The Modern Trend in Eschatology

BY

The Reverend HUGH O. ROWLANDS, D.D

HIS paper does not purport to give the writer's own views on the subject discussed; much less is it a defense of, or an attack on the opinions of others. I shall endeavour to give as an observer what seems to be the drift of modern Christian thought on this great question, such part of it as concerns the doom of incorrigibles, or the "unsaved," after death. I shall not burden the paper with references to authors and books. Usually the preacher and the author are special attorneys pleading for one side of the case or attacking the other.

The newspaper, the novel, the sermon, and magazine discussions of the question, are evidence of the deep and often unconscious faith men have in future immortality, as shells and pebbles on the beach are proofs of the inrolling waves from the deep and mysterious sea.

The very existence of different views and conclusions among the learned, the good, and the great in all ages should preclude intolerant dogmatizing. Reverent Bible students, men profound in the history of Christian Dogmatics and zealous propagandists of the Christian faith, whose piety and devoutness were unquestioned, have been far from being unanimous in their understanding, deductions and conclusions respecting this question. This fact shows conclusively that the revelations of the Sacred Scriptures are not so full and clear as to put the question beyond controversy. Hence the need of charity and catholic toleration; reverent and unobstrusive doubt of any position should place no one outside the pale of Christian fellowship. It should not be made a test of fitness -or unfitness-for church membership. I could conceive of conditions where it ought not to be made a test for an ordina

tion to the Christian ministry, or an appointment to the missionary field.

I name a few of the "trunk lines" of various beliefs that prevail and the favor in which they are held, or considered by different "schools" of Christians.

I place the word in quotation marks to save myself from a charge of assuming that the views inculcated under that name are the right teaching. The man who dies unrepentant and unsaved is irretrievably and everlastingly lost to blessedness and happiness; this lost condition is one of conscious, unutterable, and endless anguish in the torments of hell. No mercy will be ever offered, and if it were offered the very capability of the lost soul to profit thereby is destroyed.

This condition is not so much the provision of divine justice; but the wilfully chosen self-banishment of the sufferer from God. It is Hell because he is out of harmony with his Environment-God. No one is lost but out of wilful rejection of Jesus Christ who is the Light and Life of men. Hell is both retributive of sin and exhibitive of divine justice, hence it is subjective and objective in its elements.

Theories of the methods and nature of future retribution such as "lake of fire," "brimstone," etc., must be eliminated from the teaching of modern orthodoxy; they are the remnants of a by-gone literalistic, materialistic age and of the legalistic, Latinic church in distinction from the spiritual Greek church. They are associated with orthodoxy by its adversaries for the purpose of caricature and ridicule. That a sporadic few orthodox" people believe in those lurid details is possible; but no party should be judged as to its principles by the extravagancies and frenzies of a few of its least representative adherents, nor by the caricatures of its opponents. It is needless to write that the orthodox view of this question is professedly got from the Scriptures; on them entirely its supporters depend for authority.

COMMENTS

Does the Bible teach such a dogma? It certainly appears so to a multitude of zealous and pious Christians. Revivals, missions, the impassioned appeals of great evangelists have been greatly quickened, inspired and intensified by this dread belief. The strange parable of the "sheep and the goats" recorded in the Gospel according to Matthew seems to teach this doctrine explicitly; so also Matthew 18: 8, 9; other passages from the Scriptures seem to teach or imply the sentiments with more or less clearness.

However, let it be remembered that a large number of holy, learned Bible students believe that those parts of the Scriptures on fair exegesis are capable of other and widely different explanations and construction.

