All of the Meetings were well attended, Many being Turned Away


The last joint discussion of the series between the Rev. Dr. E. L. Eaton, pastor of the North Avenue Methodist Episcopal church, and Pastor C. T. Russell was held yesterday in Carnegie Hall, Allegheny. Six meetings have been held, the first one on October 18, and at every one of them all the seats were taken, while yesterday's discussion was even better attended, the audience crowding the aisles.

Hundreds were turned away.

The audience was pretty evenly divided in sympathy, and telling points made by either speaker were applauded impartially. The Rev. Dr. B. F. Woodburn presided and introduced the speakers. This proposition was debated:" The scriptures clearly teach that the divine penalty for sin' actual transgression of God's holy law' eventually to be inflicted upon the incorrigible, will consist of inconceivably great sufferings, eternal in duration." The Rev. Dr. Eaton led off with the affirmative and Pastor Russell supported the negative. Each speaker had 50 minutes to present his arguments and then each took 10 minutes for reply.

During the debates the following ministers took charge in the order named: The Rev. Dr. W. H. McMillan, the Rev. Dr. Henry D. Lindsay, the Rev. Dr. J. W. Sproul, the Rev. John A. Jayne, the Rev. Eli [HG155] Miller and Dr. Woodburn. In supporting the proposition Dr. Eaton said:


We now leave the boundaries of time and space, and in this seek to explore some of the realities and mysteries of eternity. Hell is the last calamity; the eternal state of a lost soul. Opinion is practically universal on this point. The difference is chiefly concerning the quantity and quality of the calamity. Conjecture is of little value here. Human opinions are worthless, especially upon a subject which does not come level to the human mind. God has spoken; let us hear what He has to say.

Do the scriptures clearly teach the eternal punishment of the wicked? The answer must be sought in the scriptures. There is not a single word in the Old Testament which means hell. In the discussion of the intermediate state it was shown that the word translated in the common version hell, sheol, when used with a modifying word, such as lower sheol, sheol from beneath, etc., means hell. It is referred to in the New Testament as hades, but neither word represents the eternal state.

The only word in the Bible which means the eternal state of the lost is "gehenna," and in the American revision of the scriptures it is so translated. Gehenna' the Valley of Hinnom is first mentioned in connection with the boundaries of the tribe of Benjamin. It was located southeast of Jerusalem. Before the country was occupied by the Hebrews the valley had been defiled by every base practice in heathen rites, even the burning of children and the sacrificing of human beings to the god Moloch. All this was abolished by the Jews, and the old heathen ground was made odious by the good king Josiah and became the receptacle for the dead bodies of the city, where they were burned, including the bodies of criminals, and consequently a smoke could be seen ascending continually.


In Isaiah it was called Tophet, and is the description of the punishment of a wicked king, probably Sennacherib, whose army was over-thrown by the breath of Jehovah, and whose dead bodies were consumed in the valley of Hinnom. The word "gehenna" is an attempt to Hellenize the Hebrew word. It is a Greek word now, and comes into the New Testament thus. We have the word 12 times in the New Testament, and always correctly translated hell. It never means the detestable valley south of Jerusalem in the New Testament, but universally carries with it the horrible associations of the place from which the name is taken, and stands in the New Testament for the fiery blast which shall come against the enemies of God. Matt. 5:22: "I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment, and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; but whosoever shall say to his brother, Thou fool, shall be in danger of gehenna-fire."

There are three different grades of wrong-doing, and their appropriate penalties.

To be angry with a brother would expose one to the civil courts; to say to one's brother Raca would expose one to the penalty of the Sanhedrin; but to condemn a brother to eternal infamy and hell would expose the one himself to that very penalty. That is the best that can be got in English of the Greek words.

The court of heaven itself takes cognizance of the third class of offences. God is the judge, and the penalty is gehenna. It cannot, therefore, refer to a punishment of the present time, but some awful penalty which shall beset the soul in eternity, the dreadful catastrophy beyond death and the general judgment.

Matt. 18:8: "It is better to go into life maimed than that thy whole body shall be cast into gehenna' better to go into life with one foot, than that thy whole body should be cast into gehenna." If these were the only texts in the New Testament where the word gehenna is found, we might conclude that gehenna stood for some earthly, temporal sense, the body and not the soul being here involved.


But in Matt. 10:28 we learn that the soul as well as the body is involved in the doom of gehenna. "Fear not them which kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him that is able to destroy both soul and body in gehenna."

Including the soul in the doom of final destruction clearly locates that doom beyond the scope of earth and time, and makes it an eternal experience. The soul cannot be consigned to the literal valley of Hinnom for punishment, but beyond this earth it will be consigned to gehenna for its everlasting doom. "It is better to enter into life halt or maimed than to be cast into everlasting fire." The word gehenna does not appear here, yet it is the same class of comparisons that is mentioned in the sermon on the mount. This intimates that gehenna and everlasting fire refer to the same thing.

Mark 9:47 says, "It is better to enter into the kingdom of God"' thus the entering into life is associated with entering into the kingdom. This established the fact that the judgment upon the soul is not in time, nor confined to the boundaries of this life, but that it explicitly extends to the life which is to [HG156] come. In Mark 9:43-48 we have these same injunctions to cast off an arm or foot, and pluck out an eye, associated with the same penalties that attach for refusal to obey Christ, and these words, "To go into gehenna, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." Luke 12:45, "Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do; but fear Him which, after He hath killed, hath power to cast into gehenna." So gehenna is a calamity of the soul; it is no calamity after a man is dead to burn his body; the calamity is the killing of the body; but here, after the body has been killed, fear him who can cast the soul into gehenna.

