev. xx. 14, 15). That which is already there needs not to be cast in. From our point of view, the image is quite plain: physical death having taken place, a final and terrible chastisement will put an end to the dying life of the obstinate sinner. The two deaths are not identical, but they have a common character which our opponents are not able to indicate. There is nothing to prevent the second death being for the soul just that which the first death is for the body, namely, the end of action and sensation.

The confusion of M. Arnaud's statements is in contradiction not only with the texts in the Revelation, but also with many categorical declarations of both the Old and the New Testament. According to the Scripture, moral separation from God constitutes not death, but sin. Isaiah says, "Your iniquities have separated between you and your God." "If ye live after the flesh, ye must die"; "Sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death"; "There is a sin unto death;" these are the statements of Paul, James, and John. To sin is to die; it is not yet to be dead. Sinners are dying men, not corpses. Sin leads to death; it is mortal; it is not death itself. Death is the wages of sin; the wages are paid after the service. We should observe and respect the distinctions that are made as by a common accord by the Bible, nature, and reason.—See Isa. lix. 2; Rom. vi. 21, 23; vii. 5; viii. 13; Phil. iii. 19; James i. 15; 1 John v. 16, 17; and 2 Cor. iv. 3, "The Gospel is veiled in them that are perishing," not in them that have perished.

From this point of view let us return to some of the passages that are brought forward as designating a spiritual death, and let us see whether they do not rather speak of creatures that are on the way towards death. 1 The Ephesians before their conversion were on the way towards eternal death; they were virtually dead, moribund. Their activity was all morbid; they were in the way of perdition, lost, and, as it were, already dead. Paul indicates the end to which sin would have fatally led his readers if they had not received the Gospel. Meyer says: "The expression is proleptic, and ought to be taken in its, natural sense; the death will become complete in the world to come." 2 In Germany the name of Meyer carries considerable weight, especially in relation to Paul's epistles.

Our interpretation is further supported by the following considerations:

“In the same passage there is another case of prolepsis, forming a kind of pendant to this, representing the same men as already raised up with Christ and sitting with him in heaven. "God... raised us up with Christ and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places."

1 In truth, metaphorical death and proleptic death seem sometimes to be confounded. At bottom they are both nearly related to hyperbole, and that is the reason why it is possible to recover from death of those kinds. The essential point is to remember that no kind of death has power to immortalize any person or thing; and secondly, that so far from immortalizing, every death suppresses, or is held to suppress, provisionally or definitively, one or more kinds of activity. In order to live for ever, it is not sufficient to die spiritually.

2 Proleptisch... so gut wie todt gewesen. So, too, Cremer in his Lexicon at the words thanatos and nekros. Cf. Rom. vii. 9; viii. 10: "The body is dead because of sin." Physical death is looked upon as an acquired fact. The body is mortal (vi. 12); it must die; it is virtually dead. "The body is adjudged and devoted to death."—Bengel. "Under the power of death."—Alford. "Mortal, and will certainly die."—Cobbin. Hyperbolice et per prolepsin quasi jam mortuum. —Grimm, Clavis Novi Testamenti. "Irrevocably doomed to death."—Professor Fred. Godet.

"A magnificent anticipation," writes M. Louis Bonnet; "a taking possession of the heavenly glory by those whom Christ has redeemed, who are still living and striving upon earth!" 1 None the less does the apostle declare to be heretics those who affirmed that the real resurrection had already taken place. 2 He writes elsewhere: "Those whom God justified, them he also glorified." But according to the same epistle: "We rejoice in hope of glory." To the Colossians the apostle says: "For ye died," that is to say, ye have broken with evil; and he adds: "Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth;" 3 or, in other words, the sin which still lives.

"I was alive apart from the law once, but when the commandment came sin revived, and I died." 4 Placed in presence of a law which I did not succeed in fulfilling, I recognized my guilt. I saw myself condemned and lost. Paul uses an expression similar to that of Isaiah when he saw the Lord: "Woe is me, for I am undone!" 5

We may also quote from the Second Epistle to Timothy (i. 10) this declaration: "Christ abolished death," while according to the First Epistle to the Corinthians (xv. 26) "the last enemy that shall be abolished is death." In the former passage the apostle treats a future triumph as though already attained. 6

T he angel of the Church in Sardis is said to be "dead"; the commentary quickly follows: "Stablish the things that remain that are ready to die." 7 Another apparently decisive proof: Jesus sometimes calls ("sick" those whom he elsewhere calls "dead”. 8

1 Le Nouveau Testament avec notes explicatives, 1852, in loco.

2 2 Tim. ii. 18.

