GOD’S DEALINGS WITH HIS CREATURES.
“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” asked an eminent
servant of God in the opening pages of revelation, Gen. 18:25; and when
all is finished, the redeemed, looking over all God’s dealings with man,
exclaim with fervent lips, “Just and true are thy ways, thou King of
saints.” Rev. 15:3. It is objected that we should raise no question
regarding the justness of the doom to which God may devote any portion
of our race; because we are not able to judge of his ways. Of things
with which we are imperfectly acquainted, or which are above our
comprehension, this is undoubtedly true; but respecting our relation to
God, the light in which he looks upon sin, and the disposition he will
finally make of it, he says to us, “Come, let us reason.” We are never
called upon to form an opinion or a decision in regard to things
respecting which we are incapable of judging; but we are called upon to
reverence God, as a God of love, wisdom, justice, and mercy. We must,
therefore, be capable of judging of his character, his mercy, his love,
his wisdom, and his justice. Are these characteristics displayed in his
future dealings with the wicked, according to the view generally
promulgated by the churches of the present day? The question to be
decided is this: Is an eternity of torture so intense that the severest
pain a person can suffer on earth is but a faint shadow of it, any _just
punishment_ for any conceivable amount of sin committed by the worst of
men, during the brief period of our mortal life? What is our present
life? Something for which we did not ask; something given us without our
knowledge or consent; and, in the forcible language of another, “Can any
abuse of this unasked-for gift justify the recompense of an existence
spent in unending agony?”
Between the sins committed in this finite life, and the fiery torment of
hell continued through numberless millions of ages, and then no nearer
its end than when the first groan was uttered, there is a disproportion
so infinite, that few attempt to rest that eternal misery on merely the
sins of the present life; and they endeavor to vindicate God’s justice
in the matter, or at least to apologize for his course, by saying that
the sinner continues to sin, and that is the reason why he continues to
suffer. The guilt of all the sins done in the body is soon expiated in
the fiery flame; but then they must suffer for the sins committed after
they left this mortal state, and commenced their life of agony in hell.
And here they are represented as sinning faster than the inconceivable
woe of hell can punish. It is affirmed of them, as quoted from Benson in
the previous chapter, that “they must be perpetually swelling their
enormous sums of guilt, and still running deeper, immensely deeper, in
debt to divine and infinite justice. Hence, after the longest imaginable
period, they will be so far from having discharged their debt that they
will find more due than when they first began to suffer.”
In like manner Wm. Archer Butler, in his sermon on Future Punishment,
says:--
“The punishments of hell are but the perpetual vengeance that
accompanies the sins of hell. An eternity of wickedness brings with it
an eternity of woe. The sinner is to suffer for everlasting, but it is
because the sin itself is as everlasting as the suffering.”
Do the Scriptures anywhere thus speak? Do they not affirm, not once or
twice, but over and over again, that the punishment of the future is for
the sins of the present time? It is for the sins in which the sinner
dies, not for what he commits after death, that he is to suffer future
retribution. Eze. 18:26. The works for which we are to be brought into
judgment (and for no others can we be punished) are the works of this
present life. Eccl. 12:14. And Paul testifies, “For we must all appear
before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the
things _done in his body_, according to that he hath done, whether it be
good or bad.” 2 Cor. 5:10. It is for the sins done by human beings in
the body, in this present life, not for what they will commit as lost
spirits in hell, that they are to answer at the judgment seat of Christ,
and for which they are to receive a just retribution. And if everlasting
misery is thought to be too much for this, we are not at liberty to
throw in _post-mortem_ sins to balance the excessive punishment. If
eternal torment cannot be defended as a just punishment for the sins of
this present life, it cannot be defended at all.
To illustrate: Suppose in an earthly tribunal the judge should sentence
a criminal to a punishment altogether too severe for the crime of which
he had been guilty, and then should endeavor to justify his course by
saying that he gave the sentence because he knew that the criminal would
deserve it by the sins he would commit after he went to jail! How long
would such a judge be tolerated? Yet this is the very course attributed
by learned doctors of divinity, to the Judge of all the earth, who has
declared that he will do right.
On the supposition that eternal torture is to be inflicted as the
penalty for a life of sin in this world, were man asked if God’s conduct
in this respect was just, his own innate sense of justice, not yet
wholly obliterated by the fall, would prompt him to a universal and
determined, No! The framers of different religious systems have felt
this, and seem to have searched sharply for some avenue of escape from
the fearful wrong of this horrid theory. So Plato had his Acherusian
lake from which at least some of the wretched sufferers in Tartarus,
after a purgative process might issue forth again to the upper air.
Augustine following Plato in his notion of an abode of unending pain for
some, had also his purgatory from whence others might find a road to
Heaven. Rome has only a purgatory, the fires of a finite period, for the
millions within her communion. Origen conceived of a purgatory wider
than Plato’s, Augustine’s, or Rome’s, from which all should at length be
restored to the favor of God.
The churches of the Reformation have generally accepted of Augustine’s
hell, but denied his purgatory. In the Protestant denominations,
therefore, we have this doctrine in its most horrid aspects. And it is
no marvel that many who have felt compelled by their creed to accept it,
have shrunk from its advocacy, and have tacitly, if not openly,
confessed that they could heartily wish it were a lie.