If we collate the texts cited we shall get these facts: That gehenna is the calamity that shall be visited upon the enemies of God; that it is called a fire, an everlasting fire, a calamity pronounced upon the soul, and that it belongs not to time, but to eternity, and that it is to be eternal doom' a lasting punishment. CHRIST'S DESCRIPTION OF GEHENNA

The word is found in several other texts' Matt25: Matt. 23:33. Every one of these testimonies are from the words of Jesus. No writer in the Bible except James used this word, outside the Lord Jesus, because evidently Jesus thought it was too important a doctrine to commit to others for expression. James used it once, "The tongue is a world of iniquity, that setteth on fire the whole course of nature, and is set on fire of gehenna." We can learn something about gehenna by comparing other texts where it appears under other names that possess the same characteristics. Matt. 25:41, "Everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Matt. 18:8, this calamity is called everlasting fire. When the Lord said, "Depart from me, ye cursed, unto everlasting fire," He means gehenna fire, and when in the 46th verse of the same chapter, He said, "These all shall go into everlasting punishment," He means exactly the same thing as He says in verse 41.

In other words, everlasting fire and gehenna fire and everlasting punishment are the same thing.

Rev. 20:12. This wonderful chapter, that people toy with and juggle with and conjure with, which is neither literal nor figurative, that nobody is sure of, but of which we get so much nonsense. I am going to quote from that chapter, because I know what I am talking about when I quote it. (Applause.) "I saw the dead small and great stand before God." Are the dead going to be there? They are.

It is in harmony with the statement, "When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, before Him shall be gathered all nations." I do not preach anything out of the 20th chapter of Revelation that cannot be proven by the analogy of faith. "The books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged out of the things written in the books, according to their works." My brother has spent a little part of every speech he has made here in trying to show that the judgment is a probation, and a trial, and a millennium.

Now, it is not all that. I say to you that the judgment is not a trial. I say that the judgment is not a test; but it is pronouncing the verdict of the court according to the books, and the books written according to the deeds done in the body, and not the deeds done in the intermediate state. (Applause.) "We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, that every man may give an account of his works to God."


I do not think my brother is the only one in the muddle over this matter; the whole Christian world is muddled. Put this sentence down in your minds: It is one thing to be saved by faith in Jesus Christ, and it is another thing to receive retribution or judgment at the judgment throne of Christ for the deeds done in the body. (Applause.) If you write that sentence in your heart no man will ever fool you again. That is what the judgment is for. It is to tell us who is to be saved!

(Applause.) It is to determine what rewards men shall have, not to determine who is to receive opportunity for salvation. If you are going to be saved, you had better get saved now, and if you have not got it when the judgment throne is set, you will be on the left side in the decision.

"The sea gave up her dead, and death and hades gave up the dead that were in them and they were judged, every man according to his works, and every man whose name was not found in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death." In this sublime and awful passage we learn that the lake of fire is identical with the everlasting fire and punishment of Matt. 25, gehenna fire, everlasting fire, everlasting punishment, the lake of fire and the second death are all exactly identical. They all mean the same thing, and I defy any man by any interpretation to show that those words do not all mean the same thing. (General applause.) Further, the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels, into which the finally wicked will be cost, is also identified with the lake of fire and brimstone, "where the beast and the false prophet are." That this calamity is eternal is found in the fact that they "shall be tormented day and night forever and ever."

The clearest, fullest and most unequivocal statement of the doctrine of the future anywhere in the [HG157] Bible is in the words of Jesus Himself. Other and corroborative texts may be found from one end of the Bible to the other; for instance, "The wicked shall be turned into hades, sheol, and all the nations that forget God." "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God," and others of like import. But it seems our Lord was not willing to have this tremendous doctrine in doubt, and Himself gives us the best exposition. Whatever quarrel anyone has on the subject must be had with the Lord Himself.


There are popular objections that have been made' popular with the masses. One says the revised version has eliminated hell out of the Bible. As a matter of fact, the revised version has not turned it a hair's breadth; they have made it stronger and more forceful, if possible, because they have translated the word gehenna and made an English word of it and put it in its right place. The word "hell" in popular meaning is the eternal calamity of the lost souls, and almost everybody attaches that meaning to it, and, that being the case, it exactly fits the word gehenna; the word hell was a perfect and complete equivalent for the word gehenna.

Others say, and I expect my brother to ring the changes upon it, that this is all figurative description. Figures are never used in weakness. I do not know whether this is all figurative or not, but, even admitting that it is, the reality transcends the figure, for the figure is but the poor scaffolding to help us climb up to some conception of the mind of God. Grant they are figures, and the meaning of it is that our ideas of heaven are figurative. Are you going to wipe out heaven that you might have no hell? If the descriptions of hell are figurative, all the descriptions of heaven are figurative, too. Do you want to give up heaven and throw it all overboard for the sake of modifying or obscuring the doctrine of hell? I don't. I feel like the old Universalist preacher, who was always talking about salvation for everybody. He was a chaplain in the civil war, and when he went down there and saw those rebels he said, "if there isn't a hell, there ought to be one for military necessities." When you rob hell of its terrors by saying it is figurative, you rob heaven of its glories by the same argument. (Applause.) Let us see if it is figurative. The parable of the wheat and tares was a figurative expression; but the Lord explained it by showing that wheat were children of the kingdom, tares the children of the wicked one. Then he adds: "As therefore the tares are gathered up and burned with fire (there is your figure) so shall it be in the end of the world; the Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that cause stumbling and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into everlasting fire." Is that figurative? He uses and treats it as though He was stating literal facts.


