The Gospel of the Hereafter

by J. Paterson Smyth

II

The theory of Universalism, i. e., that all men shall at length be saved.

This opinion is based on the more hopeful side of Scripture that we have referred to, but it ignores or explains away what contradicts it in the darker and sterner side. If one could forget that, it would be the most inspiring of all the guesses that have been made. As presented by its best exponents, such men as Allen and Jukes and Cox, it is wonderfully attractive and at first sight seems to satisfy many of the conditions of the problem. It takes account of a just and awful retribution for every sin, and takes account also of the mysterious hope in the Hereafter which runs through the Bible. It believes that the power of God has infinite resources and that the love of God has unwearying persistence and that no soul can ultimately resist such resources and such love. Even Hell itself it deems God's final effort when all other means have failed.

The reader who thinks there can be no possible excuse for such a theory should glance at a few of the passages quoted in its favour:

"God who wills that all men should be saved" (1 Tim. ii. 4), and "who wills that all men should come to repentance" (2 Peter iii. 9). And this will or determination of God is "immutable" (Heb. vi. 7). Again, "Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the Prince of this world be cast out, AND I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Myself" (John xii. 31, 32). "All flesh shall see the salvation of God" (Luke iii. 6). "His grace bringing salvation to all men" (Titus ii. 11). "We trust in the living God who is the Saviour of all men, especially of those who believe" (1 Tim. iv. 10). "He is the propitiation not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John ii. 2). "He was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil" (1 John iii. 8) [and destroy the devil (bruise the serpent's head) Gen. iii. 15]. "He shall overcome the strong man armed (the devil) and take away his armour and divide his spoils" (Luke xi. 21, 22). "He was manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself" (Heb. ix. 26). "God hath not cast away His people whom He foreknew … and so all Israel shall be saved" (Rom. xii. 25-33). "The times of the Restoration of all things which God hath promised by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began" (Acts iii. 21). "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the first-fruits; afterwards they that are Christ's at His coming. Then cometh the end … when all things have been subjected unto Him[4] … then shall the Son also be subjected unto Him that put all things under Him that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. xv. 22-29).

One can see how the constant study of such passages should lead men to an enthusiastic hope and lead them to study less carefully the stream of darker teaching that seemed to conflict with these. Whatever may be said against the advocates of Universalism we at least owe to them a clearer emphasizing of the mysterious hopefulness of Scripture as to the final triumph of good.

But with deep reluctance one is bound to assert that the advocates of Universal Salvation to a great degree ignore or explain away unsatisfactorily much of the sterner side of the Bible. For amid all its hopefulness there is a steadily persistent note in Scripture, stern, awful, sorrowful, which seems impossible to reconcile with Universalism. There are clear and repeated assertions that some men at any rate will not be saved. It is St. Paul, the author of so many of those hopeful Scriptures quoted, who tells us "even weeping" of men "whose end is destruction" (Phil. iii. 19), and of those whose fate shall be "eternal destruction from the presence of God" (2 Thess. i. 9). It is the loving Christ Himself who said of one of His apostles, "It were good for that man if he had not been born" (St. Matt. xxvi. 24).

We are warned back too by the tendency of character to grow permanent. And when we are told that God "willeth all men to be saved," and that God can do everything, we are forced to ask, Can God do contradictory things? Can God make a door to be open and shut at the same time? Can God make a thing to be and not to be at the same time? Can God make a man's will free to choose good or evil and yet secure that he shall certainly choose good at the last? One longs to believe that Universalism should be true, but to believe it we must ignore much of the evidence of Scripture.