on grounds of working expediency, is disgraceful, contemptible, criminal. Watts exposes with well-merited rebuke a gross instance of pious fraud in Burnet, who advised preachers to teach the eternity of future punishment whether they believed it or not. It is by such a course that error and superstition reign, that truckling conformity, intellectual disloyalty, moral indifference, vice, and infidelity, abound. It is practical atheism, debauchery of conscience, and genuine spiritual death. Besides, the course we are characterizing is actually as inexpedient in practice as it is wrong in theory. Experience and observation show it to be as pernicious in its result as it is immoral in its origin. Is a threat efficacious over men in proportion to its intrinsic terror, or in proportion as it is personally felt and feared by them? Do the menacing penalties of a sin deter a man from it in proportion to their awfulness, or in proportion to his belief in their reality and unavoidableness? Eternal misery would be a threat of infinite frightfulness, if it were realized and believed. But it is incredible. Some reject it with indignation and an impetuous recoil that sends them much too far towards antinomianism. Others let it float in the spectral background of imagination, the faint reflection of a disagreeable and fading dream. To all it is an unreality. An earnest belief in a sure retribution exactly limited to desert must be far more effective. If an individual had a profound conviction that for every sin he committed he must suffer a million centuries of inexpressible anguish,—realizing that thought, would he commit a sin?

If he cannot appreciate that enormous penalty, much less can he the infinite one, which is far more likely to shade off and blur out into a vague and remote nothing. Truth is an expression of God's will, which we are bound exclusively to accept and employ regardless of consequences. When we do that, God, the author of truth, is himself solely responsible for the consequences. But when, thinking we can devise something that will work better, we use some theory of our own, we are responsible for the consequences. Let every one beware how he ventures to assume that dread responsibility. It is surely folly as well as sin. For nothing can work so well as truth, the simple, calm, living truth, which is a chime in the infinite harmony of morals and things. It is only the morbid melodramatic tastes and incompetencies of an unfinished culture that make men think otherwise. The magnificent poetry of the day of judgmentan audience of five hundred thousand millions gathered in one throng as the Judge rises to pronounce the last oration over a dissolving universe-takes possession of the fancy, and people conceive it so vividly, and are so moved by it, that they think they see it to be true.

Grant for a moment the truth of the conception of hell as a physical world of fiery torture full of the damned. Suppose the scene of probation over, hell filled with its prisoners shut up, banished and buried in the blackest deeps of space. Can it be left there forever? Can it be that the

33 World to Come, Disc. XIII.

roar of its furnace shall rage on, and the wail of the execrable anguish ascend, eternally? Endeavor to realize in some faint degree what these questions mean, and then answer. If anybody can find it in his heart or in his head to say yes, and can gloat over the idea, and wish to have it continually brandished in terrorem over the heads of the people, one feels impelled to declare that he of all men the most needs to be converted to the Christian spirit. An unmitigated hell of depravity, pain, and horror, would be Satan's victory and God's defeat; for the very wish of a Satanic being must be for the everlasting prevalence of sin and wretchedness. As above the weltering hosts of the lost, each dreadful second, the iron clock of hell ticked the thunder-word "eternity," how would the devil on his sulphurous dais shout in triumph! But if such a world of fire, crowded with the writhing damned, ever existed at all, could it exist forever?

Could the saved be happy and passive in heaven when the muffled shrieks of their brethren, faint from the distance, fell on their ears? In tones of love and pity that would melt the very mountains, they would plead with God to pardon and free the lost. Many a mourning lover would realize the fable of the Thracian poet who wandered into Hades searching for his Eurydice; many a heroic son would emulate the legend of the Grecian god who burst through the iron walls of Tartarus and rescued his mother, the unfortunate Semele, and led her in triumph up to heaven.

Could the angels be contented when they contemplated the far-off lurid orb and knew the agonies that fed its conscious conflagration? Their gentle bosoms would be racked with commiserating pangs, they would fly down and hover around that anguished world, to moisten its parched tongues with the dropping of their sympathetic tears and to cool its burning brows with the fanning of their wings.

