Practical Religion Part 42

(2) Secondly, where _shall you be in eternity_? It is coming, coming, coming very fast upon us. You are going, going, going very fast into it.

But where will you be? On the right hand or on the left, in the day of judgment? Among the lost or among the saved? Oh, rest not, rest not till your soul is insured! Make sure work: leave nothing uncertain. It is a fearful thing to die unprepared, and fall into the hands of the living G.o.d.

(3) Thirdly, would you be _safe for time and eternity_? Then seek Christ, and believe in Him. Come to Him just as you are. Seek Him while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. There is still a throne of grace. It is not too late. Christ waits to be gracious: He invites you to come to Him. Before the door is shut and the judgment begins, repent, believe, and be saved.

(4) Lastly, _would you be happy_? Cling to Christ, and live the life of faith in Him. Abide in Him, and live near to Him. Follow Him with heart and soul and mind and strength, and seek to know Him better every day.

So doing you shall have great peace while you pa.s.s through "things temporal," and in the midst of a dying world shall "never die." (John xi. 26.) So doing, you shall be able to look forward to "things eternal"

with unfailing confidence, and to feel and "know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved we have a building of G.o.d, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." (2 Cor. v. 1.)

P. S.

Since preaching the above Sermon I have read Canon Farrar's volume, "Eternal Hope." With much that this book contains I cannot at all agree.

Anything that comes from the pen of such a well-known writer of course deserves respectful consideration. But I must honestly confess, after reading "Eternal Hope," that I see no reason to withdraw anything I have said in my Sermon on "Eternity," and that I laid down the volume with regret and dissatisfaction, unconvinced and unshaken in my opinions.

I can find nothing new in Canon Farrar's statements. He says hardly anything that has not been said before, and refuted before. To all who wish to examine fully the subject of the reality and eternity of future punishment, I venture to recommend some works which are far less known than they ought to be, and which appear to me far sounder, and more Scriptural, than "Eternal Hope." These are "_Horbery's Enquiry into the Scripture Doctrine of the Duration of Future Punishment_,"

"_Girdlestone's Dies Irae_," the Rev. C. F. Childe's "_Unsafe Anchor_"

and the Rev. Flavel Cook's "_Righteous Judgment_." "_Bishop Pearson on the Creed_," under the head "Resurrection," and "_Hodge's Systematic Theology_," vol. iii. p. 868. will also repay a careful perusal.

The plain truth is, that there are vast difficulties bound up with the subject of the future state of the wicked, which Canon Farrar seems to me to leave untouched. The amazing mercifulness of G.o.d, and the awfulness of supposing that many around us will be lost eternally, he has handled fully and with characteristic rhetoric. No doubt the compa.s.sions of G.o.d are unspeakable. He is "not willing that any should perish." He "would have all men to be saved." His love in sending Christ into the world to die for sinners is an inexhaustible subject.--But this is only one side of G.o.d's character, as we have it revealed in Scripture. His character and attributes need to be looked at all round.

The infinite holiness and justice of an eternal G.o.d,--His hatred of evil, manifested in Noah's flood and at Sodom, and in the destruction of the seven nations of Canaan,--the unspeakable vileness and guilt of sin in G.o.d's sight,--the wide gulf between natural man and his perfect Maker,--the enormous spiritual change which every child of Adam must go through, if he is to dwell for ever in G.o.d's presence,--and the utter absence of any intimation in the Bible that this change can take place after death,--all, all these are points which seem to me comparatively put on one aside, or left alone, in Canon Farrar's volume. My mind demands satisfaction on these points before I can accept the views advocated in "Eternal Hope," and that satisfaction I fail to find in the book.

The position that Canon Farrar has taken up was first formally advocated by Origen, a Father who lived in the third century after Christ. He boldly broached the opinion that future punishment would be only temporary; but his opinion was rejected by almost all his contemporaries. Bishop Wordsworth says,--"The Fathers of the Church in Origen's time and in the following centuries, among whom were many to whom the original language of the New Testament was their mother tongue, and who _could not be misled by translations_, examined minutely the opinion and statements of Origen, and agreed for the most part in rejecting and condemning them. Irenaeus, Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, Basil, Cyril of Alexandria, and others of the Eastern Church, and Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Bede, and many more of the Western Church, were unanimous in teaching that the joys of the righteous and the punishments of the wicked will not be temporary, but everlasting."

