Friday evening talk a denunciation of piccadilly collars as threatening serious injury to the Christian cause. This interruption, shedding as it did the gentle influence of feminine sympathy and companionship upon his severe study, put our theologian into better humor, and such is the effect of apparently trivial causes upon our spiritual being that it considerably modified the rather harsh views which he had been inclined to take upon the subject of the endless torments of the lost. "What shall be my text?" he queried, glancing dubiously at the frightfully plain language of most of the citations given in the Concordance. "Paul," he added, "has the admirable advantage of being obscure. Here, for example, is Ephesians 1: 9, 10. 66 6 Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself: that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth; even in him.' "Here the apostle is talking about Christ as the head of the Church, but as there happens to be no church in particular, I can weave from the text a beautiful allegory about 'gathering in,' or the ultimate salvation of all believers." As our non-clerical readers cannot be presumed to know how a great preacher prepares his discourse, we subjoin a synopsis and analysis of the Brooklyn divine's sermon. Any one who has the courage to read it in extenso will find it in the New York Christian Union, for December 26th, 1877. Subject: Is there a hell? 1. Talk about mystery, in a mysterious manner. Abysses, etc. Paul is impassioned. Great unknown. 2. Divine justice. We can't understand it. Illustrate this idea by the following little story: "I am going to take you to your grand It father's, and you are going to see a magnificent horse, only that it is not like any horse you ever saw. has no eyes, no ears, no mouth, no legs, no mane, no tail, no skin, no bones, but it is a horse!" Yet, etc., etc. Would God be just to talk thus to us? And will he treat us so? Oh, no! no! (Handkerchief.) 3. "Gather all in Christ." Bring in old farmer gathering. (This is a little stale, but has good effect on agriculturists.) A man dead, 4. Swedenborg. and didn't know it. 5. "I believe in the Trinity!" (Good effect on orthodox.) Why do I believe in the Trinity? I DON'T KNOW. (Spread.) 6. What is time? Same answer. Another story-Lamb and wolf. Wolf don't explain to lamb. God don't explain to us. 7. What is the grand law of the universe? Suffering. God don't want us to suffer. (Hard to prove, but spread.) He would rather suffer than let us suffer. 8. Hit slumbering ministers. Indefiniteness of Scripture. Infinite benevolence. All fatherliness. Oversoul. Christ love, etc. Anecdote― When I was a boy fond of johnnycake, such as they make in New England, etc. 9. Shall we all go to heaven? I don't know. (More mystery, tears, if possible, loved ones, children.) I throw myself, etc. throw myself, etc. Zion. Angelic bugles. 10. But to come to the subject, etc. Love, love, love! Oh, the lovableness of the gospel! Away with hell! Cruel thought. (Spread.) Hymn 1789, Plymouth collection, “There's a land that is fairer than day." If there is any serious-minded man who would frame his ideas of a future state of punishment and retribution from such a chaotic jumble of absurdities as the foregoing, we have only to say that he would take risks which would not satisfy any fire in surance company in the land, no matter how reckless it might be. Yet, we submit, this analysis of a sermon of Mr. Ward Beecher, which has been extensively circulated, is as clear and as fair as his treatment of the great theme. We never believed that Beecher had any theological culture, not to speak of exact theological views. But we credited him with fairness in presenting such a fundamental verity of the Christian religion, and, in fact, of all religion, natural and revealed, as the everlasting punishment, in a future state, of souls departing this life in the habit and malice of deadly sin. His utterances upon so momentous a subject are vague, windy, and inexact, even from a Universalist point of view, for he does not even regard the partial punishment of the reprobate as punitive or reformative, but leaves the whole subject in a cloud of rhetorical and sentimental rose-color. No doctrine is more fully or plainly revealed in the Scriptures than the everlasting punishment of the reprobate. It is, in fact, the cardinal dogma on which the moral government of God depends, and from which the divine law draws its sanction. The texts upon the subject are numerous and explicit. Our Saviour contrasts the eternal life of the blessed with the everlasting punishment of the damned, using the same word for everlasting in both instances, and thus preventing any limitation of meaning in the sentence which consigns the reprobate to perdition. As eternal happiness is eternal in the sense of unending, so the sufferings of the lost are likewise interminable. The preacher who would honestly and solemnly lay before his people the divine oracles upon this awful theme need have no doubt about his success in establishing what all men must recognize as a most salutary, if terrible and heartrending, truth. Whatever may have been Mr. Beecher's motive in passing over the great Scripture testimonies, he was under no necessity of making so pathetic a complaint about the obscurity and indefiniteness of the Bible upon hell. There is no obscurity or indefiniteness whatever. Hell is far more clearly described than heaven, and its vivid portraiture is not confined to any portion of Holy Writ, either in the Old or the New Testament. But as he sets us the example of investigating the natural or rational arguments for future punishment, and as, in his treatment of the theme, he imitates Canon Farrar and other Universalists, we purpose devoting a few pages to refuting his arguments, or rather rhapsodies. His assumption that the whole region of the future, its economy of rewards and punishments, its moral government and regulation, belong to the sphere of the "unknowable, is a result of that pernicious system of skepticism advocated by Herbert Spencer and other