THE LAST ASSIZE
CHAPTER I
GENERAL
CONSIDERATIONS
OVER fifty years ago I preached and published a
sermon with the title "The Sinner’s Future." At or about that time I
studied the chief attacks upon the doctrine of eternal punishment, some in
favour of the annihilation of the wicked, some advocating the ultimate
restoration to God of all created beings. In the intervening half century I
have read and meditated much upon these themes. Of late I have read again those
older treatises and have added more recent works, English, American, and
German. The outcome is here set forth. I cannot hope to have canvassed every
argument or to have dealt with every passage of Scripture employed in them,
indeed, many of the latter seem irrelevant; but I have sought to deal with all
that is material to the subject. I will first touch upon some general topics.
1. My essential and vital conclusion remains as in those earlier
years. I see no fair escape from the belief that for the impenitent
Christ-rejector there awaits endless conscious experience of the wrath of God.
But I now see
(a) No teaching in Scripture that the destiny of all men is
fixed at death.
(b) No authority in Scripture to assert that the
unevangelized - and they are the vast majority of our human race - will
necessarily and inevitably be lost for ever.
2. We ought to deplore the
flights of imagination and unrestrained rhetoric with which the solemn warnings
of eternal punishment have been too often exaggerated and disfigured. One of
the greatest preachers of the nineteenth century thus declaimed: "When the
damned jingle the burning irons of their torments they shall say ‘For
ever!’ When they howl, Echo cries ‘For ever!’" Such language
does not befit the awfulness of the prospect. The metaphors of Scripture are
sufficiently solemn and, produce all the effect desired, without human
amplification.
3. On the other hand it cannot be denied that the men
whom God most used to the awakening and conversion of sinners taught the
doctrine of eternal punishment. Their emphasis upon it was not nullified even
by the needless and regrettable additions just indicated. In spite of these the
Spirit of God used them mightily. One need only mention in more modern times
men such as Jonathan Edwards, Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Spurgeon, and Moody.
Conversely, has any teacher of the doctrine of annihilation or of universal
restoration been used thus mightily to the awakening of the lost?
4. If
advocates of the doctrine of eternal punishment have erred in presentation, its
opponents also are guilty. To intensify their argument they dilate upon the
horror of the prospect and employ mathematics to drive the nail home. Of one of
the most celebrated of their books it was said, not unjustly, that it was
everything that such a treatise ought not to be, being from first to last a
passionate appeal to prejudice. This may be said in measure of all their
writings which I have seen. Let the reader be cautious of appeals to sentiment.
They disturb that balance of mind indispensable to sober inquiry and sound
judgment. Opponents labour such arguments as that eternal wrath is inconsistent
with the nature and character of God as merciful and loving. The searcher for
truth must be alert when he meets such reasoning. It is easy to form one’s
own notion of God and so to be unbalanced. It is possible to dwell unduly upon
His holiness and justice; it is much more common to regard Him as only love and
grace. In either case there is distortion, and then follows a distorted view of
either His wrath or His mercy.
6. It is characteristic that opponents,
of all schools, are not content to submit on this subject to the Word of God
alone. They insist that history, conscience, nature, experience, and reason are
also books of God and entitled to a direct voice in these great matters. Now
history tells of the past; it is not a revelation of the future. Conscience
does no more than insist that I must do what I think to be right, and not do
what I think wrong; it cannot settle what is right or wrong, for this is not
its function, and certainly it tells nothing distinct about the future. Nature
has a voice about the Creator, but gives no revelation as to the hereafter.
Experience is based upon the past, and likewise does not open out the future.
How shall reason guide us as to eternal matters, seeing that it has no data
upon which to work? If reason has ought to say upon the subject, surely it is
that God alone knows the future, that He alone can foretell it with certainty,
and that it is in the Holy Scriptures alone that He has done so to man.
Moreover, how shall our natural faculties be trusted, seeing that they are
perverted and enfeebled by sin and are not capable of comprehending things
spiritual? (I Cor. 2. 14).
7. Another feature of those who object to
eternal punishment is that they appeal to the "general tenor" of Scripture and
refuse to settle the question by the text of Scripture. This is subtle and
dangerous. The reader should be highly cautious of any writer who so argues,
for it is a tacit admission that the separate texts do not establish his views.
