Chapter I.

“Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?”—Gen. 18:25.

The following pages are written under the pressure of a deep conviction that the views generally held, as to the future punishment of the ungodly, wholly fail to satisfy the plain statements of Holy Scripture. All forms of partial salvation are but so many different ways of saying, that evil is in the long run too strong for God. The popular creed has maintained itself on a Scriptural basis solely, I believe, by hardening into dogma mere figures of oriental imagery; by mistranslations and misconceptions of the sense of the original (to which our authorised Version largely contributes); and finally, by completely ignoring a vast body of evidence in favour of the salvation of all men, furnished, as will be shewn, by very numerous passages of the New Testament, no less than by the great principles that pervade the teaching of all Revelation. Again, I write, because persuaded, that however loudly asserted and widely held, the popular belief is at best a tradition—is not an Article of Faith in the catholic Church—is accepted by no general Council, nay, is distinctly opposed to the views of not a few of the holiest and wisest Fathers of the Church in primitive times; who, in so teaching, expressed the belief of very many, if not the majority, of christians in their days.

Further, I write, because deeply and painfully convinced of the very serious mischief which has been, and is being, produced by the views generally held. They in fact tend, as nothing else ever has, to cause, I had almost said, to justify, the scepticism now so widely spread; they effect this because they so utterly conflict with any conception we can form of common justice and equity.

Therefore of mercy I shall say little in these pages: it is enough to appeal, when speaking of moral considerations, to that sense of right and wrong which is God’s voice speaking within us. Indeed, among the many misconceptions with which all higher views of the Gospel are assailed, few are more unfounded than that, which asserts that thus God’s justice is forgotten in the prominence assigned to His mercy. This objection merely shews a complete misapprehension of the views here advocated. For these views do in fact appeal to, and by this appeal recognise, first of all, the justice of God. It is precisely the sense of natural equity which God has planted within us, that the popular belief in endless evil and pain most deeply wounds.

And these considerations are in fact a complete answer to some other objections often heard. “Why disturb men’s minds,” it is said, “why unsettle their faith; why not let well alone?” By all means, I reply, let well alone, but never let ill alone. Men’s minds are already disturbed: it is because they are already disturbed that we would calm them, and would restore the doubters to faith, by pointing them to a larger hope, to a truer christianity. A graver objection arises, but, like the former, wholly without foundation in fact. It is said, “By this larger hope you, either weaken or wholly remove all belief in future punishment. You explain away the guilt of sin.” The very opposite is surely the truth, for you establish future punishment, and with it that sense of the reality of sin (to which conscience testifies) on a firm basis, only when you teach a plan of retribution, which is itself reasonable and credible. A penalty which to our reason and moral sense seems shocking, and monstrous, loses all force as a threat. It has ever been thus in the case of human punishments. And so in the case of hell. Outwardly believed, it has ceased to touch the conscience, or greatly to influence the life of christians.

To the mass of men it has become a name and little more (not seldom a jest); to the sceptic it has furnished the choicest of his weapons; to the man of science, and to the more thoughtful of all ranks, a mark for loathing and scorn: while, alas, to many a sad and drooping heart, which longs to follow Christ more closely, it is the chief woe and burden of life. But the conscience, when no longer wounded by extravagant dogmas, is most ready to acquiesce in any measure of retribution (how sharp soever it be) which yet does not shock the moral sense, and conflict with its deepest convictions. And so the larger hope most fully recognises at once the guilt of sin, and the need of fitting retribution: nay, it may be claimed for it, that it alone places both on a firm and solid basis, by bringing them into harmony with the verdict of reason, of conscience and of Holy Scripture.

It is better now for clearness sake, to define that popular view of future punishment, of which I shall often speak. It is briefly this: That the ungodly finally pass into a state of endless evil, of endless torments; that from this suffering there is no hope of escape; that of this evil there is no possible alleviation. That when imagination has called up a series of ages, in apparently endless succession, all these ages of sin and of agony, undergone by the lost, have diminished their cup of suffering by not so much as one single drop; their pain is then no nearer ending than before. Those who hold this terrible doctrine to be a part of the “glad tidings of great joy” to men from their Father in heaven, differ indeed as to the number of the finally lost: some make them to be a majority of mankind, some a minority, even a very small minority. This division of views is instructive, as illustrating the ceaseless revolt of the human heart and conscience against a cruel dogma.

