JUSTICE.

_Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy; for thou renderest to every

man according to his work_.--Psalm lxii. 12.

Some of the translators make it _kindness_ and _goodness_; but I

presume there is no real difference among them as to the character of

the word which here, in the English Bible, is translated mercy.

The religious mind, however, educated upon the theories yet prevailing

in the so-called religious world, must here recognize a departure from

the presentation to which they have been accustomed: to make the psalm

speak according to prevalent theoretic modes, the verse would have to

be changed thus:--'To thee, O Lord, belongeth justice, for thou

renderest to every man according to his work.'

Let the reason of my choosing this passage, so remarkable in itself,

for a motto to the sermon which follows, remain for the present

doubtful. I need hardly say that I mean to found no logical argument

upon it.

Let us endeavour to see plainly what we mean when we use the word

_justice,_ and whether we mean what we ought to mean when we use

it--especially with reference to God. Let us come nearer to knowing

what we ought to understand by justice, that is, the justice of God;

for his justice is the live, active justice, giving existence to the

idea of justice in our minds and hearts. Because he is just, we are

capable of knowing justice; it is because he is just, that we have the

idea of justice so deeply imbedded in us.

What do we oftenest mean by _justice_? Is it not the carrying out of

the law, the infliction of penalty assigned to offence? By a just judge

we mean a man who administers the law without prejudice, without favour

or dislike; and where guilt is manifest, punishes as much as, and no

more than, the law has in the case laid down. It may not be that

justice has therefore been done. The law itself may be unjust, and the

judge may mistake; or, which is more likely, the working of the law may

be foiled by the parasites of law for their own gain. But even if the

law be good, and thoroughly administered, it does not necessarily

follow that justice is done.

Suppose my watch has been taken from my pocket; I lay hold of the

thief; he is dragged before the magistrate, proved guilty, and

sentenced to a just imprisonment: must I walk home satisfied with the

result? Have I had justice done me? The thief may have had justice done

him--but where is my watch? That is gone, and I remain a man wronged.

Who has done me the wrong? The thief. Who can set right the wrong? The

thief, and only the thief; nobody but the man that did the wrong. God

may be able to move the man to right the wrong, but God himself cannot

right it without the man. Suppose my watch found and restored, is the

account settled between me and the thief? I may forgive him, but is the

wrong removed? By no means. But suppose the thief to bethink himself,

to repent. He has, we shall say, put it out of his power to return the

watch, but he comes to me and says he is sorry he stole it and begs me

to accept for the present what little he is able to bring, as a

beginning of atonement: how should I then regard the matter? Should I

not feel that he had gone far to make atonement--done more to make up

for the injury he had inflicted upon me, than the mere restoration of

the watch, even by himself, could reach to? Would there not lie, in the

thief's confession and submission and initial restoration, an appeal to

the divinest in me--to the eternal brotherhood? Would it not indeed

amount to a sufficing atonement as between man and man? If he offered

to bear what I chose to lay upon him, should I feel it necessary, for

the sake of justice, to inflict some certain suffering as demanded by

righteousness? I should still have a claim upon him for my watch, but

should I not be apt to forget it? He who commits the offence can make

up for it--and he alone.

One thing must surely be plain--that the punishment of the wrong-doer

makes no atonement for the wrong done. How could it make up to me for

the stealing of my watch that the man was punished? The wrong would be

there all the same. I am not saying the man ought not to be

punished--far from it; I am only saying that the punishment nowise

makes up to the man wronged. Suppose the man, with the watch in his

pocket, were to inflict the severest flagellation on himself: would

that lessen my sense of injury? Would it set anything right? Would it

anyway atone? Would it give him a right to the watch? Punishment may do

good to the man who does the wrong, but that is a thing as different as

important.

Another thing plain is, that, even without the material rectification

of the wrong where that is impossible, repentance removes the offence

which no suffering could. I at least should feel that I had no more

quarrel with the man. I should even feel that the gift he had made me,

giving into my heart a repentant brother, was infinitely beyond the

restitution of what he had taken from me. True, he owed me both himself

and the watch, but such a greater does more than include such a less.

