“The little Pilgrim listened with an intent face, clasping her hands, and said, ‘But it never could be that our Father should be overcome by evil. Is that not known in all the worlds?’”—The Little Pilgrim.
“This word is strange and often terrible; but be not afraid, all will come right at last. Rest will conquer Restlessness; Faith will conquer Fear; Order will conquer Disorder; Health will conquer Sickness; Joy will conquer Sorrow; Pleasure will conquer Pain, Life will conquer Death; Right will conquer Wrong. All will be well at last.”—Madame How and Lady Why.—C. Kingsley.
THE question of universalism is usually argued on a basis altogether misleading, i.e., as though the point involved was chiefly, or wholly, man’s endless suffering Odious and repulsive to every moral instinct, as is that dogma, it is not the turning point of this controversy. The vital question is this, that the popular creed by teaching the perpetuity of evil, points to a victorious devil, and to sin as finally triumphant over God. It makes the corrupt, nay, the bestial in our fallen nature to be eternal. It represents what is foulest and most loathsome in man, i.e., the most obstinate sin as being enduring as God Himself. It confers the dignity of immortal life on what is morally abominable. It teaches perpetual Anarchy, and a final Chaos. It enthrones Pandemonium as an eternal fact side by side with Paradise; and, gazing over its fetid and obscene abysses, is not afraid to call this the triumph of Jesus Christ, this the realisation of the promise that God shall be “All in All.”
A homely illustration may make my meaning more clear. What should we say of a householder who, prizing purity before all things, and with ample power to gratify his tastes, should sweep into some corner every variety of abomination, there to rot on for ever under his sight? Nor is this all, for it is precisely the least rotten, and offensive, of the mass of moral filth that he removes and cleanses, while permitting the foulest of all (i.e., the most obstinate and the very worst sinners) to rot and putrify for ever. Indeed, according to the current theology, it is exactly because the moral foulness of this mass is so great that it must endure for ever.
I have spoken very plainly, for our opponents do not realise what it is that they have been teaching, and still teach. I have spoken very plainly because of the moral scandal involved in lowering God below the level of humanity; because such teaching justly makes God odious to thousands; because of the manifold and painful evasions of the great moral issues involved, pp. 78-9; because of scepticism justified and increased.
And how instructive is the evident perplexity our opponents feel in reconciling with the triumph of Christ the perpetual duration of that evil, which He expressly came to destroy (1 John 3:8). Thus some (able) men now plead that the resistance of the lost to God will be “passive” only, and their evil “inactive.” But passive resistance, if it be not a contradiction in terms, is some form of resistance, and inactive evil is some form of evil, and in both cases Christ’s very purpose is defeated. And obviously the worst forms of obstinate sin, for which hell is reserved, are the most active, are essentially active. Therefore, to say that they become inactive is to say that hell exercises a remedial influence. And if hell be remedial how near are our opponents to the larger hope? Further, I wish they would frankly tell us how this perpetuity of evil is possible. “Having anchorage in God,” says De Quincey, “innumerable entities may possibly be admitted to a participation in the divine æon. But what interest in the favor of God can belong to falsehood, to impurity, to malignity? * * Evil would not be evil, if it had that power of self-subsistence which is imparted to it in supposing its æonian life to be co-eternal with that which crowns and glorifies the good.”—Theol. Essays. And as already noticed, how can a process of degradation be endless?
With all earnestness, I repeat that our choice lies between accepting the victory of Christ or of evil, and between these alternatives only. Escape from this dilemma there is none. It avails nothing to diminish, as many now teach, the number of the lost; or to assert that they will be finally annihilated. All such modifications leave quite untouched the central difficulty of the popular creed—the triumph of evil. Sin for ever present with its taint, even in a single instance, is sin triumphant. Sin, which God has been unable to remove (and has had no resource but to annihilate the sinner) is sin triumphant and death victorious.
How strange, too, is the delusion, often advocated, viz., that all real objections to the traditional creed are met, if the grosser forms of teaching it are abandoned. This means, I presume, “let us still punish for ever, though all chance of amendment is over. But do not shock the mass of men, do not mention a literal fire: that is to go too far; retain the agony, but be careful to apply the suffering to the highest part—to the spiritual nature. Rack the spirit with endless woe, and remorse; hand over to the devil for ever one formed in God’s Image, one for whom the Son of God died; consign man’s spirit to endless evil, it lasts only for ever and ever! Who can be so unreasonable as to murmur?” Men’s minds must be deeply drugged by prejudice, and the power of reasoning partly paralysed, when such pleas are advanced; or when they fancy that, by diminishing the area of damnation they elude all objections to endless evil. As though you could solve moral questions by process of arithmetic, or annul the devil’s victory by diminishing the number of his victims. So long as one soul for whom Christ died remains in the devil’s grip for ever, so long and so far, is the devil victor. Nothing can by a hair’s breadth alter that fact.
A further vital point there is; how far Bishop Butler designed to teach that “probation” is an adequate description of our moral relationship to God may be uncertain. Yet it is certain that practically his great name is (largely), the authority with those who teach in fact, if not in words, that God is primarily the Judge, or the Moral Governor of His creatures. Against this idea, which is working untold mischief, I earnestly protest. It is the fatal legacy, the damnosa hereditas, which the stern and narrowly legal mind of Rome, with a natural bent to cruelty, bequeathed to the Gospel. The God, Who is Love, is thus in practice changed into an Almighty Proconsul, while the Saviour of Men is disguised in the garb of a Roman Governor. Not the mercy-seat, but the seat of judgment is presented to the eye. An inflexible code, and an unbending Judge rule all; on every side is diffused a sense of terror. Love is subordinate, sin becomes the central fact; guilt, not grace, comes first. “Our Father” to all practical purposes, disappears, while the great Taskmaster, or the Moral Governor, or the Accountant-General takes His place. It is not that in so many words the love of God and the divine Fatherhood, are denied, but that they are so often recognised in words only. Shrunken, atrophied, palsied, the doctrine remains, as in some country where the rightful monarch has not been formally dethroned, but has dwindled into a puppet.
Such a system may call itself the Gospel, may point to the support of the greatest names, and be taught in thousands of pulpits (often softened, but the same essentially), yet it is a counterfeit and no true Gospel.
Where has the bright and joyous Christianity vanished which covered the dark recesses of the Catacombs, (p. 105,) with every symbol, that could attest joy and triumph, but gave no place to any dark and painful image, not even to the Cross? Why was this? Because to these men the victory of Jesus Christ was a thing really believed in, a fact actually realised, and dominating all else. Because they believed that death, and its sting, was really, truly, universally swallowed up in victory. And so they loved to paint Christ radiant with youth and strength, true and absolute Conqueror of death and hell. Perpetual death, moral rottenness for ever festering, what place—such were their thoughts—have such things in a restored creation? Why is the Christ of religious Art now so sad, with anguished features and drooping head—is it because He mourns His approaching defeat? Why have we so generally banished from our churches the figure of the risen and triumphant Lord—is it because in our heart of hearts we feel in how many cases He fails to triumph? Whither has gone the Vision so noble, so tender, and yet so strong, of the victorious Christ as He descends into Hades, and opening the prison doors brings the disobedient dead back to life?
