THE Four Last Things, in theological language, are Death, The Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Death, as we have seen in a preceding chapter, not only closes man’s probation, but, so far as the sinful are concerned, ends the divine goodness, converts the love of God into hatred, and his mercy into revenge. “As death leaves us, so judgment will find us,” has grown into a maxim in orthodox circles, and is supposed to carry with it a most fearful import.
To the unrepentant it is the knell of all hope, the unfailing prophecy of all forms of direst calamity. After death nothing remains to them but a certain fearful looking-for of judgment.
Their day of probation is brought to a close, their dread accounts are made up, and they may well utter the lamentation of the prophet: “The harvest is passed, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” And if not saved before the termination of this present life, no salvation is possible! “It is only in the present state of trial and under the present proposals of grace,” says Dr. Watts, “that sleeping sinners can be awakened into spiritual and divine life.” And this is the common opinion of the orthodox world. Here we are in a state of probation; beyond the grave we enter at once upon a state of retribution that has no end. “Men,” says Dr. Pond, “are on probation for judgment, and for the retributions of eternity. It is for their characters while on probation that they will hereafter be called into judgment, and for their deeds while in the body that they will be rewarded or punished beyond the grave. This being the case, the grand design of probation seems to be to furnish those who are placed upon it such opportunity for the formation and development of moral character as will best prepare them to stand in the judgment, and to meet its everlasting awards.”
But plain and true as this appears to the religious world about me, it does not commend itself to my reason or my understanding of the Scriptures. It avails nothing, however, to suggest to the advocates of this doctrine that the time allotted, even the longest, is still very short for such a being as man to prepare for “everlasting awards.” It is only a moment in comparison with the eternity whose character it is to shape, and whose infinite happiness or misery it is to determine. Nor is it more availing to urge that all the conditions of this very brief probation are as various and as unequal as it is possible to conceive, so that the destinies of immortal souls seem to be settled by accident or caprice rather than by any recognized principles of equity. As I have before taken occasion to say, our fate, according to the orthodox theory, is already determined, so far as any action of our own is concerned, by the very circumstances of our existence. We are born totally depraved, and under God’s wrath and curse; and we are as incapable of doing anything to improve our moral condition as we are to change the course of the planets. We are placed under probation, as it is called, for a few days, to prepare for the judgment, and to meet its everlasting awards.
If God does not interpose by his irresistible grace, is there any doubt what the issue will be? Bound hand and foot, our salvation depends, we are told, on our rising and coming off victors in a race and a fight; and yet it is certain that we can neither rise nor run. Still it avails nothing to say to our religious neighbors that in granting man the boon of this probation, and thus affording him, as Dr. Pond expresses it, “another opportunity of securing everlasting life,” God must have foreseen what our religious friends now recognize so clearly, that it would prove a most disastrous failure, and result, as they are constrained to confess, in the damnation, under aggravated guilt, of vastly more than it would save. The scheme itself must have been a very bad one, or these theologians take a very bad view of it. A moral government that has been in operation these six thousand years, and yet is at the present time consigning fifty thousand heathen souls every day to the endless torments of hell, to say nothing of the multitude of nominal Christians who suffer the same fate, obviously demands some important modifications before it can justify its claims to a divine origin.
The doctrine of a final judgment necessarily stands connected with that of probation, as that word is generally understood. If mortals are here on trial to see if they will serve the purpose for which they were created, there must, of course, come a time when this shall be determined, and the probation end. If I buy a horse on condition that the animal upon trial proves satisfactory to me,—and this is the popular notion of probation,—it is evident that I am not to use the horse indefinitely; the probation must have a limit, and then I either pay the price or return the animal, according to contract.
Our theologians, without any ostensible reason, and certainly without any warrant of Scripture, have fixed upon the moment of death as the extreme limit of this period of human trial, and this, as I have before observed, without the slightest regard to its duration or the circumstances under which it is passed,—whether it lasts one hour, one month, a year, or a century; or whether it is attended by the best opportunities for “securing everlasting life,” indifferent ones, or no opportunities at all! In this cast-iron scheme it matters not, as we have seen, whether one is born under the light of the gospel or in pagan darkness; if he dies unrepentant and without faith in Jesus Christ, he is inevitably lost. It matters not whether one is brought up under the best domestic and social influences or the worst. Under this kind of probation there must occur many events at which angels as well as men would be somewhat surprised.
