not necessarily associated
with that of sin, and actually precedes it both historically and
psychologically, but it cannot be gainsaid that in Christian thought
the desirability of finding some means of escaping or minimising the
punishment of sin has tended to overshadow everything else in popular
presentations of the Atonement. But what is the punishment of sin, and
who administers it? What is the Judgment and when does it take effect?
How does Salvation stand related to punishment and judgment? What has
Death to do with the matter? What are we to understand by Heaven and
Hell, and what is the bearing of either upon Salvation and Judgment?
Everyone knows how popular evangelical theology would answer these
questions. Sin, we are told, will be punished in a future life by the
committal of the impenitent soul to everlasting torment. Salvation is
primarily a means of escaping this, and secondarily being conformed
gradually to the moral likeness of the Saviour. Judgment is a grand
assize, which will take place when the material world comes to an end;
Jesus Christ will be the Judge, and will apportion everlasting weal or
woe, according as the soul has or has not claimed the benefit of His
redeeming work in time to profit by it. Death is the dividing line
beyond which the destiny is fixed eternally whether we die old or
young. Heaven is the place into which the redeemed enter--whether
after death or after judgment has never been clearly settled--there to
praise God eternally in perfect happiness; Hell is the place of never
ending torment to which unbelievers are to be consigned.

Now it does not require a very profound intelligence to see that
popular theology is a mass of contradictions in regard to these things.
By eternal the ordinary Christian usually means everlasting; why should
punishment be everlasting? The worst sin that was ever sinned does not
deserve everlasting punishment, and I have never yet met the Christian
who would really and truly be willing to see a fellow-creature undergo
it. There is no understandable sense in which justice could demand
such a terrible sentence, even if it involved no more than everlasting
unhappiness; how much more unthinkable it becomes if the punishment is
to be everlasting, fiendish torment! If Salvation is first and
foremost deliverance from this punishment, how is it that it does not
take effect immediately? Justice would suggest that it ought to do so,
for some sinn