Is Sin Eternal?

THIS question we ask with reference to the results of sin. Sin did not always exist. Right existed before wrong. As there was a time when Adam and Eve were in their primeval innocence in Eden, before sin entered our world, so there must have been a time when, in all the creation of God, both that which is visible and that which is invisible was pure and sinless. For God's pleasure all things were created. Rev. 4:11. The sacred psalmist says: "For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee." In order then, that all might tend to the pleasure of God, all his created intelligences must, like man, have been "made upright" (Eccl. 7:29). Their departure from that condition of uprightness into those ways displeasing to God is, in a great measure, owing to their invention of other ways than those of God's appointment.

It is not our purpose in this article to trace sin to its first origin, but to speak of it as we find it in our world. The first three chapters of the book of Genesis show us that sin entered into the world through the fall of Adam and Eve as they yielded to temptation. This agrees also with the words of St. Paul in Rom. 5:12-14.

Sin is in our world, and the import of our questions is, Is it to exist eternally? We ask this question not supposing it to be answered by reason merely, but believing that the Bible as clearly reveals the finality of the impenitent as it does the fall, or the way of life and hope for the penitent through the blood of Christ.

Our readers are not unaware that this question is one in which, at the present time, is eliciting much inquiry throughout this kingdom in general, and in Southampton in particular. Men in high positions in the religious world are setting forth theories vastly different from those incorporated into the Protestant creeds whether we speak of Conformist or Non-conformist.

The Lord Bishop of Winchester was fully aware of the agitation of the public mind on this, as well as other theological questions, when in the Diocesan Conference held in the Winchester Cathedral, November 3, 1880, he made the following statement: "I think that neither Churchman nor dissenters as they fight can fully have brought home to their own thoughts and hearts the reality of that conflict which is already begun, but which will soon burst upon us and it’s fury, the conflict between faith in God in Christ and immortality, and the belief in nothing but material prosperity here and eternal sleep hereafter. The agnosticism which now makes common cause with the advancing columns of democracy is the scientific formulating of that principle which has ever guided the godless and the selfish, and is sure, therefore, to catch the suffrages of all who are too lazy to think or too worldly and sensual heartily to believe. Making the best of the present world and letting the next world take care of itself, is the old and common rule of life. It is now reduced to scientific principle, and is taught as the truest and the only wisdom."

In view the conflict of truth and error he says: "If we are to withstand in the day of battle, and having done all to stand, we must cling closely to scriptural and primitive truth."

The true doctrine of the Conformist, or church of England, is plainly set forth in the Thirty-nine Articles. By "His Majesty's Declaration" every member of that church is prohibited from "putting his own sense or comment to the meaning of an article, but must take it in its literal and grammatical sense." The eighth article states, "The three creeds,—Nicene, and Athanasius' Creed, and that which is commonly called the Apostles' creed—ought thoroughly to be received and believed."

The creed of Saint Athanasius, is called in the prayer book, "This confession of our Christian faith." From the concluding words of the creed we should judge it was most firmly believed by them, as it says: "This is the Catholic faith; which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved."

The Athanasian Creed says: "And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil into everlasting fire." That this has been understood by those using it to teach eternal misery to the wicked, and that this has been their faith, is confirmed by the comments and sayings of those who have held the most tenaciously to the creed. As a sample, we quote the words of the Right Reverend Geo. Horne, late Lord Bishop of Norwich, from his commentary on the Psalms. On Ps 55:15, "Let death seize upon them and let them go down quick into hell," he says, "The sudden destruction of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who, for stirring up a rebellion against Moses and Aaron, 'went down alive into the pit,' seems here alluded to, as the grand representation of the manner in which the bottomless pit shall one day shut her mouth forever upon all the impenitent enemies of the King of Israel, and great High Priest of our profession."

And again in his comments on Psalm 75:8, "For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them." he says, "Calamity and sorrow, fear and trembling, infatuation and despair, the evils of the present life and of that which is to come, are the bitter ingredients which compose this most horrible cup of mixture. It is entirely in the hand and disposal of God, who, through every age has been pouring out, and administering its contents, more or less, in proportion to the sins of men. But much of the strength and power of the liquor still remains behind, until the day of final vengeance. It will then be exhausted, even to the dregs by unrepenting rebels; when 'burning coals, fire, and brimstone,' and eternal 'tempest' 'shall be the portion of their cup.' Ps. 11:6."

