ART. VII.-PROBATION AFTER DEATH.

[SECOND ARTICLE.]

THE Scripture argument on this subject in the January number of this Review, besides making clear that the passages most strongly relied on as favoring the continuance of the day of grace beyond this life do not sustain it, answers a not infre quent inquiry for the proof that a probation after death is impossible, by showing (1) that the teachings of our Lord and his apostles limit probation to the present life, which excludes it from the next, and (2) that they base the decisions of the final judgment upon conduct in this world, and in no way on conduct afterward. Either of these positions is conclusive upon the point for all who accept the Scriptures as authoritative in matters of religion.

There are, indeed, many passages of Scripture which, at first glance, apparently point to the salvation of the race, such, for instance, as tell us that Christ tasted death for every man; that he wills that all men shall be saved; that he will draw all men to himself; that he will subdue all things to his authority; that every tongue shall confess him to be Lord, and the like. Dr. Farrar has made a catena of them extending through half a dozen pages. If there were no positive assertions limiting probation, and making conduct in this life the ground of the final decision, it would, perhaps, be natural to accept the apparent meaning as the true one, to be realized, however, under a different system from that which God has framed. But there are such assertions, and to them these passages, rightly interpreted, are in no way antagonistic. They set forth the divine side of the plan of salvation, but with the full knowledge that there is a human side as well, in which free, responsible man, of his own choice, acting in opposition to God, may defeat his gracious intentions, and gain only eternal ruin for himself, thus destroying a soul for whom Christ died.

With these views the discussion might here close, did not the advocates of future probation call us to a range of argument lying outside of revelation, with the frank confession on the part of some of them that their doctrine cannot be argued from the teachings of Scripture, and must be maintained on other

grounds. There may be bravery in thus assuming to penetrate the counsels of the Infinite respecting the destiny and privileges of men, and to discover his unrevealed purposes and methods of mercy in another world for those who spurn him in this; but if their logic be false and their conclusions baseless, their solid rock will prove but shifting sand. The positions taken fall together under one head, which we will denominate, I. The philosophical argument for future probation.

Extremes meet here. John Murray, the hyper-Calvinist and the father of American Universalism, who logically extended the decree of absolute and unconditional election to embrace all for whom Christ died, and the Rev. Samuel J. Barrows, the ultra-Liberal, who demands that we "remove the stumbling-block of biblical infallibility," strike hands here, and agree that the day of grace for the neglectful and the wicked extends into the next life. Be it noted, however, that the doctrine of probation, which throws the responsibility of the sinner's damnation upon himself, is not known to pure Calvinism. That system, by its principle of necessity, takes away his freedom of choice and action, except in the direction in which he is compelled to choose and act, and thus relieves him of all responsibility for his conduct or destiny, and puts it upon God. It makes him a mechanical non-probationer, unrewardable and unpunishable, and then, with a justice equaled only by its reasonableness, remorselessly dooms him to perdition for what he cannot help. Murray's extension of election to include all men, because Christ died for all men, while it does something to relieve the imputation upon the character of a holy God, also leaves man with no proper probation. But both Calvinism and Universalism have become so far removed from their original forms that their founders, were they to re-appear on earth to-day, would not recognize them; and "the progressive orthodoxy" of the former has in "the drift of modern thought," to use Dr. Atwood's expression, gone so far toward the adoption of the theories of the latter that they both agree in the impossibility of vindicating the divine character in giving to every man a fair chance, if probation is limited to this life. Dr. Atwood, as reported in "The Independent," said truly, in the Universalist General Convention in October last, "The Doom of the Majority of Mankind," p. 146.

21-FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXVI.

that "the principles of the new orthodoxy are akin to Universalism," though he was compelled to confess it "apparent that, on the part of the leaders of that movement, there is a studious attempt not to recognize the Christian standing and work of the Universalist Church." But let him not be cast down by this unreadiness to acknowledge the kinship, for it needs only the adoption of Dr. Dorner's inability to pronounce dogmatically upon the doctrine of eternal punishment because of human freedom, to place them in the same line. The laws of the oscillation of the psychological pendulum are very certain, and have many illustrations. Dr. Farrar, the freshest and most vigorous living advocate of continued probation, was educated in the school of rigid Calvinism, and in the reaction has gone to the other extreme. Dr. Newman Smyth, a Presbyterian, is now among the foremost in the ranks of the advanced orthodoxy. And the New England Theology, whose adamantine walls once towered so proudly and grandly, is razing its own fortress, and, revolting from itself, is following the revolt of years ago into the happy Elysium of Liberalism. Professor Fisher, of Yale College, bore testimony in "The New Englander" six years ago that, as a historical fact, in the wake of modified Calvinism a belief in restoration and kindred doctrines was springing up. It was not a Methodist, but Professor Park, who, a few months ago, sorrowfully wrote: "I must that say on some of our essential doctrines, as, for example, the doctrine of probation, we must look to our Methodist brethren for light and guidance. On this truth they are sounder than we are; and if it had been told to our fathers sixty years ago that this young denomination would be more orthodox than the Congregationalists, our fathers would have died before their time." Let us hope that the swinging of the pendulum will finally bring our brethren to the solid Methodist ground that every human being who has intelligence enough to be accountable has a probation, and a sufficient probation, in this life.

Dr. Dorner's double standard painfully illustrates the mischief of substituting philosophy for Scripture in the construction of his system. "That some are damned," he says, "rests on preponderant exegetical grounds, but that gives no dogmatic proposition, because this must be derived also from the

1

principle of faith." * A theology based upon Scripture would lead him conclusively to the doctrine of eternal punishment, but he does not accept it because it does not accord with his previously formed ideas of the absolute Christianity, or, as he terms it, "the principle of faith." This double basis of Scripture and faith, in which the former is frequently compelled to yield to the latter, pervades his whole theological system. So Dr. Smyth admits "Dorner's dogmatic hesitancy when he finds himself unable to reconcile facts of history, or texts of Scripture, with that which faith has already learned to deem Christlike and most worthy of God." Beautiful as this is, it casts us all adrift upon a sea of uncertainties. What we find in Holy Writ we are not to embody in our theology until we have tested it by some previously settled principle. But who shall define for us what is "Christlike and most worthy of God?" Shall it be John Wesley, or John Calvin, or Theodore Parker? Or, shall every man be his own judge and hold himself at liberty to refuse from his acceptance whatever in Scripture does not harmonize with his conception of what is like Christ and worthy of God? This notion of what is becoming God, differing in different men, may, as facts most clearly show, become so greatly changed in the same individual that what was but yesterday proclaimed as truth is in "the progress in theology" to-day rejected as error. Very pertinent here is the remark of Dr. Newman Smyth, that "the feeling of God's being and nature is never fully taken up into any one conception of him, and the religious feeling acts and reacts upon us in a twofold manner, both leading us constantly to think of God, and causing us to become soon dissatisfied with our best thoughts of him. Theology must, therefore, be a progressive science." And whither it may progress and what may prove its goal, with faith, the religious feeling, or the spiritual intuition, by whichever name it be called, as the arbiter of doctrine, no man can tell. Thus Dorner's principle, that "those views are to be rejected which prevent faith," is practically identical with that of Barrows, namely, this: "We must decline to accept as authoritative any interpretation of the Bible, be it true or false, which affronts the moral sense of

The Future State," p. 127.

+ "The Religious Feeling," p. 166.

humanity or impugns the righteousness of God."*, The most ultra of Liberalists ought to be satisfied with either.

Dorner's argument that human freedom stands in opposition to eternal punishment, and that "so long as freedom of any kind exists, so long the possibility of conversion is not excluded, though it be through judgment and damnation to deep, long woe," is precisely the argument with which Universalism has long made us familiar. It assumes that the moral government of God will be administered in the next world in the same way that it is in this; that probation continues beyond the present life, and even so long as human freedom exists; that the atonement of Christ, though spurned here, will avail as richly in hell as it does on earth; that the gracious aid of the Holy Spirit to repentance and faith, refused by men here, will be freely given there, and that the agencies devised by infinite wisdom to awaken slumbering souls and bring them to Christ in this world, such as the preaching of the Gospel, the strivings of the Spirit, and the example and influence of the good, will be perpetuated in the world to come. Indeed, it is assumed by some that God has in reserve a higher system of agencies which he will there employ for the recovery of those who under the present one die impenitent, although it would seem beyond conception that there can be a higher dispensation than this in which God himself becomes incarnate, manifests to men the full excellence of his character, reveals to them his will, and then by the sufferings and blood of the cross pays the price of their redemption, and in which the Omnipotent Holy Spirit is the minister of salvation to all who will consent to be saved. Infinite love can provide no greater sacrifice, nor can it more clearly manifest itself than it has done; and the only obstacle to its winning all men to its embrace is in the hostile human will.

Over against these assumptions, which not only have no authority in Scripture, but are contrary to it, lies the fact of the distinctive effect of persistent sin. God deals, and will forever deal, with man in accordance with the laws of the nature which he has given him. By one of those laws, the soul that does not turn to righteousness must grow more and more into worldliness and sin. Beginning with simple neglect of the

*The Doom of the Majority," p. 140.