1887.] CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS AND ENDLESS PUNISHment. 459

ARTICLE XXIX.

The Christian Consciousness and Endless Punishment.

THE Conclusions affirmed or suggested by a preceeding essay on the Christian Consciouness generally considered, in the last January number of this Review, may be thus re-stated:

While truth is one and unchangeable, an individual's conceptions of the truth vary with his mental furniture or standpoint. In other words, and more specially, the residuum of our religious experience determines in a large degree the contents of our theology. This residuum, being the work of the Holy Spirit in us, may be and ought to be used as an authority in the interpretation of the Bible or of any other work of the Holy Spirit. In fact it has ever been the chief power in the elaboration and application of religious truth. It give srise to the Christian mode of apprehension, which in these days has been recognized as a distinct faculty, and has received a name, "The Christian Consciousness." On all sides men have objected. But their objections have been found in the name alone, or have orignated in a misunderstanding of the intention of it, or again in some abuse of the faculty. For practically there is a psychological necessity of using the faculty to some extent, and of relying upon it with some degree of confidence, whether we confess it or not. Indeed, when acting nominally in its own province, and without restraint, the faculty is infallible. It comes to pass, however, in the progress of the church toward truth not before recognized, that this faculty seems to render different verdicts in different people. We may therefore take evidence as to which verdict is really Christian, and which on the other hand is due to some of the various biases that have been rengent in us. Any proposition (old or new) alleged to be a product of the Christian consciousness must in general sustain the following tests: is it consistent with itself ith the Bible, and with undoubted truths? Is it found in all Christian times? Is it prominent in the best Christians, and in modern times? Can the adverse verdicts be explained

on grounds other than Christian? In addition to these there may be other tests, proper to the special subject considered.

The purpose of the present essay is to inquire what is the verdict of the Christian consciousness on the doctrine of endless punishment. What in this doctrine is indicated in the various manifestations of the Christian character- thought, feeling, conscience, whatever in a man is Christian? I shall begin with the historical part of the subject, and for the sake of brevity shall be confined to generalizations and typical examples.

The church of the first three centuries in the East was a specially pure and almost ideal church; and its testimony is therefore of special value. According to some historians this church taught the doctrine of universal restoration. Other historians differ on the question of the dogma; but they are mostly agreed that the dominant influence was that of the schools of Alexandria and Antioch which were Universalist; and in general that the doctrine of the everlasting punishment of the wicked did not enter largely into their life as Christians. It was sometimes preached as a threat, but it was not implied in the main principle of their theology; nor was it regarded as a thing to be desired or worked for or prayed for. In other words the Christian consciousness generally was clearly opposed to the doctrine of endless damnation and in favor of Universalism.

Afterward the church in the East became the state church, and one great source of its purity and dignity-namely the persecution it had suffered-was removed. Then the multitudes crowded in, and brought their paganism with them; and gradually the church declined until in a few more centuries the empire in the East became, as another has said, "one of the most despicable forms that civilization has yet assumed." Parallel with the disappearance of true Christianity, Universalism also disappeared-a fact of some value as negative evidence for the same conclusion as before.

The early church of the West is commonly regarded as a less pure form of Christianity. For the preceeding civilization

or character was more hardy and enduring than that of the East, and was therefore less easily displaced or reformed by Christianity. It was perhaps on this account that the dominant influences in the Western church were dogmatically and in some other respects opposed to Universalism, at least after the time of Augustine. For example, the doctrine of hell torments was agreeable to the instincts" of Tertullian. But in this respect he goes beyond the church, beyond his more illustrious and influential successor, and quite outside Christianity. His case will come up again. Afterward at some distance came the "Dark Ages" in which there was little Christianity and little evidence of Universalist sentiment. There was however one great man, the greatest of several centuries, John Scotus Erigena; and he was through and through Universalist. And the small favor in which his doctrines were held was not entirely due to this element of them. Among the pious who are the witnessess in this question, he was better received.

Afterward came the Scholastics dogmatically opposed to Universalism, and making much nse of the opposite doctrine. This is true however only in one department of their life, the intellectual-morally and emotionally they may sometimes be quoted on the other side. But they were not the best representatives of Christianity in their time. By far the best religon in the Middle Ages was found among the conservative Mystics. Their testimony is strongly for the ultimate salvation of all. The fact that they sometimes held the orthodox eschatology seems to be due to some external pressure or to some inward bias, for the doctrine of final perdition is clearly not a part of the general current of their Christian life. Not to quote individuals, when a generalization is at hand-that much praised book German Theology, by many pious souls elevated to the side of the Bible, doubtless represents the spirit of the Mystics. It says, "Sin is so hateful to God, and grieveth him so sore that He would suffer agony and death that one man's sin might be washed out;" and again it represents Christ," As though God in human nature were saying, I am pure simple goodness, and therefore I cannot will, nor

desire, nor rejoice in, nor do, nor give anything but goodness. If I am to reward thee for thy evil and wickedness, I must do it with goodness for I am and have nothing else. Hence God in a man that is made partaker of His nature, desireth and taketh no revenge for all the wrong that is or can be done unto Him." Yet these men had no deficient sense of sin, but they had such a vivid sense of God's love that they saw God dealing with the sinner not in anger nor with an endless hell, but with a tireless and omnipotent love.

In the times of the Reformation the human mind to some extent broke the fetters of the past; and in its new-found freedom and under the inspiration of the Bible might naturally revert to the pure forms and doctrines of Christianity. It is significant that at a time there was a renewal of Universalism. For the freest and strongest religious consciousness ofthe time, we are justified in looking to the two great originators of the Reformation. Concerning the doctrine of endless punishment Luther writes: "It is a severe and awful judgment.

were it not a judgment of God, it would be mere malice, arbitrary power, and injustice." . . One must "shut his

though He here seems to act against and beyond all reason

and to be mere anger and injustice.

Nature and reason cannot bear it; it terrifies too much for them; weak faith caunot bear it; it is too offensive for that." On this account he advises that this terrible doctrine be preached only to those long confirmed in the faith; lest the revolt ot the nature be stronger than the faith, and the hearer be thereby driven from the church. Luther himself believed the doctrine, against his nature, because he thought it was in the Bible. He was able to do so with an appearance of consistency because he held that our human nature even in the regenerate is so far corrupted as to be unreliable. He thought his "consciousness" was not Christian. In these days we judge otherwise.

Of the more tolerant and kindly Zwingle so much in this line can be said, that to some he has seemed to be a Universalist in doctrine. This interpretation of him is apparently

not true, and probably for the same reason as in the case of Luther he thought the Bible taught endless punishment. But the better instincts, intuitions and sentiments of his nature protested against that doctrine, and in some parts quite prevailed. He believed in the salvation of unbaptized infants who die in infancy.

If we may instance one more notable Christian of that time, let Calvin be the man. When he called the reprobation of the wicked a "horrible decree," he substantially declared that according to his Christian sense, a temporal punishment is adequate to the case of the wicked. It may be added that some historians have esteemed Calvin to be the most Christian man of his time. But take the three great Reformers together and remember that they were God's men, and godly men, sent to establish not so much a better doctrine as a better life; and what does the character of that life indicate as to the requirements of justice?

Since their time the greatest individual religious influence (according to some estimates) is Schleiermacher, "the Origen of the Nineteenth Century." He is dominant in Germany, and to some extent in England and America. He was a Universalist and his influence is for Universalism. So that in the first named country and in Protestant France the doctrine of endless punishment has almost disappeared; and in English speaking countries some of his followers are professed Universalists, and others, "disciples of the larger hope" are apparently prevented from accepting Universalism, by exegetical and prudential reasons only. This statement is true in a less degree outside the professed following of Schleiermacher. In England for a century, the most distinguished and representativeChristians have strong tendencies toward Universalism. Tillotson, Robert Hall, John Wesley, Coleridge, Maurice, Farrar, Plumtre; and in the United States, Ballou, Channing, Bushnell, Mulford,are representives of large aud growing bodies. Here in America thought has been freer and the hope is more often expressed. During our heroic period of the Revolution, and with many great men since, it has found, special favor.