the punishments and reward of Hades, they reject." These last were the infidels of their day, and, Josephus elsewhere adds (Antiq. B. XVIII. chap. 1, sec. 4), "This doctrine is received but by a few." So that, on his testimony, the vast majority of his nation, when Christ came, were firm believers in the future punishment of the wicked. We find corroboration of this in the fact, that future punishment is appealed to as a motive to virtue in the apocryphal books, which - although without the authority of inspiration - have yet a certain value as witnesses of the opinion of the times which produced them. In the second book of the Maccabees (6: 26) the old man Eleazer is represented as refusing to be guilty of deceit to save his life, for he says: "Though for the present time I should be delivered from the punishment of men; yet should I not escape the hand of the Almighty, neither alive nor dead." So (7: 19) a young martyr is represented as saying, with his dying breath, to the wicked king: "Think not thou, that takest in hand to strive against God, that thou shalt escape unpunished." So in the third chapter of the Wisdom of Solomon we read (vs. 1 and 18, 19), "The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them," while of the wicked it is said: "If they die quickly they have no hope, neither comfort in the day of trial; for horrible is the end of the unrighteous generation."

It is right that I should notice here an assertion of the author of "Two Discourses" recently published, the argument of one of which we have already examined. He says (p. 22):

There is no allusion, in the Old Testament, to punishment at all in the unseen world. So long as the Jews were under the exclusive influence of the Old Testament literature and inspiration, they held no doctrine of future punishment. Down to the time of Malachi, it had not appeared among them. That doctrine came into their mind from heathen sources, chiefly from Alexandria in Egypt, and their connection with Greek mythology and speculation. It is only in the later books of the Apocrypha, approaching the time of Christ, that the dogma is detected in their literature.

I have just quoted those passages in the Apocrypha to which reference is here made, and I think you will agree with me that they are even less decided in their tone than many passages which we have found in the Psalms, Proverbs, and Prophets, near a thousand years before Christ came. And it may be doubted if there is not quite as much evidence that Alexandria learned its doctrine at Jerusalem, as that Jerusalem imported it from Alexandria, especially since all the passages we have quoted from the Old Testament were matter of record hundreds of years before the first stone of Alexandria was laid (332 B. C.).

We are prepared, then, to say, in answer to the question, What is the doctrine of the Old Testament in regard to the future state of the impenitent, that, conforming to the immature and only gradually advancing condition of the Hebrew mind, it very gradually and at the best dimly, and yet with growing distinctness, did convey to the Hebrew nation the great ideas of immortality, and of future punishment for the wicked and reward for the righteous. They had actually received those ideas from it, and had wrought them thoroughly into their theology, before the Christian era. And such-with the exception of the inconsiderable sect of the infidel Sadducees was the decided conviction, though perhaps not very intelligent or intelligible to themselves, of the Jewish people when Christ came. We pass therefore to the inquiry : —

II. What was the teaching of our Saviour on this question of the future punishment of the wicked?

Here I refer for a moment again to the sermon to which allusion has just been made, the great object of which is to weaken the apparent testimony of our Saviour on this subject, by the suggestions that our record of his views is very fragmentary, and that, since he was of a highly poetical temperament, his language ought not to be pressed to that degree of literal interpretation which would be allowable in the construction of the dry decree of a court, or the formal act of a legislature.

Grant both of these, for argument's sake, and it will still remain imperishably true, that our Saviour did teach some doctrine (however fragmentary in form, and however poetic); and that his solicitude for men was such as to make him greatly desire that they should not be misled in eternal things, and his intelligence such that he could not fail to perceive the drift of their minds under the circumstances in which they were addressed by him. Doubtless we shall all agree that he both knew whether the doctrine of future eternal punishment is true or false, and knew that it must be of consequence to human welfare for men to know, and being divinely honest — we have a right to suppose that he shaped his words (however fragmentary, and however poetic) in such a way that they would not tend to mislead the multitude, whose welfare he desired with a desire which led him to the cross. There can be no avoidance of the conclusion, that the Saviour was a Universalist, or (for neutrality is impossible) a disbeliever in, and opposer of, the doctrine that there is no eternal hell. If he was a Universalist, he must necessarily teach like one. If he was not, he would not. And with this in mind we cannot go amiss in our interpretation of his language.

(

I propose now, as briefly as possible, to glance, in chronological sequence, at every written' word of Jesus having obvious. reference to the question before us.

*

The conversation with Nicodemus (John 3: recorded instance of any utterance upon it.

1–21) is the first

He urges upon

this rabbi of the Jews the necessity of being born again, because, without it, one cannot see the kingdom of God, -a phrase which, unquestionably, was understood by Nicodemus to include reference to future life in heaven. And this inference must necessarily have been encouraged in his mind by Christ's subsequent remarks: that the Son of Man must be

* The order is that of Dr. Robinson's "Harmony," and Prof. Greenleaf's Testimony of the Four Evangelists."

"lifted up," like the serpent in the wilderness, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life: for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life; adding that God sent his Son that the world might through him be saved. Here is obviously running through all this conversation the clear intimation of future remediless danger, from which one course only-that of belief in Christ - can save the world. Christ knew that Nicode

mus was a Pharisee. Even the author of the "Two Discourses admits that the Jews at the time of Christ, and particularly the Pharisees, did believe in future punishment, though he thinks they got their faith from Alexandria, and not from the Old Testament. But for this matter, it made no difference where Nicodemus got his faith in future punishment; he evidently must have had it, and Christ must have known that he had it, and must have known whether it was true or false, and must have known that if it were false it ought to be rebuked, and yet, in the face of all this knowledge, he tells him that if he is not born again he must perish. Now we may call Christ incoherent, or poetical, or what we please, but unless we call him dishonest, I think we must, under these circumstances, admit that he did intend to encourage (certainly did not intend to discourage) the faith of Nicodemus as a Pharisee in future punishment.

Significant also are the words of the Samaritans of Shechem when, after Christ had preached there two days, subsequent to his interview with the woman at Jacob's well, they said: "Now we believe for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world." (John 4: 42) Had he not taught them, then, that the world was lost without him, and so far as it should withhold faith in him?

The next record (John 5: 1-417) is at the pool of Bethesda, where Jesus healed the infirm man on the Sabbath day. The

act disturbed the Jews, who raised a tumult against him. He seized the opportunity to address them, defending himself for saying that God was his Father, and adding (remember that this was a crowd of Pharisees, who believed in future punishment, and whose error, if Christ were a Universalist, he was bound to rebuke): "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, &c. The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the son of God; and they that hear shall live, &c. The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation." Now, as I said before, we may call this poetry, or we may call it prose, but if we call it the sincere utterance of an honest voice, we are driven to believe that our Lord himself believed and taught the future puuishment of the wicked.

Next comes the sermon on the mount. (Matt. 5: 1—8: 1, and Luke 6: 20-49.) Throughout,—especially when you · interpret it in the necessary recollection of the fact that Christ was speaking to those who had been trained to believe in future punishment, and must therefore have been predisposed to interpret his language into coincidence with that belief,-this sermon is veined by thoughts that look and lean that way. The opening beatitudes, in their glorious promise of comfort and heaven for the possessors of the virtues which they catalogue, perpetually intimate a darker alternative for those who lack them. The remark that saving righteousness must exceed the strict, technical yet hollow righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, in order to secure admission to heaven, certainly has no look like that of censure for their faith of hell for the wicked. So all those striking precepts which affirm and reaffirm the need of a more thorough and genuine excellence of character than that which the Pharisees pos