KINGDOM AND AGE TO COME.
“Earnestly contend for the Faith, which was once delivered to the Saints.”—Jude
Volume 1—Number 6 (June 1851)
AN IMPORTANT QUERY ANSWERED.
“What must a man know and believe before he is a fit subject for immersion?”
—E. M. S—, Illinois.
Answer.
“The Gospel of the Kingdom,” that is, “the things concerning the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ.” See Mark 16: 15-16; and Acts 8: 12; also Matthew 24: 14. When a man knows, or understands, and believes this gospel with “an honest and good heart” he is fit to be united to the Holy Ones, that he may receive repentance, remission of sins, and a right to eternal life through the name of Jesus. See Luke 24: 47; John 20: 31; Acts 5: 31; 11: 18; Revelation 22: 14.
LETTERS OF INQUIRY FROM NEWARK, ENGLAND.
Letter 1.
Newark, Feb. 28th 1850.
SIR:
I am one of those who having read your valuable work, “Elpis Israel,” have fully determined to cast aside the existing systems of religion, and to devote myself to the study of the pure Word of God. This being the case, as a matter of course, I meet with a vast amount of opposition from various quarters. In the course of argument I am often met with the parable of the “Rich Man and Lazarus” as a proof both of the existence of a place of torment and of a separate state of existence, between the period of death and the resurrection of the body. If we are to take this parable as it stands in the English version, I, of course, am not able to interpret it in any other way than the above, and consequently my position is very much weakened.
They also bring forward a text from 2 Corinthians 5th chapter, 8th verse.
I trust you will reply on these important subjects, as you do not notice them in your work. I am fully aware that your time must be pretty well taken up with communications more worthy of note than mine; but I do hope, if you deem me worthy, you will send a few words on these subjects, as it would serve in a great measure to settle and confirm my faith in the—to me new, but I believe truthful—doctrines you advocate.
Waiting your pleasure, I am,
A sincere seeker of the truth,
W. S. VIRISH.
Letter 2.
Newark, Nottingham, Feb. 1851.
SIR:
During your last visit to Newark, I was persuaded by a friend to go and hear one of your lectures at the Corn Exchange. It was the last you gave, and therefore I merely heard a part of your doctrine; I was, however, so interested in it that I bought an “Elpis Israel,” and I am now convinced of the falsity of the current religions of the day. But there are a few passages in the scriptures which I should feel obliged if you would show me the meaning of. They are as follows: Matthew 18: 8; Matthew 25: 41 & 46; Revelation 14: 10-11; Revelation 20: 10. All of which seem to imply that the wicked will be punished forever. In disputing with any one upon this point, although I feel convinced in my own mind that the wicked will not burn for ever, still unless I can more clearly interpret the above texts it is difficult to bring others to the same mind as myself.
There is also another which is brought forward by my antagonists in favor of immortal soulism, Philippians 1: 23.
If you would favor me with an explanation of the meaning of these texts I shall be very greatly obliged to you.
I remain, sir,
Yours truly,
WM. LAWTON.
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Replication.
LAZARUS AND THE RICH MAN.
This is part of a discourse, contained in the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of Luke, delivered by Jesus in the presence of “the publicans and sinners,” “the Pharisees and Scribes,” and his disciples. It contains the parables of the lost sheep, of the piece of silver, of the prodigal son, of the unjust steward, and of “a certain rich man,” and “a certain beggar named Lazarus.” These are parables illustrative of the things of the kingdom in relation to the joy there will be among the angels when they shall see repentant publicans, sinners, and prodigals in the kingdom; of the condemned state of the covetous pharisees; and of the “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” or “torment,” that awaits them when they shall see Abraham and the prophets in God’s kingdom and themselves excluded. These were the matters of stirring interest propounded by the Lord Jesus to his contemporaries of the House of Judah in the course of his “preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God” in all the towns and villages of Israel.
The letter before us directs our attention particularly to the case of the rich man and the beggar; we shall therefore give it all the consideration it deserves. It is a parable; consequently not a true history of two men, but a comparison or similitude illustrative of the truth. That it is a parable is unquestionable. It was addressed to the covetous pharisees who disregarded the Law and the Prophets, and in speaking to them and their disciples we are informed, that “without a parable Jesus spake not unto them.” That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.”
The parables of Jesus were illustrations of the things of the kingdom of God spiritually discernible. Even the unsophisticated and simple-minded apostles were under the necessity of soliciting an explanation of them in private. Without this assistance they found it impossible to understand his doctrine; for before he had called them to be his apostles their minds had been darkened like the rest by the leaven of the scribes and pharisees. The interpretations of the Lord Jesus were the explanations of the Spirit through him. By the light of these spiritual interpretations they were able to discern, or understand, the meaning of the parables. If the parables were mere narratives of facts, their meaning would have been obvious to the popular mind; but seeing that they represented something different from the signification of the words and phrases spoken—that they had a hidden meaning—an interpretation of these dark sayings became absolutely necessary to the comprehension of them.
The apostles were greatly astonished at the Lord Jesus that he did not speak plainly to the people, and without enigma. “Why,” said they, “speakest thou to them in parables?” As if they had said, “If thou desirest that they should understand, and be converted, and receive forgiveness of sins in recognizing thee as the king of Israel, why dost thou not teach them so as that a child might understand thy speech?” such a result as this, however, he was desirous to avoid. The generation of Judah and Benjamin, the forty-second generation from Abraham, was then in its youth. It was like the generations that had preceded it, both crooked and perverse; and as the narratives of the evangelists and apostles, and the history of Josephus, prove, more obdurately wicked than all that had gone before. It was determined therefore to judge the nation by the calamities to be visited upon the generation contemporary with Jesus and his apostles. Jehovah consequently did not purpose to give them light enough to lead them to a repentance by which his indignation and wrath against the guilty nation might be turned aside. The leaders of the people had caused them to err. They had made the word of God of none effect by their tradition. They had taken away “the key of knowledge,” and had substituted the mythology of the Greeks, which had made the people’s heart gross, their ears dull, and their eyes blind. The people were blind, and their leaders were blind, nevertheless they said “We see;” therefore their sin remained.
This was the moral condition of the nation in the days of Jesus. The minority acknowledged his claims to the throne of David, and recognized in him the Son and prophet of Jehovah; but the nation, the great and overwhelming majority of the nation, rejected him, and constituted itself the fit and proper instrument blindly to carry into effect the predetermination of God concerning his son. In answer therefore to the inquiry, “Why speakest to them in parables?” the Lord Jesus replied, “Because it is given unto you to understand the mysteries (secrets) of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath to him shall be given, and he shall have greater abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing (saying they see) see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: for this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men have desired to see what ye see, and have not seen; and to hear what ye hear, and have not heard.”
The parables then were illustrative of “the secrets of the kingdom of heaven,” which the multitude could not understand, because the key of knowledge was lost. They had “the knowledge,” for it was in “the Law and the Prophets;” but neither the learned nor the unlearned could interpret it aright. Thus were fulfilled the words of Isaiah, “they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the Lord hath poured out upon them the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed their eyes: the prophets, and their rulers, the seers hath he covered. And the vision of all hath become to them as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed: and the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned.”—Isaiah 29: 9-12. “The Key” to the understanding of the knowledge of this book they had lost. They had lost sight of the true doctrine of the Kingdom; and had embraced the vain philosophy of their Greek and Roman masters, which taught immediate reward and punishment in Elysium and Tartarus at the instant of death. They expected Elijah to come and restore all things, and the kingdom to be re-established with observation, when the Messiah should appear and sit upon the throne of his father David; but they understood not that “he must first suffer many things and be rejected of their generation;” and by a resurrection from the dead be raised up to sit upon David’s throne. —Acts 2: 30. Neither did they understand that they who were to possess the kingdom with him must first be righteous men, and then immortal by a resurrection from among the dead. They supposed when Messias came he would promote them to the honor and glory of his kingdom, little dreaming that “the first shall be last” then; and that certain poor peasants of Galilee, and dogs of Gentiles from afar, should be first in the kingdom and empire of Shiloh.
The kingdom of God rightly understood is “the key” to the parables, and indeed, not to the parables only, but to the whole Bible; for the Bible is in truth the Book of the Kingdom of God. It is nonsense for men to talk of understanding the Bible if they do not understand the true doctrine of the kingdom. As well might one say that he understood Turner’s Elements of Chemistry though entirely ignorant of chemical science, or acquainted only with Alchemy. The leaders and people of Israel were mere alchemists in theology; they sought after the stone of Greek philosophy, and stumbled at the princely stone, and bruised themselves to death.
It is not to be wondered at that the moderns should find the interpretation of the parables beyond their skill. They are alchemists like their prototypes of the forty-second generation of Israel. The exposition of the parables relating to the kingdom is as impossible to them as the analysis of the alkalis and of water were to the alchemists of the age of Paracelsus. The fact is that the moderns generally understand less of the kingdom of God than the ancient scribes, pharisees, and lawyers. They have resolved it into a kingdom of grace and a kingdom of glory, with an intermediate state, or not, according to their taste. They tell us not to pray “Thy kingdom come,” because it is already come. It came, they say, on the Day of Pentecost! It is the kingdom of grace, or the church; the very reign of favor itself! Where is the throne? In reply, they point to the throne of the invisible majesty, somewhere in the milky way, which they call the throne of David, and tell us that there is the Lord Jesus reigning over the House of Jacob forever! They teach also the Greek philosophy, or mythology rather, concerning souls. At the instant of death they translate them to heaven or hell—a theory by which the real kingdom of God is entirely superseded. Pledged to this leaven they can see nothing in the Bible pertaining to the future free from the fermentation of immortal-soulism, and its consequences, an intermediate state with its separate localities for the souls, or disembodied ghosts, of the righteous and wicked dead. As if conscious of the weakness of their theories, they seize with avidity upon every text (and they are but few) not to prove what they affirm, but out of which they think they can create difficulties for those who repudiate their dogmas. Among these texts are the two presented to us by our correspondent in Newark. The opposition there, as here, can explain nothing. They can only twist ropes of sand, and on the ghosts of seven pillars erect castles in the air. We repeat it, that these aerial-castle builders being ignorant of the real kingdom of God, and consequently of the gospel of the kingdom, cannot interpret the parables, much less able are they to interpret the rich man and the beggar, the most difficult of all. They have first adopted their theory on the plea of reconciling, or rather of harmonizing Christ and Plato, that the doctrine of Jesus might be less objectionable to “philosophy;” and have then put the scripture to the torture to compel it to speak according to their wishes. This is just the reverse of what they ought to have done. They should have put their philosophy on the scripture rack, and if it would not confess according to what is written, have condemned it to an auto da fe, because of its cancerous and destructive heresy. Having omitted to do this, they have committed an egregious blunder; and imposed the burden upon us of supplying their deficiency.
