diated it, that great scholars have denied it, that every iota of it may be met and refuted, is shown to some extent in the previous pages, and might be shown still more abundantly and convincibly, as, beyond all doubt, it will be in future years.

And besides this negative argument in the way of disproof, there is from many different quarters a very large mass of proof which tends in an opposite direction. I therefore intreat all honest, serious, and competent readers-and to such alone is it worth while to appeal to weigh the plain literal meaning of the texts which follow -the number of which might easily be trebled. And in weighing them with an earnest and prayerful desire to get rid of traditional bias and attain to truth, will they also do as follows?—

i. Examine their own reason and conscience as to all that they know, and all that the Bible teaches, respecting the love of God, and redemption through Jesus Christ.

ii. See how very little, which is in the least degree decisive, they can produce on the other side; and how for every word of that very little an explanation is offered, demonstrably tenable, and far more in accordance with history than that which they adopt.

iii. Consider the tremendous weight of evidence which must be thrown against their private interpretation from the fact that neither the Jewish nor the Christian Church has ever been able dogmatically to sanction it.

iv. Remember that in the extreme form in which they hold it, which excludes anything resembling Purgatory, it is directly opposed to a large body of primitive teaching, and to the views of the entire Roman Church.

v. Give due weight to the fact that many who have devoted years of earnest labour to the inquiry-ripe scholars and good men, orthodox Fathers, eminent theologians, profound thinkers, holy and reverent inquirers-have come to the deliberate conclusion that there

is not a single text in all Scripture which necessitates a belief in endless torment.

vi. Bear specially in mind that it rests, almost if not quite exclusively, on the meanings which they attach to two words, "Gehenna" and "Eonian": of which the first, interpreted by the only possible means of interpretation open to us, cannot bear the sense which they attribute to it; and the other is over and over again applied in Scripture to indefinite but limited time, or to that which transcends all conception of time.1

vii. Be shamed into a little humility-a little doubt as to their own absolute infallibility on all religious subjects—a little sense of their possible ignorance or invincible prejudice—a little abstinence from cheap anathemas and contemptible calumnies—a little avoidance of such base weapons of controversy as the assertion that those who hold such views as I here have advocated are repeating the devil's whisper, "Thou shalt not surely die "2-by not losing sight of the fact that (1) these views have been held in substance, not only (as I have said) by great teachers and holy saints, but also by whole Churches; and (2) that they are theoretically involved in practices so universal and so primitive as prayers for the dead. The Kaddish, or prayer for the dead, in the Jewish liturgies is probably as old as the time of our Lord, and if so, was by Him unreproved, though it was believed to be efficacious for the relief of souls in Gehenna. Eminent commentators, comparing 2 Tim. i. 16, and iv. 19, have believed that St. Paul's prayer for Onesi

1 I will add one more testimony to the many already adduced. "In Hebrew and Greek the words rendered 'everlasting' have not this sense. They signify 'a long duration of time,' 'a period,' whence the phrase 'during these eternities and beyond.'" (De Lammenais.)

2 The same crude charge might be brought with ten thousandfold more force against the doctrine of repentance. It is one of the many signs that in all generations religious bigotry and ignorance repeat themselves, that the very same taunt was aimed at the merciful hopes of Archbishop Tillotson.

2

phorus is a prayer for one who was dead; and he does not reprove the principle of even so superstitious a practice as baptism for the dead.1 The ancientness of belief in the validity of prayers for the dead"antiquissimâ omnium Ecclesiarum traditione stabilitum "—is beyond possibility of dispute. Of the practice itself I give no opinion; but it proves most absolutely that the Early Church held as a certain belief the main point for which I have here contendedwhich is, in brief, a possible hope beyond the grave. When Aerius taught the modern popular doctrine, 'assuming one broad line of demarcation in the unseen world," he was treated as opposing the practice of the Church from the beginning3 (Epiphan. Haeres. 75); and St. Augustine-whose views (as I have pointed out) were so far less frightful in many respects than those now prevalent— distinctly declares that we may pray for the dead, "ut sit plena remissio, aut certe ut fiat tolerabilior damnatio."

