Suts even the cruellest of murderers to a painless eath. We, who dare not torture, cannot conceive that God's administration includes endless torment.
4. Passing from simpler moral considerations to a religious speculation, we note that optimism enters into every theistic creed. In some sense — in the deepest sense — what happens in God's world is the best. It is best that evil should be per- mitted, should show what is in itself, should be conquered. Above all, when God's providence and grace have reached their goal in history, we must be able to say, ' It is best.' Again, God is omnipo- tent. He cannot, of course, do anything formally impossible or inherently absurd ; nor can He ' deny Himself.' But any lawful desire of His children He can and will supply. All that He has is ours, for we are 'heirs of God.' He acts in His own way, according to His own will ; yet He grants what we desire, or something better. This is the key which unlocks the riddles of our private lives. Its grandest and most public application is found in redemption. God could not, or would not, ignore the world's sin. He did what was far better, when He sent Jesus Christ. Now, here it seems incomparably the divinest issue of history that redemption should prove universal, and God all in all, not through slaughter of His enemies ( ' Order reigns in Warsaw'), still less through chaining them in hopeless misery and hatred, but through winning in every heart that victory which, in some of the hardest and darkest of hearts, Christ has won already.
' His blood can make the foulest clean ; His blood availed for me.'
Again, God is our Father Men have said in the writer's hearing, — some lightly, some with the profoundest gravity and tenderness, — ' I could leave no child of mine to endless misery. Can God do that?' We, being evil, cannot but raise this ques- tion. Our Maker must answer it.
5. On the other hand, we cannot banish from our minds the tendency of character to set, for good or for evil. As we know it, this tendency remains incomplete. None are perfect, nor may we regard any as beyond rescue. But even a child learns how repetition facilitates either evil or good, and how a delayed reform grows harder and less likely to be achieved. It is no skirmish or sham fight
for which we are enlisted. As right differs from Avrong by the whole diameter of being, so the issues of the life that has been won for righteous- ness and love must differ from those of the life that has willingly preferred sin. Measured and limited ill-consequence is in no sort of proportion to the infinite evil of wilful wickedness ; and the rhetoric of universalism in the minds of those who ' eddy round and round ' is the lazy and lying assurance, ' It will come to the same thing in the end.' God cannot brook this. He must needs threaten sin with its wages ; and we have no right to affirm that the most awful of all threats is but an empty or ideal possibility. So, longing with full hearts for a universal restitution of lost souls, we must leave this theme of mystery and terror upon the steps of the Redeemer's throne of grace.
Literature. — Besides the works cited in the art., cf. Salmond, Chr. Doct. of Immortality, 628 ; J. A. Beet, Last Things, 203 ; Newman Smyth, Orthodox Theol. of To-day, 55 ; Alcott, ' Uni- versalism a Progressive Faith ' in New World, iii. (1894), 38.
Robert Mackintosh. UNLEAVENED BREAD.— See Passover.
UNPARDONABLE SIN.— The expression is not a Scriptural one, but rests partly upon a saying of Jesus reported in different forms by all the Synop- tists, and partly upon two analogous passages in Hebrews and one in 1 John. It is only with the saying in the Gospels that we are directly con- cerned, but the passages in the Epistles must be glanced at as bearing upon our interpretation of Christ's words, and something must be said also as to the place of the subject in Christian experience.
1. In the Gospels. — It is the solemn declaration of Jesus that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall never be forgiven which forms our funda- mental authority. In an examination of these words, several points have to be considered. (1) The occasion of the utterance. — Both Mt. and Mk. connect the saying with calumnious charges of the scribes and Pharisees, based upon our Lord's action in curing demoniacs (Mt 12-^2fts ^k S^-^^ff-). Lk.
gives it a different setting (12^'''- ; cf. II''"''-) ; but while it is possible that Jesus used the words on separate occasions, there can be little question that, if He spoke them only once, it is from Mt. and Mk. that we get the proper historical con- nexions. His work in delivering demoniacs from tJie power of evil spirits had deeply impressed the multitude, who, according to Mt. (12-*), began to ask, 'Is this the Son of David?' But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, ' This man doth not cast out devils but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils' (v. 24, Mk 3^2; cf. Lk \V% Jesus showed the absurdity of such a charge, considered from the point of view of mere reason and common sense (Mt 1225ff-, Mk S^sff-, Lk 11"«'-). And then, suddenly changing His tone as He passed from the logical weakness of His adversaries to lay His finger on their moral and spiritual fault, He uttered those memorable words in Avhich He declared that while all other sins and blasphemies, even blasphemy against Himself, shall be forgiven, whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit shall never be forgiven (Mt 12*i- ^^, Mk 32«- ^s ; cf. Lk 12i»).