If it be objected, 'You may forgive, but the man has sinned against

God!'--Then it is not a part of the divine to be merciful, I return,

and a man may be more merciful than his maker! A man may do that which

would be too merciful in God! Then mercy is not a divine attribute, for

it may exceed and be too much; it must not be infinite, therefore

cannot be God's own.

'Mercy may be against justice.' Never--if you mean by justice what I

mean by justice. If anything be against justice, it cannot be called

mercy, for it is cruelty. '_To thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy, for thou

renderest to every man according to his work_.' There is _no_

opposition, _no_ strife whatever, between mercy and justice. Those who

say justice means the punishing of sin, and mercy the not punishing of

sin, and attribute both to God, would make a schism in the very idea of

God. And this brings me to the question, What is meant by divine

justice?

Human justice may be a poor distortion of justice, a mere shadow of it;

but the justice of God must be perfect. We cannot frustrate it in its

working; are we just to it in our idea of it? If you ask any ordinary

Sunday congregation in England, what is meant by the justice of God,

would not nineteen out of twenty answer, that it means his punishing of

sin? Think for a moment what degree of justice it would indicate in a

man--that he punished every wrong. A Roman emperor, a Turkish cadi,

might do that, and be the most unjust both of men and judges. Ahab

might be just on the throne of punishment, and in his garden the

murderer of Naboth. In God shall we imagine a distinction of office and

character? God is one; and the depth of foolishness is reached by that

theology which talks of God as if he held different offices, and

differed in each. It sets a contradiction in the very nature of God

himself. It represents him, for instance, as having to do that as a

magistrate which as a father he would not do! The love of the father

makes him desire to be unjust as a magistrate! Oh the folly of any mind

that would explain God before obeying him! that would map out the

character of God, instead of crying, Lord, what wouldst thou have me to

do? God is no magistrate; but, if he were, it would be a position to

which his fatherhood alone gave him the right; his rights as a father

cover every right he can be analytically supposed to possess. The

justice of God is this, that--to use a boyish phrase, the best the

language will now afford me because of misuse--he gives every man,

woman, child, and beast, everything that has being, _fair play_; he

renders to every man according to his work; and therein lies his

perfect mercy; for nothing else could be merciful to the man, and

nothing but mercy could be fair to him. God does nothing of which any

just man, the thing set fairly and fully before him so that he

understood, would not say, 'That is fair.' Who would, I repeat, say a

man was a just man because he insisted on prosecuting every offender? A

scoundrel might do that. Yet the justice of God, forsooth, is his

punishment of sin! A just man is one who cares, and tries, and always

tries, to give fair play to everyone in every thing. When we speak of

the justice of God, let us see that we do mean justice! Punishment of

the guilty may be involved in justice, but it does not constitute the

justice of God one atom more than it would constitute the justice of a

man.

'But no one ever doubts that God gives fair play!'

'That may be--but does not go for much, if you say that God does this

or that which is not fair.'

'If he does it, you may be sure it is fair.'

