Is Sin Eternal?

NOTWITHSTANDING the statement of Scripture that "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation," and the injunction to seek God "while it is called to-day," and that "the night cometh when no man can work," the advocates of "Eternal Hope" will persist in telling us there is hope beyond the grave, and that sinners may then become reconciled to God. Such should remember the words of the prophet Ezekiel, if a man "committeth iniquity, and dieth in them; for his iniquity that he hath done shall he die." Eze. 18:26.

In the sixth discourse of Canon Wilberforce he claimed mercy for the wicked after death, on the ground that Christ in the time intervening between his death and resurrection, preached to those who had previously died. The basis of his remarks was the words of St. Peter: "He went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing." 1 Pet. 3:19, 20. Claiming that the "prison," should be rendered "place of safe keeping," and that the preaching was not so much evangelizing as to proclaim or herald, he passed on to say, "There have been some grand preaching scenes in history. We can cast back our thoughts to antediluvian times, and picture to ourselves Noah, the first reformer, preaching repentance as he shaped his planks of gopher wood for the ark; we can see, in the mind's eye, the young Ezekiel pleading with stubborn hearts, by the murmuring waters of Chebar; we can imagine the enthusiasm of the excited crowds who followed John the Baptist, the ascetic missioner, into the desert; we can call up before us the scene of grace and wonder on the slopes of the mount of beatitudes, when the Son of man first broke the silence of two thousand years; we can dimly imagine the electrical effect of St. Peter's first Pentecostal sermon, and admire the splendid courage of St. Paul's denunciation of idolatry on Mars' hill; we can think of Savonarola converting Florence, and of Wesley and Whitefield washing the grimy faces of the miners with their own tears as they unfolded to them the love of Jesus; but imagination utterly fails us in attempting to realize the preacher, the pulpit, and the congregation spoken of by St. Peter in the text. It needs a Dante with a revelation of the Inferno, to picture the dim shadows of disembodied spirits, the grim ghosts of doomed men, encircled by some spectral prison house, beyond the confines of which they could not, dared not roam, hanging eagerly on the words of one who, like a God as he was, had come to burst the bars of that two thousand years' locked prison. There is nothing in fact or fiction to compare with this glorious picture of Christ the conqueror wielding in hell the power he won on Calvary, bursting into hades with the charter of man's salvation and restitution on his lips—'I am he that liveth and was dead; behold I am alive forevermore, and have the keys of hell and of death.' Gaze upon it! It was a supreme crisis in the history of this planet. The great drama of man's salvation had closed on Calvary; on the cross was hanging the tortured body of him who had lived only to bless and heal; those whom be had blessed and healed had killed him—the mob is ever like some poor frightened animal which bites the hand that liberates it; the masses generally crucify their reformers and worship them when dead. But what was death to him? A royal procession to a newly acquired dependency. In the flesh he was straitened by earthly conditions. He preached in person to the few, he was held back by the limitations of this life, but, freed from the flesh, he was quickened by the Spirit. Death opened to him a new sphere of restoring work. He flies to the rescue of the spirits that lived and sinned and died in the days of Noah. He has won them; they are his, he will draw them out of anguish that they may be educated for his everlasting home and rest."

He states further: "The flood was a signal evidence of God's love; seeing man wandering farther and farther from him, in the days of Noah increasing the separation, aggravating the lawlessness, his love sent the flood to arrest his wanderings from rectitude and to convey him to another sphere of education. In the fullness of time, the same love revealed in Jesus, enters their prisonhouse, releases them from darkness, and brings them out into the fullness of gospel light."

In the above we have an eloquent description of the case in hand, but eloquence is not always argument. It might all be very well, if it were a fact that the preaching was done during the period intervening between Christ's death and resurrection. Of this we shall see more presently.

The Reverend Canon says, "We need a Dante to describe this scene of Christ preaching in hell." It occurred to me while reading the above, that I had read a very full description of this fancied preaching of Christ to disembodied spirits. I open volume XVI. of the twenty-four volumes of the Ante-Nicene Library, edited by the Rev. Alexander Roberts, D.D., and James Donaldson, LL. D., Edinburgh, edition of 1870, and find under the appellation of "Apocryphal Gospels," one entitled "The Gospel of Nicodemus," Part II., giving us quite a full and elaborate description of what it calls "Christ's descent into hell."

