This view of the final results of moral evil, as destroying personal existence, is hardly an Orthodox doctrine, though quasi-Orthodox. It is the refuge of that class of minds which are unable to accept universal restoration on the one side, or everlasting punishment on the other. To them a large number of human beings seem “too good for banning, and too bad for blessing,” and in their opinion will be suffered quietly to drop out of conscious existence. The analogies of nature, in which out of many seeds and many eggs produced, only a few attain to the condition of plants and animals, tend to confirm this view. The state of human character here appears also to favor it, since multitudes pass out of this world in an undeveloped condition, seeming wholly to have failed of the end of their being. The chief scriptural argument in favor of the doctrine is found in the assumption that “life through Christ” is equivalent to continued conscious existence, and that “death” as the punishment of sin, is equivalent to annihilation. We have so fully discussed the meaning of these terms in the previous chapter, that it is not desirable to argue this point here. We agree with the Orthodox view, and differ from that of the annihilationists on this point. The God of the gospel is the Father of all his children—of the weakest, feeblest, and most sinful. If he is the God of _all_, then he is “the God, not of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” Indian tribes and heathen nations may be willing that the sickly infants, and those worn with age, should perish; they may expose female infants, thinking them not worth bringing up; but Christian nations establish schools and hospitals for the deaf and dumb, the insane, the inebriates, the idiotic. If we, then, being evil, know how to care for the weak, undeveloped, and vegetative natures, how much more shall their Father in heaven care for them! The doctrine of annihilation rests fundamentally on a Pagan view of God. § 10. The Doctrine of Universal Restoration. This opinion has its roots, we think, in the gospel. It has prevailed in the church from the earliest times, having been held, as we have seen, by Origen, and a great number of eminent church fathers and doctors. What more Christian word has come to us from the earliest centuries than the cry out of the heart of the great Alexandrian teacher, “My Saviour, even now, mourns for my sins. My Saviour cannot be happy while I remain in my iniquity. He does not wish to drink the cup of joy alone in the kingdom of God; he is waiting till we shall come and join him there.”(59)