There remains one other view of the relationship of a future life

with the present. And it seems to be the true view. The same

Creator presiding, the same laws prevailing, over infinitude and

eternity that now rule over time and earth, our immortality cannot

reasonably be imagined either a moment of free action and an

eternity of fixed consequences, or a series of separate fragments

patched into a parti colored experience with blanks of death

between the patterns of life. It must be conceived as one endless

existence in linear connection of cause and effect developing in

progressive phases under varying conditions of motive and scenery.

With what we are at death we live on into the next life. In every

epoch and world of our destiny our happiness depends on the

possession of a harmoniously working soul harmoniously related

with its environment. Each stage and state of our eternal

existence has its peculiarities of duty and privilege. In this one

our proper work is to improve the opportunities, discharge the

tasks, enjoy the blessings, belonging here. We are to do the same

in the next one when we arrive in that. All the wealth of wisdom,

virtue, strength, and harmony we acquire in our present life is

the vantage ground and capital wherewith we start in the

succeeding life. Therefore the true preparation for the future is

to fit ourselves to enter it under the most favorable auspices, by

accumulating in our souls all the spiritual treasures afforded by

the present. In other words, the truest aim we can set before

ourselves during our existence on earth is to make it yield the

greatest possible results of the noblest experience. The life

hereafter is the elevated and complementary continuation of the

life here; and certainly the directest way to ameliorate the

continuation is to improve the commencement.

But, it may be said, according to this representation, the fact of

a future life makes no difference in regard to our duty now; for

if the grave swallows all, still, it is our duty and our interest

to make the best and the most of our life in the world while it

lasts. True; and really that very consideration is a strong proof

of the correctness of the view in question. It corresponds with

the other arrangements of God. He makes every thing its own end,

complete in itself, at the same time that it subserves some

further end and enters into some higher unity. He is no mere

Teleologist, hobbling towards his conclusions on a pair of decayed

logic crutches,2 but an infinite Artist, whose means and ends are

consentaneous in the timeless and spaceless spontaneity and

perfection of his play. If the tomb is our total goal, our genuine

aim in this existence is to win during its course an experience

the largest in quantity and the best in quality. On the other

hand, if another life follows this, our wisdom is just the same;

because that experience alone, with the favor of God, can

constitute our fitness and stock to enter on the future. And yet

between the two cases there is this immense difference, not

indeed in duty, but in endowment, that in the latter instance we

work out our allotted destiny here, in a broader illumination,

with grander incentives, and with vaster consolations. A future

life, then, really imposes no new duty upon the present, alters no

fundamental ingredient in the present, takes away none of the

charms and claims of the present, but merely sheds an additional

radiance upon the shaded lights already shining here, infuses an

additional motive into the stimulants already animating our

purposes, distills an additional balm into the comforts which

already assuage our sorrows amidst an evanescent scene. The belief

that we are to live hereafter in a compensating world explains to

us many a sad mystery, strengthens us for many an oppressive

burden, consoles us in many a sharp grief. Else we should oftener

go mad in the baffling whirl of problems, oftener obey the baser

voice, oftener yield to despair. These three are the moral uses,

in the present life, of the

2 "Seht, an der morschen Syllogismenkrucke Hinkt Gott in Seine

Welt."Lenau's Satire auf einen Professor philosophia.

doctrine of a future life. Outside of these three considerations

the doctrine has no ethical meaning for human observance here.

It will be seen, according to the foregoing representation, that

the expectation of a future life, instead of being harmful to the

interests and attractions of the present, simply casts a cheering

and magnifying light upon them. It does not depreciate the

realities or nullify the obligations now upon us, but emphasizes

them, flinging their lights and shades forward through a mightier

vista. Consequently there is no reason for assailing the idea of

another life in behalf of the interests of this. Such an

opposition between the two states is entirely sophistical,

resulting from a profound misinterpretation of the truemoral

relations connecting them.

The belief in immortality has been mistakenly attacked, not merely

as hostile to our welfare on earth, but likewise as immoral in

itself, springing from essential selfishness, and in turn

nourishing selfishness and fatally tainting every thing with that

central vice. To desire to live everlastingly as an identical

individual, it has been said, is the ecstasy and culmination of

avaricious conceitedness. Man, the vain egotist, dives out of

sight in God to fish up the pearl of his darling self. He makes

his poor individuality the measure of all things, his selfish

desire the law of endless being. Such a rampant proclamation of

self will and enthronement of pure egotism, flying in the face of

the solemn and all submerging order of the universe, is the very

essence and climax of immorality and irreligiousness. To this

assault on the morality of the belief in a future life, whether

made in the devout tones of magnanimous sincerity, as by the

sublime Schleiermacher, or with the dishonest trickiness of a

vulgar declaimer for the rehabilitation of the senses, as by some

who might be named, several fair replies may be made. In the first

place, the objection begs the question, by assuming that the

doctrine is a falsehood, and that its disciples wilfully set up

their private wishes against the public truth. Such tremendous

postulates cannot be granted. It is seizing the victory before the

battle, grasping the conclusion without establishing the premises.

For, if there be a future life provided by the Creator, it cannot

be sinful or selfish in us to trust in it, to accept it with

humble gratitude, and to prepare our souls for it. That, instead

of being rebellious arrogance or overweening selfishness, would

simply be conforming our thoughts and plans, our desires and

labors, to the Divine arrangements. That would be both morality

and piety. When one clings by will to a doctrine known to be a

falsehood, obstinately suppressing reason to affirm it as a truth,

and, in obedience to his personal whims, trying to force all

things into conformity with it, he does act as a selfish egotist

in full violation of the moral law and the spirit of religion. But

a future life we believe to be a fact; and therefore we are, in

every respect, justified in gladly expecting it and consecratedly

living with reference to it.

Furthermore, admitting it to be an open question, neither proved

nor disproved, but poised in equal uncertainty, still, it is not

immoral nor undevout deeply to desire and fondly to hope a

personal immortality. "The aim of religion," it has been said, "is

the annihilation of one's own individuality, the living in the

All, the becoming one with the universe." But in such a definition

altogether too much is assumed. The aim of religion is only the

annihilation of the self will of the individual as opposed to the

Will of the Whole, not the losing of one's self in the unconscious

wastes of the universe, but the harmonizing of one's self with the

Supreme Law of the universe.

An humble, loving, and joyous conformity to the truth constitutes

morality and religion. This is not necessarily inconsistent with a

personal immortality. Besides, the charge may be retorted. To be

identified with the universe is a prouder thought than to be

subordinated to it as an infinitesimal individual. It is a far

haughtier conceit to fancy one's self an integral part of God's

substance than to believe one's self a worshipping pensioner of

God's will. The conception, too, is less native to the mind, has

been more curiously sought out, and is incomparably more pampering

to speculative luxury. If accusations of selfishness and

wilfulness are to be hurled upon any modes of preferred faith as

to our destiny, this self styled disinterested surrender of our

personality to the pantheistic Soul is as obnoxious to them as the

common belief.

If a desire for personal immortality be a normal experience in the

development of our nature, it cannot be indictable as an offence,

but must be recognised as an indication of God's design. Whether

the desire is a cold and degraded piece of egotism deserving

rebuke and contempt, or a lofty and sympathetic affection worthy

of reverence and approval, depends on no intrinsic ingredient of

the desire itself, but on the character in which it has its being.

One person will be a heartless tyrant, another a loving saint, in

his hope of a future life. Shall our love of the dead, our prayers

to meet them again, our unfathomed yearnings to know that they

still live and are happy, be stigmatized as mean and evil? Regard

for others as much as for ourselves prompts the eternal sigh. Nor

will Divinity ever condemn the feeling himself has awakened. It is

said that Xerxes, gazing once upon his gorgeous army of a million

men spread out below hire, sheathed in golden armor, white plumes

nodding, purple standards waving, martial horns blowing, wept as

he thought that in thirty years the entire host composing that

magnificent spectacle would be dead. To have gazed thoughtfully

upon such a sight with unmoved sensibilities would imply a much

more selfish and hard hearted egotist. So when a lonely

philanthropist from some meditative eminence looks down on the

human race, if, as the contemplation of their pathetic fading and

decay wounds his saddened heart, he heals and cheers it with the

faith of a glorious immortality for them all, who shall call him

selfish and sinful? To rest contented with the speedy night and

the infinite oblivion, wiping off all the unsolved sums from the

slate of existence with annihilation's remorseless sponge, that

would be the selfishness and the cruelty.

When that sweet asp, death, fastens on our vein of earthly life,

we all feel, like the dying queen of Egypt, that we have "immortal

longings" in us. Since the soul thus holds by a pertinacious

instinct to the eternity of her own existence, it is more rational

to conclude that this is a pledge of her indestructible

personality, God's impregnable defence reared around the citadel

of her being, than to consider it the artificial rampart flung up

by an insurgent egotism. In like manner, it is a misrepresentation

of the facts to assert the culpable selfishness of the faith in a

future life as a demanded reward for fidelity and merit here. No

one demands immortality as pay for acquired desert. It is modestly

looked for as a free boon from the God who freely gave the present

and who has by a thousand symbolic prophecies promised it. Richter

says, with great insight, "We desire immortality not as the reward

of virtue, but as its continuance. Virtue can no more be rewarded

than joy can: it is its own reward." Kant says, "Immortality has

been left so uncertain in order that pure freedom of choice, and

no selfish views, shall prompt our aspirations." "But," Jean Paul

keenly replies, "as we have now discovered this intention, its

object is defeated. Besides, if the belief in immortality makes

virtue selfish, the experience of it in the next world would make

it more so." The anticipation of heaven can hardly make man a

selfish calculator of profit; because heaven is no reward for

crafty reckoning, but the home of pure and holy souls. Virtue

which resists temptation and perseveres in rectitude because it

has a sharp eye to an ulterior result is not virtue. No credible

doctrine of a future life offers a prize except to those who are

just and devout and strenuous in sacred service from free loyalty

to the right and the good, spontaneously obeying and loving the

higher and better call because it divinely commands their

obedience and love. The law of duty is the superior claim of truth

and goodness. Virtue, yielding itself filially to this, finds in

heaven not remuneration, but a sublimer theatre and an immortal

career. Egotistic greed, all mere prudential considerations as

determining conditions or forces in the award, are excluded as

unclean and inadmissible by the very terms; and the doctrine

stands justified on every ground as pure and wholesome before the

holiest tribunal of ethics. Surely it is right that goodness

should be blessed; but when it continues good only for the sake of

being blessed it ceases to be goodness. It is not the belief in

immortality, but only the belief in a corrupt doctrine of

immortality which can poison the springs of disinterested virtue.

The morality of the doctrine of a future life having thus been

defended from the attacks of those who have sought to destroy it

in the fancied interests either of the enjoyments of the earth or

of the purity of virtue and religion, it now remains to free it

from the still more fatal supports which false or superficial

religionists have sought to give it by wrenching out of it

meanings it never held, by various perverse abuses of it, by

monstrous exaggerations of its moral importance to the present. We

have seen that the supposition of another life, correctly

interpreted, lays no new duty upon man, takes away from him no old

duty or privilege, but simply gives to the previously existing

facts of the case the intensifying glory and strength of fresh

light, motive, and consolation. But many public teachers, not

content to treat the subject with this sobriety of reason, instead

of presenting the careful conclusions of a conscientious analysis,

have sought to strengthen their argument to the feelings by help

of prodigious assumptions, assumptions hastily adopted, highly

colored, and authoritatively urged. Upon the hypothesis that

annihilation is the fate of man, they are not satisfied merely to

take away from the present all the additional light, incentive,

and comfort imparted by the faith in a future existence, but they

arbitrarily remove all the alleviations and glories intrinsically

belonging to the scene, and paint it in the most horrible hues,

and set it in a frame of midnight. Thus, instead of calmly seeking

to elicit and recommend truth, they strive, by terrifying the

fancy and shocking the prejudices, to make people accept their

dogma because frightened at the seeming consequences of rejecting

it. It is necessary to expose the fearful fallacies which have

been employed in this way, and which are yet extensively used for

the same purpose.

Even a Christian writer usually so judicious as Andrews Norton has

said, "Without the belief in personal immortality there can be no

religion; for what can any truths of religion concern the feelings

and the conduct of beings whose existence is limited to a few

years in this world?" 3 Such a statement from such a quarter is

astonishing. Surely the sentiments natural to a person or

incumbent upon him do not depend on the duration of his being, but

on the character, endowments, and relations of his being. The

hypothetical fact that man perishes with his body does not destroy

God, does not destroy man's dependence on God for all his

privileges, does not annihilate the overwhelming magnificence of

the universe, does not alter the native sovereignty of holiness,

does not quench our living reason, imagination, or sensibility,

while they last. The soul's gratitude, wonder, love, and worship

are just as right and instinctive as before. If our experience on

earth, before the phenomena of the visible creation and in

conscious communion with the emblemed attributes of God, does not

cause us to kneel in humility and to adore in awe, then it may be

doubted if heaven or hell will ever persuade us to any sincerity

in such acts. The simple prolongation of our being does not add to

its qualitative contents, cannot increase the kinds of our

capacity or the number of our duties. Chalmers utters an injurious

error in saying, as he does, "If there be no future life, the

moral constitution of man is stripped of its significancy, and the

Author of that constitution is stripped of his wisdom and

authority and honor." 4 The creative Sovereign of fifty million

firmaments of worlds "stripped of his wisdom and authority and

honor" because a few insects on a little speck are not eternal!

Can egotistic folly any further go? The affirmation or denial of

immortality neither adds to nor diminishes the numerical relations

and ingredients of our nature and experience. If religion is

fitted for us on the former supposition, it is also on the latter.

To any dependent intelligence blessed with our human susceptibilities,

reverential love and submission are as obligatory, natural, and

becoming on the brink of annihilation as on the verge of immortality.

Rebellious egotism makes all the difference. Truth is truth,

whatever it be. Religion is the meek submission of self will to

God's will. That is a duty not to be escaped, no matter what the

future reserves or excludes for us.

Another sophism almost universally accepted needs to be shown.

Man, it is said, has no interest in a future life if not conscious

in it of the past. If, on exchange of worlds, man loses his

memory, he virtually ceases to exist, and might just as well be

annihilated. A future life with perfect oblivion of the present is

no life at all for us. Is not this style of thought the most

provincial egotism, the utter absence of all generous thought and

sympathy unselfishly grasping the absolute boons of being? It is a

shallow error, too, even on the grounds of selfishness itself. In

any point of view the difference is diametric and immense between

a happy being in an eternal present, unconscious of the past, and

no being at all. Suppose a man thirty years of age were offered

his choice to die this moment, or to live fifty years longer of

unalloyed success and happiness, only with a complete

forgetfulness of all that has happened up to this moment. He would

not hesitate to grasp the gift, however much he regretted the

condition.

3 Tracts concerning Christianity, p. 307.

4 Bridgewater Treatise, part ii. ch. 10, sect. 15.

It has often been argued that with the denial of a retributive

life beyond the grave all restraints are taken off from the

passions, free course given to every impulse. Chateaubriand says,

bluntly, "There can be no morality if there be no future state." 5

With displeasing coarseness, and with most reprehensible

recklessness of reasoning, Luther says, in contradiction to the

essential nobleness of his loving, heroic nature, "If you believe

in no future life, I would not give a mushroom for your God. Do,

then, as you like. For if no God, so no devil, no hell: as with a

fallen tree, all is over when you die. Then plunge into lechery,

rascality, robbery, and murder." What bible of Moloch had he been

studying to form, for the time, so horrid a theory of the happiest

life, and to put so degrading an estimate upon human nature? Is

man's will a starved wolf only held back by the triple chain of

fear of death, Satan, and hell, from tearing forth with ravenous

bounds to flesh the fangs of his desires in bleeding virtue and

innocence? Does the greatest satisfaction man is capable of here,

the highest blessedness he can attain to, consist in drunkenness,

gluttony, dishonesty, violence, and impiety? If he had the

appetite of a tiger or a vulture, then, thus to wallow in the

offal of vice, dive into the carrion of sensuality, abandon

himself to revelling in carnivorous crime, might be his instinct

and his happiness. But by virtue of his humanity man loves his

fellows, enjoys the scenery of nature, takes delight in thought

and art, dilates with grand presentiments of glory and eternity,

mysteriously yearns after the hidden God. To a reasonable man and

no other is to be reasoned with on matters of truth and interest

the assumption of this brief season as all, will be a double

motive not to hasten and embitter its brevity by folly, excess,

and sin. If you are to be dead to morrow, for that very reason, in

God's name, do not, by gormandizing and guzzling, anticipate death

to day! The true restraint from wrong and degradation is not a

crouching conscience of superstition and selfishness, fancying a

chasm of fire, but a high toned conscience of reason and honor,

perceiving that they are wrong and degradation, and spontaneously

loathing them.

Still worse, many esteemed authors have not hesitated to assert

that unless there be a future life there is not only no check on

passion within, but no moral law without; every man is free to do

what he pleases, without blame or fault. Sir Kenelm Digby says, in

his "Treatise on Man's Soule," that "to predicate mortality in the

soule taketh away all morality, and changeth men into beastes, by

removing the ground of all difference in those thinges which are

to governe our actions." 6 This style of teaching is a very

mischievous absurdity. Admit, for a moment, that Jocko in the

woods of Brazil, and Schiller in the brilliant circles of Weimar,

will at last meet the same fate in the dusty grasp of death; yet,

while they live, one is an ape, the other is a man. And the

differences of capacity and of duty are numberless and immense.

The statement is enough: argument would be ridiculous. The words

of an audacious French preacher are yet more shocking than those

of the English nobleman. It is hard to believe they could be

uttered in good faith. Says Massillon, in his famous declamation

on immortality, "If we wholly perish with the body, the maxims of

charity, patience, justice, honor, gratitude, and friendship, are

but empty words. Our own passions shall decide our duty.

5 Genie du Christianisme, partie ii. livre vi. chap. 3.

6 Ch. ix. sect. 10.

If retribution terminate with the grave, morality is a mere

chimera, a bugbear of human invention." 7 What debauched

unbeliever ever inculcated a viler or a more fatal doctrine? Its

utter barelessness, as a single illustration may show, is obvious

at a glance. As the sciences of algebra and geometry, the

relations of numbers and bodies, are true for the material world

although they may be lost sight of when time and space are

transcended in some higher state, so the science of ethics, the

relations of nobler and baser, of right and wrong, the manifold

grades and qualities of actions and motives, are true for human

nature and experience in this life even if men perish in the

grave. However soon certain facts are to end, while they endure

they are as they are. In a moment of carelessness, by some strange

slip of the mind, showing, perhaps, how tenaciously rooted are the

common prejudice and falsehood on this subject, even so bold and

fresh a thinker as Theodore Parker has contradicted his own

philosophy by declaring, "If to morrow I perish utterly, then my

fathers will be to me only as the ground out of which my bread

corn is grown. I shall care nothing for the generations of

mankind. I shall know no higher law than passion. Morality will

vanish." 8 Ah, man reveres his fathers and loves to act nobly, not

because he is to live forever, but because he is a man. And,

though all the summer hopes of escaping the grave were taken from

human life, choicest and tenderest virtues might still flourish,

as it is said the German crossbill pairs and broods in the dead of

winter. The martyr's sacrifice and the voluptuary's indulgence are

very different things to day, if they do both cease to morrow. No

speed of advancing destruction can equalize Agamemnon and

Thersites, Mansfield and Jeffries, or hustle together justice and

fraud, cowardice and valor, purity and corruption, so that they

will interchange qualities. There is an eternal and immutable

morality, as whiteness is white, and blackness is black, and

triangularity is triangular. And no severance of temporal ties or

compression of spatial limits can ever cut the condign bonds of

duty and annihilate the essential distinctions of good and evil,

magnanimity and meanness, faithfulness and treachery.

Reducing our destiny from endless to definite cannot alter the

inherent rightfulness and superiority of the claims of virtue. The

most it can do is to lessen the strength of the motive, to give

the great motor nerve of our moral life a perceptible stroke of

palsy. In reference to the question, Can ephemera have a moral

law? Richter reasons as follows: "Suppose a statue besouled for

two days. If on the first day you should shatter it, and thus rob

it of one day's life, would you be guilty of murder? One can

injure only an immortal." 9 The sophistry appears when we rectify

the conclusion thus: one can inflict an immortal injury only on an

immortal being. In fact, it would appear to be a greater wrong and

injury, for the time, to destroy one day's life of a man whose

entire existence was confined to two days, than it would be to

take away the same period from the bodily existence of one who

immediately thereupon passes into a more exalted and eternal life.

To the sufferer, the former would seem an immitigable calamity,

the latter a benign furtherance; while, in the agent, the overt

act is the same. This general moral problem has been more

accurately answered by Isaac Taylor, whose lucid statement is as

follows: "The creatures of a summer's day might be imagined, when

7 OEuvres Completes, tome xiii.: Immortalite de l'Ame.

8 Sermons of Theism, Sermon VII.

9 Werke, band xxxiii. s. 240.

they stand upon the threshold of their term of existence, to make

inquiry concerning the attributes of the Creator and the rules of

his government; for these are to be the law of their season of

life and the measure of their enjoyments. The sons of immortality

would put the same questions with an intensity the greater from

the greater stake."

Practically, the acknowledged authority of the moral law in human

society cannot be destroyed. Its influence may be unlimitedly

weakened, its basis variously altered, but as a confessed

sovereign principle it cannot be expelled. The denial of the

freedom of the will theoretically explodes it; but social custom,

law, and opinion will enforce it still. Make man a mere dissoluble

mixture of carbon and magnetism, yet so long as he can distinguish

right and wrong, good and evil, love and hate, and, unsophisticated

by dialectics, can follow either of opposite courses of action,

the moral law exists and exerts its sway.

It has been asked, "If the incendiary be, like the fire he kindles,

a result of material combinations, shall he not be treated in the

same way?" 10 We should reply thus: No matter what man springs

from or consists of, if he has moral ideas, performs moral

actions, and is susceptible of moral motives, then he is morally

responsible: for all practical and disciplinary purposes he is

wholly removed from the categories of physical science.

Another pernicious misrepresentation of the fair consequences of

the denial of a life hereafter is shown in the frequent

declaration that then there would be no motive to any thing good

and great. The incentives which animate men to strenuous services,

perilous virtues, disinterested enterprises, spiritual culture,

would cease to operate. The essential life of all moral motives

would be killed. This view is to be met by a broad and indignant

denial based on an appeal to human consciousness and to the reason

of the thing. Every man knows by experience that there are a

multitude of powerful motives, entirely disconnected with future

reward or punishment, causing him to resist evil and to do good

even with self sacrificing toil and danger. When the fireman risks

his life to save a child from the flames of a tumbling house, is

the hope of heaven his motive? When the soldier spurns an offered

bribe and will not betray his comrades nor desert his post, is the

fear of hell all that animates him? A million such decisive

specifications might be made. The renowned sentence of Cicero,

"Nemo unquam sine magna spe immortalitatis se pro patria offerret

ad mortem," 11 is effective eloquence; but it is a baseless libel

against humanity and the truth. In every moment of supreme

nobleness and sacrifice personality vanishes. Thousands of

patriots, philosophers, saints, have been glad to die for the

freedom of native land, the cause of truth, the welfare of fellow

men, without a taint of selfish reward touching their wills. Are

there not souls "To whom dishonor's shadow is a substance More

terrible than death here and hereafter"?

He must be the basest of men who would decline to do any sublime

act of virtue because he did not expect to enjoy the consequences

of it eternally. Is there no motive for the

10 Some discussion of this general subject is to be found in

Schaller, Leib nod Seele. kap. 5: Die Consequentzen des

Materialismus. And in Schopenhauer, Die beiden Grundprobleme der

Ethik.

11 Tuscul. Quast. lib. i. cap. 15.

preservation of health because it cannot be an everlasting

possession? Since we cannot eat sweet and wholesome food forever,

shall we therefore at once saturate our stomachs with nauseating

poisons?

If all experienced good and evil wholly terminate for us when we

die, still, every intrinsic reason which, on the supposition of

immortality, makes wisdom better than folly, industry better than

sloth, righteousness better than iniquity, benevolence and purity

better than hatred and corruption, also makes them equally

preferable while they last. Even if the philosopher and the idiot,

the religious philanthropist and the brutal pirate, did die alike,

who would not rather live like the sage and the saint than like

the fool and the felon? Shall heaven be held before man simply as

a piece of meat before a hungry dog to make him jump well? It is a

shocking perversion of the grandest doctrine of faith. Let the

theory of annihilation assume its direst phase, still, our

perception of principles, our consciousness of sentiments, our

sense of moral loyalty, are not dissolved, but will hold us firmly

to every noble duty until we ourselves flow into the dissolving

abyss. But some one may say, "If I have fought with beasts at

Ephesus, what advantageth it me if the dead rise not?" It

advantageth you every thing until you are dead, although there be

nothing afterwards. As long as you live, is it not glory and

reward enough to have conquered the beasts at Ephesus? This is

sufficient reply to the unbelieving flouters at the moral law.

And, as an unanswerable refutation of the feeble whine of

sentimentality that without immortal endurance nothing is worth

our affection, let great Shakspeare advance, with his matchless

depth of bold insight reversing the conclusion, and pronouncing,

in tones of cordial solidity,

"This, thou perceivest, will make thy love more strong, To love

that well which thou must leave ere long."

What though Decay's shapeless hand extinguish us? Its foreflung

and enervating shadow shall neither transform us into devils nor

degrade us into beasts. That shadow indeed only falls in the

valleys of ignoble fear and selfishness, leaving all the clear

road lines of moral truth and practical virtue and heroic

consecration still high and bright on the table land of a worthy

life; and every honorable soul, calmly confronting its fate, will

cry, despite the worst, "The pathway of my duty lies in sunlight;

And I would tread it with as firm a step, Though it should

terminate in cold oblivion, As if Elysian pleasures at its

Close Gleam'd palpable to sight as things of earth."

If a captain knew that his ship would never reach her port, would

he therefore neglect his functions, be slovenly and careless,

permit insubordination and drunkenness among the crew, let the

broad pennon draggle in filthy rents, the cordage become tangled

and stiff, the planks be covered with dirt, and the guns be grimed

with rust? No: all generous hearts would condemn that. He would

keep every inch of the deck scoured, every piece of metal polished

like a mirror, the sails set full and clean, and, with shining

muzzles out, ropes hauled taut in their blocks, and every man at

his post, he would sweep towards the reef, and go down into the

sea firing a farewell salute of honor to the sun, his flag flying

above him as he sunk.

The dogmatic assertors of a future life, in a partisan spirit set

upon making out the most impressive case in its behalf, have been

guilty of painting frightful caricatures of the true nature and

significance of the opposite conclusion. Instead of saying, "If

such a thing be fated, why, then, it must be right, God's will be

done," they frantically rebel against any such admission, and

declare that it would make God a liar and a fiend, man a "magnetic

mockery," and life a hellish taunt. This, however unconscious it

may be to its authors, is blasphemous egotism. One of the

tenderest, devoutest, richest, writers of the century has

unflinchingly affirmed that if man who trusted that love was the

final law of creation, although nature, her claws and teeth red

with raven, shrieked against his creed be left to be blown about

the desert dust or sealed within the iron hills,

"No more! a monster, then, a dream,

A discord; dragons of the prime,

That tare each other in their slime,

Were mellow music match'd with Him!"

Epictetus says, "When death overtakes me, it is enough if I can

stretch out my hands to God, and say, 'The opportunities which

thou hast given me of comprehending and following thy government,

I have not neglected. I thank thee that thou hast brought me into

being. I am satisfied with the time I have enjoyed the things thou

hast given me. Receive them again, and assign them to whatever

place thou wilt.'" 12 Surely the pious heathen here speaks more

worthily than the presumptuous Christian! How much fitter would it

be, granting that death is the end all, to revise our interpretation,

look at the subject from the stand point of universal order,

not from this opinionative narrowness, and see if it be not

susceptible of a benignant meaning, worthy of grateful acceptance

by the humble mind of piety and the dispassionate spirit of science!

Yea, let God and his providence stand justified, though man prove

to have been egregiously mistaken.

"Though He smite me, yet will I praise Him; though He slay me, yet

will I trust in Him."

To return into the state we were in before we were created is not

to suffer any evil: it is to be absolutely free from all evil. It

is but the more perfect playing of that part, of which every sound

sleep is a rehearsal. The thought of it is mournful to the

enjoying soul, but not terrific; and even the mournfulness ceases

in the realization. He uttered a piece of cruel madness who said,

"Hell is more bearable than nothingness." Is it worse to have

nothing than it is to have infinite torture? Milton asks,

"For who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual

being?"

Every creature that exists, if full of pain, would snatch at the

boon of ceasing to be. To be blessed is a good; to be wretched is

an evil; not to be is neither a good nor an evil, but simply

12 Dissert., lib. iv. cap. x. sect. 2.

nothing. If such be our necessary fate, let us accept it with a

harmonized mind, not entertaining fear nor yielding to sadness.

Why should we shudder or grieve? Every time we slumber, we try on

the dress which, when we die, we shall wear easily forever.

Not satisfied to let the result rest in this somewhat sad but

peaceful aspect, it is quite customary to give it a turn and hue

of ghastly horribleness, by casting over it the dyspeptic dreams,

injecting it with the lurid lights and shades, of a morbid and

wilful fancy. The most loathsome and inexcusable instance in point

is the "Vision of Annihilation" depicted by the vermicular,

infested imagination of the great Teutonic phantasist while yet

writhing under the sanguinary fumes of some horrid attack of

nightmare. Stepping across the earth, which is but a broad

executioner's block for pale, stooping humanity, he enters the

larva world of blotted out men. The rotten chain of beings reaches

down into this slaughter field of souls. Here the dead are

pictured as eternally horripilating at death! "As annihilation,

the white shapelessness of revolting terror, passes by each

unsouled mask of a man, a tear gushes from the crumbled eye, as a

corpse bleeds when its murderer approaches." Pah! Out upon this

execrable retching of a nauseated fancy! What good is there in the

baseless conceit and gratuitous disgust of saying, "The next world

is in the grave, betwixt the teeth of the worm"? In the case

supposed, the truth is merely that there is no next world

anywhere; not that all the horrors of hell are scooped together

into the grave, and there multiplied by others direr yet and

unknown before. Man's blended duty and interest, in such a case,

are to try to see the interior beauty and essential kindness of

his fate, to adorn it and embrace it, fomenting his resignation

with the sweet lotions of faith and peace, not exasperating his

wounds with the angry pungents of suspicion, alarm, and complaint.

At the worst, amidst all our personal disappointments, losses, and

decay, "the view of the great universal whole of nature," as

Humboldt says, "is reassuring and consolatory." If the boon of a

future immortality be not ours, therefore to scorn the gift of the

present life, is to act not like a wise man, who with grateful

piety makes the best of what is given, but like a spoiled child,

who, if he cannot have both his orange and his gingerbread,

pettishly flings his gingerbread in the mud.

The future life, outside of the realm of faith, to an earnest and

independent inquirer, and considered as a scientific question,

lies in a painted mist of uncertainty. There is room for hope, and

there is room for doubt. The wavering evidences in some moods

preponderate on that side, in other moods on this side. Meanwhile

it is clear that, while he lives here, the best thing he can do is

to cherish a devout spirit, cultivate a noble character, lead a

pure and useful life in the service of wisdom, humanity, and God,

and finally, when the appointed time arrives, meet the issue with

reverential and affectionate conformity, without dictating terms.

Let the vanishing man say, like Ruckert's dying flower, "Thanks to

day for all the favors I have received from sun and stream and

earth and sky, for all the gifts from men and God which have made

my little life an ornament and a bliss. Heaven, stretch out thine

azure tent while my faded one is sinking here. Joyous spring tide,

roll on through ages yet to come, in which fresh generations shall

rise and be glad. Farewell all! Content to have had my turn, I now

fall asleep, without a murmur or a sigh." Surely the mournful

nobility of such a strain of sentiment is preferable by much to

the selfish terror of that unquestioning belief which in the

Middle Age depicted the chase of the soul by Satan, on the columns

and doors of the churches, under the symbol of a deer pursued by a

hunter and hounds; and which has in later times produced in

thousands the feeling thus terribly expressed by Bunyan, "I

blessed the condition of the dog and toad because they had no soul

to perish under the everlasting weight of hell!"

Sight of truth, with devout and loving submission to it, is an

achievement whose nobleness outweighs its sorrow, even if the

gazer foresee his own destruction.

It is not our intention in these words to cast doubt on the

immortality of the soul, or to depreciate the value of a belief in

it. We desire to vindicate morality and religion from the

unwitting attacks made on them by many self styled Christian

writers in their exaggeration of the practical importance of such

a faith. The qualitative contents of human nature have nothing to

do with its quantitative contents: our duties rest not on the

length, but on the faculties and relations, of our existence. Make

the life of a dog endless, he has only the capacity of a dog; make

the life of a man finite, still, within its limits, he has the

psychological functions of humanity. Faith in immortality may

enlarge and intensify the motives to prudent and noble conduct; it

does not create new ones. The denial of immortality may pale and

contract those motives; it does not take them away.

Knowing the burden and sorrow of earth, brooding in dim solicitude

over the far times and men yet to be, we cannot recklessly utter a

word calculated to lessen the hopes of man, pathetic creature, who

weeps into the world and faints out of it. It is our faith not

knowledge that the spirit is without terminus or rest. The

faithful truth hunter, in dying, finds not a covert, but a better

trail. Yet the saintliness of the intellect is to be purged from

prejudice and self will. With God we are not to prescribe

conditions. The thought that all high virtue and piety must die

with the abandonment of belief in immortality is as pernicious and

dangerous as it is shallow, vulgar, and unchristian. The view is

obviously gaining prevalence among scientific and philosophical

thinkers, that life is the specialization of the universal in the

individual, death the restoration of the individual to the whole.

This doubt as to a personal future life will unquestionably

increase. Let traditional teachers beware how they venture to

shift the moral law from its immutable basis in the will of God to

a precarious poise on the selfish hope and fear of man. The sole

safety, the ultimate desideratum, is perception of law with

disinterested conformity.

The influence of the doctrine of reward and punishment in a future

state, as a working motive for the observance of the moral law, is

enormously overestimated. The influence, as such a motive, of the

public opinion of mankind, with the legal and social sanctions, is

enormously underestimated. And the authority of a personal

perception of right is also most unbecomingly depreciated.

UNIVERSAL ORDER is the expression of the purposes of God, not as

arbitrarily chosen by his will and capriciously revealed in a

book, but as necessitated by his nature and embodied in his works.

The true basis of morality is universal order. The true end of

morality is life, the sum of moral laws being identical with the

sum of the conditions in accordance with which the fruition of the

functions of life can be secured with nearest approach to

perfectness, perpetuity, and universality. The true sanctions of

morality are the manifold forms in which consciousness of life is

heightened by harmony with universal order or lowered by discord

with it. The true law of moral sacrifice or resistance to

temptation is misrepresented by the common doctrine of heaven and

hell, which makes it consist in the renunciation of a present good

for the clutching of a future good, the voluntary suffering of a

small present evil to avoid the involuntary suffering of an

immense future evil. The true law of moral sacrifice is deeper,

purer, more comprehensive, than that. It expresses our duty, in

accordance with the requirements of universal order, to

subordinate the gratification of any part of our being to that of

the whole of our being, to forego the good of any portion of our

life in deference to that of all our life, to renounce any

happiness of the individual which conflicts with the welfare of

the race, to hold the spiritual atom in absolute abeyance to the

spiritual universe, to sink self in God. If a man believe in no

future life, is he thereby absolved from the moral law? The kind

and number of his duties remain as before: only the apparent

grandeur of their scale and motives is diminished. The two halves

of morality are the co ordination of separate interests in

universal order, and the loyalty of the parts to the wholes. The

desire to remove the obligations and sanctions of the moral law

from their intrinsic supports, and posit them on the fictitious

pedestals of a forensic heaven and hell, reveals incompetency of

thought and vulgarity of sentiment in him who does it, and is a

procedure not less perilous than unwarranted. If the creation be

conceived as a machine, it is a machine self regulating in all its

parts by the immanent presence of its Maker.

When we die, may the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter of Christ, be

our confessor; the last inhaled breath our cup of absolution; the

tears of some dear friend our extreme unction; no complaint for

past trials, but a grateful acknowledgment for all blessings, our

parting word. And then, resigning ourselves to the universal

Father, assured that whatever ought to be, and is best to be, will

be, either absolute oblivion shall be welcome, or we will go

forward to new destinies, whether with preserved identity or with

transformed consciousness and powers being indifferent to us,

since the will of God is done. In the mean time, until that

critical pass and all decisive hour, as Milnes says:

"We all must patient stand, Like statues on appointed pedestals:

Yet we may choose since choice is given to shun Servile

contentment or ignoble fear In the expression of our attitude; And

with far straining eyes, and hands upcast, And feet half raised,

declare our painful state, Yearning for wings to reach the fields

of truth, Mourning for wisdom, panting to be free."

PART SIXTH SUPPLEMENTARY.

[FIFTEEN YEARS LATER]

CHAPTER I.

THE END OF THE WORLD.

WE read in the New Testament that the heavens and the earth are

reserved unto fire against the day of judgment, when they shall be

burned up, and all be made new. It is said that the elements shall

melt with ferment heat, the stars fall, and the sky pass away like

a scroll that is rolled together. On these and similar passages is

based the belief of Christendom in the destined destruction of the

world by fire and in the scenic judgment of the dead and the

living gathered before the visible tribunal of Christ. This belief

was once general and intense. It is still common, though more

vague and feeble than formerly. In whatever degree it is held, it

is a doctrine of terror. We hope by tracing its origin, and

showing how mistaken it is, to help dispel its sway, free men from

the further oppression of its fearfulness, and put in its place

the just and wholesome authority of the truth. The true doctrine

of the divine government of the world, the correct explanation of

the course and sequel of history, must be more honorable to God,

more useful to men, of better working and omen in the life of

society, than any error can be. Let us then, as far as we are

able, displace by the truth the errors prevalent around us in

regard to the end of the world and the day of judgment.

It will help us in our proposed investigation, if we first notice

that the ecclesiastical doctrine as to an impending destruction of

the world is not solitary, but has prototypes and parallels in the

faiths of other nations and ages. Almost every people, every

tribe, has its cosmogony or theory of the creation, in which there

are accounts, more or less rude or refined, general or minute, of

the supposed beginning and of the imagined end of nature. All

early literatures from the philosophic treatises of the Hindus to

the oral traditions of the Polynesians are found to contain either

sublime dreams or obscure prophecies or awful pictures of the

final doom and destruction of earth and man. The Hebrew symbols

and the Christian beliefs in relation to this subject therefore

stand not alone, but in connection with a multitude of others,

each one plainly reflecting the degree of knowledge and stage of

development attained by the minds which originated it. Before

proceeding to examine the familiar doctrine so enveloped in our

prejudices, a brief examination of some kindred doctrines, less

familiar to us and quite detached from our prejudices, will be of

service.

The sacred books of the Hindus describe certain enormous periods

of time in which the universe successively begins and ends,

springs into being and sinks into nothing. These periods are

called kalpas, and each one covers a duration of thousands of

millions of years. Each kalpa of creation is called a day of

Brahma; each kalpa of destruction, a night of Brahma. The belief

is that Brahma, waking from the slumber of his self absorbed

solitude, feels his loneliness, and his thoughts and emotions go

forth in creative forms, composing the immense scheme of worlds

and creatures. These play their parts, and run their courses,

until the vast day of Brahma is completed; when he closes his

eyes, and falls to rest, while the whole system of finite things

returns to the silence and darkness of its aboriginal unity, and

remains there in invisible annihilation through the stupendous

night that precedes the reawaking of the slumbering Godhead and

the appearance of the creation once more.

A little reflection makes the origin of this imagery and belief

clear. Each night, as the darkness comes down, and the outer world

disappears, man falls asleep, and, so far as he is consciously

concerned, every thing is destroyed. In his unconsciousness,

everything ceases to be. The light dawns again, he awakes, and his

reopened senses create anew the busy frame and phenomena of

nature. Transfer this experience from man to God; consider it not

as abstract and apparent, but as concrete and real, and you have

the Hindu doctrine of the kalpa. When we sleep, to us all things

are destroyed; and when we awake, to us they reappear. When God

sleeps, all things in themselves really end; and when he wakes,

they begin anew to be. The visible and experimental phenomena of

day and night, sleeping and waking, are universalized, and

attributed to God, It is a poetic process of thought, natural

enough to a rich minded, simple people, but wholly illegitimate as

a logical ground of belief, But being stated in books supposed to

be infallibly inspired, and in the absence of critical tests for

the discrimination of sound from unsound thought, it was

implicitly accepted by multitudes.

Closely allied to the foregoing doctrine, yet in several

particulars strikingly different from it, and evidently quite

independent in its origin, was the Great Year of the Stoics, or

the alternative blotting out and restoration of all things. This

school of philosophers conceived of God as a pure artistic force

or seed of universal energy, which exhibits its history in the

evolution of the kosmos, and, on its completion, blossoms into

fire, and vanishes. The universal periodical conflagration

destroys all evil, and leaves the indestructible God alone in his

pure essence again. The artistic germ or seed force then begins,

under its laws of intrinsic necessity, to go once more through the

same process to the same end.

The rise of this imagery and belief is not so obvious as in the

last instance, but it is equally discoverable and intelligible.

Every animal, every flower, every plant, begins from its proper

specific germ or force, goes through a fixed series of growths and

changes, and relapses into its prime elements, and another and

another follow after it in the same order. The seasons come and

go, and come again and go again, Every planet repeats its

revolutions over and over. Wherever we look, this repetition of

identical processes greets our vision. Now, by imaginative

association universalize this repetition of the course of

phenomena as seen in the parts, and take it up and apply it to the

whole creation, and you have the doctrine in hand.

It is a poetic process of thought not scientific or philosophic,

and without claim to belief; yet, in the absence of scientific

data and standards, it might easily win acceptance on authority.

The Scandinavians, also, have transmitted to us, in their sacred

books, descriptions of their belief in the approaching end of the

world, descriptions rude, wild, terrible, not without elements of

appalling grandeur. They foretell a day called Ragnarok, or the

Twilight of the gods, when all the powers of good and evil shall

join in battle, and the whole present system of things perish in a

scene of unutterable strife and dismay. The Eddas were composed in

an ignorant but deeply poetic and fertile age, when all the

mythological elements of mind were in full action. Their authors

looking within, on their own passions, and without, on the natural

scenery around them, conscious of order and disorder, love and

hate, virtue and crime, beholding phenomena of beauty and horror,

sun and stars, night and tempest, winter and summer, icebergs and

volcanoes, placid moonlight and blinding mist, assisting friends

and battling foes, personified everything as a demon or a

divinity. Asgard, above the blue firmament, was the bright home of

the gods, the Asir. Helheim, beneath the rocky earth and the

frozen ocean, was the dark and foul abode of the bad spirits, the

Jotuns. Everywhere in nature, fog and fire, fertility and

barrenness, were in conflict; everywhere in society, law and crime

were contending. In the moon followed by a drifting cloud, they

saw a goddess chased by a wolf. The strife goes on waxing, and

must sooner or later reach a climax. Each side enlists its allies,

until all are ranged in opposition, from Jormungandur, the serpent

of the deep, to Heindall, the warder of the rainbow, gods and

brave men there, demons, traitors, and cowards here. Then sounds

the horn of battle, and the last day dawns in fire and splendor

from the sky, in fog and venom from the abyss. Flame devours the

earth. For the most part, the combatants mutually slay each other.

Only Gimli, the high, safe heaven of All Father, remains as a

refuge for the survivors and the beginning of a new and fairer

world.

The natural history of this mythological mess is clear enough. It

arises from the poetic embodiment and personification of

phenomena, the grouping together of all evil and of all good, then

imaginatively universalizing the conflict, and carrying it out in

idea to its inevitable ultimatum. The process of thought was

obviously natural in its ground, but fictitious in its result. Yet

in a period when no sharp distinction was drawn between fancy and

fact, song and science, but an indiscriminate faith was often

yielded to both, even such a picturesque medley as this might be

held as religious truth.

The Zarathustrian or Persian scheme of a general judgment of men

and of the world in some respects resembles the systems already

set forth, in other respects more closely approaches that

Christian doctrine partially borrowed from it, and which is

hereafter to be noticed. Ahura Mazda, the God of light and truth,

creates the world full of all sorts of blessings. His adversary,

Angra Mainyus, the author of darkness and falsehood, seeks to

counteract and destroy the works of Ahura Mazda by means of all

sorts of correspondent evils and woes. When Ahura Mazda creates

the race of men happy and immortal, Angra Mainyus, the old serpent,

full of corruption and destruction, steals in, seduces them from

their allegiance, and brings misery and death on them, and then

leads their souls to his dark abode. The whole creation is

supposed to be crowded with good spirits, the angels of Ahura

Mazda,

seeking to carry out his beneficent designs; and also with evil

spirits, the ministers of Angra Mainyus, plotting to make men

wicked, and to pervert and poison every blessing with an answering

curse. Light is the symbol of God, darkness the symbol of his

Antagonist. Under these hostile banners are ranged all living

creatures, all created objects. For long periods this dreadful

contention rages, involving everything below in its fluctuations.

But at last Ahura Mazda subdues Angra Mainyus, overturns all the

mischief he has done, by means of a great deliverer whom he has

sent among men to instruct and redeem them raises the dead,

purifies the world with fire, and, after properly punishing the

guilty, restores all nature to its original paradisal condition,

free from pain and death.

In the primitive state of mankind, when the germs of this religion

were conceived, when men dwelt in ignorance, exposure, and fear,

they naturally shuddered at darkness as a supernatural enemy, and

worshipped light as a supernatural friend. That became the emblem

or personification of the Devil, this the emblem or personification

of God. They grouped all evils with that, all goods with this.

Imaginatively associating all light and darkness, all blessing

and bale, respectively with Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyus,

they universalized the fragmentary embodiments and oppositions

of these into one great battle; and under the impulse of

worshipping faith and hope, carried it to its crisis in the

final victory of the good. Plainly, it is mere poetry injected a

little with a later speculative element, and dealing in

mythological fashion chiefly with the phenomena of nature as

related to the experience of man. No one now can accept it

literally.

This survey of the various heathen myths of the end of the world

has prepared us, in some degree, to consider the corresponding

view held by the Jews, and more completely developed by the

Christian successors to the Jewish heritage of thought and

feeling.

The Hebrews believed themselves to be exclusively the chosen

people of God, who directly ruled over them himself by a

theocratic government represented in their patriarchs, law givers,

prophets, and kings. Jehovah was the only true God; they were his

only pure and accepted worshippers, sharply distinguished from the

whole idolatrous world. The heathen nations, uncircumcised

adorers of vain idols or of demons, were by consequence enemies

both of the true God and of his servants. This contrast and

hostility they even carried over into the unseen world, and

imagined that each nation had its own guardian angel in the Court

of Jehovah in heaven, who contended there for its interests; their

own national guardian, the angel Michael, being more powerful and

nearer to the throne than any other one. In the calamities that

fell on them, they recognized the vengeance of Jehovah for the

violation of his commands. In their victories, their deliverances,

their great blessings, especially in their rescue from Egypt, and

in the many miracles which they believed to have accompanied that

great passage, they saw the signal superiority of their God over

every other god, and the proofs of his particular providence over

them in distinct preference to all other peoples. He had, as they

piously believed, made a special covenant with Abraham, and set

apart his posterity as a sacred family, exclusively intrusted with

the divine law, and commissioned to subdue and govern all the

other families of the earth. When this proud and intensely

cherished faith was baffled of fulfillment, they never dreamed of

abandoning it.

They only supposed its triumphant execution postponed, as a

penalty for their sins, and looked forward with redoubled ardor to

a better time when their hopes should break into fruition, their

exile be ended, their captivity appear as a dream, Jerusalem be

the central gem of the world, and the anointed ruler wield his

sceptre over all mankind.

But misfortunes and woes were heaped on them. Their city was

sacked, their temple desecrated, their people dragged into foreign

slavery, forbidden to celebrate the rites of their religion,

slaughtered by wholesale. Many times, during the two centuries

before and the first century after Christ, did they suffer these

terrible sorrows. Their hatred and scorn of their heathen

persecutors; their faith in their own incomparable destiny; their

expectation of the speedy appearance of an anointed deliverer,

raised up by Jehovah to avenge them and vindicate their trust, all

became the more fervent and profound the longer the delay. Under

these circumstances grew up the Jewish doctrine of the Messiah, as

it is seen in that Apocalyptic literature represented by the Book

of Daniel, the Sibylline Oracles, the Book of Enoch, the

Assumption of Moses, the Fourth Book of Esdras, and similar

documents.

The Jews were remarkably free from that habit of mind which led

almost all the other nations to personify the most startling

phenomena of nature as living beings, which created fetiches of

stocks and stones and animals; saw a god in every wind, season,

star, and cloud. The Semitic mind and literature were more sober,

rational, and monotheistic. The place occupied in the thoughts of

other peoples by the phenomena of nature was held in the thoughts

of the Jews by political phenomena, by ritual, legal, and military

relations. And the poetic action of fancy, the mythological

creativeness and superstitious feeling which other people

exercised on the objects and changes of nature, the Jews exercised

on the phenomena of their own national history. The burning

central point of their polity and belief and imagination was the

conviction of their own national consecration as the exclusive

people of God, meant to conquer, teach, and rule all the infidel

nations; that Jehovah was literally their invisible King,

represented in their chief ruler; that every great triumph or

disaster was a signal Day of the Lord, a special Coming of Jehovah

to reward or punish his people. During their repeated bondages

under the Persians, Syrians, Greeks, Parthians, Romans, their

feeling of the antagonism between themselves and the other people

increased. From the time of the Babylonish captivity the Persian

doctrine of good and evil spirits had infiltrated into their

belief; and they adopted the notion of Angra Mainyus, and

developed it (with certain modifications) into their conception of

Satan. Then, in their faith, the war of Jews and Gentiles spread

into the invisible world, and took up on its opposite sides the

good and the fallen angels. And, finally, the idea of their

Messiah became the centre of a battle and a judgment in which all

the generations of the dead as well as of the living were to have

a part; and which should culminate in the overthrow of evil, the

subjection of the heathen, the assignment of the righteous to a

paradisal reign, and of the wicked to a doom typified by the

submersion of Sodom and Gomorrah in fiery brimstone.

How plainly this doctrine was the result of the same poetic

process of thought with the other schemes already depicted! Only

they were developed on the basis of natural phenomena; this, on

the basis of political phenomena. It is simply the imaginative

universalization of the struggle between Jew and Gentile, and the

carrying of it to its crisis and sequel. And when inexplicable

delays and the accumulation of obstacles made the realization of

the expected result amidst the conditions of the present world

seem ever more and more hopeless, the growing and assimilative

action of faith and fancy expanded the scene, and transferred it

to a transmundane state, involving the destruction of the heavens

and earth and their replacement with a new creation.

Is there any more real reason for believing this doctrine than

there is for believing the other kindred schemes? Not a whit. It

is a mistake of the same poetic nature, and resting on the same

grounds with them. Two thousand years have passed, and it has not

been fulfilled; and there is ever less and less sign of its

fulfillment. It never will be fulfilled, except in a spiritual

sense. The Jews will finally lose their pride of race and

covenant, abandon their special Messianic creed, and blend

themselves and their opinions in the mass of redeemed and

progressive humanity, and no more dream of a physical resurrection

of the dead amidst the dissolving elements of nature.

And now we must notice that besides all these poetic pictures of

the end of the world, there are prophecies of a similar result

which wear an apparently scientific garb. Many men of science

firmly believe that our world is destined to be destroyed, that a

close for the earthly fortunes of mankind can be plainly foreseen.

No little alarm was felt a century or more ago, when it was

discovered that there was a progressive diminution going on in the

orbit of the moon, which must cause it at length to impinge upon

the earth. But La Grange exhibited the fallaciousness of the

prophecy, by showing that the decrease was periodical and

succeeded by a corresponding increase. Intense and widely spread

terror has repeatedly been felt less a comet should come within

our planetary orbit, and shatter or melt our globe by its contact.

But the discovery of the nebulous nature of comets, of their great

numbers and regular movements, has quite dissipated that fear from

the popular mind in our day.

There are, however, other forms of scientific speculation which

put the prophesied destruction of the world on a more plausible

and formidable basis. It is supposed by many scientists that all

force is derived from the consumption of heat; and that the fuel

must at last be used up, and therefore no life or energy be left

for sustaining the present system of the creation. This theory is

met by the counter statement that the heat of the sun and other

similar centres may possibly not depend on any material

consumption; or, if it does, there may be a self replenishing

supply, loss and repair forming an endless circle.

It is foretold by some chemists, that the progressive interior

cooling and contraction of our orb will cause ever greater

interstices or vacant spaces among the solid substances below the

outer crust; and that into these pores, first all liquids, then

all gases and the whole atmosphere, will be absorbed: so that the

world will be left desolate, utterly uninhabitable by life.

Again: it is said that all force or energy tends at every

transformation to pass (at least partially) into heat; and

therefore that, finally, all force will be frittered down into the

one form of heat, all matter vanishing from its separate shapes

into the state of a homogeneous, nebulous fire. The portentous

sight, repeatedly descried by astronomers, of a nameless world,

away in remotest space, which has suddenly kindled, blazed,

smouldered, darkened, and vanished forever from its place, is

perhaps a solemn symbol of the fate of our own planet; hinting at

a time when the earth, too, shall make itself a funeral pyre,

And, awed in distant orbs, some race unknown Shall miss one star

whose smile had lit their own.

This same final crisis is also prophesied on the basis of a slight

retardation to which the planets are subjected in their passage

through the ethereal medium. No matter how slight the resistance

thus interposed, its consequence, it is thought, must accumulate

and ultimately compel all material bodies to approach each other;

and, as their successive collisions convert them into heat and

vapor, nothing will be left at last but one uniform nebula. The

process of evolution will then begin anew, and so the stupendous

history of the universe repeat itself eternally.

This is the sublimest of all the generalizations of science. It

may be true, and it may not be true. At any rate, it differs

immensely in the moral impression it makes from that made by the

current theological doctrine of the same catastrophe. We can

contemplate the scientific prophecy of the end of the world with a

peace of mind which the traditional prophecy does not permit.

In the first place, the ecclesiastical doctrine makes the

destruction of the world a result of wrath and vengeance. The

angry God looms above us with flaming features and avenging

weapons to tread down his enemies. We shrink in fright from the

wrath and power of the personal Judge, the inexorable Foe of the

wicked. But the scientific doctrine makes the end a result of

passionless laws, a steady evolution of effects from causes,

wholly free from everything vindictive.

Secondly. The ecclesiastical doctrine makes the dreadful

conclusion a sudden event, an inconceivable shock of horror,

falling in an instant, overwhelming all its victims with the

swiftness of lightning in the unutterable agony of their ruin. But

the scientific doctrine makes the climax a matter of slow and

gradual approach. Whether the worlds are to be frozen up by

increasing cold, or to evaporate in culminating heat, or to be

converted into gas as they meet in their career, the changes of

the chemical conditions will be so steady and moderate beforehand

as to cause all living creatures to have diminished in numbers by

insensible degrees, and to have utterly ceased long before the

final shock arrives.

Thirdly. The ecclesiastical doctrine makes the sequel imminent,

near, ready to fall at a moment's warning. At any hour the signal

may strike. Thus it is to the earnest believer a constant, urgent

alarm, close at hand. But the scientific doctrine depicts the

close as almost unimaginably remote. All the data in the hands of

our scientists lead their calculations as to the nearest probable

end to land them in an epoch so far off as to be stated only in

thousands of millions of years. Thus the picture is so distant as

to be virtually enfeebled into nothing. We cannot, even by the

most vivid imagination, bring it home closely enough to make it

real and effective on our plans.

And, finally, the theological dogma of the destruction of the

world professes to be an infallible certainty. The believer holds

that he absolutely knows it by a revelation of supernatural

authority. But with the scientist such a belief is held as merely

a probability. A billion of centuries hence the world may perhaps

come to an end; and, on the other hand, the phenomena which lead

to such a belief may yet be explained as implying no such result.

And these two issues, so far as our social or ideal experience is

concerned, are virtually the same.

A brilliant French writer has suggested that even if the natural

course of evolution does of itself necessitate the final

destruction of the world, yet our race, judging from the

magnificent achievements of science and art already reached, may,

within ten thousand centuries, which will be long before the

foreseen end approaches, obtain such a knowledge and control of

the forces of nature as to make collective humanity master of this

planet, able to shape and guide its destinies, ward off every

fatal crisis, and perfect and immortalize the system as now

sustained. It is an audacious fancy. But like many other

incredible conceptions which have forerun their own still more

incredible fulfillment, the very thought electrifies us with hope

and courage.

And thus the conclusion in which we rest at the close of our

investigation is the belief that the world is to last, and our

race to flourish on it virtually forever. This conclusion is

equally a relief from the frightful burdens of superstition, and a

consolation for our own personal evanescence. The stable harmony

of natural beauty and beneficence, amidst which we individually

play our brief part and vanish, shall stand fast, blooming with

fresh growths, and shining with fadeless light, and the successive

generations of our dear fellow men shall grow ever wiser and

happier, beyond the reach of our farthest vision into the future.

And if we recognize in the great catastrophic myths and previsions

of the poets and scientists the fundamental truth that the things

which are seen are temporal, while the things alone which are

unseen are eternal, the end being a regular and remote sequel in

the creative plan of God, free from anger, retributive

disappointment, or cruelty will not alarm us. For if souls are

substantial entities, and not mere phenomenal processes, they will

survive the universal crisis, and either at the lucid goals of

their perfected destiny rejoice forever in a reflected individual

fruition of the attributes of God, or else start refreshed on a

new career with that redistribution of the cosmic matter and

motion which in its gigantic and eternal rhythm of development and

dissolution the ancient Hindu mind figured as the respiration of

Brahm and which ambitious science now generalizes as the law of

evolution.

CHAPTER II.

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

JUDAISM so largely supplied the circumstantial and doctrinal germs

out of which dogmatic Christianity grew, that we cannot thoroughly

understand the Christian belief in a final day of judgment, unless

we first notice the historic and literary derivation of that

belief from Judaism, and then trace its development in the new

conditions through which it passed. The personal character,

teachings, life, and death of Jesus Christ, together with his

subsequent resurrection and career in the consciousness of

ecclesiastical Christendom, constituted the crystalizing centre

which, dipped in the inherited solution of ideal and social

materials furnished by the Church, has gathered around it the

accretion of faith and dogma composing the theoretic Christianity

of the present day. To follow this process with reference to the

particular tenet before us, analyze it, discriminate the

appropriate in it from the inappropriate, the true from the false,

maybe difficult; but it is necessary for a satisfactory

conclusion. To this task let us therefore now address ourselves,

putting away all bias and prejudice, invoking in equal degree

candor, fearlessness and charity.

The Jews believed themselves to be a people chosen out of all the

world as the exclusive favorites of God. By the covenant of

Abraham, and the code of Moses, Jehovah had entered, as they

thought, into a special contract with them to be their peculiar

God, Guardian, and Ruler. In contrast with the depraved habits and

idolatrous rites of the heathen nations, the Israelites were

strictly to keep the moral law, and, at the same time, to pay a

pure worship to Jehovah through the scrupulous observance of their

ceremonial law. The bond of race and family descent from Abraham,

the practice of circumcision, and the ceremonies of the Mosaic

ritual, sealed them as accepted members of this divine covenant.

So long as they were true to the duties involved in this relation,

Jehovah would watch over them, defend them from their enemies, set

them proudly above the alien Gentiles, and crown them with every

spiritual and temporal blessing. The noblest representatives of

the people believed this with unparalleled thoroughness and

intensity. They looked down on the uncircumcised nations as wicked

idolaters, destined to be their servants until they should be

adopted into the same covenant by becoming proselytes to their

faith. Jehovah was literally their direct, though invisible, King,

Law giver, and Judge, palpably rewarding their fidelity by overt

temporal blessings, punishing their dereliction by awful temporal

calamities and sufferings.

Every signal instance of his providential intervention in their

affairs they called a Day of the Lord, a Coming of Jehovah, a

Judgment from heaven. Thus the prophet Joel foretells the

vengeance which God would take on Tyre and Sidon and Philistia,

because they had assailed and scattered his people. "Behold the

day of Jehovah cometh, the great and terrible day. And I will show

wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire and

pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the

moon into blood. Then whosoever calleth on the name of Jehovah

shall be delivered: for upon Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be

deliverance. I will contend with the Gentiles for my people, and

will bring back the captives.

The multitudes, the multitudes in the valley of judgment: for the

day of Jehovah is near in the valley of judgment." In a similar

strain Isaiah prophesies against Edom: "Draw near, O ye nations,

and hear! For the wrath of Jehovah is kindled against the nations,

and he hath given up their armies to slaughter. The stench of

their carcasses shall ascend, and the mountains shall melt with

their blood. And all the hosts of heaven shall melt away; and all

their host shall fall down, as the blighted fruit from the fig

tree. For my sword shall rush drunk from heaven: behold, upon Edom

shall it descend. For it is a day of vengeance from Jehovah. Her

streams shall be turned into pitch, and her dust into brimstone,

and her whole land shall become burning pitch. It shall lie waste

forever, and none shall pass through it. The pelican and the

hedgehog shall possess it; the heron and the raven shall dwell in

it."

Tremendous and appalling as this imagery is, it is obvious that

the whole meaning of it is earthly and temporal, a local judgment

of Jehovah in vindication of his people against the heathen. And

kindred judgments are threatened against his own people when they

lapse into wickedness and idolatry. "Thus saith the Lord, Behold,

I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and

turning it upside down." "Jehovah appeareth as a hostile witness,

the Lord from his holy place. Behold, Jehovah cometh forth from

his dwelling place, and advanceth on the high places of the earth.

The mountains melt under him, and the valleys cleave asunder like

wax before the fire. For the sin of the house of Israel is all

this."

Thus the earliest meaning of the phrase, Day of the Lord, or Day

of Judgment, according to Biblical usage, was the occurrence of

any severe calamity, either to the Jews, as a punishment for their

apostasy; or to the Gentiles, as a punishment for their

wickedness, or for their violent encroachment on the rights of the

chosen people. These visitations of military disaster or political

subjection, though purely local and temporal, are depicted in the

most terrific images, such as flaming brimstone, falling stars,

heaven and earth dissolving in darkness, blood, and fire. Ezekiel,

alluding to the barbarous invasion headed by Prince Gog,

represents Jehovah as declaring, "I will contend against him, and

will rain fire and brimstone upon him and his hosts. Thus will I

show myself in my greatness and glory before the eyes of many

nations, and they shall know that I am Jehovah." The highly

figurative character of this imagery must be apparent to every

candid critic.

For example, in the following passage from Zechariah, no one will

suppose for a moment that it is meant that Jehovah will appear

visibly in person and reign in Jerusalem, but only that his

promise shall be fulfilled, and his law shall prevail there in the

triumphant establishment of his chosen people: "Behold the day of

Jehovah cometh, when I will gather all nations to battle against

Jerusalem; and the city shall be taken. Then shall Jehovah go

forth, and fight against those nations. And his feet shall stand

in that day upon the Mount of Olives. And Jehovah shall be king

over all the earth. And it shall be that whoso of all the families

of the earth will not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King,

Jehovah of hosts, upon them shall be no rain."

When the prophets burst out in the lyric metaphors, "Jehovah will

roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem;" "Egypt shall

be a waste and Edom a wilderness for their violence to the sons of

Judah; but Jerusalem shall be inhabited forever, and Jehovah shall

dwell upon Zion," the meaning is simply that "Jehovah will be a

refuge to his people, a stronghold to the sons of Israel, and all

people shall know that Jehovah is God." It would imply the

grossest ignorance in any critic if he imagined that the Jews ever

believed that Jehovah was visibly to come down and reign over them

in person. They did however, believe that an awful token or the

presence of Jehovah dwelt in the holy of holies of their temple.

They also believed that every anointed ruler who governed them in

justice and piety represented the authority of Jehovah. And as, in

the long times of their natural captivity and oppression, their

hopes sought refuge from the depressing present in bright visions

of a glorious future, when some inspired deliverer should justify

their faith by carrying the national power and happiness to the

highest pitch, they naturally believed that the spirit and signet

of the Lord would, in a special manner, rest on that Messianic

hero.

By the assimilative action of faith and imagination, this idea of

a divinely accredited Messiah developed, and grew ever richer and

more complete. It began simply with the expectation of a holy

leader and ruler who should subdue the heathen and establish the

favored people of Jehovah in peerless purity, power, and happiness

in the land of Judea. Little by little the rewards of the

righteous and the punishments of the wicked were extended beyond

those living on the earth, and took in the dead. The prophet

Ezekiel depicted the promised restoration of the Jews from their

captivity at Babylon to Jerusalem under the poetic image of a

revivification of a heap of dead bones. This metaphor slowly

assumed the form of a literal dogma, which grew from its beginning

as an exceptional belief in the resurrection of a chosen few,

stated in the book of Daniel and the second book of Maccabees, to

the belief in the universal resurrection of the dead, avowed by

Paul as the common Pharisaic belief. The belief, too, in regard to

the scene of the Messianic triumph, the penalties to be inflicted

on the enemies of Jehovah, and the kind and number of those

enemies, underwent the same process of development and growth. The

world was conceived as a sort of three story house connected with

passage ways; heaven above the firmament, the earth between, and a

penal region below. The imagery of fire and brimstone associated

in the Hebrew mind with Sodom and Gomorrah, and the fearful

imagery of idolatory, filth, and flames in the detested valley of

Hinnom where the refuse of Jerusalem was carried to be burned, had

been transferred by the popular imagination to the subterranean

place of departed souls. The story in the book of Genesis about

the sons of God forming an alliance with the daughters of men, and

begetting a wicked brood of giants, had been wrought into the

belief in a race of fallen angels, foes of God and men, whose

dwelling place was the upper air. Above these wicked spirits in

high places, but below the heaven of Jehovah, was the paradise

whither Enoch and Elijah were supposed to have been translated,

and whence they would come again in the last days. The Jewish

apocryphal book of Enoch which was written probably about a

century and a half before the birth of Christ, and is explicitly

quoted in the Epistle of Jude contains a minute account of the

final judgment, including in its scope this whole scenery and all

these agents, and closely anticipating both the doctrinal and

verbal details of the same subject as recorded in the New

Testament itself. There is not, with one exception, a single

essential feature of the now current Christian belief, in regard

to the day of judgment at the end of the world, which is not

distinctly brought out in the same form in the book of Enoch,

written certainly more than a hundred years before a line of the

Gospels was composed. The exception referred to relates to the

person of the Messiah. In the book of Enoch he is indeed called

the Son of man, but is wrapt in mysterious obscurity, undefined

and unnamed: in the Christian documents and faith he is, of

course, identified with Jesus of Nazareth, and, at a later period,

identified also with God.

The growth of the Messianic personality in distinctness,

prominence, importance, and completeness of associated grouping,

is not only historically traceable, but was also perfectly

natural. At first the prophecy of the triumphant re establishment

of the Jews was conceived as the result of the favoring power of

Jehovah, not in a personal manifestation, but providentially

displayed. Thus Joel represents Jehovah as saying, in his promise

to vindicate Jerusalem, "Let the heathen be wakened, and come up

to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will I sit to judge all

the heathen round about." It cannot be denied that this was purely

metaphorical. But in all imagery of a kingdom, of war, of

judgment, the idea of the king, the leader, the judge, would

naturally be the strongest point of imaginative action, the center

of crystalizing association around which congruous particulars

would be drawn until the picture was complete. So it actually

happened. Perhaps the most striking example of this is seen in the

growth of the notion of the great Adversary who precedes and

fights against the Messiah. The book of Daniel, written just after

Antiochus Epiphanes had oppressed the Jews with such frightful

cruelties and profaned their temple with such abominable

desecrations, impersonated in him the whole head and front of the

impious hostility which the promised deliverer would have to

subdue in vindicating the rights and hopes of the chosen people.

"The figure of Antiochus Epiphanes," Martineau has happily said,

"placed in immediate antecedence and antithesis to that of the

Messiah, as the predicted crisis moved forward, was carried with

it, and spread its portentous shadow over the expected close." The

writer of the book of Daniel looked for the immediate arising of

some inspired hero and servant of Jehovah to overthrow this wicked

despot, this persecuting monster, and avenge the oppressed Jews on

their Gentile tyrants. When subsequent events postponed this

expected sequel, the opposed parties in it, the Antichrist and the

Christ, were thrown forward together in ever dilating proportions

of gloom and brightness: the fierce countenanced king in Daniel

becomes the Man of Sin in Paul and the Beast drunk with the blood

of saints in the Apocalypse. And in the Rabbinical books of the

Jews the belief in Antichrist, under the name of Armillus, is

developed into a mass of mythological details, afterwards adopted

quite in the gross by the Mohammedans. Terrible signs will precede

the appearance of the Messiah, such as a dew of blood, the

darkening of the sun, the destruction of the holy city, with the

slaughter and dispersion of the Israelites, and the suffering of

awful woes. The Messiah shall gather his people and rebuild and

occupy Jerusalem. Armillus shall collect an army and besiege that

city. But God shall say to Messiah, "Sit thou on my right hand,"

and to the Israelites, "Stand still, and see what God will work

for you to day." Then God will pour down sulphur and fire from

heaven, and consume Armillus and his hosts. Then the trumpet will

sound, the tombs be opened, the ten tribes be led to Paradise to

celebrate the marriage supper of the Messiah, the aliens be

consigned to Gehenna, and the earth be renovated.

As the doctrine of the functions of the Messiah, in this finished

form, is not stated in the Old Testament, but was familiar in the

Christian Church, it is commonly supposed to be exclusively a

later Christian development from the Jewish germ. It did, however,

exist in the Jewish mind, before the birth of Christ, in the

mature form already set forth. It is found clearly laid down and

drawn out in Jewish apocryphal books dated earlier than the

Christian era. It is likewise explicitly and minutely detailed in

the Talmud, where its subsequent adoption from the Christians must

have been impossible to the bigoted scorn and hate of the Jews for

the Christians; while the historic affiliation of Christianity on

Judaism made the Christians avowedly adopt all the vital doctrines

of the older creed. The gradual growth of the Christian doctrine

of the connection of the Messiah with the final judgment, out of

the previous Jewish and Rabbinical notions, by the hardening of

metaphors into dogmas and the universalizing of local peculiarities,

is confessedly an obscure process, in many of its particulars

extremely difficult to trace. But that it did thus grow up,

no impartial scholar, who has mastered what is now known

on the subject, can doubt. A world of new knowledge and light has

been thrown on this whole field during the last thirty five years

by Gfrorer, Baur, Ewald, Hoffmann, Hilgenfeld, Dilmann, Ceriani,

Volkmar, and other students of kindred power and spirit.

Researches and discussions in this department are still pushed

with the greatest zeal; and it is confidently believed that in a

few years the views adopted in the present writing will be

established beyond all cavil from any fair minded critic. Then all

the steps will have been clearly defined in the development of

that doctrine of the great Day of the Lord, which, beginning with

a poetic picture of a Jewish overthrow of the Gentiles, through

the inspiring power of Jehovah, before the walls of Jerusalem,

ended with a literal belief in the setting up, by the Messiah, of

a tribunal in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, the assemblage there of

all the living and the dead for judgment, the installation of the

immortalized righteous in Paradise, and the submerging of the

wicked under the Vale of Hinnom in a rainstorm of blazing

brimstone.

And now what must we think in regard to the truth or falsehood of

the outward, forensic, military, and ritual part of the doctrine

of historic and literary development we have imperfectly followed.

Is it not perfectly clear, that the growth of the doctrine in

question has been but a natural action of the imagination on the

materials furnished it; adding congruous particulars, one after

another, until the view was complete, and therefore could extend

no further? And is it not equally obvious, that it can lay no sort

of claim to logical validity? The superstitious and arbitrary

character of its intrinsic constituents, its irreconcilableness

with science and philosophy, disprove, to all who dare honestly

face the facts, every plea set up for it as an inspired revelation

of truth. It is a mixture of poetry and speculation, credible

enough in an early and uncritical age, but a hopeless stumbling

block to the educated reason of the present day. Every one who

brings a free intelligence to the subject will find it impossible

not to recognize the same fanciful process of thought, the same

poetic ingredients, here as in the schemes of those heathen

religions whose principal portrayals we all regard as mythology.

To argue that because earthly rulers, in their anger and power,

send retributive armies against their rebellious subjects, to

bring them to judgment, destroy their homes and cities, and lay

waste their lands with fire and sword, therefore God, the supreme

King, will do so by the whole world, is not to reason logically,

but to poetize creatively. There can be no warrant for

transferring the political and military relations between men and

earthly sovereigns to the moral and spiritual relations between

the human race and God, since the two sets of relations are wholly

different. The relation of Creator and creature is immensely

higher and wider than that of king and subject. He whose laws are

everywhere incessantly self executing needs not to select and

group and reserve his friends or foes for any climateric

catastrophe. The common notion of a final judgment day the

fanciful association of all the good together, on one side, to be

saved; of all the bad together, on the other side, to be damned,

applies to the divine government an imperfection belonging only to

human governments. Surely every one must see, the moment the

thought is stated, that this imaginative universalizing of the

indignation of God, and carrying it to a climax, in the

destruction of the world, is a mythological procedure utterly

inapplicable to a Being who can know no anger, no caprice, no

change, a Being whose will is universal truth, whose throne is

immensity, whose robe is omnipresence.

Original Christianity, internally regarded in its divine truth,

was the pure moral law exemplified in the personal traits of Jesus

Christ, and universalized by his ascent out of the flesh into that

kingdom of heaven which knows not nationalities or ceremonies. But

original Christianity, externally and historically regarded, in

the belief of its first disciples, was simply Judaism, with the

addition of the faith that the Messiah had actually come in the

person of Jesus Christ. The first disciples vividly cherished the

prevalent Pharisaic doctrine that the Messiah would glorify his

people, vanquish the heathen, raise and judge the dead, change the

face of the earth, and inaugurate a holy reign of Israel in joy

and splendor. This the Messiah was to do. But they believed Jesus

to be the Messiah. Yet, before doing these things, he had been put

to death. Therefore, they argued, he must come again, to finish

his uncompleted mission. Such was the derivation of the apostolic

and ecclesiastical doctrine of the speedy second advent of Christ

to judge the dead and the living, and to wind up the present

scheme of things. The belief was inevitable under the circumstances.

To have believed otherwise, they must have reconstructed the current

idea of the Messiah, and have seen in him no political monarch

with an outward realm, but purely a king of truth.

For this they were not ready; though it seems as if, after

the experience of eighteen hundred years, we ought by this

time to be prepared to see that such was really the intention of

Providence.

It is a question of primary interest, whether Jesus himself, in

assuming the Messiahship, regarded it personally as an exclusively

spiritual office, or as a literally including these royal and

judicial functions in a visible form.

Jesus foretold, in the same imaginary used by the previous

prophets, and familiar to the minds of his contemporaries, the

speedy approach of frightful calamities, wars, rumor of wars,

famine and slaughter, Jerusalem compassed with armies and

destroyed. Then, he adds, the Son of man shall come in the clouds

of heaven, with all his holy angels, and take possession of the

scene, apportioning the destinies of the righteous and the wicked.

The question is, whether this pictured reappearance, in such

transcendent pomp and power, was meant by him as a literal

prophecy, to be physically fulfilled in his own person; or as a

moral horoscope of the destined fortunes of his religion, a

figurative representation of the establishment and reign of his

spiritual truth. The latter view seems to us to be the correct one.

In the first place, this is what has actually taken place. In the

growing recognition of his spirit and power, in the spread of his

teachings and name, in the revolutionizing advancement of his

kingdom among men, Jesus has come again and again. Jerusalem was

destroyed by the Romans, as he foretold, amidst unspeakable

tribulations, and the disciples of the new faith installed in

domination over the world. He said the time was then at hand, even

at the doors, that some of those standing by should not taste

death until all these things came to pass. If his prophecy bore a

moral sense, the sequel justified it; if it bore a physical sense,

the sequel refuted and falsified it. For that generation passed

away, fifty generations since have passed away, and yet there has

been no literal second advent of Jesus in person to judge the dead

and the living, and to destroy the world. The event proves that we

must either give the words of Jesus a metaphorical interpretation

or hold that he was in error.

But, secondly, such an error would be incompatible with soundness

of mind. For any man, even for him called by an apostle "the man

Christ Jesus," to believe that after his death he should reappear,

swooping down from heaven, convoyed by squadrons of angels, to

collect all men from their graves, and replace the old creation

with a new one, would imply a profound disturbance of reason, a

monomaniacal fanaticism if not an actual insanity. It is such a

pure piece of theatrics that no one deeply in unison with that

spirit of truth which expresses the mind of God through the order

of nature and providence could possibly believe it. Such a nature

was preeminently that of Jesus. All his most characteristic

utterances, such as: "blessed are the pure in heart, for they

shall see God;" "who loves much shall be forgiven much;" reveal

unsurpassed saneness and truth of perception. It is by much the

most probable supposition, that Jesus employed in the deepest and

purest moral sense alone those Messianic images and catastrophic

prophecies which were indeed originally used as moral metaphors,

but had been afterwards degraded into material dogmas.

Still further, the literal belief commonly attributed to Jesus, in

his own physical reappearance and reign, is not only incompatible

with his supreme soundness of mind, it is also irreconcilable with

his other explicit teachings. "My kingdom is not of this world."

"Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." He warns his

disciples against the many false Christs who will appear, and says

that "the kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation." "Say

not, lo here! or lo there! for the kingdom of heaven is within

you." "I am the truth, the way, and the life." "He that rejecteth

me, I judge him not; the word that I have spoken, that shall judge

him." "Whoever doeth the will of my Father in heaven, the same is

my brother." In view of these and kindred utterances of the

profoundest insight, irreconcilable with any gross mythological

beliefs, we must hold to the purely spiritual character of the

doctrine of Jesus concerning his personal offices, and think that

all the speeches, if any such there be, which cannot be fairly

explained in accordance with this view, have been refracted in

their transmission through incompetent reporters, or even perhaps

fictitiously ascribed to him from the faith of a later age. There

is a grateful satisfaction in thus discharging, as we feel we are

fairly entitled to do, from the authority of Jesus a burden too

great even for his peerless name any longer to support. For, say

what its advocates may, this gigantic melo drama of the second

advent, this world wide mixture and display of martial and

forensic elements before an audience of all mankind and amidst a

convulsed and closing universe, is inherently incredible by any

mind not grossly ignorant and undisciplined or drilled to the most

slavish servility of traditional thought. Every one really

educated in science and philosophy, and familiar with the

physiological conditions and literary history of mythology in the

other nations of the world, will plainly perceive the intrinsic

fancifulness and falsity of the belief, at the same time that he

easily accounts for its rise and prevalence.

The same picture of the siege of Jerusalem by a league of

idolatrous armies, and of the mighty coming of the Messiah, found

in the New Testament, is drawn in the third book of the Sibylline

Oracles, which was composed by a Jew two hundred years before one

word of Matthew or Luke was written. Jesus took up this current

and fitting imagery wherein to express the conflict of his

religion with the world, and to predict its ultimate triumph. He

identifies himself with the truths he has brought, with the

regenerating energies he has inaugurated to combat and overcome

the wickedness and despotism of the nations of men. Every advent

of his universal principles to a wider conflict or a higher seat

of authority, is a true coming of the Son of Man. The vices and

crimes of men, the selfishness and tyranny of governments,

accumulate impediments in the way of the free working of the will

of God in human society. Therefore from period to period

convulsive crises occur, shocks of progressive truth and liberty

against the obstacles gathered in their way. Thus, not only the

destruction of Jerusalem, but the destruction of Rome, the French

Revolution, and all the terrible social crises in the advancing

affairs of the world, write on the earth and the sky, in huge

characters of blood, smoke and fire, the true meaning of the

repeated coming of Christ. This is the only kind of judicial

second advent he will ever make, and this will occur over and over

in calamitous but helpful revolutions, until all removable evils

are done away, all the laws of men made just and all the hearts of

men pure. Then the spirit once manifested by Jesus in his lonely

mission will be a universal presence on earth, and the genuine

millennium prevail without end.

It is necessary now, as preliminary to a clear exposition of the

true Christian doctrine of judgment, to explain the cause and

process of the dark perversion which the teachings of Christ

himself have so unfortunately undergone in the Church. For this

purpose we must again, for a moment, refer to the original

connection of Christianity with Judaism.

Judaism was composed of two parts: one an accidental form; the

other, essential truth. The first was the ceremonial peculiarities

of the Jewish race and history; the second was the absolute and

eternal principles of morality and religion. These two parts the

ritual law and moral law were closely joined in all the best

representatives of the nation at all the best periods of its

history. Yet there was a constant tendency to separate these. One

party exalted the ritual element, another party the spiritual

element; the priestly class and the vulgar populace the former;

the prophets the men of poetic, fiery heart and genius the latter.

Such men as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, always insisted on personal

and national righteousness, purity, and devotion, as the one

essential thing. But the natural tendency of the common multitude,

and of every professional class, to an external routine of

mechanised forms, manifested itself more and more in a party which

made an overt covenant and ritualistic conformity the all

important thing. This party reached its head in the sect of the

Pharisees, who, at the time of Jesus, possessed the offices, and

represented the dominant spirit and authority of the Jewish

nation. The character of this sect of bigoted formalists, as

indignantly described and denounced by Jesus, is too well known to

need illustration. They subordinated and trivialized the weightier

matters of justice, mercy, humility, and peace, but enthroned and

glorified the regime of mint, anise, and cummin.

What was the Jewish idea of salvation, or citizenship in the

kingdom of God? What was the condition of acceptance in the

Pharisaic church? It was heirship in the Jewish race, either by

descent or adoption, with ceremonial blamelessness in belief and

act. Do you belong to the chosen family of Abraham, and are you

undefiled in relation to all the requirements of our code? Then

you are one of the elect. Are you a Gentile, an idolatrous member

of the uncircumcision, or a scorner of the Levitic and Rabbinical

customs? Then you are unfit to enter beyond the outer precincts of

the Temple; you are a hopeless alien from the kingdom of heaven.

Thus the Jewish test of acceptance with God was national,

external, formal, a local and temporal peculiarity.

When Jesus arose and began to teach, his transcendent genius,

working under the unparalleled inspiration of God, an unprecedented

sensibility to divine truth in its utmost purity and freedom,

expanded beyond all these shallow material accidents and

bonds; and he propounded a perfectly moral and spiritual test of

acceptance before God; namely, the possession of an intrinsically

good character. He made nothing of the distinction between Jew and

Gentile, declaring, "My father is able of these stones to raise up

children unto Abraham." He affirmed the condition of admittance

into the kingdom of God to be simply the doing of the will of God.

When he saw the young lawyer who had kept the two commandments,

loving God with all his soul, and his neighbor as himself, his

heart yearned towards him in benediction. And, finally, in his

sublime picture of the last judgment, he, in the most explicit and

unmistakable manner, makes the one essential condition of

rejection to be inhumanity of life, cruel selfishness of

character; the one essential condition of acceptance, the spirit

of love, the practical doing of good. He utters not a solitary

syllable about immaculateness of ceremonial propriety or soundness

of dogmatic belief. He only says, Inasmuch as ye have or have not

visited the sick and the imprisoned, fed the hungry, and clothed

the naked, ye shall be justified or condemned at the divine

tribunal. This test of personal goodness or wickedness, benevolent

or malignant conduct, proclaimed by Jesus, is the true standard,

free from everything local and temporary, fitted for application

to all nations and all ages.

But no sooner had Christianity obtained a foothold on earth,

multiplied its converts, and gained some outward sway, than its

Judaizing disciples and promulgators, fastening on that which was

easiest to comprehend and practise, that which was most impressive

to the imagination, that which seemed most sharply to distinguish

them from the unbelieving and unconforming world around, thrust

far into the background this universal and eternal test of

judgment set up by Jesus himself, and in place of it installed an

exclusive test fashioned after a more developed and aggravated

pattern of the very narrowest and worst elements in the

Phariasaism which he expressly came to supersede. The Pharisaic

condition of salvation was inheritance, by blood or adoption, in

the Jewish race and Abrahamic covenant, together with exactitude

of ceremonial observance. Everybody else was an unclean alien, an

uncircumcised dog, an uncovenanted leper. In place of this test,

the orthodox ecclesiastical party made their test dogmatic belief

in the supernatural Messiahship of Jesus Christ, formal profession

of allegiance to the official person of Jesus Christ. It is summed

up in the formula, "Whoso believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is

of God; whoso denieth this, is of the Devil."

Exactly here is where Paul, the noble apostle to the Gentiles,

broke with the Judaizing apostles, and taught a doctrine more

fully developed in its historic sequence, but substantially in

perfect unison with the free teachings and spirit of Jesus

himself. With Paul the test of Christian salvation was the

possession of the mind of Christ. "If any man have not the spirit

of Christ, he is none of his;" "but as many as are led by the

spirit of God are sons of God." "Neither circumcision availeth

anything, nor uncircumcision; but a new creature," begotten in the

image of Christ, availeth everything before God. "God rewardeth

every man, the Jew and the Gentile, according to his works." With

Paul, descent from Abraham was nothing, observance of the legal

code was nothing: a just and pure character, full of self

sacrificing love, evoked by faith in Christ, was the all in all.

Jesus Christ was the head of a new race, the second Adam; and all

disciples, who, through moral faith in him, were regenerated into

his likeness and unto newness of living, were thereby adopted as

sons of God and joint heirs with him. The Pauline formula of

salvation, freely open to all the world, was, spiritual

assimilation and reproduction of Christ in the disciple.

But the Judaizing party bore a heavy preponderance in the early

Church, and has succeeded unto this day in imposing on

ecclesiastical Christendom its own test: namely, a sound dogmatic,

belief in the supreme personal rank and office of Christ, as the

only means of admission to the kingdom of heaven. The one

peculiarity which most sharply and broadly contrasted the early

Christians with the rest of the world was unquestionably their

belief in the miraculous mission of Jesus, a belief growing

deeper, higher, intenser, until it actually identified him with

the omnipotent God. There was an inevitable tendency, it was a

perfectly natural and necessary process, for them to make this

point of contrast the central condition on which depended the

possession of all the special privileges supposed to be promised

to its disciples by the new religion. The result is well expressed

by Polycarp in these words: "Whosoever confesses not that Christ

is come in the flesh, is an Antichrist; and whosoever acknowledges

not the martyrdom of the cross, is of the Devil; and whosoever

says that there is no resurrection nor judgment, is the first born

of Satan." This extract strikes the key note of the Orthodox

Church all through Christendom from the second century to the

present hour. In place of the true condition of salvation

announced by Jesus, personal and practical goodness, it

inaugurates the false ecclesiastic standard, soundness of dogmatic

belief in relation to Jesus himself! Those who hold this are the

elect, and shall stand in heaven with white robes and palms and a

new song, while all the rest of the world apostate and detested

enemies of God and his saints shall be trampled down in merciless

slaughter, and flung into the pit whence the smoking signal of

their torment shall ascend for ever and ever. It is a transformation

of the bigoted scorn and hate of the covenanted Jew for his

Gentile foes into the intensified horror of the Orthodox

believer for the reprobate infidel. And it finally culminated in

the following frightful picture which still lowers and blazes in

the imagination of ecclesiastical Christendom as a veritable

revelation of what is to take place at the end of the world:

While the stars are falling, the firmament dissolving, the dead

swarming from their graves, and the nations assembling, Christ

will come in the clouds of heaven with a host of angels and sit in

judgment on collected mankind. All who submissively believed in

his Divinity, and have the seal of his blood on their foreheads,

he will approve and accept; all others he will condemn and reject.

No matter for the natural goodness and integrity of the

unbeliever: his unbelief dooms him. No matter for the natural

depravity and iniquity of the believer: his faith in the atoning

sacrifice saves him. The Judge will say to the orthodox, on his

right, "You may have been impure and cruel, lied, cheated, hated

your neighbor, rolled in vice and crime, but you have believed in

me, in my divinity: therefore, come, ye blessed, inherit my

kingdom." To the heretical, on his left, he will say, "You may

have been pure and kind, sought the truth, self sacrificingly

served your fellow men, fulfilled every moral duty in your power,

but you have not believed in me, in my deity, and my blood:

therefore, depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." Such is a

fit verdict to be pronounced by the avenging Warrior depicted in

the Apocalypse, from whose mouth issues a two edged sword, to cut

his enemies asunder; who sits on a white charger, in a vesture

dipped in blood, with a bow and a crown, and goes forth conquering

and to conquer; whose eyes are flames of fire; who treads his

rejecters in the wine press of his wrath until their blood reaches

to the horse bridles. It was the natural reflection of an age

filled with the most murderous hatreds and persecutions, based on

political and dogmatic distinctions. But how contradictory it is

to the teachings of Jesus himself! How utterly irreconcilable it

is with the image and spirit of that meek and lowly Son of Man who

said that he "came not to destroy men's lives but to save them;"

who declared, "of mine own self I can do nothing;" who modestly

deprecated all personal homage, asking, "Why callest thou me

good?" who sat with the publican, and forgave the harlot, and

denounced bigotry in many an immortal breathing of charity; and

who, even in his final agony, pardoned and prayed for his

murderers! What reason is there for supposing that he who was so

infinitely gentle, unselfish, forgiving, when on earth, will

undergo such a fiendish metamorphosis in his exaltation and

return? It is the most monstrous, the most atrocious travesty of

the truth that ever was perpetrated by the superstitious ignorance

and audacity of the human mind. It is a direct transference into

the Godhead of the most egotistical and hateful feelings of a bad

man. No good man who had been ever so grossly misconceived,

vilified, and wronged, if he saw his enemies prostrate in

submissive terror at his feet, perfectly powerless before his

authority, could bear to trample on them and wreak vengeance on

them. He would say, "Unhappy ones, fear not; you have misunderstood

me; I will not injure you; if there be any favor which I can

bestow on you, freely take it." And is it not an incredible

blasphemy to deny to the deified Christ a magnanimity equal to

that which any good man would exhibit?

It is with pain and regret that the writer has penned the

foregoing sentences, which, he supposes, some persons will read

with the feeling that they are inexcusable misrepresentations,

others, with a shocked and resentful horror, relieving itself in

the cry, Infidelity! Blasphemy! The reply of the writer is simply

that, while reluctant to wound the sensibility of any, he feels

bound in conscience to make this exposition, because he believes

it to be a true statement; and loyalty to truth is the first duty

of every man. Truth is the will of God, obedience to which alone

is sound morality, reverential love of which alone is pure piety.

Frightful as is the picture drawn above of Christ in the judgment,

it is impossible to deny, without utter stultification, that every

lineament of it is logically implied in the formula. "There is no

salvation for the man who unbelievingly rejects, no damnation for

the man who believingly accepts, the official Christ and his

blood." And what teacher will have the presumption to deny that

just this has been, and still is, the central dogma in the faith

of ecclesiastical Christendom? The legitimate result of this view,

unflinchingly carried out, and applied to the precise point we now

have in hand, is seen in that horrible portrayal of the Last

Judgment wherewith Michael Angelo has covered the ceiling of the

Sistine Chapel, in Rome. The great anatomical artist consistently

depicts Christ as an almighty athlete, towering with vindictive

wrath, flinging thunderbolts on the writhing and helpless

wilderness of his victims. The popular conception of Christ in the

judgment has been borrowed from the type of a king, who, hurling

off the incognito in which he has been outraged, breaks out in his

proper insignia, to sentence and trample his scorners. The true

conception is to be fashioned after the type given in his own

example during his life. So far as Christ is the representative of

God, there must be no vanity or egotism in him. Every such quality

ascribed to the Godhead is anthropomorphizing sophistry. However

much more God may be, he is the General Mind of the Universe. He

includes, while he transcends, all other beings. Now, the General

Mind must represent the interests of all, the disinterested good

of the whole, and not any particular and selfish exactions, or

resentful caprices, fashioned on the pattern shown among human

egotists by a kingly despot.

The Church, in developing Christianity out of Judaism through the

person and life of Jesus, has given prominence and emphasis to the

wrong elements, seeking to universalize and perpetuate, in a

transformed guise, the local spirit and historic errors of that

Pharisaic sect against which he had himself launched all his

invective. That temper of bigotry and ceremonial technicality

which hates all outside of its own pale as reprobate, and which

ultimated itself in the virtual Pharisaic formula, "Keep the hands

and platter washed, and it is no matter how full of uncleanness

you are within," at a later period embodied itself through the

leaders of ecclesiastical Orthodoxy in the central dogma, "Nothing

but faith in Christ can avail man anything before God." Instead of

this the true doctrine is, Nothing but obedience, surrender, and

trust, personal penitence and aspiration, can avail man anything

before God.