Yes, “they have taken our Lord away and we know not where they have laid Him.” They have taken “Our Father,” too, “the All Father,” and we know not where to find Him. For bread they give us a stony creed; judgment without mercy; hell without hope; evil without end; heaven without pity for the lost and the suffering; and a world here, in which to live is truly misery to the thoughtful, as being but the portal and antechamber to endless woe, for so many of their brothers and sisters in Christ, whom they are commanded to love as they love themselves. Catholics (?) indeed we call ourselves, while not one pulpit in a thousand in all England ventures so much as to hint at these glad tidings of the release of the dead from Hades, which Catholic antiquity universally taught, p. 97 Whither, too, has vanished that happier and higher view of death, as a CURE, as the remoulding by the Great Artist of His own Likeness and Image, a view so significant and taught by so many and so famous names? p. 149. By what right have we virtually added to the Antient Creeds the fatal clause, “I believe in an eternity of evil?” p. 147. Why do we never hear the nobler view of the Resurrection as from its very nature a process of restoration? see pp. 122-3, 133, 142-3, 144-5, 178-84. Why has the important fact been steadily ignored, or even denied, of the wide diffusion of universalism in the primitive Church? Why has the Church delighted to accept a cruel and uncatholic Africanism from the Bishop of Hippo, while refusing the nobler and more catholic teaching which the Bishop of Nyssa, p. 121-5, and so many saints freely taught in the Church’s greatest age?
I do not mean that there has been a formal acceptance or rejection. I mean that Augustinianism has in fact leavened all Latin christianity, banishing the nobler teachings of true catholicity. Thus, if God is to damn man eternally there is a step certain to be taken (to justify, if possible, such a sentence), viz., the degrading and slandering that nature which man has received from God, and which the Son of God assumed and wears for ever. Thus, too, the Incarnation loses its proper place; the true lesson of Creation is ignored; the fact of the divine Image and Likeness in every man is displaced and forgotten. “Can aught be so precious as is the Image of God,” asks S. Ambrose. The very elect are “lepers covered with dung and mire, ulcers putrified in their father’s loins.”—Answer to Travers, § 22. If even Hooker, the judicious, can so write, how deeply must the fatal leaven have penetrated—indeed its traces are most legible to this day.
To resume, I believe that no doctrine has ever gained so wide a currency, with so little support in Scripture, as has Probation; (and so little support in all the higher Patristic theology). It fact it is not the product of Scripture, it comes from the Philosophers, not from the Prophets, or the Apostles. And any one can notice how it is assumed, and not proved from Scripture, in the books that are current. Doubtless there is an element of probation in education, but, if God is our Father, the fact that dominates all else in our moral relationship to Him, is the education of humanity as His children. Certainly no education can go on without trial, but we are “tried that we may be educated, and not educated that we may be tried. * * The essential characteristic of a Father’s love is that it is inextinguishable. * * If I am here simply on trial, if I regard God as One Who is keeping a debtor and creditor account with me, I may in word call Him Father, and in word ascribe love to Him, but I cannot really regard Him as Father.”—Erskine—The Purpose of God.
Be it remembered that no reasonable man doubts that God is truly our Governor,[1] and our Judge. But we deny such a Governor and such a Judge, as the traditional creed depicts; we deny that the Father is ever (practically) lost in the Judge. We are forced to ask, Have these our teachers, learned aright the alphabet of the Gospel? If they had, could they talk as they do? For to say that God is “loving,” is in fact to make love an attribute merely, like justice or wrath. God is not loving, for God is Love, a distinction which is vital; which affects the whole christian scheme in its essence. Nor is this error all. Our opponents seem not to understand what Love really is; else they could not accuse us of making light of retribution, because we insist that God is Love.
For the very essence of Love is misconceived, when it is confounded with mere good nature; forgetting the awful, inexorable, side of true (divine) love; forgetting, too, that this love is essentially inextinguishable. With a gospel based on errors so cardinal as to substitute for the Father, the almighty Inspector—for His training, the idea of probation merely—with the central fact wrong, what wonder if all the rest is out of gear? Who could expect astronomy to flourish, if men were taught that this earth is the centre, and not the sun? So with the moral universe. If I place Sin at the centre, and not Love—I paralyse every motion, and wholly invert the divine order.
It is a sad fact, that christian teachers should only admit that God is Love, provided no due practical conclusions are drawn from it. It is a sad fact, perhaps the saddest of all facts to those who try to see fairly, that in so very few, out of the vast number of christian pulpits, is there preached a God, Who is even as good as an average human parent. Those who so preach would themselves loathe the very touch of a human father or mother who should act, as they say God will act towards many (or any, what do numbers matter here?) of His creatures; or as God has in fact acted, when He forced on these unhappy ones the fatal gift of life, and thus in the phrase of the Poet, “cursed them into birth.”
How seldom, again, is this question treated as it should be from the divine standpoint. Truly we need the profound lesson conveyed by the divine Spirit to an old Prophet, “The battle is not yours, but God’s.”—2 Chron. 20:15. This weary, age-long battle with sin is, in its final issue, not ours, but God’s. It is “the salvation of the Lord,” emphatically. —ib. v. 17. Now-a-days it is deemed the profoundest theology to forget all this: it is deemed the highest wisdom to hang the final issue of this awful conflict on the sin-stained, frail, ignorant will of a being like man. Instead of a theology they give us an anthropology; instead of a science of God, a science of man. We hear little of God’s will, because as it may be conjectured that will points so emphatically to universal salvation.
But the question remains, and will remain till it receives due answer. Is God really Master? or is sin to oust Him from any part of His own house for ever? To reject Calvinism is easy enough, but to reject the divine Sovereignty is to reject holy Scripture, p. 32-3, and may I not add to reject the verdict of reason too?
Again, I entreat my readers to pay no heed to the delusive plea that claims victory for Christ, if He shuts up His enemies in hell. as though the sole victory possible to a divine Being were not the conversion of His enemies; as though the perpetuation of evil in hell were not His defeat. But, in truth, the traditional creed is essentially, if not formally, dualistic. There is a Deity (nominally) supreme, and a rival demi-god, Satan. There are two confronting empires, destined to exactly the same duration. In the middle ages we find actually represented in painting a rival Trinity, a Trinity of Evil.—Didron Iconog. Chret. ii. 23. How profound is the revelation thus made of the beliefs ruling the minds of men, still ruling in those who believe that the devil is all but omnipotent, and practically omnipresent.