'Doubtless, or he could not be God--except to devils. But you say he

does so and so, and is just; I say, he does not do so and so, and is

just. You say he does, for the Bible says so. I say, if the Bible said

so, the Bible would lie; but the Bible does not say so. The lord of

life complains of men for not judging right. To say on the authority of

the Bible that God does a thing no honourable man would do, is to lie

against God; to say that it is therefore right, is to lie against the

very spirit of God. To uphold a lie for God's sake is to be against

God, not for him. God cannot be lied for. He is the truth. The truth

alone is on his side. While his child could not see the rectitude of a

thing, he would infinitely rather, even if the thing were right, have

him say, God could not do that thing, than have him believe that he did

it. If the man were sure God did it, the thing he ought to say would

be, 'Then there must be something about it I do not know, which if I

did know, I should see the thing quite differently.' But where an evil

thing is invented to explain and account for a good thing, and a lover

of God is called upon to believe the invention or be cast out, he needs

not mind being cast out, for it is into the company of Jesus. Where

there is no ground to believe that God does a thing except that men who

would explain God have believed and taught it, he is not a true man who

accepts men against his own conscience of God. I acknowledge no

authority calling upon me to believe a thing of God, which I could not

be a man and believe right in my fellow-man. I will accept no

explanation of any way of God which explanation involves what I should

scorn as false and unfair in a man. If you say, That may be right of

God to do which it would not be right of man to do, I answer, Yes,

because the relation of the maker to his creatures is very different

from the relation of one of those creatures to another, and he has

therefore duties toward his creatures requiring of him what no man

would have the right to do to his fellow-man; but he can have no duty

that is not both just and merciful. More is required of the maker, by

his own act of creation, than can be required of men. More and higher

justice and righteousness is required of him by himself, the

Truth;--greater nobleness, more penetrating sympathy; and _nothing_

but what, if an honest man understood it, he would say was right. If it

be a thing man cannot understand, then man can say nothing as to

whether it is right or wrong. He cannot even know that God does _it_,

when the _it_ is unintelligible to him. What he calls _it_ may be but

the smallest facet of a composite action. His part is silence. If it be

said by any that God does a thing, and the thing seems to me unjust,

then either I do not know what the thing is, or God does not do it. The

saying cannot mean what it seems to mean, or the saying is not true.

If, for instance, it be said that God visits the sins of the fathers on

the children, a man who takes _visits upon_ to mean _punishes,_ and

_the children_ to mean _the innocent children,_ ought to say, 'Either I

do not understand the statement, or the thing is not true, whoever says

it.' God _may_ do what seems to a man not right, but it must so seem to

him because God works on higher, on divine, on perfect principles, too

right for a selfish, unfair, or unloving man to understand. But least

of all must we accept some low notion of justice in a man, and argue

that God is just in doing after that notion.

The common idea, then, is, that the justice of God consists in

punishing sin: it is in the hope of giving a larger idea of the justice

of God in punishing sin that I ask, '_Why is God bound to punish sin_?'

'How could he be a just God and not punish sin?'

'Mercy is a good and right thing,' I answer, 'and but for sin there

could be no mercy. We are enjoined to forgive, to be merciful, to be as

our father in heaven. Two rights cannot possibly be opposed to each

other. If God punish sin, it must be merciful to punish sin; and if God

forgive sin, it must be just to forgive sin. We are required to

forgive, with the argument that our father forgives. It must, I say, be

right to forgive. Every attribute of God must be infinite as himself.

He cannot be sometimes merciful, and not always merciful. He cannot be

just, and not always just. Mercy belongs to him, and needs no

contrivance of theologic chicanery to justify it.'

'Then you mean that it is wrong to punish sin, therefore God does not

punish sin?'

'By no means; God does punish sin, but there is no opposition between

punishment and forgiveness. The one may be essential to the possibility

of the other. Why, I repeat, does God punish sin? That is my point.'

'Because in itself sin deserves punishment.'

'Then how can he tell us to forgive it?'

'He punishes, and having punished he forgives?'

'That will hardly do. If sin demands punishment, and the righteous

punishment is given, then the man is free. Why should he be forgiven?'

'He needs forgiveness because no amount of punishment will meet his

deserts.'

I avoid for the present, as anyone may perceive, the probable expansion

of this reply.

'Then why not forgive him at once if the punishment is not essential--

if part can be pretermitted? And again, can that be required which,

according to your showing, is not adequate? You will perhaps answer,

'God may please to take what little he can have;' and this brings me to

the fault in the whole idea.

Punishment is _nowise_ an _offset_ to sin. Foolish people sometimes, in

a tone of self-gratulatory pity, will say, 'If I have sinned I have

suffered.' Yes, verily, but what of that? What merit is there in it?

Even had you laid the suffering upon yourself, what did that do to make

up for the wrong? That you may have bettered by your suffering is well

for you, but what atonement is there in the suffering? The notion is a

false one altogether. Punishment, deserved suffering, is no equipoise

to sin. It is no use laying it in the other scale. It will not move it

a hair's breadth. Suffering weighs nothing at all against sin. It is

not of the same kind, not under the same laws, any more than mind and

matter. We say a man deserves punishment; but when we forgive and do

not punish him, we do not _always_ feel that we have done wrong;

neither when we do punish him do we feel that any amends has been made

for his wrongdoing. If it were an offset to wrong, then God would be

bound to punish for the sake of the punishment; but he cannot be, for

he forgives. Then it is not for the sake of the punishment, as a thing

that in itself ought to be done, but for the sake of something else, as

a means to an end, that God punishes. It is not directly for justice,

else how could he show mercy, for that would involve injustice?