3 Col. iii. 3, 5.

4 Rom. vii. 9, 10. "I received a mortal blow;" "I saw myself a dead man."— Fausset. "The passage of sin from the latent state to the state of an active force was for Paul a mortal blow."—Professor F. Godet, Commentaire, vol. ii.,p. 106.

5 Isa. vi. 5, nidmeti, it is all over with me; I perish.

6 So, too, believers are then and there saved (Eph. ii. 8), and elsewhere they are exhorted to work out their salvation (Phil. ii. 12; cf. Heb. ix. 28). In 1 Cor. ii. 6, "The princes of this world are coming to nought." See, too, 1 Cor. xv. 27; cf. 25.

7 Rev. iii. 2.

8 Matt. viii. 22; ix. 12; Mark ii. 17; Luke v. 31; John viii. 24.

And Paul speaks of them not indeed as "dead" but as "them that are perishing," or as "without strength." 1

"He that believeth," says Jesus, "hath passed out of death into life." 2 Here, again, he meaning may be regarded as proleptic. He who by faith is united to Jesus passes at once from a dying state, from a beginning of death to a beginning of new life, or, as Professor F. Godet has put it, "from the sphere of death into that of life." There is, then, in this passage nothing that requires us to banish from it the ontological notion of life. Jesus speaks of the true life that endures; the dying life of the unconverted sinner is in his view only an anticipated death. 3 The believer, on the contrary, while awaiting the resurrection of his body, receives within himself the principle of an endless life.

"The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the spirit is life," says the apostle. 4 The prolepsis is evident. As Professor F. Godet says: "The end is on one side death, on the other side life." M. Stapfer translates: "Leads to death.... to life."

In these passages there is nothing to hinder us. The same may be said of the threatening addressed to Adam with reference to the forbidden fruit: "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. ii. 17). In fact, Adam did not entirely die in the day of his disobedience. Unless we admit that it was an empty threat, we must have recourse to the proleptic interpretation. When he sinned the first man received a mortal stroke. Physical death, which was its consequence later on, would eventually be followed by an absolute death. 1 Even if, with Julius Muller, we take the day of disobedience to mean an epoch including the whole time of Adam's survival, the death will still have the same fundamental meaning. That continued life, even though prolonged beyond the tomb, would end in the cessation of all life. There is no reason to suppose the life to be interminable. 2

Surely to those who already have life. The assimilation of the bread implies an already existing life, but to maintain, to perpetuate it, is not that one way of giving it? Besides, the sinner's life is not only precarious; it is incomplete, meagre. That which Jesus confers is normal, full, harmonious, abundant (John x. 10). It is none the less essentially and primarily always a prolongation of existence.

1 Apollumenoi, 1 Cor. i. 18; 2 Cor. ii. 15; iv. 3; 2 Thess. ii. 10. Astheneis, Rom. v. 6.

2 John v. 24; cf. vi. 50, 51.

3 As we have previously shown, the terms "life" and "death" never lose their ontological meaning. For example, in this passage, "The Son giveth life to whom he will" (John v. 21). M. Geo. Godet objects, exclaiming: "What! give the life of sense and volition to people who already have it! What can be the meaning of such a saying?" (Chret. evang., 1882, p. 506). We reply that to substitute an eternal life for one that is dying, to engraft a new life, is to give life. Jesus elsewhere calls himself the bread that gives life; to whom does he give that?

4 Rom. viii. 6.

§ 3. PUTATIVE DEATH.

This is the presumed death of the prodigal son, who has long been supposed lost and defunct; 3 not having sent any news of himself, he had passed for dead. Here, again, the fundamental notion remains, since from the subjective point of view of the father who speaks, the absent one had ceased to live.

A similar remark applies to the sheep that had wandered, which the shepherd might easily suppose altogether lost. 4 So, too, the value of the piece of silver in the other parable in the same chapter did not exist for the proprietor so long as the coin was not recovered. 5 In fact, it would be the value of the coin, and not the mere piece of metal, that the poor woman would care about. In all this there is nothing to invalidate our definition of death. 6

1 See Auberlen, Le Prophete Daniel, translation by H. de Rougemont, p. 160, sq.

2 This interpretation of the word "day" has in its favour the fact that the adverbial expression rega', berega', or kerega', would have been much more suitable to indicate an instantaneous death. Num. xvi. 21; Job xxi. 13; xxxiv. 20; Ps. vi. 10 [11], etc.