This writing represents that as Christ approached the gates of hell, there was a dispute between Satan, the prince of hell, and hades, whether they should admit Christ. Having gained admission, he first bound Satan and "delivered him to the power of hades, and drew Adam to his brightness." Then we read, "And the Lord stretched out his hand, and said: Come unto me, all my saints, who have my image and likeness. Do you, who have been condemned through the tree and the devil, and death, now see the devil and death condemned through the tree. Immediately all the saints were brought together under the hand of the Lord. And the Lord holding Adam by the right hand, said to him: Peace be to thee, with all thy children, my righteous ones! And Adam fell down at the knees of the Lord, and with tearful entreaty praying, said with a loud voice: I will extol thee, O Lord; for thou hast lifted me up, and hast not made my foes to rejoice over me. . . . . . In like manner also all the saints of God, falling on their knees at the feet of the Lord, said with one voice: Thou hast come, O Redeemer of the world; as thou hast foretold by the law and thy prophets, so hast thou fulfilled by thy deeds. Thou hast redeemed the living by thy cross, and by the death of the cross thou hast come down to us, to rescue us from the powers below, and from death, by thy majesty. O Lord, thou hast set the title of thy glory in Heaven, and hast erected as the title of redemption thy cross upon earth, so, O Lord, set in hades the sign of the victory of thy cross, that death may no more have dominion. And the Lord, stretching forth his hand, made the sign of the cross upon Adam and upon all his saints; and holding Adam by the right hand, went up from the powers below; and all the saints followed him." P. 206.

There is one difficulty in using this Apocryphal writing as proof of the Rev. Canon's theory, and that is, the description does not relate to a deliverance of sinners, but of "saints" who were said to have Christ's "image and likeness." Then again, it seems to give so strong a potency to the "sign of the cross" as to create at once the suspicion that this so-called "gospel of Nicodemus" is only after all another forged document of the Roman Catholic church.

Let us read carefully the statement of St. Peter concerning this preaching and see if it really gives any countenance to these theories of pardon after death. "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water." 1 Pet. 3:18-20.

If we observe carefully the above scripture, we may discover in it just what we wish to know, namely, when this preaching was done, how and by whom it was done, and the exact result of the preaching. We observe first, that the preaching was not done by Christ in person, but by his spirit. He was put to death in the flesh and quickened by the spirit, by which he went and preached. The same Spirit of God that raised up Jesus from the dead, moved out Noah to preach while he was preparing the ark. The Canon says of those people at that time, that they went farther and farther from God until he sent the flood to remove them to another sphere of education. That is not the way Scripture writers state it. St. Peter says God "saved Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness." 2 Pet. 2:5. As he preached and warned the people, "they were eating and drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away." Matt. 24:38, 39. They had abundant warning in that one hundred and twenty years, but they rejected the warning and hardened their hearts in sin, and so Noah's preaching "condemned the world." Heb. 11:7. The result of this long period of Noah's preaching was the salvation of just eight souls in the ark, while the millions who rejected his warning message "knew not" (because they refused light) and were all destroyed.

John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, in his Treatise on Christian Doctrine, takes the position that the prison of this text is the grave and that the word spirits in this case refers to men now dead. He says, "By which also he went and preached to the spirits that are in prison, literally, in guard, or, as the Syriac version renders it, in sepulchro, in 'the grave,' which means the same; for the grave is the common guardian of all till the day of Judgment. What, therefore, the apostle says more fully, chap. 4:5, 6, 'Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead; for, for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead,' he expresses in this place by a metaphor, 'the spirits that are in guard;' it follows, therefore, that the spirits are dead."*

The notes to the Rhemish Testament (Roman Catholic) favor strongly the position of the Canon, that the preaching of Christ was while he was dead. Before me lies a Confutation of the Rhemish Testament with its notes. This able work was written by William Fulke, D. D., chosen fellow of John's College, Cambridge, in 1564. The writing of his confutation was completed in 1589. On 1 Pet. 3:19, he says, "The apostle saith not that the soul of Christ after his death preached in hell, but he came in his spirit, and prophesied in the days of Noah to the disobedient, whose souls are now in hell.

"This place we confess to be hard, but yet not so hard of itself, as it is to them that have a prejudicate opinion in their minds, of Christ's descending into hell after his death. But first, here is no mention of the soul of Christ, nor of descending, but of his spirit coming and preaching; not to the godly that were in prison, but to them that were sometime disobedient, which are still in prison; not to their deliverance, but to their destruction. The apostle, therefore, meaneth by this most ancient example, to show that Christ had always care of his church, and therefore in the same spirit, by which he was raised to life after he was dead, he came of old time, and preached destruction to the reprobate, even in the days of Noah, who for that they condemned his preaching, are now damned Spirits in prison. And at the same time appointed Noah to make the ark, for the safeguard of himself, and the small company of the church, and in the same preserved his church from destruction by water, wherein is also a notable figure of our salvation by baptism. And that he speaketh of Christ's divine spirit, and not of his human soul, is manifest by that he saith, he came in the same Spirit by which he was made alive, or restored to life, which was not his human soul, but his divine power, by which his soul was joined again to his body. As Paul concluded that he was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the spirit of sanctification, by his resurrection from the dead, that is, by raising himself from death by his divine spirit and eternal power. For his human soul did not return to his body of itself, but by power of His divine and eternal spirit."**

*Prose works of John Milton, translated by C.R. Summer, D. D., Lord Bishop of Winchester, Vol. 4, pp. 280, 281.

**Fulke's Confutation of the Rhemish Testament, New York, edition of 1834, p. 866,