The GOSPEL TRUTH

A GENETIC HISTORY OF THE

NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY

By

FRANK HUGH FOSTER

1907

 CHAPTER XI:

The Universalist Controversy Concluded

The real interest of the Universalist controversy to the New England theologians ceased when the Unitarian movement began to absorb their attention. The one was a movement among the obscure, and was comparatively unimportant, since it attracted to itself but few; the other had its source in the high places of the land, seemed about to sweep away everything in its irresistible course, and dealt with the most vital portions of the faith. And, further, Universalism soon became Unitarian in its theology, and resistance to the one movement was resistance to the other. Hence, for a long time, little mention is made of the lesser innovation, and few books are devoted to it.

The progress of Universalism from the high Calvinism of Relly to Unitarianism is, however, not without interest to the critical student of theological movements.

Elhanan Winchester, originally a Baptist, is the next great Universalist leader after Murray. He founded his proof of Universalism upon orthodox premises. He defended the Trinity. His statements as to the ruined condition of man without a Redeemer are as satisfactory as those of his opponents. The absolute need of repentance to forgiveness was a foundation stone of his system. None could be forgiven who did not repent. But his fundamental idea was that all will finally repent--some before death, in which case they will be received immediately to glory; others during the intermediate state before the judgment; but finally, under the long and serious discipline of the "aionian" punishment, all who may have remained incorrigible by the means that have been used for their recovery before.

He justifies the belief that the punishment of the ages after the judgment will issue in the repentance of all souls, upon the following grounds:

Punishment to a certain degree inflames and enrages in a most amazing manner; but continued longer and heavier, produces a contrary effect--softens, humbles, and subdues . . . Some sins are so daring and presumptuous as to provoke God to threaten that they shall not be purged away in this life; and perhaps their malignancy may be so great that nothing that can be used here is able to subdue them . . . Thus punishments are designed for the humbling of the proud: but if they fail of answering that purpose as administered in the present state, they will be continued and increased in future periods to such a degree as shall bring all down in due time.

Winchester received, however, comparatively little attention from the New England divines. He was too soon superseded by Hosea Ballou, who, first publishing in 1804, had speedily gained the highest influence among his denomination and effected its transfer from the Trinitarian to the Unitarian basis. On account of his determinative influence, he deserves a fuller consideration.

The book in which the revolutionary change wrought by Ballou was effected was his treatise on the atonement. We shall restrict ourselves at this time to a sketch of this work.

Ballou's decisive, and among the Universalists epochmaking, work sought to go to the foundation of the subject. Its title intimates as much as this; for, though it was intended as a means of propagating the Universalist faith, and had its sufficient raison d'etre therein, it dealt professedly with the atonement. It purposed to root out all the old theories and doctrines which were the foundation of the orthodox scheme, and thus lead to the positions where Universalism was the only consistent conclusion. It is a system of doctrine culminating in Universalism. It is divided into three parts, which deal respectively with sin, atonement, and the consequences of atonement. In general, the argument is straightforward, does not intentionally beg the question or misrepresent opponents, and seeks to remove objections before the shall occur, rather than answer them when they are forced upon the writer, Still, the limitations of Mr. Ballou's mind in the department of metaphysical and exact thinking are often very manifest.

The definition of sin with which he begins is this: "Sin is the violation of a law which exists in the mind, which law is the imperfect knowledge men have of moral good." The "legislature" which prescribed the law to all moral beings is "the capacity to understand." Since this is finite, "sin in its nature ought to be considered finite and limited, rather than infinite and unlimited, as has by many been supposed." To the proof of the proposition that sin is a finite evil, Ballou devotes considerable space. He thus designed to meet squarely one of the strong positions of his opponents. He directly opposes Edwards' arguments in fact, though he does not mention him by name when he sets up against the idea of obligation measured by the being to whom it is due--viz., God--this idea of a finite "legislature" the mind of man. How important he deemed this point may be seen by the frequency with which he returns to the topic. And yet he did not thereby rise to the height which the New England divines had themselves already attained.

But certain of Ballou's fundamental assumptions appear also in these opening pages. He says:

Now to reason justly, we must conclude that, if God possess infinite wisdom, he could never intend anything to take place or be, that will not take place or be; nor that which is or will be, not to be at the time when it is. And it must be considered erroneous to suppose that the Allwise ever desired anything to take place which by his wisdom he knew would not; as such a supposition must in effect suppose a degree of misery in the eternal mind equal to the strength of his fruitless desire!

