SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 April 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

“HE SHALL COME TO JUDGE THE QUICK AND THE DEAD.” Now is the judgment of this world; now wil the Prince of this world be driven out.”—Saint John, XII., 31. (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) This morning I am to speak on a serious subject, and I wish to speak quite seriously, though not gloomily. My appeal is to reason and conscience, and not to excited feeling or to craven fear. I shall speak with deadly honesty, but not with hectoring dogmatism or Jesuitical reserves. “From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead,” says “the Apostles’ Creed.” Each of the three great historic creeds say the same thing, with only slight verbal variation. Millions of people the world over make this affirmation Sunday by Sunday, yet I am bold to say that this doctrine has long since ceased to form any part of the working creed of the vast majority of even orthodox Christians. Not one in a thousand of those who recite these words ever allows them to influence his life and conduct. Without explicit denial of the truth they allow it to drop out of sight and out of mind. I know the doctrine of judgment to come involves great nad grave difficulty. The clearest thinkers hesitate here. The one • thing that is absolutely out of place in discussing the subject is dogmatic assertion, and none save amateur theologians indulge that temper. But though we may not dogmatise, we ought to think. Aye, and revise our thinking. THE PRICE OF PROGRESS. It is told of a colored preacher that when he came to a difficult passage of Scripture, he would turn to his audience and say: “Brethren, this is a difficult text, a very difficult text, but let us walk straight up to it, and—pass on!” It was a singularly frank and foolish statement. It was neither candid nor courageous, and it was not likely to issue in a large and fruitful life. If that attitude were generally assumed on other than Bible subjects it would mean stagnation. Peril is the price of progress. The bounds of knowledge widen because men have thought boldly, investigated fearlessly, and “lived dangerously.” Inventors and explorers, reformers and missionaries, have never been men who, when they came to a difficulty, “walked straight up to it and passed on.” The same is true of Bible knowledge. If all preachers had been like the colored preacher, we should have still been in the dark ages, still burning witches, and believing in ghosts, and our pulpits would still be ringing with “the dread tidings of great misery,” instead of the “glad tidings of great joy.” And yet the colored preacher’s attitude is not as rare as you may suppose. Thousands who do not say as he said act on the same principle, and when they come to a Bible difficulty, they “walk straight up to it and pass on!” One reason why the Holy Book is so shockingly neglected, and so cruelly tortured, is that we are either too indolent or too timid to do a bit. of honest investigation as to what the Bible is and teaches. “ ‘Afraid,’ she cried, and yet ’tis true That what man feareth he shoukTdo, Should do the thing he fears to'do And storm the ghosts in ambuscade.” FUTURE PUNISHMENT. One of the subjects regarded as “dangerous” is the doctrine of future punishment. There are still churches where the preacher who deals frankly with that question takes his life in his hands. No one questions that the Bible deals with the subject, but the theme is perilous; therefore leave it alone! But the view we take of this doctrine is bound to color every other doctrine, and to leave eschatology alone*’ means that you must leave a good deal else alone. Our thoughts of God, of Redemption, of the Future Life, of Man and of Sin, are bound up with our interpretation of the Judgment to come. It involves the character of God and the nature of man, and I say again, you should refuse to dogmatise, but you should not refuse to ponder, and ponder deeply, a doctrine that involves so much, and no cry of difficulty or danger should daunt you. It is not atheism to do your own thinking. It is not infidelity to “follow the gleam.” Besides, other men have thought on this dread subject, and, speaking broadly, there are three sets of opinion, three modes of interpretation. There is what is popularly known as “the orthodox view”; there is what is called the doctrine of “conditional immortality” or “Life in Christ”; and there is “the Larger Hope,” or “Final Restoration.” According to the one theory the wicked burn on; according to the second the wicked burn out; and according to the third the wicked burn clean. The advocates of each view claim to have the authority of Scripture on their side. Each party confesses Jesus Christ as Saviour and Judge. Each can quote the support of great names of scholars and saints. Each is stronger in its denials than its affirmations. Alas! Neither party is free of the habit of “sniping” their fellow Christians! Let me try to calmly state these views in outline, and seek to discover to you the core of truth in them all. IS IT ETERNAL? The orthodox view is that Future Punishment is Eternal. The wicked burn on. Death ends their earthly probation. They dwell in darkness, fire, and chains! And their woe endures forever! When millions of ages, beyond all calculation, have rolled past, their punishment is no nearer an end. Some who hold this view modify it to the extent of saying the fire and brimstone are not material, but symbolic of mental anguish and despair, though they hold that