Primarily, God is not bound to _punish_ sin; he is bound to _destroy_

sin. If he were not the Maker, he might not be bound to destroy sin--I

do not know; but seeing he has created creatures who have sinned, and

therefore sin has, by the creating act of God, come into the world, God

is, in his own righteousness, bound to destroy sin.

'But that is to have no mercy.'

You mistake. God does destroy sin; he is always destroying sin. In him

I trust that he is destroying sin in me. He is always saving the sinner

from his sins, and that is destroying sin. But vengeance on the sinner,

the law of a tooth for a tooth, is not in the heart of God, neither in

his hand. If the sinner and the sin in him, are the concrete object of

the divine wrath, then indeed there can be no mercy. Then indeed there

will be an end put to sin by the destruction of the sin and the sinner

together. But thus would no atonement be wrought--nothing be done to

make up for the wrong God has allowed to come into being by creating

man. There must be an atonement, a making-up, a bringing together--an

atonement which, I say, cannot be made except by the man who has

sinned.

Punishment, I repeat, is not the thing required of God, but the

absolute destruction of sin. What better is the world, what better is

the sinner, what better is God, what better is the truth, that the

sinner should suffer--continue suffering to all eternity? Would there

be less sin in the universe? Would there be any making-up for sin?

Would it show God justified in doing what he knew would bring sin into

the world, justified in making creatures who he knew would sin? What

setting-right would come of the sinner's suffering? If justice demand

it, if suffering be the equivalent for sin, then the sinner must

suffer, then God is bound to exact his suffering, and not pardon; and

so the making of man was a tyrannical deed, a creative cruelty. But

grant that the sinner has deserved to suffer, no amount of suffering is

any atonement for his sin. To suffer to all eternity could not make up

for one unjust word. Does that mean, then, that for an unjust word I

deserve to suffer to all eternity? The unjust word is an eternally evil

thing; nothing but God in my heart can cleanse me from the evil that

uttered it; but does it follow that I saw the evil of what I did so

perfectly, that eternal punishment for it would be just? Sorrow and

confession and self-abasing love will make up for the evil word;

suffering will not. For evil in the abstract, nothing can be done. It

is eternally evil. But I may be saved from it by learning to loathe it,

to hate it, to shrink from it with an eternal avoidance. The only

vengeance worth having on sin is to make the sinner himself its

executioner. Sin and punishment are in no antagonism to each other in

man, any more than pardon and punishment are in God; they can perfectly

co-exist. The one naturally follows the other, punishment being born of

sin, because evil exists only by the life of good, and has no life of

its own, being in itself death. Sin and suffering are not natural

opposites; the opposite of evil is good, not suffering; the opposite of

sin is not suffering, but righteousness. The path across the gulf that

divides right from wrong is not the fire, but repentance. If my friend

has wronged me, will it console me to see him punished? Will that be a

rendering to me of my due? Will his agony be a balm to my deep wound?

Should I be fit for any friendship if that were possible even in regard

to my enemy? But would not the shadow of repentant grief, the light of

reviving love on his countenance, heal it at once however deep? Take

any of those wicked people in Dante's hell, and ask wherein is justice

served by their punishment. Mind, I am not saying it is not right to

punish them; I am saying that justice is not, never can be, satisfied

by suffering--nay, cannot have any satisfaction in or from suffering.

Human resentment, human revenge, human hate may. Such justice as

Dante's keeps wickedness alive in its most terrible forms. The life of

God goes forth to inform, or at least give a home to victorious evil.

Is he not defeated every time that one of those lost souls defies him?