The rich man and Lazarus is a parable illustrating a mystery of the kingdom of God. Now the question is, what is that mystery, or hidden thing, which it illustrates? Our answer is, that it illustrates the saying contained in the thirteenth of Luke and thirtieth verse, and in the nineteenth of Matthew and thirtieth verse, also the twentieth chapter and sixteenth verse, namely, “Behold there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.” If it be enquired when and where? We reply, when the “first which shall be last” “shall see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and they themselves thrust out.” If it be asked, what is meant by being “tormented in this flame?” We answer, to be the subject of “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” because of being thrust out of the kingdom: the thrusting out being two-fold; first, by the Roman power when the Mosaic constitution of Israel’s commonwealth was subverted; and second, by their exclusion from the kingdom subsequently to their resurrection to judgement. In short, what is testified in Luke 13: 24-30, without a figure, is parabolically represented in Luke 16: 19-31.
The rich man and the beggar in the similitude represent two classes of Israelites. The former represents the “workers of iniquity” whom Jesus was addressing; and who at that time were “first,” being the rulers and leaders of the people, and wore purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day. These were they who sought to enter into the kingdom, but should not be able. They would then, when the door was shut, cry Lord, Lord, open to us! We have eaten and drank in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets! But all this will avail them nothing. It was their malice that brought them to his presence; and their fears of the people that permitted him for a time to go at large in their streets. “Depart from me, I know not whence ye are, ye workers of iniquity”—“Depart from me, I say, ye cursed into the enduring fire prepared for the devil and his emissaries”—this is all the response the “upper ten thousand” of the nation will be able to elicit from the King when he promotes “the blessed of the Father to the possession of the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world.”
The beggar in the parable represents “the blessed of the Father,” who in the forty-second generation were “the last,” the helpless among the people—the poor of the flock—and therefore “named Lazarus,” or God’s help, for he alone is their helper, pulling down the mighty from their thrones, and exalting them of low degree; filling the hungry with good things, while the rich he sends empty away.—Luke 1: 52. of this class were the least of the King’s brethren. They were full of sores and desiring to be fed from the leavings of the rich and ruling class of the nation. They were hungry, but their princely superiors gave them no meat; they were thirsty, but gave them no drink; strangers at their gates, but they took them not in; naked, but they clothed them not; sick in prison but they visited them not. These were their sores which experienced no relief at the hands of the purple-clad and luxurious livers of their age.
Now the parable represents a perfect and entire change of fortune with respect to those two classes; for Abraham is represented as saying to the rich Israelite, “Son, remember that thou in thy life time receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.” Here it will be perceived that the classes change situations—the hungry are filled with good things, that is, “are comforted;” while the rich are sent empty away, that is, “are tormented” even worse than the poor whom in their previous lifetime they had despised. When, however, the poor brethren in Christ are comforted, the mean-spirited rich, their former oppressors, are represented as piteously supplicating the favor; but no mercy will be shown them; for “he shall have judgment without mercy that hath showed no mercy;” and “with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again.”
The parable then brings to view two states—a present, or lifetime-state; and a future, or state of comfort or torment, as the class may be. The “now,” when the righteous shall be comforted, appears to be when the two classes, contemporary with the days of his flesh, shall both stand in his presence, when He as King, attended by all his holy angels, shall sit on the throne of his glory.—Matthew 25: 31; 2 Thessalonians 1: 7-8. This has not come to pass yet. There must therefore be a resurrection of these two classes of Israelites, according to the words of the prophet. —Daniel 12: 1-2. When this happens, the rich will see the poor in Abraham’s bosom, and themselves, like Cain, driven out of the country where the kingdom will then be “into a place of torment,” in the parable termed “this place of torment.” But where will this be? “Far off” from where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets then are. Far off as to distance; and as the kingdom is to be established in the land of Israel, it will be far off in relation to that country; from which, having risen from the dead, they are expelled from the presence of the Lord. But this country of their exile is a place where an unquenchable, or an enduring, fire is prepared for the devil and his emissaries: “for, behold the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many.”—Isaiah 66: 15-16.
The Devil and his emissaries are thus alluded to in the Apocalypse. “The great Dragon was cast out (of the heaven, chapter 12: 8,) that old Serpent, surnamed the Devil and Satan, who misleads the whole empire: he was cast out into the earth and his emissaries were cast out with him.” This is a symbolic representation of what came to pass in that great revolution when the face of the Roman world was changed by Constantine. The Devil and his emissaries here represent “the Accusers of the brethren,” or party hostile to the kingdom of God and the power of his Christ. This party reappears in the fourteenth of Revelation, and is referred to in these words, “If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation: and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth unto ages of ages,” (eis aionas aionon.) This tormenting in the presence of the holy angels and the Lamb, is the war waged between them and the Beast and the kings of the earth and their armies, or “the goats.” The result of the war is thus expressed, “And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet, &c. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the remnant were slain with the sword, &c”—Revelation 19: 19-20. That is, the territory on which the dominions exist, symbolized by the Beast and the False Prophet, shall become a lake of fire burning with the flame of artillery in war. This territory is Germany, or “the land of Magogue,” Italy, France, Belgium, Spain, Hungary, and Greece. “I will send,” says God, “a fire upon Magogue, and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles.”—Ezekiel 39: 6. So that the lightnings of heaven will be added to the flames of war. This contest with the nations results in the prostration of all the thrones, or kingdoms of the world, and their transfer to Jesus and the Saints. This overthrow is described as the laying hold on the Dragon, that old Serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and the binding him for a thousand years. —Revelation 20: 2. But at the end of this period of peace and blessedness, the Devil, or sin-power, reappears on the arena. He invades the Land of Israel with his hosts, but is driven back, or cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, the territory where the Beast and False Prophet met their fate a thousand years before, and there he is tormented as they were day and night unto the ages of the ages—eis tous aionas ton aionon. During this war death and the grave, that is, the unrighteous dead surrendered by the grave, are thrust out and exiled to the seat of the war, and thus cast into the Lake of fire to encounter death by fire and sword. Their fall is to them their Second Death; “for whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire,” which is the Second Death.
This territorial lake of fire is “the place of torment” “far off” from the territory of the kingdom, where Abraham and the Lazzaroni “are comforted.” The premillennial and postmillennial judgments upon the nations are consummated in this place; and while these judgments are in progress, the unrighteous who have died under Times of Knowledge, having been raised from among the dead, are driven like Cain from the presence of the Lord to partake in the torment with which the nations are being judged. In the exegesis of the parable we confine ourselves to the rich and beggar classes of Israel; because it is concerning them alone that the Lord is speaking. The judgment of Gentiles must be considered under a different aspect. The unrighteous in Israel of the forty-second generation (for we are considering this more particularly) will be raised to enduring shame and contempt; will weep and gnash their teeth at the cruel destiny they have brought upon themselves by their own madness and folly; and will be “thrust out” of the Land of Promise, and exiled to the papal countries as the place of their enduring punishment; where they will be subject to all the evils of the premillennial wrath and fury of their offended and insulted King, for whose death they clamoured when Pilate would have let him go. Then they were zealous for the favor of Caesar; with Caesar then they will perish, when “God shall rain upon the wicked snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest: for this is the portion of their cup.”—Psalm 11: 6; Isaiah 30: 30, 33; Ezekiel 38: 22.
In the parable the postmillennial judgment of dead men is not brought into view. We shall therefore merely remark here in passing, that “the rest of the dead” not raised to everlasting or enduring shame and contempt at the premillennial coming of the Lord; and the unrighteous dead, who, having died under the millennial reign, are raised at the end thereof, —these, we say, will meet their doom in common with the rebel nations, “Gog and Magog,” which will be exterminated at the end of the thousand years. If the reader study the twenty-fifth of Matthew, he will perceive a commingling of individual convicts with the nations of the left, styled the goats. Combined personal and national judgment at the premillennial and postmillennial epochs is the order of things in relation to wicked men and wicked nations whose iniquity is full. The wickedness of the goat-nations will be extreme and malignant, when this new element of hatred against God and his King is introduced among them by the resurrection and exile of the old enemies of the Lord. Serpents, and a generation of vipers were they in their former life-time; death and resurrection will not have changed them. When they awake from the dust they will be serpents still; and willing instruments of all evil they may be permitted to do. They must arise to judgment; for the earth’s surface is at once the arena of the reward of the righteous, the punishment of sin, and the destruction of the devil and his works.
Having illustrated the principle of the first being last, and the last first by the changed condition of the rich man and the beggar, Jesus proceeds to extract a moral precept from the premises for the benefit of those rich men who had not then as yet become tenants of the tomb. Abraham was requested by the sufferer to send the beggar to his father’s house to testify to his five brethren, lest they should be thrust out and exiled to the country of his wretched existence. Now this is the precept put into the mouth of Abraham, to which also we would do well to take heed, “They have Moses and the prophets: let them hear them.” But knowing how little regard they had for Moses and the prophets, he concluded that if this was all the testimony to be granted them, their case was hopeless. Therefore he added, “Nay father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.” But Abraham is made to say, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” This saying was verified in the fact, that though Jesus rose from the dead, and they were notified of its reality by the state-guard, and by the apostles, yet they were not, and would not be persuaded to acknowledge him, and accept repentance and life through his name.