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Moreover, there is an irrepressible rebellion in the heart and consciousness of man against the orthodox deductions from Scriptures on this subject. The" intuitional intelligence of the soul protests against them. Look at it! think of its dread, unutterable meaning! The lost soul (numbered by the millions), by virtue and authority of an irreversible law in his nature, which is a Divine fiat, is devoted to a condition in which with every pulsation of existence he becomes more guilty and depraved. Farther and farther from holiness, from God, and from hope he sweeps like an anarchistic comet of perdition. With every throb of being he becomes more satanic in ambition, more infernal in passion, and more hateful toward his Creator; bloating with the unending torments of fermenting remorse; this process going on for one year, for a century, for ten thousand-ten millions of cycles of the eternal æons; let each second of those periods represent so many æons still coming, and when those dread eternities are spent the lost soul is only on the threshold of its existence careering into everdeepening Endlessness. If at the close of a million times those periods we could discern a gleam of hope hinting that in a nameless future there was an end to the foaming, gurgling

misery of the lost it would be a satisfaction; but no! the darkness is denser and murkier as we look ahead! And all of this for the glory of a Heavenly Father and the satisfaction of a justice whose ideal and embodiment is Himself! It would not seem possible that men could believe such a doctrine and teach it as within the limits of a benevolent God's government The trend is away from it. The evangelical pulpit is slow to preach it. Evangelists do not appeal to it as did Edwards, Swan, Knapp. Moody never preached it. In cold, logical controversy it may be stoutly defended; but in the message of the pulpit it is held as a "background of mystery.”

UNIVERSALISM

Old-fashioned Universalism has in later years taken upon itself the hue of restorationism. Formerly it was taught that men are adequately punished in this life for all their sins; death ended all suffering as the result of transgression, and was the strait gate that led into blessedness and bliss. The pains of the final dissolution were the Jesus that redeemed the soul and not the Jesus of Calvary. The dying transgressor took a draught of Lethe, and was at once relieved from the guilt and memory of sin and entered the abode of the Holy and Good.

So contrary to Scriptures, so repugnant to reason, and so repellant to every intuition and instinct of justice was that teaching that intelligent Universalists no longer teach or father it. It was the extreme swing of the pendulum from the Edwardian Eschatology of New England-one as repugnant as the other. Restorationism qualifies Universalism. Men shall reap what they sow. All wrong-doing shall be punished here or hereafter. The incorrigible soul at death enters "hell"; but this is not retribution; it is a purgatory, a condition of discipline and reform where under new masters and discipline, in better environments, he is educated, disciplined, and finally delivered. Time is no element of the disciplinary course; it may be an hour or an æon; but it will be a con

stantly progressive process of purification and perfection. At last all men will be restored into the image of God, into holiness and blessedness; God will be all in all. The whole race of man redeemed and glorified.

COMMENTS

This view has never taken a firm hold on the conscience and conviction of the Christian world. It has been popular in the measure the opposite extreme was urged. It has been a hope and sentiment rather than a conviction or a statement of revealed truth; it is a protest rather than a vigorous, constructive faith.

The teachings of Scriptures are not favorable to it; the great majority of its ardent advocates fail to accept the Scriptures as infallible authority of truth; it is considered by many of its advocates as extra-biblical, an evolution of moral consciousness; a sentiment of the benevolent heart rather than a deduction from Holy Scriptures.

Many oppose this view because, as they claim, it is contradicted by all analogies of the material and physical world wherein violations of natural laws are venial only to a certain point; beyond that suffering is not remedial, but retributive Illustrations of this principle are,-transgressions against the laws of the body which may be forgiven to a certain mark of severity and persistence, beyond which they are fatal. True that natural, or psychical laws may not be identical with the spiritual, yet there is a close analogy-some scholars claim identity. This principle of irremediableness is recognized in the sociological, or legal phrase,-degenerates. The great poets, dramatists and novelists recognize the fact of irremediable depravity by consigning their villains to final destruction. Furthermore, it is claimed that acceptance of this view is usually associated with a low estimate of holiness and a light estimate of the guilt and virulence of sin. Its opponents say "it cuts the nerve of missions by making sin an error of ignorance, or the blunder of weakness, rather than a guilty violation of the