Let us go to the Bible. Those who have reason to shrink from this appeal are not universalists, but are the advocates of endless sin; of a baffled Saviour; of a victorious devil. It is they who shut their eyes to the teaching of the Bible. It is they who make light of its repeated promises of a restitution of all things. It is they who make Scripture of none effect by their traditions. To the Bible they come drugged by early prejudice; saturated with cruel traditions, to whose horror long familiarity has deadened the mind. And so it is, that many really cannot see the true force of Scripture, when it plainly asserts the restitution of all things. Hence the painful evasions; the halting logic that honestly (for I gladly admit this) but blindly turns the Bible upside down, i.e., teaching that all men drawn to Christ, means half mankind drawn to the devil; all things reconciled through Christ, means the final perdition of half the universe. The notion of the popular creed, i.e., that God is in the Bible detailing the story of His own defeat, how sin has proved too strong for Him, this notion seems wholly unfounded. Assuredly the Bible is not the story of sin, deepening into eternal ruin, of God’s Son, worsted in His utmost effort; it is from the opening to the close the story of grace stronger than sin—of life victorious over every form of death—of God triumphing over evil.
Once more I repeat that the larger hope emphatically and fully accepts the doctrine of retribution. Those who picture universalism as some easy-going system, which refuses to face the stern facts of sin and misery and retribution, are hopelessly wrong. We press on all the impenitent the awful certainty of a wrath to come, and this with far more chance of acceptance, because taught in a form that does not wound the conscience; because we dare not teach that finite sin shall receive an infinite penalty. Few things have so hindered the spread of the larger hope as the wholly and absolutely groundless notion, that it implies an inadequate sense of sin, and pictures God as a weakly indulgent Being, careless of holiness, provided the happiness of His creatures is secured. In fact it is those who teach the popular creed, and not we, who make light of sin. To teach unending sin in hell, even in a solitary instance, and under any conceivable modification, is to teach the victory of evil. To us this seems at once a libel on God and an untruth —a libel because it imputes to God a final acquiescence in sin; an untruth, because it teaches that His Omnipotence breaks down at the very moment it is most needed, and that His Love and Purity can rest with absolute complacency, while pain and evil riot and rot for ever.
Here we may ask, can any light, however small, be thrown on this awful mystery of sin? For all practical purposes, I reply, there are but two possible views of moral evil. It is endless as God Himself, which is in fact dualism;[2] or it is temporary, and in God’s mysterious plan, permitted only to serve a higher end. Indeed this view of moral evil seems to be substantially that of S. Thomas Aquinas; “he makes the elevation of the creature above the original capabilities of his nature, to depend on the introduction of sin.”—Neander, Ch. Hist. viii. 216. Thus it is a stage in the development of the creature, and of this there seems a hint conveyed in the story of the first sin. By it man is said to have “Become as one of us,” as though the very Fall implied a Rise.[3]
Certainly Scripture asserts that “God hath shut up all men unto disobedience, in order that He might have mercy upon all?” Note here the stress boldly laid (I.) on God’s agency, and not on man’s will. (II.) The universality alike of sin and of salvation, both are equally absolute and universal. (III.) But sin is permitted only as leading up to, as involving salvation. And thus we see not an arrangement by which man starts innocent, free to choose sin or not, but a (virtual) provision for the hereditary transmission of evil; by which innocence becomes impossible to all; by which every child of Adam is, in the divine plan, “shut up unto (sin) disobedience,” an arrangement inconceivable on the part of a good and loving Father, except with a settled purpose of mercy to every one. I am not presumptuous enough to fancy that I have a novel solution to offer of this profound mystery, but if the Bible be truly from God, then no solution is possible which refuses (as do almost all interpreters) to treat seriously the following striking passages, on the ground probably that reverence for the Bible is reverence for those parts of the Bible that suit our own views. These passages have been, in fact, completely ostracised.
“I am the Lord; I make peace and create evil; I the LORD do all these things.”—Isa. 45:7 Note the emphatic repetition, for, true reverence, true honesty, demand a frank recognition of these words. Nor do they stand alone in their general teaching. Take, e.g., the memorable scene when satan appears before God, and receives from Him power over Job, and those passages in which we read of an evil spirit from the Lord (1 Sam. 16:14, 18:10: 19:9). Again, God is represented as saying to the lying spirit, “Go forth and do so:” and the Lord is said to have “put a lying spirit” in the mouth of the prophets (1 Kings 22:23). So in Judges 9:23, God sends an evil spirit. I advance no theory, but quote Scripture, and protest against explaining it away under the plea of reverence. In addition to all this we have repeated statements that “God hardens” the human heart, “shuts the eyes lest they should see; and the ears lest they should hear.”—See Exod. 4:21, 7:3, 9:12, 10:1; Deut. 2:30; Josh. 9:20; Isa. 6:10, 19:14, 29:10, 63:17; Jer. 13:13, 20:7; Ezek. 14:9, 20:25; Amos 3:6; Ps. 105:25, &c.
Thus is text heaped upon text, line upon line. It is most strange to find all these brushed away, by the very men who contend for a literal meaning elsewhere? They say, ‘It is wrong to press these, because they are unworthy of God.” Be it so. But, if so, pray remember that you cannot play fast and loose with a principle. If you brush away a mass of plain texts, because they are unworthy of God, will you explain why I may not brush away texts (quoted to prove endless pain) that are far from plain, crowded with metaphor, ambiguous, and in their cruelty, as generally interpreted, unworthy, I will not say of God, but of any decent human being. Observe, that I do not desire to brush them away, but to interpret them rightly; yet it is well to shew once more that our opponents do not carry out consistently their own principles, p. 254. Nor is this all. When they brush away texts because unworthy of God, they are again inconsistent, for they thereby affirm the capacity of our moral sense to judge of religious truth and the ways of God, see pp. 14-7, which the traditional creed nearly always in effect, and very often in words, denies.
Nor can we say that in the Old Testament God is represented as doing that which He permits to be done; for the New Testament is emphatic on this point. “Whom He will He hardeneth.”[4]—Rom. 9:18. “He hath shut up all men unto unbelief.”—Rom. 11:32. “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see,” v. 8. “God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.”— 2 Thess. 2:11. Such is S. Paul’s emphatic testimony. S. John, too, echoes and re-affirms (ch. 12:39-40) Isaiah’s saying that the Jews could not believe, because God had blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts. And so our Lord declares that God had “hid certain things from the wise,”—S. Matt. 11:25—and that He spoke in parables in order that seeing His hearers might not perceive.—S. Mark 4:12; S. Luke 7:10; cf 1 Pet. 2:8. The uncompromising, fearless tone of Scripture is remarkable: everywhere it sees the divine hand, and in everything traces a divine Purpose and Will. It seems a false reference for the Bible to explain away all this. Indeed, to a thoughtful mind light comes from calmly facing these hard sayings. And so S. Paul adds: The law was given in order that the “offence might abound.”—Rom. 5:20 The law reveals—Rom. 3:20—provokes—Rom. 7:7-13—multiplies—Rom. 5:20—sin or transgression.”—Lightfoot on Gal. 3:19. This, he adds, is S. Paul’s leading conception of the function of the law.
Here let me sum up briefly and with due reverence
(I.) The facts that the law was given “in order that the offence might abound,” and that the law was our “tutor” (Gal. 3:24), suggest the educational aspect of evil: we seem to understand better the statements of Gen. 3:5, 22. Fresh light falls on the significant words, “God hath shut up all men unto disobedience,” and on these, the Creation “was made subject unto vanity,” not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope.