"4

viii. Let them weigh the fact that what Christ did once-namely, preach to the lost, and open for them the prison doors-He may do again and ever. The text on which I preached "throws blessed light on one of the darkest enigmas of Divine Justice-the cases in which the final doom seems infinitely out of proportion to the lapse that has incurred it." This was the interpretation of the early Fathers. "May not these inspired words of Peter," says Canon Spence, "hint to us that our Lord's redemptive work is far more extensive than men usually conceive?" (Col. i. 20, Eph. i. 10.)5

If any candid truth-seeker will thus inquire, I have very little doubt as to the conclusion at which he will arrive. He will see that while we most heartily agree with him in admitting the immense

11 Cor. xv. 29.

2 It is needless to point in proof of this to the evidence of the Catacombs as well as the early Fathers.

3 Dict. of Christ. Biog., Art. "Death."

4 Enchir. 113.

5 Bibl. Eaucrtor, i 112

importance attributed by all Scripture to life as a period of probation, and the certainty that future retribution will be proportionate to the willingness and heinousness of our earthly sins, neither Scripture, nor the Church, nor anything that we learn from any source within or without us respecting God, in any way sanctions the popular dogma of an irreversible doom at the moment of death, for all who die impenitent, to endless physical or mental torment. Of the opposite view, the restitution in its most literal sense of all things,-the brightest and ablest of the Scotch prelates, Bishop Ewing of Argyll and the Isles, said in language which goes farther than I can go, "Unless this be held as a matter of faith and not as a speculative dogma, it is practically valueless. With me this final victory is not a matter of speculation at all, but of positive faith; and to disbelieve it would be for me to cease altogether either to trust or to worship God."

Lastly, I do not for a moment mean to offer the following catena of texts as even approximately complete. To adduce all the passages which deepen in my mind the trust in Eternal Hope would be to transcribe one half of the Scriptures. Rarely do I read the daily Psalms or the daily lessons without meeting with expressions which seem to run directly counter to the common doctrine. It is also a most important consideration that we must judge from the silence of Scripture as well as from its utterances. Were there any truth in the numberless accretions which have gathered round this simple nucleus that there is a retribution for sin beyond the grave, surely they are of such momentous importance that they would not have been left in an obscurity so deep that the Church has never been able to sanction them, though she was well aware that some of her truest sons have openly rejected them. The silence of St. Paul as to any such doctrines in such passages as Rom. ii. 8, 9; v. 21, vi. 23; Gal. v. 21, vi. 8; Phil. iii. 18, 19;—the reticence of St. John in such passages as 1 John iii. 14, 15, v. 16-in all which places the

nature of the subjects handled would have led the Apostles to make explicit mention of endless torment, had they embraced any such belief -cannot by any possibility be the result of accident.1 "That the

doctrinal writings of these three chief teachers of the Gospel-St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. John--are wholly destitute of any assertion of the endless misery of sinners as the literal sense," says Mr. White, can be verified by every reader.” Even Luther, like almost every great and true-hearted teacher on this subject, while constantly maintaining the doctrine of endless torment in nearly its present form, yet slides unconsciously into more hopeful expressions; "God forbid," he says, "that I should limit the time for acquiring faith to the present life! In the depths of the divine mercy there may be opportunity to win it in the future state." 3

I See Essays on Eternal Death by Mr. Barlow, Fellow of Trin. Coll. Dublin. 'There is not one place of Scripture which occurs to me," said Dr. Isaac Watts, ⚫ where the word death . . . necessarily signifies a certain miserable immortality of the soul."

2 Life in Christ, p. 347.

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3 Letter to Hansen von Rechenberg, 1522. (Alger, Doctrine of a Future Life, p. 421.) To the Rabbinic passages already quoted may be added the following: Zijoni, f. 69, 3, only a thread's thickness between Paradise and Gehenna;" Asarah Maamaroth, f. 85, 1, there will hereafter be no Gehenna;" Jalkuth Shimoni, f. 46, 1, "Gabriel and Michael will open the 8,000 gates of Gehenna and let out Israelites and righteous Gentiles; " Falkuth Chadash, f. 57, 1, "the righteous bring out of Gehenna imperfect souls; Falkuth Rubeni, f. 167, 4, 'Sabbaths and refrigeria of the doomed;" Zohar in Exod. Tr. Gibborim, f. 10, 1; Nishmath Chajim, f. 83, 1; Falkuth Shimoni, f. 88, 3, and many other passages speak of twelve months as the period of punishment in Gehenna. In a magnificent passage of Othioth (attributed to R. Akiba) it is said that God has a key of Gehenna, and that He will preach to all the righteous; that Zerubbabel shall say the Kaddish, and an Amen! shall sound forth from Gehenna, and that Gabriel and Michael will open the 40,000 gates of Gehenna and set free the damned. Akiba founds this on Is. xxvi. 2, reading Shomer Amenim, “observing the Amen." for Shomer Emunim, "keeping the truth." Lastly, in Emek Hammelech, f. 138, 4, "the wicked stay in Gehenna till the resurrection and then the Messiah, passing through it, redeems them." These and other passages are collected in Stehelin's Rabbinical Literature (1748), ii. 31 -71.