Saurin at the close of one of his sermons thus speaks:--
“I sink, I sink, under the awful weight of my subject; and I declare,
when I see my friends, my relations, the people of my charge,--this
whole congregation, when I think that I, that you, that we are all
exposed to these torments; when I see in the lukewarmness of my
devosions, in the langour of my love, in the levity of my resolutions
and designs, the least evidence, though it be only possible or
presumptive, of my future misery, I find in the thought a mortal poison,
that diffuseth itself through every period of my existence, rendering
society tiresome, nourishment insipid, pleasure disgustful, _and life
itself a cruel bitter_. I cease to wonder that the fear of hell hath
made some _melancholy_, others _mad_; that it hath disposed some to
expose themselves to a living martyrdom, by fleeing from all commerce
with the rest of mankind, and others, to suffer the most terrible,
violent torments.”
Albert Barnes, the well-known preacher and commentator, speaks on the
same point as follows:--
“I confess when I look upon a world of sinners and of sufferers; upon
death-beds and grave-yards, upon the world of woe filled with hosts to
suffer forever; when I see my friends, my parents, my family, my people,
my fellow-citizens; when I look upon a whole race all involved in this
sin and danger, and when I see the great mass of them wholly
unconcerned, and when I feel that God only can save them, and yet he
does not do it--I am struck dumb. It is all dark, dark, dark to my soul,
and I cannot disguise it.”--_Sermons_, pp. 124, 125.
Such is the effect of the doctrine of eternal misery with some,
according to the confession of its own advocates. No one can say that
such effects are either good or desirable. And why does it not have this
effect upon more? We answer, it is because the lips only mechanically
assent to what the heart and reason either will not try to realize, or
else do not seriously believe. Says Bishop Newton:--
“Imagine a creature, nay, imagine numberless creatures produced out of
nothing ... delivered over to torments of endless ages, without the
least hope or possibility of relaxation or redemption. Imagine it you
may, but you can never seriously believe it, nor reconcile it to God and
goodness.”--_Dissertation_, No. 60.
But the majority are affected by it far differently. Every better
emotion of their nature revolts at the idea, and they will not accept
it. They cannot believe that God is thus cruel, tyrannical, revengeful,
implacable; the personification, in short, of every trait of character
which, when seen in men here, we consider unmistakable marks of
debasement and degradation; and believing the Bible and Christianity to
be identified with such teaching as this, with equal promptness they too
are rejected and cast away. But here we need not enlarge. Probably no
one will read these lines under whose observation some case has not come
of persons driven into skepticism, yes, driven and held there, by the
popular doctrine of eternal misery--a doctrine which has been well
described by a Christian writer, as “a theology that is confused,
entangled, imperfect, and gloomy; a theology which, while it abundantly
breeds infidelity among the educated classes, fails to spread through
the body of the population, and but dimly, or only as a flickering
candle enlightens the world.”--_I. Taylor._
But how is it with the view we have tried to present? Quite the reverse,
as our own observation proves. Instances have come under our immediate
knowledge of persons who, when they saw the divine harmony of God’s
system of government, as brought to view in his word, when they saw the
just and reasonable disposition which the Bible declares that he will
make of all those who will persist in rebellion against him,--a
disposition in which justice and mercy so beautifully blend, have been
able to take that Bible and say for the first time in their life they
could believe it to be the book of God. And believing this, they have
been led to turn their feet into its testimonies, and strive by
obedience to its plain requirements to escape a doom which they could
see to be just, and therefore knew to be certain. This has been the
experience of many. Let, then, the impression no longer exist, and the
assertion no more be made, that these views tend to irreligion and
infidelity. Their fruits everywhere show just the reverse.
Can it then be wondered at that we should be solicitous to disabuse the
minds of the people in this respect? Shall we not have a zeal for the
Lord, and be untiring in our efforts to wipe off from the book and
character of God the aspersions which are by this doctrine cast upon
them? God represents himself to his creatures by the endearing name of
Love; he declares that he is very pitiful and of tender mercy,
long-suffering and slow to anger, not hasty to execute sentence against
an evil work, not gratified in any manner by the death of the wicked,
and not willing that any should perish; he declares that he delighteth
in mercy, that he will not contend forever, neither be always wroth. And
can it be that while thus representing himself to the inhabitants of
earth, he was kindling fiery torture on multitudes of wretched beings in
the dreary regions of hell, feeding their flame with his incensed fury,
preserving and tormenting them in infinite indignation, exerting all his
divine attributes to make them as wretched as the capacity of their
nature would admit, and maintaining a fixed purpose to do this through
the endless ages of eternity! If not, “what a portentous error must it
be!” How fearfully is his character misrepresented! What a bold and
audacious libel is uttered against his holy name!
The root and trunk of all this, is the “taken-for-granted” position that
the soul is immortal. But search through your Bible and see if you find
it so. See if you will not rather be prepared to exclaim with the
eminent commentator, Olshausen, that “the doctrine of the ‘immortality
of the soul,’ and the name, are _alike unknown to the entire Bible_.”
(Comment on 1 Cor. 15:19, 20.) See if you can find the death that never
dies, and never-dying soul. If not, we ask you to reject the idea at
once as a most dangerous and destructive error. Men are thus rejecting
it. The leaven is working in the public mind. Men are growing suspicious
of the truth of a declaration, first uttered by a not over-truthful
character in Eden, perpetuated thence through heathenism, and at last
through the medium of the mother of harlots, disseminated through all
the veins and channels of Orthodoxy. But truth will work its way up,
however deeply the rubbish may have been heaped upon it; and before the
bright rising of its light, all antiquated superstitions and
traditionary dogmas, will lie exposed in their native deformity.