Hell, the place of torment, and the condition to which the finally impenitent are consigned after death, located by all the Fathers in the centre of the earth, although St Thomas says no one, without a special revelation on the point, can say where it is. Unfortunately for clearness of ideas on the subject the word has been from the beginning employed in the most various senses, and the confusion has been only deepened by the fact that in our Authorised Version it has been employed to render three wholly different words, Sheol or Hades, Gehenna, and once Tartarus (2 Peter, ii. 4). The word Sheol occurs in the Old Testament sixty-five times, and is rendered 'hell' thirty-one times, 'grave' thirty-one times, and 'pit' three times. Its original meaning seems strictly to have implied merely the shadowy under-world, a deep and gloomy cavern considered as the abode of the souls of the dead, the common receptacle for all mankind, not yet definitely differentiated into two distinct classes with the more rigorous logic of a later age and a fuller revelation. The Hebrew conception of Sheol was merely a kind of vague shadow of past life, in which the soul was shut off from any communion with the living, although we see in its loftier expressions of religious aspiration the impassioned desire for an unbroken continuity of union with God rising into a vision so vivid that it almost realises itself (Job, xiv. 13-15; cf. also Ps. xvi. 10, xlix. 15, lxxiii. 24). In these passages the Psalmists, in the heights of spiritual elevation and conscious- ness of living communion with God, leap in vision across the separating grave into a real conviction of living continuity of fellowship that rises into the region of true immortality; Job, in the perplexity of despair between his present calamities and the immediate expectation of death before God's favour is renewed to him, yet absorbed with the idea that God cannot belie himself by finally forgetting his righteous servant and his former fellowship, grasps the notion of immortality as a necessity of God's inherent righteousness, and thus reaches the loftiest spiritual conception of Christianity—a living union possible between man and God, by a process of pure religious abstraction.
The hope of a future life, in Old Testament prophecy, hardly extended beyond the perfected glory of the Israelitic theocracy under conditions which were essentially earthly, but yet already partly elevated into the supernatural. The condition of the dead continued to be represented as a shadowy existence in Sheol—an existence without special religious significance and value.
In post-exilic Judaism, on the contrary, the faith in the resurrection of the pious dead (in connection with the Messianic time of salvation) developed itself out of these two elements: (a) from the more individual conception of the covenant-relation and from the postulate of retribution in the kingdom of the Messiah, and (b) from the influences of the Persian faith in the resurrection, which co-operated with the former and furnished to them a definite form. While this faith, through the Pharisees, became a popular element of the Messianic hope, the Sadducees held fast to the old Hebrew conception of Sheol, and the Essenes assumed the Hellenistic doctrine of the incorporeal immortality of souls in a higher state of being, a doctrine which fitted in with the Essene spiritualism.
In consequence of this developed eschatology, there then entered also into the conception of Sheol the distinction of different moral retributive states: (a) for the righteous in Paradise or Abraham's bosom; (b) for the godless in Gehenna.
The Septuagint equivalent for Sheol is Hades, a word which occurs in the New Testament eleven times, and in ten of these is rendered 'hell,' the sole exception being 1 Cor. xv. 55. Again, 'hell' is used as the rendering for Gehenna twelve times. Originally as in the Old Testament usage the latter word simply signified the Valley of Hinnom near the city, which had been defiled by the abominations of human sacrifice in the Molech worship of Ahaz and Manasseh. It became later a kind of receptacle for filth, the combustible portions of which, according to some authorities, were consumed with fire. Hence in later times it became an image of the place of punishment, 'where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.' The word Tophet occurs in the Old Testament nine times, and apparently meant originally a grove or garden in Hinnom; afterwards defiled and polluted by idolatries, it became to the Rabbis a fit symbol for all abominations, the very gate or pit of hell. Almost all the passages in which the term Gehenna occurs are hopelessly metaphorical in character, on which it seems unsafe to build too rigorous dogmatic definitions: in such investigations should never be forgotten the saving caution, 'Theologia parabolica non est demonstrativa.' No less difficult is the Greek word aïōnios (aïōn, Hebrew olam), variously rendered by 'everlasting' and 'eternal.' It occurs seventy-one times in the New Testament, and in some of these cases it is certainly employed of periods limited in duration. The word aïōn does not necessarily connote what is understood by 'eternity' either in classical or Hellenistic Greek, and in the Oxford Library of the Fathers we find its adjective rendered very properly by 'secular.'