As a statement of the views of the Non-conformist we may be allowed to quote the words of one of the prominent dissenting ministers, Rev. C.H. Spurgeon: "Our lost friends are lost forever; we recollect that there is no shadow of hope for them; when the iron gate of hell is once closed upon them, it shall never be unbarred again, to give them free exit; when once shut up within those walls of sweltering flame which girdle the fiery gulf there is no possibility of flight; we recollect that they have 'forever' stamped upon their chains, 'forever' carved in the deep lines of despair upon their hearts. It is the hell of hell that everything there lasts forever. Here, time wears away our griefs, and blunts the keen edge of our sorrow; but there time never mitigates the woe; hell grows more hellish, as eternity marches on with its mighty paces. The abyss becomes more dense and fiery—the sufferers grow more ghastly and wretched, as years, if there be such sad variety in that fixed state, roll their everlasting rounds. Here, are the sympathy of loving kindred, in the midst of sickness or suffering, can alleviate our pain; but there, the tortured ghosts are sport for fiends, and the mutual upbraidings and reproaches of fellow-sinners give fresh stings to torment too dread to be endured. Here, too, when Nature‘s last palliative shall fail, to die may be a happy release; a man can count the weary hours till death shall give him rest; but oh! remember there is no death in hell; death, which is a monster on earth, would be an angel in hell. If death could go there, all the damned would fall down and worship him; every tongue would sing, and every heart would praise; each cavern then would echo with a shout of triumph till all was still, and silence brood where terrors reigned." —Spurgeon's Gems, pp. 160, 161.

In opposition to these established dogmas of the Conformist and Non-conformist we are now called upon by some ministers of the established church to accept a new and somewhat novel doctrine of a very different character. No less than three quite large volumes have been produced by three prominent church ministers and recommended as "treating of and, indeed, exhausting the subject." These works are called, "The restitution of all things," by the Rev. Andrew Jukes; "Salvator Mundi" by the Rev. Samuel Cox; and "Eternal Hope" by the Rev. Canon Farrar, and still later, here in Southampton, a series of eight discourses upon the subject have been delivered by the Rev. Basil Wilberforce, Canon of Winchester Cathedral, and Rector of Saint Mary’s church, Southampton.

In adopting the new theory the Canon does not avow himself a believer in the doctrine of Hosea Ballou. He does not endorse that theory of universal salvation which provides only for punishment in this life and leaves all at death with an equal chance for Heaven. The Canon has denominated this, his new theory, "Universal Hope." Not hope for the impenitent, but, if we understand him aright, a hope that those who die impenitent will, after the final Judgment, be made penitent by the punishment that shall be inflicted upon them. He claimed that the "dogma of everlasting torture beyond the grave was a libel upon the character of the Almighty, a doctrine prejudicial to Christianity, and a misrepresentation of the mind of the Holy Scripture." He further claims that "the punishment, though a tremendous discipline, is not endless." He also declares his belief that this punishment is "corrective and not vindictive." He says: "The old dogma, which consigned countless millions of souls, whom God made and Christ redeemed, to everlasting and irredeemable perdition is not revealed in the Bible, but the doctrine of the Bible on this point is that the duration of the sufferings of the wicked in hell shall be commensurate only with the burden of their willful sin, and that when they have paid the uttermost farthing, or, in other words, when the will is conquered, hell will have done its work, and its souls shall be admitted into the regions of the blessed."

That we have not mistaken the statement of the Canons' belief, will appear from a supposed case which he introduces in his eighth discourse, "It is thus with many a child of God taken into his father's arms in the sacrament of baptism. He grows up selfish, impure, prayerless. He sinks down and down till the power of truth and goodness has no influence on his wayward will. In his state of hardened impenitence, of darkened reason and conscience, there remaineth for him no more sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation. For him there can be no part in the first resurrection; no home in the Messianic kingdom which will be revealed at the second Advent. In the sight of the angels of God he is a maniac, and to the mad-house he must go. For his own sake and for the sake of others he must be removed to another sphere of education, where, 'pulverized by the storms of judgment,' he may be taught to lay down his weapons of rebellion, and learn a lesson that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the father."

With reference to the "everlasting fire" mentioned in the creed; the time was when religious teachers claimed that this was literal fire and brimstone, into which the wicked were to be cast after the Judgment. Of this they supposed they had sufficient evidence in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah alone. They read in the words of Saint Jude. "Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." Jude 7. Turning back to the record of God’s judgment upon the cities, they read, "Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground." Gen. 19:24, 25. "And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the LORD: And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace." Verses 27, 28. Putting these texts with the statement of St. John in Revelation, "And fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them." Rev. 20:9, they thought they had a very clear proof of literal fire for the final punishment of the wicked.

After a time it became too plain an absurdity for thinking minds to claim that literal bodies were to be in literal fire and brimstone to all eternity, especially when considered that such a fire was hot enough to bring iron to a white heat in one minute. Bodies could not be consuming into literal smoke in such a fire to all eternity without a constant miracle. Again, said they, it is real fire and brimstone, but immortal, indestructible souls that are placed in it to be tormented. It has, however, been discovered in the onward march of thought that an indestructible soul could receive no harm in a literal destructive fire, so now the literal fire doctrine is removed back to the Dark Ages.

