ief in
the doctrine itself is utterly irreconcilable with the very
essentials of his teachings and spirit, his inmost convictions and
life. He taught the infinite and unchangeable goodness of God:
confront the doctrine of endless misery with the parable of the
prodigal son. He taught the doctrine of unconquerable forgiveness,
without apparent qualification: bring together the doctrine of
never relenting punishment and his petition on the cross, "Father,
forgive them." He taught that at the great judgment heaven or hell
would be allotted to men according to their lives; and the notion
of endless torment does not rest on the demerit of sinful deeds,
which is the standard of judgment that he holds up, but on
conceptions concerning a totally depraved nature, a God inflamed
with wrath, a vicarious atonement rejected, or some other ethnic
tradition or ritual consideration equally foreign to his mind and
hostile to his heart.

Fifthly, if we reason on the popular belief that the letter of
Scripture teaches only unerring truth, we have the strongest
argument of all against the eternal hopelessness of future
punishment. The doctrine of Christ's descent to hell underlies the
New Testament. We are told that after his death "he went and
preached to the spirits in prison." And again we read that "the
gospel was preached also to them that are dead." This New
Testament idea was unquestionably a vital and important feature in
the apostolic and in the early Christian belief. It necessarily
implies that there is probation, and that there may be salvation,
after death. It is fatal to the horrid dogma which commands all
who enter hell to abandon every gleam of hope, utterly and
forever. The symbolic force of the doctrine of Christ's descent
and preaching in hell is this, as Guder says in his "Appearance of
Christ among the Dead," that the deepest and most horrible depth
of damnation is not too deep and horrible for the pitying love
which wishes to save the lost: even into the veriest depth of hell
reaches down the love of God, and his beatific call sounds to the
most distant distances. There is no outermost darkness to which
his heavenly and all conquering light cannot shine. The book which
teaches that Christ went even into hell itself, to seek and to
save that which was lost,

15 Corrodi, Ueber die Ewigkeit der Hollenetrafen. In den Beitragen
zur Beforderung des Vernunft. Denk. n. s. w. heft vii. ss. 41-72.

does not teach that