That Unknown Country

Or
What Living Men Believe Concerning
Punishment After Death
Together with
The Whole Field Explored
Every Source of Wisdom, Past and Present, Made Tributary
To the Illumination of this Theme
MAN’S FINAL DESTINY
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Springfield, Mass.
The C.A. Nichols Co. Publishers
W.C. Teeter
Dayton, Ohio
1892 (original copyright 1888)
(Chapter 3, Universalism)

Introduction by Gary Amirault, 2013: The older we get the more we think upon the after-life or after-death. “That Unknown Country” is a collection of thoughts from prominent theologians and professors of the late 1800’s in the United States on what happens to human beings beyond the grave. While most of the scholars were from Christian denominations and movements, the book contains entries from Judaism and the Moslem religion. The late 1800s was a time in which theology had much new information to consider. Textual criticism, Darwinism, science and other fields presented challenges to the traditional views that held sway over many centuries. New denominations like Universalism presented strong challenges to the “old time religion.” The following essay is by Rev. John Coleman Adams, D.D. who was the pastor of St. Paul’s Universalist Church in Chicago Illinois. This essay is chapter 3 from the book, “That Unknown Country” dealing with Christian Universalism as it had evolved by the end of the nineteenth century. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries with new understandings of time, space and matter would present more challenges for all denominations of Christianity as mankind gained deeper understanding of the nature of life and death.  

CHAPTER III.
Universalism Holds That The Whole Tenor Of Scripture Points To The Final Recovery And Holiness Of The Whole Human Race.

All Punishment must be Salutary, Disciplinary, Remedial, not Vengeful; and whatever Punishment may be Needed in the World to Come, to Bring Souls to Repentance, will be Administered Parentally, not Vindictively.—Salvation from Sin and its Deformities is the Normal Destiny of Every Soul.—Repentance and Abandonment of all Evil the Means to this End.—The Spiritual Progress wrought by Christianity is and must be toward the Universal Emancipation from Vice.—The Good of the Race Manifestly Attainable by a Terminable Punishment.—Christianity Tends to Conviction that there ought to be a Higher Aim in Punishment than Vengeance.—God's Judgments and Retributions are in the Nature of Love and Reclamation, not in Hatred.—An Aimless, Unmitigated, and Eternal Curse upon any Creature not Characteristic of the Beneficence of Deity.—The Work of Salvation not Limited to the Present Physical Life.—This Fact Covers all the Relations of Christ and Eternity to the Heathen and to those who Perished before He came on Earth, or who have never Known Him in this Life.—Suffering and Discipline for Continued Sinful Choice extend into the Future World, until, in God's Economy, the Will finally makes Free Choice of Good.—The Losses and Penalties Entailed by Sin in the Moral Nature are Repaired, in the Future Life, only after Periods of Unknown Duration.

By Rev. John Coleman Adams, D. D., Pastor of St. Paul's Universalist Church, Chicago, Illinois.

The position of Universalists in reference to the belief in future punishment may be stated in few words. They hold that, as it is clear that many men die in their sins, and as it is equally clear that the Scriptures teach that God purposes to save all men from their sins, therefore, two inferences follow: first, that all punishment must be salutary, disciplinary, remedial; and, second, that whatever punishment may be needed, in the world to come, to bring souls to repentance, will be administered. Whatever differences of opinion there may be as to particulars, this general statement covers the faith of all classes of Universalists.