The root of this conception, as we shall see is a denial of all true freedom on the part of man, which makes God's will all in all, and leads to the express denial of those distinctions between the secret and revealed will of God which are introduced into Calvinistic systems to save human responsibility.

By a strange coincidence, ideas also appear here as to the nature of evil which agree in form of expression strikingly with Samuel Hopkins. Ballou says: "If by the real evil he meant something that ought not to be in respect to all the consequences which attend it, I cannot admit of its existence." He also maintains that "the consequences of an act do not determine whether the act be good or evil."

Passing now from the nature of sin to its origin, Mr. Ballou refers the entire theory of the fall to the "chimerical story of the bard Milton." Viewing the whole as an attempted explanation of the introduction of sin into the universe, Ballou propounds the crucial difficulty in saying that it does not account for the case of Satan himself.

Was not the angel holy in every faculty? Was not the command for him to worship the Son holy and just? All answer, Yes. Then from such causes, how was sin produced? The reader will easily see, the question cannot be answered.

Our author's own solution of the problem is as follows: God had a design in making us, the whole of which "must be carried into effect and nothing more, admitting him to be an infinite person." Sin is therefore in the plan of God. To arrive at a satisfactory account of the entrance of evil into the world, we must begin with natural evil. This is a natural result of our physical organization. In the combination of the various elements entering into the composition of our bodies, there is provision for the rise of all manner of disorders. The same feature is found in our senses, which are at the same time the "origin of our thoughts and volitions." Hence physical evil is the source of moral evil. "Want unsatisfied is an evil; and unsatisfied want is the first movement to action or volition." Let now the element of confusion enter into our desires, and the introduction of sin is explained. "From our natural constitution, composed of our bodily elements, we are led to act in obedience to carnal appetites, which justifies the conclusion that sin is the work of the flesh." This language, derived from an earlier edition, conveys the thoughts of the later one before us in simpler form. Ballou subsequently clothed his theory in an expository form, but without much gain in clearness.

But, says the objector, this is to make God the author of sin. No, says Mr. Ballou, it is to make God the author of that which is in a limited sense sin.

In this connection comes in the discussion of the freedom of the will. As Mr. Ballou's great doctrinal argument for universal salvation is that the plans of God will certainly be carried out, he is compelled from his standpoint to remove the objection that the will of man may interpose to persist in sin. He does it by denying that the will has freedom. "In order for a choice to take place, the mind must have the perception of two or more objects; and that object which has the most influence on the judgment and passions will be the chosen object; and choice in this instance has not even the shadow of liberty." Other expressions which he employs show that Mr. Ballou believes in strict determinism.

In treating of the consequences of sin, our writer rejects the doctrine that they are spiritual, temporal, and eternal death. Temporal death is incidental to our constitution, since we are by nature mortal. As for eternal death, the whole discussion pertains to this; but Mr. Ballou puts in a disclaimer here, that the effects of sin are limited to the state in which they are committed.

In treating the subject of the atonement, to which he now comes, Mr. Ballou transgresses the proprieties of a sober discussion by the bitterness of his expressions against orthodox theories. Or, waiving this, he shows too little sympathy for, or understanding of, what his opponents meant to say, to inspire us with much confidence that he will contribute to the theme. We shall not delay upon his criticisms of other theories, but shall content ourselves with reproducing Ballou's own. It is substantially as follows: Jesus Christ was not God. To suppose this is to involve one's self in inextricable difficulties. "To say of two persons, exactly of the same age, that one of them is a real son of the other, is to confound good sense." "If the Godhead consists of three distinct persons, and each of these persons be infinite, the whole Godhead amounts to the amazing sum of infinity multiplied by three." It will be noted that it is necessary thus to diminish the dignity of Christ to establish the view of atonement which is to follow. The dissatisfied party needing reconciliation is man, not God. The sin of Eden produced two errors in Adam's mind, which have remained in the mind of man ever since: (a) He believed God to be his enemy. (b) He believed that he could reconcile his Maker by works which he could himself do. But, on the contrary, God loved Adam after his sin as much as before. He did not regard himself as the injured party, for the only party injured by the sin of man was man himself. His love for his Creator was interrupted, and his views of him were corrupted. The atonement was necessary to renew man's love to God. God himself sought to effect this, and so the atonement did not produce love in God toward man, but was the result of that uninterrupted love. And so the atonement consists in manifesting God's love to us, and so in causing us to love him. The temporal death and the literal blood of Christ did not make the atonement. Apparently Mr. Ballou did not have any clear place for the death of Christ in his system.

