METHODIST REVIEW.

NOVEMBER, 1892.

ART. I.-CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY.

THE deep interest taken in problems of the hereafter, as demonstrated by current literature not distinctively theological, may be regarded as one of the providential results of recent conflict with scientific materialism. The immortal questions of human destiny which were discussed long ago by the Academy and the Porch once more thrust themselves into the thinking of an age which, so far from being characteristically philosophical, has been described by one of the foremost statesinen of Europe as preeminently the age of industry. The fascinating theme is not confined to the narrow circle of philosophical inquiry. As in the first centuries philosophy exerted a forceful influence on religion, so is it now; and the general effort, as a result of it, to reconstruct creeds in terms of modern science and criticism, and to adjust dogmatic theology in harmony with a broader interpretation of revelation, has awakened within the Church a profound and widespread interest in the contents of Christian eschatology. Christianity alone is teleological. It alone, and therein is it widely differentiated from all ethnic religions and modern competitors, has a future for humanity, and is therefore the religion of progress. Hence the Christian cannot be an idle spectator, a nonpartisan in the affairs of the world, for to him all world-powers are aiding or retarding the kingdom of God, and the vision of the future is felt to be the true inspiration of the present.

New Testament eschatology is not simply a widening of Old Testament doctrine of last things. It is in many respects an 56-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. VIII.

entirely new revelation. The eschatology of the prophets culminated in the day of the Messiah; beyond that they never looked. His coming was the end of the world, the inauguration of the endless age. Christianity is the eschatology of the Old Testament, the Christianity of symbol and vision which has not yet been realized, but which through the operation of spiritual laws in harmony with human freedom is ever in process of becoming. This New Testament doctrine of last things is still Jewish, however, in terms, emblems, and figures, and in those forms of thought which form the costume of final events. Hence the Christian mind of every age must translate these ideas into its own conceptions, reaching for the real as it can behind the drapery and the accidents of form. The educative power of the Holy Ghost through the centuries must count for something in the decisions of the Christian consciousness. Moreover, since Christ Jesus is the world's Redeemer and Judge, he, in all true study of the subject, must be the center of eschatology, for around him, in closest relation to all his offices, its particulars cluster. Christian eschatology, therefore, must be studied from the standpoint of redemption.

But this is not sufficient. The doctrine of final events is intensely practical in its bearings on the life of the world and the relation of the Church militant to its earthly environments. There is to this doctrine a human as well as a divine side, and its significance is not exhausted, nor can it be truly comprehended, by gazing on the future. Modern antichristian sociologies, with their denials of God and of purpose or plan in creation, see no march of law and reason, of social progress and culture under the guidance of providence. Sinking the spiritual in the physical, they so connect humanity with inanimate nature that the laws which govern matter determine the social and moral conditions of man, and there is set before him no higher destiny than that which may be worked out by the uniform operation of physical law. There is no meaning in history; it is a purposeless ocean-swell of human endeavor, an eternal alternation of development and decay.

Christianity cannot thus look upon the world's life. If the world's history is in any true sense the world's judgment, eschatology, in order to understand the truths which it teaches, will to that end interpret the world's history. No event is

without significance or relation, near or remote, to the triumph of faith. As the prophets of Israel pondered the vision relative to national destiny and the dawn of universal deliverance in the coming of the King and Redeemer, this doctrine, if it would be anything more than a catalogue of far-off events, will have practical interest in the theories and systems which dominate human thought, in the purposes and methods of civil governments, the acts of parliaments and the movements of armies, the achievements of the explorer and the success of the missionary, the progress of ideas, the nature of reforms, the play of social and political forces, not for the purpose of indulging mathematical caprice and inventing prophecies, but because all that is to be is now; the new is involved in the old, and all that is has relation to the kingdom of God. As invisible mist evolves into visible clouds, the antichrist of the future and the golden age of prophecy will be historically developed from corresponding elements previously existing, from principles now operating in human society, and which by the ordinary working of moral laws will reach their ultimate realization as depicted in prophecy, in the fullness of time. Hence all human activity, even the chronic evils of the race, its poverty, ignorance, sin, and consuming disquietude and wretchedness, have import as potent momenta in hastening or retarding the progress of humanity toward the great event which shall be the climax of history.

Further, since the world is the mass the Church seeks to impenetrate with its thought and spirit, she cannot be indifferent to the attitude it bears to the eschatological truths she announces, or the form or color in which they are presented. The world is wiser than it was. In spite of itself it has learned something through God's educative processes. Nevertheless, while lending a sympathetic ear to the affirmations of reason, the Church cannot close her eyes to the teachings of revelation. The word of God is the ground of eschatology, and not human reasoning, or the fitness of things, or modern socialisms religiously phrased and projected on the future.

The doctrine of last things embraces death, the future state, the millennium, the second coming of the Lord, resurrection, final judgment, and consummation. From a scientific standpoint death is the necessary result of physical law. From the standpoint of religion it is the result of sin, and therefore is something