Could Christ be satisfied? he who once was rich but for our sakes became poor? he whose loving soul breathed itself forth in the tender words, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest"? he who poured his blood on Judea's awful summit, be satisfied? Not until he had tried the efficacy of ten thousand fresh crucifixions, on as many new Calvaries, would he rest.

Could God suffer it? God! with the full rivers of superfluous bliss rolling around thy throne, couldst thou look down and hear thy creatures calling thee Father, and see them plunging in a sea of fire eternallyeternally-eternally-and never speak the pardoning word? It would not be like thee, it would be like thine adversary, to do that. Not so wouldst thou do. But if Satan had millions of prodigals, snatched from the fold of thy family, shut up and tortured in hell, paternal yearnings after them would fill thy heart. Love's smiles would light the dread abyss where they groan. Pity's tears would fall over it, shattered by the radiance into rainbows. And through that illumination Thou wouldst descend, marching beneath the arch of its triumphal glories to the rescue of thy children! Therefore we rest in hope, knowing that "Thou wilt not leave our souls in hell."

CHAPTER V.

THE FIVE THEORETIC MODES OF SALVATION.

THE conceptions and fore-feelings of immortality which men have entertained have generally been accompanied by a sense of uncertainty in regard to the nature of that inheritance,-by a perception of contingent conditions, yielding a twofold fate of bliss and woe, poised on the perilous hinge of circumstance or freedom. Almost as often and profoundly, indeed, as man has thought that he should live hereafter, that idea has been followed by the belief that if, on the one hand, salvation gleamed for him in the possible sky, on the other hand perdition yawned for him in the probable abyss. Heaven and Hell are the light-side and shade-side of the doctrine of a future life. Few questions are more interesting, as none can be more important, than that inquiry which is about the salvation of the soul. The inherent reach of this inquiry, and the extent of its philosophical and literary history, are great. But, by arranging under certain heads the various principal schemes of salvation which Christian teachers have from time to time presented for popular acceptance, and passing them before the mind in order and in mutual lights, we can very much narrow the space required to exhibit and discuss them. When the word "salvation" occurs in the following investigation, it means-unless something different be shown by the context-the removal of the soul's doom to misery beyond the grave, and the securing of its future blessedness. Heaven and hell are terms employed with wide latitude and fluctuating boundaries of literal and figurative meaning; but their essential force is simply a future life of wretchedness, a future life of joy; and salvation, in its prevailing theological sense, is the avoidance of that and the gaining of this. We shall not attempt to present the different theories of redemption in their historical order of development, or to give an exhaustive account of their diversified prevalence, but shall arrange them with reference to the most perspicuous exhibition of their logical contents and practical bearings.

The first scheme of Christian salvation to be noticed is the one by which it is represented that the interference and suffering of Christ, in itself, unconditionally saved all souls and emptied hell forever. This theory arose in the minds of those who received it as the natural and consistent completion of the view they held concerning the nature and consequences of the fall of Adam, the cause and extent of the lost state of man. Adam, as the federal head of humanity, represented and acted for his whole race: the responsibility of his decision rested, the conse

