d.

(3) The theory of Conditional Immortality--that all souls who fail of
Eternal Life shall be punished not by Everlasting Torment, but by
annihilation and the loss of God and Heaven for ever.

At first sight it seems almost impossible that such conflicting
theories could be formed out of the same Bible. But a little
consideration of the evidence and of the power of prejudice and
preconceptions in estimating evidence makes it easier to understand.

The main trend of all Scripture teaching is that it shall be well,
gloriously well, with the good, and that it shall be evil, unutterably
evil, with the wicked. That there is a mysterious and awful malignity
attaching to sin--that to be in sin means to be in misery and ruin in
this life or any other life--and that sin persisted in tends to utter
and irretrievable ruin. No arguments about the love and power of God
to save to the uttermost can cancel the fact of the free-will of man or
the plain statements of Scripture confirmed beyond question by the
loving Lord Himself as to the awful fate of the finally impenitent.

But running through all this dark background of Scripture is a curious
golden thread of prophecy that evil shall not be eternal in God's
universe. One turns to it perplexed with wondering hope. For however
fully Conscience recognizes the righteousness of a terrible retribution
for sin, there is in all thoughtful minds a shrinking from the thought
that Evil shall be as permanent as Good in the universe of the All-holy
God--that any evil power can exist unendingly side by side with Him and
unendingly resist Him; that Hell and Heaven, Satan and God shall
co-exist for all eternity. This is almost unthinkable to thoughtful
men. It is a Dualism repugnant to all our ideals of God. And this
golden thread, running through the Old and New Testaments alike,
confirms this thought, in its dim vision of a golden age somewhere away
in the far future--away it would seem beyond the dark vision of
Hell--when evil shall have vanished out of the Universe for ever and
"God shall be all in all" (1 Cor. xv. 28)--when there shall come "the
times of the Restoration of all things which God hath promised by the
mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began" (Acts iii. 21).

Naturally there is danger of people emphasizing strongly either one of
these trends of Scripture and gathering certain proof texts according
to their own prejudices and preconceptions of what ou