Due weight must be assigned to the remarkable reticence maintained by Jesus regarding the world to come, botli concerning the nature of the blessed- ness of heaven, and the future destiny of the unre- {)entant. In His incarnate condition, under the imitations necessarily involved in the taking of a veritable human nature, mucli of that future was hidden from His view as from ours. The discipline of mystery concerning the futitre world, which is so salutary for our nature, was not without its value in the perfecting of the Redeemer. And therefore, while He possessed absolute knoAvledge of the moral conditions of that life, kindred as they were with the moral conditions of life here. He was not privileged to see all that future unfolded. And it is surely most significant that of the course of events in that ' sequestered state,' in that world to which the sinful jjass at death. He speaks no word. And He nowhere precludes the possibility of moral growth and betterment in tliat vast Unseen ; the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Lk 16^""^') speaks of 'a great gulf fixed' prohibiting a passage from either of the two contrasted states of being to the other, but it was not a gulf across which there could come no communication or redeeming influ- ence, for Dives and Abraham can hold converse ; and the parable hints not obscurely at some better- ment of the selfish rich man who begins to have a genuine concern for his brethren (unless it must be interpreted as a subtle form of self-excuse).
The Gospels contain no word of this life as being absolutely and finally decisive of all human destiny, and remembering the complexity of life not for the heathen only, and for nations chosen to play an- other part than a religious one, in the great purpose of God, but for men living in full gospel light, yet doomed from their birth and before it to an almost hopeless incapacity for truth and virtue, our moral nature shrinks irresistibly from such a thought. On the contrary, we have certain indications, not beyond question and yet full of hopeful suggestion, that the mind of Jesus reached out beyond all the complexity and travail to a glorious issue and con- summation worthy of being called ' the glory of the Father.^ He speaks in Mt 19^8 of a coming Re- generation {TraXivyevecria) in which those who have faithfully followed Him shall share His rule ; but we have no clue as to whether His words are in- tended to reach beyond the definite establishment of His Kingdom as an actual fact among men. But m that Kingdom once established He placed His hope, and He taught us to pray for its coming as the equivalent of the Divine will being done on earth as it is in heaven.
In Jn 1232 (cf. Jn 3") He declares that His 'lift- ing up ' shall be the means of ' drawing all men ' to Himself, and His words are naturally interpreted as expressing His hope and expectation of a com-
plete redemption of mankind, and can scarcely be satisfied by saying that though this is the natural efi'ect, it may never be the actual efiect of His supreme sacrifice.
On the whole, while it must be confessed that we have no certain statement from our Lord as to the final issue of things, we have yet much to en- courage a hopeful attitude, in harmony as that attitude is with the intuitions of the human heart, and with tlie whole disclosure of God's love ' in the face of Jesus Christ.' The Son of Man and Son of God has ' thrown light ' not only upon tlie intima- tions of immortality which existed in the heart of man, but also upon the problem as to future restoration, not so much by what He says as by His whole Personality, His revelation of and abiding relation to the unseen Father.
2. Upon that revelation in the actual Jesus of Nazaretli, and upon their increasing sense of the infinite importance of the Christ who ever liveth, the Apostles found their thought and speculation, so far as these find place in their writings, I'egard- ing the larger and ultimate issues of redemption. Whatever hopes they permit themselves to express, all centre in His Personality and power. The vagueness which characterizes most of the refer- ences to the question is due to the fact that the writings are all casual. In no case are the authors specifically or systematically dealing with the problem, being not theologians so much as practi- cal Apostles, dealing with the ethical questions of the Churches and with individual salvation.
(a) In the Johannine writings are found many l^rinciples of truth on which far-reaching inferences may legitimately enough be founded, such as the assertion that ' God is light, and in him is no darkness at all' (1 Jn P) ; but there is no evidence that the writer liad apprehended these logical inferences.
(b) In the First Epistle of Peter two important passages are 1 P 318-20 g^j^j 46^ which, in spite of a considerable weight of adverse exegesis which for- bids any dogmatic assertion based upon the words, may fairly be taken as suggesting that the scoj^e of redemption is not limited to the present scene. The Apostle has the conception of an underworld from which a moral process is not excluded.