quences of his conduct would legitimately descend, it was thought, upon all mankind. If he had kept himself obedient through that easy yet tremendous probation in Eden, he and all his children would have lived on earth eternally in perfect bliss. But, violating the commandment of God, the burden of sin, with its terrible penalty, fell on him and his posterity. Every human being was henceforth to be alien from the love of goodness and from the favor of God, hopelessly condemned to death and the pains of hell. The sin of Adam, it was believed, thoroughly corrupted the nature of man, and incapacitated him from all successful efforts to save his soul from its awful doom. The infinite majesty of God's will, the law of the universe, had been insulted by disobedience. The only just retribution was the suffering of an endless death. The adamantine sanctities of God's government made forgiveness impossible. Thus all men were lost, to be the prey of blackness, and fire, and the undying worm, through the remediless ages of eternity. Just then God had pity on the souls he had made, and himself came to the rescue. In the person of Christ, he came into the world as a man, and freely took upon himself the infinite debt of man's sins, by his death on the cross expiated all offences, satisfied the claims of offended justice, vindicated the inexpressible sacredness of the law, and, at the same time, opened a way by which a full and free reconciliation was extended to all. When the blood of Jesus flowed over the cross, it purchased the ransom of every sinner. As Jerome says, "it quenched the flaming sword at the entrance of Paradise." The weary multitude of captives rose from their bed, shook off the fetters and stains of the pit, and made the cope of heaven snowy with their white-winged ascent. The prison-house of the devil and his angels should be used no more to confine the guilty souls of men. Their guilt was all washed away in the blood of the Lamb. Their spirits, without exception, should follow to the right hand of the Father, in the way marked out by the ascending Redeemer. This is the first form of Universalism,--the form in which it was held by several of the Fathers in the earlier ages of the Church, and by the pioneers of that doctrine in modern times. Cyril of Jerusalem says, "Christ went into the under-world alone, but came out with many." Cyril of Alexandria says that when Christ ascended from the under-world he "emptied it, and left the devil there utterly alone." The opinion that the whole population of Hades was released, is found in the lists of ancient heresies. It was advanced by Clement, an Irish priest, antagonist of Boniface the famous Archbishop of Mentz, in the middle of the eighth century. He was deposed by the Council of Soissons, and afterwards anathematized by Pope Zachary. Gregory the Great also refers in one of his letters with extreme severity to two ecclesiastics, contemporaries of his own, who held the same belief. Indeed, this conclusion is a

1 Doederlein, De Redemptione a Potestate Diaboli. In Opusc. Theolog.

2 Catechesis xiv. 9.

3 De Festis Paschalibus, homilia vii. 4 Augustine, De Hæresibus, lxxix.

necessary result of a consistent development of the creed of the Orthodox Church, so called. By the sin of one, even Adam, through the working of absolute justice, hell became the portion of all, irrespective of any fault or virtue of theirs; so, by the voluntary sacrifice, the infinite atonement, of one, even Christ, through the unspeakable mercy of God, salvation was effected for all, irrespective of any virtue or fault of theirs. One member of the scheme is the exact counterpoise of the other; one doctrine cries out for and necessitates the other. Those who accept the commonly-received dogmas of original sin, total depravity, and universal condemnation entailed upon all men in lineal descent from Adam, and the dogmas of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Vicarious Atonement, are bound, by all the constructions of logic, to accept the scheme of salvation just set forth,-namely, that the death of Christ secured the deliverance of all unconditionally. We do not believe that doctrine, only because we do not believe the other associated doctrines out of which it springs and of whose system it is the complement. The reasons why we do not believe that our race fell into helpless depravity and ruin in the sin of the first man are, in essence, briefly these:-First, we have never been able to perceive any proof whatever of the truth of that dogma; and certainly the onus probandi rests on the side of such an assumption. It arose partially from a misinterpretation of the language of the Bible; and so far as it has a basis in Scripture, we are compelled by force of evidence to regard it as a Jewish adoption of a pagan error without authority. Secondly, this doctrinal system seems to us equally irreconcilable with history and with ethics: it seems to trample on the surest convictions of reason and conscience, and spurn the clearest principles of nature and religion,-to blacken and load the heart and doom of man with a mountain of gratuitous horror, and shroud the face and throne of God in a pall of wilful barbarity. How can men be guilty of a sin committed thousands of years before they were born, and deserve to be sent to hopeless hell for it? What justice is there in putting on one sinless head the demerits of a world of reprobates, and then letting the criminal go free because the innocent has suffered? A third objection to this whole view-an objection which, if sustained, will utterly annihilate it—is this:-It is quite possible that, momentous as is the part he has played in theology, the Biblical Adam is not at all a historical personage, but only a significant figment of poetry. The common belief of the most authoritative men of science, that the human race has existed on this earth for a vastly longer period than the Hebrew statement affirms, may yet be completely established. It may also yet be acknowledged that each distinct race of men had its own Adam. Then the dogmatic theology, based on the fall of our entire race into perdition in its primary representative, will, of course, crumble.

Burdach, Carus, Oken, Bayrhoffer, Agassiz. See Bunsen, Christianity and Mankind, vol. iv. p. 28; Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, p. 338.