So that St Augustine's famous argument (De Civ. Dei, xxi. 23), besides its unworthiness, is strictly a non sequitur—that because aiônios zoē is assumed to mean 'endless life,' therefore aiônios kolasis must mean 'endless punishment.' As Haupt says, 'eternal life' is not to St John a mere term for unbroken continuance in being, as though it were simply equivalent to the indissoluble life (zoē akatalutos) of Heb. v. 6; it does not define the form of this life so much as the nature and meaning of it; zoē aiônios is, in other words, a description of divine life, of the life which is in God, and which by God is communicated. At the same time the plain exegesis of the greater number of relevant passages in the New Testament points rather to everlasting than to merely æonian rewards and punishments, and indeed it is difficult to resist the conviction that such phrases as the olethros aiônios ('destruction') of 1 Thess. v. 3, and 2 Thess. i. 9, and the telos of Philippians, iii. 19, refer to endless, hopeless, irremediable doom.
The same uncertainty is reproduced in the Authorised Version in the words used to express the fact of judgment passed upon the souls of men. The words krinō, krisis, and krima occur in the New Testament some 190 times; the words katakrinō, katakrisis, katakrima, 24 times. In all but fifteen places these words are properly enough rendered by 'judge' and 'condemn,' and their derivatives; in the rest 'damn' and 'damnation' have been employed, sometimes as incongruously as in 1 Cor. xi. 29; 1 Tim. v. 12; and Rom. xiv. 23.
Enough has been said to show the difficulties in the exegesis of the passages on which the dogmas of the church about the future punishment of the impenitent are based, and it only remains to state here the chief views of eschatology now prevalent, and to sketch briefly the development of these in the history of dogma. It does not belong to us to discuss the abstract theory of future retribution—a postulate of all religions whether rudimentary or advanced—nor to attempt to justify anew the ways of God to man by distinguishing ex cathedra what is of faith and what is mere human speculation.
I. The orthodox theory, both in the Eastern and Western churches, is that at death there is passed upon every impenitent sinner an irreversible sentence to torture of both his moral and physical nature, endless in duration, and inconceivably dreadful in intensity, yet proportioned in degree to the depths of the iniquity of the individual, whose sufferings include within them both the 'pain of loss' and the 'pain of sense.' The former implies the remorseful consciousness of the loss of all good; the latter embraces all forms of physical torment, as by material fire, utter abandonment and alienation from God, and the perpetual society of lost men and devils. The pains of hell for ever without any mitigation or hope of escape are the fate of all whose faith during their life on earth has not come up to the minimum required by the rigorous justice of God. Such has been the orthodox belief of almost the entire Christian church until now, and its fathers and theologians, from St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas down to Jeremy Taylor, Thomas Boston, and Jonathan Edwards, have lavished all the wealth of impassioned rhetoric upon the description of its horrors. Medieval painters like Orcagna devoted all the riches of a grotesque imagination to the portrayal of its material torments infinite in variety as well as awful in intensity, and the famous fresco in the Campo Santo at Pisa shows what a really great artist could make of such a theme. Indeed, the words which Dante saw in his vision above the gloomy portals of hell, 'All hope abandon ye who enter here,' merely describe with literal truth the traditional belief of the Christian church.
St Augustine even found himself, in accordance with his views of predestination, compelled to postulate the eternal damnation of unbaptised infants. Although he is disposed to look upon this condemnation as mitissima and tolerabilior, he opposed the doctrine condemned by the synod of Carthage (419 A.D.) of an intermediate state in which unbaptised infants were said to be (Limbus infantum). Dante sees these hapless victims of fate in the first circle of the Inferno, and indeed this belief was held by the entire medieval church; while the eternal damnation of non-elect infants still stands implied in the famous Confession of Faith of the Westminster Divines. St Thomas Aquinas supposes that the bliss of the saved will be heightened by their witnessing the punishment of the wicked; and Jonathan Edwards thus expresses the same monstrous notion, 'the view of the misery of the damned will double the ardour of the love and gratitude of the saints in heaven.' To the Catholic the horrors of hell are enormously mitigated by the notion of an intermediate state of punitive probation, in which the souls of such as have not died in mortal sin are purged from the guilt of earthly sin, and made fit for translation to heaven to the companionship of God and his elect saints. See PURGATORY.