For the Bible is clearly against any such alleviation when read from their own standpoint. The texts on which they rely, if they teach the popular creed at all, teach, just as clearly, that the lost shall be the majority of men. “Many are called but few are chosen.” “Fear not, little flock.” “Narrow is the way that leadeth to life and few there be that find it.” These are our Lord’s own words. They present no difficulty to those who grasp the true meaning of “life,” and “death,” and “election,” the true working of the purpose of Redemption throughout the ages to come.

But they present an insuperable difficulty to that very common form of the traditional creed, which seeks to lighten the horror of endless evil by narrowing its range. Indeed, it seems perfectly clear that the popular view requires us to believe in the final loss of the vast majority of our race. For it is only the truly converted in this life (as it asserts), who reach heaven; and it is beyond all fair question, that of professing christians only a small portion are truly converted; to say nothing of the myriads and myriads of those who have died in Paganism. But even waiving this point, the objections to the popular creed are in no way really lightened by our belief as to the relative numbers of the lost and the saved. The real difficulty consists in the infliction of any such penalty, and not in the number who are doomed to it. Nor need we forget how inconceivably vast must that number be, on the most lenient hypothesis. Take the lowest estimate; and when you remember the innumerable myriads of our race who have passed away —those now living—and those yet unborn—it becomes clear that the number of the lost must be something in its vastness defying all calculation; and of these, all, be it remembered, children of the great Parent—all made in His image—all redeemed by the life blood of His Son; and all shut up for ever and ever (words, of whose awful meaning no man has, or can have, the very faintest conception) in blackness of darkness, in despair, and in the company of devils.

Let me next shew what this hell of the popular creed really means, so far as human words can dimly convey its horrors, and for this purpose I subjoin the following extracts—“Little child, if you go to hell there will be a devil at your side to strike you. He will go on striking you every minute for ever and ever without stopping. The first stroke will make your body as bad as the body of Job, covered, from head to foot, with sores and ulcers. The second stroke will make your body twice as bad as the body of Job. The third stroke will make your body three times as bad as the body of Job. The fourth stroke will make your body four times as bad as the body of Job. How, then, will your body be after the devil has been striking it every moment for a hundred million of years without stopping? Perhaps at this moment, seven o’clock in the evening, a child is just going into hell. To-morrow evening, at seven o’clock, go and knock at the gates of hell and ask what the child is doing. The devils will go and look. They come back again and say, the child is burning. Go in a week and ask what the child is doing; you will get the same answer, it is burning. Go in a year and ask, the same answer comes—it is burning. Go in a million of years and ask the same question, the answer is just the same—it is burning. So, if you go for ever and ever, you will always get the same answer—it is burning in the fire.”—The Sight of Hell. Rev. J. Furniss, C.S.S.R.

“The fifth dungeon is the red hot oven. The little child is in the red hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out; see how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor.”—ib. “Gather in one, in your mind, an assembly of all those men or women, from whom, whether in history or in fiction, your memory most shrinks, gather in mind all that is most loathsome, most revolting * * * conceive the fierce, fiery eyes of hate, spite, frenzied rage, ever fixed on thee, looking thee through and through with hate * * * hear those yells of blaspheming, concentrated hate, as they echo along the lurid vault of hell; everyone hating everyone * * * Yet a fixedness in that state in which the hardened malignant sinner dies, involves, without any further retribution of God, this endless misery.”—Sermon by the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D. “When thou diest thy soul will be tormented alone; that will be a hell for it: but at the day of judgment thy body will join thy soul, and then thou wilt have twin hells, thy soul sweating drops of blood, and thy body suffused with agony. In fire, exactly like that we have on earth, thy body will lie, asbestos like, for ever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for the feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string, on which the devil shall for ever play his diabolical tune of hell’s unutterable lament.”—Sermon on the Resurrection of the Dead. Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. Awful as are these quotations, I must repeat that they give no adequate idea at all of the horrors of hell; for that which is the very sting of its terrors—their unendingness—is beyond our power really to conceive, even approximately: so totally incommensurable are the ideas of time and of endless duration.