(II.) God’s sovereignty is everywhere to be traced: the error lies in failing to see that this sovereignty is that of Love.
(III.) Again it has been well said that there is no such thing as “pure evil;” “so unrestrained is the inundation of the principle of good into selfishness and sin itself.”—Emerson on Circles. “There is a soul of goodness in things evil,” says the greatest of Englishmen.
(IV.) We have hints in Scripture that by evil permitted and overcome, something is gained which, perhaps, could not have been otherwise had, e.g., there is “more joy over one repenting sinner, than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.” And if there is more joy in heaven, there is more love on earth from the same source, “for to whom little is forgiven the same loveth little.”
(V.) Sin is very often the result of ignorance; how far this consideration goes I do not decide, but may there not be an element of ignorance[5] in all sin?
(VI.) Nor should we forget that in sinning, if I may say so, the raw material is very often the same as in the practice of virtue, but turned the wrong way—“there is,” says Emerson, “no moral deformity but is a good passion out of place. I have steadily enforced in these pages the guilt of sin, but it remains true that to sin greatly often demands the same qualities, that rightly used would have been great virtues.
(VII.) Whatever the value of the above considerations, the larger hope has nothing to fear from any theory of sin that can be maintained. Take a lenient view of human guilt, and you thereby shut out endless penalty. Take the very sternest view, and the perpetuation of this awful hostility to God becomes inconceivable.
(VIII.) A further consideration remains. As creation is for the Deity to enter into finite relations, and to subject His plans to definite limits, so, perhaps, evil, physical and moral, is in a sense inevitable. And it may be that, by the training and collision, thus involved, a higher type of character is formed than would be otherwise possible, e.g., self sacrifice, self restraint, sympathy, mercy, etc., seem to require a background of evil for their existence; although I believe that certain results of this have not always been thought out by its advocates.[6] A creation thus advancing to perfection by a certain, if slow, victory over evil, may possibly be a nobler thing than a creation so safe-guarded as to have never fallen. In S. Bernard’s words, “ordinatissimum est minus interdum ordinate fieri aliquid.”—Ep. xxvi., ad. Eug. iii. I shall neither affirm, nor deny, these propositions. But morality and reason require one thing, viz., that creation shall be in fact so advancing; that the victory over evil shall be a victory indeed, and not a compromise—i.e., they require not partialism in any form,[7] but universalism. Evil in process of extinction, nay, in the divine plan already extinguished—is tolerable. Evil permitted for a time, in order that it may be more completely vanquished, and men thereby trained—that we can understand. But when evil, moral or physical, becomes perpetual; when it ceases to be a means and becomes an end; when it is no merely passing stain, but is wrought into the very tissue of the universe—enduring as God Himself; when God is taught as freely and deliberately permitting the entrance of evil, destined, as He knows, to be an eternal horror in His creation; then we are compelled to refuse assent, compelled by our very reverence for God, by the supreme voice within, which if God anywhere speaks with man, is indeed His voice.
And this prepares us for a very interesting question, viz., whether the evil effects of long continued wilful sin ever wholly pass away. It may be replied, perhaps never in some cases. Some men, if I may for the moment so apply our Lord’s striking words, may, in some sense, enter into life halt and maimed. Obstinate persistency in sin may leave on the spirit a wound whose evil effects are permanent. There may be, for I will not attempt to decide, a permanent weakness, though the disease of sin be cured.
Two results of this deserve notice. (I.) It furnishes us with a fresh answer to the plausible taunt cast at the larger hope as leading the careless to say, “if this be true I will have my fling, for all will come ‘right at last.’” On any view, your fling I reply, will bring on you “the wrath to come”—a retribution terrible[8] in proportion to the wilfulness of your sin. But, further, your fling may involve you in a penalty strictly everlasting. You may, though pardoned, for ever suffer from the numbness and spiritual weakness which your sin leaves behind. (II.) May not this furnish a meeting place for reasonable men on both sides? For final and universal restoration is not opposed to perpetual penalty in a certain sense; because the wilful sinner, though saved, may yet suffer a perpetual loss, a pœna damni loss of the highest spiritual blessedness hereafter.
Further, every form of partial salvation is rooted in selfishness. This selfishness is largely unconscious, but not the less real. Most people will have noticed a shocking unwillingness, on the part of the so-called religious world, even to entertain the idea of universalism. The unspoken feeling is often this—“If hell is gone, perhaps my heaven is gone too.” And then comes the deduction—What, if so, is to become of Me? We have thus a heaven actually, in some true sense, built on hell; buttressed on endless misery and sin. And this is received as the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. A degrading selfishness is popularised, nay, is sanctified; religion is tainted. Salvation becomes a sort of stampede for life, an universal sauve qui peut, a chase, in which the Powers of evil are always catching the hindmost. And most strange of all, this grotesque and tragic scene is gravely asserted to be the victory of Jesus Christ. I do not know whether all this is more strange, or more shocking. For what can be more shocking than that any of the Blessed should be for a moment happy in a heaven literally built over the anguish and blasphemies of the lost—nay, so long as a solitary mourner sits for ever in hopeless despair? Heaven is likeness to Jesus Christ; and likeness to Jesus Christ is undying sympathy with the lost; is love unquenchable towards His worst enemies. But the heaven which the traditional creed (and every modification of it) offers to us is a thing so hardened, so awful that merely to think of it fills the mind with horror. Deadened sympathies; palsied love; selfishness incarnate, pity for ever withered; such is the heaven too many of the masters of our Israel teach. “It is a mystery,” they reply. It is hell, I answer, disguised as heaven. Do they then imagine that we have not wit enough to see that so to answer, where the gravest moral questions are concerned, is a confession that no answer is possible?
“Will ye speak wickedly for God?” asks the indignant Patriarch. “Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil.” Here is the peculiar horror of the traditional creed. In the very Holy of Holies, it places that which revolts and degrades. The God it worships bids us love our enemies, while He consigns to endless perdition His own enemies. Hating sin with an eternal hatred, He provides for it an endless duration, an abiding home. Because it is so very evil, therefore it must go on for ever, for this is the meaning of saying that for the very worst sinners there is after death no hope. Their guilt is so vast, therefore it must endure for ever; it is so very foul, therefore it must defile for ever God’s redeemed universe. The Blessed are content to gaze placidly over the abyss of hell, their satisfaction unbroken; their joys undimmed, if not actually heightened, by the torments of the lost (pp. 43-4). And when, finally, the curtain falls on a universe darkened by endless sin, they actually call this the triumph of the Cross; and are content to retire into a heaven of ineffable selfishness, where love is paralysed, and the Spirit of Christ dead; not caring though the wail of the lost for ever rise: the husband grown for ever deaf to the appeal of the wife; the mother unheeding the eternal agony of her child.
