ANNI'HILA'TIONISM (from Lat. ad, to nothing). The theory of the utter extinc tion of man's being. both bodily and spiritual, either at Geath or at some later period. Little was heard of the doctrine until in the eighteenth century, when Taylor. of Norwich, England, Mc Knight. and a few' others wrote upon it. Among later supporters perhaps Archbishop \\lately may be counted; for in his View of the Script are Revelations Concerning a Future Stale, lie says that in the passages in which "death," "destruc tion," "eternal death," are spoken of. the words may be taken as signifying literal death, real de struction, the utter end of things; that "un quenchable fire" may mean a fire that quite con sumes what it feeds upon, and the "worm that dieth not" may be that which entirely devours its prey. In the United States, the question was revived by Six Sermons on the Question: Are the •iel:«1 Immortal? by George Storrs (Philadel phia, 1848). James II. McCulloh in his Ana lytical Investigations Concerning the Scriptures (Baltimore. 1852) maintained that after the final decisions at the judgment the wicked will be utterly destroyed by the visitation of God in wrath. C. F. Hudson, in Debt and Orace, as Related to the Doctrine of a Future State (Boston. 1857), denies that the natural im mortality of the soul is even implied in the Bible; on the contrary, life and immor tality are brought to the redeemed alone, all others being not only naturally mortal, soul and body, at death. but after that mortal suspension of positive existence, all arc raised at the final resurrection and cast into the lake of fire at the second death. Ile denies that endless con scious suffering is ever affirmed to be the nature of future penalty, but affirlims that the penalty consists in privation, and that in the perpetuity of this privation consists the eternity of future punishment. The Scripture terms, from which eternal misery is usually understood, such terms as "condemnation," "destruetion." "perdition." "damnation." etc., he thinks express time painful and penal consignment of the entire nature to disorganization and to the complete non-exist em-e from which it originally came. P. W.
Landis replied to Hudson, in his treatise On the Immortalitp of the Soul and the Final Condition of the Wicked (New York, 1859), and many other writers discussed the subject, especially in religious reviews and magazines.
The discussion then broadened out, and was participated in by members of all communions. The general motive was to gain some relief from the thought of the eternal suffering of vast mul titudes of human souls. It has accordingly been argued that sin is corrupting in its nature, that it leads necessarily to degeneration and decay, and that a sinning soul, embarked upon a course of rebellion against God, must finally weal its life-forces out and cease to be. But this position has no support in the Bible and little in reason. There is no evidence from the ex perience of sinners in this world, that simbowever much it may otherwise affect the nature, sub stantially diminishes the power of life. The ten dency among thinkers. who sought relief in this direction has therefore been rather to the doctrine of "conditional immortality," so-called, that. the soul of man is not by nature immortal, but becomes so by the special gift of Christ upon the exercise of a genuine faith in him. Apart from this faith man would eventually. and probably at death, cease to be. Against the ob jection that thus multitudes of souls would seem to have been created to no purpose. the analogies of evolution are brought by some, by which mul titudes of forms are everywhere produced that a few select ones may survive. The soul itself thus enters into the "struggle for existence," and the "fittest" souls survive; that is, those who have risen by Christian faith to the higher plane of life. The best advocate of the view is Rev. Edward White, Life of Christ (London, 1875). A modification of this view' is to be found in S. D. MeConnell's Evolution of Immortality (Ne• York, 1901).