from the instant of death the fate of the
wicked is irredeemably fixed.

Upon the whole, then, we reach the clear conclusion that the
Christian Scriptures do not really declare the hopeless eternity
of future punishment.16 They speak popularly, not scientifically,
speak in metaphors which cannot be analyzed and reduced to
metaphysical precision. The subject is left with fearful warnings
in an impressive obscurity. There we must either leave it, in awe
and faith, undecided; or, if not content to do that, we must
examine and decide it on other grounds than those of traditional
authority, and with other instruments than those of textual
interpretation.

Let us next sift and weigh the arguments from reason by which the
dogma of the eternity of future misery is respectively defended
and assailed. The advocates of it have sought to support it by
four positions, which are such entire assumptions that only a word
will be requisite to expose each of them to logical rejection.
First, it is said that sin is infinite and deserves an infinite
penalty because it is an outrage against an infinite being.17 A
more absurd perversion of logic than this, a more glaring
violation of common sense, was never perpetrated. It directly
reverses the facts and subverts the legitimate inference. Is the
sin measured by the dignity of the lawgiver, or by the
responsibility of the law breaker? Does justice heed the wrath of
the offended, or the guilt of the offender? As well say that the
eye of man is infinite because it looks out into infinite space,
as affirm that his sin is infinite because committed against an
infinite God. That man is finite, and all his acts finite, and
consequently not in justice to be punished infinitely, is a plain
statement of fact which compels assent. All else is empty
quibbling, scholastic jugglery. The ridiculousness of the argument
is amusingly apparent as presented thus in an old Miracle Play,
wherein Justice is made to tell Mercy "That man, havinge offended
God who is endlesse, His endlesse punchement therefore may nevyr
seese."

The second device brought forward to sustain the doctrine in
question is more ingenious, but equally arbitrary. It is based on
the foreknowledge of God. He foresaw that the wicked, if allowed
to live on earth immortally in freedom, would go on forever in a
course of constant sin. They were therefore constructively guilty
of all the sin which they would have committed; but he saved the