Dante inscribed over the gate of the mediæval hell, “Abandon hope, ye who enter here.” Our teachers bid us inscribe over the gate of heaven, words, if possible, more awful, “Abandon love and sympathy: abandon the spirit of Jesus Christ, ye who enter here.” They bid us sing—
“O saints of God, for ever blest, In that dear home how sweet your rest.”
How sweet your rest, O wives whose husbands for ever burn; O mothers, how sweet your rest, while your children for ever agonise. in that dear home how sweet your rest!
“You are shocked at reading that the Blessed rejoice over the agonies of hell,” pp. 43-4. But have you any reason, nay, any shadow of reason, to be shocked, on your principles? Are you afraid to face the inevitable result of your teaching? Must not the Blessed acquiesce in, nay be pleased with the divine judgments whatever they be? Pray consider this These judgments, whether healing and finite as we think, or vindictive and endless as you think, are certainly the outcome of the divine Will. They claim your approval as of right. The Bible tells you “The righteous shall REJOICE when he seeth the vengeance.”—Ps. 58:9. Can you escape the conclusion that the shocking passages, pp. 43-4, are justified substantially if your dogma be true?
To resume,—these horrors are taught when, as now, Agnosticism is so threatening; when Science looks on the Gospel with hardly disguised scorn. And too often, an ignorant, if well meaning, clergy are content to cry, “Have faith;” as though God were not the author of reason; as though loyalty to conscience were not the supreme duty of every rational being; and a recognition of its supremacy the very condition by which alone any religion is possible. I am content at the bidding of faith to accept a mystery which transcends my reason; but to prostitute conscience, to dethrone the moral sense, is treason to God; it is “propter vitam vivendi perdere causam.”
I do not mean wilful untruth, but I do mean that virtual falsehood stains almost the whole body of our religious literature.[9] Falsehood is to say one thing, while meaning another. Hence, to assert that the world is saved, while meaning that in fact half the world will be damned; that mankind is rescued, while meaning in fact that many (or few, it matters not which) go to the devil for ever: to do this in a thousand forms, in hymns, in sermons, tracts, treatises, is falsehood; and with such untruth our religious literature is, I repeat, honey-combed through and through.
“It is a terrible business to have a falsehood domiciled with truth, and for its possessor, when he is only half convinced or not all convinced of its truth, to take the greatest pains to dress it up like a truth. For the falsehood gets no good from the truth, but the truth gets all maimed by the falsehood. They talk of the love of God, and His mercy, and His pity, and His justice, and His righteousness * * while all the time they are speaking, this hideous companion in their own soul is laughing at all these things Love of God —what of eternal torture? Righteousness of God—what of eternal evil? Good news, salvation—oh, have done with it all.”—Stopford Brooke.
But so long as the popular creed and the Bible are held together, so long must this system of untruth continue. We pray to “our Father,” to Whom in the next breath we assign acts towards His own children more cruel than any to which the worst earthly parent would stoop. We thus degrade the Godhead below, far below the level of humanity. What is left for us to worship if the truth be a lie—if love essential be cruelty itself—if God be that, which I dare not write? Nor is this all. Having thus assigned to God acts of infinite cruelty, the popular creed goes on to assure us of His tenderness that never wearies—His love that never fails. What falsehood, what cruel mockery is this, coming from those who really mean, that this unfailing, eternal Love watches to all eternity, callous and unsympathising, the undying evil, the endless agony of its own children. A merchant who has two contradictory measures is dishonest; but what of the theologian, of whom the same is true, is he less dishonest? It is cruel to torment a cat or a dog for five minutes, but to be callous to all eternity about the endless misery of a wife or a child, is quite right and good. The transient wrongs of a chimney-sweep excite the sincerest pity; but the eternal anguish of the lost human spirit awakes not even a passing gleam of pity in the Blessed. Let a criminal be tortured for an hour by human law, and all the civilised world is roused; but let the same criminal pass to torture without end, and these endless pangs do not disturb for a moment the raptures of the inhabitants of heaven. Vivisection is odious on this earth, but is most just in hell. Is it, then, odious when temporary, and most righteous when endless? e.g., is it most righteous for Eternal Love to vivisect for ever, or at least permit to be vivisected, His own children, in the sight of the Lamb, and the Holy Angels—Rev 14:10, (for the true meaning of this passage see p. 278-9.)
That Philanthropists (whom we honor) should be unable to bear the sight of the momentary suffering of the outcast here, while they are prepared to accept heaven’s joy unmoved by the endless agony of the outcast hereafter, fills the mind with thoughts, for which amazement is too feeble a term.
The apologies offered for the traditional creed are truly worthy of it. Thus many shelter themselves under the phrase, “God will do His best for every man” I can only suppose such an apology meant, not as an argument, but as an ill-timed piece of pleasantry. For what are the admitted facts? An Almighty Being, Who is, on any possible hypothesis, perfectly free to create or not, yet forces on myriads of hapless children of His own the fatal gift of existence, knowing that in fact this life of theirs will ripen into endless misery and woe. To call this doing His best for them is an abuse of language, could He do worse for them?
Some actually try to defend endless evil by asking, “would the lost be happy if put into heaven.” As if the larger hope did not expressly teach the conversion of the lost in the first place.
Another plea for endless evil is made. This I shall state and answer in Mr. Foster’s words. “It is usually alleged that there will be an endless continuance of sinning, with probably an endless aggravation, and therefore the punishment must be endless. Is not this like an admission of disproportion between the punishment and the original cause of its infliction? But suppose the case be so—that is to say, that the punishment is not a retribution simply for the guilt of the momentary existence on earth, but a continued punishment of the continued, ever aggravated, guilt in the eternal state: the allegation is of no avail in vindication of the doctrine, because the first consignment to the dreadful state necessitates a continuance of the criminality, the doctrine teaching, that it is of essence, and is an awful aggravation, of the original consignment, that it dooms the condemned to maintain the criminal spirit unchanged for ever. The doom to sin as well as to suffer, and, according to the argument, to sin in order to suffer, is inflicted on the punishment of the sin committed in the mortal state. Virtually therefore the eternal punishment is the punishment of the sins of time.”—Life and Corresp. vol. i. If, indeed, the sentence on the ungodly involve a virtual necessity to sin for ever, then the excuse offered is the deepest accusation possible of the traditional creed: Further, there is a duplicity in this plea when urged by those who quote texts, e.g., S. Matt. 25., which state the future punishment to be inflicted for sins already past.
Few things are more wonderful in this whole question than the reluctance so many feel, to follow out these unhesitating convictions to their only possible legitimate conclusion—the rejection of that dogma, which flatly contradicts them. I do not assert, that these convictions are an infallible guide; for indeed of what can it be said that its directions reach us in an infallible form? Can that be said of the Bible itself? Are those who translate it, or who comment on it, infallible? Are those who read it free from error, from prejudice? But no christian, therefore, doubts its divine authority, or fails to see in it a guide practically sufficient, and binding. So in the case of that other, and primary revelation of God to man. We do not claim infallibility for it, yet we do claim that the deliberate verdict of our moral sense represents to us the voice of God speaking for our guidance in daily life, and on which we are absolutely bound to act.