"These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." Kolasin aionios (everlasting punishment) and zoa aionios (everlasting life) are the words used here. The same word is used for eternal in both cases. If one is lasting the other is; if one comes to an end, the other does. So far as quality and quantity is concerned, one is as great as the other. My brother, however, will tell me that aion means an age or short period. I admit that it is used that way. I think we are now living in the aion of the world which began with the human history, and that it is the last age; our brother will tell us that there are several aions, ages of the ages, and I won't quarrel with him, but they refer to the ages of eternity, not this world. He will tell you that aionios does not mean an endless condition, but let me tell you that these two words, aion, the noun, and aionios, the adjective, are the only words in the Greek language which express eternity. If you wanted to say that a thing is eternal you would use those words; in the Hebrew it is olam, and in the Greek aion, but those words do not always express eternity. You have to remember the associations of the text.

Some will tell you that annihilation of the soul is the punishment, and will say that all the words describing the loss of the soul are punishment, or destroy or burn up, and so on. They quote the passage, "The wicked shall be ashes under your feet," from Malachi, and say of course that means annihilation. But hold on!

They don't read the next verse which says: "Ye shall grow up as calves of the stall!" There you are! You are calves and the wicked are ashes! I don't know a word in the Bible that means annihilation. God probably could annihilate, but we cannot do it, not even to a grain of sand, much less a human soul. And that doctrine is built upon another error, that the soul is not naturally immortal. Our brother has been fighting for that all through. I affirm it is immortal, God made the human soul immortal in the sense that He made it a living soul. I defy anybody to point out the error. God made man in the likeness and image of himself in his intellect, sensibilities and will, not in his nature; a living soul, in which there was no self-limiting device which would at some future period work its overthrow. It is not in the soul, but it is in the body immortal unless He introduced some device to stave off death. But it is not natural for the soul ever to die, and if the soul ever does die it will be an act of God. (General applause, in which Pastor Russell joined.) I do not believe God ever [HG158] made soul or angel He could not kill. (General applause.) The only question is whether you or I know about it, and I say He has not informed us of it.


Another class has the restoration idea, that the soul will be restored because it is a child of God. The wicked is not a child of God; there is a trememdous difference.

If a man gets to be a child of God he will have to be born of the Holy Ghost, and there is some little hope that such a one will come back again to divine favor after he has backslidden, as the prodigal son did, but the man who has no recollection of God, who is a sinner, and who has not received the Holy Ghost, and who does not want to know God, who never was at home with God and has traveled from him ever since he was born, who curses God till the air is blue in Allegheny' the fairest city in the world' there is no restoration for them.

If you build up any thought of annihilation on the idea that human souls are children of God you will be left in the darkest hour of eternity. It is not true. The whole idea proceeds upon the one idea that God can do something in eternity that He cannot do here; that salvation means are going to be multiplied and intensified in the future. That is a piece of sheer nonsense. It was right here in this world where Christ died; it was here where the kingdom was inaugurated, when Pentecost came and men were commissioned to go everywhere and proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ. If there is any world in God's universe where these means for salvation can be made more intense, I do not know where it is, and it is not in the Bible. (Applause) My brother is going to have them saved where there is no probation at all; where Satan is bound; evil restrained; balmy breezes; millennial comforts; case-hardened sinners growing up into prodigies of moral fiber' as much as an angle worm! (Applause). That is not probation at all. I have had to work out my salvation with fear and trembling for 40 years, and expect to keep at it till I get through, and when I get through I will not think I have been to a kindergarten! (Applause) But I will think I have been on probation, and if God has to save me on those terms I am going to respectfully request that He will put those other fellows through the same milli (Applause)


Some make much of the love of God. Let my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I ever speak lightly of the love of God, the only hope of a lost world; but there are some things God cannot do.

Jesus loved the young rich man who wished to know the way of life, but when he gave him the final test and the suggestion, was rejected, God could not save him without his own inclination. To the Jews who had rejected Him, He uttered those solemn and awful words, 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and those that are sent unto thee: how often would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens, and ye would not: behold, your house is left unto you desolate." He stood before the doors of their hearts, weeping because he could not save them, and you had better face those tremendous facts, rather than go into eternity with the hope that God is going to accomplish there what he cannot accomplish here.

They say modern preaching has changed; that present-day preachers don't talk about hell. I wonder how many people in the North Avenue church would say that? I tell you hell is a serious matter. There is one preacher who hasn't gotten over preaching it, and I am not responsible for the rest of them. If they have lost faith in this thing, or have lost their courage to proclaim it, it is their fault.

Fifty-three years ago I stood by the ashes of my mother in a one-roomed log cabin in Wisconsin. They enclosed her in a rough coffin, took her in a wagon five miles away to the little graveyard, and put her into a cave without flowers, or a song or a benediction, We looked into that mysterious place called the grave till every last particle of gravel upon the coffin lid had fallen, and then left in that place our dearest earthly friend. Times have changed. Coffins are caskets, flowers make the home like a garden, sweet music and sympathetic words make the trial easier, and at last, the cemetery, itself like a palaced city of the dead, receives the casket which we lower into a bank of flowers, and sing a sweet song and go away. The funeral of today is not the funeral of years ago. Times have changed; but death is the same! (Applause.)


Pastor Russell then took up the negative side of the proposition. He said: We are pleased to say, dear friends, that there is a great deal that Dr. Eaton has just stated to you that we fully agree with, but there are certain portions of his discourse with which we could not agree. We cannot agree that the scriptures teach that the wages of sin is an eternity of torture. We do not find it so written in the word, nor do we find that such application would be in harmony with the character of our heavenly Father. By way of giving a thought as to where we believe this great doctrine of eternal torment came [HG159] from, which has so entrenched itself in the minds of the people, that good people like our dear brother, well intentioned people, must confess that it is very much against their own desires that they must preach very much differently from what they would like to do themselves, very much different from what they would like to think of the Almighty' we state that during the dark ages, at the same time that purgatory came forth, this doctrine of torment was evolved' the same place all the errors came from. And when I say the same place, I mean, dear friends, that it came from Satan himself. Where did the heathen get their ideas of torture and inferno? Not from the scriptures; they got them from the great adversary, of whom the apostle says:" The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not lest the glorious light of the goodness of God should shine into their hearts." (Applause.) The goodness of God is hidden from the sight of the heathen by these false views, which they have received, and likewise in proportion as Christian people receive this doctrine their minds become darkened.

