THE PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED.
By William Penniman
"Too Great Tendency to Extreme Literalism."
"TOO great a tendency to extreme literalism" is what the endless-misery advocate pronounces the destruction-of-the-wicked doctrine to be. With more than tenfold propriety can we claim that those who say this cling to an extreme figuratism when they claim that 122 texts are all figurative, and that the 9 which they urge against the destruction of the wicked are all literal. There are in reality only 5. [When properly understood, there are none.—ED. S. OF T.] How shall we take the Scriptures? Luther says in regard to the interpretation of the Scriptures: "That which I have so often insisted on elsewhere, I here once more repeat, viz., that the Christian should direct his first efforts toward understanding the literal sense (as it is so called) of Scripture, which alone is the substance of faith and of Christian theology." R. Hooker says ("Eccl. Polity"): "I hold it for a most infallible rule in expositions of Sacred Scripture that when a literal construction will stand, the fartherest from the letter is commonly the worst. There is nothing more dangerous and delusive than that act which changes the meaning of words as alchemy doth or would the substance of metals, make of anything what it listeth, and bringing in the end all truth to nothing." Jeremy Taylor says: "In all the interpretations of Scripture the literal sense is to be presumed and chosen unless there be evidence to the contrary. The reasons are plain because the literal sense is natural, and it is just, and it is most agreeable to laws, to the predication of commands, to the revelation of the divine will, to the concerns of the vulgar, in which the idiot is as much concerned as the greatest clerks." Alford says (Comment on Acts 10:42): "A common interpretation which should be constantly borne in mind is that a figurative sense of words is never admissible except required by the context." Of course the objection, "too much literalism," is urged against the doctrine that the Bible teaches literal hell fire. Is it not true, and can it not be established here by Bible and profane history, and also by geology or geological formations, that this world was once destroyed with water? According to the Word of God (2 Peter 3:10), this earth will be melted with fire, and the works therein burned up. Then when we read (Mal. 4:1; Rev. 20:15) that the wicked shall be burned with fire, let us take it as it reads. There is no doubt but that the suffering by the remorse of conscience will be greater than that by fire, but the sinner will suffer both. We say, therefore, to the sinner, in the language of Scripture (Isa. 55:7): "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon."