VI. Study of his favourite maxim—
“Whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul; or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? 4
Such is the generally received translation of a saying which may be called the favourite maxim of Jesus. It would seem that no aphorism was more often on his lips. In forms more or less complete it is found as many as six times in the Gospels, and it occurs, as is not usual, in John as well as in the Synoptics. 5 Professor F. Godet perceives in this saying "the foundation of the moral philosophy of Jesus Christ"; and M. Louis Bonnet speaks of its "supreme importance."
It is also very mysterious. It is an enigma, a paradox, 6 like that which may be heard in familiar conversation in speaking of a game in which "the loser wins." One word in particular has been the despair of translators. They have all been foiled by the Greek term psuche, which they have sometimes rendered life and sometimes soul, while neither of these expressions is satisfactory.
In order to indicate clearly the point of the difficulty, let us try the passage using the word soul: "Whosoever will save his soul shall lose it"; that is an idea that revolts the thought, Jesus would thus be condemning as sterile and mischievous a pious and laudable endeavour. Such a translation would evidently be a contradiction. Let us now try the word life; this term would introduce a contradiction equally grave in the last clause of the passage. Jesus would be asking what would be a compensation for the loss of life, or, in other terms, what is more precious than life, and by life would be understood generally and primarily the present life. This, therefore, would be likely to lead on a wrong track. Jesus would seem to teach that existence here below is the chief good; yet the Christian and even the simple patriot know more precious treasures, and Jesus himself has only just announced that it is sometimes wise to sacrifice the life. Professor Reuss, who (like the English revisers) maintains in his translation the word life all through, acknowledges that this term "does not very clearly convey the meaning of the original." In fact, it is equivocal.
1 John vi. 53. The "life indeed" which endures (tes ontos zoes ), 1 Tim. vi. 19. In the sight of God and in reality the sinner's life is a dying life.
2 Luke ix. 25. Heauton de apolesas, the man who loses or forfeits "his own self."—R. V.
3 John v. 25-29; Matt. x. 28.
4 Matt. xvi. 25, 26, A. V.
5 Matt. x. 39; xvi. 25, 26; Mark viii. 35-37; Luke ix. 24, 25; xvii. 33; John xii. 25.
6 In Hebrew mashal . Orientals generally, and the Jews in particular, delighted to put their maxims into enigmatic form. The book of Proverbs offers numerous examples of this.
It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that many translators should have preferred to introduce in this place the word soul instead of life, as adopted by them in the preceding verse. But to employ in the same argument in two consecutive verses two different words to render one and the same term in the original is to violate an established rule of translation. 1
1 The latest edition of the Lausanne version, usually so strictly literal, here with a certain timidity departs from its fundamental rule.
What, then, is to be done? We see only two alternatives: either to maintain the word life throughout the passage, adding in a note the indispensable explanation that the word used in the original sometimes designates that which is called specifically the human soul with the prospect of a future existence; or else to have recourse to a paraphrase.
If a paraphrase be preferred, we will try the reflective pronoun himself as a rendering of the debateable term which appears four times in the two verses under review. We will put it thus: Whosoever will save himself in contempt of the divine appeal, preserving at all costs his present life, shall lose himself; but whosoever will for my sake make the momentary sacrifice of himself, shall find himself again. Wise and praiseworthy calculation! For what shall it profit a man to prolong for a short time his earthly existence and to gain even the whole world, if he should lose himself? Wherewith could he redeem himself? This paraphrase is founded upon the example given by the evangelist Luke in one of the passages referred to. 1 We can also appeal to the usage of the Aramaic Greek of the Gospels, the roots of which reach down to the Hebrew of the Old Testament. In Hebrew the soul (nephesh ) is often: used to designate the person: "The Lord of hosts hath sworn by himself" (Jer. li. 14); literally, "by his soul." 2 From the biblical point of view the individuality is in the nephesh, or psuche, the soul or life of man, and God himself is represented as having, or, more precisely, as being, a soul. 3
We now hold the key of the enigma. Like the noun in the original, our personal pronoun himself bears a double meaning; it will designate sometimes the present life of the individual, and sometimes his future existence, according to the sequence of the thought. For everyone there is an earthly life, with the possibility of a life immortal. The self is, as it were, separable into an inferior and a superior self. 4 The inferior must be subordinated, and often even sacrificed, to the superior. The man who, at all cost, is determined to save his earthly life, will lose the possibility of attaining an immortal life; but he who, on the contrary, will sacrifice his earthly life in the service of Jesus Christ, will receive a life imperishable.
