The Gospel of the Hereafter

by J. Paterson Smyth

I

THE JUDGMENT

We touch lightly on the subject of the FAR Hereafter which is still away in the future for all humanity. One day the Intermediate Life will close. The end of this age will come at the Second Advent. And at this crisis our Lord places the great drama of the Judgment and the final decision of each man's destiny. Whether it will be a great spectacular event such as His picture suggests, with all humanity assembled and the Judge on the great White Throne, or whether His picture is figurative, we cannot affirm. We can only gather that it will be a final judgment and that it will be a judgment according to finally developed character, when men shall be clearly seen to belong to the right hand or the left, the sheep or the goats, to the wheat or the tares, to the good fish to be gathered up or the bad fish to be thrown away.

Then come the final stages in the history of humanity, Hell and Heaven.

II

HELL

Here we touch the awful part of our study. In Christ's great drama of the Judgment those on the left hand are passing out into the darkness, and we see them no more. In that darkness there seems no ray of hope. So far as we can learn, it means irrevocable ruin and loss. In spite of God's love and pain for them on Earth and in Hades, they seem at last to have destroyed in themselves everything of good, and so placed themselves beyond possibility of restoration for ever. The judgment has clearly the ring of finality. There seems nothing more to be said. And so, with pain in our hearts responding to the pain of the Father, we are forced to leave them in the darkness and mystery in which Scripture enshrouds them.

This is, I think, all that can justifiably be said. The reticence and reserve of Scripture forbids any definite doctrine of Hell.

And this is all that would have needed to be said if men had kept to that reticence and reserve of Scripture, and to all further questionings contented themselves with the answer that the Judge of all the earth will do right. But they have not so contented themselves. It is hard to blame them. For beyond the main facts about the doom of the impenitent there are here and there through the Bible many tantalizing hints perplexing and difficult to reconcile with each other, but very tempting to follow out. By emphasizing certain of these and ignoring or dwelling more lightly on certain others which seem to contradict them, men have formulated definite doctrines about Hell, differing widely from each other but each with apparently strong Scriptural support. This is only what may happen in any department of study. The strict rule of evidence in any enquiry is that all the facts must be studied and that no theory shall be accepted as entirely trustworthy while any of the evidence remains unaccounted for.

There are three theories which hold the ground to-day, each of them seemingly with much evidence in its favour, but each of them seriously unsatisfactory as conflicting with other evidence.