The parable represents by anticipation the relations of things between the “first” and the “last” which will actually obtain when the kingdom is established in the Land of Israel. The things set forth are beyond the resurrection, not before it. At the time of the supposed conversation the parable represents the parties as dead. It is a fictitious conversation between suppositious dead men concerning what is in relation to the then living; and what will be hereafter in regard to themselves then dead. We have an example in Isaiah of the dead holding discourse in the parable against the king of Babylon. The dead kings of the nations are there made to address him in these words—“Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations. For thou hast said in thy heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the Mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms! That made the world as a wilderness, that destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?” Here the dead kings are made to rejoice over their fallen adversary by anticipation; for at the time Isaiah penned this parable the kings were not even born, and Belshazzar had not fallen from the political heaven. It was written in the reign of Ahaz or Hezekiah, about 130 years before Nebuchadnezzar, “the destroyer of the Gentiles,” began his conquests, and about 200 before Belshazzar was slain in the midst of his revels. The parable was therefore prophetic of what should be when the time of the fall of the Chaldean dynasty should arrive; and so also the parable of the rich man and the beggar is prophetic, not historical; but an anticipative fictitious narrative, prophetic of what shall obtain when the kingdom of God is established in the land.
In regard to certain expressions in this parable, we may remark that two things are affirmed of the beggar—“he died;” and “was carried.” Query, was he carried into Abraham’s bosom by the angels as soon as he died, or when? If as soon as he died, then he was laid in the cave of Machpelah; for there the dust once called Abraham was deposited. This, however, is not testified, therefore we cannot confirm it. To a man instructed in the kingdom there is but one other alternative, namely, Abraham is supposed to have been raised, and the beggar also, and the two brought together by the angels: but they were both really dead, an idea that is kept up in the conversation. The rich man also died, and was buried. He had a pompous funeral, which the beggar had not. Lazarus is not even said to have been put under ground, unless we take the words “was carried” to signify his being placed there. The rich man was buried “in hell,” that is “in the unseen”—en to hado—in the grave or tomb. Before falling into dust, he is supposed to have a vision of the future. He lifts up his eyes, and sees. He exists bodily as it were. He suffers physically, for his tongue is hot, and being in flame he is scorched. Lazarus is also corporeal, and not a shade; for he has a finger. This the sufferer perceives, and desires that the tip of it may be moistened with water, and applied to his tongue. These incidents are enough to prove that the scene has nothing to do with “disembodied spirits,” for all parties here are corporeal, and proximate to water in abundance.
For further information on this parable the reader is referred to the “Herald of the Future Age,” vol. iii. 9. page 211.
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AGE TO COME—THE AGES OF THE AGES—PARADISE—
ABSENT FROM THE BODY.
2 Corinthians 5: 8.
The Bible reveals, or rather treats of but two states, the present and the future. We may almost say of the past and future, for the present is no sooner here than it is gone; so that the past becomes as it were a completive present. Of the future state we know nothing but as it is revealed in the scriptures. What do they testify as to this state? That like the past, and present, it has to do with the living and not the dead. State is organization, individual and physical, or national; but death is dissolution and the reverse in everything. The scriptures also testify that the future state is a constitution of things upon earth growing out of those that now exist as the elements thereof; and that is subdivisible into two eras, the Millennium, or “Age to Come,” and that which succeeds it, called “The Ages of the Ages.” The Age to Come is styled “the Economy of the Fulness of Times” by Paul, and “the New Heavens and New Earth wherein dwelleth righteousness” by Peter, as contrasted with the Mosaic Economy in which ungodly men and scoffers, walking after their own lusts, had rule over Israel. The Age to Come is intermediate between “the times of the Gentiles” and the Ages of the Ages; and is the only “intermediate state” treated of in the word of the truth of the gospel. The Age to Come is the New Heavens and Earth of Isaiah 65: 17, and 66: 22; the era contemporary with the kingdom of God, when his son Jesus Christ our Lord shall sit upon the throne of his father David as king of Israel and Emperor of the world.
The Ages of the Ages are the New Heavens and New Earth spoken of by John in the Revelation 21: 1. They are also the third Heavens, or Paradise in full development, beheld by Paul in vision. The earth undergoes great changes at their introduction, for when established there is “no more sea.” They commence with the folding up of the heavens of the Age to Come like a vesture; for these shall be changed, having then waxed old as doth a garment. The constitution of the kingdom is changed at that epoch; for sin being taken away from among men, and death its punishment abolished, the element of priesthood must be removed. Then the end will have come when the son shall deliver up the kingdom to the Father that God may be all and in all. From this end the Ages of the Ages take their rise, and things on earth are changed no more.
A resurrection from among the dead marks the introduction of a future state. It precedes the Age to Come; and it precedes the Ages of the Ages; —the former being the resurrection of the First Fruits of God’s creatures, and therefore termed the First Resurrection; the latter, a thousand years after at “the End.” “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the Second Death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.”
Now the subject matter of the “great salvation” is the Kingdom and Age to Come to which believers are introduced by a resurrection from among the dead. We affirm this on the authority of Paul in his letter to the Hebrews. “How shall we escape,” says he, “if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord,” &c. “For unto the Angels he has not put into subjection the future habitable (teen oikoumeneen teen mellousan) concerning which we speak.” Here then we learn when the Lord Jesus began to preach he spoke about the future habitable? But what is this future habitable? The answer is found in the testimony of Luke concerning what Jesus preached. He informs us that when the people of Capernaum besought him to remain among them, he refused, saying, “I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also, for therefore am I sent.” Mark also says that “after John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God draws near; repent ye, and believe the gospel.”—Luke 4: 43; Mark 1: 14-15. In preaching about the future habitable then, Jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom. Now a “habitable” is a place or country capable of being inhabited; a “future habitable,” a country uninhabitable in the present, but habitable hereafter. This is true of the Land of Israel, called the Land of Promise, because God promised it to Abraham and Christ. —Genesis 12: 7; 13: 15; 15: 7-8, 18; Galatians 3: 16-19. At present, it is uninhabitable by Jesus and those who neglect not the “great salvation,” for “the uncircumcised and the unclean” possess it: but when it becomes the area on which is erected the kingdom of God—upon which David’s tabernacle and throne are existing in their glory—the enemy will have been expelled from the country; and it will be inhabited by the Twelve Tribes of Israel, “a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation”—Exodus 19: 4-6, the subjects of the kingdom; and by Jesus and the Saints, his co-heirs and brethren, the inheritors of its glory, honor, immortality, and dominion. The Land will then be the oikoumenee gee, the habitable land, concerning which, says Paul, we speak.
This condition of the Land of Promise will be manifested in the Age to Come, of which “the Son given” to Israel is the “father,” or founder. —Isaiah 9: 6-7. Concerning the country, then become “a heavenly country,” Jehovah saith to the Saints, and to his people Israel, by the mouth of the prophet, “Hearken unto me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord: * * * look unto Abraham your father * * * for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him. For the Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places: and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden (Paradise) of the Lord: joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody.”—Isaiah 51: 1-3. No one who understands this testimony (and before he gives his opinion he should read the whole chapter to the 10th verse of the next) can be at a loss to answer the question, “What and where is Paradise?” It is the Land of Israel made like Eden and the garden of the Lord, when Jerusalem, the holy city, puts on her beautiful garments, being henceforth “no more” the habitation of the uncircumcised and unclean. This is Paradise—THE LAND OF ISRAEL WITH THE KINGDOM OF GOD ESTABLISHED UPON IT IN THE AGE TO COME. Paradise is neither the grave, nor in Hades; but the Holy Land converted into the garden of the Lord. It is a word that signifies the same thing as the kingdom of God; and when the Lord Jesus sits upon the throne of his father David on Mount Zion, he will then and there be “the Tree of Life in the midst of the Paradise of God.”—Revelation 2: 7; 22: 2, 14. We must eat of this tree if we would live for ever; for it is “our life.” It is a Vine-Tree, with Twelve Branches, and “Twelve Fruits;” and the unwithering “leaves are for the healing of the nations.”—John 15: 1, 5; Psalm 1: 3. In other words, the work of healing the nations of their spiritual and political maladies is assigned to Jesus on the throne of David; to the apostles on the twelve thrones of the house of David; and to the Saints associated with them in the kingdom. These things are the topics of the great salvation which began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto their contemporaries by the apostles that heard him, God also bearing them witness, &c.
Now the righteous dead can only attain to this hope by a resurrection from among the dead; and the righteous living who may witness its manifestation, by being changed, or immortalised in the twinkling of an eye. Resurrection is the issue, or path from death to life. “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence;” “the dead know not any thing;” “in death there is no remembrance of thee, O Lord; in the grave none can give thee thanks;” “the grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I, Hezekiah, do this day:” “whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest.” These testimonies are true and entirely set aside the foolish speculations of “the learned” with respect to the dead while in the power of death. If a man would praise the Lord; if he would remember him; if he would celebrate his name and give him thanks; if he would hope in his truth; if he would do any thing, and have any knowledge and wisdom after he departs this life, he must rise from the dead. Paul was thoroughly convinced of this; hence his anxiety as expressed in his letter to the Philippians that “he might know Christ and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable to his death: if by any means he might attain to the resurrection from among the dead”—eis teen exanastasis icon nekroon. —Philippians 3: 10-11. Does the reader imagine in the face of these testimonies that Paul had “ a desire to depart” into the death-state; that he thought there was anything to gain in that region of darkness and silence by dying; or that he considered that when dead he should be “present with the Lord?” No, Paul said none other things, and believed none other things than what Moses and the prophets testified; and these writers are in entire harmony with himself and all that is written in the New Testament, and this men would soon discover if they understood the Old.