the punishment is everlasting. The texts of Scripture they quote are few and figurative, bitt they would say that one text is enough. Of the many who have taught this dreadful dogma. I will name only three. Tertullian—“the Fierce Tertullian”— in the second century declared that part of the bliss of the saved would be the sight of t he damned! It is told how one of his audience rose in church and pleaded: “O, sir, spare the people!” Jonathan Edwards says: “Here all judges have a mixture of mercy, but the wrath of God will be poured our on the wicked without mixture.” John Wesley says: “Be their suffering ever so extreme, be their pain ever so intense, there is no possibility of their fainting away, no, ' not even for a moment.” Il would be easy to multiply examples from Protestant and Roman Catholic authors and preachers. 1 have seen church windows that are “a horrible nightmare of color.” Such words and pictures make the heart sick and the mind faint. Those who say such things are not ( ignorant and brutal; some are quite the j reverse. They hold and teach this dreadful ' dogma because they believe the Bible teach- i es it, because they believe the justice of , God demands it. and because they believe • that such teaching will drive men to seek Christ as a Refuge from “the wrath to i come.” On the other hand, those who deny ’ the dogma of a never-ending Hell do so because they hold that it is unscriptural. The words “Hell,” “Damn,” “Damnation.” and “Eternal” have disappeared from the Revised Version, and in their place you

have “Gehenna,” “Judge,” “Condemn,” and “Age long.” They hold you cannot touch spirit with material flame. They contend that to punish the sin’s of a brief lifetime with endless torment is a graver travesty on Eternal Justice than for an English squire to punish a hungry tra’-ip with a month’s hard labor for stealing a turnip or a swede. And so far from the preaching of Hell proving a deterrent, it has driven multitudes into infidelity. THE SOUL’S IMMORTALITY. The second theory seeks escape from an Eternity of conscious suffering by the denial of the soul’s natural immortality. Its advocates say that man is not by nature immortal, but only becomes so in union with Christ. They reason that obviously some men are not fit to survive the act of death. There are modifications in this school of thought, but what unites the n is the belief that the wicked bum out. The finally impenitent will be punished with “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.” Dr. R. W. Dale held this view, so did Dr. Edward White, and the late Archbishop of York argued for this view in his Brampton Lectures. They contended that the passing of the wicked out of existence vindicates the justice _ and mercy of God. Those who reject this interpretation argue tha tthe doctrine of immortality is rooted in the Christion Go-spel, and that since we are the children of God, we share His endless life, and that if God thought man worth the making, He will think man worth holding in life. So with Tennyson they say that love and truth and the souls of men are not perishable like Nature’s salts and sodas and bines, and with Bismarck they say that if death ends all, life would not be worth the trouble of dressing and undressing; and with Emerson they trust the Creator to keep faith with man in his dream of the life immortal. THE JUDGMENT. The third attempt to interpret the doctrine of Judgment is thife, that punishment is designed to be corrective and restorative in the Yonderland, as in this world. That Hell itself is part of the mercy of God, and part of the Great Salvation. That evil men do and will'suffer the due consequence of their deeds, but that, since God is “a just God and a Saviour,” His chastisement is for their profit until they shall turn to Him and be restored. The wicked bum clean. That “as in Adam all died so in Christ shall be made alive.” That Christ, being lifted up, “will draw all men unto Him.” Those who reject the idea of Final Restoration of all men to God say that it is not Scriptural, that it is dangerous, and that it cuts the nerve of Evangelism. Those who believe and teach it answer that it greatly expands the significance of the redemption by Christ, that it exalts the mercy of God, that it turps universal defeat into a Cosmic victory, and that to say that it is dangerous is to beg the whole I question, for the one thing to consider is [ not, Is it safe, but, Is it true ? FAITH IN CHRIST REQUISITE. Of course this is a bare outline, a rough, imperfect sketch. One thing I claim is that it fairly represents the situation in the religious world. Each theory is supposed to rest on the authority of the Bible. The advocates of each are loyal servants of Jesus Christ. They trust His Saviourhood, and believe that He is “the way, the truth, and the life,” and I want to say that “sniping” ought to stop, for it is nowhere written that “He that believeth in Everlasting Punishment shall be saved.” Faith in Christ is the one condition of salvation. Our motto might well be this: “In things essential unity, in things doubtful liberty, in all things charity.” JUDGMENT IN MAN’S CONSCIENCE. It may be impossible to completely harmonise views so divergent, yet the divergence is not so great as it seems. The question at issue is not whether sin is to be punished. All are agreed that it must be . There is a judgment seat of Christ in every man’s conscience. “The world’s history is the world’s judgment,” as Schiller said. The story of the rise and fall of nations is God writing His moral decisions. Babylon, Assyria, Byzantium, Spain, the feudal regime of France, the civil war of America, and the downfall of Germany—what were these but the coming of Christ to judge the quick and the dead? History is not atheistic. As Lowell sings:

