2 E. g. Stuart's Dissertation on the Angelology of the Scriptures, published in vol. i. of the Bibliotheca Sacra.
3 De Principiis, lib. iii. cap 2. See, also, in Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament, sect. 4 of the chapter on Jude.
4 Book of Enoch, translated by Dr. R. Laurence, cap. ii.
thought it imminently necessary for men to be diligent in striving to secure their salvation, because "all sensual mockers, not having the spirit, but walking after their own ungodly lusts," would be lost. He probably expected that, when all free contingencies were past and Christ had pronounced sentence, the condemned would be doomed eternally into the black abyss, and the accepted would rise into the immortal glory of heaven. He closes his letter with these significant words, which plainly imply much of what we have just been setting forth: "Everlasting honor and power, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be unto God, who is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the face of his glory with exceeding joy."5
The first chapter of the so called Second Epistle of Peter is not occupied with theological propositions, but with historical, ethical, and practical statements and exhortations. These are, indeed, of such a character, and so expressed, that they clearly presuppose certain opinions in the mind of the writer. First, he evidently believed that a merciful and holy message had been sent from God to men by Jesus Christ, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises." The substance of these promises was "a call to escape the corruption of the world, and enter into glory and be partakers of the Divine nature." By partaking of the Divine nature, we understand the writer to mean entering the Divine abode and condition, ascending into the safe and eternal joy of the celestial prerogatives. That the author here denotes heaven by the term glory, as the other New Testament writers frequently do, appears distinctly from the seventeenth and eighteenth verses of the chapter, where, referring to the incident at the baptism of Jesus, he declares, "There came a voice from the excellent glory, saying, 'This is my beloved Son;' and this voice, which came from heaven, we heard." Secondly, our author regarded this glorious promise as contingent on the fulfilment of certain conditions. It was to be realized by means of "faith, courage, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, kindness, and love." "He that hath these things shall never fall," "but an entrance shall be ministered unto him abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ." The writer furnishes us no clew to his idea of the particular part performed by Christ in our salvation. He says not a word concerning the sufferings or death of the Savior; and the extremely scanty and indefinite allusions made to the relation in which Christ was supposed to stand between God and men, and the redemption and reconciliation of men with God, do not enable us to draw any dogmatic conclusions. He speaks of "false teachers, who shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them." But whether by this last phrase he means to imply a ransom of imprisoned souls from the under world by Christ's descent thither and victory over its powers, or a purchased exemption of sinners from their merited doom by the vicarious sufferings of Christ's death, or a practical regenerative redemption of disciples from their sins by the moral influences of his mission, his teachings, example, and character, there is nothing in the epistle clearly to decide; though, forming our judgment by the aid of other sources of information, we should conclude in favor of the first of these three conceptions as most probably expressing the writer's thought.
5 Griesbuch's reading of the 25th verse of Jude.
The second chapter of the epistle is almost an exact parallel with the Epistle of Jude: in many verses it is the same, word for word. It threatens "unclean, self willed, unjust, and blaspheming men," that they shall "be reserved unto the day of judgment, to be punished." It warns such persons by citing the example of the rebellious "angels, who were thrust down into Tartarus, and fastened in chains of darkness until the judgment." It speaks of "cursed children, to whom is reserved the mist of darkness forever." Herein, plainly enough, is betrayed the common notion of the Jews of that time, the conception of a dismal under world, containing the evil angels of the Persian theology, and where the wicked were to be remanded after judgment and eternally imprisoned.
