Then will the universe be clean and pure. Then the stain of sin will all be wiped away forever; sinners, and the great enemy that deceived them (for he, too, shall be destroyed, Heb. 2:14), being rooted out of the land of the living. Its every scar now impressed upon the handiwork of God shall be effaced; and this unfortunate earth shall be re-adorned, as only God, omnipotent in power and omniscient in wisdom, is able to adorn it. And then will arise that glad anthem of universal Jubilee, in which shall join every creature which is in Heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, ascribing blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever. Rev. 5:13. There is no room here for a great receptacle of fiery torment, where an innumerable company of human beings shall burn and blaspheme and sin and suffer forever and ever. There is no room in this great song of joy for the discordant and hopeless wailing of the damned. There is no provision made for an eternal rebellion against the government of God, and eternal blasphemy against his holy name! No! only the loyal subjects of the great Captain of our salvation, only such as love immortal life, and seek for it, and prepare themselves for its inestimable blessings, shall ever enjoy the glorious boon; while those who put from themselves the word of God, and “judge themselves unworthy of everlasting life,” Acts 13:46, will be remanded back to the original elements from which they sprung; and strict Justice will write upon their unhonored and unlamented graves that they themselves were the arbiters of their own fate.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
GOD’S DEALINGS WITH HIS CREATURES.
“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” asked an eminent servant of God in the opening pages of revelation, Gen. 18:25; and when all is finished, the redeemed, looking over all God’s dealings with man, exclaim with fervent lips, “Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.” Rev. 15:3. It is objected that we should raise no question regarding the justness of the doom to which God may devote any portion of our race; because we are not able to judge of his ways. Of things with which we are imperfectly acquainted, or which are above our comprehension, this is undoubtedly true; but respecting our relation to God, the light in which he looks upon sin, and the disposition he will finally make of it, he says to us, “Come, let us reason.” We are never called upon to form an opinion or a decision in regard to things respecting which we are incapable of judging; but we are called upon to reverence God, as a God of love, wisdom, justice, and mercy. We must, therefore, be capable of judging of his character, his mercy, his love, his wisdom, and his justice. Are these characteristics displayed in his future dealings with the wicked, according to the view generally promulgated by the churches of the present day? The question to be decided is this: Is an eternity of torture so intense that the severest pain a person can suffer on earth is but a faint shadow of it, any just punishment for any conceivable amount of sin committed by the worst of men, during the brief period of our mortal life? What is our present life? Something for which we did not ask; something given us without our knowledge or consent; and, in the forcible language of another, “Can any abuse of this unasked-for gift justify the recompense of an existence spent in unending agony?”
Between the sins committed in this finite life, and the fiery torment of hell continued through numberless millions of ages, and then no nearer its end than when the first groan was uttered, there is a disproportion so infinite, that few attempt to rest that eternal misery on merely the sins of the present life; and they endeavor to vindicate God’s justice in the matter, or at least to apologize for his course, by saying that the sinner continues to sin, and that is the reason why he continues to suffer. The guilt of all the sins done in the body is soon expiated in the fiery flame; but then they must suffer for the sins committed after they left this mortal state, and commenced their life of agony in hell. And here they are represented as sinning faster than the inconceivable woe of hell can punish. It is affirmed of them, as quoted from Benson in the previous chapter, that “they must be perpetually swelling their enormous sums of guilt, and still running deeper, immensely deeper, in debt to divine and infinite justice. Hence, after the longest imaginable period, they will be so far from having discharged their debt that they will find more due than when they first began to suffer.”
In like manner Wm. Archer Butler, in his sermon on Future Punishment, says:--
“The punishments of hell are but the perpetual vengeance that accompanies the sins of hell. An eternity of wickedness brings with it an eternity of woe. The sinner is to suffer for everlasting, but it is because the sin itself is as everlasting as the suffering.”
Do the Scriptures anywhere thus speak? Do they not affirm, not once or twice, but over and over again, that the punishment of the future is for the sins of the present time? It is for the sins in which the sinner dies, not for what he commits after death, that he is to suffer future retribution. Eze. 18:26. The works for which we are to be brought into judgment (and for no others can we be punished) are the works of this present life. Eccl. 12:14. And Paul testifies, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” 2 Cor. 5:10. It is for the sins done by human beings in the body, in this present life, not for what they will commit as lost spirits in hell, that they are to answer at the judgment seat of Christ, and for which they are to receive a just retribution. And if everlasting misery is thought to be too much for this, we are not at liberty to throw in post-mortem sins to balance the excessive punishment. If eternal torment cannot be defended as a just punishment for the sins of this present life, it cannot be defended at all.
To illustrate: Suppose in an earthly tribunal the judge should sentence a criminal to a punishment altogether too severe for the crime of which he had been guilty, and then should endeavor to justify his course by saying that he gave the sentence because he knew that the criminal would deserve it by the sins he would commit after he went to jail! How long would such a judge be tolerated? Yet this is the very course attributed by learned doctors of divinity, to the Judge of all the earth, who has declared that he will do right.
On the supposition that eternal torture is to be inflicted as the penalty for a life of sin in this world, were man asked if God’s conduct in this respect was just, his own innate sense of justice, not yet wholly obliterated by the fall, would prompt him to a universal and determined, No! The framers of different religious systems have felt this, and seem to have searched sharply for some avenue of escape from the fearful wrong of this horrid theory. So Plato had his Acherusian lake from which at least some of the wretched sufferers in Tartarus, after a purgative process might issue forth again to the upper air. Augustine following Plato in his notion of an abode of unending pain for some, had also his purgatory from whence others might find a road to Heaven. Rome has only a purgatory, the fires of a finite period, for the millions within her communion. Origen conceived of a purgatory wider than Plato’s, Augustine’s, or Rome’s, from which all should at length be restored to the favor of God.
The churches of the Reformation have generally accepted of Augustine’s hell, but denied his purgatory. In the Protestant denominations, therefore, we have this doctrine in its most horrid aspects. And it is no marvel that many who have felt compelled by their creed to accept it, have shrunk from its advocacy, and have tacitly, if not openly, confessed that they could heartily wish it were a lie.