3 Luke xv. 24, 32.

4 Luke xv. 3-6. Cf. 1 Sam. ix. 3, 4, 20. "The sheep lost to the shepherd." Cremer's Lexicon at the word apollumi.

5 Luke xv. 8, sq.

6 Dr. R. F. Weymouth has made an examination of classic literature similar to that with which we have been occupied in respect of the New Testament. In view of an attempt to attenuate the meaning of the verb apollumi, which was said not always to signify destroy, but only to remove certain attributes of a being, Dr. Weymouth has carefully reviewed the texts quoted to prove it. By his kind permission we reproduce in Supplement No. XIV. the results of his inquiry.

§ 4. EVERYWHERE AND ALWAYS DEATH MEANS THE CESSATION

OF AN ACTIVITY.

To sum up, it is our right and our duty to maintain everywhere and always the historical and grammatical meaning. Interpreted in accordance with this principle, the New Testament as a whole teaches us that death is at its work in every one of us.

The body is first to succumb, the soul surviving; but the soul being deeply tainted, sick unto death, will not survive for an indefinite period. Left to itself, it advances by a slow and painful process towards a final destruction which will be the second death, complete, absolute death, the end of the whole individual.

The definition which explains death as "life under a different aspect" 1 is first obscure and then inexact. There is not merely difference, but radical opposition between life and death. And such a definition is not in harmony with the texts. 2 On the other hand, we affirm, after having put it to the proof, that the biological meaning is not merely admissible, but is required in every Scripture passage in which the terms occur that have been the subject of our study. It is a skein which is easily unwound when begun at the right end of the thread. The confusion resulted from a preconceived idea which perverted the natural meaning of the words. 3

VII. Morality and efficacy of this notion of future punishment. In the first place, far from being too mild, it is of a nature to inspire a salutary terror—

Nevertheless, it is not enough to set free the biblical doctrine from the accretion of ages; it is needful to penetrate its deep meaning, and to justify it from a moral and rational point of view, otherwise it would be no more than a sterile formula. Arisen out of its tomb, it demands its due place in the preaching of the Gospel; but it is treated as a stranger, it is said to interfere with the harmony of revealed truths, and to be contrary to the analogy of the faith.

1 Chretien evangelique, 1881, p. 22, and 1882, p. 559.

2 The apostle exhorts to "make dead" or "mortify" sin under its various forms (Col. iii. 5, etc.). Is it possible that this death of sin can admit of its revival under a different form?

3 1 Thess. iii. 8 has been quoted against us: "Now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord;" and we are asked, "To live, is it not here to rejoice?" Be it so, but let us take the contrary idea, which would be a mortal sorrow. The ontological idea remains latent. See, too, Chap. XI., sect. iv, § 2.

In its defence we shall show that its claims, based upon exegesis and history, are ratified by conscience, by reason, and by experience, and that the charges brought against it are really applicable to the usurping dogma that has supplanted it.1

FIRST CHARGE.

It is said that by mitigating the penalty the doctrine of Conditional Immortality would "diminish the fault in the eyes of many.... Annihilation is not so much a penalty as a favour for the wicked; the frequency of suicide is the evident proof of this. Those who kill themselves hope for nonentity. To preach annihilation would be likely to benumb consciences.... The new dogma might produce baneful effects. Care should be taken lest, in attempting to dissipate the mystery, we should at the same time get rid of that salutary fear which is produced in our minds by the unknown much more readily than by evil which is foreseen." 2

We remark, to begin with, that this last assertion is diametrically opposed to the experience acquired in the administration of penal justice. There was a time when in England sheep-stealing involved hanging as its legal consequence, but the penalty was very rarely applied. Witnesses were not to be found, and juries would not convict. The severity of the law overshot the mark; it introduced uncertainty, "the unknown," into the case. Sheep-stealers became all the more confident. At that time they swarmed; they have nearly disappeared since the penalty has been reduced. It has been recognized that it is not so much the extreme severity of the threatened punishment as the certainty of its execution that imposes a respect for the law. Now, it is a fact that such a certainty does not exist in respect of eternal torments. No one believes in them without some reserve. They are like those bars that are fixed too high, so that the horses pass under instead of leaping over them. M. Bost, senior, compared them to an elastic band "which stretches to a certain extent and then breaks and recoils;" when faith is in question the recoil is unbelief. To threaten with eternal torments is to use the rusty weapons of a former age; their proper place is the museum of the history of dogmas. In its contact with paganism, traditional theology has received an impress of barbarism; it will do well to follow the incontestable progress of human jurisprudence.

