ment are those of Jesus himself, as for example, Mat. 23: 33 - "Ye serpents, ye offspring of vipers how shall ye escape the judgment of hell?" Mark 3:29-"whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"; Mat. 10:28-"be not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell"; 25: 46 - "these shall go away into eternal punishment."

(b) All preaching which ignores the doctrine of eternal punishment just so far lowers the holiness of God, of which eternal punishment is an expression, and degrades the work of Christ, which was needful to save us from it. The success of such preaching can be but temporary, and must be followed by a disastrous reaction toward rationalism and immorality.

Much apostasy from the faith begins with refusal to accept the doctrine of eternal punishment. Theodore Parker, while he acknowledged that the doctrine was taught in the New Testament, rejected it, and came at last to say of the whole theology which includes this idea of endless punishment, that it "sneers at common sense, spits upon reason, and makes God a devil."

But, if there be no eternal punishment, then man's danger was not great enough to require an infinite sacrifice; and we are compelled to give up the doctrine of atonement. If there were no atonement, there was no need that man's Savior should himself be more than man; and we are compelled to give up the doctrine of the deity of Christ, and with this that of the Trinity. If punishment be not eternal, then God's holiness is but another name for benevolence; all proper foundation for morality is gone, and God's law ceases to inspire reverence and awe. If punishment be not eternal, then the Scripture writers who believed and taught this were fallible men who were not above the prejudices and errors of their times; and we lose all evidence of the divine inspiration of the Bible. With this goes the doctrine of miracles; God is identified with nature, and becomes the impersonal God of pantheism.

Theodore Parker passed through this process, and so did Francis W. Newman. Logically, every one who denies the everlasting punishment of the wicked ought to reach a like result; and we need only a superficial observation of countries like India, where pantheism is rife, to see how deplorable is the result in the decline of public and of private virtue. Emory Storrs: "When hell drops out of religion, justice drops out of politics." The preacher who talks lightly of sin and punishment does a work strikingly analogous to that of Satan, when he told Eve: "Ye shall not surely die" (Gen. 3:4). Such a preacher lets men go on what Shakespeare calls "the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire" (Macbeth, 2:3).

Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:671-"Vicarious atonement is incompatible with universal salvation. The latter doctrine implies that suffering for sin is remedial only, while the former implies that it is retribution. . . . . If the sinner himself is not obliged by justice to suffer in order to satisfy the law he has violated, then certainly no one needs suffer for him for this purpose." Sonnet by Michael Angelo: "Now hath my life across a stormy sea Like a frail bark reached that wide port where all Are bidden, ere the final reckoning fall Of good and evil for eternity. Now know I well how that fond fantasy. Which made my soul the worshiper and thrall Of earthly art, is vain; how criminal Is that which all men seek unwillingly. Those amorous thoughts that were so lightly dressed-What are they when the double death is nigh? The one I know for sure, the other dread. Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest My soul that turns to his great Love on high, Whose arms, to clasp us, on the Cross were spread."

(c) The fear of future punishment, though not the highest motive, is yet a proper motive, for the renunciation of sin and the turning to Christ. It must therefore be appealed to, in the hope that the seeking of salvation which begins in fear of God's anger may end in the service of faith and love.

Luke 12: 4, 5-"And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, who after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him"; Jude 23-"and some save, snatching them out of the fire." It is noteworthy that the Old Testament, which is sometimes regarded, though incorrectly, as a teacher of fear, has no such revelations of hell as are found in the New. Only when God's mercy was displayed in the Cross were there opened to men's view the

depths of the abyss from which the Cross was to save them. And, as we have already seen, it is not Peter or Paul, but our Lord himself, who gives the most fearful descriptions of the suffering of the lost, and the clearest assertions of its eternal duration. Michael Angelo's picture of the Last Judgment is needed to prepare us for Raphael's picture of the Transfiguration. Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2: 752-"What the human race needs is to go to the divine Confessional. . . . . Confession is the only way to light and peace. . . . . The denial of moral evil is the secret of the murmuring and melancholy with which so much of modern letters is filled." Matthew Arnold said to his critics: "Non me tua fervida terrent dicta; Dii me terrent et Jupiter hostis"-"I am not afraid of your violent judgments; I fear only God and his anger." Heb. 10:31 — "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Daniel Webster said: "I want a minister to drive me into a corner of the pew, and make me feel that the devil is after me."

(d) In preaching this doctrine, while we grant that the material images used in Scripture to set forth the sufferings of the lost are to be spiritually and not literally interpreted, we should still insist that the misery of the soul which eternally hates God is greater than the physical pains which are used to symbolize it. Although a hard and mechanical statement of the truth may only awaken opposition, a solemn and feeling presentation of it upon proper occasions, and in its due relation to the work of Christ and the offers of the gospel, cannot fail to accomplish God's purpose in preaching, and to be the means of saving some who hear.

Acts 20:31 "Wherefore watch ye, remembering that by the space of three years I ceased not to admonish every one night and day with tears"; 2 Cor. 2:14-17" But thanks be unto God, who always leadeth us in triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest through us the savor of his knowledge in every place. For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are being saved, and in them that are perishing; to the one a savor from death unto death; to the other a savor from life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? For we are not as the many, corrupting the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ "; 5: 11 - "Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we persuade men, but we are made manifest unto God; and I hope that we are made manifed also in your consciences"; 1 Tim. 4:16 - "Take heed to thyself and to thy teaching. Continue in these things; for in doing this thou shalt save both thyself and them that hear thee."

"Omne simile claudicat" as well as "volat"-"Every simile halts as well as flies.” No symbol expresses all the truth. Yet we need to use symbols, and the Holy Spirit honors our use of them. It is "God's good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe (1 Cor. 1:21). It was a deep sense of his responsibility for men's souls that moved Paul to say: "woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel" (1 Cor. 9:16). And it was a deep sense of duty fulfilled that enabled George Fox, when he was dying, to say: "I am clear! I am clear!"

So Richard Baxter wrote: "I preached as never sure to preach again, And as a dying man to dying men." It was Robert McCheyne who said that the preacher ought never to speak of everlasting punishment without tears. McCheyne's tearful preaching of it prevailed upon many to break from their sins and to accept the pardon and renewal that are offered in Christ. Such preaching of judgment and punishment were never needed more than now, when lax and unscriptural views with regard to law and sin break the force of the preacher's appeals. Let there be such preaching, and then many a hearer will utter the thought, if not the words, of the Dies Iræ, 8-10-" Rex tremendææ majestatis, Qui salvandos salvas gratis, Salva me, fons pietatis. Recordare, Jesu pie, Quod sum causa tuæ viæ: Ne me perdas illa die. Quærens me sedisti lassus, Redemisti crucem passus: Tantus labor non sit cassus." See Edwards, Works, 4:226-321 ; Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 459-468; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 310, 319, 464; Dexter, Verdict of Reason; George, Universalism not of the Bible; Angus, Future Punishment; Jackson, Bampton Lectures for 1875, on the Doctrine of Retribution; Shedd, Doctrine of Endless Punishment, preface, and Dogm. Theol., 2:667–754.

INDEXES

The author acknowledges his great indebtness to the Reverend Robert Kerr Eccles, M. D., of Lemoore, California, for the preparation of the exceedingly full and valuable Indexes which follow, and a similiar obligation to Mr. Herman K. Phinney, Assistant Librarian of the University of Rochester, for his care in the proof-reading of the whole work.