II. The second belief in importance is that associated with the great name of Origen, and variously termed Universalism, Restoration, or the Larger Hope—viz. that all men ultimately will be saved. Origen believed that the punishment of hell itself was but purgatorial in its character, that, its purifying effect once attained, the punishment would cease for all, most probably even for the devils themselves, and that the duration in each case would be proportioned to the guilt of the individual. This doctrine of the final restoration of all to the enjoyment of happiness is the theory of the Apocatastasis to which so many of the early Christian writers allude. It was taught definitely by Gregory of Nyssa, who foretells in glowing words a time when 'there shall no longer be a sinner in the universe, and the war between good and evil shall be ended, and the nature of evil shall pass into nothingness, and the divine and unmixed goodness shall embrace all intelligent existence.' Theodore of Mopsuestia teaches that in the world to come 'those who have done evil all their life long will be made worthy of the sweetness of the divine bounty. For never would Christ have said "until thou hast paid the uttermost farthing" unless it were possible for us to be cleansed when we have paid the penalty. Nor would he have spoken of the many stripes and few unless after men had borne the punishment of their sins they might afterwards hope for pardon.' Gregory of Nazianzus seems to have held the same opinion; and St Jerome, who does not accept it, at least treats it with respect, and adds 'human frailty cannot know the judgment of God, nor venture to form an opinion of the greatness and the measure of his punishment.' The Reformers followed Augustine except in so far as they rejected Purgatory, first taught distinctly in his treatise De Doctrina Christiana. Of theologians inclined to the wider hope it is enough to name Bengel, Henry More, Rothe, Neander, Tholuck, and Martensen; and among ourselves Maurice, Milman, Kingsley, Alford, Erskine of Linlathen, Thirlwall, Plumptre, and Farrar. The last has argued for the cause with equal learning and eloquence.
In close connection with the theory of universalism, as suggesting inferences all tending to the possibility of purification and educational discipline being mingled with the penalty for sin beyond the grave, is the much-debated question of the descent of Christ into hell to preach to the spirits in prison. The earliest account of this as a historical fact is given by Eusebius, but it soon appears with fantastic elaboration in the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus, and a statement of belief in it was inserted in the Apostles' Creed, in the earlier forms of which, however, it does not appear, any more than it does in the creeds of Irenæus, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, nor in that of the Council of Nice. Yet we find it distinctly taught by Ignatius, Hermas, Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian, Cyril, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Chrysostom. It was maintained in answer to Arian and Apollinarian heresies, as proving the true humanity and the real death of Christ. Besides 1 Peter, iii. 19, the other passages in Scripture considered to support this belief are Eph. iv. 9, and Acts, ii. 27-31. Tertullian asserts that heaven is not open till the end of the world, and that all men are in Hades, either comforted or tormented, and that the purpose of our Lord's descent was that the patriarchs should be made partakers of him. The belief soon came to be widely held that the patriarchs and prophets were in Hades, but passed with Christ into Paradise—the germ of the medieval doctrine of the Limbus patrum. Augustine seems to have believed that Christ's preaching was effective in saving some souls which were in torment. Cyril of Alexandria describes Christ as having by his descent 'spoiled Hades utterly, and thrown open to the spirits of those that slept the gates that none may escape from, and leaving the devil there in his solitude and desolation, having risen again.' To him it was the supremest proof of Christ's love to man that the Cross, the symbol of deliverance, had been raised in Hades itself. The theme early became a subject of Christian art, as the 'Harrowing of Hell' was a favourite subject of our own medieval writers of mysteries, and takes its place in the great Divina Commedia of Dante. The Reformers felt that the doctrine lent support to the dogma of Purgatory, and some, as Calvin, taught that the descent into Hades meant only the terrible anguish with which the soul of Christ was tried, equalling in its intensity for the time the sufferings of the damned, while others merely admitted the fact without allowing themselves to define anything as to its purpose or result. Hammond, Pearson, and Barrow maintain the only meaning of St Peter's words to be that our Lord by his Holy Spirit, inspiring Noah, preached to the disobedient antediluvians, who are now for their disobedience imprisoned in hell—an explanation that had already occurred to Jerome and Augustine. Bishop Harold Browne observes that on this subject Pearson has written less logically than is his wont, and says well that the real difficulty consists in the fact that the proclamation of the finishing of the great work of salvation is represented by St Peter as having been addressed to these antediluvian penitents, while no mention is made of the penitents of later ages, who are equally interested in the tidings. It can hardly be denied that the patristic interpretation is most in harmony with an honest exegesis of the passage in St Peter's epistle, but here it may be enough to summarise the opinions of two great Protestant theologians, Martensen and Dorner.