It is to the advantage of our twentieth century that we have lost some of our love for eternal torment. The time they loved the doctrine most was when they used to emulate what they thought was the character and disposition of the Almighty Father, and they would burn one another at the stake, and give them a foretaste of what they thought the Father would give them later, only that would be kept up through all eternity. The doctrine has been the most damnable doctrine throughout the entire history of the church. I charge it with the greatest crimes of history.

What do these lynchings of the present day signify? Simply a repetition of what is believed to be the character of God and his vindictiveness against evil-doers.


The scriptures are in full harmony with what you and I and every other sane, reasonable person in the world shall concede to be the reasonable and proper character of our God. (Applause.) What is declared of our heavenly Father? That He is just, that He is wise, that He is loving, that He is powerful. All Christian people will acknowledge these attributes of the divine character. If this is so, can we find any sense of the word in which we could conceive of God as just and yet punishing a creature of His own hand to all eternity, no matter what the sin was? I am not an apologist for sin; I do not live in sin myself, and I never preach sin. We at the Bible House chapel preach holiness to the Lord. (Applause.) But I tell you that all these people around here that our brother says are making the air blue with their blasphemies of God and the holy name of Jesus Christ are all people who have been taught this doctrine of eternal torment. (Applause.) And all the murderers, thieves and evil doers in the penitentiaries, were all taught this Doctrine.(continued applause.) And another thing; you won't find one of the Bible House company in that order by any means. (Prolonged applause.) These are bad doctrines; they have been injuring the world this long time; they are not a part of the Lord's teaching at all, and our dear brother has not gotten the smoke of the dark ages robbed out of his eyes yet. (Applause.) If we take up the subject of God's justice for a moment, could you possibly make yourself believe that it would be a just thing for our heavenly Father to create a world of humans and foreknow the end, and prepare a great and awful place where 99 out of every 100 of them were to go, and to prepare a corps of fireproof devils, and then to set forth the evil influences we see all about us, and to say: "If you don't get away from these, down you go, and I intend you shall have it!"

There is no justice in that! It is totally foreign to justice. Where would be the justice of tormenting a man to all eternity for 20, 50 or 100 years of life in Eden?

Where would be the wisdom of God in allowing a plan of that kind? Our brother has his own ideas of this matter. He tells us in one breath that it is only those who were begotten of the spirit that are to be saved, and again he tells us in another that it is all the heathen, who never heard about Christ at all, who are to be saved.

(Applause) His good heart tries to embrace the world and see God's character vindicated by the outcome, and he is in conflict with himself.


If only the ones who are going to escape hell are those who are begotten of the Holy Spirit, most of your families and friends are going to eternal torment. It is a serious matter to think of, and for God to think of, that hundreds and thousands of millions He has created have no better opportunity, but are without opportunity for knowing that truth, without which they cannot be begotten of the Holy Spirit, and brought into the blessings of God's favor, now open to those who will receive it. Where would God's love be in this plan? Our brother would tell us that God's love was manifested in providing a way of escape. Then notice, that according to this theory, because Adam sinned, damnation was pronounced upon him and he was sent to eternal torment, and all his children with him sent to the same place; and there would be no hope of escape except that we have Jesus as the Redeemer.

I freely concede, indeed, I claim, that none are escaped from the penalty except those who accept Jesus; but I claim that what they escape from is [HG160] that which Jesus suffered for them' death! (Applause.) I claim further, that God's gracious plan is that after He shall have gathered out the church to be joint heirs with Christ in His kingdom, He is to give to His little flock the administration of that millennial kingdom, that all the families of the earth may be blessed with the knowledge of the Lord, and the opportunities they will have then will be much better than now' and I am glad they will have them much better than I am having it! '( Applause.) I never begrudge any man all the blessings and advantages he can get, and I will be glad to see the world get all the exceeding riches of God's grace in the ages to come as the apostle suggests in his letter to the Ephesians." In the ages to come (not in the present age), God will show His exceeding riches of grace by Christ Jesus." But the riches of grace shown to us who are in Christ Jesus now, and the blessing to us of the church, are incomparably greater than are coming to the world, as we saw the other evening.

The blessing to the church is partaking of the divine nature' not merely to get life as human beings, but as the blessing God proposes to offer to the world is life, a restitution as expressed by Peter in Acts 3, a higher blessing, namely life on a spiritual plane, will be for the kingdom class.


I hold that all punishment from the Divine standpoint must be corrective, just as the best and noblest sentiments of mankind must have determined that all earthly punishment shall be corrective, never vindictive. I am pleased, indeed, to see that in all the penal institutions of the United States gradually this sentiment of corrective punishment is being introduced, and all thought of vengeance against the individual is being removed. It is a sign of progress; and I declare that they are not progressing beyond the heavenly Father' thathe has in his plan the same principle: that all punishment is intended to be corrective, to assist the individual.

Notice, that according to the scriptures, the penalty for original sin was death.

The account given in Genesis, where if in any place, there ought to be a succinct statement of what the penalty would be, in the account of man's disobedience and the Divine statement of the penalty, we find it to be, "The wages of sin is death."

And death doesn't mean eternal torment. Death is the opposite of life. Life is one thing, death is the antithesis. So, when God told Adam that he might live by obedience, it meant what it said; it did not mean, you have life anyhow, for suffering or pleasure. Proceeding, we see that our Lord Jesus paid the penalty for sin, and the penalty he paid was what? Did he go to eternal torment? Did he go to gehenna? No. We all know to the contrary. He paid the penalty the Lord let fall on Him. He paid what we would have had to pay but for His sacrifice' we would never have escaped eternal death, if it was not for what Christ did. And what did He do? "Christ dies for our sins, according to the scriptures!" (Applause.) Death was the penalty, the wages, and this wage our Redeemer paid, and it was because He paid it that we have hope toward God that we shall not be confined in death, hope that all the prisoners in the pit shall come forth in the hope of a ressurrection.