1 Luke ix. 25.
2 In his pamphlet entitled Notre Duree, M. Byse quotes seventeen instances of this use of the word soul to designate God as a person. These should not be confounded with those passages in which the Lord swears by his life. Ezek. xx. 31, etc.
3 In Hebrew, and generally in the Semitic languages, this word soul with the personal suffix is very frequently used to express the idea embodied in our reflective pronoun. All the translators of the New Testament into Hebrew— Reichardt, Delitzsch, and Salkinson—are agreed in rendering heauton (himself) in Luke ix. 25 by naphsho. So it is in the ancient Syriac version. The Greek of Luke is richer and more precise; it here unites in a single word the body and the soul, which Matthew in a similar context mentions separately: "to destroy bothsoul and body" (x. 28).
4 Thus it maybe said of the same individual at the same time: "He is no more; he is dead"; and, "He is in heaven; he lives with God." This indicates the double meaning of the pronoun, as in our paraphrase. In the same way the nouns existence and person sometimes contain a double meaning.
What is it to sacrifice the earthly life? In the first place it is, in various passages relating to persecution, to accept a violent death rather than deny Jesus Christ. In the second place it is to renounce, in order to serve Jesus Christ, not merely sinful inclinations, which needs no saying, but even the satisfaction of some innocent tastes and natural preferences. It may, perhaps, involve the renunciation of a brilliant or lucrative career, of the public favour, of an attractive marriage with an unconverted person, or, again, of the display of some special talent. In short, it will be to repress, if need be, a certain expansion of the personality. A pastor, for example, may have a taste for painting; he will, perhaps, renounce its gratification, lest he should devote to it the time and energy which he owes to his ministry. This second sense, like the first, is in perfect conformity with the genius of the biblical languages, the soul in Scripture frequently designating the sum of human aspirations, and occasionally a dominant passion.
In the Gospel of John we see that Jesus applied to himself the maxim which he seems to have adopted as his motto. 1 He renounced the legitimate joys of the family and all temporal ambition. He sacrificed his person and his life; but the loss was compensated by a speedy and glorious resurrection. Precept and example were in him admirably united. He sacrificed much; he recovered as much, and more. So also did his disciples. He who dies a martyr sacrifices an ephemeral existence; in exchange he obtains immortality. Every faithful Christian will mortify worldly desires and tastes; in return he will enjoy, not only beyond the tomb, but even here below, pleasures more noble and not less intense. More than that, like the martyr, he will secure his personal immortality, he will "lay hold on eternal life."
By following the method indicated by Professor Drummond in his captivating studies on Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 2 there may be seen anticipated in this favourite maxim of Jesus Christ the formulation of one of Nature's greatest laws.
1 John xii. 23-27.
2 See ante, pp. 21, 31.
Among individuals, as among species, only those organisms survive which, accommodating themselves to the changes in their environment, renounce certain habits to adopt a new mode of life. The famous law of "the survival of the fittest" rests in great measure upon these renunciations and this flexibility of certain types. On the other hand, the types which do not lend themselves to the indispensable transformations break down, and are only to be found by the archaeologist in a fossil state. 1
Let us note in passing the variety in the expressions relative to the manner in which immortality is to be obtained. According to Matthew, the believer will find (heuresei ), will discover as by a miracle that which he had lost. This evangelist has in view the essentially Jewish hope of the resurrection of the body. The divine omnipotence will supernaturally intervene in order to restore life to the dead body lying in the tomb. Luke, on the other hand, often aims at expressing the subtler shades of Greek thought. According to him, the believer will reproduce (zoogonesei ) his life. 2
1 In America at the present time the race of the Red Skins is dying out before advancing civilization. Hope is, however, entertained of saving some tribes which have accepted the new life of the Gospel and have renounced the attractions of savage life. In the South Seas Christianity has saved whole peoples from the abyss. In South Africa the French Protestant Mission has preserved the existence of the Basutos, maintaining their vital force through the transformation of their national manners under the influence of a regenerative doctrine.
