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existence of the soul appears everywhere and in various forms. Says J. T. Addison: “The belief
that the soul of man survives his death is so nearly universal that we have no reliable record of
a tribe or nation or religion in which it does not prevail.”[Life Beyond Death, p. 3.] It may
manifest itself in the conviction that the dead are still hovering around and near at hand, in
ancestor worship, in seeking intercourse with the dead, in the conception of an underworld
peopled with the dead, or in the idea of the transmigration of souls; but it is always present in
some form or other. But in these religions all is vague and uncertain. It is only in the Christian
religion that the doctrine of the last things receives greater precision and carries with it an
assurance that is divine. Naturally, they who are not content to rest their faith exclusively on
the Word of God, but make it contingent on experience and on the deliverances of the Christian
consciousness, are at a great disadvantage here. While they may experience spiritual
awakening, divine illumination, repentance and conversion, and may observe the fruits of the
operations of divine grace in their lives, they cannot experience nor see the realities of the
future world. They shall have to accept the testimony of God respecting these, or continue to
grope about in the dark. If they do not wish to build the house of their hope on vague and
indeterminate longings, they shall have to turn to the firm ground of the Word of God.
B. ESCHATOLOGY IN THE HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
Speaking generally, it may be said that Christianity never forgot the glorious predictions
respecting its future and the future of the individual Christian. Neither the individual Christian
nor the Church could avoid thinking about these and finding comfort in them. Sometimes,
however, the Church, borne down with the cares of life, or entangled in its pleasures, thought
little of the future. Moreover, it happened repeatedly that at one time it would think more of
this, and at another time, more of that particular element of its future hope. In days of
defection the Christian hope sometimes grew dim and uncertain, but it never died out
altogether. At the same time it must be said that there has never been a period in the history of
the Christian Church, in which eschatology was the center of Christian thought. The other loci of
Dogmatics have each had their time of special development, but this cannot be said of
eschatology. Three periods can be distinguished in the history of eschatological thought.
1. FROM THE APOSTOLIC AGE TO THE BEGINNING OF THE FIFTH CENTURY.
In the very first
period the Church was perfectly conscious of the separate elements of the Christian hope, as,
for instance, that physical death is not yet eternal death, that the souls of the dead live on, that
Christ is coming again, that there will be a blessed resurrection of the people of God, that this
will be followed by a general judgment, in which eternal doom will be pronounced upon the
wicked but the pious will be rewarded with the everlasting glories of heaven. But these
elements were simply seen as so many separate parts of the future hope, and were not yet