The third and last chapter is taken up with the doctrine of the second coming of Christ. "Be mindful of the words of the prophets and apostles, knowing this first, that in the last days there shall be scoffers, who will say, 'Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as from the beginning.'" The writer meets this skeptical assertion with denial, and points to the Deluge, "whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished." His argument is, the world was thus destroyed once, therefore it may be destroyed again. He then goes on to assert positively relying for authority on old traditions and current dogmas that "the heavens and the earth which are now are kept by the word of God in store to be destroyed by fire in the day of judgment, when the perdition of ungodly men shall be sealed." "The delay of the Lord to fulfil his promise is not from procrastination, but from his long suffering who is not willing that any should perish." He waits "that all may come to repentance." But his patience will end, and "the day of God come as a thief in the night, when the heavens, being on fire, shall pass away with a crash, and the elements melt with fervent heat." There are two ways in which these declarations may be explained, though in either case the events they refer to are to occur in connection with the physical reappearance of Christ. First, they may be taken in a highly figurative sense, as meaning the moral overthrow of evil and the establishment of righteousness in the world. Similar expressions were often used thus by the ancient Hebrew prophets, who describe the triumphs of Israel and the destruction of their enemies, the Edomites or the Assyrians, by the interposition of Jehovah's arm, in such phrases as these. "The mountains melt, the valleys cleave asunder like wax before a fire, like waters poured over a precipice." "The heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll, all their hosts shall melt away and fall down; for Jehovah holdeth a great slaughter in the land of Edom: her streams shall be turned into pitch, and her dust into brimstone, and her whole land shall become burning pitch." The suppression of Satan's power and the setting up of the Messiah's kingdom might, according to the prophetic idiom, be expressed in awful images of fire and woe, the destruction of the old, and the creation of a new, heaven and earth. But, secondly, this phraseology, as used by the writer of the epistle before us, may have a literal significance, may have been intended to predict strictly that the world shall be burned and purged by fire at the second coming of the Lord. That such a catastrophe would take place in the last day, or occurred periodically, was notoriously the doctrine of the Persians and of the Stoics.6 For our own part, we are convinced that the latter is the real meaning of the writer. This seems to be shown alike by the connection of his argument, by the prosaic literality of detail with which he speaks, and by the earnest exhortations he immediately bases on the declaration he has made. He reasons that, since the world was destroyed once by water, it may be again by fire. The deluge he certainly regarded as literal: was not, then, in his conception, the fire, too, literal? He says, with calm, prosaic precision, "The earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holiness, looking for a new heaven and a new earth, and striving that ye may be found by him in peace, without spot, and blameless!" We do not suppose this writer expected the annihilation of the physical creation, but only that the fire would destroy all unransomed creatures from its surface, and thoroughly purify its frame, and make it clean and fit for a new race of sinless and immortal men.
"Tears shall not break from their full source,
Nor Anguish stray from her Tartarean den,
The golden years maintain a course
Not undiversified, though smooth and even,
We not be mock'd with glimpse and shadow then,
Bright seraphs mix familiarly with men,
And earth and sky compose a universal heaven."
We have now arrived at the threshold of the last book in the New Testament, that book which, in the words of Lucke, "lies like a Sphinx at the lofty outgate of the Bible." There are three modes of interpreting the Apocalypse, each of which has had numerous and distinguished advocates. First, it may be regarded as a congeries of inspired prophecies, a scenic unfolding, with infallible foresight, of the chief events of Christian history from the first century till now, and onwards. This view the combined effect of the facts in the case and of all the just considerations appropriate to the subject compels us to reject. There is no evidence to support it; the application of it is crowded with egregious follies and absurdities. We thus simply state the result of our best investigation and judgment, for there is no space here to discuss it in detail. Secondly, the book may be taken as a symbolic exhibition of the transitional crises, exposures, struggles, and triumphs of the individual soul, a description of personal experience, a picture of the inner life of the Christian in a hostile world. The contents of it can be made to answer to such a characterization only by the determined exercise of an unrestrained fancy, or by the theory of a double sense, as the Swedenborgians expound it. This method of interpreting the Revelation is adopted, not by scholarly thinkers, who, by the light of learning and common sense, seek to discern what the writer meant to express, but by those persons who go to the obscure document, with traditional superstition and lawless imaginations, to see what lessons they can find there for their experimental guidance and edification. We suppose that every intelligent and informed student who has