In all harmony with this, we find the apostle, speaking of those who have come to the knowledge of the truth, Heb. 6:4-6; 10:18-30, described the penalty that shall come upon those who have sinned wilfully after coming to the knowledge of the truth' "a certain fearful looking for judgment which shall devour the adversaries"' notreserving and torturing, but devouting the adversaries of God.

Our brother quoted: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."


The apostle was not speaking about the world, but the church, in this same connection. If members of the church, who have come into Christ, shall take themselves out of the hands of Christ, whom God sent as the mediator, and we fall into the hands of God's justice, nothing remains of Divine favor, but only the wages of sin' death. There is nothing to be hoped for out of Christ.

The message of salvation, the good tidings, that Christ died, is for whom? Every man. Have all heard the message? No. Have all a hearing ear now? No. It is a special blessing to those who hear the message in the present time, as the Lord said: "Blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear." Let us rejoice that God's providence permitted our eyes of understanding to be opened in permitting our getting some sight of God's goodness and plan. Let us not forget, however, that there are a great many not so favored, and that the time is coming when all the blind eyes shall be opened, and all the deaf ears shall be unstopped, according to Isaiah 35.

The proposition is, choose, believe, live. "Choose life that ye may live." Some one says, "But you cannot help living anyway; you are so constituted that you cannot die." God's Word days, "I have set before you life and death, choose life that ye may live." Those whose eyes are opened may have the rejoicing that they have chosen life, and in the present time the Lord himself declares that it is a narrow way we walk in, [HG161] "and few there be that find it." We are in full harmony with the Lord in this matter; not many are finding the way of life, not many know about the way of life, nor the only name given under heaven or amongst men whereby we must be saved, because God's due time is not come to bless the world with this full knowledge. Look at the dark ages. Where was the knowledge of the kingdom at that time? Where was the power of the kingdom exercised then? No one can speak. The truth was fallen in the streets, and gross darkness covered the people for over a thousand years. Was Christ's reign established in that gross darkness?

Our brother suggested that the establishment of the kingdom was at Pentecost, because our Lord and John and the disciples proclaimed the message, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." Let us look at that. God had promised the kingdom through Abraham to Israel, if they were faithful. They were to become God's favored nation to bless the world as the seed of Abraham. And so the apostle, speaking of His message, says "It was necessary that the gospel should first have been preached unto you." It must be offered to Jews before it could be offered to the Gentiles.


Our Lord said to the disciples, "Ye shall not be gone over the cities of Israel before the Son of Man be come." When did He come in that sense? Five days before the crucifixion, when approaching the city, He wept over it, and stated those words which our brother has already quoted, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how oft would I have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." There He came as king; there He offered Himself as king. They did not receive Him, and Jesus pronounced these words of desolation upon them, but was it an everlasting desolation? Note further, "Henceforth ye shall see me no more until that day." (Great applause.) What day? The great millennial day, the day in which "ye shall say blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." Meantime the kingdom has been taken from them, and the people rejected from divine favor while God is selecting from the nations in general the class which shall eventually constitute the true kingdom, which shall rule to bless the world.

In the text which our brother quoted the other night (Acts 15:14, 15) James tells how the Lord is taking out this people for His name, and then goes on to quote the prophet Amos on the subject. Our brother doesn't think the prophets knew anything, or that the apostles knew very much, when they thought the stars were pinholes in the sky, but I think it was much better to have it said, as it was of Peter and John, "They took knowledge of them that had been with Jesus and learned of Him," than to know all there is to know about astronomy. (Applause.) What we want is the words of the Lord, and what we care for is not whether Peter was learned or unlearned, but if God was with him and God used him, and declared He would speak through him; then we will look for our instruction from him.

James went on to say, "After this I will turn again and will rebuild the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down, and will build up the ruins thereof, that the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called."


I would like to have you notice concerning our brother's argument that we agree that hades never means eternal torment; that there is not a word about torment concerning hades except the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and I must help him on that. (Applause.) The rich man was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day. That doesn't mean that every rich man is in danger of something horrible. These are figures or parts of a parable. Purple represents royalty' it always has. Was there any nation in a royal condition, a kingly condition, in favor with God, at the time our Lord spoke? Yes, the Jewish nation held that position. Their kingdom was the Lord's kingdom, as the Scriptures said, for instance, of Solomon, "Solomon sat in the throne of the kingdom of the Lord, in the room of David his father." Was there anything to represent their white linen? Yes, they had the justification, purity, of the sacrifices of the law' not actual justification, but a typical cleansing. What was the sumptuous feast? It was the rich promises and blessing which God had given them, of which the apostle wrote, "What advantage hath a Jew? Much advantage every way, chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God." And what does Lazarus represent? That class who were aliens and strangers from God's favor, the poor of this world, not highly esteemed' the Gentiles.

There came a change in the Jewish nation; it passed away as a nation, although it has remained as a people; and Lazarus' condition was changed. The Gentiles came into God's favor, and became participants of the blessings promised to the seed of Abraham. Abraham's bosom represented that the Gentiles had been admitted to the privileges of the children of Abraham, spiritual Israelites, joint heirs with Christ in His kingdom.

The end of the rich man's course is not mentioned in the parable, but in Rom. 11, we have the Apostle Paul [HG162] very fully describing the casting off of Israel, in order to permit the election of the Gentiles who should complete the church of Christ, and after this has been accomplished a return of great favor to the Jewish nation – a release of the rich man from his condition of torment, and his admission into the blessings which God has promised, humbled and helped by the severe experiences of the past nineteen centuries.