An innocent girl—innocent, I mean, as the world speaks, not as theologians talk—is instantly killed by a hardened ruffian. She dies unrepentant and without that vital Christian faith deemed necessary for salvation, and goes to hell. Her murderer is arrested, tried, condemned, converted, and passes from the gallows to the eternal felicities of heaven! There are very few men capitally punished who are not reported as dying good Christians. Indeed, if we may believe our religious neighbors, far more murderers, and others guilty of capital crimes, in proportion to their numbers, die “prepared for the judgment and the awards of eternity,” than of honest and reputable people who die in their beds! And this startling fact, I remember, was years ago sometimes appealed to as an argument for capital punishment.
With the close of life, then, comes also the close of our probation; and whatever may be the moral condition of the soul, or under whatever advantages or disadvantages formed, it is immediately “called to stand in the judgment and meet its everlasting awards.” President Dwight gives us a simple yet graphic account of this solemn and infinitely important transaction. “The soul after death,” he says, “returns immediately to God to give an account of its conduct in the present life. . . . It will be furnished with a power of recollection sufficiently capacious to comprehend all that it has done, and will be compelled to declare it without disguise, enhancement, or evasion. Its secret chambers, and all which they contain or have ever contained, will be laid open to its own eye as well as to that of its Maker. In this manner, the motives by which it has been governed, and the moral character which it has sustained during its probation, will be so entirely developed as to satisfy even itself that the investigation has been just as well as complete.
“The sentence of God will be pronounced in perfect righteousness on all it has done. To those who have done the will of God, loved his character, believed on his Son, and turned away from their iniquities, he will say: ‘Well done, good and faithful servants; ye have been faithful over a few things; I will make you rulers over many things; enter ye into the joy of your Lord.’ Of those who have refused or neglected to do these things he will say: ‘Take ye the unprofitable servants and cast them into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ In consequence of this sentence the soul will immediately enter upon a state of reward.” Dr. Watts expresses this thought very neatly, so far as relates to the wicked, in his paraphrase of the words of the Preacher, “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return to God who gave it,” thus:—
- The dust returns to dust again:
- The soul in agonies of pain
- Ascends to God; not there to dwell,
- She hears h er doom, and sinks to hell.
What occasion there can be after this for a General Judgment I fail entirely to apprehend, nor do I remember ever to have seen any satisfactory reason assigned. This judgment immediately after death, though it may be regarded as personal and private, is perfectly righteous, founded, as we have seen, on a complete investigation of the case. All the facts have been brought into view and duly considered; the sentence has been rendered, and execution taken place. Can any one suggest a reason for a rehearing or a new trial? The facts remain unchanged, the Judge is the same, the law the same; and can the sentence be different?
Yet upon no subject have orthodox divines dwelt more frequently or expatiated with greater freedom and effect than the General Judgment. And as the Scriptures certainly say very little upon it, so the larger scope is given to the imagination, and in consequence of this the scene has been filled with whatever each individual felt or fancied to be most impressive, alarming, or august. Hence it is hardly to be expected that where so much is left to mere conjecture or speculation there should be any very exact agreement in respect to details, and we ought to be content with the most general harmony in the great leading features, the merest outline, of so momentous a transaction. That the General Judgment is immediately to succeed the resurrection of the dead seems to be the almost universal belief, as it also is that it is immediately to precede the end of the world. As generally described, this whole series of transactions is to be attended with amazing pomp.
At the sound of the trumpet of the archangel the dead are to arise, that is, as is more commonly thought, the dead bodies; the souls of all the dead are already in heaven or hell, but at the resurrection they will be reunited, that they may be rewarded or punished together, as it was together here in their lifetime that they did well or ill, and merited the retribution that awaits them. The judgment is to take place here on the earth, where the whole human race will be assembled. The souls of the wicked will be summoned from hell, and those of the righteous will come with Christ from heaven, in company with all the holy angels, and with infinite glory. The righteous will be placed at the right hand of the Judge, and the wicked at the left, and the proceedings of the trial are to pass largely in the mass, those on the right hand being welcomed and blessed, while those upon the left will be pronounced accursed.
