"Thou shalt be brought unto the blood of sprinkling, as an
undone helpless, damned sinner."
--John Wesley, Sermon on "Justification by Faith."
Polite ears, which are often the longest, will be shocked at the title
of this article. This is an age in which it is accounted vulgar to
express plain doctrines in plain language. Spurgeon was the last doctor
of a good old school. Their theology was hateful: an insult to man and
a blasphemy against God--if such a being exists; but they did not beat
about the bush, and if they thought you were booked for hell, as was
most likely, they took care to let you know it. They called a spade
a spade, not a common implement of agricultural industry. They were
steeped in Bible English, and did not scruple to use its striking
substantives and adjectives. When they pronounced "hell" they aspirated
the "h" and gave the full weight of the two "l's." "Damn" and
"damnation" shot from their mouths full and round, like a cannon ball
sped with a full blast of gunpowder.
But, alas, how are the mighty fallen! No longer do the men of God
indulge in thunderous Saxon. They latinise their sermons and diminish
the effect of terrible teaching. You shall hear them designate
"hell" with twenty roundabout euphemisms, and spin "damnation" into
"condemnation" and "damned" into "condemned," until it has not force
enough to frighten a cat off a garden wall.
Let us not be blamed, however, if we emulate the plain speech of the
honest old theologians, and of the English Bible which is still used in
our public schools. We despise the hypocritical cry of "vulgar!" We
are going to write, not on "condemned transgressors," but on "damned
sinners." Yes, DAMNED SINNERS.
Now, beloved reader, it behoves us to define and distinguish, as well as
amplify and expatiate. We must therefore separate the "damned" from the
"sinners." Not indeed in fact, for they are inseparable, being in truth
one and the same thing; for the adjective is the substantive, and
the substantive is the adjective, and the "damned" are "sinners" and
"sinners" are the "damned." The separation is merely _mental_, for
reasons of _convenience_; just as we separate the inseparable, length
from breadth, in our definition of a line. This is necessary to
clear and coherent thought; man's mind being finite, and incapable of
operating in all directions at once.
What then are _sinners_? A simple question, but not so easy to answer.
_All_ men are _sinners_. But what is a _man_? A featherless biped? So
was the plucked fowl of Diogenes. A man is--well a man; and a sinner
is--well a sinner. And this is near enough for most people. But it does
not satisfy a rational investigator, to say nothing of your born critic,
who will go on splitting hairs till his head is as bare as a plate, and
then borrow materials from his neighbor's cranium.
In ancient Egypt it was a sin to kill a cat; in England cats are slain
in myriads without a tremor of compunction. Among the Jews it is a sin
to eat pork, but an English humorist writes you a delicious essay on
Roast Pig. Bigamy is a sin in the whole of Europe but the south-eastern
corner, and there it is a virtue, sanctioned by the laws of religion.
Marrying your deceased wife's sister is a sin in England; four thousand
years ago, in another part of the world, it was no sin at all; in fact,
a gentleman of remarkable piety, whom God is said to have loved, married
his wife's sister without waiting for a funeral. Did not Jacob take
Rachel and Leah together, and walk out with them, one on each arm?
Sin as a _fact_ changes with time and place. Sin as an _idea_ is
disobedience to the law of God; that is, to the doctrines of religion;
that is, to the teaching of priests. _Crime_ is quite another thing. It
is far less heinous, and far more easily forgiven. Of course crime and
sin may overlap; they may often be the same thing practically; but this
is an accident, for there are crimes that are no sins, and sins that are
no crimes. It is a crime, but not a sin, to torture a heretic; it is a
sin, but not a crime, to eat meat on a Friday.
A sinner is a person on bad terms with his God. But who, it may be
asked, is on good terms with him? No one. According to Christianity, at
any rate, we have all sinned; nay, we are all full of original sin; we
derived it from our parents, who derived it from Adam, who caught it
from Old Nick, who picked it up God knows where. Now every sinner is
a damned sinner. He may not know it, but he is so; and the great John
Wesley advises him to recognise it, and come as a "damned sinner" to
God, to be sprinkled or washed with the blood of Christ.
What is _damned_ then? We take it that "damned sinners," that is _all_
sinners, are persons to whom God says "Damn you!" To whom does he say
it? To all sinners; that is, to all men. And why does he say it? Because
he is wroth with them. And why is he wroth with them? Because they are
sinners. And why are they sinners? Because they are men. And why are
they men? Because they cannot help it. They were born in sin and shapen
in iniquity, and in sin did their mothers conceive them.
Every Christian admits this--theoretically. He goes to church and
confesses himself a "miserable sinner," but if you called him so as he
came out of church he would call you something stronger.
A sinner may be damned here, apparently, without being damned hereafter.
He is liable to hell until he dies, but after that event he is sometimes
reprieved and sent to heaven. But the vast majority of the human race
have no share in the atoning blood of Christ. They were "damned sinners"
_in posse_ before they were born, they are "damned sinners" _in esse_
while they live, and they will be "damned sinners" for ever when they
leap from this life into eternity, and join the immortal fry Of almost
everybody born to die.
This is a very comfortable doctrine for the narrow, conceited, selfish
elect. For other people--all the rest of us--it is calculated to provoke
unparliamentary language. Why should God "damn" men? And how can men be
"sinners"? Certainly they can sin against each other, because they can
injure each other. But how can they sin against God? Can they injure
him? He is unchangeable. Can they rob him? He is infinite. Can they
deceive him? He is omniscient.
Can they limit his happiness? He is omnipotent. No, they _cannot_ sin
against him, but he _can_ sin against them. And if he exists he _has_
sinned against every one of them. Not one human being has ever been as
strong, healthy, wise, noble, and happy as God might have made him. Nor
is man indebted to God for his creation. There cannot be a debt where
there is no contract. It is the creator and not the creature who is
responsible, and the theological doctrine of responsibility is the truth
turned upside down.
Suppose a man had the power of creating another thinking and feeling
being. Suppose he could endow him with any qualities he chose. Suppose
he created him sickly, foolish, and vicious. Would he not be responsible
for the curse of that being's existence?
Man is what he is because he is. He is practically without choice. The
cards are dealt out to him, and he must take them as they come. Is it
just to damn him for holding a bad hand? Is it honest to give him hell
for not winning the game?
Let us use for a moment the cant language of theology. Let us imagine
the _vilest_ of "damned sinners" in Gehenna. Does not every scientist,
and every philosopher, know that the orb of his fate was predetermined?
Would not that "lost soul" have the right to curse his maker? Might he
not justly exclaim "I am holier than thou"?
Do not imagine, reader, that this new reading of the book of fate has no
practical significance. When we get rid of the idea of "damned sinners,"
when we abolish the idea of "sin" altogether and its correlative
"punishment," and learn to regard man as a complicated effect in a
universe of causation, we shall bring wisdom and humanity into our
treatment of the "criminal classes," we shall look upon them as moral
lunatics and deal with them accordingly. And this spirit will extend
itself to all human relations. It will make us less impatient and angry
with each other. We shall see that "to know all is to pardon all."
Thus will the overthrow of theology be the preparation for a new moral
development. Another link of the old serpent of superstition will
be uncoiled from the life of humanity, leaving it freer to learn the
splendid truth, taught by that divine man Socrates, that wisdom and
virtue are one and indivisible.