Everlasting Punishment.
By Uriah Smith
"AND these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." Matt. xxv, 46. There is, perhaps, as much reliance placed upon this text, as any other, to prove the endless conscious existence of the wicked. But the advocates of this theory have no strong hold, which believers in the destiny of the wicked which the Scriptures reveal, may fear to meet. They can afford to walk deliberately up to this text, which the reader will recollect had the honor of being one of the only two produced on this point in the late discussion at Charlotte, Mich., in favor of orthodoxy, and thoroughly and candidly explore the length and breadth of its meaning. We then inquire, What is the everlasting punishment threatened in this text? The word rendered punishment is kolosis, and occurs in but one other passage in the New Testament, where it is rendered torment; namely, 1 John iv, 18. So, say the believers in the sinner's immortality, this word conveys the idea of torment; and torment can be suffered only by conscious beings; and as this punishment or torment is to be everlasting, therefore the wicked must be everlastingly conscious to receive it. Thus stated, this conclusion no doubt sounds strong and good to the popular ear; but it would be unsafe to adopt it, without looking further at the meaning of the word. Perhaps a derived or secondary meaning has been attached to it, which is liable to misconstruction. Kolosis is defined by Robinson as follows: "A curtailing; a pruning; for example, the pruning of trees." Liddell and Scott say, "A pruning, as of trees." Thus these lexicographers, who stand at the head of all authority in these matters, give to the word the primary idea of pruning, or cutting off from something. True they give a secondary meaning of checking, punishing, and correcting; but all the punishing that can be expressed by this word must result from being cut off from, or deprived of, something. Apply this to the scripture under notice. The human race is comprised in two great divisions, the righteous and the wicked. We may liken it to a tree with two great branches, the righteous being one branch, the wicked the other. Now of these the Saviour says that one shall live on, a life eternal, but the other shall suffer an everlasting kolosis, pruning, or cutting off. Cutting off from what? Answer, from life. When a branch is pruned or cut off from a tree, we understand that that branch, cut off from its fountain of life, can no longer live. So of the wicked. The antithesis of their punishment is eternal life; not happiness or bliss, but life in itself considered. Then their punishment must be just the opposite of life. Thus we see that the Saviour's language demands that we take the word kolosis in its most literal and primary sense, which is to cut off. So taken, a more striking contrast between the eternal destiny of the righteous and the wicked can scarcely be found in the Bible. The righteous shall go into life eternal, but the wicked into an everlasting "cutting off" from life—into a state of eternal lifelessness or death. With these thoughts we submit Matt. xxv, 46, to the reader. With the same clearness that it is supposed to teach eternal conscious misery for the wicked, does it not in reality teach that as conscious beings they shall exist, after the second death, no more forever?