The former says that departed souls live a deep spiritual life, for the kingdom of the dead is a kingdom of subjectivity, of remembrance in the full sense of the word. At death the soul finds itself in a world of pure realities: the manifold voices of the world, which during this earthly life sounded together with the voices of eternity, grow dumb, and the holy voice now sounds alone, no longer deadened by the tumult of the world; and hence the realm of the dead becomes a realm of judg- ment. Departed spirits thus not only live and move in the elements of bliss or woe which they have formed and prepared for themselves in time, but they continue to receive and work out a new state of consciousness, because they continue spiritually to mould and govern themselves in relation to the new manifestation of the divine will now first presented to their view.
Of the famous passage of St Peter, Dorner says that Peter really contemplates Christ after his death, probably before his resurrection, as active in the region of the dead, and therefore not in the place of torment, but in the intermediate region. There is an Intermediate state before the decision of the Judgment. The Reformation, occupied chiefly with opposition to the Romish Purgatory, leaped over, as it were, the middle state—i.e. left at rest the questions presenting themselves here, gazing with unblenched eye only at the antithesis between the saved and the damned, on the supposition (retained without inquiry), in opposition to more ancient tradition, that every one's eternal lot is definitely decided with his departure from this present life. This is in keeping with the high estimation put on the moral worth of the earthly life. Nevertheless, the view is untenable, and that even on moral grounds. Not merely would nothing of essential importance remain for the Judgment if every one entered the place of his eternal destiny directly after death, but in that case also no space would be left for progressive growth of believers, who yet are not sinless at the moment of death. If they are conceived as holy directly after death, sanctification would be effected by separation from the body; the seat, therefore, of evil must be found in the body, and sanctification would be realised through a mere suffering of death as a physical process instead of through the will. Add to this that the absoluteness of Christianity demands that no one be judged before Christianity has been made accessible and brought home to him. But this is not the case in this life with millions of human beings, as the heathen in central Africa. Nay, even within the church there are periods and circles where the gospel does not really approach men as that which it is. Moreover, those dying in childhood have not been able to decide personally for Christianity. The passages which make the pious enter at once a better place exclude a Purgatory as a place of punishment or penance, but by no means exclude a growth in perfection and blessedness. Even the departed righteous are not quite perfect before the resurrection. Their souls must still long for the dominion of Christ and the consummation of God's kingdom. There is, therefore, a status intermedius even for believers, not an instantaneous passage into perfect blessedness.
How closely this touches the question of the admissibility of Prayers for the Dead will be at once apparent, although that subject hardly falls to be discussed here. It was an ancient pre-Christian custom to offer up prayers for the dead, and we early find traces of it in the Christian Church. These St Augustine thought might at least secure for the lost a tolerabilior damnatio.
III. Another view, not without its adherents, is that of Conditional Immortality or Annihilationism, according to which final destruction and not endless suffering is the doom of the finally impenitent. It of course traverses the belief in the inherent immortality of the soul, the instinctive hope and belief of all mankind everywhere; and, if it saves the mind from the horror of endless torment, necessitates the belief that God will raise up the impenitent from the dead only to be tormented and at last destroyed. Its adherents depend for proof on the literal and assumed interpretation of a few passages of Scripture, and count among its modern supporters Watts, Isaac Taylor, and Whately.
The principal theories of future retribution having thus been briefly sketched, it only remains to say a few words more generally upon the significance of New Testament eschatology, and the mode of its development; and here we shall follow closely in the track of Pfeiderer. The whole of the Primitive-Christian community lived in the expectation of the speedy return of Christ and the advent of his visible kingdom of glory upon earth. Further, the Apocalypse of John (following the Jewish apocalyptic—e.g. the Book of Enoch) distinguished between (1) the earthly kingdom of Christ (of limited duration—1000 years, hence Chiliasm), beginning with the Parousia and First Resurrection, and (2) the definitive end of the world (Rev. xx. 2-7) following thereupon, which, through a second general resurrection and judgment of the world, together with the annihilation of the kingdom of Satan, will introduce the eternal completion of the kingdom of God: which completion, moreover, the Apocalypse also still represents in accordance with the analogy of the Israelitic theocracy—descent of the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev. xxi.).