Incidentally the writer has introduced a discussion at this point of endless punishment as the penalty of the law. It is not necessary (a) to maintain the law and secure the government of God, since he is almighty; nor (b) to reclaim the delinquent, for of course it is especially calculated not to reclaim him, since it is endless; nor (c) is it necessary to deter others from crime, for through the sin of Adam the entire race would be involved in endless punishment, and there would be no one to deter. And (d) endless punishment involves endless sin; but to inflict endless sin is against the law which requires endless holiness.

We now enter upon the closing portion of the work, the most important from the author's point of view--the consequences of the atonement to mankind. These are, in general, the universal holiness and happiness of the race.

This statement has no sooner been made than the influences of Mr. Ballou's surroundings become evident in his pausing to discuss the supposition that eternal punishment is necessary to the greatest final amount of happiness. The speculations of the Hopkinsians were before his mind here, though the statements which Mr. Ballou makes of their positions are very objectionable. His great answer is derived from the conception that what is meant by these reasoners is that pain is an object of enjoyment in and of itself. We may therefore pass, without stopping on this topic, to the positive arguments which Mr. Ballou now begins to propose for universal salvation.

Certain objections are first noticed. That derived from Rev. 14:10, 11, he answers by referring to the present time as the period of punishment. But it is objected that millions go out of this world unreconciled, and therefore shall remain so to all eternity. But, says Ballou, this implies that there will be no change after death, and, if this is so, saints will not increase in holiness, which is too absurd to need refutation. The answer to the objection from moral agency consists in repeating the denial of the freedom of the Will. Or, on the ground of the objector, which Ballou always tries to take, it gives men an opportunity of repentance and salvation, and thus is no obstacle to universal salvation. Again, the word "everlasting" does not mean endless. If the "day of judgment" of the Scriptures be an objection to universal salvation, the proper understanding, according to Mr. Ballou, substantiated by a long exegetical discussion, is that the "coming of the Lord," and the "day of judgment" were accomplished by the destruction of Jerusalem. The account of Dives and Lazarus is not literal. In Matt 12:31, 32 (neither in this world nor in that which is to come), "world" means dispensation; "this" world, the legal priestly dispensation; and "that which is to come," the gospel. And, finally, Mr. Ballou thinks that endless misery demands a principle to support such misery, in the divine nature.

The treatise closes with the reasons for believing in universal salvation, and with them our review shall close. They open with the argument from the goodness of God, with which we are already familiar. Further arguments are: (a) There is an immortal desire in every soul for future existence and happiness. "Why should the Almighty implant this desire in us if he never intended to satisfy it?" (b) All wise, good, and exemplary men wish for the truth of the doctrine. "If it be God's spirit in us which causes us to pray for the destruction of sin, is it reasonable to say that this same spirit has determined that sin shall always exist?" (c) If any of the human race are endlessly miserable, the whole must be, provided they know it, on the principle of sympathy. (d) The world is a place of education. Sin is a mistake, and is it conceivable that men should never find this out, unless the school is to be a failure? (e) Mankind in their moral existence originated in God. They must finally be assimilated with the fountain from which they sprang. (f) Finally, the Scripture proof. This is to be of the plainest sort. "I am determined to admit no Scripture as evidence in this case that needs any interpretation to cause it to mean what I wish to prove: therefore I shall produce but a small part of the Scriptures which I conceive have a direct meaning in favor of Universalism." We are relieved by this fact from the necessity of entering into the discussion of the separate passages. The most obvious meaning which will tell in favor of the doctrine of Universalism is the one which Mr. Ballou has in mind. We therefore append a list of the passages and leave the reader to make the examination for himself.

