VII.

THE DOCTRINE OF ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.

I. The Rev. NOAH PORTER, D. D., LL. D. II. The Rev. O. B. FROTHINGHAM.

III. The Very Rev. THOMAS S. PRESTON, V. G.

IV. The Rev. HENRY W. BELLOWS, D. D. V. The Rev. WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS, D. D. VI. The Rev. THOMAS J. SAWYER, D. D. VII. Conclusion-The Rev. NOAH PORTER, D. D., LL. D.

I.

THE Christian doctrine of eternal punishment is proposed as a theme for friendly discussion by a few gentlemen who are supposed to hold different opinions in respect to its import and its truth. The duty has been assigned to me of opening and closing this discussion, after such a method as may promise the most satisfactory issue.

There are two aspects in which this doctrine must be viewed by every thoughtful person, each of which occasions difficulties which cannot easily be set aside. These are its ethical and exegetical aspects, or its import and its truth. The ethical side has to do with its relations to the moral nature of man, and the moral administration of God; the exegetical, with a satisfactory interpretation of the teachings of the Scriptures. Neither of these aspects can be considered apart from the other. As between the two the ethical should first be discussed. It seems necessary, therefore, that in opening I should state briefly, but clearly, a few general positions which should be distinctly recognized and carefully considered before proceeding to the examination of the evidence for and against the truth of the doctrine in question.

We shall agree in this: that man is a moral being, and as such possesses all the endowments which are requisite for responsible activity. He is personal and free. He assents to the excellence of duty, and he imposes duty upon himself as the supreme law of his inner and outward activity. The inner activities, whether they are called choices, volitions, affections, or purposes, are the springs of conduct. They are more or less permanent and con

trolling, and hence character, as the source of conduct, is itself morally good or evil; and is that alone which makes actions to be good or bad. If man is responsible for what he does, he is preeminently responsible for what he intends; i. e., for what he is. The saying of the Great Teacher is at once true and fundamental: "A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things;" and similarly, "Every tree is known by its fruit."

We assume also that God is a person in a more eminent sense than man possibly can be. If the crown and glory of the finite and dependent universe is man, with his free personality, then surely the infinite and absolute, who upholds and supplements the finite, is himself a person who is intelligent and free. He has an intellect to devise, a heart to love, and a will to choose, and these several activities are coördinated into that harmony of perfect moral goodness which is called indifferently unspotted holiness and perfect love. As a being who is perfectly good he imposes on himself the law of moral perfection, and as completely complies with this self-imposed law. But he does not confine it to himself alone. As personal, he must use his personal influence with his creatures, who are like him in nature and capable of interpreting his thoughts and emulating his character. As a being who is loving and yet good, he cannot but use this personal force for the moral perfection of others. This influence, when employed, makes God a moral ruler; when asserted, it becomes God's moral law.

It is questioned of late whether law and government have any significance as between God and man; whether they are not outworn fictions which formerly incased a precious kernel of ethical and spiritual truth, but which has long ago outgrown and burst the shell that is now withered and ready to fall. To guard against any misconception, I repeat what has been already implied, that no law even from God can have any moral force unless it requires such perfection as man exacts from himself. Were we to suppose that God should command anything of man which either in kind or degree man does not impose upon himself, his command would have no binding force. A conflict would at once arise between the personal influence or behest of the Creator and the moral law which the creature finds written

on his own heart. In such a conflict the creature, like Antigone, is bound to obey the law of goodness, which he dares not offend, however much he may tremble before the wrath of the Sovereign who has power to kill and make alive.

But if no such conflict exists or can be supposed; if the law is such as the man approves and imposes on himself, he will also accept and obey it as the personal will of his Creator and heavenly Father. The law gains in this way a double enforcement, the moral and the personal. It is obeyed because it is right, and also because a person who is the personification of rectitude enforces it as his personal will by the grandeur and loveliness of his uncreated majesty. Man, the creature and child of God, is therefore morally bound to accept God as his personal king and to own his government. He finds in himself the impulse to loyalty and worship as truly as the law of conscience; nay, it is the law of conscience itself which enforces the impulses of personal allegiance to the living God.

