t and the victory won; and it will stand with spreading favor
as long as there are unenslaved and cultivated minds in the world.
This position is, in logical necessity, and as a general thing in
fact, that of the large though loosely cohering body of believers
known as "Liberal Christians;" and it is tacitly held by still
larger and ever growing numbers nominally connected with sects
that officially eschew it with horror. The result of the studies
and discussions associated with this principle, so far as it
relates to the subject before us, has been the rejection of the
following popular doctrines: the plenary inspiration of the
Scriptures as an ultimate authority in matters of belief;
unconditional predestination; the satisfaction theory of the
vicarious atonement; the visible second coming of Christ, in
person, to burn up the world and to hold a general judgment; the
intermediate state of souls; the resurrection of the body; a local
hell of material fire in the bowels of the earth; the eternal
damnation of the wicked. These old dogmas,15 scarcely changed,
still remain in the stereotyped creeds of all the prominent
denominations; but they slumber there to an astonishing extent
unrealized, unnoticed, unthought of, by the great multitude of
common believers, while every consciously rational investigator
vehemently repudiates them. To every candid mind that has really
studied their nature and proofs their absurdity is now transparent
on all the grounds alike of history, metaphysics, morals, and
science.

The changes of the popular Christian belief in regard to three
salient points have been especially striking. First, respecting
the immediate fate of the dead, an intermediate state. The
predominant Jewish doctrine was that all souls went indiscriminately
into a sombre under world, where they awaited a resurrection.

The earliest Christian view prevalent was the same, with the
exception that it divided that place of departed spirits
into two parts, a painful for the bad, a pleasant for the good.
The next opinion that prevailed the Roman Catholic was the same as
the foregoing, with two exceptions: it established a purgatory in
addition to the previous paradise and hell, and it opened heaven
itself for the immediate entrance of a few spotless souls. Pope
John XXII., as Gieseler shows, was accused of heresy by the
theological doctors of Paris because he declared that no soul
could enter heaven and enjoy the beatific visi