"Nor was this all. The Fifth General Council, held at Constantinople under the Emperor Justinian, in 553, A.D. examined the tenets of Origen, and pa.s.sed a synodical decree condemnatory of them. And for a thousand years after that time there was an unanimous consent in Christendom in this sense." (Bishop Wordsworth's "Sermons," p. 34.)

Let me add to this statement the fact that the eternity of future punishment has been held by almost all the greatest theologians from the time of the Reformation down to the present day. It is a point on which Lutherans, Calvinists, and Arminians, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Independents have always, with a few exceptions, been of one mind.

Search the writings of the most eminent and learned Reformers, search the works of the Puritans, search the few literary remains of the men who revived English Christianity in the eighteenth century, and, as a rule, you will always get one harmonious answer. Within the last few years, no doubt, the "non-eternity of future punishment" has found several zealous advocates. But up to a comparatively modern date, I unhesitatingly a.s.sert, the supporters of Canon Farrar's views have always been an extremely small minority among orthodox Christians. That fact is, at any rate, worth remembering.

As to the _difficulties_ besetting the old or common view of future punishment, I admit their existence, and I do not pretend to explain them. But I always expect to find many mysteries in revealed religion, and I am not stumbled by them. I see other difficulties in the world which I cannot solve, and I am content to wait for their solution. What a mighty divine has called, "The mystery of G.o.d, the great mystery of His suffering vice and confusion to prevail,"--the origin of evil,--the permission of cruelty, oppression, poverty, and disease,--the allowed sickness and death of infants before they know good from evil,--the future prospects of the heathen who never heard the Gospel,--the times of ignorance which G.o.d has winked at,--the condition of China, Hindostan, and Central Africa, for the last 1800 years,--all these things are to my mind great knots which I am unable to untie, and depths which I have no line to fathom. But I wait for light, and I have no doubt all will be made plain. I rest in the thought that I am a poor ignorant mortal, and that G.o.d is a Being of infinite wisdom, and is doing all things well. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right."

(Gen. xviii. 25.) It is a wise sentence of Bishop Butler: "All shadow of injustice, and indeed all harsh appearances in the various economy of G.o.d, would be lost, if we would keep in mind that every merciful allowance shall be made, and no more shall be required of any one, than what might have been equitably expected of him from the circ.u.mstances in which he was placed, and not what might have been expected from him had he been placed in other circ.u.mstances." ("a.n.a.logy," part ii. ch. vi. p.

425. Wilson's edition.) It is a grand saying of Elihu, in Job, "Touching the Almighty, we cannot find Him out: He is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice: He will not afflict." (Job x.x.xvii.

23.)

It may be perfectly true that many Romish divines, and even some Protestants, have made extravagant and offensive statements about the bodily sufferings of the lost in another world. It may be true that those who believe in eternal punishment have occasionally misunderstood or mistranslated texts, and have pressed figurative language too far.

But it is hardly fair to make Christianity responsible for the mistakes of its advocates. It is an old saying that "Christian errors are infidel arguments." Thomas Aquinas, and Dante, and Milton, and Boston, and Jonathan Edwards were not inspired and infallible, and I decline to be answerable for all they may have written about the physical torments of the lost. But after every allowance, admission, and deduction, there remains, in my humble opinion, a ma.s.s of Scripture evidence in support of the doctrine of eternal punishment, which can never be explained away, and which no revision or new translation of the English Bible will ever overthrow.[23] That there are degrees of misery as well as degrees of glory in the future state, that the condition of some who are lost will be far worse than that of others, all this is undeniable. But that the punishment of the wicked will ever have an end, or that length of time alone can ever change a heart, or that the Holy Spirit ever works on the dead, or that there is any purging, purifying process beyond the grave, by which the wicked will be finally fitted for heaven, these are positions which I maintain it is utterly impossible to prove by texts of Scripture. Nay, rather, there are texts of Scripture which teach an utterly different doctrine. "It is surprising," says Horbery, "if h.e.l.l be such a state of purification, that it should always be represented in Scripture as a place of punishment." (Vol. ii. p. 223.) "Nothing," says Girdlestone, "but clear statements of Scripture could justify us in holding, or preaching to unG.o.dly men, the doctrine of repentance after death; and not one clear statement on this subject is to be found."

