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.
III
The theory of Conditional Immortality, i. e., that all souls who fail of Eternal Life shall be punished not by Endless Torment, but by Annihilation and the loss of God and Heaven for ever and ever.
This is another conjecture framed to escape the difficulties of the former two. It would be consistent both with retribution for evil and also with the final victory of good. That in the mysterious nature of things when the malignity of sin becomes incurable, a soul rotted through with sin might ultimately die out of existence; this opinion is at least allowable as a conjecture to escape from the theory of Endless Torment and Sin. It would in a real sense be an everlasting punishment, being an everlasting loss of Heaven and God. But it too is founded only on part of the evidence, on such texts as "The gift of God is eternal life," "He that hath the Son hath life," implying that immortality is a conditional thing granted only to those who are saved, and such texts as "eternal destruction from the presence of God," and the idea of utter annihilation in such passages as "burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." There is much in favor of it but there is much in Scripture which makes it difficult to accept it. And it contradicts straight out the wide-spread Christian belief in the essential immortality of the soul (though that belief also needs to be examined). At any rate it cannot claim authority as a theory of future punishment.
IV
These are the only conjectures offered us to solve the difficulties connected with Final Retribution. We find them all unsatisfactory. We have reached no definite doctrine of Hell. With the evidence at our disposal it seems impossible to do so. The failure of all attempts at reconciling the seeming contradictions of Scripture must suggest to us that the solution of this problem is beyond the range of our present powers. At any rate it is beyond the range of our present knowledge. Surely it is wise and reverent to think that this points to some dealing of God beyond our human ken which will one day reconcile all the difficulties.[5] Our little guesses do not exhaust God's possibilities. Some day we shall find the answer in that land where we shall know even as we are known. And when we find it we know it will be consistent with our highest thoughts of God. I like to think that it is those who have grown closest to Christ in sympathy for sorrow and pain and who unlike us, know all the facts of the case, who are represented as joining in that glad shout hereafter, "Hallelujah! salvation and glory and power belong to our God, FOR TRUE AND RIGHTEOUS ARE HIS JUDGMENTS." Leave the manifestation of this to God. A wise old man once said, "God has a good deal of time to do things between this and the other side of eternity."