All hell cannot make Vanni Fucci say 'I was wrong.' God is triumphantly

defeated, I say, throughout the hell of his vengeance. Although against

evil, it is but the vain and wasted cruelty of a tyrant. There is no

destruction of evil thereby, but an enhancing of its horrible power in

the midst of the most agonizing and disgusting tortures a _divine_

imagination can invent. If sin must be kept alive, then hell must be

kept alive; but while I regard the smallest sin as infinitely

loathsome, I do not believe that any being, never good enough to see

the essential ugliness of sin, could sin so as to _deserve_ such

punishment. I am not now, however, dealing with the question of the

duration of punishment, but with the idea of punishment itself; and

would only say in passing, that the notion that a creature born

imperfect, nay, born with impulses to evil not of his own generating,

and which he could not help having, a creature to whom the true face of

God was never presented, and by whom it never could have been seen,

should be thus condemned, is as loathsome a lie against God as could

find place in heart too undeveloped to understand what justice is, and

too low to look up into the face of Jesus. It never in truth found

place in any heart, though in many a pettifogging brain. There is but

one thing lower than deliberately to believe such a lie, and that is to

worship the God of whom it is believed. The one deepest, highest,

truest, fittest, most wholesome suffering must be generated in the

wicked by a vision, a true sight, more or less adequate, of the

hideousness of their lives, of the horror of the wrongs they have done.

Physical suffering may be a factor in rousing this mental pain; but 'I

would I had never been born!' must be the cry of Judas, not because of

the hell-fire around him, but because he loathes the man that betrayed

his friend, the world's friend. When a man loathes himself, he has

begun to be saved. Punishment tends to this result. Not for its own

sake, not as a make-up for sin, not for divine revenge--horrible word,

not for any satisfaction to justice, can punishment exist. Punishment

is for the sake of amendment and atonement. God is bound by his love to

punish sin in order to deliver his creature; he is bound by his justice

to destroy sin in his creation. Love is justice--is the fulfilling of

the law, for God as well as for his children. This is the reason of

punishment; this is why justice requires that the wicked shall not go

unpunished--that they, through the eye-opening power of pain, may come

to see and do justice, may be brought to desire and make all possible

amends, and so become just. Such punishment concerns justice in the

deepest degree. For Justice, that is God, is bound in himself to see

justice done by his children--not in the mere outward act, but in their

very being. He is bound in himself to make up for wrong done by his

children, and he can do nothing to make up for wrong done but by

bringing about the repentance of the wrong-doer. When the man says, 'I

did wrong; I hate myself and my deed; I cannot endure to think that I

did it!' then, I say, is atonement begun. Without that, all that the

Lord did would be lost. He would have made no atonement. Repentance,

restitution, confession, prayer for forgiveness, righteous dealing

thereafter, is the sole possible, the only true make-up for sin. For

nothing less than this did Christ die. When a man acknowledges the

right he denied before; when he says to the wrong, 'I abjure, I loathe

you; I see now what you are; I could not see it before because I would

not; God forgive me; make me clean, or let me die!' then justice, that

is God, has conquered--and not till then.

'What atonement is there?'

Every atonement that God cares for; and the work of Jesus Christ on

earth was the creative atonement, because it works atonement in every

heart. He brings and is bringing God and man, and man and man, into

perfect unity: 'I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect

in one.'

'That is a dangerous doctrine!'

More dangerous than you think to many things--to every evil, to every

lie, and among the rest to every false trust in what Christ did,

instead of in Christ himself. Paul glories in the cross of Christ, but

he does not trust in the cross: he trusts in the living Christ and his

living father.

Justice then requires that sin should be put an end to; and not that

only, but that it should be atoned for; and where punishment can do

anything to this end, where it can help the sinner to know what he has

been guilty of, where it can soften his heart to see his pride and

wrong and cruelty, justice requires that punishment shall not be

spared. And the more we believe in God, the surer we shall be that he

will spare nothing that suffering can do to deliver his child from

death. If suffering cannot serve this end, we need look for no more

hell, but for the destruction of sin by the destruction of the sinner.

That, however, would, it appears to me, be for God to suffer defeat,

blameless indeed, but defeat.

If God be defeated, he must destroy--that is, he must withdraw life.

How can he go on sending forth his life into irreclaimable souls, to

keep sin alive in them throughout the ages of eternity? But then, I

say, no atonement would be made for the wrongs they have done; God

remains defeated, for he has created that which sinned, and which would

not repent and make up for its sin. But those who believe that God will

thus be defeated by many souls, must surely be of those who do not

believe he cares enough to do his very best for them. He _is_ their

Father; he had power to make them out of himself, separate from

himself, and capable of being one with him: surely he will somehow save

and keep them! Not the power of sin itself can close _all_ the channels

between creating and created.