Our opponents will not remember that the moral sense is God’s revelation to us; that it is his word, speaking to us, quite as truly as from the pages of any book. It is pure sophistry to say, “you must yield your ideas to God’s revealed will,” as though our true moral feelings were not God’s revealed will to us.
Let us consider how false it is to say, “We must yield our ideas.” Must we? what! our ideas of truth, are they to be yielded? May God say that which we call false, and, if so, does it become truth? But if I must not yield up my idea of Truth, as applied to God, why am I to yield my ideas of Mercy, and Right, and Love? Does God perhaps hate in fact, while professing to love, the righteous? This question is vital. It is bad and terrible to use a cruel plea: it is far worse to use it when you do not, just because you dare not, use it honestly all round. If our human ideas of Right and Wrong are not to be trusted when applied to God, then anything may happen; anything may be right, anything may be wrong; anything may be true, anything may be false. All is Medley, Chaos, Anarchy: hell and heaven may change places. And so, for aught we know, may good and evil— see pp. 11-2: 15-7. We are in fact Agnostics, for we know nothing really. We may call ourselves anything we please, but (moral) Agnostics we are, and we remain.
This volume has strongly urged the moral degradation due, directly and indirectly, to the doctrine of endless penalty. Here I may state a final instance in an unexpected quarter. It has helped in large measure to promote that immoral casuistry against which at length the human conscience rose in open revolt. This it has effected because that system had its origin in the distinction between mortal and venial sin. Now, as the results of mortal sin were supposed to be so unspeakably awful, if in any way unrepented of, a direct incitement was furnished to narrow, as far as possible, the range of these sins. And thus a perverted ingenuity was set to work in breaking down great moral distinctions, and in attenuating systematically the guilt of the graver crimes, in order to stamp them as merely venial offences.—Maine, Antient Law, p. 352.
I have shewn further by abundant evidence, the wide currency, in the early ages, of the broadest universalism, a fact too little known and ignorantly denied. May I again point out that this universalism was essentially based on Scripture, and that it has been re-echoed in later years by the most saintly souls. You may search in vain in all the annals of English religion for a name more saintly than W. Law, the universalist. Men talk of the “laxity” of universalism. Was it this “laxity” that recommended it to the glowing devotion of Law, to the sainted Macrina, (whose death-bed is the most impressive in all primitive annals, p. 121,) to Origen, whose life was one continuous prayer; to a crowd of men like-minded in the early Church? Was the devout Erskine of Linlathen drawn by this “laxity” to universalism, or Charles George Gordon, or Florence Nightingale? Was the holy Ken attracted to a wider hope than that current in his day by this “laxity?” Or was it not that these, like so many of the early saints, had caught more truly the Spirit of Him, the All-Father, Who loving, loves to the end, Who seeks the lost, till He finds them?
Next we have seen (ch. vi.) how close is the connection between Universalism and Creation, Incarnation, Atonement, and Resurrection; and have enquired carefully into the meaning of “Election,” “Death,” “Judgment,” “Fire.” I have attempted to shew that the true teaching of Holy Scripture, and of Antiquity, on these points is in absolute harmony with the larger hope, that to insist on one and all is to bring into clearer relief the doctrine of universal salvation.
To attempt to introduce fresh ideas, especially in things religious, into minds saturated with doctrines taught in childhood, and hallowed by so many ties, has been well compared to trying to write on paper already scribbled over. Hence the many compromises, excuses, modifications, now current, on the part of those half convinced that the traditional creed is false. The first shelter that offers is accepted, thus many snatch at Conditional Immortality, not pausing to enquire (even writing volumes without enquire (even writing volumes without enquiring) whether it so much as fulfils the great primary point of teaching the victory of Jesus Christ, p. 9.
I have steadily sought in these pages, even when necessarily most outspoken, to recognise the perfect sincerity of my opponents; my quarrel, when most earnest, is not with individuals, but with a system. Here I would make a final appeal and ask, if some who read will not try to rise to higher levels, and to see in the larger hope the only view worthy of the All-Father, and of His Justice, which is the handmaid of His Love. Alone this hope explains the wonders of our creation in God’s Image; alone it satisfies the majesty of Love and its unquenchable thirst to raise the fallen, and most of all to save finally the most hopeless, the most unrepentant. Alone it really teaches that with God “All things are possible:” alone it sweetens every sorrow, and wipes away every tear. By its light alone are we able to gaze at the very saddest depths of sin, and in its worst discords to hear an undertone of hope. It alone enables us to believe truly in the Eternal Goodness, and its final victory: by it alone do we gain a full and adequate idea of the divine Unity (pp. 209, 245)—One Will, One Love, One Law, One Lord, and “One far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves.”
We have carefully considered the all-important question of the teaching of Holy Scripture. We have noted even in the Old Testament, intimations from the very first of a future blessing, designed to embrace all the race of man. These become more distinct as the plan of God is more fully disclosed; and both Psalmists and Prophets unite in their promises of an age yet to come, when the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
Nor have we forgotten the argument for the larger hope from the tendencies of the Bible, pp. 68, 252, and from the great principles that pervade its teaching, pp. 68, 75, 234-5, 236. I have also tried to shew how completely the traditional creed misapprehends the language and usage of Scripture in its threatenings, pp. 266-8, a subject well worth careful study.
The New Testament received the attention, due to its supreme importance. The passages supposed to teach the popular creed, have been carefully considered, and we have seen reason to conclude that they, one and all, while emphatically warning sinners of the wrath to come, teach nowhere an endless punishment.
Lastly, a chapter has been devoted to pointing out how full the New Testament is of passages too often explained away, and yet teaching, or implying, the final salvation of all. So important is this evidence that I here append a brief summary. We have seen how to Christ is assigned a kingdom absolutely without bound or limit; how all flesh shall see the salvation He gives. You have read how the Good Shepherd seeks on, till each sheep He has lost is found, and how the Son of Man came to seek and to save, not some of the lost, but simply “that which was lost,” or, as it might be rendered, “the destroyed,” so little does “destruction” involve final loss. His mission is exactly described as having for its object the salvation of the world, and He is said to take away the sin of the whole world. Do these terms represent a partial salvation; are they honestly consistent with it?
Again, it is said that all things have been given to the Son, and that all that is so given shall come to Him. He is repeatedly described as the Saviour of the world—which yet He does not in fact save on the popular view and as the Light of the world. He is said not to offer, but to give life to the world, a totally different thing. He says (no words can be more absolute), speaking of His Cross, that He will draw all men unto Himself. He adds, that He came not to judge, but to save the world. Can you, on any fair theory of the meaning of human language, reconcile all this with the horrors of endless evil? If the sin of the whole world be taken away, how shall there be a hell for its endless punishment? If all things without exception (the original is the widest possible) are given to Christ, and all so given to Him shall come to Him, can you reconcile this with unending misery? pp. 228-9-30. But let us go on: we find language employed by the Evangelists quite as decisive against the popular creed as that just quoted. When, for instance, we read in S. John how God’s Son was manifested for the very purpose of destroying the works of the devil, we are forced to enquire if that is consistent by any possibility with preserving these works in hell for ever? Is there no significance in Christ’s telling us that He is “alive unto the ages, and has the keys of hell and death?” Or again, what do the promises to make all things new, that there shall be no more curse, or pain, mean? If these be not promises of universal restoration, what are they? Lastly, ponder over the vision of the Apocalypse, where every creature in heaven, on earth, and under the earth (the dead), joins in the song of praise to God; and say if less than an universal salvation can satisfy the plain sense of these words.