"As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes (the church's sake), but as touching the election (the original promises of earthly favor to Israel) they are beloved for the father's sake. As in times past ye have obtained mercy through their unbelief, through your mercy they may obtain mercy." When shall the church exercise mercy toward Israel? In the future time of glory, when all power shall be in the hands of the glorified church to accomplish all of God's will.

We agree that gehenna is a place of fire, but the apostles agree, and the prophets, and Jesus, that the Lord's utterances were parabolic. "Without a parable spake He not unto them." "He opened His mouth in parables and dark sayings, that seeing they might see and not perceive, and hearing they might hear and not understand."


The disciples did not understand, and Jesus told them they would not understand "Until the holy spirit should come upon them, and they should be endued with power" later. We agree that gehenna means a place of fire, and that the original Tophet, outside Jerusalem, was a representation of gehenna. The literal gehenna outside Jerusalem was a type of the symbolic gehenna outside the New Jerusalem.

As the literal valley was a place for disintegration of dead carcasses, so in the symbolical condition, all the evildoers should be cast into gehenna, dead' to forever experience the penalty pronounced for wilful sin' because nothing that defileth or maketh a lie shall enter into the new government, the New Jerusalem, to be established when the millennial kingdom shall begin to exercise its control.

Our brother quoted from Revelation the very interpretation of the lake of fire which we should have given' Revelation 20, says, "The lake of fire, which is the second death!" (Great Applause.) The second death is just like the first death would have been, an everlasting death, had not our Redeemer purchased an opportunity for resurrection. The second death has no end, there is no hope that those who go into it shall ever return; it means utter destruction. Christ dieth no more, He will never redeem the world again, but as the result of His own redemption every member of the human family purchased by His precious blood must have a full opportunity to escape the hadean penalty upon the human race, must have the opportunity of gaining eternal life. Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, should have the hearts to know that in the present time they may have part in the select little flock who, by patient continuance in well-doing, may attain to the opportunity of administering the wonderful blessings which God has in reservation for the world of mankind.


Our brother stated that if you take away hell you take away heaven' the eternity of the one is implied in the eternity of the other. We are fully agreed that the penalty which God will pronounce upon the wicked will last forever!

(Applause.) There is no question about the eternal continuance Of it. The question is, "What will the penalty consist of?" Our answer is most emphatically, the penalty for wilful sin will be the second death, from which there is no resurrection, from which there is no recovery.

Our brother quotes a text from this 20th chapter of Revelation, which he told us the other night he didn't understand' a quotation which I certainly hope and you certainly hope you never will see fulfilled, if it is to be taken literally that the beast and the false prophet shall be tormented before' " the throne of the Lamb day and night forever:" If all the wicked are to be cast in with them to a lake of fire, the Lord and the saints throughout all eternity would be doing nothing but hearing the groans of the damned.

We have not time to go into this now, but I merely suggest: What is the beast?

You don't know! What is the false prophet? You don't know! Well, you will have to get an understanding of what these two are before you can understand how they are going to be tormented! (Applause) They are symbols of institutions, now existing in the world. It is the same figure referred to early in the chapter. "That would not receive the mark of the beast in the forehead nor in their hands." These are great institutions now in existence, and we need' to be on guard that we do not have the mark of this beast on us! (Applause) The Lord speaks of the broad way that leadeth to destruction. That doesn't sound like eternal torment, does it? I used to think it did once, and went out of this city of Allegheny, when a boy, putting texts on walls and in the streets, warning people to turn to God, and escape the awful future I thought was before them, and wondered why God didn't do more to save the people, and tell them of their terrible condition. I have found out since that God was more wise and [HG163] loving than I, that, as the prophet declares, "His ways are higher than our ways; and His plans higher than our plans' as the heavens are higher than the earth."



Our brother didn't quote anything from the apostles, and I'll tell you why. There wasn't anything to quote! (Laughter.) The Lord spoke in parables and dark sayings, but the apostles did not do so; the apostles were writing to the church, and they wrote plainly. Paul says, "They shall be punished with everlasting destruction"' the destruction shall be forever. "Whose end is destruction." (Philip. 3:19) "Vessels of wrath fitted for destruction." (Rom. 9:22) "Which drown men in perdition and destruction." (1 Tim. 6:9) Nothing about eternal torment in any thing the apostle states and yet he said, "I have not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of God."

What He had to tell was sufficient that the man of God might be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work. (Applause) Paul was not the only one. Peter says, "Bringing upon themselves swift destruction." (2 Pet. 2:1)" Some wrest the scriptures to their own destruction." We are wresting the scriptures to our own injury if we take words and make anything mean black when it is white, make life mean death, and death mean life, and destruction mean torment, and make perish mean torment. "God so loved the world 'that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish"' does perish mean torment? It takes several years at a theological seminary to know how to do that. (Applause) Our brother has made a point concerning the kingdom, that it must have begun at Pentecost, because the Lord said, "There be some standing here who shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." Our brother should have read on. The division of the Bible into chapters is a modern invention, and was not contained in the original scriptures.

The translators divided the account of these words from their proper connection, for the first words of the next chapter are, "And five days afterward He taketh Peter, James and John up into a high mountain, and was transfigured before them." He showed them the glories of the kingdom. How do you know? One of the brethren there said so!


Peter said, "We have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we were eyewitnesses to his majesty, when he received from the Father honor and glory when there came such a voice from the excellent glory. This is my beloved Son; and this voice we heard when we were with him in the holy mount." He is talking about the matter of the glory and the kingdom. And he goes on, "We have a more sure word of prophecy, where unto we do well that we take heed, as unto a light that shineth in the dark place, until the day dawn."