1 We have not succeeded in separating dogmatics from morals. We console ourselves, like M. Charles Bois, with the thought that the distinction is not obligatory; Calvin, Sartorius, Nitzsch, Rothe, Vinet, and other great theologians have not made it. Martensen admits that the contents of the two sciences arethe same.

2 Chret. evang. , 1881, pp. 59, 70, sq., passim.

"At heart, without being conscious of it, those who preach eternal torments do not really believe in them," said the eminent pastor, A. Rochat. "Saurin preached them," observed one who was present. Rochat's reply was: "Saurin did not really believe in them; when anyone believes in them he confines his statements to our Saviour's own words as to judgement to come, and he trembles." 1

One of our honoured opponents has acknowledged that the revival of the doctrine that we are defending is a reaction against the enervation of the traditional teaching: "On one hand the present-day advance of immorality, on the other hand a certain enfeeblement of preaching, have led to a study of the means by which Christianity may recover its moralizing influence and activity, which are on the decline." 2

It is this moral side of the doctrine of attainable immortality that has won the adhesion of one of the most illustrious English preachers. Dr. R. W. Dale says: "There is a general avoidance of the appalling revelations of the New Testament concerning 'the wrath to come.'... The appeal to fear is being silently dropped... But the menaces of Christ mean something. The appeal to fear had a considerable place in his preaching; it cannot be safe, it cannot be right, to suppress it in ours."

1 This declaration has come to us from a venerable witness who was resent and heard it. We presume that Rochat meant to say that the dogma in question would not bear examination. In order to admit it, an implicit faith is needed in mysterious words of which it is not sought to discover the true meaning.

2 H. Berguer. Article Conditionnalisme in the supplement of the Encyclopedie des sciences religieuses.

Seeing that eternal torments are no longer preached, and that there is nothing put in their place, the sinner may take what he thinks an advantage of this doctrinal uncertainty; he will say: "In the condition of suspense in which I am left, I see nothing that is undoubted except the divine mercy. The tacit consent of our spiritual leaders allows me to hope that after a period of trial the heavenly Father will bring about a complete and general amnesty. Let us then eat and drink, for to-morrow we die; or if we survive, as we are assured, there will be no lack of time in which to solicit a pardon which God's goodness could not help granting. If there be a morrow after death, that morrow may take care of itself. What matters the time of the return of a prodigal son? The longer his absence lasts, the deeper and more lively will be the Father's joy when he sees him return." Thus it is seen that the combined dogmas of compulsory immortality and God's eternal mercy provide the most favourable pillow for the sinner's sleep.

It is high time for the traditional doctrine to be opposed by the biblical dogma of the immortality of the righteous and the gradual annihilation of the wicked. We are told that annihilation is too mild a penalty, one not likely to inspire a salutary terror.

We would ask in reply, Is the death penalty too mild? does it not inspire any terror? On the contrary, it is because it appeared to them too severe, too frightful, that Victor Hugo, in "The Last Day of a Condemned Convict," and other philanthropists, have demanded the suppression of capital punishment. 2 The death penalty has always been looked upon by legislators as the most terrible of sanctions, and it is very rarely that a convict fails to plead for a commutation of the death sentence to one of perpetual penal servitude. Death looked in the face makes the bravest turn pale. How, then, Will it be with annihilation, that aggravated capital punishment, that second death without a ray of hope to soften its long and terrible agony? If there is a truth that is commonplace, it is that of all instincts self-preservation is the strongest, the most persistent, the most indestructible. Stifle it, it speedily revives; witness so many unfortunates who, after having plunged into the river, strive earnestly by swimming to regain the bank.

Rather suffer than die

Is the motto of men. 1

But it is objected that in capital punishment that which strikes terror is not so much death as the fear of a mysterious unknown. The objectors may be reminded that an element of the unknown forms part of the prospect of gradual extermination, and that this doctrine has the right to claim for itself all that is really efficacious in the teaching that we oppose. We do not teach an immediate annihilation when this life is over; final extinction does not constitute the whole of the penalty. But is it, therefore, not a penalty? If it is considered that self-preservation is the most imperious of all instincts, it will be seen that of all morally admissible penalties the final deprivation of existence is the most dreadful.