materialistic Englishmen of the present day. We laugh at Pyrrhonism, or universal doubt, but the philosophy of the unknowable is just as absurd. Of course we know. To deny knowledge whether in the natural or the supernatural order is a contradiction in terms. The existence of God is an object of science, just as much as the existence of London. We know God as First Cause, our Creator, as Ens a se, actus purissimus,. and absolutely necessary Being. All these are demonstrable, and have been demonstrated a thousand times. The idea of the Infinite and Absolute is familiar to our minds, and can be demonstrated as objectively real. Every schoolboy can prove the existence of God, from the physical constitution of the world, the principle of order, of cause and effect, etc. But we not only know God as our First Cause, but as our Final Cause, the end and object of our creation, and, included in this idea of God as Final Cause, the everlasting and incontrovertible root and foundation of our responsibility and our whole moral relationship with him rest. No sooner has the human mind grasped this fact, which is traditional as well as knowable in itself, and which is the life of all religion, than there at once flashes upon us the truth of God as Rewarder and Punisher, the Supreme and all-just Judge, the Sovereign Good, the absolutely perfect being, between whom and the slightest shadow of sin or wrong-doing there is eternal separation and conflict. The very Vision of God, supremely good and all-holy, is sufficient to banish the sinner forever from his face. The mystery of mysteries is that the All-Holy One bears as he does with the manifest sinfulness in the world; but there is no mystery whatever in the absolute and eternal exclusion from his presence of reprobate man, viewed simply as defiled with sin, that is to say, out of harmony with his final end, and, in the eyes of God, a rebel to his will, and a perverse scorner of the law and the moral order which he has established. The To know these truths there is no necessity of having recourse to the Scriptures. They are demonstrations. They flow out of our conception of the Supreme Being. No sooner do we reflect upon his infinite perfections than the beauty of his heaven beams upon us, and the dread of his hell chills us. Nothing defiled can come near that spotless sanctity; no storms of passion can reach that peaceful abode. eternal good, the everlasting blessedness, all that we can conceive of infinite sanctity, purity, mercy, grace, all perfections, are in God, or rather are God. Evil is the negation of good, the loss of perfection, the turning away from the everlasting fountain of grace and benediction. The just man prayed that his flesh might be pierced with the Divine judgments, for no man can contemplate this ocean of perfection without trembling at his sin. What blasphemy is it to speak lightly of sin in reference to the holiest God, who hates it with an infinite hatred, as being the antithesis and contradiction of himself. He cannot abide sin. It flies from his presence. He cannot overlook sin. He cannot fail to punish it. It is the everlasting law and justice, which is himself, that casts out sin and the sinner from the Holy Mount. The whole controversy upon hell as conducted by those who deny it and its eternity does not proceed upon this elementary idea of God, an idea which demonstrates the existence of hell, or of a state or condition of everlasting exclusion from God for those who prefer evil to himself. This truth is known by natural reason, and is found in all nations, in all religions, and in every age. To deny it is to advocate the absurd and blasphemous theory that God must make some compromise with deadly sin, must derogate his everlasting sanctity by treating sin with lenity, carelessness, or without that strict justice which is his attribute. In vain do we exclaim against its apparent rigor, its seeming contradiction of the mercy of God and his loving kindness to man. There is no contradiction. His mercy and redemption are plenteous. We are but laying down the eternal law under which we live, a law from which there is no deviation, because it exists in the divine mind, and its decrees are from everlasting to everlasting. This denial or obscuration of the teleological or final order is the cause of nearly all the confusion and error of Protestant theology. A recognition of God is not wanting. Elaborate proofs of his existence are at hand, but there is an unaccountable failure to perceive that, if he is our First Cause, our Creator and proprietor, he necessarily is our end and judge. He has absolute dominion over us, and our last end falls as clearly under his régime as our communicated a law sufficient to first beginning. The doctrine of save them, but they will not. The moral accountability is recognized; natural man who observes this law, the immortality of the soul is in- written on the human heart, who recsisted upon, though few are thought- ognizes his Creator as his Final ful enough to perceive that, strong Cause, and as the rewarder of them as are the arguments for immortality that seek him, is in the way of salvadrawn from the nature and spiritual- tion according to St. Paul. It is in ity of the soul, the grand and con- his failure to draw this distinction, clusive argument springs from the or to apprehend God as our end, truth of personal responsibility, the that Mr. Beecher falls into the secfreedom of our actions, and their ond of the egregious errors in which recognized permanent force and in- his discourse abounds. fluence. We have a belief, which amounts to the certitude of inner consciousness, that we shall survive personally and substantively in a disembodied state. We know that we shall never die; and the moral sense announces, with no doubtful voice, that we must undergo judgment and receive reward or punishment according to our deserts. In spite of the natural weakness of our own ideas touching this judgment, no man can conceal from himself that the absolutely perfect and just. being will mete out to him a sentence, the essential glory of