It may be said that in a large degree the Universalism of Ballou was a reply to itself. Not many books were written especially against Ballou, and the reason is not far to seek. So long as the Universalist movement was favored by leading men like Chauncy, who in general maintained their reputation for orthodoxy and their position in the churches, or appeared unexpectedly among obscurer men like Huntington, whose defection was not known till revealed by a posthumous publication, it alarmed the Orthodox and earnest men who formulated the New England theology, for the safety of their churches and the truth. But when it became identified with Unitarianism, and that at the moment when the large prevalence of the Unitarian movement was being revealed, in 1815, by the publication of the Belsharn letters, it was no longer an object of special apprehension. What answered the one movement answered the other. The churches were coming gradually into the right position as to the Unitarian movement, and they might be safely left to reject a Unitarian Universalism. It is evident from contemporaneous accounts that the vulgarity of many Universalist ministers and of much of the Universalist preaching excited disgust, and assisted in nullifying their influence. Ballou himself receded more and more from reason and common-sense, and hence removed more and more all necessity for special efforts against him. In 1817 he "became entirely satisfied that the Scriptures begin and end the history of sin in flesh and blood; and that beyond this mortal existence, the Bible teaches no other sentient state but that which is called by the blessed name of life and immortality." The doctrine of no future punishment whatever was so manifestly contrary to the Bible, as well as to the teachings of former leaders among the Universalists themselves, that it needed no reply until it was presented under a professedly exegetical form. This was soon given to it, but not by Ballou. The honor, if it be such, of supplying this place in the Universalists' argument, and of presenting their theory with learned apparatus and in a series of volumes, belongs to Walter Balfour.

Balfour's first work was his Inquiry, published in 1824. As we learn from the preface of the third edition, the author's attention was directed in this work exclusively to the endless duration of future punishment, since he was not then prepared to deny limited future punishment. His object was to investigate the supposition "that a place called Hell in a future state is prepared for the punishment of the wicked." He says that

all the principal writers on both sides of this question proceed on this ground that there is a place of future punishment and that the name of it is Hell. Winchester, Murray, Chauncy, Huntington, and others all admit that Hell is a place of future punishment. Edwards, Strong, and others who oppose them, had no occasion to prove this, but only to show that it was to be endless in its duration.

The place Balfour occupies in the discussion is thus defined by himself. He comes to the conclusion that there is no place of eternal punishment.

Balfour first takes up the word "Sheol." Following the lead of a certain Dr. Campbell, he brings out by various quotations and discussions the fact that Sheol properly signifies the state of the dead, or the place of the departed. Hence, the argument is, it never signifies the place of punishment. Even Ps. 9:17 ("The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God") is thus explained. "The Psalm in which the words stand is treating of God's temporal judgments. upon the heathen nations." He continues: "Surely, no one who has attended to all the above texts in which Sheol occurs, can continue to believe that Sheol here has such a meaning . . . It is the same hell in which the Savior's soul was not left," etc. In conclusion he affirms that the Old Testament writers and Christians of this day are "hardly agreed in a single idea about hell." He then takes up the word "Hades." The reasoning and conclusion are the same. The account of Dives in Luke is a parable. Whatever Hades is, it shall finally be destroyed. Tartarus, a portion of Hades, shall share its fate, and hence none of these terms denote the place of endless punishment. In fact, Balfour suggests very strongly that the idea of Tartarus was imported into Christianity by heathen converts from the Greek religions.

To this point the difficulties in Balfour's way have been comparatively slight. He puts forth greater exertions in overcoming the force of the word "Gehenna," but arrives successfully at the same goal. He objects strongly to the transfer of the meaning of the word from "the valley of Hinnom" to "hell." The Old Testament, he thinks, makes it an emblem of the future temporal punishment to the Jews as a nation. This interpretation he derives from Jer. chap. 19, and 7:29 to end. With this clue he comes to the New Testament and interprets all such passages as Matt. 23:33 ("Ye generation of vipers, how shall ye escape the damnation of hell?") of the temporal calamities connected with the fall of Jerusalem. A long and labored distinction between the Greek terms ____ and ______ led to the conclusion that even if Gehenna should be a place of future punishment, the spirit never enters it, and this discovery prepared the way for his later essays upon the immortality of the soul. Balfour's general conclusion to his first inquiry is therefore that there is no word used in the Bible to designate the place of endless future punishment, and hence that there is no such punishment. The work made the greatest possible impression upon the Universalists. They had had hitherto only comparatively uneducated men who had been able to appeal only to the English Bible in substantiation of their position; but here was a scholar who freely handled the original tongues of the Scriptures. The popularity of his writings was so great that Balfour issued in 1826 a second Inquiry, in which he arrived at the similar result, that there is no really existent devil, and that the opinion that he exists is derived from heathenism. The last 154 pages of the book are devoted to the discussion of the terms olim [for olam], aion, and aionios. Into the details of this argument we cannot follow him. Enough to say that the argumentation is in principle that, because these words do not always mean strictly "everlasting," it can never be successfully maintained that they do in respect to future punishment. Notions derived from the investigation as to Gehenna reappear, and numerous cases of "everlasting punishment" are referred to the destruction of Jerusalem. A substantial summary of his position is made in the following passage:

I conceive that all the everlastings of which the Scriptures speak stand in some shape or other connected with God's dispensation of love and mercy to man through Jesus Christ. The ages or everlastings began with him, and shall terminate when Christ hath subdued all things, and the last enemy death is destroyed. Hence the state after this does not appear to me to be described in Scriptures by the expression "everlasting life;" but by other words and phrases. For example--the dead are said to put on incorruption or immortality. Mortality is then said to be swallowed up of life. They cannot die any more, but are equal unto the angels, being sons of the resurrection, their inheritance is incorruptible, and fadeth not away, and they are to be forever (pantote) with the Lord.

The last sentence of this extract suggests the final contribution of Balfour to his system, which was made in 1828 in his Three Essays. Here he promulgated the doctrine that the souls of men are not immortal; that the spirit returns unto God who gave it, in the sense that it is laid up with Christ in God, unconscious, to be restored to man in the resurrection at the last day, at which time all men shall be immediately admitted without judgment into felicity, from which they shall never depart.

All these gradual discoveries and communications to the public only made the Balfourean system more popular with the Universalists. It spread rapidly, was eagerly read, and learned by heart by multitudes of the people, and filled the air with the clamor of controversy. Doubtless the New England teachers were not idle, and there were many faithful parish sermons like one of Emmons upon "The Plea of Sinners against Endless Punishment." There are five principles, he says, upon which the Universalists argue in favor of their doctrine. These are: "The universal goodness of God; the universal atonement of Christ; the universal offers of salvation; the universal goodness of mankind; their universal punishment in this life." The arguments of the first four heads are those with which we have already become familiar. Under the last he intends evidently to meet the form of Universalism before us. He says:

They affirm that there is not a threatening in the Bible respecting any future and eternal punishment of sinners. But all men of plain common sense who have read the Bible and whose understanding has not been darkened by the blindness of the heart and by the sophistry of deceivers, know that God has plainly threatened future and eternal punishment to the finally impenitent and unbelievers.

And thus, with the most summary quotation of certain passages, he dismisses their position. In a sermon there is little room for prolonged discussion, and yet Emmons desired to strike at the root of the exegesis by which Balfour had now attempted to support Universalism. So he declares that the method of the Universalists is wrong. They come to each passage of Scripture which they quote, determined to make it support their own false principles. Single texts should be interpreted in the light of the whole Bible.

No doctrine can be proved or refuted by merely marshalling one class of texts against another without explaining them according to some sound and accepted principle. Texts ought never to be adduced to explain and establish any first principles; but first principles are to be adduced to explain and establish the sense of every text of Scripture.

This sounds like a plea for the most pronounced sort of dogmatic exegesis. But such is not Emmons' intent. He is complaining of the dogmatic exegesis of the Universalists. What he means is determined by the significance he attaches to the phrase "first principles," and this he has explained by pointing to those great and fundamental doctrines which constitute the substance of the Christian religion, and which are derived from the Bible itself. He mentions "the true meaning of God's universal goodness as consisting in universal benevolence and limited complacence" and the "true sense of the universal atonement of Christ." Reason was to have its place, though not the supreme place, in interpretation. He complains of the Unlversalists that

they never lay down principles and explain them, nor construe Scripture according to the dictates of reason. But those who hold to a limited salvation lay down principles and explain them . . . They do not set one text of Scripture against another, but explain every text agreeably to the great principles which they have established and explained.