2 Luke, the companion of Paul, thus recalls the image employed by the apostle in one of his letters to the converted Greeks at Corinth (1 Cor. xv. 37). Jesus makes use of the same emblem at the time when certain Greeks ask to see him (John xii. 20-24); but he has in view the origin of his Church rather than his own personal resurrection, the production of the ear rather than the mere reproduction of the seed deposited in the earth.
It is the notion of the grain of corn in the Eleusinian mysteries; by a sort of co-operation of forces the grain lives again in the ear, which it engenders or brings forth. It is the philosophical idea of palingenesis. Mark seems to represent the Roman faith, the faith of the soldier who hardly reasons at all. Without inquiring how, he knows that the struggling believer will in the end come forth safe and sound from the conflict with death; he will wrest his life from the enemy who threatens it: he will save it (sosei ). Then, lastly, as represented in the Gospel of John, the believer cannot die. He will neither recover his life, nor reproduce it, nor deliver it from death in an agonizing encounter; calm and tranquil, though at the same time vigilant, he will keep (phulaxei ) 1 his life. This expression is in conformity with the most intimate thought of the Master, who said: "Whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die." 2 Begun here below, the communion of the believer with his Saviour is never interrupted; it survives physical death, which is thus only an apparent death. Let us now see what is to be the fate of the man who, through cowardice or egoism, 3 refuses the required sacrifice.
1 The profound genius of John makes eternity begin here below, for the worldly man as well as for the believer. He who prefers the world to Jesus Christ has already begun to lose his being; apolluei in the revised text, instead of the future of the Synoptists. "He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life" already (John xii. 25; iii. 36; v. 24; vi. 47, 54; 1 John v. 11-13). He takes possession of himself (Heb. x. 34, revised Greek text); cf. ver. 39: those who save their soul, or take possession of it, peripoiesin.
2 John xi. 25, sq.; v. 24; vi. 50; viii. 51.
3 Luke (xvii. 33) accentuates the notion of a culpable egoism, carnal and fundamentally sacrilegious; peripoiesasthai in the revised text, a word which sometimes bears the bad sense of monopolize or appropriate personally, Man does not belong to himself; he has not the right to refuse to respond to the call of God.
"He will lose himself." And what is it to lose himself? We need not go far to ascertain the exact meaning of the word lose. We need not, indeed, go beyond the context. As we have just seen, in order to be saved, to obtain eternal salvation, it is necessary to lose something; this something that is lost is absolutely suppressed, destroyed, annihilated. For the martyr there is total suppression of the earthly life, annihilation of present existence. For every Christian there is the voluntary suppression of certain enjoyments; and here, again, suppression is synonymous with annihilation. Seeing, then, the parallelism of the terms, it follows incontestably that to lose himself when immortality is in question must be to destroy, to suppress, that prospect and to annihilate himself. The exicological correlation makes it clear that it is the loss of that which is called in philosophy the ego, the individual personality, that is in question. The destruction may be progressive, but at last nothing will remain to him, nor of him, who loses his true self. The loss of the Christian is real, but comparatively light, and in some measure provisional; that of the worldling is the supreme loss, the irreparable loss of existence. Supposing that at the last moment the worldling should wish to pay a ransom and recover possession of his being that is about to be engulfed in the abyss of nothingness, what would all his acquired possessions avail him? These could not restore his life, and, besides, he is about to lose them by speedily ceasing to exist. 1
The worldling grasping at earthly possessions has been compared to a man who should purchase a gallery of pictures and become almost immediately blind. This vivid comparison is a thousand times too weak. The heir of a magnificent empire dying on the very day of his coronation affords an image which is still very inadequate, since, according to the formal teaching of Jesus Christ, to be lost is to be destroyed "soul and body," deprived of all the faculties of the being, to enter at last into the horror of eternal nothingness. 2 There is in this prospect enough to inspire salutary terror. Jesus leaves no hope of imperishable life to the man who despises his invitation. Every man must give himself to Jesus or perish, and must at once begin this surrender, or at once the process begins which will end in destruction. He who persists in rejecting the Saviour will at last perish utterly and for ever; by a slow and painful death-process beyond the tomb the effacement and complete suppression of his individuality will be accomplished.