To (virtually) evade such words is bad enough; but, having done so, to charge universalists with fearing to appeal to Scripture, is surely not fair. Take next a very large body of fresh passages, teaching the larger hope, from the Epistles of S. Paul, S. Peter, and that to the Hebrews. S. Paul is full of glowing anticipations of the assured triumph of Christ’s kingdom over all evil. Thus Abraham is to receive the world, and no less, as His portion, i.e., in the elect, all are to be saved. Whatever sin has done to injure man is to be more than repaired, by the grace of Christ. But is it possible to undo, in fact, all that sin has done if a single soul[10] be left in endless evil? would not S. Paul be speaking untruly in such a case? Surely a fair answer is due to this enquiry (even though a fair answer seem to lead to universalism). Further, the Apostle says that the whole creation shall be delivered into the glorious liberty of God’s children. Again, all Israel are to be saved (and being the “firstfruits,” their salvation involves that of the entire world, pp. 212-3, 238). The Apostle, too, affirms that God’s gifts and calling are “without repentance” (irrevocable)—words very significant, for what is the popular creed but an assertion that God’s gifts can be set at naught finally? And what S. Paul asserts is echoed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which assures us of the immutability of God’s counsel. Again, if God has shut up all in unbelief, it is, S. Paul says, that He may have mercy upon all. Does “all” mean “some” in the latter clause, and not in the former?
Once more he assures us that if the first Adam brought death universally, then the last Adam brings universal life, and that as sin abounds, much more shall grace abound. But in saying that the last Adam has in fact failed in myriads of cases to undo the evil caused by the Fall, you are giving these words a flat contradiction. Then as to Christ’s empire, we are told that to Him every knee shall bow, i.e., “All creation, all things, whatsoever and wheresoever they be.”—(Lightfoot on Phil. 2:10) and every tongue confess—the original term means thanksgiving, nay, is the very term used of our Lord’s giving His Father thanks—S. Matt. 11:25, and that one day—at the end—God shall be All in All. It is the Father’s good pleasure to sum up all things in Christ; to reconcile all things unto Himself through Christ; are we indeed to believe that anything can be reconciled to God by being consigned to hopeless evil? For it is a virtual, if unconscious, evasion to say that all things are reconciled to God, if, after countless generations have sent their contingents to the devil, some one generation and those succeeding it, shall be fully saved. Further, the Apostle assures us, the living God is the Saviour of all, that Jesus Christ has abolished death, that the grace of God bringeth salvation to all men. Are these statements fairly consistent with a partial salvation?[11] And why do our opponents never allude to the noble and most inspiring hope, suggested by such a passage as Rom. 11:36? (pp. 239 and 233.)
S. Peter, too, speaks to the same effect. He tells of Christ’s preaching the Gospel to the dead, who had been disobedient and died so—a story whose significance is the greatest possible, as indicating how behind the veil Christ works on to heal and to save even those who died in sin: and adds, that the Lord is not willing that any should perish. Is God’s deliberate counsel—such is the original word—to come to nothing? Then in the Epistle to the Hebrews we have some remarkable testimony, e.g., the assertion that all things are to be put under Christ; that His object in dying was to destroy the devil; that once in the end of the age He has appeared to put away, i.e., abolish sin by His sacrifice of Himself. Can anyone explain how the abolition of sin can be consistent with maintaining evil in hell for ever? Thus, the traditional creed seems to stand hopelessly opposed to the teaching of Scripture. Does it not almost deny God Himself, because if we are to believe in God at all, there is no room for a defeated God? Therefore, either God really wills to save all men in fact, and if so, He will assuredly accomplish this; or He does not so will. The first proposition involves the larger hope, the second is mere Calvinism.[12] I can see no rational alternative.
Such is a brief outline of the teaching of the New Testament, for I have not quoted all its promises of universal salvation. It is no case of building upon Eastern metaphors, of dogma resting upon mistranslations or misconceptions of the original, as in the case of the traditional creed. It is evidence, clear and unambiguous, and repeated. We have, in fact, line upon line, promise upon promise, assertions—reiterated, accumulated—yet amid all their variety closely linked and pointing to this central thought, to the completeness of the triumph of Jesus Christ, to the boundless nature of His saving empire over all; to the assurance of a victory won by His Incarnation, His Death, and His Resurrection over all the powers of evil. “The Father willed through Christ to reconcile the universe once more unto Himself, * * and so to restore all things whatsoever and wheresoever they be.”—Lightfoot on Col. 1:19, 20.
This being so, let me next ask, have you, who maintain the traditional creed, ever quietly thought over the terrible slight you unconsciously offer to the whole work of Christ, to His Incarnation and His Passion, by asserting the final loss of countless myriads of our race, or even of any soul for whom He died? He has come, we know, to save the world, He, very God of very God, but you proclaim in all your writings, in all your pulpits, that which is, in fact, His defeat. His Apostles announce, in language strong and clear, in words that still throb with life, His victory over death. You announce death’s victory over Him, for hell filled to all eternity with its wailing millions is His defeat, nay, His utter defeat. Could you more effectually make light of His Atonement? I read in the Bible that in His death all (actually) died (so vital is the union between Him and all the race of man). Are they, then, to go down to endless evil and woe, those lost ones, who died with Jesus—(2 Cor. 5:14, Rev. Ver.)—these souls of His creating, still wet, so to speak, with His most precious blood, still pursued by His love (for love is unfailing); are these souls to spend an eternity in sin and pain? Is our Lord’s Passion to be for these, endless, fruitless, hopeless? Am I to proclaim this as the victory of Jesus Christ, this as the glad tidings of great joy? I do not impugn, I fully recognise, the honesty of my opponents; but it is something more than strange to see thoughtful men teaching that Christ “sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied,” while He surveys to all eternity even one immortal spirit for whom He died—one child of His Love in the grip of endless evil, or annihilated.
Permit me further—for I want again to protest against the dishonour done to Scripture by the popular creed—permit me to ask what the meaning is, on the popular view, of the oft-repeated promises of the New Testament assigning to Christ an universal empire? Is it true, that it is the Father’s pleasure that in Christ all things, Eph. 1:10—the original words are the widest possible—are to be summed up? Is it true that Christ has actually abolished death; nay, that He has been manifested for this very end, that He might destroy all the works of the devil? Or is it a mere dream of the Evangelist, when He tells us that God has given to Him all things, and that all things that the Father hath given to Him shall come to Him? But if all this is actually written in Scripture, how can it be truly taught that sin and hell are endless? Can sin be everlasting, and yet the sin of the world be truly taken away by the Lamb of God? Can hell for ever prey on the lost, and yet the whole creation be delivered into the glorious liberty of the children of God? Once again, let me say, that a fair answer is due to these questions, and not an answer which is, however honestly meant, in fact an evasion.