Has the day dawned yet? No; we are still in the night time, and the Lord's people still need the light of the lamp, the word to guide them, until the glorification of the church, the bride of Christ, when, as stated in the parable of the tares, after the wheat was gathered into the garner, "Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." This will be the manifestation of the sons of God, in glory, for which the apostle, in Rom. 8, declares the whole creation is groaning and waiting that they might then be delivered from the bondage of sin.

I am sorry there are some still blinded, as were the Pharisees at the beginning, that they do not see the great privileges and blessings of many of God's people today, and see not that the light is breaking on all topics under the sun, and the sciences and inventions are being multiplied, so it is due time that light should shine out of darkness, and that the dawning of the new day should be marked by the increased knowledge concerning God's holy word. Not wresting the Scriptures, but having full confidence in them, we stand with every person who has similar confidence, and seek to know as fully as possible the revealed will of God!

The applause following Pastor Russell's close was long-continued, and the speaker was obliged to arise and acknowledge the outburst. Dr. Eaton was greeted with enthusiastic cheers when he got up to make his 10-minute reply. He said:


I cannot get my brother to give me an answer. I gave you a statement, unvarnished, scriptural, with a thousand texts to prove It.(applause.) Why didn't he answer them? Why doesn't he say something? He tells ns that the beast and the false prophet and the devils are symbols. Every one can see that! We have to admit it! They were thrown into the lake of fire and tortured forever! It must be hard work to torture Symbols.(applause.) They were persons, my brother, and they were thrown into the lake of fire; that is the only place where God will torture. I have not said God would torture sinners, as he said I did. I have talked about [HG164] eternal punishment. I referred you to Jesus' own words, kolassin' punishment.

You can appeal to men's notions, and get cheers from a rabble on a street corner. I appeal to men's reasoning powers. The question is, What are we going to take from the word of God? The doctrine did not come from Satan; we had it from the lips of Jesus Christ, and no man can examine the texts in which the word gehenna occurs without feeling that the calamity of a lost soul is an inconceivably great calamity and eternal.

I thought our brother was going to discuss what we had before us tonight, and not hash up a lot of other things. I supposed I had made the millennial doctrine look like 30 cents the last night, and I didn't propose to discuss it again.

Our brother said all punishment is corrective. He muddles you when he talks like that. A great many texts state how God is correcting, for our profit, all through the period of probation; but when probation ends, and when men are passed beyond the present life, then punishment is retributive, and not corrective. God is not damning men in this life. He is not punishing them here. The evil comes that he may prune and purify. The whole question of eternal punishment is not corrective or remedial, but retributive, for "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, saith the Lord."

(Applause.) The soul that reaches the calamity of gehenna has come to the point where corrective measures do not go, but punitive measures, the execution of the judgment of God as retributive justice upon those who refuse the privileges of mercy.


Our brother worried about two things, and has been trying to make the best of them he could. He says that Christ never spoke except in parables. We know that is not true. He has found one text which says He always spoke in parables, but I do not know why the author wrote it. I cannot interpret it as truth. He did not always speak in parables, by any means. He went to the extent of explaining parables to make them literal. It was not a parable when Jesus said, "Repent."

That was a plain statement.

When John said "Repent," there was no figure about it, and when he put it into the mouths of the others, it was literal. That mission, given to the disciples, 12 and 70, was never repeated after Pentecost, but Paul says to the church at Ephesus, "Amongst whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God." Our brother says the kingdom was not set up on that occasion. It was set up. It was inaugurated at Pentecost, for Jesus and Paul and John, and the 70 and the 12, not only said the kingdom of heaven is at hand, but they also heard Jesus say, "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel until the Son of Man be come." He was already there in one sense, He was to come in another sense. Do not be fooled by anybody. It is impossible for a people who have a spoonful of brains to misunderstand. What did Christ mean? He meant that they would surely see the kingdom when the power should be manifested at Pentecost. It was not the transfiguration at all. Mark says: "They shall not taste death until they have seen the kingdom of God come with power." When Jesus said, "Ye shall be endued with power after the Holy Ghost is come upon you," that referred to Pentecost. (Applause.) My brother, it is not a fair treatment of the word of God to try to wiggle out of that! (Applause.) If, after I give you the simplest statements of the scriptures, and my brother insists that they are figures, then you have no revelation at all, from God's word, but a revelation from Pastor Russell! (Applause.) Did that kingdom of God come with power on the day of Pentecost when the holy spirit was poured out? If it did it is come, and it is coming by and by, and we are in the last time, the last period of the world's history now. Peter stood up and so declared when he said: "This is that which was spoken of by the prophet Joel, 'In the last days I will pour out my spirit. '"God poured out His spirit at Pentecost and that was the last day. They will close with the harvest, which is the judgment, and this millennial nonsense, which is a piece of stupidity and nothing else, will be completely shattered and done away!


Dr. Eaton's remarks were received with vociferous cheers by many, and he was obliged to acknowledge the applause by a rising salute.

Pastor Russell, answering the reply, was accorded a most enthusiastic reception also. He said: I must be very brief, but I have some other items I should have mentioned before.

Regarding the kingdom, we quite agree that it was begun in an embryotic sense.

We are not at all in disagreement that Pentecost was a great day and a wonderful time; it was the beginning of the new dispensation; it was the beginning of the selection of the house of sous; it was the anointing of the sons with the holy spirit from on high. But it is one thing to have the kingdom begun in an embryotic condition, and another thing to have the kingdom in power. During all this gospel age the kingdom has been in progress, and the Lord is taking out the class whom he wants, all probationary members, who are exhorted to make their calling and election sure that they may be in the completed kingdom in due time. But all the reigning and ruling [HG165] done in the present time isn't worth mentioning. "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force!" They took the head of the kingdom, and crucified Him, and they have taken the members of the body, who must suffer for Christ's sake before they can do any Reigning.(applause.) In due time, when all the members of the kingdom shall be ready, and after the gathering of all the jewels who shall compose that kingdom, then the offer of blessings to the world, through it, shall begin at once. To use another figure, the bride will be with the bridegroom when the kingdom is fully established, but, as the Scriptures say, "The bride must make herself ready."