It is clear that the general tenor of a document can be gained only by weighing
carefully its several statements. "Sound exegesis of individual passages is the
foundation of doctrine."
8. Another general point is that objection is
taken to any appeal to fear as a motive of action. Is, then, man wiser than
God, who has included fear as an element in man’s constitution? To what
but fear was the first Divine warning addressed: "In the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. 2. 17)? It was godly fear that moved Noah
to prepare the ark (Heb. ii. 7). Christ earnestly warns us to "fear Him who is
able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna" (Matt. 10. 28). Granted that it
is higher and sweeter to respond to love, which should be emphasized in our
messages; yet it is better to flee from the coming wrath out of fear than to be
overwhelmed by its fury. A Christian woman told me that when unconverted she
went one night to a bridge to drown herself in the canal, and was deterred only
by the thought that if she went down into that water, she would go down to
hell.
This one-sided objection results from a defective view of the
wickedness of sin and of the holiness of God. It arises from a disproportionate
sense of His mercy as compared with His wrath. This distorts the subject and
perverts the judgment.
9. It is strongly alleged that the thought of
eternal torment is a fruitful source of disbelief and atheism. But such
unbelievers usually protest against other Biblical doctrines, such as the
depravity of human nature, and its incapability of pleasing God, and that it is
so incurably sick that a positively new birth from God, the imparting of a new
nature, is indispensable, and that there is necessity for atonement by the
shedding of blood. Such persons cavil at the virgin birth of Christ, His deity,
and other evidently Scriptural doctrines. Are these also, to be surrendered
because fallible, fallen men object to them?
Moreover, this argument is
double-edged and may cut those who use it. Have any been encouraged in sin by
the hope of extinction of being or of final restoration? Let this case answer
the question. The earliest well known modern advocate of the restitution of all
things had his daughter as his amanuensis, who made fair copies of his
manuscripts. She told me of her extreme reluctance to copy his book on this
subject and of the constraint she had to put upon herself to serve her father
in this instance, because the effect of that doctrine upon her brother had been
so disastrous, that she was sure it was not of God.
In 1878 Dean Farrar
published the five addresses he had given in Westminster Abbey against eternal
punishment. In his recent book "Battle for the Mind", p.130, Dr. William
Sargant has this significant statement: One of the most important occasions in
English religious history may prove to have been when a workman is said to have
rushed jubilantly out of a church when Dean Farrar was preaching, and shouted:
‘Good news, mates, old Farrar says there’s no
‘ell!’
In the year 1903 I spoke with a Christian assistant in
one of the largest business establishments at Brighton. She told me that when
she rebuked other assistants for their immoral lives they replied with scorn:
"Don’t talk to us about hell: Mr. Campbell (R. J. Campbell, afterwards
minister of the City Temple, London) says there’s no such place."
10. It is necessary to disencumber one’s mind of these and all such
presuppositions in order to address oneself hopefully to the Word of God to
learn what the Spirit of truth there teaches. This is the more important
because persons of various schools of thought are, consciously or
unconsciously, influenced by pre-Christian philosophic ideas, especially that
the soul of man is naturally immortal. If this had meant only that man, once
created by God, will exist for ever, it would have been true, but "immortal" is
not the right word for existence. It means properly "incapable of dying" which
is true of God alone, "Who only hath immortality (i Tim. 6. i6). The Apostle
Paul, who wrote this statement was very well acquainted with the current
phiiosophical idea of man’s immortality, and tacitly repudiated it. Adam
was created in a condition called by God "life ("man became a living soul,"
Gen. 2. 7). Through sin this condition was lost and the fallen state of man is
not what God calls "life," but is rather "death" ("in the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die," Gen. 2. 12). But although he died that day he
did not then cease to exist. Presently death extends its power beyond the
spirit of man to his body, whereupon the soul, disembodied, goes to a lower
realm of existence, Hades. But he does not cease to exist, for, as Christ
taught, in that realm all live unto God (Luke 20. 38). Dead in condition, out
of touch with this world, they exist before God.’ Abraham, Dives, and
Lazarus were the same persons as previously, only in a state called death. At
the close of the Millennium those of the dead not raised at the first
resurrection are seen standing before the great white throne, which shows that
the first death is not annihilation, nor do we see Scripture anywhere to teach
that they ever cease to exist, though their condition of existence is death "
not " life."