“Some great cause, God’s New Messiah Offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand And the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever, ’Twixt the darkness and the light.”’

Judgment is present and continuous. So with individuals. The drunkard comes to judgment in the inflamed tissue of his brain. The gambler comes to judgment in the greed that stamps his face with a look almost bestial. V'/’hen the man of lust looks into the face of his baby born blind and rickety, and knows the blindness and the rickets are the result of sexual vice, he comes to judgment, and if he has a spark of manhood left, he will see the face of his Holy Judge and hear Him say: “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto Me.” JUDGMENT IS HERE. No need of scaring pictures of infernal dungeons beyond the bounds of time. Judgment is now. Judgment is here. “To- be in sin is to be in Hell.” “To turn away from Thee is Hell." To turn to Thoe is Heaven.” This much is common to all the creeds, Protestant and Roman Catholic. This is the beliefs of heathen teachers and writers. The idea of retribution is universal. It is the truth behind the words “Nemesis,” “Tantalus,” and “Prometheus,” behind the words “Hades,” “Gehenna and “Tartarus..” Xlie punishment of sin is one of the primal instincts of the race. “The tissues of life to be We weave with colours all our own: And in the field of destiny We reap as we have sown.” We have a robust common-sense that compels the belief that the distinction between good and bad is not fictitious but fundamental. “Yesterday this day’s madness did prepare, To-day, to-morrow’s triumph or despair.” Bu tno power on earth can ever convince us that one man is elected to life and has Heaven settled on him as an entailed estate, and another ordained to death and held thereto, and that one is “blessed” because he held an orthodox creed, and another is “cursed” because he made a > mistake in tne most profound of all the * sciences. Jesus never made judgment turn on the will of God or the beliefs of man. He made judgment to rest on what a man is in the sight of oGd, when stripped of all the accidents of birth and all the prejudices of men. OUR ETERNAL JUDGE. But “the Son of Man” will be our Eternal Saviour fudge. In His hands our cause is safe. All judgment will not mean condemnation; condemnation does not of necessity mean damnation, still less an Everlasting Hell. For some men judgment ‘ will vindication. If God's

mercy in Hades, if he wash the gates of the grave with the tears of his penitence, will God turn away? Some say “Yes,” some say “No.” For myself I will say that the Father of Jesus is “a just God and a Saviour." “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” To be “unsaved" does not mean to be “unsavable,” Here or Yonder.