not originally inherent in human nature. The reconciliation between these apparently opposite conclusions need not be difficult. Both are undoubtedly true. For, while man was not created to die as he now dies, death had in human nature potential existence in the elementary constituents of his organism. The potential became the actual in the subjection of the person to sin, which has made death for man what it now is, and in which lies its ethical significance. As it has been experienced in the history of the race, death is an enemy which must, in the very nature of things, be destroyed if humanity has any future in which all its powers, intellectual and spiritual, shall have unlimited scope; and in the prophetic word it is already destroyed in anticipation by the resurrection of Christ from the dead. This overcoming of death in the palingenesis does not signify merely the uninterrupted persistence of the human spirit, but since death is a retributive separation, under physical law, of spirit and body, it must, in its relation to the redemptive and restorative work of Christ, mean a restoration of the broken unity between body and spirit.

That death is not the end of all is not provable outside of revelation. Arguments for human immortality based on metaphysical, psychological, teleological, analogical, or cosmical grounds cannot be accepted as proving the immortality of the soul; and the same must be concluded of the so-called theological, ethical, and historical proofs. The Christian idea of immortality is not the bare notion of continued existence, which some imagine the doctrine of evolution will sustain. The soul, as substance or force, may continue, but such an immortality is predicable of all substance and energy. Nor is the pantheistic idea of the conservation of the individual life in the Infinite, which Schleiermacher affirmed to be the immortality of religion, the teaching of faith, for such an immortality is only another form of annihilation, a Christian nirvana. The New Testament doctrine of immortality affirms not only the eternal continuity of soul-substance; it rises immeasurably above that in its affirmation of the uninterrupted persistence of personal selfconsciousness in eternal blessedness or its opposite, and of the completeness of the individual. Hence, since pure spirit-life is unnatural to the human spirit—such a life in its relation to man as a compound entity being only half a life, and therefore

incomplete the Christian doctrine of immortality involves the resurrection of the body.

In the creeds of evangelical Christendom the intermediate state finds no recognition. Eschatology, therefore, as expressed in these symbols, is declared defective in that it knows of two places only for departed spirits, heaven and hell, and in its dogmatic decision that the destiny of all men is fixed at death. The denial of the intermediate state does not rest primarily on exegetical but on historical grounds. The business enterprise of Tetzel, the indulgence-monger, had a great deal to do in giving shape to the eschatological thought of his opposers. Prior to that time the Church universal held to the early belief of an intermediate condition of men between death and the final judgment. That in addition to heaven and hell there is a third place in which all departed beings exist is not to be rejected because the Reformers of the sixteenth century rightfully rejected the false and perverted doctrine of purgatory. The teachings of our Lord in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus; the statements of Acts xii, 27, 31, xxxiii, 8, xxiv, 15, 1 Peter iii, 19; the promise of Christ to the thief on the cross; the passages 1 Cor. xv, 6, 18, 20, 55, and 1 Thess. iv, 13; the declarations in Rev. i, 18, vi, 8, xx, 13, 14, seem to plainly teach the reality of such a place. On the other hand, the teaching of the fourth gospel, John xiv, 2, xviii, 24, and that of the apostle Paul in 2 Cor. v, 8, Phil. i, 21-23, Heb. xii, 22-24, and some other passages, as Acts vii, 59, indicate that the righteous enter immediately at death into the presence of the Lord. The adjustment of these two forms of teaching is the task of a scriptural eschatology. Nor will this be difficult if, in the first instance, we modify the historical opinion which we have received from the Reformers, who cannot be allowed to have formulated Christian doctrine for all ages, and reject in the second instance the Judaic idea of sheol, which many persist in carrying up into our Christian thinking of the life beyond. Sheol, or hades, as it appears in the New Testament, has a history different since the death of Christ from what it had before. The departed in Christ are in hades, but they are no less in the presence of their Lord and Redeemer, and in the enjoyment of rest and the sweet felicity of heaven. The shadows of sheol fall not on the hills of paradise. Hence in the New Testament

hades is never used, except in quotation, as the dwelling place of the redeemed. It is the vestibule of gehenna.

Eschatology must face this question of an intermediate state in a new spirit. Its rejection involves more than that. That all believers are made free from every stain of sin at the moment of death, "consumed yet quickened by the glance of God," may be boldly affirmed but can never be proved. It is making the death agony a concentrated purgatory. The difference between such belief and the Roman doctrine of the ex opere operato of the sacraments is only a difference in the agent working, for it is attributing to death the same magical effects affirmed of the sacraments. The two views are clearly seen in the following. Möhler, in his Symbolism, says:

It is a perfect self-contradiction to assume that the soul, whether covered or not, enters heaven while stained with sin. The question, therefore, arises, How is man finally set free from sin, and the principle of holiness within him thoroughly quickened?