Shall we be told of a suicide committed with a light heart on account of a mere thirst for nonentity? In order to provoke a voluntary death, there must be extreme suffering, a deluge of troubles. Moreover, a suicide is always accompanied by remorse and bitter regrets. The fear of death and the love of life are the strongest motives in the world. In our days, as in the time of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the fear of death holds many in hard bondage. 2 There are but few who are free from its shackles. 3 Against this desire of existence "will be shattered that materialist doctrine called nihilism, a senseless philosophy which the German speculations of Schopenhauer and Hartmann will never enable sound reason to accept."

1 La Fontaine. Fable of Death and the Woodman. The condition is understood that the suffering be not at the same time excessive and unending. The French words are: Plutot souffrir que mourir, C'est la devise des hommes.

2 Heb. ii. 15.

3 Look at Prado, a criminal executed at Paris the 28th Dec., 1888. His attitude is most insolent. He repulses with disdain the prison chaplain, saying: "I do not believe in the existence of a God who has not cared to deliver me." But in presence of the guillotine his face became frightfully pale. "The livid hue of his features at that moment could not be depicted."

In the depths of the heart of those who commit suicide there is always the vague hope of obtaining mercy.

“It is privation of happiness, not existence itself, that is insupportable. The man who kills himself wishes a happy life; if his suffering were removed he would eagerly plunge into the joys of life. The act of suicide repudiates only an accidental mode of life, not life itself.” ‘

An unfortunate is about to plunge into the river, believing that her lover has betrayed her; prove to her that he is willing to marry her, she will at once recover a passionate desire for life. To the insolvent banker who is about to shoot himself, hand over a sufficient sum of money: he will forthwith throw aside his murderous weapon.

Death is terrible; the second death will be doubly so. Only exhibit it as it is, logical, natural, certain, imminent, irremediable, painful, infamous; exhibit it with its anguish, its disruption, its terrors, as the loss of all good, the accumulation and climax of all evils; some very strong minds may perhaps make a mock of it all, but their bravado will hardly conceal the trouble that actually fills their soul. A legitimate emotion will spread through your audience. "The thought of sufferings that will end only with existence, a thought attainable although terrible, is very much more efficacious than one that loses its power, either because it brings about its own prompt rejection or because it is simply incomprehensible." 3

“… Carelessness in relation to death may pass for a natural instinct among the sleepy and dreamy Orientals, but it makes our nature shudder as would a monstrosity. "Everything that is most calculated to persuade that death is not an evil has been written.... yet I doubt whether any sensible person ever believed it, and the trouble taken in order to persuade others as well as the writers themselves of it shows plainly that it is no easy enterprise.... Every man who can see death as it is finds it a terrible thing." That is the truth. I am more grateful to La Rochefoucauld for this loose and careless expression of a sentiment so natural than for all the brilliant polish and conciseness of his most celebrated paradoxes. Apart from faith in the individual immortality of souls, 1 every really living man who says that he is not terrified by the idea of death either lies or deceives himself; so, too, do those writers lie or deceive themselves who pretend to have no care as to their future life.” 2

There are cases of mental derangement; there are also cases of moral derangement; there are sons of perdition whom the eloquence of Jesus himself will not save; there are "seared consciences," souls corrupted to such an extent that in them the instinct of self-preservation itself succumbs in the ruin of all their faculties. There is no doctrine that can be in itself a restraint all-powerful to prevent such abuses of human liberty. Jesus Christ teaches us that it is in man's power to "destroy himself." 3 It is worthy of God's character to abstain from imposing his benefits; beneficium invito non datur. God will not force an unending life upon beings who reject the normal conditions of existence. He leaves to man the possibility of suicide, which he punishes not with eternal torments, but with the second death; as the apostle says: "Your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost, and if any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy." 4

Those who have hitherto committed suicide have not heard of an attainable immortality, which as yet is unhappily but little known; they have been brought up in the hereditary belief, and that has not prevented them from causing their own death. Exaggeration has rather tended to lull conscience to sleep. The Conditionalist on his part unreservedly believes in Christ's threatenings, because for him they have not the false and excessive character that is assigned to them by the traditional interpretation. Himself a candidate for immortality, an heir presumptive of the crown of life, he will not by suicide plunge himself through a dismal period of weeping and gnashing of teeth into the fearful abyss of eternal death.