But it will be said, “we no longer believe in a material hell—no longer teach a lake of real fire.” I might well ask, on your theory of interpreting Scripture, what right have you so to teach? But let me rather welcome this change of creed, so far as it is a sign of an awakening moral sense. Yet this plea, in mitigation of the horror your doctrines inspire, cannot be admitted; for when you offer for acceptance a spiritual, rather than a material flame, who is there that cannot see that the real difficulty is the same, in either case. If evil in any form is perpetuated then the central difficulty of the traditional creed remains.

Merely to state the traditional doctrine in any form, is to refute it for very many minds. So deeply does it wound what is best and holiest in us; indeed, as I shall try to shew further on, it is, for all practical purposes, found incredible, even by those who honestly profess to believe it. This terrible difficulty, felt and acknowledged in all ages, has been largely met for the Roman Catholic, by the doctrine of Purgatory, which became developed as the belief in endless torment gradually supplanted that earlier and better faith, which alone finds expression in the two really catholic and ancient creeds, faith in Everlasting Life. How immense must have been the relief thus afforded, is evident, when we remember that the least sorrow, however imperfect, the very slightest desire for reconciliation with God, though deferred to the last moment of existence, was believed to free the dying sinner from the pains of hell, no matter how aggravated his sins may have been. Among the Reformed Communions this difficulty was met, no doubt, by a silent incredulity—often unconscious—yet ever increasing, on the part of the great majority: indeed, some divines, have at all times, both in England and on the Continent, openly avowed their disbelief in endless torments. This growing incredulity has found, in our day, open expression, in a remarkable theory, that of conditional immortality (itself a revival of an earlier belief). This doctrine, briefly stated, teaches that man is naturally mortal, that only in Jesus Christ is immortality conferred on the righteous—that the ungodly shall be judged, and, after due punishment, annihilated.

Of this dogma^[1] I shall at once say, that, while it degrades man, it fails to vindicate God. “It is that most wretched and cowardly of all theories, which supposes the soul to be naturally mortal, and that God will resuscitate the wicked to torment him for a time, and then finally extinguish them. I can see no ground for this view in Scripture but in mistaken interpretations; and it does not meet the real difficulty at all, for it supposes that evil has in such cases finally triumphed, and that God had no resource but to punish and extinguish it: which is essentially the very difficulty felt by the sceptical mind. I have called it cowardly, for it surrenders the true nobility of man, his natural immortality, in a panic at an objection; and like all cowardice, fails in securing safety.”—Donellan Lectures, Quarry.

Further, let me reply thus;

(I.)—“I believe in one God the Father Almighty, who willeth not the death of a sinner.” If, then, even one sinner die finally, God’s will is not done, i.e., God is so far defeated and evil victorious. Annihilation is the triumph of death over life: it is the very antithesis to the Gospel, which asserts the triumph of Christ over every form of death. It is strange indeed that able men, who write elaborate treatises advocating this view, should overlook the fact that all schemes of partial salvation involve a compromise with evil on God’s part.

(II.)—No less strange is the assertion that the moral sense is not shocked by God, who is absolutely free, yet forcing the gift of life on those whom He knows to be in fact destined to become the prey of evil so completely, that they either rot away of sheer wickedness; or, being hopelessly corrupt, are extinguished by their Father.

(III.)—Death nowhere in Holy Scripture implies annihilation, for earthly destruction is, especially in the case of the Old Testament, that which is denoted by the term, death: but as a rule this term has a wider significance, and one far deeper. Nay, as I hope to point out, (ch. 6. on death,) there is in Scriptural usage, especially in the New Testament, a deep spiritual connection between death and life; death becomes the path to, and the very condition of, life.

(IV.)—Further, this theory wholly breaks down in practice. So far from “perishing” implying final ruin, Christ came specially to save that which has “perished.” —to apolesai, the “lost,” “ruined,” “destroyed;” the original term is the same which is often translated “destroy,” and on which the theory of annihilation is so largely built. The same word occurs in S. Luke 15, and there is applied to the Sheep, the Coin, the Prodigal Son—all of which are thus ‘destroyed,” “lost,” and yet finally saved. In S. Matt. 10:39, 16:25, to “lose” (destroy) one’s life is stated as the condition of finding it. So Christ is sent to save the “lost” (destroyed) sheep of Israel. So Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed, and yet have a special promise of restoration.—Ezek. 15:53-5. Take the Antediluvians. After they had “died” in their sins they were evangelised by Christ in person.—1 Pet. 3:19. Hence the unanswerable dilemma, either all these are annihilated, or you must give up that sense of “perishing” on which the theory is based.