1 Cf. Psa. xlix. 6-9, to which Jesus seems to allude.
2 Cf. Matt. x. 28 and the valuable work of M. D. H. Meyer, Le Christianisme du Christ, p. 307, sq. The proper and normal meaning of the Greek verb apollumi is, moreover, clearly indicated in another passage of Matthew (v. 29, 30), relating to the amputated member which rots and perishes. Cf. Mark xiv. 4; Luke xxi. 18; John vi. 12, 27; Acts xxvii. 34; James i. 11; Rev. xviii. 14. The meaning is evidently to cease to exist. So it is, too, with another verb used in Matt. xvi. 26, zemioo in the passive voice, which does not mean to endure pain, any more than apollumi. It means to be damaged, to pay a fine; and in this case to pay at the cost of existence or of damage to the being. When, in respect of the soul, a meaning is attributed to apollumi, which it never bore in Greek antiquity, a law of exception is made and exactitude is sacrificed for the sake of a philosophical hypothesis. Lexicology protests against such violence done to the sacred writers.
To sum up as concisely as possible the Master's thought Our text speaks of two kinds of existence, one earthly and ephemeral, needing the other, which is heavenly and eternal, to be grafted upon it. Jesus exhorts man, if occasion should demand it, to sacrifice the earthly to the heavenly life. The sacrifice required involves, in the case of martyrdom, the total suppression of the earthly existence; in any case, the deprivation of many temporal advantages. To lose is, then, to suffer a deprivation when it relates to the present life. When it relates to the future existence, there is nothing to prevent, rather everything to compel us to allow the same word to bear the same meaning in the second member of the same phrase. It follows that worldlings who refuse the required sacrifice find themselves threatened with thedeprivation of their existence.
Unhappily, Platonic ideas percolating into the Church have falsified the meaning of the most important terms of this important declaration. To the human soul has been gratuitously attributed absolute immortality, without reserve or condition. The result has been that the word translated to lose has been defrauded of its natural and legitimate sense. Its meaning was to suppress; it has been made synonymous with render eternally miserable. But by a distortion of the meaning of the words, the balanced adjustment of the reasoning of the two verses before us has been upset, the point of the divine paradox has been broken, the two-edged sword has been blunted, the key of the enigma has been twisted out of shape this saying of Jesus has become
untranslatable.
VII. Accordant teaching of the apostles—
The Epistles furnish a commentary upon the teaching of the Gospels. The apostle Paul says: "God only hath immortality. . . He will give eternal life to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honour and incorruption. . . He that soweth to his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. . . The disobedient shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction." 1
1 Olethros aidnios, 2 Thess. i. 9; the death without limitation of Rom. vi. 23, viii. 13; the end, Philip. iii. 19. "The punishment of sin is the destruction of the life," Menegoz, Le Peche et la redemption d'apres saint Paul, p. 78; Paris, 1882. This book has brought the question one step nearer solution. It brings out Conditional Immortality very clearly in Paul's writings; but it makes the mistake of setting the teaching of the great apostle in opposition to that of Jesus Christ, some of whose words are summarily quoted, though in reality they have but little evidential force. We shall have an opportunity of analyzing each of the passages brought forward by M. Menegoz.
Christ is the life of the apostle, the head indispensable to the existence of the body of the Church and of every believer; he is the second Adam, the federal chief of all those who will share in the endless life. Paul speaks once of the resurrection of the wicked, 1 but their survival will be for so short a time that he usually passes it over in silence. There is no absolute immortality outside of, or apart from, Jesus Christ.