In the Pauline eschatology two essentially different views cross each other: (a) On the one hand, the specifically Jewish-Christian expectation (handed down in the Christian community) of the following miraculous catastrophes: Parousia, Earthly Reign of Christ, Resurrection of Christians, General Judgment (1 Cor. xv. 23-26; 1 Thess. iv. 13-18)—under the assumption of which the state of souls between death and resurrection appears as a middle state, like sleep; on the other hand (b) a result of the specifically Pauline doctrine of the Spirit of Christ—viz. the expectation of a glorified state of individual Christians in fellowship with Christ—a state already prepared in the life of the Christian on this side the grave, and therefore beginning immediately after death to unfold its fullness in the manifestation of a body-of-light (Rom. viii. 10 et seq., and 17-23; 1 Cor. v. 1 et seq.; Phil. iii. 20 et seq.). The latter mode of conception appeared first in the later Pauline epistles, without however being made to harmonise with the first. The definitive end of the world Paul conceives as introduced by the subjugation of all the enemies of God, which is carried out under the earthly rule of Christ as king (whether through their conversion or even through their complete annihilation), and finally of even death itself. On this follows the surrender of the kingdom by Christ to God and the dominion of God alone in all creation, even to outward nature—glorified and serving God in freedom (1 Cor. xv. 27 et seq.; Rom. viii. 21).
The ideal tendency of the Pauline eschatology was strengthened from the side of Hellenism, under whose influence already the Epistle to the Hebrews had combined the future Messianic world of Jewish-Christianity with the higher, heavenly, or ideal world, and had immediately attached the perfect state to the death of the individual (Heb. xii. 23; iv. 9 et seq.; ix. 27).
In John the idealising spiritualisation of the traditional eschatology goes still further by transforming the external perfection (in the future) into the internal perfecting of the religious Christian life of the present church. As already the 'coming again' of Christ, in the valedictory discourses, wavers between future Parousia and present Coming-in-the-Spirit (John, xiv. 16), so also the 'eternal life' of believers has now already become realised in the present in their corporate unity with God and Christ, which is above death and judgment, and which receives no essential addition even through the future resurrection to life (which, withal, is here firmly adhered to). In like manner, also, Judgment realises itself already in the historical life of the community, continuously, in the process of separation betwixt faith and unbelief, sonship to God and to the Devil—which separation will find only its full outward manifestation in the future two-sided resurrection (John, xvii. 3; xi. 25 et seq.; vi. 40; v. 24 et seq.; iii. 17-21, 36; xvi. 8 et seq.).
In the spiritualisation of eschatology Origen only went further on the line pursued by the Gospel of John. The other Church Fathers in opposition to Gnostic spiritualism laid stress all the more decisively on the sensuous reality of the last things, even to the Pharisaic fleshly identity of the resurrection body with the earthly one. Only it must be noted that Chiliasm, as an apocalyptic hope for the future, was from the 3d century all the more decisively rejected by the church, the more its idea realised itself in the church's own dominion over the world, and the Parousia of Christ was pushed forward from the near future to the far-off distance.
The conception of the Ignis Purgatorius, derived from the Platonic doctrine of the purifying penances of souls in the world beyond the grave, was early adopted by individuals, but from the time of Gregory I. became a part of the Catholic Church's faith, closely connected with the Mass and with the church's penitential discipline, for which reasons it was rejected by Protestant orthodoxy, which makes the unchangeable and endless retributive states of salvation and damnation ensue immediately on the death of the individual, between which states there is no third, though different degrees within both are admitted. In no other respect does the Protestant eschatology differ from the Catholic. Chiliasm is rejected as a Jewish error; but the Parousia of Christ with general resurrection, judgment, and transformation of the world stands as the solemn close of time and entrance on eternity. In the further course of Protestant theology some more mystical thinkers have sought to vivify the abstract monotony of the world beyond the grave as conceived by the church (a) by adopting once more the biblical Chiliasm, now termed Millenarianism, or (b) by finding a compensation for purgatory in assuming the capability of conversion beyond the grave, or assuming a growing perfectibility, or assuming a general restoration of all men (Apocatastasis).
