2. Of the wicked.
The final state of the wicked is described under the figures of eternal fire (Mat. 25:41); the pit of the abyss (Rev. 9:2, 11); outer darkness (Mat. 8:12); torment (Rev. 14:10, 11); eternal punishment (Mat. 25:46); wrath of God (Rom. 2:5); second death (Rev. 21:8); eternal destruction from the face of the Lord (2 Thess. 1:9); eternal sin (Mark 3:29).
Mat. 25:41—“Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels”; Rev. 9:2, 11—“And he opened the pit of the abyss; and there went up a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace.... They have over them as king the angel of the abyss: his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in the Greek tongue he hath the name Apollyon”; Mat. 8:12—“but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth”; Rev. 14:10, 11—“he also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of his anger; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment goeth up for ever and ever”; Mat. 25:46—“And these shall go away into eternal punishment.”
Rom. 2:5—“after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God”; Rev. 21:8—“But for the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death”: 2 Thess. 1:9—“who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might”—here ἀπό, from, = not separation, but “proceeding from,” and indicates that the everlasting presence of Christ, once realized, ensures everlasting destruction; Mark 3:29—“whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—a text which implies that (1) some will never cease to sin; (2) this eternal sinning will involve eternal misery; (3) this eternal misery, as the appointed vindication of the law, will be eternal punishment. As Uzziah, when smitten with leprosy, did not need to be thrust out of the temple, but “himself hasted also to go out” (2 Chron. 26:20), so Judas is said to go “to his own place” (Acts 1:25; cf. 4:23—where Peter and John, “being let go, they came to their own company”). Cf. John 8:35—“the bondservant abideth not in the house forever” = whatever be his outward connection with God, it can be only for a time; 15:2—“Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away”—at death; the history of Abraham showed that one might have outward connection with God that was only temporary: Ishmael was cast out; the promise belonged only to Isaac.
Wrightnour: “Gehenna was the place into which all the offal of the city of Jerusalem was swept. So hell is the penitentiary of the moral universe. The profligate is not happy in the prayer meeting, but in the saloon; the swine is not at home in the parlor, but in the sty. Hell is the sinner's own place; he had rather be there than in heaven; he will not come to the house of God, the nearest thing to heaven; why should we expect him to enter heaven itself?”
Summing up all, we may say that it is the loss of all good, whether physical or spiritual, and the misery of an evil conscience banished from God and from the society of the holy, and dwelling under God's positive curse forever. Here we are to remember, as in the case of the final state of the righteous, that the decisive and controlling element is not the outward, but the inward. If hell be a place, it is only that the outward may correspond to the inward. If there be outward torments, it is only because these will be fit, though subordinate, accompaniments of the inward state of the soul.
Every living creature will have an environment suited to its character—“its own place.” “I know of the future judgment, How dreadful so e'er it be, That to sit alone with my conscience Will be judgment enough for me.” Calvin: “The wicked have the seeds of hell in their own hearts.” Chrysostom, commenting on the words “Depart, ye cursed,” says: “Their own works brought the punishment on them; the fire was not prepared for them, but for Satan; yet, since they cast themselves into it, ‘Impute it to yourselves,’ he says, ‘that you are there.’ ” Milton, Par. Lost, 4:75—Satan: “Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.” Byron: “There is no power in holy men, Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast, Nor agony, nor, greater than all these, The innate torture of that deep despair Would make a hell of heaven, can exorcise From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense Of its own sins.”
Phelps, English Style, 228, speaks of “a law of the divine government, by which the body symbolizes, in its experience, the moral condition of its spiritual inhabitant. The drift of sin is to physical suffering. Moral depravity tends always to a corrupt and tortured body. Certain diseases are the product of certain crimes. The whole catalogue of human pains, from a toothache to the angina pectoris, is but a witness to a state of sin expressed by an experience of suffering. Carry this law into the experience of eternal sin. The bodies of the wicked live again as well as those of the righteous. You have therefore a spiritual body, inhabited and used, and therefore tortured, by a [pg 1035]guilty soul,—a body, perfected in its sensibilities, inclosing and expressing a soul matured in its depravity.” Augustine, Confessions, 25—“Each man's sin is the instrument of his punishment, and his iniquity is turned into his torment.” Lord Bacon: “Being, without well-being, is a curse, and the greater the being, the greater the curse.”
In our treatment of the subject of eternal punishment we must remember that false doctrine is often a reaction from the unscriptural and repulsive over-statements of Christian apologists. We freely concede: 1. that future punishment does not necessarily consist of physical torments,—it may be wholly internal and spiritual; 2. that the pain and suffering of the future are not necessarily due to positive inflictions of God,—they may result entirely from the soul's sense of loss, and from the accusations of conscience; and 3. that eternal punishment does not necessarily involve endless successions of suffering,—as God's eternity is not mere endlessness, so we may not be forever subject to the law of time.
An over-literal interpretation of the Scripture symbols has had much to do with such utterances as that of Savage, Life after Death, 101—“If the doctrine of eternal punishment was clearly and unmistakably taught in every leaf of the Bible, and on every leaf of all the Bibles of all the world, I could not believe a word of it. I should appeal from these misconceptions of even the seers and the great men to the infinite and eternal Good, who only is God, and who only on such terms could be worshiped.”