3. The fatuity of the lost often takes the form of pleasure in evil, or of happy delusion. In uneasy and unenviable joys, their condition may be hideous and detestable, but not otherwise fearful. To low and vulgar minds this is the same that an eternal career of splendid wickedness is to minds of a loftier make. In the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg this view of the condition of the lost is somewhat prominent. It is stated by an earlier writer thus: "The divine goodness is not to be charged with cruelty for letting them continue in that existence, though it be very miserable, when they themselves will not have it removed; or for not altering their condition, which they utterly refuse to have altered. It is better for them, indeed, not to be than to be; but only in the opinion of wise men, to which they do not assent."1

4. It is sometimes thought that the inflicted sufferings of the future state may be at times remitted, or ever moderate and endurable. Augustine himself once allowed the expression that "the punishments of the damned are mitigated, at certain intervals; since the wrath of God might still be said to abide upon them." And a form of theodicy sometimes mooted is thisthat the sufferings of the lost are so reduced in degree, that, though eternal in duration, they are still finite in their sum."

5. The eternal progress of the lost in knowledge and capacity is sometimes denied. Thus we are told: "An assumption which adds nothing to the plain scriptural doctrine of retribution, is that the wicked will go on indefinitely increasing in capacities and in degrees of suffering, on a scale not unlike that of the righteous. The Scriptures do not expressly teach such doctrine. Sin does not, like holiness, enlarge the capacities of the soul. It has no tendencies that way,-punishment has none."

To all this indistinct theodicy, we need not reply in detail.

1 King, Origin of Evil, App. § 2.

3 Asa Shinn, On the Supreme Being.

2 Enchir. ad Laurent. c. 112.

4 Review of T. S. Smith's Illustrations of the Div. Gov., Chr. Spec. March, 1836, pp. 98, 99. Compare, Augustine and Pelagius, (below, p. 331, sq.);— Lombard, Sentent. 1. 4, dist. 46: "Non incongrue dici potest, Deum, etsi juste id possit, non omnino tantum punire malos in futuro, quantum meruerant, sed eis aliquid, tantumcunque mali sint, de pœnâ relaxare;' - Malebranche, Meditations Chrétiennes, vii, supposes the sufferings of the lost to be partly remitted,

In some of its statements the lost appear as half dead; showing few signs of immortal vigor. In others, their deportment is unworthy of an immortal existence. And in all, the final retribution makes slow progress. The conceptions are all in twilight, both as they picture a condition between the glaring light of God's eternal frown, and the blackness of darkness for ever; and as they indicate the feeble hold the human mind has on the ideas of the Eternal and the Infinite.

This mixed theodicy of life and death is, we think, untenable. The living human soul can not be stationary. Nothing else than a habit of unceasing oblivion could subject it to eternal illusions; and an eternal power of thinking must give it increase of knowledge; and knowledge, experience; and the notion of experience is fatal to each form of the argument. The prisoners whom it would hold must either come out into the light of day, or sink in eternal night. In a word, they must either live or die.

Beside being in itself an unrest of the Christian intellect, and a burden to the Christian faith, the argument, we think, encumbers the divine administration with a sloth of justice, and the universe with a mass of useless being.

for satisfaction made by Christ. Arminius, Resp. ad xxx1 Articul. 14, cites opinions that infants dying unbaptized will be in the mildest condemnation; that they will suffer without remorse of conscience; and that they will suffer penalty of loss, but not of sense. The last named is the doctrine of the Limbus Infantum, as professed by Leibnitz, Systema Theolog. p. 334, Paris, 1819. See also Lombard, Sentent. 1. 2, dist. 33. The second is adopted by Ridgely, who alludes, Body of Divinity, q. 47, to an opinion that those dying in infancy ever remain in an infantile state. Leibnitz, Théodicée, Part. I. § 19; Abregé de la Controv., thought there might be incomparably more of happiness in the glory of the saved, though less numerous. than of misery in the damned. Saurin, Sermon on Hell, thinks the doctrine of degrees in future punishments "may serve to solve the difficulty of the doctrine of their eternity." Niemeyer, Popul. Theol. 305, and Morus, Epitome, p. 302, allow the improvement of the lost, with happiness ever imperfect. Swedenborg, Spiritual Diary, 4038, says that some "sit like dead stocks, and afterwards serve as a class of subjects that have scarcely any life." See also Paley, Mor. Phil. b. 1, c. 7;- Harris, note on Foster's Letter. Appeal to Am. Tract Society, pp. 40-42.

CHAPTER IV.

EVIL TEMPORARY.

"What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction?"

We have now shown that the doctrine of eternal evil resulting from an event in time is dualistic, and that Theodicy does not relieve this limitation of the divine power. Before we proceed to the scriptural argument, we will offer some reasons to show that evil is temporary, and thus consists with a true Theism.