The notion of suffering as an offset for sin, the foolish idea that a

man by suffering borne may get out from under the hostile claim to

which his wrong-doing has subjected him, comes first of all, I think,

from the satisfaction we feel when wrong comes to grief. Why do we feel

this satisfaction? Because we hate wrong, but, not being righteous

ourselves, more or less hate the wronger as well as his wrong, hence

are not only righteously pleased to behold the law's disapproval

proclaimed in his punishment, but unrighteously pleased with his

suffering, because of the impact upon us of his wrong. In this way the

inborn justice of our nature passes over to evil. It is no pleasure to

God, as it so often is to us, to see the wicked suffer. To regard any

suffering with satisfaction, save it be sympathetically with its

curative quality, comes of evil, is inhuman because undivine, is a

thing God is incapable of. His nature is always to forgive, and just

because he forgives, he punishes. Because God is so altogether alien to

wrong, because it is to him a heart-pain and trouble that one of his

little ones should do the evil thing, there is, I believe, no extreme

of suffering to which, for the sake of destroying the evil thing in

them, he would not subject them. A man might flatter, or bribe, or coax

a tyrant; but there is no refuge from the love of God; that love will,

for very love, insist upon the uttermost farthing.

'That is not the sort of love I care about!'

No; how should you? I well believe it! You cannot care for it until you

begin to know it. But the eternal love will not be moved to yield you

to the selfishness that is killing you. What lover would yield his lady

to her passion for morphia? You may sneer at such love, but the Son of

God who took the weight of that love, and bore it through the world, is

content with it, and so is everyone who knows it. The love of the

Father is a radiant perfection. Love and not self-love is lord of the

universe. Justice demands your punishment, because justice demands, and

will have, the destruction of sin. Justice demands your punishment

because it demands that your father should do his best for you. God,

being the God of justice, that is of fair-play, and having made us what

we are, apt to fall and capable of being raised again, is in himself

bound to punish in order to deliver us--else is his relation to us poor

beside that of an earthly father. 'To thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy,

for thou renderest to every man according to his work.' A man's work is

his character; and God in his mercy is not indifferent, but treats him

according to his work.

The notion that the salvation of Jesus is a salvation from the

consequences of our sins, is a false, mean, low notion. The salvation

of Christ is salvation from the smallest tendency or leaning to sin. It

is a deliverance into the pure air of God's ways of thinking and

feeling. It is a salvation that makes the heart pure, with the will and

choice of the heart to be pure. To such a heart, sin is disgusting. It

sees a thing as it is,--that is, as God sees it, for God sees

everything as it is. The soul thus saved would rather sink into the

flames of hell than steal into heaven and skulk there under the shadow

of an imputed righteousness. No soul is saved that would not prefer

hell to sin. Jesus did not die to save us from punishment; he was

called Jesus because he should save his people from their sins.

If punishment be no atonement, how does the fact bear on the popular

theology accepted by every one of the opposers of what they call

Christianity, as representing its doctrines? Most of us have been more

or less trained in it, and not a few of us have thereby, thank God,

learned what it is--an evil thing, to be cast out of intellect and

heart. Many imagine it dead and gone, but in reality it lies at the

root (the intellectual root only, thank God) of much the greater part

of the teaching of Christianity in the country; and is believed in--so

far as the false _can_ be believed in--by many who think they have left

it behind, when they have merely omitted the truest, most offensive

modes of expressing its doctrines. It is humiliating to find how many

comparatively honest people think they get rid of a falsehood by

softening the statement of it, by giving it the shape and placing it in

the light in which it will least assert itself, and so have a good

chance of passing both with such as hold it thoroughly, and such as

might revolt against it more plainly uttered.