These principles prepare us to understand the nature and place of reward and punishment in the personal government of God. This is the more necessary for the reason that many object to the use of reward and punishment altogether as mercenary and demoralizing. They explain the presence of these terms and conceptions in the Scriptures as necessary figures of speech, adapted to the crude and undeveloped notions of ruder times, or as proper to a lower stage of moral culture. Even those who would accept the active personal influence of the Supreme in his moral rule, are offended at the thought of being moved to holiness by the hope of reward or the fear of punishment. As against a defective conception of both, these objections hold good, but they fail altogether when confronted by a truly ethical definition of either. If by reward or punishment is intended only a good or evil which God may effect for our sentient or selfish sensibility, the motive is unworthy and the influence immoral, or, at least, it fails to be moral. But if the force of either lies in what this good or evil expresses of the personal feeling of God, then it takes rank with the influence of conscience itself, moving in the same plane, only employing an additional force for good and against evil. It should never be forgotten, however, that the moral effectiveness of reward or punishment is not in

the medium which expresses the feelings of God, whether it be a "pavement of gold" or of "burning marl," but wholly in what these symbols effectively express, viz., the favor or the displeas ure of the Being whose smile and frown are the reflex of our own for ourselves, forasmuch as man is made in God's image.

It follows that it is most reasonable to believe that reward and punishment, in this high moral import, are used in the personal government of a personal God. Every analogy forces us to infer that he, in fact, employs them. Every right-hearted man will rejoice in their use, and will accept them for himself. To assert, or infer, that the only reward or punishment which is worthy of God is the good or evil which is the natural consequence of sin and holiness in the soul of man to the exclusion of any feelings of God which these may express, is to overlook the most potent of all influences of which man is susceptible from his fellow-men and from Him who, though the highest of beings, is yet the nearest to man. The position is atheistic in its affinities and its theory of the moral universe.

On the other hand, it is equally important to insist that punishment is impossible to one who is not conscious of ill-desert, and does not accept it as just. The sky which is brightened by the sunlight of self-approval can never be wholly darkened even by the supposed frown of God. It is only so long as I am displeased with myself, and know that God is displeased with me and for cause, that punishment is possible. Moreover, we can suffer the keenest form of punishment only so long as we retain and reassert the wicked purpose or the wicked act. So soon as we repent and renounce both, even though God should continue to feel and express his displeasure for what we had been, we should find some taste of heaven in our present renunciation of our wicked past.

It may be questioned, however, whether the sinner, left to himself, will ever seek or find repentance and self-recovery. So far as we know anything of sin, it is self-perpetuating. It may be a law of man's being which, though not of fate, is yet as uniform as fate, that every free agent, who sins against the restraints imposed by his own moral sense and the will of God, overleaps a barrier along the pathway of goodness and of life which he will never effectually desire to recross. Every purpose

which we call sinful may, in its very nature, be permanent or eternal. It certainly shows itself to be persistent, as it gathers strength by repetition in outward act. So far as experience teaches any lesson, it teaches that moral recovery must be inspired or furthered from without. All forms of religion assume as their starting-point that man needs some such intervention, which grows out of his real or fancied exposure to punishment, and his moral weakness. It is on this assumption that Christianity rests its claim to be received as supernatural and divine. It finds and declares, but it does not make man to be a sinner, and, as such, helpless and in danger. It provides and offers a remedy, which is so completely adapted to his needs that it is impossible that it should have been devised by man, and at the same time should presume to declare that it comes from God. The remedy which Christianity furnishes, it offers for man's acceptance-it presses it upon him, but it does not compel him to take it. It offers it upon conditions, and plainly tells him that he cannot fail to comply with these conditions without loss and penalty.

What this penalty and loss may be in their nature and effect are the questions presented for our discussion. As a preliminary, I have stated the several axioms or principles which the Christian Scriptures presuppose, reaffirm, or supplement. Unless these axioms are true, a revelation of mercy and blessing is either meaningless, or useless, or impossible. We do not say that the Scriptures reaffirm these truths in form, but that they imply their authority by declarations, examples, and actions, which take them for granted. These truths are the overhanging firmament of azure out of which one star after another emerges to meet man's longing gaze for light from above and beyond. Against this background they are all projected. The background itself only ceases to be discerned or noticed when the sun arises and floods the heavens with its excess of light.

If we must assume these ethical truths to assure ourselves that the Christian revelation is from God, we must also use these truths in interpreting the import and application of its declarations. Against this same background of eternal love, which is but another name for eternal justice, must we read all the sayings in the revealed word that are dark or enigmatical concerning man's future, whether by reason of the shadowy or figurative import of