It is, however, well understood that as to these particulars there has been some variety of belief among the modern Universalists. The early believers in this faith, in America, held to the doctrine of limited future punishment. Hosea Ballou, in his later years, held that "the Scriptures begin and end the history of sin, in flesh and blood; and that, beyond this mortal existence, the Bible teaches no other sentient state but that which is called by the blessed name of life and immortality"; and beyond the teaching of Scripture he refused to dogmatize or speculate. Many of his followers, however, were not so scrupulous, but disbelieved in any future punishment. For the last thirty years there has been a reaction from the opinions of this class of Universalists, and it has been more and more widely taught that the present and the future life are organically one, so that the moral consequences of conduct and the character of the soul run beyond the limit of death, affecting at least the beginning of the soul's disembodied condition. In justice to those who have been popularly known as "Ballou Universalists," it is to be distinctly remembered that neither they, nor Ballou, ever held that death wrought a miraculous change in the soul, but only that the ineffable glory and impressiveness of the future would so affect the mind and heart that the impenitent soul, just entering the immortal life, would be irresistibly drawn to the disposition of humility and love. Death was not in their thoughts a savior of souls, but merely the transcendent opportunity for impressing, persuading, and converting the soul. It is probable that the views of the majority of believers in Universalism, in this country, are expressed in the words of a minute adopted at the Boston Ministers' Meeting in 1878. "Whatever differences in regard to the future may exist among us, none of us believe the horizon of eternity will be relatively either largely or for a long time overcast by the clouds of sin or punishment, and in coming into the enjoyment of salvation, whenever that may be, all the elements of penitence, forgiveness, and regeneration are involved. Justice and mercy will then be seen to be entirely at one, and God will be all in all."

It is to an exposition of the views of that portion of Universalist believers who accept the doctrine of future punishment that I address myself.

In the first place, it is assumed and asserted that the human race needs salvation. Sin is universal with our race. The moral life of man is narrowed and corrupted by moral evil. The selfish and disobedient use of the will demoralizes human nature. It throws the soul into disorder, deranges its functions, and disorganizes its life. It is not merely a retardal of the soul's development; it distorts the inner nature, and smites it with disease and deformity. So that something more than progress is necessary to bring the soul into true and normal relations with God and his law. Salvation implies the correction of evil and abnormal conditions, the removal of corrupting influences, the consent of the will to the divine order and commandment. If that condition of the soul is not brought about in this life, if death finds the soul still in revolt, still in subjection to evil dispositions, still defiant, perverse, or corrupt, clearly that soul is unsaved. Nor is salvation possible, in any true sense, until the soul has been reclaimed from these conditions, and inwardly renewed. Universalism is at one with the whole course of Christian belief from the beginning, in recognizing the evil of sin, its essential character as resistance to the divine order, the necessity for its removal by repentance, conversion, and regeneration,—that is, by a recognition of its enormity, a resolve to forsake it, and the assumption of a right disposition and life toward God. That this condition has not been reached by multitudes, perhaps one may say by the majority, of those who pass out of this life, is a proposition which needs no word of supporting argument. It is universally conceded.

But this condition of salvation is the good toward which, in the providence of God, all souls are moving. This is the most natural inference from the world's past as that is read by science; it is the prophecy of the world's future, as announced in the pages of revelation.

For the inference to which a knowledge of man's past leads intelligent minds is, that the moral life of the human race is a long march of gain and progress. The earliest moral beings may have been innocent. They did not long remain so. Sin entered into life, and the weary struggle for virtue began. The progress of that struggle has been a steady triumph of the better over the worse, the higher nature over the lower. The work of past ages has all tended toward the moral emancipation of mankind. The great virtues which are characteristic of man's higher life have commended themselves more and more to human souls; and justice, purity, benevolence, self-sacrifice, love, have come to fill a larger and a more favorable place in human ideals. Warlike and brutal instincts are slowly weakening. Man's susceptibility to improvement increases with each generation. In the language of Dr. Flint (Theism, p. 231), "In the struggle of good and evil which pervades all the ages, victory is seen slowly but steadily declaring itself for the good. The vices die,—the virtues never die. Some great evils which once afflicted our race have passed away. What great good has ever been lost? Justice carries it over injustice in the end." The consenting voices of all candid students of history affirm the moral progress of the race from the earliest days up to the present. And it is impossible not to project the lines thus started into the future, and predict the final emancipation of the race from all evil, and prophesy its ultimate freedom from sin. One prophet of the scientific school has already done this in words which voice the general consent of thoughtful minds: "The future is lighted for us with the radiant colors of hope. Strife and sorrow shall disappear. Peace and love shall reign supreme. The dream of poets, the lesson of priest and prophet, the inspiration of the great musician, is confirmed in the light of modern knowledge; and, as we gird ourselves up for the work of life, we may look forward to the time when, in the truest sense, the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of Christ, and he shall reign forever, King of kings and Lord of lords."—John Fiske's Destiny of Man, p. 119.

