(1) The theory of Everlasting Torment—that every soul which has missed of Christ shall be plunged into a Hell of torment and sin for ever and ever, growing worse and worse and lower and lower through all the ages of Eternity.
(2) The theory of Universalism—that in the ages of the far future through the stern loving discipline of God all men shall at length be saved.
(3) The theory of Conditional Immortality—that all souls who fail of Eternal Life shall be punished not by Everlasting Torment, but by annihilation and the loss of God and Heaven for ever.
At first sight it seems almost impossible that such conflicting theories could be formed out of the same Bible. But a little consideration of the evidence and of the power of prejudice and preconceptions in estimating evidence makes it easier to understand.
The main trend of all Scripture teaching is that it shall be well, gloriously well, with the good, and that it shall be evil, unutterably evil, with the wicked. That there is a mysterious and awful malignity attaching to sin—that to be in sin means to be in misery and ruin in this life or any other life—and that sin persisted in tends to utter and irretrievable ruin. No arguments about the love and power of God to save to the uttermost can cancel the fact of the free-will of man or the plain statements of Scripture confirmed beyond question by the loving Lord Himself as to the awful fate of the finally impenitent.
But running through all this dark background of Scripture is a curious golden thread of prophecy that evil shall not be eternal in God's universe. One turns to it perplexed with wondering hope. For however fully Conscience recognizes the righteousness of a terrible retribution for sin, there is in all thoughtful minds a shrinking from the thought that Evil shall be as permanent as Good in the universe of the All-holy God—that any evil power can exist unendingly side by side with Him and unendingly resist Him; that Hell and Heaven, Satan and God shall co-exist for all eternity. This is almost unthinkable to thoughtful men. It is a Dualism repugnant to all our ideals of God. And this golden thread, running through the Old and New Testaments alike, confirms this thought, in its dim vision of a golden age somewhere away in the far future—away it would seem beyond the dark vision of Hell—when evil shall have vanished out of the Universe for ever and "God shall be all in all" (1 Cor. xv. 28)—when there shall come "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).
Naturally there is danger of people emphasizing strongly either one of these trends of Scripture and gathering certain proof texts according to their own prejudices and preconceptions of what ought to be. "The way in which some people read their Bibles," says Mr. Ruskin, "is like the way in which the old monks thought that hedgehogs ate grapes. They rolled themselves over the grapes as they lay on the ground and whatever first stuck to their spikes they carried off and ate." If the grapes are of various kinds as are the passages of Scripture we cannot judge thus of the taste of the vintage. To get the true taste of the grapes we must press them in cluster. To get the true meaning of Scripture we must study the whole trend of Scripture. Before we can accept any doctrine from separate passages of Scripture we must assure ourselves that it is in harmony, not only with other passages but also with the ruling thoughts which run through all Scripture, God's unutterable holiness, God's awful hatred of sin and stern denunciations of doom against the impenitent, God's love, God's unchangeableness, God's reasonableness and fairness, and the mysterious golden thread of hope which runs through all.
Now we glance as briefly as possible at the three theories referred to.
I
The theory of Everlasting Torment and Everlasting Sin.