Paul knew that as a living man in any sense he stood related only to two states, the present and the future; and that as a dead man he would know nothing he could offer no praise, he could have no recollection of the past and no hope for the future. The interval between dying and rising again he well knew was a perfect blank—an interval of which he would have no consciousness. Being therefore unconscious of it (and it is only the living that are conscious that such an interval exists) dying and rising became to him, though really centuries apart, but two successive acts, following each other in the twinkling of an eye. This must be of necessity, for there is no account taken of time by the dead. The testimony says they know nothing; consequently they know no more about time than they do about any thing else. If we understand this we are delivered from the perverting influence of the heathen philosophy, of mythology of “spirit worlds,” (which have no existence save in the mesmerized imaginations of clairvoyant familiars and those who deal with them,) which constitutes the mysticism of sectarianism, the flesh-eating “cancre” that destroys the truth.
Paul then knew only of presence with the body, and presence with the Lord, both of them, however, bodily states; for, he says, speaking of presence with the Lord, “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things in body, according to that he hath done, whether good or bad.” “The things” are the things promised and threatened. He hoped to receive “the things” promised, such as glory, honor, immortality, and the kingdom; and he hoped to receive them also “in body.” He knew he could not receive them if he were not existing bodily; for as disorganized dust and ashes he could possess nothing. Presence with the Lord, then, is bodily presence; and this is absence from the body of mortal flesh: for when the faithful are “present with the Lord,” their bodies have suffered transformation, being then incorruptible and deathlessly living, having put on immortality; which putting on is their being “clothed upon by their house from heaven,” or being built up of God from the ruins of their mortal body, or former house, which had been dissolved or reduced to dust. This “building of God” is erected in the rising from the dead.
So long as believers are flesh and blood they are “at home in the body,” and absent from the Lord; for “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” because it is corruptible and mortal; and until they do inherit the kingdom, they cannot be present with him: for it is in the kingdom he appears and meets them. They walk by faith now; they walk by sight then; but in the death-state there is no walking at all, for they walk neither by faith nor sight there, no knowledge, nor wisdom existing in the grave whither they go. The apostle evidently did not expect to be present with the Lord in the death-state. He leaves us without a doubt on the subject; for he tells the Saints in Corinth that “God who raised up the Lord Jesus, shall also raise them up by Jesus, and shall present him and Timothy with them.” He did not expect his own presentation to precede theirs; but that he with them and the rest of the Saints should all be ushered into the Lord’s presence together at his coming, when those of them turned to righteousness by him should be his glory, and joy, and crown of rejoicing for evermore. —1 Thessalonians 2: 19.
The apostle’s mind was fixed on the Age to Come, its kingdom, honor, glory, and immortality, and not upon the dark, loathsome, and gloomy grave in which he was to moulder in unconsciousness till the trump of God awaked him. The things of the kingdom and Age to Come are “the things which are not seen,” and are enduring. They are not yet seen by the natural eye; but are discerned by the eye of faith by the light of the divine testimony. These unseen, and as yet unrevealed things, existing only in promise, are the subject of the faith which justifies, and by which the ancients obtained a good report. Paul’s faith agreed with his definition of it, as “the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen;” for says he in relation to the “far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,” “we look at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal:” therefore he saith in anther place, “If then ye be risen with Christ (by faith of his resurrection, and by being baptized in hope of being planted in its likeness,) seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set Your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead (to earthly things) and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.”—Colossians 3: 1-4. Was Paul’s hope and expectation different from that he set before the Colossians and others? Assuredly not. He sought for those things which are from above, and his affections were upon them. He walked in the belief of them, and hoped to realise them at the appearance of the Lord in glory. He would then be present with him and not a moment before. He expected life and glory to be brought to him when the Lord shall depart from God’s right hand on his return to Olivet. “Walk so as ye have us for an example; for our citizenship,” says he, “belongs to the heavens; from whence also we wait for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change the body of our humiliation, in order that it may become of a like form to the body of his glory according to the power whereby he is able also to subdue all things to himself.”—Philippians 3: 17, 20-21. After this who can scripturally affirm that Paul expected life, glory, and incorruptibility, and to be present with the Lord, at the instant of death; or who is so blind that he cannot see, that he looked for all these things when he should appear before the judgment seat of Christ in company with the Saints at the epoch of their resurrection? He took no account of the period of his unconsciousness in the grave; but connected the present with the future as continuous, which they are in fact to the generations of the living, by whom alone any interval is perceived at all, and that only in relation to the dead. The living perceive the lapse of time between dying and rising again; but the dead do not.
We shall now conclude this exegesis of the passage before us by the following paraphrase of the text: For we know that if our mortal body be dissolved in the dust, we are to receive a new body and a new habitation, a building from God, a house not made with hands, enduring in the New Heavens. For in the midst of the things which are seen we groan, earnestly desiring that our habitation which is from heaven may be clothed upon us: if so be that being raised and appearing before the tribunal of Christ we shall not be found naked or destitute of the wedding garment. For we that are surrounded by the things seen and temporal do groan, being burdened: not that we desire to enter the death state by being unclothed or divested even of mortal life, but clothed upon by putting on immortality, that mortality may be swallowed up of life. Now he that has begotten in us this earnest desire and hope is God, who has given us the spirit as the earnest of what we shall receive at the coming of the Lord. We are therefore always confident, having full assurance of faith, knowing that whilst we who believe are mortal, we are absent from the Lord: (for while absent we walk by faith, not by sight:) we are full of hope, I say, and rejoice rather to be delivered from mortality, and to be present with the Lord. Wherefore we labor, that whether present at his tribunal or absent from it, we may be accepted of him. For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ: that every one may receive the things in body, according to that he hath done, good or bad.
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THE GEHENNA OF FIRE—ENTERING MAIMED INTO LIFE—“SON OF HELL”—“TONGUE SET ON FIRE OF HELL”—THE WORM THAT DIES NOT—SHEOL—HELL—SORROWS OF HELL.
There is one text in the letter of our second Newark correspondent we have not yet alluded to. This is Matthew 18: 8. But as other passages bearing upon the same subject have occupied the minds of others, we shall present them for consideration at this time in the words of the following extract of correspondence:
Pleasant Valley, Scott Co., Iowa.
Dear Brother:
There are two churches of what I would term “Campbellite Disciples” in this region; and a third about twelve miles off in the country. They don’t wish to have much to do with the Herald. The Universalists are attracting the attention of the people hear more than any others. They have a preacher at $400 * a year, beside which, I am told, “a donation party” presented him with $150 or $200 in money; so much do they “honor” the man who preaches smooth things to them, and cries “peace and safety,” when sudden destruction is at the door. He is a pretty good speaker in his way; able to say what he desires to speak in a strong and pointed manner. In a discourse the other day on the words in Matthew 10, “Fear not them who kill the body” &c., he asserted that the word “Gehenna” was nowhere used in the Old Testament; and that the Gentiles were never threatened with “hell-fire,” or a destruction in Gehenna. I would like to have particular information on this matter; and to know the meaning of the texts, “The wicked shall be turned into Hell”—Psalm 9: 17; “Let them go down quick into Hell”—Psalm 55: 15; “the sorrows of hell compassed me”—Psalm 18: 4-5; Isaiah 14: 15. It would be a particular satisfaction to me to know what to say on this subject in conversation; and it would tend, I believe, to relieve some from embarrassment.
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* Four hundred dollars with presents is quite a moderate hire. The Rev’d James Henshall, late “Campbellite-Disciple” preacher in this city, we understand, received $800, besides funeral and marriage fees. This was a more profitable business than hammering on the lapstone. He enjoyed this stipend, or thereabouts, for several years; and was enabled to support his family “respectably” and to buy property. The present incumbent, the Rev. R. L. Coleman, editor of the “Christian Intelligencer,” we are informed, commenced where his predecessor left off. He had not been here long, however, before he told the leaders that he would not preach for them unless they gave him $1000 a year. They agreed; and Mr. C. remains. We labored two years and a half at the same house without fee, and these divines have entered into our labor and found rest.
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The same speaker asserted also in the same discourse, that it was the Roman power the Saviour instructed his disciples to fear, since that they only had power to put men to death; whereas the Jews had power only to torture or distress the body, as he explained the term “kill” in the text. He affirmed also that men were nowhere commanded in the Bible to fear God; but rather to put their trust in him.
The Universalist preacher has made considerable effort to establish his notions in this section, and has thus far succeeded to a great extent; but his progress will probably be stopped. Very many stumbling blocks have been placed before him in the form of texts to preach from. The last presented and preached from was, “Enter in at the strait gate.” This was his hardest effort. He said that “the strait gate” and narrow way was the entrance into the Kingdom of Christ then established on earth through faith and obedience to the gospel, in doing justly, and so fulfilling the golden rule; and the broad way to destruction was the way that led to the destruction of the Jews at Jerusalem. But the way to heaven was a broad and free way, which was Jesus Christ through the resurrection! This was a desperate effort. I have handed him in the question, “Does the scripture teach a redemption from the Second Death?” He has since announced that he will deliver two discourses on the Second Death, founded on a part of Revelation 20; but he has not shown a disposition to take the question as it stands.
What I should like to know is this, whether there is to be found in the original of the Old Testament, terms of expressions indicating retribution in the world beyond death? When you have an opportunity please give us something on the subject. Do you know that Dr. Gatchel of Cincinnati has turned Universalist?
Your’s affectionately,
E. D.
The passage to which our Newark friend refers reads thus, “Woe to the world because of delusions (skandala;) for there is a necessity that delusions come: but woe to that man through whom the delusion cometh. Wherefore if thy hand, or thy foot ensnare thee cut them off and cast them from thee; it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands and two feet to be cast into the enduring fire (eis to pur to aionion).” In the next verse the place of the fire is mentioned in these words, “into the Gehenna of the fire (eis teen geenan tou puros.” The parallel text in Mark 9: 42-49, is expressed somewhat differently. In two verses it reads “enter into life,” and in a third “enter into the kingdom of God,” expressions which are explanatory one of the other: for no man can enter into life eternal unless he enter the kingdom of God. Mark’s phraseology concerning the fire also varies from Matthew’s. He calls the Gehenna of enduring fire, an inextinguishable fire. His words are, “It is better to enter into (eiselthein) the life maimed than having two hands to go away into (apellt ein eis) the Gehenna, into the fire inextinguishable—eis teen Geenan, eis to pur to asbeston.” In the common version asbeston is rendered “never to be quenched.” This, however, is not correct. Asbeston is a neuter adjective and simply expresses a quality, not the time of the fire’s continuance. It was a judicial fire Jesus was speaking of, and of that fiery judgment he affirmed that it was inextinguishable, that is, by any other power than God’s. Mark also adds that the judgment occurs in Gehenna “where their worm does not end, and the fire is not put out.” This our Lord repeated thrice to give it emphasis.