Delitzsch, in his Biblical Psychology, replies:

In him whose inward being is renewed by God's grace, after laying aside the body of sin and death, the life of the spirit so far checked and impeded breaks forth in the presence of the realities of the invisible with such force that everything sinful and its consequences must disappear as mist before the sun.

This, perhaps, is the best answer that can be given to the problem as stated by the Romanist Möhler. The fact of an intermediate state is forced upon our thought from other considerations. However blessed the dead who die in the Lord, they are still in an imperfect condition. That the spirit is clothed with an enswathment which is its body at death is purely a speculative opinion which may be true or not, but for which there is certainly no support in revelation. On the contrary, the soul is naked, unclothed, having put off the mortal and not yet put on the immortal body (2 Cor. v, 4). Deprived of bodily life, which is their natural mode of existence, the dead are limited in their scope of activity, and are so far "dead" (Rev. i, 15; xiv, 13, et al). So Julius Müller says:

The apostle ascribes (2 Cor. v, 3) to the soul in its intermediate state-between death and the resurrection-the quality of youvov Eival, which state is expressed by other writers of the New Testa

ment by calling the departed ψυχαί, οι πνεύματα (1 Peter iii, 19; Apoc. vi, 9; xx, 4; Heb. xii, 23). This view undoubtedly implies that certain limits are set to the disembodied soul's manifestation of its life, as also appears from the кalɛúdɛv of the soul, as opposed to ypηyopɛiv in life (1 Thess. v, 10, etc., 1 Cor. xi, 30), of course both in unison with the ζῆν ἅμα σὺν Χριστῷ. But this yvuvórns does, evidently, not imply that the soul is entirely stripped of all bodily mediation-is a retrogression of the soul into a merely spiritual existence. Some medium of self-manifestation adheres to the soul even after death; but this is such that in it the full reality of human life cannot come to view, and compared with the owμа пνενμатIкóv not only, but also with the earthly life, it is a retrogression-a condition less perfect than either.

And Olshausen writes on the subject thus:

The New Testament statements concerning the state after death apply only to believers, whose yuxý is illuminated by the Spirit of Christ, and thus prepared for the presence of the Lord. But even for believers this state is only a temporary, though relatively happy, one; they long for the redemption-ransoming-of their bodies (Rom. viii, 23; 2 Cor. v, 4).

St. Paul does not comfort the Thessalonians with the declaration that the departed have obtained completeness. In his thoughts, and throughout the New Testament, that is reached only in the parousia. Further, if, as the creed asserts, the destiny of all men is decided at death, Christian eschatology must transfer the sphere of its events from the present visible world to the invisible realms. This new departure in eschatology is inevitable if the idealizing methods of interpretation shall prevail. There will, then, be no real resurrection at the last day, no objective, realistic return of the Lord, and no real objective judgment. And finally, if the fate of all men is fixed at death, in logical consistency a final judgment is superfluous, for the purpose of it has been already obtained. To insist that it will afford an opportunity for the vindication of the divine government, which is often asserted, is simply to substitute an incident of the purpose for the purpose itself. Not God, but humanity is on trial; and the only object of the final judgment known to the New Testament is the final decision between right and wrong.

Second probation is not a matter of revelation. The Spirit of the living God presents the Christ to human souls now, and

a rejection of him, conscious and deliberate, involves now eternal death. This is the belief of the Church founded on correct interpretation of Scripture. But eschatology has the task of proving the futility of opposition to this truth. Hitherto rejection of the Church doctrine has been based on the lexicon, on the nature of the divine attributes, and the scope of the atonement. With the triumph of faith over opposition falsely grounded the Church cannot rest. Her victory has been complete. But the source of objection to the doctrine of second probation, or restoration, has not been exhausted. Eschatology must now consider the question from the standpoint of human nature, the persistence of human freedom, and the arguments from intuition. From the persistence of free will nothing perhaps can be lost to the faith of the Church; for men are free now but do not repent, and they who fail to use it now are the least likely to use it hereafter. Abstract freedom does not save, but the grace of God; and to assume that to operate in the future world is to assume the nonnecessity for its operation in this. But the argument from intuition, which has not yet been considered, presents difficulties worthy of profound consideration. There is no space in which to present this argument. But if the argument from intuition is valid in the discussion of immutability, how shall it be invalidated in support of the future happiness of all men? No matter what agony men may suffer, physical or mental-no matter to what depths of degradation and infamy they sink-there still lingers in the depths of the human soul the innate hope, feeling, belief, surmise, or impression, that sometime, somewhere, somehow, sin and shame shall pass away "like a rolled syllable of midnight thunder from the coming day." With this, eschatology must come to an understanding whether it is really intuitional or a complexed feeling originating in the love of life and the elements of sanguinity in human nature.

We have been speaking of second probation for those who have rejected Christ. But what of those millions who never heard of him? To be on probation is to be so in respect to something. The something in this instance is Christ the Lord. Can the heathen, then, in any real sense, be on probation at all with respect to accepting the Gospel? How, then, are they saved? By living up to the light they have. But is this not