§ 1. EVIL NOT NEEDFUL.

Besides the theodicies we have examined, various arguments are adduced to show either an eternal necessity or an eternal economy of evil. These may be classified as the epidictic, eudaimonic, and disciplinary theories.

I. The epidictic theory supposes evil needful in order to display some divine attribute. E. g.:

1. The Divine Power. -Thus we are often told that the destruction of revolted subjects could only be a dernier ressort of the Sovereign Ruler, and proof of His weakness. "Why," it is asked, "should God strike them from existence, unless because it is impossible to uphold and rule them for ever in revolt, in a manner worthy of his perfections, and compatibly with the safety of his government over his other subjects? But an inability to reign over them in such a manner would be an imperfection; and to annihilate a vast crowd of creatures because of such an inability would be a public acknowledgment and demonstration of that imperfection. It would form an indisputable proof that He was unequal to his station; that He had called beings into

existence whom He was unable to uphold and rule conformably to their character, in such a manner as not to defeat the ends for which He created them." Such a destruction, we are told, would furnish Satan with an excuse for rebellion, and a boast of triumph over God.1

The reply is two-fold. (1.) What are "the ends for which God created" his rebellious subjects? Certainly the end of government is obedience, and not the mere display of statesmanship. Hence it may be doubted whether God can rule rebels "for ever in revolt, in a manner worthy of his perfections." But, waiving this limitation of the divine power, the transparent fallacy of the argument is (2.) an assumption that what God can do, He must do. Who ever doubted that the Omnipotent can manage his creatures, in some way, so long as He keeps them in being? He can do this eternally, if any sceptic should ask such proof of his power. But He is able also not to do this. As true courage fears not the cry of cowardice, so God may contemn the charge of weakness, though in so doing He should remind us of his power to create by un-creating the worthless. But, by the argument in hand, God's capacities are made divine necessities. If He can conserve the rebellious, He must do so, lest Satan should deride Him, and all the people distrust Him. He is therefore bound hand and foot, by the green withes of our theology, until the trumpet shall sound: "The Eternities be upon thee, O Lord!" Until then, the bands, we doubt not, will strengthen some sort of faith.

2. The display of Divine Justice.-We have already shown that eternal suffering is not to be claimed as the right of God's justice. But it is urged that such endless punishment is wanted, to exhibit this eternal attribute of God. "Sin and its power in the world could not be missing, because that contrast of the two divine attributes, of punitive justice on the one hand, and mercy on the other, quite dualistically exhibited, required objects in which to reveal itself." 2

1 D. N. Lord, Theol. and Lit. Journal, Jan. 1851, p. 401.

2 Müller, (stating the view of Beza,) Chr. Doc. of Sin, I. 421.- See also the critique of Leibnitz, Théodicée, Part. II. § 238; and of Bayle, Réponse aux

Here the reply is also two-fold. (1.) If this divine attribute needed an eternal suffering not strictly its due, the deplorable want might be supplied from an eternal succession of the sinning and perishing. But (2.) we deny the impoverishing need. The law of God asks obedience, to be rewarded with blessing. The recompense of reward is the display of justice which God desires. He needs nothing which He forbids. All penal suffering is the necessity not of God's infinite fulness, but of man's wickedness and weakness.

3. The display of God's Holiness.-"May not divine wisdom," it is asked, "find a fitting end in keeping the wicked in endless existence as an endless and requisite expression of the divine displeasure and abhorrence toward sin? Such a living and actual expression may alone be adequate to bring out the mind of God before His creatures."1

This is to suppose that the holiness of God, of which the Shekinah was the sacred symbol, can not shine brightly enough by its own light, but needs the hideous deformity and blackness of sin for its illustration. God needs that which it is his very nature to detest, and it must be a feature of the eternal world if not a part of his plan, — that his abhorrence of it may appear! The whole theory is a contradiction, which reminds one of the supposed wisdom of keeping up the fire upon the altar of the temple of Ephesus, by digging down the coal foundations on which it rested. It justifies the remark of Möhler upon the theory of Beza just named: "It was thus the part of the Deity to call forth somehow an evil sentiment, in order to attain his ends; that is to say, He must annihilate his sanctity, in order on its ruins to attain to compassion and justice.” 2

4. The display of God's Mercy.—This theory is suggested in some of the passages already cited. By one writer it is stated as the Church doctrine, as contained in the old expression :

Questions, Part. II. c. 152. Compare Jurieu, Jugement sur les Méthodes, § 13; — Emmons, Serm. on Rev. xix. 3.

1 T. M. Post, New Englander, Feb., 1856, p. 131. Compare Jurieu, De Pace ineundâ, p. 188;- Hopkins, Works, II. 459.

2 Symbolism, b. 1, part 1, § 4.