Luke in recording the same incident says nothing about Gehenna, worm, and fire; but stops short in his report at the end of Mark 9: 42, saying that it is better for the deceiver “that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.”
The Gehenna of the fire is styled by Jesus in Matthew 23: 33, the Judgment of the Gehenna—krisis tees geennees—tendered in the English version “the damnation of hell.” The Gehenna-judgment of fire was denounced upon the “serpents and generation of vipers” in Israel. Malachi predicted it; John and Jesus proclaimed its approach; the apostles preached the “judgment to come,” and some of them witnessed it in the dissolution of the order of things constituted by the Mosaic code. The judgment of Gehenna was the day of the Lord upon the forty-second generation of Abraham’s descendants. “His furnace was in Jerusalem,” and when it came the day burned as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that did wickedly, were stubble; and they were burned up, so that the day left them neither root nor branch. For that generation filled up the measure of their fathers; so that upon them came the national punishment due for all the righteous blood that had been shed upon the land from Abel to Zachariah son of Barachias whom they slew during the siege of their city by the Romans. —Malachi 4: 1; Matthew 23: 34-39.
The Judgment of Gehenna was the Baptism of Fire with which John the Baptist said the Messiah would overwhelm the Pharisees and Sadducees, and their factions in the state. “O generation of vipers,” said he to them, “who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Think not to say within yourselves, ‘We have Abraham to our father.’ The axe is now laid to the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. There standeth one among you, whom ye know not, he shall baptise you with fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat in his garner; but he will burn up the chaff with fire inextinguishable.” The enemies of the Lord Jesus in Israel were the stubble, the trees bearing bad fruit, and the chaff of his land or floor. He came to bring fire, and division, and a sword upon the land that every offender might be eradicated from his kingdom’s territory. “His fire was in Zion and his furnace in Jerusalem”—Isaiah 31: 9; Matthew 13: 34-39; and into this burning oven he cast the trees of unrighteousness by the Romans as his messengers of destruction, where their worm or anguish ceased not, and the fire of his indignation was unquenched.
Gehenna is the Hebrew name for a valley outside the wall of Jerusalem on the south-east. It is compounded of two words pronounced ge Hinnom, the valley of Hinnom, and is first mentioned in the scriptures in Joshua 15: 8. It should never be rendered by the word “hell,” especially in the sectarian sense of the word. Dr. George Campbell says “that Gehenna is employed in the New Testament to denote the place of future punishment prepared for the devil and his angels, is indisputable. In the Old, however, we do not find this place in the same manner mentioned.” But the Doctor did not understand the prophets; therefore his judgment cannot be received as “indisputable” in the case. The devil and his angels are no where said to be cast into Gehenna: but into an enduring fire far off from the land of Israel.
In the nineteenth chapter Jeremiah is commanded by the Lord to go forth into Gai-ben-Hinnom, the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the east gate, and prophecy there against the kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. He charges them with having burned incense in it to other gods; with having filled it with the blood of innocents; and with having burned their sons with fire as offerings unto Baal there. Because of these horrible crimes he tells them that the place should no more be called Tophet, nor Gehenna, but the Valley of Slaughter. And they shall bury them in Tophet till there be no place to bury. This was the judgment of Gehenna executed upon Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, and nearly 700 years afterwards by the Romans.
With the popular notions about the kingdom of God it is not possible to interpret the passages before us in Matthew and Mark. How can a man enter eternal life in a kingdom beyond the skies one-eyed, or maimed, as the result of losing an eye or a hand; does the loss of a member of the body extend to what is called “the immortal soul?” This question is unanswerable. The texts cannot be explained on any other grounds than of the doctrine we teach; but upon this all difficulty disappears. Thus, when Jesus spoke the words it was expected that the kingdom was about to be set up by the God of heaven in the land of Israel immediately. Had this been the case it would have been contemporary with the forty-second generation to which the words were addressed. Now if the eye, hand, or foot, or any thing equally dear, belonging to one or more of that generation, had caused them to offend, and they had acted literally upon that advice, they would have been halt, maimed, or one-eyed, contemporarily with two events—first, with the judgment of Gehenna, which was to precede the setting up of the kingdom; and secondly, with the establishment of the kingdom itself. Had they preferred to retain the cause of offence, they would have been cast whole into the Zion-fire, and Jerusalem-furnace by the Roman power; but casting it from them, and taking heed to the signs of the coming of the Son of Man, they would have escaped the descending wrath of heaven, and have been prepared for entrance into the kingdom, maimed or halt, should it have been set up in their life-time. Had this been the case, the maimed, the halt, and the one-eyed would have been operated upon by the Spirit of God, which would have changed them in the twinkling of an eye into whole, incorruptible, and angelic men. Their eyes, hands, and feet would have been restored to them, by the same power that will restore the mouldering dust of former beings to its rightful possessors. Thus they would have entered maimed into the life of the kingdom, but would not have continued so, being made whole by the Spirit of God.
Gehenna and Tophet have reference to the same valley. Hinnom’s Valley was called Tophet from the beating of the Toph, or drum, to drown the cries of the burning infants by its noise. Gehenna occurs twelve times in the New Testament. In two of these the use of it is figurative but singularly expressive. The proselytes of the Pharisees to their traditions are said to be twofold more sons of Gehenna than themselves. The Pharisees were heirs of the judgment in Gehenna; any proselyte of their’s would therefore be heir of it too as their disciple, and also by his own practice. The leaven of the heirs of the Gehenna-judgment set on fire the unruly tongues of those who set up for teachers in the Jewish congregations. They taught the concision of the believing Pharisees who sought to blend the gospel and the law that the offence of the cross might cease. Now these were some of the men through whom scandals came, and upon whom Jesus pronounced the woe of Gehenna-fire. Their doctrine was a deadly poison, a wisdom that was earthly, sensual, and devilish, producing envying and strife, confusion and every evil work. So that the tongue that worked out such results was said to be “set on fire of Gehenna.”—James 3: 6. “Where their worm dieth not.” This is affirmed in scripture of carcasses as the reader may see by turning to Isaiah 66: 24. The undying existence of the worm is bounded by the duration of the body. Antiochus, king of Syria, was eaten of worms while alive. His worm did not die. If it had, he might have recovered his health; but it died not, therefore he died a miserable death.
It is true that the Gentiles are not threatened with the fire of Gehenna in the Testaments, Old and New. The armies of the nations, however, are threatened with destruction in the Valley of Jehoshaphat which is continuous with the Valley of Gehenna; and the nations themselves with hailstones, fire and brimstone, and a burning tempest. As to the dead, those who are raised partake in the same torment in the regions whither they are commanded to “depart.” In this way “the wicked will be turned into Sheol”—Psalm 9: 17, but not into Gehenna; sheol being the word used in that place, as well as in the other texts referred to by “E. D.”
There has been a great deal of controversy aforetime about this word sheol; some contending that it means simply a grave, or sepulchre, in particular; others the grave in general; and others again “the place of departed spirits,” and exactly rendered into Greek by hades. “Taken by itself,” says Dr. George Campbell, “we have no word in our language that answers to sheol;” yet he says, “I freely acknowledge that by translating sheol the grave, the purport of the sentence is often expressed with sufficient clearness.” It can, however, only be fully rendered by the sentiment. The Doctor adduces the text in Genesis as an evidence that grave will answer in many places; as, “Ye will bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.” Here, he says, “it undoubtedly gives the meaning of the sentence in the original, notwithstanding that the English word grave does not give the meaning of the Hebrew word sheol.” He argues that sheol means more than grave from the saying of God by Moses, “A fire is kindled in mine anger which shall burn to the lowest hell,” or sheol. He admits, however, that it is here used hyperbolically; but contends that the hyperbole is based upon something deeper, more profound, or ample than the word grave implies.
The doctor is unquestionably right in saying that sheol means more than grave, but he is wrong in maintaining that it signifies the place of the living ghosts of dead men both good and bad. He admits that tsalmoth, shadow of death, rendered hades by the Seventy, is ordinarily synonymous with sheol, and is sometimes used metaphorically for a very dark place, or a state of great ignorance. This is true, and indicates the condition of the dead, both good and bad, in sheol and hades; and is in strict accordance with Solomon’s doctrine, who was second only in wisdom and knowledge to the Lord Jesus. He says, “there is no knowledge nor wisdom in sheol,” and that the dead there “know not any thing.” It is testimony, and not speculation—the declaration of Holy Writ, and not rhetorical, philological, and mythological disquisitions, by which such words in scripture must be defined. The revelation itself shows, that sheol is the death-state subsequently to the corruption of the body in the grave. If it be asked, “how came the word sheol to be applied to this dissolved state of the body?” We answer because the body is then in question, and the noun sheol is derived from the verb shaal to ask, or to make inquisition. Thus, the body, or a dead man, in sheol, may be said to be in two states—first, entire and undecomposed; and secondly, resolved into dust. In the former he is simply in keber, the grave or sepulchre, and in bor the pit; but in the latter, his keber is barkthai bor in the sides of the pit; and they who deposited him in the keber or sepulchre, looking in some time afterwards and not seeing him, ask the question “Where is he?” The not seeing him is expressed by hades, which signifies his invisibility; and the inquisition after him, by sheol which imports that he was sought, or asked for, because of his disappearance. Abraham is not only in keber, but in sheol, in tzalmoth, and in barkthai bor. If a person were told he was in the cave of Machpelah, and were to look in to see, he would say “where is he, I see him not?” Because Abraham is thus in question he is said to be in sheol.