These hopeful predictions of those who have made a study of the history and the tendencies of the human race are, of course, but the inductions from experience. For the Christian they must still be compared with the utterances of revelation. If the believer finds a conflict between what reason derives from man's past and what inspiration announces as to the future, he must be plunged into a double perplexity. If he finds an agreement he will be doubly strengthened in his faith. Universalism holds that the whole tenor of Scripture points to the final holiness of the race. The announcement is early made that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head. It is followed by the promise to Abraham that in his seed shall every nation of the earth be blessed. The prophet affirms, in the name of the Lord, the decree that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess to righteousness and strength in the Lord, and declares of the Divine One that he shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied. These words, uttered out of the assurance of hearts that had not yet seen the Messiah, are more than echoed in the declaration of our Saviour himself and of those who carried his gospel abroad. Again and again are reiterated those promises which lead us to trust in the final recovery of all souls. He who was described as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world, and of whom it was said that he tasted death for every man, and that he gave his life a ransom for all, himself declared that he would draw all men unto him, that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that of all that had been given him he would lose nothing,—thus justifying his title, the Saviour of the world. To the same effect are the prophetic outbursts of the apostles announcing a day when the creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, when God shall have gathered together all things in Christ, when by the blood of the cross he shall have reconciled all things unto himself, the day of restitution of all things, when at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, when they all shall say, Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb forever, the day in which there shall be no more curse, and in which death and hell shall be cast into the lake of fire; the day in which Christ shall have delivered all things unto the Father, when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power, and God shall be all in all. In such a day, prophesied by the consenting voices of scientific knowledge and of inspired prophecy, we implicitly believe.

A faith so radical and so comprehensive as this involves, of necessity, a thorough re-examination of our conceptions of the nature and object of penalty, under its double form of punishment and discipline. It has never been possible to assign a reason for endless punishment which did not clash with our faith in the divine love and wisdom. The only assignable cause for it has been, at last, that repugnant word, vengeance. For it has never been shown why the good of the race could not be secured just as well by a terminable punishment; nor why an endless term of sin and suffering contributed in any wise to the glory of God, or to the joy of the redeemed. Justice does not demand it and mercy cries out against it. And whoever attempts to defend the dogma which teaches it, finds himself dealing with the whole subject of retribution upon a plane of thought and sentiment which the world has been outgrowing for the last thousand years. For it is one of the marks of the influence of Christianity upon human thought, that it has led men to the conviction that there ought to be a higher aim in punishment than mere vengeance. In all enlightened communities men are coming, year by year, to insist that the aim of punishment shall be to reform the offender, at the same time that it deters others from crime. It has already become apparent that human society will never rest satisfied with any method of penalty which does not at once involve the principles of restraint and cure. Already, at this comparatively early date in the history of penology, men are extremely reluctant to admit that any case of confirmed criminality is incorrigible. "Give us time and resources," they say, "and we could reclaim the most inveterate sinner." The effect of this reasoning upon theological thought has been inevitable. It has unsettled all the old notions of the nature of divine punishments. Christian thought, to-day, runs strongly toward the Universalist belief that God's judgments are sent in mercy. He pursues us with his retributions, because of the infinite and tender love he bears us; a love which is outraged by the disobedience of the sinner, and is absolutely and forever committed to our salvation. He who believes implicitly in the love of God, believes in a retribution as sure and relentless as the unchanging nature of God himself. He believes in a retribution which will not let the sinner go until it has brought him to the gates of salvation: a penalty whose end and aim is to deliver and to purify. The divine wrath is no mere spleen of the Infinite against a neglectful or defiant creature. It is not merely the reaction of outraged justice. It is not the outbreak of exhausted patience, or of affection turned to hatred. It is the inevitable and inherent hostility of the Infinite Purity against what is unholy and depraved. It is the parent's repugnance to whatever can sully the nature of his child. God's penalties are not the outcome of a vengeance untempered by mercy. They are, first, last, and always, the promptings of pity, the precautions of mercy, the effort of love to save and deliver. They are the warnings of the Heavenly Compassion, they are the chastisements of the Divine Will. They are co-ordinated with all the milder persuasions and drawings of the divine nature for the salvation of souls. Any other conception of punishment in God's hands must inevitably make it an offense against the highest instincts of our nature, the implications of experience, the dictates of reason. To conceive of punishment as endlessly prolonged, with no effect but to harden the object of its severities, is to charge upon Deity the infliction of an aimless curse unmitigated by any redeeming sign of beneficence. The endless infliction of pain, with no ulterior aim, would not be punishment; it would be revenge.

