eism, and a really Christian doctrine of
human freedom, are inseparable from the belief in the possibility of
wilful sin leading to final ruin.

'It is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgement';
and this judgement in the case of those of us who have wilfully
hardened themselves, or remained loveless and love-rejecters, in face
of the real offer of God to man in Christ Jesus, is a divine
condemnation which takes effect in an eternal punishment, the
bitterness as well as the justice of which the soul realizes, and
which--if it does not necessarily mean an everlasting continuance of
personal consciousness--is yet final and irreversible, and unspeakably
awful[4].

[1] _Summa_, pars. 1, qu. 75, art. 6, 'Respondeo dicendum, quod necesse
est dicere, animam humanam, quam dicimus intellectivum principium, esse
incorruptibilem.'

[2] See Dr. Agar Beet's _Last Things_ (Hodder and Stoughton, 1898), pp.
194 ff, and Gladstone's _Studies Subsidiary to Butler_ (Oxford, 1896),
part ii. pp. 260 ff.

[3] See _Types of Ethical Theory_ (Oxford, 1885), ii. pp. 60 ff.

[4] The only passage in the New Testament which strongly suggests an
_everlasting_ persistence of personal consciousness of pain, is Rev.
xx. 10, 'Shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.' This is
explicit enough. But I am persuaded that all the numbers and
expressions for periods of time in the Apocalypse are strictly
symbolical. 'A thousand years,' 'forty and two months,' 'three days
and a half,' 'day and night for ever and ever,' are expressions which
have to be translated into some moral equivalent before they can be
made the basis of literal teaching. Thus 'day and night for ever and
ever' describes in a picture the _completeness_ of the final overthrow
and the anguish of the enemies of the Lamb. The symbolical character
of the expression is further indicated by 'the beast' and 'the false
prophet'--themselves symbolical figures--being with the devil the
subjects of the torment.

Some will say that the deterrent effect of the doctrine of hell depends
upon its being held to be a state of strictly endless conscious
torment. I do not believe this is the case. The language of the New
Testament is full enough of deterrent horror if we are faithful to it.
And after all, this is all we have a right to be.

{215}

NOTE D. See vol. i. pp. 143 ff.

DIFFICULTIES ABOUT THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT.

I have endeavoured above