I also agreed that we are in the last days. The whole period of time from Adam to the second coming of Christ is divided into six periods of a thousand years each' thousand-year days. Six are past and we are now in the beginning of the seventh.

At the time of our Lord four of these great days had passed, and they were entering the fifth, so that it was proper for the apostles to say that they were in the last days' they were in the latter end of this great week.


I also agree that by an act of God all the wicked can be dealt with; that they have not inherent immortality, and if God says all the wicked will be destroyed, how else shall we view the matter? Our brother accused me of not answering him; he did not notice that I was agreeing with him so well. God is able to destroy both soul 'and body in Gehenna, and not only able, but He is going to do it' an everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power!

(Applause.) I should not enjoy heaven after the manner of Jonathan Edwards, who told the people about their friends in their lost condition, and when asked how God could be praised under such conditions, said: "We will look from the battlements of heaven and see the earthly ones writhing in torture, and then turn about and praise God the louder for the manifestation of His justice!"

Our dear brother talked about the beasts and the lake of fire. He forgets that the lake of fire is just as symbolical as the beasts are! (Applause.) Jesus explains this particular symbol and says: "The lake of fire is the second death!" (Applause.) Our brother thought he annihilated the doctrine of the millennium. He called attention to the fact that there would not be room for him to sit down, and that that completely demolished the millennial idea. Our dear brother demolished himself (laughter) when he told us that. I took his figures, and I wish you would check them over carefully yourselves. He tells us the population of the world altogether would amount to ninety-eight trillions, ninety-eight billions, three hundred millions. That is not so. (Applause.) Take your pencil and paper and follow the doctor's statement of how he got at this result. You will find that, according to his idea of calculating, there would be today in this world forty-eight trillions, two hundred and eighty-nine billions, eight hundred and twenty-four millions, one hundred and sixty-five thousand, six hundred and Eight.(applause.) I want to say that the doctor is a safer man to follow in some other things than in figures. He had an object in this. He wanted to make out that there wouldn't be room to sit down, if he were on earth in the millennium.

I began with today. We have the best statistics today that were ever known. There are today sixteen hundred millions of a population, as compared with forty-eight trillions! (Laughter.) The doctor's figures are only forty-eight thousand two hundred and eighty-nine times too many. That is a pretty good joke. (Laughter and applause.) You remember that the other evening he told us either he or I could fool you, and I believe he has fooled you on this. (Laughter.) I am speaking as candidly as I would know how to do in the presence of God and the angels on this matter, dear friends. (Applause.) I find that by the most reasonable calculation I can possibly make there have been living in this world nineteen billions, four hundred and thirty-seven millions, five hundred and seventy-five thousand, eight hundred and twenty-two, the extreme outside number that could possibly be reckoned.


But suppose you double this, it will still leave plenty of room. This calculation shows that, taking the acreage of the world as it is today there would be nearly two acres apiece for all the people who ever lived in the world. (Applause.) Plenty of room to sit down. You have not the millennium knocked out on that basis. And God is able to make that statement in Revelation literal, "There shall be no more sea," in order to make good his promise that all the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord," and that "every man shall know Him, from the least to the greatest."

In this calculation I found it necessary to work in harmony with the scriptures' figures, giving the count from Noah's time on; our brother reckoned that half a million persons would be a fair estimate before the flood; I conceded a million, to be generous. Beginning with Noah there were eight persons. I count that they multiplied four times every century in the first nine centuries, instead of twice, as our brother suggested. That would give us at the exodus 4,194,304 persons [HG166] dying in one century. Four centuries later it would be 37,000,000; in Solomon's time, 75,000,000; in Babylon's time, 150,000,000; in Christ's time. 301,000,000; in Atilia's time, 693,000,000 in Charlemange's time, 1,207,000,000; in the Crusader's time 2,500,000,000; in the time of the Reformation, 4,800,000,000' dying every four centuries. Coming to the seventeenth century, and counting each century's death-rate separately, there would be for the last three centuries two billions, three billions, and four billions eight hundred millions respectively. We cannot throw out the millennium on the score of lack of standing room now!

Now dear friends, I must cease. I wish to thank you for your kind attention, and I am sure our brother will join in this expression, that our hope is that we have not come together merely to measure theological swords, but to help all see more clearly the word of the Lord, and to expose the truth, that the Lord may be glorified, and that all who are of the truth may be able to see the truth. (Prolonged applause.) Dr. Eaton replied to the closing expressions of Pastor Russell, assuring the audience of similar good desire, and his pleasure at noting the general manifestation of interest on the part of the people in the word of the Lord, as evidenced by the remarkable attendances at the meetings. He admitted that there was not enough doctrinal teaching and discussion concerning the Lord's word, and hoped that this would be stimulated by the series of debates which was just closing.

Had we been there beloved Lord When on that night you knelt With anguished prayer upon your lips, Would we your grief have felt?

Had we been there?

Had we been near, O precious Lord When traveling Calvary's road You fell beneath the cross you bore, Would we have borne the load?

Had we been near?

That early morn would we have gone And sought thy sacred tomb That we might thus annoint thee there With spice and sweet perfume?

That early morn?
What joy is ours, for thou art raised And nevermore shalt die.
Thy blood was shed that we might live, Thy name we glorify!
What joy is ours!
We'll follow on, the call is clear For all to consecrate.
A life anew in us begun, All else do we forsake.
We'll follow on!
Then raised with him when life is o'er, A crown for every cross.
What resurrection joy we'll know!
What gain for every loss!
When raised with Him!