We are greatly assisted in our thoughts of the moral economy of God in respect to punishment, if we comprehend the teachings of Jesus as to the eternal life. The kingdom of heaven is not of this world. It is not framed with reference to the cycles of time which limit the life of the body and its earthly dwelling-place. Its lines run above and beyond the limitations of this earth's centuries. The eternal life is the life of the aeons or ages. It takes no account of physical incidents or accidents, not even of death itself, being related to the immortal soul and to its undying essence. To limit the work of salvation to the present life is to pervert the very substance of the gospel. Death assumes no importance in the sight of our Lord. To him it was an entirely subordinate incident of our spiritual existence. To him eternity is a present fact, eternal laws in present operation, eternal life within reach of present effort. And the life thus begun goes on without interruption by death. The laws thus ordained are in force wherever there are moral beings. The work of salvation is not limited to the world of our physical life. It begins here, indeed, but its development is beyond the line of death and sense. It is started in the body; but before it is done the body has fallen. The reign of the Son of man is a period which transcends the limits of time and death. It is a vast cycle which, dating from the birth of Jesus the Christ in this earth, ends only with the subjection of all things in holiness unto God. "Then cometh the end." But the work of salvation is the one distinguishing feature of this kingdom and reign of the Lord. It is for this that he came, for this that he labors. And if his reign among souls is to continue until "he hath put all enemies under his feet," clearly the work and the period of salvation must be coextensive with each other, and must reach far beyond the sight and knowledge of our present faculties, into the future life.

This thought furnishes an answer to those inevitable questions in regard to the heathen, to those who perished before they ever knew Christ, to those who passed from the earth before he came. If his kingdom overruns this life, and goes on in other states and conditions, we must think of him as having a relation to souls in the life beyond, as reigning in the unseen world. The New Testament describes him, after life on earth is over, as "sitting on the right hand of God." What other meaning are we to attach to that phrase than to conceive it as the announcement that he has a work in the heavens? He labors for souls wherever souls are to be labored for. Redemption is not a process of this earth merely. It is a work of the ages. Salvation is a word not based on time relations, but upon principles enduring into the aions. While there is a soul unsaved that work must go on. When all are saved "then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all."

It is a striking fact that this teaching of the New Testament, respecting the kingdom of Christ, is supported and further enforced by the philosophical principle, so conspicuous in modern thought, of the unity of the divine methods. It is a necessary corollary of the belief in one God, whose scepter sways all worlds, that we should believe in the unity and the uniformity of his government. If there is one God for all worlds, then for all worlds there is one moral law. The principles of the Almighty's reign are neither transient nor variable. In all times and in all places he executes his purposes with unalterable fidelity to his own nature. Since that cannot change, the fundamentals of the moral law cannot alter. Neither can the soul's relations to this law and its workings. This much we are entirely safe in affirming as necessary results of a belief in God's universal government.

And of course it follows, from these reflections, that we only do what the mind has a perfect right to do, in projecting the principles of the divine government, in its dealing with sinful souls, even into the future life, and claiming that the same distinctions, the same moral laws, hold good for the unseen life, as hold in this visible world. We may safely imitate the physical philosopher, who affirms the universality of the law of gravitation, and assures us that we could use our text-books on geometry in any of the stars. So it must be true that the laws on which God has framed his moral universe are everywhere the same, and that they apply with the same force to souls in the unseen life as in this. The moral law is a unit. Its workings must always be the same under given circumstances.