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says: "We are not of them that shrink back unto perdition, but of them that have faith to the saving of the soul. . . for our God is a consuming fire... a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries." 2 That which God consumes he does not allow still to exist the burning bush in Exodus was a miracle just because, although on fire, it was not consumed. After the last judgement death will make no more victims, it will itself be abolished, and God will be "all, in all" the survivors.
The apostle John is still more precise; he says: "He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever"; 3 the notion of a privilege consisting in a perpetual existence making a man eternal, being thus clearly and distinctly brought out. In the light of this saying should be read this other passage of the same epistle: "Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him." 4
1 Acts xxiv. 15. We shall come again upon this question of the resurrection of
the wicked and its purpose. See in particular Chap. XI., sect. vii.
2 Heb. x. 39; xii. 29; x. 27.
3 1 John ii. 17.
4 Di 'autou, 1 John iv. 9.
In the Apocalypse the righteous only have access to "the tree of life," which is by no means a symbol of enjoyment. Nothing is said about the beauty or attractiveness of the fruit of this tree. It was the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil which was pleasant to the eyes and the taste. And so in order to attain holiness, Adam needed only to resist the temptation to eat the forbidden fruit. The only purpose of the tree of life was to perpetuate existence; so distinctly is this the case that it is spoken of as having power to immortalize even impenitent sinners. 1
The "book of life" is the register of the living who will survive. It is a figure of the divine decrees. The lake of fire symbolizes the final destruction of those whose names have been blotted out of the catalogue. 2
1 Gen. iii. 22; Rev. ii. 7; xxii. 2, 14.
2 Rev. iii. 5; xiii. 8; xvii. 8; xx. 12, 15; xxi. 27; xxii. 19.
The "water of life" mentioned in the last chapter of the Apocalypse has the brightness and purity of crystal, yet it is first of all an emblem of perpetual life. "He that will, let him take of it;" such is the message, in which is clearly formulated an attainable immortality. A life indefinitely prolonged is the gift offered to everyone who desires it and consents to take possession of it: whosoever refuses to drink of that water can but die of thirst. It is put in three words: Ho thelon labeto, on the last page of the Bible, as though a summary of the whole.
[The Spirit and the bride say, "Come!" And let the one who hears say, "Come!" Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.]
VIII. Preliminary reply to two categories of objections—
At the outset we established the right and the duty of holding to the grammatical meaning wherever possible. Interpreted upon this principle, the whole New Testament teaches that Jesus is the only source of immortality. On the other hand, it attests that death is in operation in every one of us. The body is first to succumb, something surviving; but this something being deeply tainted, sick unto death, will not survive indefinitely. Left to itself, this vital force advances by a slow and painful process towards final destruction, which will be the second death, complete and absolute death, the end of the individual.
We can now affirm, having put it to the test, that the historico-grammatical meaning is not merely warranted, but required, in every one of the passages of Scripture in which are found the terms that have just been the subject of our study. It is a skein which can be easily unwound by anyone who begins at the right end. Our readers can convince themselves of it by the use of a concordance.
To the passages relating to life and death should be added a large number of others which speak of salvation and perdition. To save a living being is to snatch him away from a mortal danger; to save an inanimate being is to preserve it from imminent destruction. 1 We have determined the meaning of the terms death and destruction.
1 Sozo, root soos or sos , whole, subsisting, surviving (Alexandre, Schleusner, Wahl, Grimm, Cremer). The meaning to make healthy is only secondary. Save is opposed to destroy: James iv. 12; Heb. v. 7. Matt. xvi. 25: "Whosoever would save his life shall lose it." Make his life healthy would here be a contradiction.
But the traditional exegesis has turned death into a species of life, yet "a different mode of life." In order to sustain this paradox certain passages of the New Testament are brought forward, in which death seems not to designate the end of the individual, since he who is called dead still exists, perceives, and acts. This state is called spiritual death; it is the condition of impenitent sinners, and may, it is said, be prolonged indefinitely, a deathless death: there would therefore be room for endless sufferings. In our seventh chapter we shall reply to this objection, showing that spiritual death cannot immortalize, that it has no power to prevent either physical or metaphysical death, and that, on the contrary, it is only the precursor, the antecedent symptom of a complete and definitive death of the whole individual.
Another objection is urged which would be of graver import. Just as in the case of the Old Testament, to our army of witnesses are opposed a rear-guard of four or five verses, which are held to possess extraordinary properties. To begin with, if they had the meaning assigned to them, like veritable erratic blocks, they would be foreign to the general tenour of the books from which they are quoted. Then, by a special privilege, they would be able to balance, and even outweigh, a thousand other texts; five ounces in one scale would weigh as much as five hundredweights in the other. The absurdity of such a claim is evident. But besides that, without even leaving the royal road of exegesis, we can perceive that these four or five verses are not erratic blocks, that they do not contradict all the rest, that they have not the meaning ascribed to them, and that by the attempt to interpret them otherwise than in accordance with established rules the interpreter becomes the sport of an optical illusion. 1
We shall make a special study of these exceptional passages. 2 We are, however, already acquainted with the general tenour of biblical teaching concerning the future life. The moment has arrived in which to summarize it. So far as we are personally concerned, the following exposition will be at the same time our profession of faith.
1 As an illustration we will mention Matt. xviii. 34: "He delivered him up. . . till he should pay all that was due," in connection with the words of v. 26: "Thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the last farthing." Here some have seen eternal torments; but why not rather the death of the insolvent debtor in the prison? Usually a prisoner dies in the prison if he is never allowed to go out. Should the one of whom Jesus speaks be an exception? To suppose so would be to beg the question, supposing the inalienable immortality which is in dispute. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke xvi. 23) says not a word as to the duration of the Hades in which the scene is placed. Hades is not eternal; according to the Apocalypse, it is to be at last destroyed: Rev. xx. 14.
2 See Chap. xI., and in the Supplement the Table of Objections.
IX. Profession of faith drawn from the whole body of biblical writings
The Scripture, a heavenly messenger, soaring above materialism and the old spiritualism, above science and tradition, brings to us glad tidings. At the voice of this celestial emissary we escape from the darkness of our ignorance, and from the nightmare of our superstitions. The teaching thus brought to us bears the impress of truth, which prompts and warrants our faith; it appeals to the witness of the Holy Spirit in our consciences.
From the first to the last of its pages, the Bible sets clearly bee ore our eyes life and immortality, but it is never the unconditional and impious immortality of the pantheistic religions) This religious encyclopaedia, the work of fifteen centuries and a hundred different writers, teaches us the most evident truths of so-called natural religion: the existence of one only God, his eternity, the distinction between good and evil; but in vain will it be searched for a word which affirms or implies the imperishability of the human soul; it contains no more reference to such a thing than does the Pentateuch to a priesthood in the tribe of Judah, concerning which "Moses spake nothing." The soul is indeed spoken of as many as sixteen hundred times; but in the whole range of Scripture there is not to be found the expression "immortal soul," that favourite term of ecclesiastical phraseology.
God alone, we read, hath immortality. No doubt there will be a survival for every man, but a "second death," a final death, will be the portion of the incorrigible sinner. Only "he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever," says the apostle John.
The Bible does not flatter us, does not exaggerate our value. In full accord with science, it teaches that, like man, every animal has a soul, and that the soul of the flesh is in the blood. There is an immortality, but it is the privilege of the righteous; the man who has not wisdom is likened to the beasts that perish. The future has no promise for the evildoer; the lamp of the wicked is to be put out. Victim of moral suicide, the obstinate sinner will sooner or later succumb. Undoubtedly man bore a divine image; he was created in view of immortality, but under express conditions and reservations. He has infringed those conditions; he has given way to his lower appetites; he has chosen death, and become subject to it.
