T H E K I N G ’S B U S I N E S S tered the sadly solemn words: “ It had been good for that man if he had not been bgrn.” Similarly there is a strik ing and. significant contrast between our Lord’s words to the unbelieving Jews recorded in John 8:21: “Whither I go ye cannot come,” and those to Peter in chapter 13:36: “Whither I go, thou canst not follow Me now, but thou shalt follow Me afterwards.” As character tends to permanence, heaven is a place of perfect holiness and hell must be of the opposite; and this throws light upon the words of Rev. 22:11, which were apparently ut tered by our ascended, glorified, and re turning Lord: “He that is unrighteous, let him do unrighteousness still; and he that is filthy, let him be made filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still; and he that is holy, let him be made holy still.” The doctrine of universal restoration springs from a natural desire to wish the his tory of mankind to have a happy end ing, as in most story books; but it ig nores the fact that, by granting man free will, God has (as it were) set a boundary to His own omnipotence,, for it is a moral impossibility to save a man against his will. Surely eternal sin can only be followed by eternal retribu tion; for, if a man deliberately chooses to be ruled by sin, he must inevitably be ruined by it. One never hears of the doctrine of .final restoration being ap plied to the devil and his angels, but why not? If the answer is, “ Because they cannot and will not repent,” the same is surely true of many human be ings. Not only is there no vestige of foun dation in our Lord’s words for the doc trine of universalism, there is also no shadow of a suggestion of any restora tion of the wicked hereafter. So far from this being the case, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus rings the death knell of any such hope. Abraham is there represented as saying, to Dives: “ Between us and you there is a great
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places in which it is used in the New Testament reveals the fact that it is twice used of the Gospel, once of the Gospel covenant, once of the consola tion brought to us by the Gospel, twice of God’s own Being, four times of the future of the wicked, and fifteen times of the present and future life of the be liever. No one thinks of limiting its duration in the first four cases and in the last, why then do so in the other one? The dilemma becomes acute in considering the words of our Lord re corded in Matt. 25:46, where precisely the same word is used concerning the duration' of the reward of the righteous and the retribution of the wicked, for only by violent perversion and distor tion can the same word in the same sen tence possess a different signification. Again, it is sometimes urged that, as salt has a purifying power, the words, “ everyone shall be salted with fire,” in Mark 9:49, have this significance in the case of future punishment; but the con text clearly shows that its preserving power is alluded to, for the passage speaks of the undying worm and the un quenchable fire. Besides, if the Divine chastisements are ineffectual here in the case of any individual, when there is so much to restrain men and women from wrong-doing, how can they be ex pected to prove effectual in the next world, with all these restraints remov ed, and only the society of devils? It is certainly somewhat illogical for those who make so much of the love of God to argue that punishment will prove remedial hereafter in the case of those whom Divine Love has failed to influ ence here. Not only is there not the slightest hint in the teaching of our Lord that future punishment will prove remedial or corrective, but His words concerning Judas in Matt. 26:24 are inexplicable on that supposition. Surely His existence would still have been a blessing if his punishment was to be followed by ultimate restoration, and Christ would therefore never have ut
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