These fires are now explained as figures. As an illustration of this, I refer to the printed report of sermons in reply to Canon Wilberforce. The first one is the first of a series by Rev. H.O. Mackey of Portland chapel, Southampton. He said: "In reading through the published sermons which have recently appeared on the other side, I was struck with how large a proportion of them was occupied with a repudiation of the doctrine of physical torture as applied to lost souls. But the indignation with which the idea of everlasting fire wrapping the body, and the worm that never died, were regarded, had better be reserved for a real and not an imaginary foe. For he, and those who thought with him, equally denounced and hated the doctrine, which, however, he reminded them first found its power in the Middle Ages, when priest and monk used it as a means of extorting money from relatives so that the souls of the dead might be get out of purgatory."

That we did not mistake his meaning in the above is confirmed by his second and third discourse when he said, "The sufferings of the wicked were not physical, but mental and spiritual, since both heaven and hell were in the soul." Of the sinner he says, "All we ask is that he be left to himself—no flames to wrap the body—no worms to wear the physical frame, but the sinner left to himself, for sin to work its own punishment in the soul according to the text, God saying, 'He that is filthy, let him be filthy still.'"

The Rev. H.C. Lake of East street chapel, in the first of his sermons on the subject said, "The sermons of Canon Wilberforce represented the orthodox views in an unfair light. He said if the rector of St. Mary's had learnt what that view really was before he made an attack upon it, he would have saved himself much trouble. All granted that the sufferings of the wicked would be spiritual—such sufferings, indeed, as were the results of repentance made too late."

The Canon, in his sixth discourse, thus speaks of future punishment, "The action of the memory will be the test of personality—memory, full, free, unclouded memory—the flashing into the imprisoned soul of that intolerable light which makes all past present. If we but realized the keen torture that this will be we should hardly dare to sin. What fire is to the body, that memory is to the shrinking soul."

In the third of his discourses on the text, "Our God is a consuming fire," he said of the use of this terrifying emblem of fire, "while pregnant with warning, it is gloriously suggestive of the purifying remedial discipline of God. God is fire and God is love; therefore fire is love—the love that is only cruel to be kind."

It seems then that both Canon Wilberforce and his opponents are agreed that the future suffering of the wicked is only mental, and their disagreement is only with reference to the duration and final issue of that suffering. On the one hand it is contended that the suffering will never cease and will only tend to harden the sinner in his sin, and on the other hand it is contended that the suffering will finally soften the heart of the hardest sinners causing them to turn to Christ, and that then the sufferings of sinners, and in fact the career of sin will be ended, because all sinners will then be converted to Christ. If we admit this position of the Canon we shall have to denominate it salvation by fire. St. Paul speaks of some who shall be saved, "yet so as by fire," 1 Cor. 3:15. Let it be remembered, however, that those so saved are not hardened and impenitent sinners, but some of God's ministers, as Apollos, Cephas, and others. The "gold, silver, precious stones," mentioned by St. Paul, were built upon the foundation—Christ. The wood, hay, and stubble that some were placing on the foundation did not represent sins that were to be burned while the individual sinner should escape, but these combustible materials represent men and women brought onto the foundation by the minister. While they were professing to accept the religion of Christ there was in them a lack of thorough consecration to God. They were only partially converted, and in such a condition brought into the church of Christ. They were like wood, hay, and stubble placed on a good foundation. That some such material had been gathered into the church of Corinth we learn in chapters five and six of this same first epistle to the Corinthians. In the day of God, when the fire shall try every man's work, the minister who from the heart has himself obeyed God and yet has collected worthless material into the church, shall have his work tested of what sort it is. He may have had followers who would declare loudly for Apollos, or Cephas, and yet were vile, like some of these incestuous Corinthians. So much of this material collected by the minister will be a loss, for all such shall be burned.

We get a clear view of the final destiny of the ungodly in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah. Our Saviour, St. Peter, and St. Jude, each refers to the sad fate of these cities of the plain in speaking of the punishment of sinners at the final Judgment; and not one of them call this fire mental anguish or repentance that came too late. No doubt they had anguish of the deepest type when they saw their lost condition, but that is the effect of the judgment brought upon them, and not the judgment itself. We read in the words of Christ, "But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed." Luke 17:29, 30. St. Jude says, "They are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." Jude 7. The vengeance of fire is its power to burn all combustibles exposed to its action. The vengeance of eternal fire is undergoing a destruction by the action of a fire, not of human kindling which might be quenched, but a fire which fell from the Great Eternal, which no man can quench. St. Peter is still more explicit in his statement of the case. He says, "Turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;" 2 Peter 2:6.

We shall endeavor to show in future articles how this sample will be met in the final punishment of the wicked.