The saints will ascend with Christ to the heavens and enter upon a state of unending felicities, and the damned will descend into hell, or, as President Edwards believed, will be swallowed up in the conflagration of the world and of these lower heavens, which will immediately follow the final sentence. The whole scene is spectacular, or at most it is only exhibiting in the eye of the universe the final judgment of the righteous and the wicked, which had already been passed upon them individually as they died, but is now thus gloriously displayed. But, as I before said, it changes the destiny of no one,—it determines nothing, except with the few who chance to be living at this dread moment,—but merely calls the saints and sinners from their respective awards to be united with their long-lost bodies and return to their happiness or their misery again.
According to President Edwards and Rev. Mr. Spurgeon, as we have already seen, the felicity of heaven and the misery of hell will now for the first time be complete.
But passing this and many other things directly or incidentally connected with this great subject, there is one point which I especially desire to emphasize and press upon the mind of the reader, namely, that the whole proceeding in this judgment, whether it is enacted once or twice, relates exclusively to human conduct in the present life. As Dr. Pond says: “It is for their deeds while in the body that they will be rewarded or punished beyond the grave;” or, to repeat the words of President Dwight, “the motives by which the soul has been governed, and the moral character it has sustained, during its probation,” are the things to be investigated, and upon which judgment will be rendered. “The last great day is just at hand,” says Dr. Watts; “then we must give an account of all that has been done in the body, whether it has been good or evil.” In a word, without quoting more authorities to a point so plain, and a fact so necessary to the harmony and completeness of the orthodox doctrine of probation, our eternal destiny is suspended wholly upon our conduct in the present life, the deeds done in the body, and the character we form in this world.
This is the general statement; though it would be more exact to say that our final destiny depends upon the attitude of the soul towards God and Christ at the moment of death. It matters little what one’s life has been or what character he has formed; a moment’s action of the soul but an instant before death may annul or reverse it all. Let a man live ever so bad a life, and yet sincerely repent the moment before he dies, and believe on Christ, and is there any one who doubts his salvation? On the other hand, let one live ever so good a life, filling his days with prayer and charities, and yet commit one sin, even in thought, the moment before he expires, and die with that sin unrepented and unforgiven, and if there is any truth in the doctrine of probation, he will, without doubt, be damned everlastingly. It is this circumstance that gives to death its vast importance and its most terrible and alarming features; and hence the question commonly asked—the only question that really has any significance—is, not how a man has lived, but how he died.
Under this theory of religion, “all is well that ends well.” And as no one educated in the orthodox faith intends or expects to die in his sins, but generously assumes that before he leaves the world he shall, by one means or another, “get religion,” and thus be insured against the just punishment of his iniquities, he is enabled to avoid, for the present, what he has been taught to regard as the burdens and self-sacrifices of a religious life, and enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Death is generally distant to human view, and men have heard sung, and perhaps sung themselves, that
- While the lamp holds out to burn,
- The vilest sinner may return;
and as there is time enough before them, they do not doubt that before the fatal hour arrives, they will, as they propose, have set their house in order, and thus gain both this world and the next.
It is a little remarkable that the advocates of our popular doctrine of probation do not perceive that their favorite theory involves all the ill-consequences they so freely charge upon the larger and better faith. They think that if any opportunity for repentance and salvation were hoped for beyond the present life, no one would ever repent in this. But they do not seem to reflect that mere extension of the time does not affect the principle. On the same reasoning no man would repent this year who expected to live to the next, or to-day, if he hoped to survive till to-morrow. Hence it happens that the most earnest appeals to men to become Christians are made to rest on the uncertainty of life and the danger of a sudden death! President Edwards, as we have seen, often dwelt on this point, and endeavored to impress his hearers with the alarming fact that natural men never go to sleep but they are in danger of waking up in hell!
Yet, owing to the native depravity of the human heart, a great many who were constant attendants upon his ministry, and listened year after year to his powerful discourses, remained unconverted. Perhaps the very doctrine of their total depravity, and their utter inability to do anything well pleasing to God, or that could in any way contribute to their salvation, may have served as a counterpoise to his earnest exhortations to repentance and faith, and the good works becoming a Christian. The poor sinner often finds himself in most embarrassing circumstances when told that his welfare for eternity depends on his tempers and conduct in time, and is yet assured that he can no more regulate those tempers and conduct in a manner to meet the approbation of God than a blind man can open his own eyes, or a dead man raise himself from the grave.