If, now, we assume the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and the belief of the perpetuity of personal identity,—two propositions which it is taken for granted we agree to,—and if we allow the universality of the moral law, have we not ample foundations upon which to base a belief in the continuity of both discipline and penalty into the future life? Under the laws of this moral universe in which we live, the doers of righteousness are invariably blessed, while the doers of evil are uniformly afflicted. So long as a soul continues to make a choice of evil things, it must rest under the displeasure of God, as well as suffer the penalties which flow out of that abhorrence of the All-Holy, for iniquity. Unless it can be distinctly shown, either by the laws of man's moral nature, or by the express declaration of Scripture, that the soul ceases to choose evil immediately after death, we must believe that it is exercised in the future by the same suffering, and chastened by the same discipline, as are inflicted in this life for the same sinful choice. The presumption must be, if we hold to the doctrine that immortality is the continuity of the life of the soul in a spiritual body, that the soul retains its moral quality, its affections, and its antipathies, for a time, at least, after it has left the environment in which these were begotten. Without the most explicit grounds for a contrary belief, we must regard the soul as retaining in the next world the character formed in this, until the conditions of that state have time to work out the salvation which it is the aim of all God's economy to effect.

It will be said, of course, that the physical body is the cause, or the inducement, to sin, and that when the body is struck off the soul will cease from the acts which were the consequences of physical conditions. But we must protest, in the strongest manner, against a theory like this, which completely inverts the moral facts of the soul's life, and reads the spiritual history of man upside down. It is not true to the facts to lay the blame of man's sinfulness upon his body. For what is sin? It is a conscious, willful violation of law. But can the body either be conscious of, or will, a violation of law? The conscience, which apprehends the law, the will, which elects to violate it, and the consciousness, which appropriates these acts as those of a person, are all spiritual faculties. They are entirely independent of the body, and inhere in the soul. The whole process of a sinful act is therefore inward and spiritual, and can occur without the co-operation of the body. The physical act only carries out what has already taken place in the mind. And in the face of so many sins, like envy, hate, deceit, insincerity, pride, stubbornness, which are entirely independent of the body in their origin, it is not wise to say that all sin has its occasion in the body. The affirmation is not true. And any assumption of immediate loss at death of disposition to sin, based on this theory of the connection between the soul and the body, must be given up. The disposition to sin lies in the soul. No sinner is saved until that disposition is changed. Removal of all occasions or provocations to sin by no means removes the disposition. So that it is not to be granted that the separation of the soul from the body removes the inclination to evil choice. That is a fault of the affections and the will. Granting that the separation of the soul from the body removes it from many temptations; granting that it destroys the hold of many gross appetites; it is nevertheless to be distinctly remembered that this is not the conversion of the soul. The will, which in this life so often chooses righteousness, in spite of the solicitations of the senses, does not, in the next life, lose the inclination to sin because the outward suggestion of wrong has gone. That will not be overcome until the heart has learned the hatred of sin.

It must be said, in this connection, that this doctrine of salvation by cancellation of the opportunities and the suggestions of sin is not warranted by our experiences in this life. The divine method here is not to save the soul by subtracting from it all passions and powers which might lead it astray. The very problem of life supposes the constant presence of these possibilities of evil, and requires us to find a way of doing right, in spite of them all.
Souls are not saved in this life by the sudden and complete removal of temptation, the benumbing of every sense which might convey an unholy hint, the amputation of every offending member. No amount of stripping away the surroundings of life alters the complexion of the soul, any more than picking a child out of the gutter washes his face. The will is not converted when it is put where it cannot reach the means of executing its evil inclinations. That removal by no means implies an inward renewal. There can be no such thing as salvation, in this or any other world, under the moral economy of God, without cost to the sinner. He must pay the price of submission. He must surrender his own perverse will to the Divine Will, must make the supreme effort of personal consent to the law of the universe, or he is yet in his sins. And however useful the removal of this body may be, as a means of salvation, the fact is never accomplished until the will makes free choice of good.
The belief that the punishment of sins committed in this life extends into the future is strengthened by the fact that this present life affords many instances of what may be called cumulative punishment. It often happens that the consequences of sin, either physical or mental, are held in the leash for a time, and do not fall in force upon the sinful heart until the sin itself is long past. The penalties seem to gather slowly about the soul, until they break in a sort of crisis, and heap disaster on the guilty heart. Penalty does not keep even pace with transgression. As the old proverb runs, "God does not pay us our wages every Saturday night." Still less does he always pay as fast as the work is done. The divine judgments are not all of them as swift as the bolt which crashes through the air when two clouds surcharged with the electric fluid near each other. They are frequently as slow in culminating as are those storms which gather, through many serene days, and finally end a long period of tranquil weather with a violent and devastating gale. This is the case with many an evil life in this world. In many cases, in which death intervenes before any such climax of catastrophe is reached, we feel sure that nothing but the removal of the offender from the earth has saved him from complete overthrow and humiliation. Nor can we repress the question whether death has, after all, diverted the steady drift of events towards such a culmination, or whether in the invisible world there be not in store for him the same judgment of disclosure, shame, and overthrow, as might have overtaken him had he lived on in the earth.

