In one of his early stories William Black represents a sour-tempered Scotchman as protesting against the idea that a sinner he has in mind should be allowed to escape the consequences of his acts: “What's the good of being good,” he asks, “if things are to turn out that way?” The instinct of retribution is the strongest instinct of the human heart. It is bound up with our very intuition of God's existence, so that to deny its rightfulness is to deny that there is a God. There is “a certain fearful expectation of judgment”(Heb. 10:27) for ourselves and for others, in case of persistent transgression, without which the very love of God would cease to inspire respect. Since neither annihilation nor second probation is Scriptural, our only relief in contemplating the doctrine of eternal punishment must come from: 1. the fact that eternity is not endless time, but a state inconceivable to us; and 2. the fact that evolution suggests reversion to the brute as the necessary consequence of abusing freedom.
(c) The benevolence of God, as concerned for the general good of the universe, requires the execution of the full penalty of the law upon all who reject Christ's salvation. The Scriptures intimate that God's treatment of human sin is matter of instruction to all moral beings. The self-chosen ruin of the few may be the salvation of the many.
Dr. Joel Parker, Lectures on Universalism, speaks of the security of free creatures as attained through a gratitude for deliverance “kept alive by a constant example of some who are suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” Our own race may be the only race (of course the angels are not a “race”) that has fallen away from God. As through the church the manifold wisdom of God is made manifest “to principalities and powers in the heavenly places” (Eph. 3:10); so, through the punishment of the lost, God's holiness may be made known to a universe that without it might have no proof so striking, that sin is moral suicide and ruin, and that God's holiness is its irreconcilable antagonist.
With regard to the extent and scope of hell, we quote the words of Dr. Shedd, in the book already mentioned: “Hell is only a spot in the universe of God. Compared with heaven, hell is narrow and limited. The kingdom of Satan is insignificant, in contrast with the kingdom of Christ. In the immense range of God's dominion, good is the rule and evil is the exception. Sin is a speck upon the infinite azure of eternity; a spot on the sun. Hell is only a corner of the universe. The Gothic etymon denotes a covered-up hole. In Scripture, hell is a ‘pit,’ a ‘lake’; not an ocean. It is ‘bottomless,’ not boundless. The Gnostic and Dualistic theories which make God, and Satan or the Demiurge, nearly equal in power and dominion, find no support in Revelation. The Bible teaches that there will always be some sin and death in the universe. Some angels and men will forever be the enemies of God. But their number, compared with that of unfallen angels and redeemed men, is small. They are not described in the glowing language and metaphors by which the immensity of the holy and blessed is delineated (Ps. 68:17; Deut. 32:2; Ps. 103:21; Mat. 6:13; 1 Cor. 15:25; Rev. 14:1; 21:16, 24, 25.) The number of the lost spirits is never thus emphasized and enlarged upon. The brief, stern statement is, that ‘the fearful and unbelieving ... their part shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone’ (Rev. 21:8). No metaphors and amplifications are added to make the impression of an immense ‘multitude which no man can number.’ ” Dr. Hodge: “We have reason to believe that the lost will bear to the saved no greater proportion than the inmates of a prison do to the mass of a community.”
The North American Review engaged Dr. Shedd to write an article vindicating eternal punishment, and also engaged Henry Ward Beecher to answer it. The proof sheets of Dr. Shedd's article were sent to Mr. Beecher, whereupon he telegraphed from Denver [pg 1053]to the Review: “Cancel engagement, Shedd is too much for me. I half believe in eternal punishment now myself. Get somebody else.” The article in reply was never written, and Dr. Shedd remained unanswered.
(d) The present existence of sin and punishment is commonly admitted to be in some way consistent with God's benevolence, in that it is made the means of revealing God's justice and mercy. If the temporary existence of sin and punishment lead to good, it is entirely possible that their eternal existence may lead to yet greater good.
A priori, we should have thought it impossible for God to permit moral evil,—heathenism, prostitution, the saloon, the African slave-trade. But sin is a fact. Who can say how long it will be a fact? Why not forever? The benevolence that permits it now may permit it through eternity. And yet, if permitted through eternity, it can be made harmless only by visiting it with eternal punishment. Lillie on Thessalonians, 457—“If the temporary existence of sin and punishment lead to good, how can we prove that their eternal existence may not lead to greater good?” We need not deny that it causes God real sorrow to banish the lost. Christ's weeping over Jerusalem expresses the feelings of God's heart: Mat. 23:37, 38—“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathered her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate”; cf. Hosea 11:8—“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I cast thee off, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboiim? my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together.” Dante, Hell, iii—the inscription over the gate of Hell: “Justice the founder of my fabric moved; To rear me was the task of power divine, Supremest wisdom and primeval love.”
A. H. Bradford, Age of Faith, 254, 267—“If one thinks of the Deity as an austere monarch, having a care for his own honor but none for those to whom he has given being, optimism is impossible. For what shall we say of our loved ones who have committed sins? That splendid boy who yielded to an inherited tendency—what has become of him? Those millions who with little light and mighty passions have gone wrong—what of them? Those countless myriads who peopled the earth in ages past and had no clear motive to righteousness, since their perception of God was dim—is this all that can be said of them: In torment they are exhibiting the glorious holiness of the Almighty in his hatred of sin? Some may believe that, but, thank God, the number is not large.... No, penalty, remorse, despair, are only signs of the deep remedial force in the nature of things, which has always been at work and always will be, and which, unless counteracted, will result sometime in universal and immortal harmony.... Retribution is a natural law; it is universal in its sweep; it is at the same time a manifestation of the beneficence that pervades the universe. This law must continue its operation so long as one free agent violates the moral order. Neither justice nor love would be honored if one soul were allowed to escape the action of that law. But the sting in retribution is ordained to be remedial and restorative rather than punitive and vengeful.... Will any forever resist that discipline? We know not; but it is difficult to understand how any can be willing to do so, when the fulness of the divine glory is revealed.”
(e) As benevolence in God seems in the beginning to have permitted moral evil, not because sin was desirable in itself, but only because it was incident to a system which provided for the highest possible freedom and holiness in the creature; so benevolence in God may to the end permit the existence of sin and may continue to punish the sinner, undesirable as these things are in themselves, because they are incidents of a system which provides for the highest possible freedom and holiness in the creature through eternity.
But the condition of the lost is only made more hopeless by the difficulty with which God brings himself to this, his “strange work” of punishment (Is. 28:21). The sentence which the judge pronounces with tears is indicative of a tender and suffering heart, but it also indicates that there can be no recall. By the very exhibition of “eternal judgment”(Heb. 6:2), not only may a greater number be kept true to God, but a higher degree of [pg 1054]holiness among that number be forever assured. The Endless Future, published by South. Meth. Pub. House, supposes the universe yet in its infancy, an eternal liability to rebellion, an ever-growing creation kept from sin by one example of punishment. Mat. 7:13, 14—“few there be that find it”—“seems to have been intended to describe the conduct of men then living, rather than to foreshadow the two opposite currents of human life to the end of time”; see Hovey, Bib. Eschatology, 167. See Goulburn, Everlasting Punishment; Haley, The Hereafter of Sin.