with complete confidence on such a subject as this, except,
indeed, so far as any truth on the subject can be shown to be dis- tinctly revealed to us. Prebendary Row thinks that St. Paul's language in the 15th chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians (22-28) contains a positive revelation that no evil being shall ultimately survive the triumph of Christ over the world. The passage, as the Revisers have translated it, is as as follows :—" For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order : Christ the first- fruits ; then they that are Christ's, at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father ; when he shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign till he bath put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be abolished is death. For, He put all things in subjection under his feet. But when he saith, All things are put in subjection,' it is evident that he is excepted who did subject all things unto him. And when all things have been subjected unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subjected to him that did subject all things unto him, that God may be all in all." We doubt whether a passage could be quoted better adapted to show the difficulty of relying on special words and phrases in writings an little governed by an immediate dogmatic intention as those of the New Testament. In the first sentence, the expression "even so in Christ shall all be made alive," is not even interpreted by Prebendary Row himself in its most literal meaning. He believes, on the authority of other express statements, that there are cer- tainly those who will not be made alive in Christ in the sense of being made spiritually alive by him,—in a word, that there are those, deliberately impenitent, for whom ultimately destruc- tion is reserved. Well, if that be so,—and it is Mr. Row's own contention,—then the very first clause of this passage should warn us against accepting, without the utmost care, the super- ficial drift of the remainder. There are in the other clauses of it two separate predictions that "all rule and all authority and power" (except his own) are to be " abolished " by Christ, and that all the enemies of Christ are to be "put under his feet," or "subjected to him." Next, the Apostle goes on to say that the last enemy to be " abolished " is death. Is there not here a distinction between what is to be " abolished " and what is to be "subjected," or put "under his feet " ? All rule is to be "abolished" except Christ's. Death itself is to be "abolished." But is it equally clear that all the enemies who are to be sub- jected to Christ, or put "under his feet," are to be abolished ? We think it is at least conceivable that while all power or authority, or active rule of any kind, is to be abolished that is not Christ's, the " enemies " who are "to be put under his feet" or "subjected to him " are not in the same sense to be abolished, but only rendered absolutely powerless. We are far from maintaining that this is the meaning. We quite agree with Mr. Row that it is difficult to assert that God shall be "all in all" if any creature remains in existence at all who, however impotent, is in any sense at enmity with God. Still, considering that this is the only passage in which it can be reasonably maintained that the ultimate extinction of all evil is revealed, the meaning of this passage seems open enough to doubt, to make it hazardous to lean upon it so very heavily. And we cannot say that the various words which imply destruc- tion, and which are applied to the impenitent, are at all obviously intended to express annihilation, seeing that the same words occur where they obviously do not express annihilation, but only moral death. On the other hand, language like that employed in the parable concerning Dives and Lazarus and, the parable of the sheep and the goats, is doubtless intended to suggest, and does suggest, a very awful fate to the impenitent, and is not intended to suggest, and does not suggest, that there shall be any definite close to that preying upon the wicked of the worm that dieth not, and that searching pain of the fire that is not quenched, of which our Lord prophesied with such awful emphasis. On the whole, we think that Mr. Row has completely made out his case that there is no dogmatic assertion of the endlessness of punishment, and that it is at least difficult to conceive such a judgment as endless and fruitless punishment consistently with the infinite mercy and love of God as revealed in Christ. But we do not think that he has made out at all adequately his own view that the ultimate destruction of the impenitent is revealed. We believe that the matter was intended to be left in mystery, and that it is left in mystery ; that we are warned that nothing can be conceived more awful than the state of deliberate rebellion against God ; and that if once we begin to yield to evil, we have no security against falling into that state, into which others have certainly fallen before us. But of what shall be the ultimate result of falling into that state we have no express revelation.
We are very grateful to Mr. Row for his chapter on the ques- tion, "Does Human Probation Terminate at Death ?" It is a chapter which states very vigorously what the most devout Christians must have felt very deeply, and we never met with a Christian of any denomination who had not felt the difficulty in the common view, and had not devised some answer to it. We have met with numbers,—numbers even of orthodox Roman Catholics,—who hold that, in the very moment of dying, an extended career of probation may be offered to the souls of those who have lived their ordinary life without any fair chance of embracing Christ's offer of eternal life. The old saying, "Between the saddle and the ground, he mercy sought and mercy found," represents a serious conviction in many com- munions that what seem to us the few minutes of death may be, and often are, the term of a full probation. That is, however, so artificial a view of the case,—for it is almost incredible that multitudes who had lived years without hearing, or hearing adequately, of Christ's Gospel, should have the whole of their life's trial compressed into the subjective passion of a few minutes of apparent unconsciousness,—that we feel very thank- ful to Mr. Row for stating the question plainly, and making its direct bearing on our faith in the justice of God as clear as he does. For our own parts, we heartily accept his view, and are quite sure that there is not a word in the New Testament which declares that probation must necessarily end with life, and cannot extend beyond it.
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