XVI

THE TWO CLASSES

"When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory: And before Him shall be gathered all nations; and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left."—MATTHEW XXV. 31-33.

SOME of you will remember that of the two sermons I preached here last term the first had for its subject the antinomies of Scripture; in other words, it dealt with the fact that there are passages of Scripture which, taken separately, present different aspects of truth, and on which accordingly opposite systems have been founded. The second sermon dealt with a particular case of the kind, namely, the Christian doctrine of reward, there being passages which speak of man's reward as altogether proportioned to his works, others which seem to deny the possibility of man's works earning for him any reward at all. Yet when we came to examine this particular case, the opposition between the different utterances of

Scripture was seen to be so superficial that you may reasonably have wondered why I thought it necessary to prefix so elaborate an introduction. The ordinary rule of life certainly is that a man is rewarded according to his works; that according as a man sows, so he reaps; and yet to receive love and benefits we have not earned is the experience with which the life of every one of us of necessity begins, and is one which, if we judge ourselves fairly, we must in all thankfulness acknowledge, is daily repeated. It is manifest likewise that it can hardly be said that there is even apparent opposition between the statements that rewards are proportioned to work, and yet may be such that the workman could not claim them as his earned due except so far as the promise of his bountiful benefactor gave him a right to make such a claim.

But there is a difficulty connected with the Scripture doctrine of future retribution which lies deeper down; one not concerned with points on which Protestants have differed from Roman Catholics, or one Protestant sect or party from another, but relating to a doctrine which all Christians may be said to hold in common: the doctrine namely, that hereafter mankind will be divided into two great classes, separated from each other by a sharp and ineffaceable line of distinction. The text

speaks but of two classes, "He will put the sheep on His right hand and the goats on His left," and such is the doctrine of all Christian sects; for though in Roman Catholic theology a third region in the unseen world is recognised, its use is supposed to be only temporary. At the Judgment Day the time of purgation will have passed, and all who are not finally rejected will have passed into the abodes of bliss.

But the difficulty presents itself that if men are to be rewarded according to their works, no such simplicity of classification is possible. If we were to judge men according to their conduct, even supposing we knew with all-seeing accuracy the deeds and the temptations of each, we cannot conceive it possible but that we should find them differenced from each other by scarcely perceptible gradations. We can hardly imagine that we should be able to place anywhere a broad line of separation, on one side of which all should be saints, or the other all sinners. Why, we condemn even a work of fiction if its villains are all black, its virtuous characters all faultless. We set down such a work as belonging to the signboardpainting school of art. We regard its author as one who was no observer of nature and did not draw after real life; where the worst men often surprise us by some redeeming virtues, the best

often disappoint us by unexpected frailties, and intermediate there are many whose good qualities are SO mixed with faults that we should find it hard to pronounce which predominates. The doctrine of inequality of future retribution, corresponding to the infinite variety of conduct here, is in itself so reasonable, and has so much countenance from Scripture, that it has been generally admitted to form a part of theological systems which in other points are at wide variance with each other. Our Lord distinctly taught that there would be inequality of punishment,—some being beaten with few stripes, while others who had only been guilty of the same sin, but had sinned against light and knowledge, should be beaten with many stripes. And He spoke with equal distinctness of the inequality of rewards, the servant who had gained ten pounds being more richly rewarded than he who had only gained five; each good action, even a cup of cold water given in His name, receiving its separate reward.

So no theologian has had any difficulty in recognising that there may be among the blessed infinite varieties of happiness, indeed infinite varieties of capacity for happiness; and in like manner infinite variety in the sufferings of the lost. In Roman Catholic theology hell has its

outer fringes or Limbi, the inhabitants of which suffer no pain of sense, but are only grieved by the pain of loss. Nay, modern Roman Catholic theology, as represented by the speculations of private divines though not formally sanctioned by their Church, is merciful enough to exempt unbaptized infants from even the pain of loss, and is willing to believe their state to be one of the highest physical enjoyment, and only deserving to be called damnation in comparison of the infinitely greater happiness which they are compelled to forego. Dante, whose representations of the unseen world only gave vividness and form to the beliefs which were current in his time, and which he helped to fix, saw as he descended into hell circles ever narrowing, the torments of which, as he went lower, constantly increased in intensity; while in like manner in Paradise the blessedness increased according to the degree of nearness which was permitted of approach to the Throne of the Supreme.

Theologians, then, have willingly agreed to admit a gradation in the conditions both of the saved and of the lost, but they have been nearly as unanimous in holding that there is an entire breach of continuity in passing from the one state to the other. When Paley was presented with the difficulty that there would probably be little