Twenty times the apostle Paul repeats that the wages of sin is death, death absolute, in the sense which the word bears in its composite deathlessness, the cessation of all life, death with the meaning which is unavoidable in so many passages where the apostle exhorts us to cause sin to be mortified or put to death. The Bible speaks of souls that die: the soul that sinneth it shall die; he that shall turn a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death. Sin is not itself the final death, but it leads to it. Death is the fruit of sin, the wages of the senseless war against God. If we give way to the flesh we shall speedily die; lust engenders sin, sin when finished engenders death. Fallen man has been mercifully banished from the tree of life, which might have given him a baneful immortality; he will therefore not live on in ceaseless torments. If he does not repent, he will return by a slow but sure process to the nothingness from which he has been called forth by divine goodness. He carried in himself a fragile mirror of the divinity; the mirror is broken, and the man is now only a child of the dust. Taken from the earth, the first man was but dust, as the apostle tells us.
Sin has taken possession of human nature. It sticks to us like the shirt of Nessus. This inveterate evil is transmitted with the blood; it empoisons the good gift of existence; it undermines, ruins, and kills us. Left to our own unaided powers, we shall never regain innocence, we shall exhaust ourselves in the struggle against the torrent which is carrying us away. The most we can do is to retard the developement of the fatal germ that threatens to destroy us body and soul, according to the expression of Jesus Christ. The axe is already laid at the root of the barren tree; the pruning-knife menaces the unproductive vine branch,
“Which, severed from the stock, must wither and decay.” 1
The verdict of Scripture respecting man left to himself is also the verdict of science; we are without hope in the world, beings truly lost. "A single word sums up the situation: it is awful." 2
1 Qui, separe du tronc, doit perir desseche.
2 Louis Ruchet, La Science et le christianisme, p. 218; Paris, 1872.
But what a light shines suddenly in the night of the tomb just ready to close upon us! It is Jesus Christ, our light and our life. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life. The incarnation of the Word unites a divine essence with our perishable nature. Along with our flesh, the Son of God adopts our interests and responsibilities. Representative of penitent humanity, priest and victim, Jesus offers with his blood the painful pledge of our repentance, and the requisite propitiation for the sins of the world. His death is a sanction of the moral law; it proclaims and expiates our guilt. God in Christ reconciles the world to himself. He suffers for and with his guilty creatures. The cross becomes the instrument of the reconciliation.
By repentance, love and faith we become united to the Saviour; we follow him to Calvary. Joined to him by all the powers of our soul, we are morally crucified with him, baptized with his baptism. Grafted into him, we become one plant with him, the members of a body of which he is the head. We die and we rise again spiritually with Jesus, and his immortal life becomes our own. He that believeth on the Son receives the principle of a new life; he has passed from the beginning of death to a beginning of that new life. The apostle John tells us fifty times over that Jesus is the only source of imperishable life, that the transmission of this life is the very object of the incarnation. Twice the evangelist declares that this glorious and necessary teaching is the purpose of his book. That life is holy, happy, full, glorious; but first and foremost it is specifically life, in the proper and radical meaning of the word; it is "the state of animated beings, so long as they have in them the principle of sensation and movement," and in speaking of man, his existence with the display of his various faculties. Jesus calls himself the bread of life; we need to drink his blood. He is the vine-stock of which we are the branches. These images clearly signify that the spirit of Jesus penetrating our spirit communicates to it an element of immortality.
It was the Serpent who said: "Ye shall not surely die." Jesus, on the contrary, exclaims with a sigh: "How narrow is the gate and straitened the way that leadeth unto life, and few be they that find it!" but "broad is the way that leadeth unto destruction, and many be they that enter in thereby." Life eternal is a promise, a favour, a prize offered to the believer who will lay hold of it, and who, by patience in well-doing, seeks for glory, honour, and incorruption.
The resurrection of Jesus is the guarantee of this promise. If Jesus had not risen again, a rough common-sense might say with the materialists: "After death all is dead; let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die!" But because Jesus lives we also shall live. The body dies: that is our share of expiation; the spirit still lives, and the body will be born anew and transfigured. We shall not suffer the second death; our names inscribed in the register of the celestial city will never be blotted out.