The familiar maxim about getting our punishment as we go along is true only in part. It makes no account of those frequent periods in which judgment is held in suspense, and the leaden feet of Justice delay the blow from her iron hand. There are countless cases in which the mind can find no satisfaction for its sense of justice, except in the thought that the future life hides in its own bosom a scourge of thorns, and that the retribution, which seems only to have befallen in part, will culminate behind the veil.

It remains to speak briefly of that phase of penalty which always endures, even after the act of penitence has removed the sense of alienation from God and the sting of self-condemnation. There are sequences of sin which outlast the punishment of sin. Punishment endures only so long as the soul is consciously violating divine law. Repentance brings forgiveness, and with forgiveness come the remission of sin and the cessation of those retributions which follow the sinner so long as he is a sinner. But, long after he finds that his punishment has ceased, in so far as that was penal, the consequences of his sin endure, in weakened faculties, in lost ground, in degenerate moral fiber, a discipline and a chastisement to his soul. There are losses in moral stamina, in faculty, and in inward capacity for blessedness, which not even forgiveness can immediately remove. They linger even after punishment has ceased. But they are punishments no longer. They have been transformed into chastisements. They are now like the refining and purifying powers by which heaven purges away our evil and our bitterness.

Nor can we hope that even the blessed environments of the immortal world will at once rejuvenate in the graces and powers of the Spirit, by repentance, in all, the weakness and degeneracy wrought by a wicked past. The scars of transgression may remain after the healing of penitence. Nor does it lie within the range of human speculation to estimate how far into the future this negative phase of penalty may run. Even for those who go into the future life with contrite hearts, there may still be in store long periods of remedial disciplines, the necessary intervals in which to remove our defects and correct our imperfections. Upon this point revelation is silent and reason can affirm but little. We have to fall back upon the analogies of God's method in the beginning of the spiritual world, which we have already discerned. It is characteristic of the moral order, as already made manifest, that the sanctification of the soul is accomplished by discipline and by correction.
If, therefore, the peculiarities of this kingdom are preserved in the world to come, it may be expected that whatever remedial or educational influences are necessary to our growth in that life will be applied even to those who have learned submission and obedience. But the agencies by which these disciplines are secured are very different from punishment in its proper sense. The former are compatible with happiness and moral peace; the latter is not. And while discipline will be needful for all who enter the next world, punishment, it may be believed, will only be inflicted where old courses of sin have not yet worked out their results of penalty, or so far as a continuous disposition to do wrong calls for retribution.

We have spoken of death as only an incident in the progress of the work of salvation. But while we accept this for true there is every reason to believe it is an incident fraught with redemptive consequences to the soul. It translates it to new surroundings. It impresses it with realities which a lifetime could never make clear. It is a release from many a phase of temptation. It removes the impediments of bodily frailty or evil habit. It pours a flood of light into the mind. It must powerfully affect the emotions.

Is it possible to conceive that this supreme experience of the soul, the most impressive and the most amazing it has ever known, should be the very one, which, in the providence of God, is made to have no effect on character? If we have any right to our conceptions of death, it should be regarded as the most tremendous event, in its power over the understanding and the affections, which ever has befallen the soul. It is no more than a reasonable inference to believe that death itself, in freeing the spirit from the body with all its environments, in lifting it into the light of a new knowledge, and in thus putting before it new motives and new aspirations, must powerfully affect the will toward righteousness and reconciliation. And thus death itself may go far to hasten the end of those retributions which it cannot in itself interrupt.