1 "In our day it is no longer possible to conceive of immortality except as happy, or as expiatory with happiness in prospect, and therefore not terrible. The idea of an eternity of sufferings is too repugnant to reason and to the modern conscience for the imagination to continue to be terrified thereby, as in the middle ages. All the terror is now in the idea of nonentity."—P. Stapfer.

2 Paul Stapfer, De l'amour de la gloire et du desinteressement litteraire Bibliotheque universelle, 1890, p. 564.

3 Heauton apolesas. Luke ix. 25.

4 1 Cor. iii. 16, 17; vi. 19.

Our opponents would probably be considerably embarrassed if we were to ask them where and when our point of view has exerted a baneful influence; can they bring forward any examples that justify their fears.

Too often the fact stated in the following remark of one of our predecessors is overlooked; we reproduce his words in order, if possible, to dispel all misunderstanding:

“We have never said that the fate of the wicked would be only to die for ever. A chastisement may end in death after having begun with strokes causing weeping and gnashing of teeth. So it was, too, with the martyrs, who were made to endure frightful sufferings and were afterwards burnt. The punishment will not consist only in death, nor only in strokes and sufferings; and that is why the Lord did not say, "These shall go away to eternal death," nor, "These shall go away to eternal torments," seeing that the punishment consists in strokes, weeping and gnashing of teeth, and then death.” 1

In other terms, final extinction does not by any means exclude the sinister train of woes by which it is preceded. The two notions are combined in the expression "death-agony."

The lay writer just quoted added by way of conclusion:

“Are you still really convinced that the torments of the lost will be eternal? If you are no longer fully convinced of it, teach it no more without loyally announcing that it is contestable.

Ah! if you will but rather declare to the man who has not the happiness of believing, that if he is not converted that which will be eternal for him will not be torments, but the second death, after strokes, weeping, and gnashing of teeth, according to the just measure of him who will judge in all righteousness and equity, you will see that such a man will listen, he will become serious, thoughtful, will hang his head and answer nothing, for, in fact, there is no answer. And why should this not be to the full glory of (god, who speaks of a thousand generations when it is a question of mercy, and only of three or four when it is a question of punishment?

1 Fin des mechants d'apres la Bible. Pamphlet in 8vo. Lausanne [1866]. The author was the late advocate, Frank Burnier.

If rightly considered, the penalty of final extermination is so grave, so distressing, so dreadful, so dismal, that it has sometimes been thought too severe. 1 In order to the acceptance of its rigour the following four considerations may be urged: First, it is just; second, it is categorically taught in the Scripture; third, it is in conformity with the laws of nature; fourth, it is compatible with the notion of the divine goodness.

This last characteristic will enable us to meet a second charge that has been brought against our conception of future chastisement.

VIII. In the second place, it is not barbarous; although terrible, it leaves room for mercy. The divine compassion is present and dominant even in the depths of hell.

SECOND CHARGE.

By a contradiction difficult to understand, M. George Godet speaks of the penalty as "brutal," which he has only just treated as too mild. He says: "It is the solution of an impotence that crushes those whom it cannot persuade... a useless cruelty, an act of vengeance.... Suffering which results only in nonentity is without purpose; it appears cruel because useless." 2

We may say that by this rule it would be necessary to charge with cruelty all the benefits that God bestows upon the wicked, for their wickedness renders these gifts useless, and even baneful. In our view suffering is a benefit, the supreme remedy of the heavenly physician; a remedy that is bitter, but worthy of the divine wisdom, which undoubtedly adapts it to our needs. In the gradual extinction of the guilty soul there is neither constraint nor brutality; there is only the Creator's respect for his creature's liberty, with a door remaining constantly open to repentance and healing so long as the sinner does not close it with his own hand. The sinner destroys himself, according to the Scripture; 1 he spontaneously makes himself the blind executor of the chastisement that he suffers. In the ruin of Jerusalem, for example, and in order to chastise that greatest of crimes, the murder of his only Son, God does not directly intervene, but he leaves to itself the cherished nation which in misguided folly rejects its Saviour and rushes on to be shattered against the Roman colossus.

1 Such was the sentiment expressed by the natural philosopher, H. B. de Saussure in his lectures on metaphysics: Forsan dicunt: Annihilatio malis foret sufficiens poena. Resbondemus hanc esse nimis magnam. We owe this unpublished quotation to the kindness of Professor Ernest Naville.