God, with whom there is no respect of persons, will have pity upon the heathen and the ignorant, as he has had pity upon us. Believers are a chosen band, not a caste. The God of Jews and non-Jews is also the God of the baptized and the non-baptized, of the initiated and the non-initiated. The supreme judge will show himself just; he will ask little of those who have received little. Those for whom it would have been better never to have been born will be the exceptions. They must have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit of God to lose all chance of salvation; that is the only unpardonable sin. The chastisements will be in exact proportion to the gravity of the offences; and the gravity of the offences is in proportion to the gifts entrusted to each person. For those who have not been able to hear or to understand the divine message, a further announcement is in reserve. The first-fruits, of which we form part, will be followed by an abundant harvest. It is written that in the future paradise there will be a tree of which the leaves will be for the healing of the nations.The nations are all those of human race to whom God has not yet been made known.
The Scripture, moreover, reveals to us a God who is good even to the wicked and the ungrateful, a God whose tender mercies are over all his works. David's heart was as the heart of God; on the death of his rebellious son the royal prophet was heard to exclaim: "O Absalom, my son, my son!" This voice was an echo of the fatherly compassion of the Creator even for the wicked. God entreats the sinner to come back to him, he announces his goodwill, he will exhaust the means of reconciliation; but he will never make man into an automaton by destroying his freedom. The rebel, summoned to lay down his arms, must surrender or perish. He is in a burning edifice; if he delays he will escape only with wounds; if he obstinately remains he will be consumed.
If we sin willingly and deliberately after having come to the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for the expiation of our sins; we have only to await a terrible judgement and the fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries. The New Testament predicts a total extinction of the irreconcilable wicked; to signify this it employs the same terms that Plato uses in the Phaedo to indicate annihilation. There are no stronger terms. The obstinate sinner will be as the rivers separated from their sources, as the trees with neither roots nor branches, as the dry bundles of tares, as the corpses eaten by worms; he will go to destruction, to Gehenna, the refuse-heap of souls. A fire more terrible than that of Sodom and Gomorrah will consume beings that are already in course of moral decomposition; it will purify the atmosphere by putting an end to the last vestiges of their transitory existence. The remembrance of this ruin will last through the ages. Isaiah and after him the apostle John compare it to the columns of smoke which, from the heights of Mamre, Abraham saw risingabove the Dead Sea after the burning and disappearance of the cities of the plain.
The rebels no longer existing, the revolt being suppressed, the devil trodden under foot and destroyed, there will be no more curse; death will no longer reign, it will rejoin Satan in the abyss of annihilation, called in the Apocalypse the lake of fire and brimstone. 1 God will be all in all. The redeemed will survive for ever; a new earth and new heavens will be their portion. Sin had for a moment abounded; grace will superabound world without end. 2
In this teaching is there anything to wound the religious conscience? If so, let it be shown. We perceive in it rather the synthetic, moral, reasonable, and sublime character which is the inimitable sign of a revelation. While searching for immortality in science alone, we were groping along a dark tunnel; on opening the Gospel, we have at once seen resplendent before us the radiant landscapes of the sunny lands beyond the Alpine chain. This pure and soft light appears to us to be that of truth itself.
We have now to consider in what way man can unite himself with Jesus Christ, and how this union can make us immortal.
1 Probably in allusion to the history of the Dead Sea. In the time of Abraham, the region now covered by the waters became the scene of a vast conflagration. The earth, impregnated with bitumen and naphtha, took fire; it was then a veritable "sea of fire and brimstone." After the conflagration was extinguished the smoke continued to rise during years and ages (Wisdom of Solomon, x. 7). A sinking of the soil having taken place, the waters of the Jordan filled the great basin; but "fish cannot live there, nor are any aquatic plants to be found there" (Stapfer, La Palestine, p. 71). A striking symbol of the eternal death that threatens hardened sinners.
2 See in Supplement No. IX. a doctrinal summary formed exclusively of quotations taken from the Old and New Testaments; and the epitome by Rev. Ch. H. Oliphant, Supplement No. X.
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