Our old English word Hell is a derivative from the Saxon hillan or helan to hide, or from holl a cavern, and anciently denoted the concealed or unseen place of the dead in general. Hell has lost its original meaning, and comes now to represent a place of torment such as is found only in the mythologies of Greece and Rome. The arena of punishment is above, and not underground, among the living, and not the dead. When the wicked are turned into sheol, they will be sought for, and found no more; for, having then gone down to “the sides of the pit,” they will be but dust and ashes under the soles of the living’s feet, even as Adam was before the Lord formed him from the ground.
To “go down quick into hell,” sheol chayim, is to be seized with sudden and violent death. Judas, who is one of the persons referred to in the text, went into sheol living. Koran, Dathan, and Abiram, also “went down quick into the pit,” chayim sheol, living into death. Thus “they died not the common death of all men, nor were they visited after the visitation of all men;” this uncommon death is the scriptural idea of going down “quick into hell.”—Numbers 16: 29-33.
“The sorrows of hell.” The cheblai maveth and the cheblai sheol are interpreted by the facts recorded of Jesus. When he was suspended on the cross, and surrounded by the multitudes, he was compassed by the cheblai maveth, or “sorrows of death;” but when he was laid in the keber of Joseph of Arimathea, he was compassed about by the cheblai sheol, or “sorrows of hell,” and prevented by the mokshai maveth, or “snares of death,” which held him as in a trap. Cheblai are pains in general; also bonds.
The strength of Universalism and of sectarian theology in general, not excluding Campbellism, is the ignorance of the people in regard to the things noted in the scriptures of the prophets. The New Testament doctrine of rewards and punishments is nothing more than an allusive reproduction of the Old Testament teaching on the subject. Being ignorant of the kingdom, they are of necessity in the dark concerning every thing else. They know nothing as they ought to know it. Before their sayings can be treated with any more respect than the sayings of children, they must go back to the a, b, c, and make themselves acquainted with the first principles and elements of things. The Universalist pleases those who hire him. This is his business, as it is the business of all other rival teachers. They are all Babel builders alike, hindering and interrupting one another in their work. Their tower will never become the Holy City. Universalists become Campbellites and Campbellites, Universalists, like Dr. Gatchel. It matters not. We are surprised at nothing. Men ignorant of the prophets are liable to turn anything that may suit the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. It would no ways astonish us if Master Aleck himself were to make a somerset in that direction, if such a change were found to be expedient!
There are not only Hebrew terms and expressions, but English ones also, in the Old Testament, indicating retribution in the world beyond death. Here is one place in Daniel 12: 1-2. Speaking of the time when the Little Horn of the Goat “shall come to his end, and none shall help him,” that is, when the Stone strikes the Image, the Spirit says that Daniel’s people, the Jews, shall be delivered; and that “many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt”—lacharaphoth lediron olam—to reproach and contempt unlimited, but not endless, save in the memory of the righteous, who will always hold the remembrance of them in abhorrence. Here is retribution beyond the first death to which certain attain by resurrection from among the dead in sheol. It will not do for Universalists to apply this text to the destruction of Jerusalem; for the Jews were not then “delivered,” but destroyed; when the awakening in Daniel occurs, their enemies will be destroyed, and they delivered. All of which is respectfully submitted to his readers by their friend the—EDITOR
“In argument with “the common people,” how do we substantiate the views we present on the great leading truths? Assuredly not by philological niceties, nor by laying the stress on mere words that look to teach a certain doctrine, but by masses of arguments from scripture that demonstrate the indispensableness of just such or such a view.”—Dobney.
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HERALD
OF THE
KINGDOM AND AGE TO COME.
RICHMOND, VA., JUNE, 1851.
AN IMPORTANT PRINCIPLE.
The reader will find in our first article a solution of certain matters hitherto unexplained by writers on the destiny and punishment of the wicked. We will only add here this principle to which his attention is particularly invited, namely, —that the rewards of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked are to be manifested in distinct countries of the earth, at two great crises of the world’s history, through events which are determined in relation to the Twelve Tribes of Israel. This principle understood as revealed in the Law and the Testimony will emancipate the inquirer from the “foolishness” of all the popular superstitions, which at present make up “the wisdom of the world:”—it is an axe laid to the root of the trees which hews them down and converts them into fuel to be burned.
ELPIS ISRAEL.
By the time this number of the Herald is in the hands of the reader, Elpis Israel will be passing through the press of a printing establishment in New York. We shall publish 1000 copies, and trust that those who profess to be interested in the Gospel of the Kingdom, who have not yet done according to their ability, will bestir themselves in obtaining circulation for them among the people. The American edition will be an improvement upon the London. The paper will be better; the plates will be worked off by steam; there will be a steel plate engraving of the author; and an additional preface containing our correspondence with the Russian ambassador in London, and our letter addressed to the Emperor with the copy of Elpis Israel forwarded to Baron Brunow for transmission to St. Petersburg. Though not sanguine of widely-extended and numerous combinations in the interests of the faith in these latter days of an expiring era, we are hopeful of deep and lasting impressions upon many minds through Elpis Israel, which shall strengthen to the promotion of the common cause against the enemy, and lead them in the way of righteousness that they may enter life in the kingdom of God. The circulation of a few thousand copies among the intelligent of the people, we doubt not, would produce a notable result in favor of the truth. It would create more real believers in the gospel of God than have been formed by all the preaching for the last thirty years. Here then is a work for them to do who profess to believe “the things of the Kingdom of God, and the Name of the Lord Jesus.” We have done our part. We have written the book, and published it at considerable risk in a foreign land, and are incurring further hazard in this; the least they can do who say they love the truth is to exert themselves in its favor. If they cannot leave their farms, or their merchandise, or their professions, as we do, to speak to the people all the words of this life, they are now left without an excuse in not circulating these words, seeing that the means are placed within their reach, and that they have nothing else to do but to put their hands into their pockets, where they have got secreted a good deal of the Lord’s treasure, and apply some of the “mammon of unrighteousness” to the purchase of Elpis Israel for gratuitous distribution to those who are inquiring what they must believe and do to inherit eternal life. It is true they have the scriptures; but they cannot understand them, and their preachers darken council by words without knowledge. Elpis Israel will enable men to understand the scriptures, and then the scriptures will make them wise to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. The disciples going to Emmaus, and the Apostles, had the scriptures, but it was necessary for their understandings to be opened before they could see into their meaning. —Luke 24: 45. The key of knowledge had been stolen from them by the scribes and lawyers, and Jesus restored it to them. They could then unlock the hidden mysteries of the word. So it is now. The people read, but they know not about what they read. The key restored by the Lord and published by his servants has been again lost, so that now when men read the Bible they know not whether they are reading of things in the Milky Way, or in “an intermediate state;” of things past or of things to come; or of things real or allegorical. The lost key is found in Elpis Israel; and though the faithlessness or incredulity and indifference of mankind keep them from enjoying the benefit of the discovery, to persons of “honest and good hearts” the discovery is a restoration, which has caused the hearts of such to burn within them while it opens to them the scriptures by the way. This is the desideratum of the age—a key to the understanding of the Bible. The thing desired is supplied in Elpis Israel. Will its friends do themselves the honor of “compelling” it into an extensive circulation, as the apostles compelled their contemporaries, by being instant in season and out of season, to come into the Lord’s House that it might be filled? Behold what the blind accomplish for the diffusion of their darkness to the utmost bounds of the habitable earth! Seventy-five millions of dollars have been subscribed for sectarian missionary purposes in England since the societies commenced. Even a few days ago in this city a young lady subscribed a hundred dollars, and an old man five thousand to send sectarianism to “heathen lands!” Such is the emulative liberality of the blind! Worthy indeed of a better cause. But from our experience of the effects of knowledge upon some, we apprehend, were they as enlightened as these, it would freeze up the sources of their bounty and congeal it into the solidity of selfish avarice. We remember hearing of an enlightened “reformer” in the west urging upon his friend the reception of Campbellism on account of its cheapness, saying that he had been a reformer twenty years, and in all that time his religion had only cost him twenty-five cents! What a miserable, parsimonious, creature was this! Talk of “souls,” surely such a soul as his was never a particle of the Divine Essence! But we are sorry to bear witness that there are souls who profess the gospel of the grace of God as covetous as his; and that it is such enlightened icicles as these that in appearance justify the saying, that “ignorance is the mother of devotion.” We would have liberality in the promotion of God’s truth spring from a self-denying appreciation of it. We feel that we have a right to speak plainly on this subject, for we have proved our faith by our works; and would stir up our friends to do more than we if they can. We have forsaken all for the promotion of the truth. Will our friends go and do likewise; or will they in proportion to their ability begin to do something that will shield them from shame and contempt when they shall appear before the tribunal of Christ. Let them not mistake. We ask them for no bounty for our own individual profit. We are not of that class who say, as certain preachers in town and country, “we will not preach for you unless you give us six hundred, or a thousand dollars a year.” Our advocacy of the truth does not depend upon any per annum. We are bound to advocate it as long as we can. Our anxiety is that the advocacy should be efficient; and as we cannot do all that needs to be done, and have friends who are abundantly able to do much, we desire to stir them up to a cooperation that shall not consist in mere words, but in deed and in truth. Here is Elpis Israel to their hand. If it remains inefficient it will be because of their lack of enterprise and liberality. Let them therefore see to it, for the Lord’s eye is upon all their ways, and all their thoughts and motives are known to him.
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THE EDITOR IN LUNENBURG.