2 Chret. evang., 1881, pp. 58, 60, 64.

The useful purpose assigned by M. Geo. Godet to eternal sufferings, viz., the salutary terror which they might inspire in those creatures who should witness them, is equally attained without interminable sufferings in the doctrine that we are defending. The remembrance of the terrible end of the wicked will remain as a perpetual menace for free beings who might be tempted to rebel against God.

The "useless cruelty" is then only in the hypothesis of endless torments which he who inflicts them knows certainly and declares will never result in the conversion and salvation of the victims.

It is morally reasonable that there should be retribution beyond the tomb, that the test, which here is sometimes suddenly interrupted, should be completed, and that the free agent who persists in evil-doing, and rejects the last appeals of divine compassion, should in the end perish miserably and definitively. It would, on the other hand, be unreasonable and shocking to imagine a revolt as eternal as God himself and torments prolonged for ever.

M. Geo. Godet tries to defend what he calls the mystery, which we prefer to call the fiction, of eternal sufferings by invoking the "equally insoluble" problem of the apparent injustices which shock us here below. We say that this is not "equally insoluble," for by our opponent's own admission the injustices of this life may be adjusted hereafter. He says: "There will be infinite compensations in another life," but on the hypothesis of unspeakable suffering, beginning immediately after death and never coming to an end, there can be no compensation. The two cases are not alike.

1 Psa. vii. 15, 16; xxxiv. 21; xciv. 23; Prov. viii. 36; xiii. 6; sa. ix. 17, sq.; Jer. ii. 19. But there is nothing to prevent us from supposing the possibility of salvation so long as there is conscient suffering.

As it was said by Clement of Alexandria, "The divine goodness prevails even in chastisement." It is with a view to the sinner's salvation that God inflicts suffering; it is also in mercy that he causes that suffering to result in death when it becomes useless as a warning. The wicked man himself is thus the object of the heavenly Father's compassion even to the end of his existence; and thus are fully justified the Scripture declarations: "The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works.... He will not keep his anger for ever.... The Lord is gracious in all his works." 1 The divine love penetrates, even to its lowest depths, a domain from which that love had been too long banished by traditional dogmatics and popular belief. 2

Terrible will be the penalty of the obstinately wicked; every sensible man will tremble at the prospect of such a lamentable fate; yet although it is verily dreadful, there is nothing in it incompatible with the notion of the divine goodness. The most perverse and corrupt of men will at last be, as the Scripture expresses it, "as though they had never been." Lacking the good news of the Gospel, five hundred millions of Orientals make this final extinction the goal of their most strenuous efforts; they desire it, indeed, because they have not, like the Christian, the notion of an existence free from sin and pain; and this extinction is desirable only in a condition of hopeless misery. We may well admire the bounty of the true God, whose supreme chastisement, following the longsufferings which are the last appeals of fatherly solicitude, inflicts upon his most guilty creatures a destiny which is the very ideal imagined by the principal heathen religions. Their paradise does not rise above the lowest depths of the Christian hell. The Nirvana, which to the Buddhist seems the chief good, is but the last of evils in the revealed religion.

1 Psa. ciii. 9; cxxxvi.; cxlv. 9, 17; Micah vii. 18.

2 One day we asked a traditionalist theologian whether the divine love had any place in hell. He replied: "No place at all." It would follow that God, who is love, would not be everywhere present! Does not this frank avowal, which ends in a contradiction,

And God in his mercy confers this benefit upon those who have obstinately refused to accept from him a higher boon. 1 The Gospel is thus superior to the pessimist religions and philosophies by the whole height of heaven and of the joyful immortality promised to the disciples of Jesus Christ. 2

1 Rev. S. Cox, D.D. Quoted from his article in Good Words in a letter by Rev. S. Minton, M.A., reprinted from the Christian World in a pamphlet entitled Life and Death; London: Elliot Stock, 1877; p. 77.

2 Compared with the blessedness promised in the Gospel, extermination is a terrible fate, and the way that leads to it is fearful too; yet final nonentity is better for man than an eternal life in the continual practice of sin. The divine goodness will thus be manifested either in conferring a new life upon the repentant sinner, or in finally abandoning the obstinate sinner to that definitive death which will put an end to fruitless sufferings.