But opposition to Ballou's and Balfour's views arose among those Universalists who were still inclined to favor the doctrine of Restoration. Among these, Charles Hudson, pastor of a Universalist church in Westminster, Mass., published A Series of Letters addressed to Mr. Ballou in which, from an intimate knowledge of the Universalist literature, he brought materials to set forth fully the doctrines he wished to refute. As is well known, this disagreement with Ballou ripened into a movement which separated from the Universalist denomination in 1831, and maintained, under the name of the "Restorationist Association," a separate existence till 1841. Hudson was a sharp and witty antagonist, and when he turned his weapons against Balfour, the latter could not endure his sarcasm. He summed up the first Inquiry very well in the following words:

In order to ascertain whether Mr. B. has succeeded in refuting future or eternal punishment, it is proper to leave all that he has said upon Sheol, Hades, and Tartarus out of the question; for surely, if they do not mean misery at all, as Mr. Ballou contends, they do not have the least bearing in deciding the question whether misery be endless . . . The only word he allows to signify misery is Gehenna; and wherever it occurs in the New Testament, it is, he says, applied to the Jews, and expresses those judgments, and those only, which fell upon that nation at the destruction of Jerusalem . . . So the whole of Mr. Balfour's labors comes precisely to this: If the destruction of Jerusalem does not mean endless misery, that doctrine is not taught in the Scriptures! He has written more than four hundred pages to show that there can be no punishment in a future state because Jerusalem was captured in this!

Hudson complains also repeatedly of Balfour's apparent desire to "pull down and not build up"--a fundamental and just criticism.

Hudson's remarks irritated Balfour extremely, as was usually the case, for he did not seem to be able to bear criticism with equanimity, and in some remarks upon Hudson's Letters, which he attached to his Three Essays, he indulged in petty personalities. One good argument refuting Hudson's own theories is, however, found here. Punishment arising from

"the internal state of mind" alone, and not from any external application, he says, leaves the abandoned sinner with nothing to fear in the future world. "The more hardened he dies, so much the better for him in the world to which he goes. . . . If he can only contrive to keep himself hardened in hell, what in God's universe can distress him, upon Mr. Hudson's system of future punishment?

Hudson replied in a small book, in which, among other things, he pricked the fallacy of Balfour's methods of exegesis, but he succeeded in setting up no sufficient method for himself.

Less noted orthodox ministers did not neglect the subject in their parish sermons. Edward R. Tyler, of Middletown, Conn., delivered a series of Lectures on Future Punishment to his church which he afterward published. Direct reference is made to Balfour's ideas in the discussion of Gehenna. The book was a faithful and useful discussion of the whole theme. It shows how the ministry of that day overcame the danger from Universalism--by openly combating it in the pulpit.

But now a more formidable antagonist of Universalism appeared upon the scene in the person of Moses Stuart. The success with which Balfour had met among his co-religionists had induced him to call loudly for a refutation. Stuart had been frequently mentioned as the man who should undertake it, and probably it was in response to direct solicitations that he finally published, first in the Panoplist, and then in a separate form, his book entitled Exegetical Essays on Several Words Relating to Future Punishment. It was not formally a reply to Balfour, and for the sake of avoiding "a polemic attitude" mentioned but one writer of opposing teaching, and him only in a short appendix. Yet it was Balfour's works which drew out the treatise, and his first Inquiry, and that portion of the second which referred to the words aion, etc., were substantially met.

The work opens with remarks upon the importance of the subject and the impossibility of answering inquiries as to the future state by the light of reason. Ancient philosophy failed even to establish the immortality of the soul. Our appeal must then be to the Bible, which must be examined without prepossessions, candidly, and impartially. Such an examination Stuart sets himself to make.

The words ____ and _______; are first examined. Their classical use is presented, and then in various classes the cases quoted in which they appear in the New Testament, and the meaning exhibited in each case. The presentation is fair, the summing-up convincing and the conclusion is expressed with force in these words: "Whenever ____ is employed for the purpose merely of designating future time, as a period of duration, it designates an indefinite, unlimited time in all cases; those of future punishment being for the present excepted." "In regard to all the cases of _______; which have a relation to future time, it is quite plain and certain that they designate an endless period, an unlimited duration" (the cases referring to future punishment being excepted). He examines the Hebrew olam, and the Greek words ____ and _______ in the LXX, with the same result.

