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The context, in the instance just mentioned, comprises several chapters. From an attentive perusal of these, may be gathered the following particulars:

1. "The men 99 mentioned in the text are the Jewish high-priests, compared and contrasted with "The Apostle and High-priest of our profession, Christ Jesus." 1

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2. They are spoken of in the plural, as "men," because, as the apostle here says, "they truly were many priests," for the reason that, being mortal, one died, and an other succeeded him, while Christ, having "an endless life," can not vacate the office by death, and so has a priestship which is "unchangeable," or passes not to a successor, He being the sole and perpetual High-Priest of the Christian age. 2

3. Those men being appointed "to die ", means being appointed to do so by proxy, in their sacrifices, or, as the apostle expresses it, to enter "into the Holy-Place every year with blood of others," that is, of the animals sacrificed, while Christ, "by His own blood", or, as is also said, "by the sacrifice of Himself," "entered in once into The Holy-Place", not, however, into one "made with hands," "but into heaven itself." 3

4. By their being appointed to die "once," is meant the same as in the preceding and succeeding expressions, "once every year," "year by year," &c., that is, on the day of atonement, -as set against Christ's being offered "once," which, in like manner, is explained to mean not "often, as the high-priest entereth into the holy-place every year," but "once for all," which is to say, once and no more. 4

1 Heb. vii. 28; iii. 1.

3 Heb. ix. 11, 12, 24, 25, 26.

2 Heb. vii. 16, 23, 24.
4 Heb. ix. 7, 25; x. 1, 10.

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5. The judgment" or verdict following the sacrificial death of each high priest, was the assurance given to "the people" of Israel, by the reappearance of such high-priest, or his safe return out from the Holy of Holies, that "the errors of the people," for the year then ended, were forgiven, as compared with certain facts relating to Christ, who is (or was) to "appear a second time" &c. 1

In a certain sense, judgment after the death of the body may be regarded as a Scripture doctrine. To judge sometimes signifies to rule. The first rulers of Israel were called judges. Jesus Christ rules, that is, exercises dominion over, both dead and living; or, as the Common Version has it, He is "Lord both of the dead and living.' 12

In Rev. 20th, a judgment of "the dead" is described, as was remarked in our last chapter; yet, from the metaphorical character of the language employed, it is evident that the subjects of that judgment were dead in some other than a physical sense. Thus it is said:

"And I saw a great white throne, and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.......And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them; and they were judged," &c. Rev. XX. 11-13.

The sea might give up dead bodies, that is, the bodies of those recently drowned therein, also, those bodies recently committed thereto; but surely, it is persons, not their cast-off bodies, who are proper subjects of judgment. We are not told that the earth yielded up her dead; which, perhaps, may be accounted for by supposing that this "terrestrial ball" had "fled away" to "no place" 1 Heb. ix. 7; Ex. xxx. 10; Lev. xvi. 2–34. 2 Rom. xiv. 9.

before the proceedings commenced. Death is obviously not a place or space at all, nor has it, literally, any capaciousness whatever; yet the dead which were in it were duly delivered up. Hell, also, delivered up its dead; but heaven, or "the heaven," surrendered none of its inhabitants, whether it had "fled away" previously, or had not. The whole scene is thus manifestly figurative. See Whittemore on the Revelation.

For the proper import of the word rendered "hell" in the above passage, see Chapter iii. of this work.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ENDLESS PUNISHMENT.

It has been believed by a very great majority of the Christian church for more than a thousand years, that, after the resurrection, if not before it, many, very many, of mankind are each to be subjected to an amount and degree of penal suffering, compared with which the greatest and most severe tortures ever inflicted by the cruelest of human monsters, are but as a drop to the ocean, or as the tiniest spark to Nebuchadnezzar's furnace in fullest blast.

It is believed also, that these unparalleled and seemingly insupportable torments are to be ever and ever increasing that through long, long days, and weeks, and months, and years, of direful agony, the tardy moments, as they successively arrive, will each be fraught with fresh and fiercer pains.

It is further believed, and this is the chief idea directly presented by this doctrine,- that these torments of the wicked, beyond the resurrection, are to be positively endless with each individual; -not merely that such torments are to be inflicted without intermission, and endured without alleviation, through accumulated and accumulating years, and centuries, and ages, and ages-of-ages, and these last multiplied ad indefinitum;— but

that the torments of the wicked are absolutely to continue ad æternum, or to duration without end.

It is also very generally held in regard to those torments, that the resurrection will greatly enhance them; and it is taught by some that the very existence of such torments depends upon the resurrection; they holding that without it there is neither happiness nor misery. The wicked are to be raised that they may be judged; and the judg ment eventuates in their being sentenced to endless suffering. It is thus entirely apparent that the doctrine claims an intimate relation to our general subject, and is therefore entitled to a share of our attention in the present work.

The doctrine of endless punishment is in a manner venerable on account of its age; and it has long been highly popular from the great number of its advocates and votaries; yet it is objected to as being unreasonable, unphilosophical, and especially unscriptural. Thus,

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I. The doctrine of endless punishment ascribes the 66 living" or really existing God, possessing the attributes of power, wisdom, and goodness, a proceeding, toward some of His creatures, exactly in accordance with the character of an imaginary god, possessing the attributes of power, wisdom, and badness.

The above may be a startling proposition, to some; yet its truth can be easily shown:

The causing of an individual to be as miserable as is possible in the nature of things, and the protracting of that misery to the longest possible ex tent, (endless punishment as commonly taught,) is actually doing to that individual the very worst that could be done by an infinitely evil-disposed Being, with ability and contrivance equal to his malevolence. Yet, according to the doctrine under

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