It is vastly important to grasp the Biblical sense of
"life and "death," because the doctrine of the annihilation of the sinner could
hardly exist apart from the false assumption that "life" equals "existence" and
that by consequexice "death" must mean, at least finally, "non-existence." All
writers of that school known to me build upon this assumption.
ii. Again,
opponents of eternal punishment give to reason almost the place given to it in
the Platonic philosophy and by later Rationalists. "For the Platonist held that
reason is never false; it ‘contemplates the first, abiding, unchanging
truths,’ and always knows what is right" (C. Bigg, Chief Ancient
Philosophies, Neoplatonism, 87).
It was into lands saturated with
these ideas that Paul took the good and enlightening news of truth as it is in
Jesus (Eph. 4. 21), and he said plainly that philosophy is "not after Christ"
and could only rob His people (Col. 2. 8). Therefore if one wishes to learn
truth, apd secure its mighty benefits, he must turn from human philosophy and
learn of and from Christ Jesus. But this meant for those first readers just
what it still means for us, that we must abandon Plato and give heed to Paul
and other messengers commissioned by Christ.
Luther said that they had
been taught by the Scholastic theologians that one who wished to be a
theologian must begin with Aristotle; but, said he, if any man wished to be a
theologian he must first get rid of Aristotle. This is just. He who would learn
about man’s destiny, among other truths, must first become a little child
and sit humbly at Christ’s feet, as did Mary. From His lips he will hear
the most tender of calls to the sinner to receive salvation and also the most
solemn of all warnings as to the wrath of God. May we find grace to do so, as
we ponder this most awful of all themes, the eternal future of the
sinner.
CHAPTER II
HAS MAN A
FUTURE?
Our present purpose is not to discuss once again whether
the punishment of the sinner will be everlasting but to set forth, in its main
features, the general question of man’s ‘future, from the stand point
of one who believes that the punishment of the Christ-rejector will be for
ever. One of two things covers the whole case; either Man has a future after
death, or He has no future beyond this life.
It is needful to begin here
because there have not been, and are not, wanting those who assert that man has
no existence after his present life. Some ancient philosophers taught it, and
their successors confront us today. Three leading considerations may be urged
against this view:
i. That the universal aspiration and expectation of the
human race is that man will have a future existence.
2. That justice
requires that he should.
3. That the Word of God is decisively on that
side.
These arguments may be termed the natural, moral, and Scriptural.
1. As to the first, we must not attach too great weight to the feelings and
wishes of man, for he is condemned by his conscience and is therefore inwardly
biased against the thought of retributive justice deciding his future. "As
creatures already guilty and condemned, we are not impartial judges upon our
own case, and have rather to learn what is the judgment of God than of our own
reason upon it." But the point must be mentioned because some who oppose the
teaching of everlasting punishment are ready to appeal to the sentiments of our
own nature as being entitled to a loud voice in the settlement of these
questions. Upon this particular point the longings of our race are decidedly in
favour of man having a future career.
2. As to the second argument, there
would manifestly be something wrong with the government of the universe, if
evil beings are allowed to work ruin to their fellows and escape with no more
retribution than many receive here. Asaph of old (Psa. 73) was troubled with
what, if it were the whole fact of the case, would trouble us also, namely, the
present ease and seeming prosperity often attending the wicked; nor was it till
he "considered their latter end," as viewed in God’s sight, that his sense
of security returned. If it could be demonstrated that the cruel and the
abandonedly profligate will receive no more recompense than the comparative
modicum that some of them suffer in this life, we might well give up belief in
there being a Maker and Ruler. For if God is, He is necessarily a God of
infallible justice, the principle of whose government must be that "every
transgression and disobedience shall receive a just recompense of reward" (Heb.
2. 2); and if this rule does not rule, then God is not. The allowance of
inequalities and injustice in this age can only find solution and explanation
in the fact of a hereafter when the balance will be made even, by both vice and
virtue, here often unrewarded, being then rewarded as each deserves.
End of this extract.