With this general preparation he comes to consider those cases, already quoted in the investigation, in which these words are applied to future punishment. He finds these parallel in all philological respects to the cases in which the future blessedness of the righteous is stated, and he sums up his conclusion in the following words:

It does most plainly and indubitably follow that, if the Scriptures have not asserted the endless punishment of the wicked, neither have they asserted the endless happiness of the righteous, nor the endless glory and existence of the Godhead. The one is equally certain with the other. Both are laid in the same balance. They must be tried by the same tests. And if we give up the one, we must, in order to be consistent, give up the other also.

The bearing of this will be seen when we recall that Stuart rested all these truths on revelation alone, since the powers of our reason had never discovered them to heathen nations, nor ever could. He adds farther on: "I have long searched with anxious solicitude for a text in the Bible which should even seem to favor the idea of a future probation. I cannot find it."

This part of the discussion ended, Stuart goes over to the consideration of Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna. The exposition is temperate and fair. He acknowledges all that Balfour says (though not mentioning him by name) in respect to the meaning of "Sheol" in many passages. He then introduces a discussion of the figurative use of language, which sets forth the fundamental principles upon which such a word is to be interpreted, in any kind of literature. The figurative use of every word representing intangible and invisible objects must be derived from the literal uses by which it was originally restricted to objects accessible to the observation of the senses. Paradise was a pleasure garden literally; but figuratively it is the state of the blessed in the eternal world. Hence the question as to the meaning of "Sheol" and like words is not to be determined by their literal uses (as Balfour had sought to do); but the question still remains: Are they "ever employed in the figurative or secondary sense in the Old Testament?" The determination of this question, Stuart confesses, "depends perhaps in great measure on the state of knowledge among the Hebrews with regard to future rewards and punishments." That they were entirely ignorant of such things, the acknowledged belief of the Egyptians as to the future forbids us to suppose. Many texts are evacuated of their meaning on such a supposition.

The sum of the evidence from the Old Testament in regard to Sheol is that the Hebrews did probably in some cases connect with the use of this word the idea of misery subsequent to the death of the body. It seems to me that we can safely believe this; and to aver more than this would be somewhat hazardous, when all the examples of the word are duly considered.

A like discussion of Hades follows. The Hades of Luke 16:23, he says, has the significance of Tartarus, the place of future and endless punishment. As to Gehenna, the discussion is shorter, but equally explicit. Of Balfour's notion that its punishment meant the destruction of Jerusalem, Stuart does not think it worth while to take notice.

This treatise practically closed the controversy on the side of the New England divines. The dogmatic answer to Universalism was already made, and the exegetical answer, which only remained in some little doubt after the appearance of Balfour, was now in. It is a curious illustration of the relentlessness of the logic of facts, and of the impotence of the opinions of men to withstand their progress, that Balfour, whose theology and influence, both among the general body of the New England churches and even among his own denomination, had been annihilated by Stuart's Essays, had not the slightest thought that such a fate had befallen him. He published a Reply, in 1831, which was full of personalities, but contained no substantial addition to the discussion. In the following year he published the third (largely rewritten) edition of his Inquiry. In the Introduction he uses the following language. After having denominated Professor Stuart's Essays an attempt to refute the Inquiry, he says:

We have too high an opinion of Mr. Stuart's understanding to think that he considers his essays deserving the name of an answer to the Inquiry. We have never heard of a single intelligent man, orthodox or otherwise, who thinks his essays a reply to it. But we have heard several express a contrary opinion. If the book [viz., the Inquiry] then is not unanswerable, we may say, it yet remains unanswered . . . Without these attacks, I might have gone down to my grave doubting whether I might not after all be mistaken in my views. It would be almost sinful in me now to doubt their correctness, considering the character, talents, and standing of the men, who have tried but failed to point out my error.

And yet in 1840 Thomas Whittemore, who had been a Balfourean, issued his Plain Guide to Universalism--a kind of Universalist dogmatics--which leaned decidedly toward Restorationism; in 1841 the Universalists as a whole had become so favorable to restoration that the Restorationist Association could dissolve; and in 1878 the Universalist ministers of Boston and vicinity, by a vote of thirty-three to two, adopted a statement of belief which, while strongly Unitarian, and so far in accord with Ballou's theology, was decidedly restorationist, and marked the complete downfall of Balfour's System.

 

 

 

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