known to be holy and just and good, it follows logically that the penal consequences must needs vary according to the various degrees of guilt. The doctrine of degrees of penalty is as clearly taught in Scripture as is the doctrine of degrees of sin and guilt (comp. above, p. 90). The same passages which establish the one prove the other also (comp. Matt. x, 15; Luke xii, 47, 48; John xix, 11). The appeal to reason in Heb. x, 28, 29, assumes as beyond controversy that he who sins under the superior light of the gospel is "worthy of much sorer punishment" than one who "set at naught a law of Moses." This fundamental principle, that all righteous penalty must be proportioned according to the various degrees of sin and guilt in the different criminals, is a truth so obvious to every reasonable mind and so universally accepted as to require no extended argument.

11. Duration of Penalty Everlasting. The duration of future punishment, so far as the Scriptures indicate, is everlasting. This is the idea naturally conveyed by such a statement as that of Matt. xxv, 46: "These shall go away into everlasting punishment" (kóλaoiv alúmiov). Here the duration of the doom of the accursed ones (Karηpaμévo, ver. 41), who are sentenced to "the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels," is designated by the same word which describes the everlasting life of the righteous. In like manner the fearful punishment spoken of in 2 Thess. i, 9, is "everlasting destruction (öλpov aviov) from the face of the Lord." But the eternal continuance of the penal consequences of sin may be argued on other grounds than the use of a single word like alúviov. The specific statement that he who blasphemes against the Spirit has no forgiveness, "neither in this age, nor in the age to come" (Matt. xii, 32) seems to exclude all possibility of future pardon. For though "the age to come" be explained as the Messianic age, there is no intimation of any other age (aiwv) to follow which will introduce better or more hopeful conditions for the sinner who goes out of this life as an enemy of God.

(1) Absence of Hope or Promise. Perhaps the most impressive argument from the Scriptures on this point is the notable absence of any clear and explicit statement that the penal consequences of sin will ever come to an end. This absence of any sure ground of hope for the wicked in any world or age to come cannot be fairly ignored or set aside as of little import. It is as awfully significant as the fearful language of Rom. ii, 9, concerning the positive visitation of "tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that worketh evil," set over in contrast with "eternal life" which "the righteous judgment of God renders to them

that by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and incorruption."

(2) Question of Matthew xii, 32. It is often alleged that the language of Jesus in Matt. xii, 32, leaves it to be fairly inferred that in the world to come there may be pardon for other sins than the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Let this be freely acknowledged as a legitimate inference; and yet it by no means sets aside the doctrine of eternal doom for some. Rather, may it be said, this very inference enhances the awful conclusion that those who are guilty of the unpardonable sin have no hope of forgiveness, but are shut up in eternal sin and death (comp. Mark iii, 29). We cannot suppose that our Lord would give utterance to such fearful statements about hopeless perdition if no human soul had ever committed or would or could ever commit a sin whose penal consequences might continue through ages of ages. Our contention here is not about supposable possibilities of grace beyond this life, and about future opportunities of knowledge and change for those who in this life never have the light of the gospel. We are inquiring into the possible consequences of willful transgression, and find that, according to the Scriptures, there is no promise of any future provision for a change of character in incorrigible sinners, "but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries" (Heb. x, 27).

(3) Question of 1 Peter iii, 18-20. It has also been supposed that the preaching to the spirits in prison referred to in 1 Pet. iii, 18-20; iv, 6; is evidence of a provision of saving grace that will be effectual for the salvation of sinners in the world of spirits. But here, as in Matt. xii, 32, we may grant any legitimate inference of possible provisions for some exceptional "spirits in prison" without in the least nullifying the equally legitimate significance of those other scriptures already cited which clearly indicate eternal punishment and perdition as the sure result of willful transgression and sin. A careful criticism of 1 Pet. iii, 18-20, moreover, does not warrant all the inferences which some have drawn therefrom. For if we allow the strictest literal construction, the passage only declares that Christ, "being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit, went also and preached unto the spirits in prison." There is no revelation of what he preached, or of the results of his preaching; and the entire statement is limited to spirits "who beforetime were disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing." There is no intimation that he preached to any other spirits, or that any such preaching ever took place before or will ever take

place hereafter.' And if we further infer from 1 Pet. iv, 6, that the purpose of this preaching to the dead was to rescue them from their prison in order that they might "live according to God in the spirit," we are not told that even one individual of them accepted the offer, and obtained the salvation of Christ. All our hopeful inferences, therefore, are at the best presumptions, and lack confirmation in other scriptures. Such presumptions are quite insufficient to be made a ground of hope for any willful sinner. For this same epistle sounds a notable warning to evildoers, and says that "the time is come for judgment to begin at the house of God: and if it begin first at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel of Christ? And if the righteous is scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?" (1 Pet. iv, 17, 18.)

12. Doctrine of Annihilation of the Wicked. Many have sought to explain the penal consequences of sin as issuing in the annihilation of the incorrigible sinner. The "eternal destruction" is understood as eternal in effect, and such terms as death, perdition, destruction, perishing, cutting off, consuming away, are affirmed to signify in their most natural import the idea of utter cessation of existence. Some go so far as to maintain that the soul is dependent upon the physical organism for its conscious life and must therefore necessarily cease to exist at the death of the body. But this view is incompatible with such language as we find in Matt. x, 28, which clearly implies that to kill the body is not to destroy the soul. It is also irreconcilable with all those scriptures which imply personal conscious life, memory, and thought beyond the grave, as in the description of the rich man after his death and burial (Luke xvi, 23-31). Scriptures also which involve the doctrine of a blessed heavenly life beyond death are against this view of the soul's dependence on the body for conscious life. The words of Jesus to the dying malefactor (Luke xxiii, 43), the prayer of Stephen (Acts vii, 59), and the language of Paul in Phil. i, 21-24, imply a belief in the immortality of the soul. If conscious personal life of the soul be dependent on physical organization,