(V.)—Probably I have said enough, but yet a very grave difficulty remains. This theory stands in hopeless conflict with the promises to restore all things, to reconcile all things through Christ, which abound in Scripture; nay, which form the very essence of its teaching when describing Christ’s empire. It seems amazing that able men are found capable of maintaining that a reconciliation which is described as co-extensive with all creation, Col. 1:15-20, can be equivalent to restoring some (or many) things, only after annihilating, as hopelessly evil, all the rest.

Another view adopted by a number, probably extremely large, and increasing, differs altogether from that last stated. Those who hold it have had their eyes opened to the fact, that the New Testament contains very many, long neglected, texts which teach the salvation of all men. They have also learned enough to have their faith gravely shaken in the popular interpretation of the texts usually quoted in proof of endless pain. The theory of conditional immortality fails to satisfy such men. They see that it is altogether unsuccessful in meeting the real difficulty of the popular creed, i.e., the triumph of evil over good, of satan over the Saviour of man, and therefore over God. They perceive, too, the narrow and arbitrary basis on which it rests in appealing to Holy Scripture. And so they decline to entertain it as any solution of the question, and say, “We are not able definitely to accept any theory of the future of man, because we do not see that anything has been clearly revealed. Enough has been disclosed to shew to us that God is love, and we are content to believe that, happen what will, all will ultimately be shewn to be the result of love divine.”

It is impossible to avoid sympathy with much of this view at first sight, but only then; for when closely examined it is seen to be open to the charge of grave ambiguity, or far worse. It may mean that in the future God will act as a loving human parent would, and then, I reply, this is precisely the larger hope. Again, it may mean a very different and very dangerous thing. It may mean that at the last my ideas of right and wrong will undergo a complete change—that the things which I now pronounce with the fullest conviction to be cruel and vile, will at that day seem to be righteous and just, and that thus God will be fully justified though He inflict endless torment. But take this statement to pieces and see what it really means. It means, in effect, practical Scepticism. It means blank Agnosticism. This is easily shewn. For what this view really tells me is that my deepest moral convictions are wholly worthless, because that which they declare to be cruel and revolting, is right and holy, and will so appear at the last. But if this be so, then I have lost my sole measure of right and wrong. What is truth or goodness, I know not. They cease to be realities; they are, for aught I know, mere phantoms. Religion, therefore, is impossible. Conscience ceases to be a reliable guide. Revelation is a mere blank, for all revelation presupposes the trustworthiness of that moral sense to which it is addressed. Thus the above plea, plausible as it seems, is wholly ambiguous, and does in fact lead either to the larger hope, or to mere unbelief.

In opposition to both these theories stand the views here advocated, which have been always held by some in the catholic Church; nay, which represent, I believe, most nearly its primitive teaching. These views are, I know, now widely held by the learned, the devout, and the thoughtful in our own and in other communions. Briefly stated, they amount to this:—That we have ample warrant, alike from reason—from the observed facts and analogies of human life—from our best and truest moral instincts—from a great body of primitive teaching—and from Holy Scripture itself, to entertain a firm hope that God our Father’s design and purpose is, and has ever been, to save every child of Adam’s race.

Therefore I have called this book, “Universalism Asserted.” But let there be no mistake. I assert this not as a dogma, but AS A HOPE: as that which after many years of thought and study seems to me to be the true meaning of Holy Scripture, as it is certainly in harmony with our moral sense, and has been taught by so many saints in the early Church. The term, “Universalism,” may not, indeed, commend itself to some, but I retain it advisedly. It seems to convey an essential truth. “The kingdom of Christ * * * is in the fullest sense * * * universal.”—Lightfoot. It is an universal remedy to meet an universal evil. While sin is universal, and sorrow and pain universal, shall not our hope be universal too? Shall not life be as universal as death, and salvation as universal as sin? Can we even think of a divine life and a divine love as other than in their very essence universal?

1. Is annihilation possible? “Nulla enim natura potest corrumpi ut penitus non sit, et ad nihilum redigatur.”—Erig. De div. nat. lib. v. (↩)