("Dies Irae," p. 269.) If we once begin to invent doctrines which we cannot prove by texts, or to refuse the evidence of texts in Scripture because they land us in conclusions we do not like, we may as well throw aside the Bible altogether, and discard it as the judge of controversy.

23: Horbery alone alleges and examines no less than one hundred and three texts, on his side, in his reply to Whiston.

The favourite argument of some, that no religious doctrine can be true which is rejected by the "common opinion" and popular feeling of mankind,--that any texts which contradict this common popular feeling must be wrongly interpreted,--and that therefore eternal punishment cannot be true, because the inward feeling of the mult.i.tude revolts against it,--this argument appears to me alike most dangerous and unsound. It is _dangerous_, because it strikes a direct blow at the authority of Scripture as the only rule of faith.

Where is the use of the Bible, if the "common opinion" of mortal man is to be regarded as of more weight than the declarations of G.o.d's Word?--It is _unsound_, because it ignores the great fundamental principle of Christianity,--that man is a fallen creature, with a corrupt heart and understanding, and that in spiritual things his judgment is worthless. There is a veil over our hearts. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of G.o.d, for they are foolishness to him." (1 Cor. ii. 14.) To say, in the face of such a text, that any doctrine which the majority of men dislike, such as eternal punishment, _must_ therefore be untrue, is simply absurd!

The "common opinion" is more likely to be wrong than right! No doubt Bishop Butler has said, "If in revelation there be found any pa.s.sage the seeming meaning of which is contrary to natural religion, we may most certainly conclude such seeming meaning not to be the real one." But those who triumphantly quote these words would do well to observe the sentence which immediately follows: "But it is not any degree of a presumption against an interpretation of Scripture, that such an interpretation contains a doctrine which the light of nature cannot discover." ("a.n.a.logy," part i. chap. ii. p. 358. Wilson's edition.)

After all, what the "common feeling" or opinion of the majority of mankind is about the duration of future punishment, is a question which admits of much doubt. Of course we have no means of ascertaining: and it signifies little either way. In such a matter the only point is, What saith the Scripture? But I have a strong suspicion, if the world could be polled, that we should find the greater part of mankind believed in eternal punishment! About the opinion of the Greeks and Romans at any rate there can be little dispute. If anything is clearly taught in the stories of their mythology it is the endless nature of the sufferings of the wicked. Bishop Butler says, "Gentile writers, both moralist and poetic, speak of the future punishment of the wicked, both as to duration and degree, in a like manner of expression and description as the Scripture does." ("a.n.a.logy," part i. chap. ii. p. 218.) The strange and weird legends of Tantalus, Sisyphus, Ixion, Prometheus, and the Danaides, have all one common feature about them. In each case the punishment is eternal! This is a fact worth noticing. It is worth what it is worth. But it shows, at all events, that the opponents of eternal punishment should not talk too confidently about the "common opinion of mankind."

As to the doctrine of the _Annihilation of the Wicked_, to which many adhere, it appears to me so utterly irreconcilable with our Lord Jesus Christ's words about "the resurrection of d.a.m.nation," and "the worm that never dies, and the fire that is not quenched," and St. Paul's words about "the resurrection of the unjust" (John v. 29; Mark ix. 43-48; Acts xxiv. 15), that until those words can be proved to form no part of inspired Scripture it seems to me mere waste of time to argue about it.

The favourite argument of the advocates of this doctrine, that "death, dying, peris.h.i.+ng, destruction," and the like, are phrases which can only mean "cessation of existence," is so ridiculously weak that it is scarcely worth noticing. Every Bible reader knows that G.o.d said to Adam, concerning the forbidden fruit, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely _die_." (Gen. ii. 17.) But every well-taught Sunday scholar knows that Adam did not "cease to exist," when he broke the commandment.

He died spiritually, but he did not cease to be!--So also St. Peter says of the flood: "The world that then was, being overflowed with water, _perished_." (2 Peter iii. 6.) Yet, though temporarily drowned, it certainly did not cease to be; and when the water was dried up Noah lived on it again.

It only remains for me now to add one more last word, by way of information. Those who care to investigate the meaning of the words "eternal" and "everlasting," as used in Scripture, will find the subject fully and exhaustively considered in _Girdlestone's "Old Testament Synonyms_," ch. 30, p. 495; and in the same writer's "_Dies Irae_," ch.

10 and 11, p. 128.