1

Perhaps, after all, as J. Rendel Harris has suggested (in the Expositor; London, 1901, pp. 346-349), our whole trouble over this obscure text of 1 Pet. iii, 19, is the result of a careless omission, by some early scribe, of the word ENOX after KAI. That the book of Enoch was widely read among the Jewish Christians of the first and second centuries is evident from the use made of it in 2 Peter and Jude (Comp. 2 Pet. ii, 4, 5; Jude 6), and as matter of fact, we read in the book of Enoch (xii and xiii) that Enoch did, at the command of the heavenly watchers, go and proclaim to Azazel and his associate fallen spirits that they should find no peace nor forgiveness. Thus it was Enoch and not Christ who "went and preached unto the spirits in prison." But see also the Expositor for 1902, pp. 316-320, and 377390. This conjecture appears among the various readings of Griesbach's critical edition of the Greek Testament. London 1809.

there is no apparent reason why the righteous more than the wicked should survive the dissolution of the body. Such a doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked, moreover, is clearly inconsistent with the idea of degrees of punishment for sin. Others, however, maintain that the wicked after death may suffer various degrees of punishment, according to their sins, but their personal being and faculties become gradually weakened into helplessness, and finally become utterly ruined by the consuming curse of God and so pass out of conscious existence. Such texts as Psa. xxxvii, 20, are cited in evidence:

The wicked shall perish,

The enemies of Jehovah shall be as fat of lambs;

They shall consume; in smoke shall they consume away.

But this psalm has no necessary reference to the question of existence after death, nor can such poetic utterances have any weight in setting aside the more positive and specific import of such texts as those we have adduced to show the perpetual consequences of sin. The admonition to "fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna" (Matt. x, 28) is cited as a proof-text for annihilation; but the mere word destroy (áпóλλvu) does not and cannot determine the question, for it is used also in speaking of lost sheep and lost coins (Matt. x, 6; Luke xv, 6, 8). No positive or satisfactory conclusion touching the future destiny of the soul can be reached by the etymology or the suggestions of any one word. Even the very significant word eternal, alívios, is insufficient in itself to determine such a question. The doctrine of the future annihilation of the wicked is at best only a hypothesis beset with manifold difficulties.' It cannot be proven from the Scriptures. While it may seem to fit some texts, and may be a possible meaning of some words, it does not naturally accord with the more obvious import of the teachings of the New Testament touching the endless penal consequences of sin.

13. The Question of Theodicy. Why evil in any form should ever have entered the universe of the blessed God is one of the

'It does not meet the immediate difficulty, not to speak of the further mystery which is left under all theories. It means that in some cases the victory of sin over man and God is so absolute that nothing remains for God but to get rid of it by a coup de main. It has been characterized as the 'most wretched and cowardly of all theories'-a theory which surrenders man's true nobility 'in panic at an objection, and like all cowardice fails in securing its object' (Quarry, Donellan Lectures, p. 31). The judgment is strong, but not without its justification. Surely it is more reasonable, more scriptural, more reverent, either to hope that God will find some better way of using sinful souls than to extinguish them, or else to believe that man is so great a work of God, a being endowed with capacities so vast that no limit can be put to the possibilities of his resistance of the divine will, and, therefore, none to the continuance of the penalties of resistance.-Salmond, The Christian Doctrine of Immortality, p. 627.

most perplexing problems of human thought. In view of the awful facts and penal consequences of sin, one hesitates to accept the belief that the God of infinite wisdom, power, and goodness would permit among his creatures the existence of any intelligent being like himself to whom self-conscious existence would prove an everlasting curse. Some necessitarian divines have affirmed and argued that sin is necessary or in some way conducive to the ultimate highest good of the universe. But so far as this hypothesis admits the tacit assumption that God could have secured a universe of moral beings without sin, it cannot present a satisfactory vindication of the divine government of the world. Far better is the hypothesis which starts from the demonstrable facts of man's free personality, and maintains that the existence of moral beings, made in the image of God, is necessary to the realization of the best possible universe. Such beings are essential in any conception of a moral government, but sin is in no sense necessary to the highest good of any being or of any world. God did not desire it, plan it, or authorize it; but he saw, as we also may see, that it was impossible in the nature of things to have a world of free and responsible moral beings without the accompanying possibility of sin. Whether in the ages of ages to come, by some form of Christly mediation, the penal consequences of sin may be overcome and the universe be purged of its stains, is a question we may meditate but may not presume to answer. We have received no message or revelation as to the possibilities of the future times eternal. It has been thought, however, that the language of 1 Cor. xv, 24-28, suggests a far off goal when all authority and power adverse to Christ shall be abolished. We need not doubt that the everlasting Father would gladly, in any age or in any world, welcome any lost spirit that turned freely from his sin and cried for gracious restoration. But we do not know that any such lost spirit will ever thus freely turn unto God. Meanwhile we hold as a tentative theodicy that God prefers a moral universe of innumerable hosts of holy and righteous spirits made perfect, even though that universe be in some spots forever black with Hell, rather than have no free moral universe at all. The best theodicy ever written is, perhaps, the book of Job. But that poem leaves the problem of evil unsolved, and Jehovah's answer out of the whirlwind (Job xxxviii-xli) is an appeal to human limitations and ignorance in justification of his works and ways. But the appeal is adapted to suggest very powerfully that the Creator and Ruler of the world knows what he is doing, and will look after the consequences as well as the beginnings of all things he has made.