which will be its absolute justice and its freedom from the slightest suspicion of fear or favor. But how few carry their speculation or knowledge to this point! We know God, our Creator. We seldom think of him as judge. Our ideas of sin are confused or inaccurate. The world about us mitigates the fear of God by its patronage, or concealment, or indifference in matters involving questions of the divine law. Our own conscience becomes callous, and the poetic dictum about first hating, then tolerating, and finally embracing vice, is daily verified. Yet all the time the infinitely holy God finds only one thing in all his creation which the necessity of his being obliges him to regard with infinite hate and displeasure, and that is the actual moral corruption of the creatures whom he has made in his own image, and to each of whom, outside of revelation entirely, he has What solution is given to the admitted necessity of punishing sinners after death, the doctrine of purgatory being denied? Clearly, none. Either admit purgatory, as Mr. Beecher is virtually forced to do, but to the destruction of hell, or throw revelation and reason overboard. The doctrine of an intermediate state falls into beautiful harmony with every idea of infinite justice. The clear mind of Dr. Samuel Johnson perceived its reasonableness, and he acted upon his intuition, when he prayed daily for his departed friends. God, who can discriminate infallibly between sins, created purgatory as a remedial and reformatory school of suffering, patience, and hope. The specific differences in sin, the temporal punishment due to sin, after the remission of its external punishment, and the exactions of divine justice, all combine to prove the existence of such a purgatorial state, to say nothing of the clear Judaic tradition upon the subject. But to argue from its existence and admitted advantages, conducive to God's glory, to the exclusion of hell and eternal punishment, would be to confuse the distinctions of sin, and overturn the justice of God. The various theories of an ending hell, after probation, apply to purgatory, wherein the spirits of the just are made perfect, satisfaction is given, and sin expiated. But nothing is surer than that there is a fixed and immovable condition of suffering prepared for the devil and his angels. Canon Farrar, an English divine, and the author of a popular Life of Christ, has also entered the lists against an endless hell. Dean Stanley has likewise signified his disbelief in endless torments, an opinion which, for his own sake, we hope he may find true. Farrar, whose utterances appear to have made considerable stir in England, indulges not so much in argument as in an impassioned invective against the " coarse terrorism" of the doctrine and the popular descriptions of hell found in the poets. These, it is clear, have nothing to do with the dogma. Dante's Inferno is not of faith, nor is the Ghost in Hamlet an authorized exponent of theologic truth. Milton's Pandemonium, on the whole, is not such a dreadful place to live in; but not even the great Calvinistic poet's conception of hell is orthodox. In fact, his entire poem is, viewed theologically, vicious and absurd. Farrar opens his denunciation of hell by the statement that it is a human figment, invented by theologians and intensified by vulgar fears and superstition. This is a grave error. In the first place, no man would be naturally inclined to invent eternal damnation; and, in the second place, no man would be willing to believe in it. The fact of the universal tradition among men, in all ages and from the earliest antiquity, of a place of future punishment is proof presumptive of its divine origin. Certain it is, there is no religion which has not its heaven and hell, and what is strikingly to our purpose, its everlasting hell. This tradition has a profound significance. The great beliefs of the human race upon morals are deserving of the most attentive examination and acceptance. The mythology of Greece and Rome had its Tartarus, with innumerable appliances of torture. The universal cry of humanity has condemned to everlasting darkness and horror the impious and the irreligious. The all-pervading belief in the divine ret ribution has sustained mankind, in all ages, under the yoke of injustice and the triumph of the wicked. The eternal distinction between right and wrong has never been obliterated from the human soul; and the testimony of all ages represents man as looking forward to another life, in which his wrongs shall be righted, his virtues rewarded, and his wickedness punished. It matters not that in his ideas of such a state he may appear to the philosopher grotesque or superstitious. There is the anderlying truth, announced by the very constitution of his nature, and pointed out to him by his reason, that the wicked shall fall under the vengeance of an offended Deity, and that the good shall be crowned with his glory. We dwell thus long upon the simple and elementary truths both of reason and revelation, in order to point out the straits to which those writers are reduced who would force man to practically reject the doctrine of the future life, as reject it he must if he abandons the idea of future punishment. Why should we cumulate arguments to prove there is a heaven (which we are in fact most ready to accept without proof), and to exclude from the pale of reason the idea of hell? If the difficulty is in accepting an everlasting hell, why is there no difficulty in accepting an everlasting heaven? If unending happiness is the reward of the virtu ous, why should we carp at an endless punishment for the wicked? There is just as much proportion, naturally speaking, between our deserving an everlasting heaven for our good works as our deserving an unending punishment for our evil works. The argument against hell has no logical foundation, from whatever side we view it. The trouble is that we dread to face the difficulty; we shrink from the contemplation of pain, by a law of our being, and all our philosophic calmness breaks down before the very thought of end |