tradiction between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, we are justified in saying that the wicked develop a character which will be the most hideous perversion of the divine imageship, 2. Over devils the law of sin will hold complete sway, inasmuch as after the judgment devils will reap the horrible harvest of apostasy and of persistent wickedness extending through the whole course of history. Even for devils prior to the final consummation, we are warranted in supposing that there is a species of relief. As during the current eon their continuous antagonism to God is maintained in the kingdom of the true and the good, we may presume that the bitterness of sin is in some degree neutralized by this warfare and by seeming temporary victories. But when devils will no more come into contact with the true and the good; when they are cast out from the positive domain of God's kingdom; when all seeming victories have been overwhelmed by ruinous defeat; when they shall be shut up within themselves, circumscribed only by diabolism; when their own intrinsic wickedness will react upon themselves without restraint;-then sin and guilt will work out the lie of diabolism in their experience with extreme virulence and under its most hideous forms. § 393. The Christian heart contemplates with horror the final penalties of devils and wicked men. The hand of a thoughtful theologian almost refuses to set down in words the indubitable intimations of sin and the unequivocal prophecies of Christianity. "There is no power in holy men, Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form Eschatology however dare not forget that the hopeless woe of gehenna is contrary to the eternal purpose, the creative word and the providential designs of God. God has constituted Satan and his angels personal beings. Relative autonomy is their inalienable prerogative. God has constituted man a personal being, bearing His own image. Relative autonomy is also his inalienable prerogative. Human personality carries in its unfathomable depths positive capacities for the Infinite and the Absolute, capacities for transcendent ennoblement in the fellowship of the triune God. But positive freedom toward the absolute Good implies the possibility of contrary choice. The absolute Good to become the good for me and in me, must by me be chosen and appropriated. This possible appropriation of the Good may not become actual. The autonomy of personality is a profound mystery. Angels and men may renounce the truth for a lie, renounce God for self, and the right for the wrong. In such voluntary self-perversion sin begins, by it sin continues and sways the sceptre of bondage over its subjects here and hereafter. Gehenna is not the decree of God, not the consequence of God's causative providence. The gehenna following 'Byron. the judicial separation of the final judgment is the ultimate product of sin: for devils, of diabolical sin and diabolical guilt; for men, of human sin and human guilt. There the mystery of iniquity finds its own place, begotten by itself and for itself. Will gehenna ever cease to exist? The answer to this question depends on the reply we may give to two other questions. First, will the constitution of personality be abolished? Secondly, will the false principle of sin cease? These two questions may be resolved into one: will sinful personality cease to be sinful? Sin and penalty are one. Penalties will cease when sinfulness ceases. Should we have any reason to anticipate that sinful personality in gehenna may become righteous and holy personality, or that fixed aversion to Jesus Christ may be resolved into faith and love, then we might teach that the horrors of gehenna may come to an end. But that such a presumption may become a fact neither faith nor sound reason affords ground for hope. Pagan moral philosophy and Christian ethics and the written word of God, all shut us up to the conviction that sin multiplies sin, that sinful personality which has wilfully, persistently rejected the true, the good, the right as realized and manifested in the person of the incarnate Son, becomes confirmed in sinfulness; and the penalties inseparable from sinfulness and sins, instead of effecting a return from falsehood to truth, from self-will to Christian obedience, intensify and embitter aversion to God and His righteousness. Rational thought on the ethical and judicial relationship between the personality of God and the personality of the creature necessitates the bitter expectation that the disorganization and torment of sinful personality will become more and more real as from age to age devils and wicked men perpetuate and intensify their wickedness. Christian reason has to justify the sentence: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels." CHAPTER IX. HEAVEN: FINAL BLESSEDNESS. $ 394. In the world of nature environment modifies and in process of the ages may change the structure of the plant or the animal, though the degree of change of structure depends in every case on the constitution of the living thing. When we enter the kingdom of man the same law operates, in a degree, as regards the figure of his body, his dwelling, and external methods of gaining a liveli hood. But as regards personality the law operative in sub human organisms is reversed. 1. Natural environment does not touch the categories of thought, or the fundamental laws of speech, much less the unique qualities of man's conscience; least of all does environment change his instinctive relationship to God. In the sphere of personality the environment does not form the man, but the man fashions the environment. This reversed interaction between personal being and environment may be seen even among savage tribes, some building for themselves a more degraded, others a more noble abode. The reversal of natural law becomes more and more remarkable as we pass from savage to civilized nations and then ascend in the scale of civilization. Civilization is not the effect of natural surroundings. Whatever modifying influences latitude or ocean, mountain or sky, may have on the disposition and customs of a people, neither one nor all taken together make a civilization. Civilization is builded by personality. Human genius begets the useful arts as well as the fine arts. Intelligence and will originate and inform the moral structure of the social organism. The noblest development of human life and the best civilization may emerge and flourish where climate is inhospitable and the external conditions of society are seemingly most unfavorable to moral and religious culture; whilst a lower status of civilization may exist in the midst of external conditions apparently much better adapted to the progress of knowledge and morality. Iceland compared with Mexico affords an illustration. Whether we contrast a hut or a palace, a field or a golden harvest, a village or a city, a bank or a temple with a desert or a wilderness, it is evident that man changes his natural environment and constructs his own abode; he constructs it in forms answerable to the character and aims of individual and social life. 2. Of man, 'the image and glory of God," this reversal of the law governing the interaction between a thing and its environment in nature is true, because the reversal is true of God. God forms His own environment, called by our Lord "my Father's house,” ¿v tŋj oikíątov naτpós, and by Paul "light unapproachable," ¢ãç oikäv àπphoitov. Like His own being, the oikia of God is holy, blissful, in the absolute sense. Says Delitzsch: 11 Cor. xi. 7. 2John xiv. 2; 1 Tim. vi, 16. |