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16687-16696]

THE ULTIMATE AWARDS, OR THE FOUR LAST THINGS.

than the gnawing of remorse. Although, then, it would be very rash to lay down dogmatically that the "fire" is not to be understood literally, as it has been understood almost universally by Christians, yet no one has a right to urge these representations, from which the imagination so shrinks, as a ground for refusing to believe in hell, since he is left free not to believe them.Rev. E. Pusey, D.D.

[16688] Our Lord in Matthew xxv. 46 uses no figure of speech, but gives a literal statement of the future condition of the ungodly. It will be a state of punishment; that is the radical idea; and all the figurative terms, fire, chains, darkness, death, destruction, and the like, come under this generic idea to give intensity to some peculiar phase of that punishment which underlies the whole.-Rev. J. Thompson.

[16689] The children of the wicked one are depicted in terms which imply an absence of events in their history: no variety, no progress, no gleams of sunshine crossing their darkened path; no energy, no activity, no knowledge, nothing worth calling life; clouds without water, stamped with the mark of God's indignation for ever and ever.-Rev. R. Girdlestone.

IX. THE UTTER MISERY AND ANGUISH OF HELL.

[16690] The condemned spirit is doomed at the moment of sentence to a perpetual continuance in iniquity; and we cannot but believe that it requires a very slight knowledge of the human heart to see that there is here involved a condition of intense mental anguish. Take the example of a man of extraordinary depravity; in the midst of his most flagrant violations of the Divine law, he cherishes the hope of reformation at some future period; he allows himself, indeed, little space for reflection, but whenever his reflections do take a moral direction, he pleases and soothes, ay, and strengthens himself in guilt by the idea of repentance and amendment hereafter. He does not expect always to be so bad. Because he is wicked now, he does not feel that he shall always be wicked. Contrariwise, he has heard of a variety of cases of the penitence and godly end of sinners as great as himself, and thence he argues to the probability of his own rejection of vice at some indefinite period. Now what is all this but the impatience even of the most abandoned soul under sin? what but proof that the heart cannot be at ease, that the spirit of a man cannot be satisfied with iniquity. The guilt of the unrighteous is theirs for ever; they are sent forth to spend the long eternity, irremediably polluted. Mingled with Satan and his angels, they may learn from the more tremendous development of sin in angelic creatures, to hate sin, but they cannot shake it off. Taught by bitter experience how it blasts all happiness, and withers all delight, they may, perhaps,

[HELL.

come to abhor that to which they once gave way.

[16691] The lost soul will raise himself out of the fire only to fall back into it. He will always feel the desire of rising, because he was created for God, as a bird shut up in a room flies to the ceiling and falls down again; the justice of God is the ceiling which keeps down the lost.Vianney.

[16692] Scripture is more terrible in its mysterious reserve about the "wrath to come" than any picture man could paint; there is more pathetic and awful meaning in the one word "the lost" than in any attempt of ours to expand the thought.-Dean Church.

X. RELATIVE PROPORTION OF THE SAVED AND THE DAMNED.

[16693] I always think of the number of the finally lost out of all ages and worlds as bearing no greater proportion to all the inhabitants of the intelligent universe than the number in the prisons and penitentiaries in well-ordered societies now bears to the whole population.J. Cook.

[16694] The number of the lost will bear no more proportion to that of the saved, when the final judgment shall for ever settle the destinies of our race, than the convicts in a prison bear to all the inhabitants of the state.-Rev. R. Lardis, D.D.

[16695] If, in addition to a third part of the human race, who die in their childhood, the many who pass into happiness unnoticed from obscure situations in life, and the multitudes of pious people whom bigotry anathematizes as damnable heretics, we add all those who are pretty generally acknowledged to be the people of God, with all idiots, and the chief part of those who die between the age of seven and twelve (and who can doubt but most of these are received to happiness after death?), it will require no very great stretch of faith and charity to conclude, that hitherto a majority of the human race have attained to felicity in the eternal world. And if we look forward the prospect will brighten; for there is an age approaching, during which righteousness will be universal. "The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Isa. xi. 9).-D. Isaac.