We have been absent about twenty days during the last month in Lunenburg county, which is the reason of the late issue of the previous number. This section of Virginia has acquired considerable interest in connexion with the progress of the gospel in these United States. About a dozen or fifteen years ago it was literally in a state of heathenish darkness. Sectarianism in stolid imbecility reigned there in all the plenitude of infatuated ignorance of the Law and the Testimony; so that “religion” was but another name for the spiritless “piety” of a heartless formality. The incarnation of this unmental mysticism was pre-eminently discoverable in the Association which rejoiced in the leadership of the Rev’d. Silas Shelburn, and his colleagues of the night. The “pious” looked up to them as the very oracles of heaven, the droppings of whose ministrations made effectual by the concurrent work of the “Holy Ghost” upon the hearts of sinners, wore away the hardness of their impenitence, gave them a saving faith, a hope of pardon, and a “title clear to mansions in the skies!” This was truly the hour of darkness. Not even a farthing rushlight burned to irradiate a single soul. Shelburn and company were darkness manifest in the flesh, whose blackness assumed an intensity in the ratio of their presumption blindly to lead the blind. They had the scriptures among them it is true; but they read them, if they read at all, as one reads a book written in a language he does not understand. The key was lost, and there was none that could tell them where to find it. Thus the Kingdom was closed against them; for no man could tell them how to enter in.
Things might have continued in this deplorable condition till the advent of the King of Israel but for the benevolence of God. It would seem that he determined to cause the light to shine out of the darkness itself, by making the dark atoms of the system instrumental in its reflection. This, however, could not be accomplished all at once. Light was manifested on the first day, but the sun, moon, and stars did not appear until the fourth. The chaos was inveterate and almost unplastic, and required violence to be subdued; for it is a law of divine creation that the Spirit of God must “move,” before the “let be” of heaven’s will can be established. This movement commenced in the Pharaoh of the system being roused up that the truth of God might be manifested in his fall. The report of what was going on in other parts of Virginia between the Campbellites and the Baptists found its way to Lunenburg, where curiosity was excited, and a disposition to play with fire created. The consequence was that we received an invitation from Silas Shelburn to visit the Baptist churches there of which he was popeling, that they might by hearing us see if they could fellowship us. We accepted the invitation, stating that we would see if we could fellowship them. We went, and introduced the Campbellite gospel among them, that is, Baptism for the Remission of Sins to every one that confessed that Jesus is the Christ—this was the good news we preached to them from Acts 2: 38, in those “times of ignorance” when we affirmed what we had been taught—things, however, which neither we nor our teachers understood, which is the case with the latter until this day. Nevertheless, the commingled theory laid before them was a decided improvement upon the bare bones they had been picking for their spiritual sustenance with such patience and humble thankfulness for so many previous years. There was something tangible about it, for we could show that it was written “be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.” If therefore a man believed in Jesus and was immersed, we jumped to the conclusion that he had remission, and had obeyed the gospel of Christ. This is at once true and not true. It is true if a man believes in Jesus in the scripture sense of the phrase; it is not true, however, in the Campbellite and Baptist acceptation of it; yet the Campbellite definition of faith in Jesus is more distinct and rational than the alter-sectarian notion. We may remark here in passing, that to believe in Jesus is defined in the scriptures as believing in the “exceeding great and precious promises of God” and in Jesus as his son and heir; —in other words, “the things concerning the Kingdom of God and the Name of Jesus Christ.” But in those days darkness overshadowed our minds in relation to that kingdom. A kingdom was indeed talked about, but it was about such a kingdom as God has nowhere promised in the Law and the Testimony. We preached the gospel of the kingdom set up on the day of Pentecost; and taught the reception of men into the kingdom by confession that Jesus was the Son and Christ of God, sorrow for sin, and immersion into the name. Such a gospel as this, sustained by collateral arguments in favor of the necessity of reading the scriptures for ourselves, of their sufficiency to make us wise to salvation, of the obligation to “prove all things and to hold fast that which is good”—was the hearth of fire kindled in the wilderness to consume the thorns and briars of sectarianism which had brought the ground well nigh to cursing.
The introduction of Campbellism into Lunenburg made the dry bones rattle. It caused the dissolution of the Association of Baptist churches, and started questions among them which shook them to their foundations of sand. “If,” said they, “the belief that baptism is for the remission of sins to those who confess that Jesus is the Son and Christ of God, be the gospel, we have not believed it, we cannot have obeyed it; therefore, although we have been immersed we must be still sinners, and unsaved from our past sins.” This view of the matter originated the question of “re-immersion” among them. The subject was much agitated, and warmly discussed. Their leaders, who were men of remarkably rude and uncultivated minds, the exact counterpart, indeed, of the dilapidations, and agricultural ruin and impoverishment in the midst of which they respired the breath of life, —these began to perceive that in introducing Campbellism into their region they had warmed a serpent into existence that if not scotched without delay would slay them like Israel in the wilderness. They saw no deliverance except in worshipping the serpent whom they feared. They lifted up their eyes to him; for they had divined, that though Campbellism suggested the question of “re-immersion,” its supervisor was opposed to it. They became fervid Campbellites. They offered incense to the image in the west, and under the inspiration of the deity that resided in it, became valiant for the leaven of the scribes. Their policy prolonged their existence for a time, during which they labored diligently in their vocation of producing strife and every evil work. But, in spite of all their chicanery and hypocrisy their opposition was defeated, and the conviction thoroughly established that the gospel they had been preaching was no gospel at all, and that an immersion predicated on the belief of it was neither the obedience of faith, nor christian baptism.
While this controversy was in progress, the immortality of the soul attracted public interest. A week’s debate upon this subject at the Fork Church in Lunenburg, between the editor and a Presbyterian clergyman, established the conviction in many minds that man has no inherent immortality of any kind. They perceived that immortality, or “life and incorruptibility,” were a matter of promise, and part and parcel of the inheritance of the righteous only. With the dethronement of immortal-soulism, Campbellism began to decline rapidly in their esteem. They saw no difference between it and sectarianism in the hope it set before the people. It was as visionary upon the important subject of immortality as the systems it denounced. Its place of departed spirits, and kingdom of glory beyond the skies, both fell to the ground when Hymenean-Campbellism was deposed. In those days the sectarian gospel and the sectarian heaven and immortality received a blow in Lunenburg from which they can never recover themselves in this generation. The leaders aforesaid became exceedingly mad against us in consequence. The subjects discussed were too high for them. They could not grasp or comprehend them. They declaimed, they denounced, they raved, and blasphemed, but could not reason; for reason and testimony were both against them. They had recourse to all sorts of meanness and intrigue; but in every effort they were foiled, defeated, and exposed. Campbellism had ruined Baptistism in their circuit, so that all that remained to them was to hold on to the former though itself in the article of death.
As it may be supposed, the discussion of these questions kept up an appearance of life in the religious community to which the non-professors themselves were not indifferent. In 1839, we removed to Illinois where we remained about four years. There was a lull in the controversial tempest, during which the leaders had an opportunity of obtaining aid and comfort from deserters and allies from abroad. They hired “evangelists” at several hundreds per annum to preach Campbellism, and union with the Baptists. One of the hirelings was quite successful for a time in his vocation. Being a sort of trumpet, or “sounding brass,” he made a great noise, which not a few mistook for gospel. While his blasts were echoing in their ears they had peculiar sensations, which they supposed were convictions of the truth. As getting people into the water was regarded as the triumph of the gospel, all efforts were directed to this end. ‘Water,’ therefore, was continually tinkling in their ears like the jingle of a cymbal; so that in going down into the water in all their ignorance, they imagined they were obeying the truth! The consequences of yielding to senseless sounds instead of calm conviction of the truth soon became apparent. Collapse succeeded excitement; and death, the fitful fever that plunged them in the cooling stream.
When we returned from Illinois these sounding brasses stirred up their proselytes against us, and tried their strength for our seclusion from the field of their hireling operations. But they were beaten on every point, and put to open shame. At this stage of affairs no principle was in debate. Re-immersion, and immortality the gift of God only to the righteous, had triumphed; but the tactics of the enemy were changed. Their energies were concentrated in a personal attack upon us, and in an endeavor to exclude from their churches all who would not countenance them in their iniquity. But even in this encounter they were put to the rout, and their intrigues circumvented at every point. They were baffled, confounded, mortified; and have found it more to their advantage to retire from the scene of action into that original and more congenial obscurity from which they ought never to have emerged.
It may easily be conceived that while all this controversy and party conflict was waging in their midst a great deal of interest would seem to be manifested in the truth. This was “life” and “heat” of a certain kind. “The meetings of the brethren” were well attended, and they sung and rejoiced together as though they were actually sitting down together enjoying “spiritual blessings in the heavenlies.” But how changed the appearances of things at the present time. Mr. Campbell represents them as a withered, scattered, and dying flock. If the churches under consideration be so it is the work of his spirit incarnate in the rude corpuscles which had been working mischief there for so long a time. Through them he destroyed Baptistism to some extent, and reacted upon his own system which he also wounded unto death. While the burning fuel consumed the victim it exhausted itself by its own fires. This is the relation of Baptistism and Campbellism in Lunenburg. There is no life or heat in either; they are merely the exhausted and dying embers of a desolating conflagration. They lie side by side like bleeding warriors, enfeebled, helpless, and expiring on the field. Their end is come, and this is their obituary. Their collisions have resulted in good; for the spirit of God has moved upon the face of the waters, and light has sprung forth.