Future punishment remains severe without ever ceasing to be merciful. The suffering which accompanies it is fearful, but so long as it lasts it is an appeal to repentance, and therefore an occasion for hope, the indication of a possible salvation. At last it vanishes, when the moral perversion becomes irremediable. Then the reason for the suffering disappears. To assert its continuance with a merely vindictive purpose would be to slander the God of the Gospel, by attributing to him a malignity worse than that of the Etruscan or Mexican divinities. But it is not so; unconsciousness will put an end to the existence of the incorrigible individual, and the suppression of that focus of infection will be a benefit for the moral universe. By the operation of pre-established laws the senseless suicide of which the wicked man is guilty will definitively rid the world of an element of disorder.

Together with all the best motives of action at the disposal of traditional Christianity, the doctrine of Conditional Immortality possesses resources which are superior. Life in Christ, the love of that which is good, beautiful, true, the eternal delights of communion with God and with his saints, the splendour of heaven, the pains of hell so far as they may be conceived of without offence to the supreme love, all these chords are made to vibrate by the Gospel, rightly understood; it banishes the false notes, and replaces them by new harmonies.

The Conditionalist Christian sitting by the bedside of a dying man, who has been revolted by the traditional dogma, says to him: "My friend, my God is not the one who exasperates thee; deign to listen to an affectionate appeal: my God loves thee, and will always love thee, do what thou wilt. Thou mayest reject him, thou canst not legitimately hate him; death is not his work if he does not exist.But he does exist, and Jesus, his living image, reveals to thee in his own person a divine unreserved love; he has suffered more than thee, before thee, and for thee. God chastises only with regret; he did not owe to thee the present life, he offers to thee a better life gratuitously. If thou preferrest nonentity, he will respect thy freedom; if the prospect of eternal death seems pleasant to thee, I will not begrudge thee the only consolation of thy absolute wretchedness. My tears shall flow without giving thee offence. I will be silent, but remember that so long as a breath of life remains to thee, or a ray of personal consciousness, thy heavenly Father's arms will remain open to receive thee, open still the well-spring of his compassions, open, too, all the treasures with which he can still endow thee!" If there are sinners who would be moved to suicide by such an appeal, we believe that they belong to that class of desperate men who "are perishing," 1 for whom, the apostle says, the Gospel is a savour of death. He did not look upon that as a motive for ceasing to preach the Gospel.

We conclude by saying that in our view a life eternal is the greatest of benefits; an eternal death is the greatest of evils; sin, the mother of death, is that which is most odious. What more can be said? Is it possible reasonably to adduce arguments more powerful than these?

Thus it is that, in spite of formulas, an instinct which is the voice of God himself has restrained the lips of many of the most orthodox preachers, as, for example, those of Rochat, that apostle of the revival, of whom Vinet said: "Oh! if I could but speak like him!" He is addressing a last appeal to hardened sinners; does he speak to them of endless torments Not at all. Without being aware of it he expresses himself as though he were a veritable Conditionalist; and who, to-day, among non-Conditionalist preachers, would have the courage, we do not say to blame Rochat, but even to replace the "death eternal," of which he speaks by torments eternally renewed?

1 Tois apollumenois. 2 Cor. ii. 15.

“In leaving you, the traveller towards eternity is moved by the deep feeling of sadness which is felt by one who is obliged to abandon a wretch whom drunkenness and the icy breath of winter have plunged into a state of lethargy from which nothing can rouse him. Neither entreaties, nor offers of help, nor pictures of the threatening danger, nor anything else will move him; he only stirs to repulse the helping hand held out to him; and in his delirium he takes as sweet repose the slumber which is for him the forerunner of death. The traveller, seeing the uselessness of his efforts, regretfully and with a heavy heart quits the poor fellow. As he goes away he calls out to him once more: "Are you, then, determined to perish?"... And I, too, call out once more to you poor sinners who have rejected all my words, you who are taking pleasure in a slumber which will quickly lead you to eternal death. I, too, hold out my hand to you once more saying: Are you really determined to perish?... Will you not come to Jesus that you may have life?... Will you not listen to the kindly voice that calls to you Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from among the dead, and Christ shall give thee light?” 1

Is there any conception of future punishment which, without wounding theChristian consciousness, can inspire a more salutary fear? Can the terror producedby a superstition be called a salutary fear? No; for the reaction that follows upon the dissipation of a superstition produces unbelief. While it commends itself to the Christian consciousness, the prospect held out to us in the Bible maintains the terrible notion of that which is irreparable. We await the proposal of a better solution; if a better be not found, by what right shall this one be set aside, which seems to reconcile so many elements of the difficult problem?

1 Sermons of A. Rochat, p. 34, sq. Paris, Delay, 1846. See, too, p. 217.