Reflect what it is the popular creed is, in fact, teaching—see its inconsistencies—the contradictions of Scripture, to which long usage has deadened its supporters. Christ “holding the keys of hell” and never opening; Christ “making all things new,” and yet things and persons innumerable not renewed; the Good Shepherd “seeking till He finds,” yet never finding those precisely who need Him most; “no more pain,” and yet pain for evermore; “no more curse,” and yet hell echoing for ever with the curses of the lost; “tears wiped from every eye,” and yet the lost for ever weeping; every creature which is in “heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are on the sea, and all that are in them, saying, ‘Blessing and glory and honour to God,’” and yet a number of creatures shut up for ever and ever in misery; “all made alive in Christ,” and yet many sunk in hopeless, endless death.
I plead for the acceptance of the larger hope, as taught by so many in primitive days (a fact fully proved); a hope, that it has ever been the purpose of “Our Father” to save all His human children. To believe or to hope for less than this would be, not alone to contradict Scripture, as I have tried to shew, but to mistake its whole scope and purpose. For the Bible is the story of a Restoration, wider, deeper, mightier than the Fall, and therefore bringing to every child of Adam salvation. It is not, as the popular creed teaches, the self-contradictory story of One Almighty to save, and yet not, in fact, saving those for whom He died. It is the story of infinite Love seeking “till it find;” a Love that never faileth, never, though heaven and earth pass away: a Love that is, from its very nature, inextinguishable—being the Love of a divine Father. It is the story of the unchanging purpose of the unchanging Lord God Omnipotent.
Further, by this larger hope, and by it alone, can we accept and harmonise every line and letter of Holy Scripture, its solemn threatenings to the sinner, no less than its repeated promises of life to all. These threatenings I accept implicitly. They are, as we have seen, fully reconciled with the promises of universal salvation the moment we have learned to realize the true meaning of God’s judgments and penalties, and have been led by His word to see in “the ages” yet to come His purposes being steadily worked out. Yes, I believe, because the New Testament so teaches, and all reason confirms it, that to this brief life there succeed many ages, and that “through these ages an increasing purpose runs.” In these “ages” and during their progress it is that God’s threatenings find their complete fulfilment for the ungodly; and the many successive scenes of the drama of Redemption are slowly unfolded, and carried on to completion. For God’s purpose to save all men once declared must stand firm for ever from His very nature; and to this end it is that His very penalties are inflicted, that in Jesus Christ, one day, all created things may be summed up. And this being so, we who hold the larger hope are prepared fully to believe that there await the sinner in “the ages” yet to come, God’s fiery judgments; that æonian discipline protracted till the will of man yield to the will of “our Father,” and till, as in the silent prophecy of the familiar words, “that will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
For this I plead, for a hope, wide as that which swelled the Saviour’s heart, when looking steadily at the Cross He said, “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” I plead for the simple truthfulness of the explicit promise made by all God’s holy prophets, “that there shall be a restitution of all things.”—Acts 3:21. The issue may be simply stated, is this promise true in its fair and natural meaning, or is it untrue? The dilemma cannot be avoided—yes or no?
For my part, in this promise I believe—in the sole true catholicity of the Church of Christ, as destined to embrace all mankind—in the power of His Redemption, as something which no will can resist, to which all things must yield one day in perfect submission, love and harmony. I plead for the acceptance of this central truth as the great Hope of the Gospel, that the victory of Jesus Christ must be final and complete, i.e., that nothing can impair the power of His Cross and Passion to save the entire human race. I believe that He shall see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied. And I feel assured that less than a world saved, an universe restored, could not satisfy the heart of Jesus Christ, or the love of our Father.
I ask all fair and reasonable minds to reject as immoral, and incredible, the picture of a heavenly Parent, Who, being absolutely free and absolute in power and goodness, creates any children of His own, whom He knows to be, in fact, certain to go to endless sin and ruin. Therefore in these pages I have pleaded for the larger hope. Therefore I believe in the vision, glorious, beyond all power of human thought fully to realise, of a “Paradise regained,” of an universe from which every stain of sin shall have been swept away, in which every heart shall be full of blessedness in which “God shall be All and in All.”—Amen.
The End.
Footnotes / Endnotes:
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- In fact we admit this divine rule far more truly than our opponents. To them God’s rule is, in fact, baffled finally and hopelessly by evil, which He never succeeds in extinguishing. (↩)
- May it not be said a peculiarly evil form of dualism, for in it the Good Spirit freely permits the entrance of evil, which He knows will endure for ever? (↩)
- Does Clement of Alexandria mean this when he speaks of Adam as “made a man by disobedience.”—Adm. ad gent. (↩)
- We are not entitled to evade this, because it is sometimes said in Scripture that men harden their own hearts—which is, of course, most true. (↩)
- Nor would it be true, in my judgment, to call this ignorance wilful in all cases, so vast is the network of illusions surrounding us. —See 1 Cor. 2:8 (quoted with a little inaccuracy, p. 22). “Most sins,” says S. Gregory of Nyssa “are committed from a confusion of judgment as to what is truly good.”—De mort. Or. ii. p. 1049. (↩)
- Thus, if so, what of heaven? Must evil be present there to elicit virtue? Again, if the highest type of character be the result of conflict with evil, must the Seraphim and Cherubim, &c., have known evil? and so on up to the very throne of God. (↩)
- For annihilation is no victory: it is death triumphant over life. (↩)
- An evil result of the traditional creed has been that, by its exaggerated threats, deadens men to any true sense of future penalty. Men grown familiar with endless punishment practically think very lightly of any less penalty, however awful. Thus a critic of this book maintains that the “tragic” element in religion is lost except we retain endless penalty! Is, then, 10,000 years (or 100,000) of pain and banishment from God a comic thing, and not tragic? (↩)
- “There appears to me in all the English divines a want of believing, or disbelieving, anything because it is true or false. It is a question which does not seem to occur to them.”—Life of Arnold.— Letter 152. (↩)
- “If but one soul were to remain in the power of the devil, death, or hell, to all endless eternity, . . then the devil, death, and hell would have something to boast of against God; . . . and thus death would not be entirely swallowed up in victory, but always keep something of his sting, and hell would ever more be able to make a scorn of those who would say, ‘O hell, where is thy victory?’”—The Everlasting Gospel—Paul Siegvolck, 1753. (↩)
- Further, it is impossible for any thoughtful reader to escape noting how, at times, this Apostle seems on fire, as it were, as he catches sight of a vision of surpassing glory, of a future kingdom to be won by Christ; boundless, limitless, embracing every created thing, whatsoever and wheresoever. (↩)
- And thus, since Calvinism has fallen into universal discredit, there has been a steady movement towards the larger hope on all sides. (↩)