On the contrary the more rational theologians tended rather to set aside the last remains of the primitive Christian dogmas—Parousia and Resurrection, and to reduce this whole section of doctrine to the Alexandrine form of the incorporeal continuance of souls. Philosophic thinkers found the essential idea of Christian eschatology in the immanent eternity or infinity of the religious spirit; along with which the individual continuance of souls was denied by some (as in Schleiermacher's Reden; it is otherwise in his Glaubenslehre; and by the Hegelian Left), but asserted by others (as by Leibnitz, Wolff, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, the Hegelian Right, Krause, Herbart, Lotze, Teichmüller, &c.).
Theology holds almost exclusively to the latter side. The Christian faith has from the beginning combined the two fundamental forms of hope for the future: (a) the Hebrew, of hope for the earthly future perfection of the people of God, and (b) the Hellenistic, directed to the supra-mundane perfection of the individual soul. Each of the two represents an essential side of the Christian hope, and is conceivable without self-contradiction; it is only from the mixture of both sides, as it passed over from the Jewish theology into primitive Christianity, that obscurities and contradictions arose. To set aside these and bring each of the two sides, the mundane and the supramundane, or the social and individual, hope of perfection to the clearest possible view appears to be the eschatological task of the theology of the present.
The primitive Christian faith in the return of Christ and the earthly erection of his kingdom includes the ideal of the earthly realisation of the kingdom of God, or of the extensive and intensive permeation of the Christian spirit throughout humanity, as the goal and task of the history of the world. It is in the union of all mankind in the family of the children of God and in the moralising of the whole life of society through the power of the Christian spirit that the victorious Coming and Royal Rule of Christ in the earthly world is constantly realising itself. But, because realising itself upon the foundation of the historical life of nations, it remains constantly bound to those conditions and limits which are historically human.
Christian faith hopes to find in the supramundane or heavenly future of the individual persons the completion of what is on earth but fragmentary, and the harmony of what is on earth discordant. This hope rests partly (a) on the consciousness of the independent super-sensuous reality of the personal life distinct from its sensuous organism; partly and especially (b) on the conviction of our faith that we are destined to perfect likeness to God and fellowship with God, and that this our destination is eternally founded in God, and therefore not to be set aside by any temporal contingency whatever.
Since the capacity for development which is inherent in the nature of the human soul cannot be removed with the death of the body, and since the eternity of the pains of hell may be considered neither psychologically thinkable nor consistent with the all-wise love of God, nor yet correspondent to the thought of 1 Cor. xv. 28, therefore the Protestant doctrine of the stability of the twofold state of departed souls must be transformed into the thought of an infinite variety of forms and stages of development beyond the grave in which there remains room for the infinite love to exercise endlessly its educative wisdom. Further, the unbiblical conception of a resurrection of the body of flesh is to be explained according to the spiritualised (1 Cor. xv. 44, also 50th verse) Pauline theory of resurrection bodies, in doing which the speculative theory of the body as the totality of ministering forces organised by the soul itself may be called to our aid.
For the rest, the true evangelical treatment of the 'last things' must follow the principle of biblical caution; and, instead of arbitrarily picturing to ourselves that which is unsearchable, we can content ourselves with the promise that we will be present with the Lord, and that the eternal blessed life, which is begun indeed already here below, but, under the endless suffering of the world, remains constantly incomplete, will at last reach perfection in the knowledge and love of God.
See the articles CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY, DEVIL, HEAVEN, IMMORTALITY, MOHAMMED, PRAYER, PURGATORY, RESURRECTION; also the Histories of Dogma of Neander and Hagenbach; E. White's Life in Christ (1846); Andrew Jukes's Restitution of All Things (2d ed. 1869); J. Baldwin Brown's Doctrine of Annihilation in the Light of the Gospel of Love (1875); F. N. Oxenham's Catholic Eschatology and Universalism (2d ed. 1878), and his answer to Pusey, What is the Truth as to Everlasting Punishment? (2 parts, 1882); H. M. Luckock's After Death (1879); W. R. Alger's Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life (10th ed., with a complete bibliography of the subject, comprising 4977 books relating to the Nature, Origin, and Destiny of the Soul, by Ezra Abbot, Boston, 1880); E. H. Plumptre's article 'Eschatology' in Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography, &c. (vol. ii. 1880), and his Spirits in Prison, and other Studies on the Life after Death (1885); F. W. Farrar's Eternal Hope (1878), and Mercy and Judgment (1881); S. Davidson's Doctrine of Last Things contained in the New Testament (1882); Th. Kliefoth's Christl. Eschatologie (Leip. 1886); and Professor J. Agar Beet's series of papers in the Expositor for 1890.