Other restorationists rest their hope of the ultimate salvation of all men, not on the purifying effect of suffering, but on the effi- cacy of the death of Christ. If He died for all, they infer, all will be saved.
2. Others hold that future punishment is only hypothetically everlasting. That is, the wicked will suffer forever if they con- tinue to sin forever. But, if the Spirit continues to strive with men in the world to come, or, as others believe, if plenary ability belongs to the very nature of a rational creature, then we may assume that some, perhaps many, perhaps all, in the course of ages, will repent and turn unto God and live.
3. Others again teach that the sufferings of the impenitent are only relatively endless ; that is, it will forever be true that their condition will be inferior to what it would have been had they been better men.
4. Others hold that the life promised to the righteous is im- mortality, and that the death threatened against the wicked is the extinction of life, or, the cessation of conscious existence. The soul will die in the future world, just as the body dies here. It ceases to act ; it ceases to feel ; it ceases to be. This death of the soul is called eternal, because life is never to be restored. The punishment of the wicked is, therefore, in a sense, everlasting. It is a final and everlasting forfeiture of all good. Thus Cicero 1 calls death " sempiternum malum," and Lucretius 2 speaks of a " mors immortalis." This second death may be very painful and protracted. The finally impenitent, may, and doubtless will, suffer for a longer or shorter period, and to a less or greater de- gree, before the final extinction of their being. And thus there shall be a future retribution, answering all the ends of justice. 8
5. The common doctrine is, that the conscious existence of the soul after the death of the body is unending ; that there is no repentance or reformation in the future world ; that those who depart this life unreconciled to God, remain forever in this state of alienation, and therefore are forever sinful and miserable. This is the doctrine of the whole Christian Church, of the Greeks, of the Latins, and of all the great historical Protestant bodies.
1 Tusculanarum Disputationum, i. xlii. 100; Works, edit. Leipzig, 1850, p. 1057, b.
8 See Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, iii. 517-519, edit. London, 1712, p. 144.
« This theory is advocated with confidence, as well as with ability and learning, by Henry Constable, A. M., Prebendary of Cork, in his tract on The Duration and Nature of Future Punishment, Reprinted from the Second London Edition," New Haven, Conn., 1872. And much more elaborately in Debt and Grace as related to the Doctrine of a Future Lift. By C. F. Hudson. Fifth Edition. Boston: 1859.
870 PART IV. Ch. IV. — THE SECOND ADVENT.
It is obvious that this is a question which can be decided only by divine revelation. No one can reasonably presume to decide how long the wicked are to suffer for their sins upon any general principles of right and wrong. The conditions of the problem are not within our grasp. What the infinitely wise and good God may see fit to do with his creatures ; or what the exigencies of a government embracing the whole universe and continuing throughout eternal ages, may demand, it is not for such worms of the dust as we are, to determine. If we believe the Bible to be the Word of God, all we have t6 do is to ascertain what it teaches on this subject, and humbly submit.
1. It is an almost invincible presumption that the Bible does teach the unending punishment of the finally impenitent, that all Christian churches have so understood it. There is no other way in which this unanimity of judgment can be accounted for. To refer it to some philosophical speculation which had gained ascend- ancy in the Church, such as the dualism of good and evil as two coeternal and necessary principles, or the Platonic doctrine of the inherent immortality and indestructible nature of the human soul, would be to assign a cause altogether inadequate to the effect. Much less can this general consent be accounted for on the ground that the doctrine in question is congenial to the human mind, and is believed for its own sake, without any adequate support from Scripture. The reverse is the case. It is a doctrine which the natural heart revolts from and struggles against, and to which it submits only under stress of authority. The Church believes the doctrine because it must believe it, or renounce faith in the Bible and give up all the hopes founded upon its promises. There is no doctrine in support of which this general consent can be pleaded, which can be shown not to be taught in the Bible. The doctrines of the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the personality of the Holy Spirit, the sinfulness of men, and others of a like kind, are ad- mitted to be Scriptural even by those who do not believe them. The argument now urged, does not suppose the Church to be infallible ; nor that the authority of the Church is the ground of faith ; it only assumes that what the great body of the competent readers of a plain book take to be its meaning, must be its meaning.
It is unreasonable to account for the general reception of the doctrine in question on the ground of church authority. It was universally received before the external Church arrogated to itself the right to dictate to the people of God what they must believe ;