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‘And these shall go away into everlasting punishment.’
Mat_25:46
II. A most difficult fact.—We go on from this to point out that it is not only a fact, but it is the most difficult fact in the Christian religion—quite the most difficult. In the region of abstract thought the subject is finally insoluble, because you get totally different conclusions as you approach the question from opposite standpoints. There is the attempt to solve the problem by the doctrines of Universalism and Conditional Immortality. But many cannot accept any such solution of the difficulty; and so in the region of abstract thought we leave it in that insoluble condition. Only, let us remember that in this respect it stands in a long series of insoluble truths that you must leave to God.
III. To be treated in relation to other facts.—Thirdly, it is a fact which must be treated in relation to other facts. Half the difficulty of the subject of eternal punishment springs from people considering this truth in isolation. All Christian truth is interdependent.
(a) You must treat it in relation to the fact of the existence of an intermediate slate between death and judgment.
(b) We must set it in relation to another fact—the fact of the possibilities of death. Who are we to judge what is going on in those moments of unconsciousness when the soul shows no kind or sort of consciousness of this life, but is perhaps awake to God?
(c) We put it alongside the fact of God’s unerring justice, and the fact that there is much more good than evil in the world.
(d) We also set this side by side with the fact of the Divine Law of excuse. We may not press it too far, but the saying is profoundly true, ‘that to know all is to pardon all.’
(e) So we set it side by side with that, and also side by side with the master thought of the Christian religion—the master thought of the Fatherhood of God. Whatever eternal punishment may be, it cannot conflict with the Fatherhood of God.
The Rev. G. F. Holden.
Illustrations(1) ‘I know that revelations from saintly individuals are always to be received with a certain amount of reserve, but there is a beautiful revelation of one of God’s saints, where it is said our Lord revealed Himself to her, and told her that whenever a soul was dying on this earth, ere it passed, He revealed Himself in such entrancing love and rapture that it was hardly possible for it to resist Him.’
(2) ‘I cannot better conclude this subject than by giving you that wonderful passage of Faber’s which has comforted so many people who have had to look at this great question. He says: “God is infinitely merciful to every soul. No one ever is, or ever can be, lost by surprise, or trapped in his ignorance; and as to those who may be lost, I confidently believe that our Heavenly Father threw His arms around each created spirit and looked it full in the face with bright eyes of love in the darkness of its mortal life, and that of its own deliberate will and choice it would not have Him.” ’