Section IV.

The Same Subject Continued-The Argument Concluded.

To maintain that the penalty of the law or proper punishment of sin is both suffering and annihilation, consisting in part of each, must either fritter away the penalty of the divine law to the mere pangs of a common death, a moment's pain, or represent God unnecessarily severe and cruel, and as punishing for the sake of punishing. If loss of existence be the penalty of the law, then does reason say it involves only so much suffering as is necessary to dissolve our being. It may be presumed, that if God annihilates, or takes away the existence of the wicked as a punishment for their sin, he will have some uniform method of executing the sentence. This is believed to be by fire. All who hold that the wicked will cease to exist, insist that God will burn them up. Admitting this, the portion of suffering must be so much, and should be only so much as a person endures while he is burning to death. Understand-the theory we oppose, holds that the wicked will not be raised immortal, with undecaying natures, but that they will be raised as they now are, mortal, subject to the action of fire. As they have no souls or spiritual nature here, so they will have none in the resurrection; as they are nothing but organized matter before death, so they will be nothing but organized matter in the resurrection, and like all matter may be burned up in the common sense. Admitting then that they are to be burned up, it is not possible to see how they can suffer more than an ordinary death by fire. The pains of hell, according to this view are less than many good people have endured in life, for they have been roasted by a slow fire, which did not burn them up as quick as the fire of the last judgment will, when the heavens shall be on fire and the elements melt with fervent heat. Some have had their flesh picked from their limbs with hot pincers, which must cause more pain than to be burned up in a very hot fire. All this follows from the frailty of our being, on the supposition that sinners are to be raised as we now are, a material organism, subject to the action of fire and death; and unless sinners are thus raised, fire will not burn them up, and the argument is at an end. A material organism like the human body can endure but a limited amount of heat and pain without dissolving, and that amount must fix a limit to the pains of hell. Thus is the penalty of the divine law frittered away to even less than many of the martyrs endured in this world.

To escape this aspect of the subject, our annihilationists insist that the suffering of the wicked will be long and fearfully great before they cease to exist. This we insist is not possible, unless God in the resurrection should constitute man a different being from what he is in this world, so as to require the action of five, ten, fifty, a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand years to burn him up. To say the least of this, it is without proof. There is not the slightest evidence or shadow of proof upon the supposition that man has no spiritual nature, and that he is to be raised mortal, capable of being burned up. Upon this principle, this semi-immortal nature which is to resist the action of fire for a thousand years, or for one whole year, is a mere chimera of the brain. But we are not prepared to say that God cannot produce an organization, just such as this theory supposes, or that he could not suspend the laws of nature, so as, by his power, to hold a sinner in existence with his present organization, under the tortures of fire for a thousand years, but very strong considerations go to show that he will not do it.

1. We can see no important end to be secured by it. It is certainly not to dispose of the sinner, and place him beyond the power of further depredations upon God's moral government; for as it is insisted that death is the extinction of being, he is already disposed of; and God has only to let him be in his non-existence, and he will be harmless forever. Why should God raise the sinner that he may torture him for a time, and then send him back into non-existence

2, It represents suffering as expiating guilt, which must do away the necessity of annihilation. If God be not cruel, and inflict suffering for its own sake, why does he not leave the sinner in non-existence, or, having raised him, why does he not annihilate him at once, without first causing him to pass through a long and dreadful age of suffering The only valid reason that can be given, is, that justice demands that the sinner should suffer so much, according to the degree of his guilt, before God can send him into non-existence. This implies that the suffering expiates the sinner's guilt, otherwise justice will always require him to remain under the same degree of suffering. If when the sinner has suffered a hundred years, he is just as guilty as he was when he commenced, he deserves just as much punishment as he did at the commencement, and he is no nearer the point when justice can allow of his annihilation, if it cannot allow of it at once. If the sinner is at the commencement so guilty that it would be unjust to annihilate him, then if he remains just so guilty, it will always remain unjust to annihilate him, and he must always remain just so guilty, unless his sufferings expiate his guilt, rendering him less guilty as he continues to suffer. But if suffering does expiate the sinner's guilt, rendering him less deserving of punishment as he suffers, when he has reached a point where it becomes just to annihilate him, God might, by causing him to suffer a little longer, expiate the remainder of his guilt, and render his annihilation unnecessary. If suffering does not remove the sinner's guilt, God could dispense with it by annihilating him at once, and inflicts unnecessary tortures; and if it does remove the sinner's guilt, a little more of it could remove the whole of it, and God is represented as unnecessarily taking away his existence. The annihilationist may take which horn of the dilemma he pleases, either will gore his theory to death.

3. To suppose God to give to sinners an organization capable of enduring a thousand times as much suffering as his present organization, or that he will support, by his direct power, the sinner's present organization, for the express purpose of having him endure a thousand times as much suffering as he could otherwise bear, will overthrow the entire foundation on which annihilationists build their theory. As has been seen in preceding arguments, they always urge their theory in opposition to endless suffering, and insist that it is the only theory which will carry them clear of this terrible doctrine. But here God is represented as supporting man's frail organization for the purpose of causing it to suffer a thousand times more anguish than it could otherwise endure, before he will allow the sinner the relief of annihilation. This suffering must be inflicted on the part of God, from a love of inflicting suffering, or from some necessity found in the principles of the divine government. If it be from the love of suffering, no one can infer from the divine goodness that endless suffering will not be most in accordance with the divine nature. If it be from some necessity found in the principles of the divine government; if there be a necessity with the divine government, for holding sinners in existence a long time, for the express purpose of causing them to suffer before annihilating them, no one can prove that the same necessity does not exist for endless suffering. Thus is the destructionist, by the carrying out of his own theory, robbed of all the support he attempts to derive from the horrors of endless punishment, and its supposed inconsistency with the divine benevolence. His own theory makes God cruel, or else it lays him under the necessity of inflicting long and terrible suffering; and if God is under a necessity of inflicting a thousand years' suffering, the same necessity may require him to inflict it longer, ad infinitum. We trust we have now proved by a great variety of arguments, each of which is conclusive in itself; that the penalty of the law does not consist of suffering and annihilation, and we will close the general argument on this point just where we are.

The proposition is, that the penalty of the law, or the proper punishment of sin, must be annihilation without suffering; suffering and annihilation consisting in part of both; or it must be suffering, of some kind and degree, without annihilation. But it has been proved,

1. That the penalty of the law is not annihilation without suffering.

2. That it is not suffering and annihilation, consisting of both in part; and, therefore,

3. It follows that it must consist of suffering, of some kind and degree, without annihilation; and that sinners will never be annihilated, or cease to exist.