And again, "when the mighty call of God's Son ... goes forth to those who thus lie in the graves, then, as in the Old Testament God's angel said to Daniel, shall the many who sleep under the earth awake, some to everlasting life, some to everlasting disgrace and shame."1

It would seem, therefore, that the school of writers referred to insist upon the uncertainty in the teaching of the New Testament as to the essential permanence of the consciousness of the soul. The wicked, they appear to teach, may, as far as the Scriptures are concerned, so far fall under the dominion of death as to forfeit, or not gain, that eternal consciousness which is bestowed as a "gift of God" when it will conduce to the happiness of the soul. These authors do not however venture to assert that this doctrine is clearly taught in Holy Writ, but that Holy Scripture is patient of such an interpretation. There is much to make us wish the doctrine might be true, but there is also not a little that makes it very doubtful. It seems not very unlike the older belief in conditional immortality, which involves the annihilation of the wicked.

The fact that the popular belief within and without the historical Church is opposed to any form of conditional immortality does not necessarily prove the doctrine to be false, but it shifts the onus probandi upon those who maintain the doctrine. The Church has never defined, we believe, what is meant by everlasting damnation, so that if it could be proved that the Bible does not teach the everlasting permanence 1 1 p. 569.

of human consciousness, the Church might interpret the Bible to teach that the wicked are body and soul literally destroyed and consumed after the final judgment. But the most careful consideration of Holy Scripture and of all the arguments hitherto put forth in defence of conditional immortality fail (in the opinion of many who are desirous to believe the doctrine) to meet the difficulties of the case. There are passages of Scripture that are opposed to conditional immortality, and these, taken in connection with the unfailing tradition of Christendom as to the meaning of the Bible, make it at present well-nigh impossible to accept the doctrine. Those who accept the Bible cannot entirely ignore the Scriptural office of the Church.

The Church was fashioned by Jesus Christ to be our teacher, and, although she must show by Holy Scripture that she is teaching no new doctrine, she is certainly entitled in a question of interpretation of Scripture to say in what sense she has always understood the words of her Lord and the writings of His Apostles. It is of course perfectly true that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul was taught as a part of Greek Philosophy, but on that account it became imperative that our Lord should plainly condemn the doctrine if it were false. The doctrine could not be ignored. If, on the contrary, His words seemed to those who heard them to sanction the belief, and if our Lord knew that His teaching would lead His Church to believe that the soul is immortal, we can

only suppose that the doctrine is true. Those who deny that it is plainly taught in Scripture may be right as far as the literal content of certain words is concerned, but they must confess that the whole tone of the teaching of the New Testament—as addressed to many who already believed the soul to be immortal-is most misleading.

In defence of the doctrine that the soul is in every case gifted with immortality, and that the condition in which this unending life will be passed depends on the choice of the soul itself, we must recall the relationship in which the Church stood to the Jewish and pagan world, in which it was originally planted.

Our Lord compared the kingdom of God-the Church -to seed cast upon the earth: "So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground."1

To His Church He gave a divine life-force that was destined to draw into itself all that was valuable in the pre-Christian systems; it was to be sown first in Jewish soil and then transplanted, in order that it might be fostered and developed by the philosophies, mythologies, and worships of ancient Greece and Rome. It was, however, destined to produce a fruit peculiarly its own. It is the province of history to try and discover how the soil ministered to the growth of the Church; how Christianity worked up the raw materials of Judaism and paganism, separating elementary bodies and joining them together afresh; rejecting this, absorbing that;

1 St. Mark iv. 26.

now hindered and now helped by its environment, but steadily developing and ripening for the harvest.

When we apply these thoughts to the teaching of our Lord and His Apostles, we have to consider first whether what was taught was entirely a new revelation, or whether it was teaching that presupposed a certain belief in those who were addressed. The doctrines of the Trinity and Unity of God, and the redemption of the world, may be given as examples of doctrines that were hitherto unknown. But even these new revelations needed the aid of Greek thought to find anything like adequate expression in human language.

On the other hand, the human intellect, enlightened doubtless by that Divine Word Who, St. John says, "lighteth every man that cometh into the world," had very generally arrived at a belief in the existence of God, and the duty of worship. The survival of the soul after the death of the body, its immortality, and the doctrine that the future life was one of reward or of punishment, were also beliefs accepted by the greater part of the Jewish world, and familiar to the more thoughtful among the pagans. We have, then, in considering any doctrine of our Lord, to ask what preparation there had been for His teaching in the Jewish Church; in what sense, consequently, those who heard Him would understand His words, and whether or no our Lord confirmed or contradicted the received belief of His day. In studying the teaching given by the Apostles to the Gentiles we must ask the same questions. The

truth as to any doctrine will be found in the final belief of the Church. Those who do not regard the Church as the divine teacher will necessarily, if they are Christians, be left in uncertainty on many points that the Bible does not plainly decide.

Christianity assimilated the belief as to the survival of the soul after death, while it rejected the doctrine of its pre-existence. The Scriptures of the New Testament, however, do not discuss the question whether or no this survival is due to the essential permanence of the human soul, neither do the Scriptures tell us plainly that because the soul survives death it must survive everlastingly. The writers of the New Testament do, however, assert that "the gift of God is eternal life,"1 and that the soul departing from the body in the grace of God will enjoy life everlasting. What concerns those who belong to the Church is not whether or no they, as individuals, can find this or that doctrine in Holy Scripture, but what, as a whole, the Church of God has taught men to believe to be the true meaning of Holy Writ.

The seed of divine teaching given by Jesus Christ, fostered by enlightened Greek thought, and moulded and nourished by the Holy Spirit, has undoubtedly resulted in the doctrine of the soul's immortality being accepted throughout Christendom as the truth. In its growth the divine seed has worked up the raw materials of Jewish and pagan speculation; separated and joined 1 Rom. vi. 23.