Till 1847 the previous controversies had been preparing the way for the Gospel of the Kingdom. Hitherto the lightning and the thunder, the tempest and the earthquake had awakened the minds of many, and predisposed them to give ear to “the still small voice of truth.” The study of the scriptures necessitated by the position we had found ourselves in during previous years had opened up to us “the things of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ.” We discovered that these things as a whole constituted the Gospel and its Mystery, or the glad tidings and conditions upon which “the joy of the Lord” might be entered upon. We saw clearly that the popular or Gentile sense of the saying that “Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God,” was not the gospel; that repentance was not sorrow for sin, nor reformation; but a faithful and hopeful, a humble, childlike, and obedient disposition, such as Abraham exhibited when he believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness; that remission of sins was not promised to the Gentiles on a simple confession that Jesus was what he claimed to be; but upon a repentant belief in the things of the Covenant, and in Jesus as “the Messenger of the Covenant;” that baptism in the Campbellite sense was not for the remission of sins; but for the union of a repentant believer in the whole gospel to the name of Jesus, in which uniting action his disposition was granted to him for repentance, and his faith counted to him for remission, in that exalted and omnipotent name. We saw that the Gentile hope of a heaven beyond the skies for immortal souls was not the hope of the gospel, but no hope at all, because it was false, being nowhere taught in the word of God. These things being apparent, we saw that Campbellism was a mere pioneer of truth, and not the truth itself. We therefore renounced it as a thing which had answered its appointed end, and destined thenceforth to fall into the rear, and to be numbered among its antagonists as a thing of nought. Like all other sects, exhausted and dead, its work being fully accomplishes, it exists only as a monument of the past to point a moral and adorn a tale. Having put off this legend and embraced the faith, we introduced the gospel of the kingdom to Lunenburg. Its light shone into the hearts of several, while others were staggered by the announcement. Its effects have been characteristic of the truth. It began the work of separating the wheat from the chaff. Where it found “an honest and good heart,” a soil congenial to the good seed, the word of the kingdom put forth its radicles and shot upwards above the ground; but where the soil was stony, thin, and thorny, the hearing of the word was attended with withering, choking, and death. Churches were dissolved, “the meetings of the brethren” suspended, and numbers scattered themselves to their tents, as if they had no further interest in the Son of Jesse, or in his kingdom and throne. To them who walk by sight and not by faith this state of things had the appearance of desolation and ruin. But in this they err, not discerning the true nature of things. The former things were corrupt before God and needed to be abolished, before a wholesome and scriptural system could be established. The dispersion that came upon them will afford scope for the manifestation of the approved; who, we trust, will shine brighter and brighter to the perfect day. The enlightening and exaltation of the human mind is a long and tedious process. It is like the growth of trees, gradual and perceptible only after a lapse of years, as in the case before us. That process has been made in Lunenburg during the past fourteen or fifteen years is visible to every one who is acquainted with things as they are and as they were when we first visited the county. Then there were none that knew the truth; but now there are many, though even these are but in the infancy of spiritual life.
Since our departure to England, with the exception of one or two visits from our friend and brother in the faith, Albert Anderson of Caroline, no culture has been bestowed upon them. They have been left to their own resources, which they have not availed themselves of as abundantly as they might. They promise amendment in this respect; and we do earnestly hope that as the time allotted to them is short they will awake from their slumber, and gird themselves to meet the King in power and great glory. As we have said, we visited them during the past month, and talked to the people about twenty-four hours altogether on the kingdom and name of Christ. At Ledbetter and Good Hope the houses were unable to hold the numbers assembled, though there were meetings around us on every side. At Concord and Lunenburg Court House the assemblies were small; also at Forest Hill, a meeting house belonging to the Presbyterians, which they very readily and politely granted to us for the occasion. We confess that things appeared flat and lukewarm among our old friends, which, however, may be more apparent than real. The contrast to us is very great after the scenes we have passed through during our sojourn in Britain. The spirit of partyism is happily laid and extinguished; but this is no reason why the friends of the truth should become lukewarm. Of all persons under the sun they have the greatest reason to be warm-hearted, alive and vigorous. If on examination they have found that they are not in the faith, let them be up and doing, and obtain the answer of a good conscience towards God. Let them think of and devote themselves less to the present evil world; let them gird up the loins of their mind, and be men; and let them go to work in earnest, labouring and striving to enter into that rest which remains for the people of God. Our patience is greatly exercised. We have labored many years for the illumination and improvement of the people of Lunenburg. To what extent our endeavors have been effective we cannot yet see; we do hope, however, that those who say they see, will respond to the sentiment that He whom they profess to serve expects that every man will do his duty.
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From the Family Herald.
FOREIGN EXILES IN ENGLAND.
England is a city of refuge for discomfited politicians; Kings, Prime Ministers, Provisional Governors, Prefects of Police, Socialists, and Mountaineers, all come to England when things go hard with them at home. Here they rest, and here they write books and publish periodicals, and carry on their respective movements with the pen, when their swords are broken or taken from them, rusted or pawned.
At present we have exiles from all European nations, —French, German, Italian, Austrian, Hungarian, Portuguese, Spanish and Polish; and here they have all their respective coteries—legitimist, monarchical, salic, and democratical. Here, they cherish their respective hopes and cheer one another as best they can; and endeavor to convince their countrymen and us that God is on their side, and that truth, justice, and they must assuredly conquer at last.
Each thinks the other wrong! How strange it would be if they were all right!
The democratic exiles have formed a committee in London, which they call the Central European Democratic Committee of all Nations, at the head of which we find the names of Ledru Rollin for France, Joseph Mazzini for Italy, Arnold Ruge for Germany, and Albert Darasz for Poland. This committee and its constituency have started a periodical in London, for the purpose of disseminating the principles of the gospel of republicanism and socialism. It is called the Proscrit, and appears once a month, with a series of articles having the names of their respective writers appended. The writers are all men of distinction and talent, men who have taken an active part in the democratical and insurrectionary movements of their respective countries. The articles, therefore, may be said to contain the very cream of continental republican philosophy. Joseph Mazzini is a host in himself; as a writer his talent is very great. He has the art of expressing his own ideas in a terse, vivid and captivating style. His pen is eloquent, and his mind is well-trained—historically, logically, poetically, and rhetorically—for giving the best possible effect to the philosophy which he represents, Ledru Rollin is evidently a man of talent, notwithstanding all his Gallican absurdities, his French patriotism, and self-blinding hatred of England. The rest of the party, of whom we know less, but whose articles in the Proscrit all seem to be draughts from the same well of philosophy, and distinguished by the same peculiarity of logical idealism which characterises all the political philosophy of the Continent, are men who, if they do not represent the great Democratical Party as thinkers, have at least advanced themselves to distinction as actors, and aimed at the honors, if not the emoluments, of Tribunes of the People.
Each of these national representatives, perhaps, regards his own country as containing the Gordian knot of the great social problem. Mazzini says, “In Italy, then, is the knot of the European question; to Italy* (See next page) the solemn work of emancipation belongs. And Italy will accomplish the work which civilisation has committed to her. Then the nations will hasten to range themselves round another principle. Then the south of Europe will be placed in equilibrium with the north. Italy resuscitated will enter the European family. Oh, how solemn her awakening will be! She will then have awakened three times since Rome, in falling, arrested the march of ancient, and became the cradle of modern civilisation. The first time, there arose from Italy a voice which substituted spiritual European liberty for the triumph of material force. The second time, she spread throughout the world the civilisation of arts and letters. The third time, she will blot out, with her powerful finger, the creed of the Middle Ages, and substitute social unity for the old spiritual unity. It is from Rome, then, that must come, for the third time, the word of modern unity; for it is from Rome alone that the absolute destruction of the old unity can proceed.”
* This is not God’s view of the matter. It is not “to Italy,” but to Jehovah’s servant the Branch,” with the Twelve Tribes of Israel as his “battle-axe and weapons of war,” the terrible work of the world’s social and political regeneration belongs—Editor.
Ledru Rollin, as is natural for a Frenchman, looks merely to France, which, he says, is a full century in advance of every other nation in civilisation. Consequently, a hundred years hence, our Ledru Rollins will be exiles in Paris, publishing a Proscrit for the English, to stir up the baffled insurgents of the British Isles. Is that what he means? Or does he mean that France, when resuscitated under the Rollin regime, will take England under her protection, and make her one of her maids of honor in the republican palace of the world, and cause her to leap one hundred years in advance in the course of one revolution of the sun? We know not. But we think it strange that the land which is so far in advance of other nations should ostracise the very best of her sons, and give the sceptre of her power into the hands of men who restore and support the mediaeval supremacy of Rome, withhold from the people and the press the Anglo-Saxon privilege of free discussion, imprison and fine the publisher of the Proscrit for its very first number, and travel back blindfold to the old-fashioned principle of brute force and military ascendancy.
There must be some mistake here. It is very natural for a Frenchman to look upon France as the mother of civilisation, and to regard her ascendancy and her preceptorship as complete. But patriotism, like hatred, is a blinding principle; and as Ledru Rollin, himself, has well remarked, in one of his articles in the Proscrit, it has a tendency to narrow the sphere of a man’s thoughts and aspirations in behalf of humanity. For this very reason he congratulates himself and his democratical brethren on the fact, that that very proscription which was intended to crush and destroy them, will, ultimately, tend to strengthen their cause, by enlarging their sympathies in exile, and converting the patriotic movements of isolated nations into one great universal movement of nations combined.
Each nation, in this case, therefore, must have its peculiar mission. Surely France cannot teach everything or do everything. She is merely part of a whole. Frenchmen are too apt to regard her as the whole itself. Every Frenchman that so regards her is in a delusion, and every revolution that he makes under the influence of this delusion will prove a failure.
Has England no mission as well as France? Is she alone an outcast from the plan of Providence? What makes all these men come over to England to conduct their schemes of universal restoration? Why should the democratical committee of all nations find greater security on English soil than on any other soil? Is there no meaning in this? Both Rollin and Mazzini are in the habit of looking abstractly at facts as the representatives of living principles of providential agency. What is the meaning of this fact? Is it not that in England, and in England alone, can be found that universality which is indispensable to settle the great controversies of the world?
Mazzini says the knot is in Rome, because the Pope is there. But this is only part of the knot. The downfall of the Pope would not settle the question. The Pope was put down in England long ago, and yet it seems that England is a hundred years behind France! But the Pope, being a religious idea, can only be put down by another religious idea, and where is the religious idea that Mazzini would substitute? Mazzini respects the religious feeling, and never fails to reveal it in his writings. He says, “Without religion political science can produce nothing but despotism or anarchy.” But where is his substitute for Popery? “God in the people!” That’s all; and what is that? God in a hundred heads, and that is a hundred gods. Popery is God in one, at least it fain would be so.
It is an old question, as old as the world—this one and many. It is the great controversy of human society: our religion and our politics all come out of it. The Jews represent the ONE in religion, the Gentiles represent the MANY. Jews worshipped one God, Gentiles many gods. Even the Christian Trinity is a Gentile idea, and the Roman saints and images are all Gentile ideas, and Mazzini himself is a representative of Gentilism. He swears by t