ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 3, 1 December 1883, Page 9

ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.

One of the most singular changes in theological opinion is taking place in the Church of England itself, with a rapidity which must seriously endanger her pretensions to be considered an authoritative guide as to the meaning of that supernaturally inspired book, which is the basis of the Christian religion. If there was one doctrine which more than any other has always been held to be part and parcel of the Christian faith, it is that of the doctrine of eternal punishment. As lately as 1864, the Archbishop of Canterbury stated in his Pastoral Letter dealing with the celebrated Privy Council judgment in the case of " Essays and Reviews," that " the conclusions at which I arrived on the subject of the charge against Mr. Wilson relating to the everlasting punishment of the wicked did not result from any doubt in my mind as to the doctrine of the Church of England upon this point. This doctrine I consider to be clearly indicated in the Commination Service, the Burial Service, the Apostles Creed, and the Athanasian Creed ; to the effect that the reward of the righteous is everlasting life, and the punishment of the wicked everlasting death ; nor do I conceive that the Church has any more sure warrant for belief in the eternal happiness of the saved than it has for belief in the eternal suffering of the lost." Yet, at least a year before this official utterance of the mind of the Church of England upon this momentous question, Canon Farrar had "indicated" in the article " Hell" in "Smith's Dictionary of the Bible" that he held a totally contrary opinion, and in 1876 preached in Westminster Abbey his five famous sermons subsequently published with notes in a book called Eternal Hope." Perhaps the most remarkable feature connected with this subject is, that not only has Canon Farrar incurred no penalties for his boldness, but that intellectual and cultivated as well as fashionable audiences whom he addressed, accepted his views calmly and without surprise, a sufficient proof of the direction in which the lay mind at least had been travelling. In 1878 no less than fourteen learned and reverend gentlemen of whom several were doctors of divinity, discussed the question in the 'Contemporary Review ' with the result that no two of them thought precisely alike as to the exact meaning of the " inspired record," while on the main question their opinions were about equally divided. The fact is that the truth of the doctrine of eternal punishment cannot be decided by minute scholarship at all. The application of this sort of criticism to the Bible is merely playing the

theological game according to rule. When we have arrived at the precise meaning of the Hebrew word Sheol, with its equivalents Inferi and Hades, when erudition has done its best to prove that every text bearing on this subject, conveyed a very different meaning to St. Augustin or to Calvin, to that which it conveys to a modern Englishman, we have at the most formed some vague idea of what men's opinions were in a state of civilization different from our own. From the heart of things we are as far removed as ever. To us the important question is not what men think but what actually is. Modern science and modern morality stand aghast at the picture presented by a theology derived from barbarous times, showing the merciless tyrant of the universe condemning the vast majority of mankind to endless torments. Even our professional theologians are at length forced by the modern spirit to "read between the lines," for natural selection controls belief as much as it does animal and vegetable life. Beliefs incompatible with existing knowledge die out, and the " survival of the fittest " obtains no less in the moral than in the physical world. Just 'as Mr. Lecky argues, that the belief in witchcraft disappeared, not so much because the evidence on which it rested was proved to be false, as because other beliefs had taken its place, so is the belief in eternal punishment disappearing in a similar manner and from similar causes. _ How the doctrine of the Atonement can survive the doctrine of eternal punishment would puzzle even those ingenious scholars who, in the Revised Version of the New Testament, have evaded so many difficulties by substituting Hades for Hell. R. P.