XI. THE DEGREES OF SUFFERING IN HELL.

[16696] The Scriptures teach, in the most un equivocal terms, that there will be degrees in the final punishment of the wicked, not less than in the final rewards of the righteous. The general principle laid down by our Lord: "That servant which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he

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THE ULTIMATE AWARDS, OR THE FOUR LAST THINGS.

that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes," He himself applies to the awards of the final judgment: It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee." Now the common doctrine of eternal punishment admits, as we have seen, of degrees innumerable. Though all will be punished without end, the misery of one may be twice as great as that of another. But if the doom of all the wicked is annihilation, and this is that “ everlasting punishment" spoken of by our Lord, where are the degrees of suffering in non-existence? Beyond doubt it is the vengeance which Christ takes at the day of judgment on them that know not God, that shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for Capernaum. But this vengeance is expressly defined to be "everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord." If now annihilation be what is meant, how can that be more tolerable for Sodom than Capernaum? But if it be the suffering that precedes annihilation, then we have " everlasting destruction," which is the vengeance which Christ takes on the wicked, before it begins. Rev. E. Barrows, D.D.

[16697] If eternal punishment did not admit of degrees, neither would eternal rewards. Equality of continuance admits easily of degrees of misery, as fine and as manifold as are the deserts of the condemned.-Marshall Randles.

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XII. PRACTICAL REFLECTIONS.

He who refuses to be blessed makes himself accursed, and thereby chooses the inevitable penalty pronounced by the Judge.

[16698] The torments of the lost must not be regarded as merely an arbitrary infliction of punishment from the hand of God, but as the natural and necessary result of depraved character. We must not suppose that there is nought to prevent the sinner entering heaven but the merciless determination of an angry God not to admit him. The misery of the condemned sinner will mainly spring from within himself. There will be the unquenchable fire of self-reproach, the never-dying worm of an accusing conscience, the scorpion-stings of remorse, the bottomless pit of despair, and this intensified by the sight of those who are unholy still, filthy still." This-this is enough to make the lot one of "weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth."-Rev. J. Hitchens, D.D.

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[HELL.

[16699] It is plainly possible that a man may fall into free permanent dissimilarity of feeling with God, or fail to attain a predominant desire to be holy. If he does, it remains scientifically certain that even Omnipotence and Omniscience cannot force upon such a character blessedness. There can be no blessedness without holiness; and there can be no holiness without a supreme love of what God loves, and a supreme hate of what God hates. It is possible that a man may so disarrange his nature as not to attain a permanent and predominant desire to be holy.-J. Cook.

[16700] (1) Man's future doom is what he will have chosen; (2) is what he will have deserved; (3) is what he will have fitted himself for (cf. Acts i. 25).—Dean Ramsay.

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"Flee from the wrath to come "-"Why will ye die?"

[16701] "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Who says this? Who utters this awful condemnation? This is no raving of ignorance or fanaticism; no boast of vindictive cruelty; no figure of rhetorical fancy. All these words fell from the lips of Christ, the gentle, loving Son of God, the Friend of sinners. They fell from the lips of Him who came into the world that, through faith in Himself, men should not perish, but have everlasting life. They mean all that the cross means; for it was because the Saviour knew the awful eternity that is before the wicked that He died to redeem us from hell. Ah, these are Christ's own words, and therefore do they take away hope. And why did He utter them? That you and I might fear; that you and I might flee !-might fear the just punishment of our sins; might flee from the wrath to come! That you and I might turn from sin; that you and I might come to Him, and through His cross gain everlasting life. Not to affright our souls with images of horror, not to distract our fancy with exaggerated terrors, not to excite our nerves at the expense of reason, not to put into the hands of priests and religious enthusiasts and demagogues an instrument of terror to govern the weak; no, no, not for any such reason as they allege, who deny future punishment, did the Son of God, the Friend of sinners, the meek, the gentle, bleeding, dying Lamb of Calvary, give us this solemn warning of the future punishment of the ungodly. It was that we might not die, but turn and live.-Rev. J. Thompson, D.D.

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SECTIONAL INDEX.

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SECTION XV.

CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS.

N.B.-This Index is much curtailed, as a full Syllabus is given when necessary with the leading subject in the body of the book.
For such Syllabi, see vol. iv., pp. 231, 283, 289, 319, 380, 390, 401, 434, 447, 453, 461, 471, 490; vol. v., pp. 2, 30, 38, 54, 68, 80, 111,
208, 409, 452; also Classified List, pp. vi. vii.

Adam, Divine Promise of Mercy to

Adoption

Adoration

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Advent, Second, see Judgment

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Analogy between the Works of God

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Angelic Host

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Antichrist, see Judgment

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Apostasy, The Great, see Judgment
Atonement

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