Once for all I will ease my soul regarding the horrid phantasm. I have

passed through no change of opinion concerning it since first I began

to write or speak; but I have written little and spoken less about it,

because I would preach no mere negation. My work was not to destroy the

false, except as it came in the way of building the true. Therefore I

sought to speak but what I believed, saying little concerning what I

did not believe; trusting, as now I trust, in the true to cast out the

false, and shunning dispute. Neither will I now enter any theological

lists to be the champion for or against mere doctrine. I have no desire

to change the opinion of man or woman. Let everyone for me hold what he

pleases. But I would do my utmost to disable such as think correct

opinion essential to salvation from laying any other burden on the

shoulders of true men and women than the yoke of their Master; and such

burden, if already oppressing any, I would gladly lift. Let the Lord

himself teach them, I say. A man who has not the mind of Christ--and no

man has the mind of Christ except him who makes it his business to obey

him--cannot have correct opinions concerning him; neither, if he could,

would they be of any value to him: he would be nothing the better, he

would be the worse for having them. Our business is not to think

correctly, but to live truly; then first will there be a possibility of

our thinking correctly. One chief cause of the amount of unbelief in

the world is, that those who have seen something of the glory of

Christ, set themselves to theorize concerning him rather than to obey

him. In teaching men, they have not taught them Christ, but taught them

about Christ. More eager after credible theory than after doing the

truth, they have speculated in a condition of heart in which it was

impossible they should understand; they have presumed to explain a

Christ whom years and years of obedience could alone have made them

able to comprehend. Their teaching of him, therefore, has been

repugnant to the common sense of many who had not half their

privileges, but in whom, as in Nathanael, there was no guile. Such,

naturally, press their theories, in general derived from them of old

time, upon others, insisting on their thinking about Christ as they

think, instead of urging them to go to Christ to be taught by him

whatever he chooses to teach them. They do their unintentional worst to

stop all growth, all life. From such and their false teaching I would

gladly help to deliver the true-hearted. Let the dead bury their dead,

but I would do what I may to keep them from burying the living.

If there be no satisfaction to justice in the mere punishment of the

wrong-doer, what shall we say of the notion of satisfying justice by

causing one to suffer who is not the wrong-doer? And what, moreover,

shall we say to the notion that, just because he is not the person who

deserves to be punished, but is absolutely innocent, his suffering

gives perfect satisfaction to the perfect justice? That the injustice

be done with the consent of the person maltreated makes no difference:

it makes it even worse, seeing, as they say, that justice requires the

punishment of the _sinner_, and here is one far more than innocent.

They have shifted their ground; it is no more punishment, but mere

suffering the law requires! The thing gets worse and worse. I declare

my utter and absolute repudiation of the idea in any form whatever.

Rather than believe in a justice--that is, a God--to whose

righteousness, abstract or concrete, it could be any satisfaction for

the wrong-doing of a man that a man who did no wrong should suffer, I

would be driven from among men, and dwell with the wild beasts that

have not reason enough to be unreasonable. What! God, the father of

Jesus Christ, like that! His justice contented with direst injustice!

The anger of him who will nowise clear the guilty, appeased by the

suffering of the innocent! Very God forbid! Observe: the evil fancy

actually substitutes for punishment not mere suffering, but that

suffering which is farthest from punishment; and this when, as I have

shown, punishment, the severest, can be no satisfaction to justice! How

did it come ever to be imagined? It sprang from the trustless dread

that cannot believe in the forgiveness of the Father; cannot believe

that even God will do anything for nothing; cannot trust him without a

legal arrangement to bind him. How many, failing to trust God, fall

back on a _text_, as they call it! It sprang from the pride that will

understand what it cannot, before it will obey what it sees. He that

will understand _first_ will believe a lie--a lie from which obedience

alone will at length deliver him. If anyone say, 'But I believe what

you despise,' I answer, To believe it is your punishment for being able

to believe it; you may call it your reward, if you will. You ought not

to be able to believe it. It is the merest, poorest, most shameless

fiction, invented without the perception that it was an invention--fit

to satisfy the intellect, doubtless, of the inventor, else he could not

have invented it. It has seemed to satisfy also many a humble soul,

content to take what was given, and not think; content that another

should think for him, and tell him what was the mind of his Father in

heaven. Again I say, let the person who can be so satisfied be so

satisfied; I have not to trouble myself with him. That he can be

content with it, argues him unready to receive better. So long as he

can believe false things concerning God, he is such as is capable of

believing them--with how much or how little of blame, God knows.

Opinion, right or wrong, will do nothing to save him. I would that he

thought no more about this or any other opinion, but set himself to do

the work of the Master. With his opinions, true or false, I have

nothing to do. It is because such as he force evil things upon their

fellows--utter or imply them from the seat of authority or

influence--to their agony, their paralysation, their unbelief, their

indignation, their stumbling, that I have any right to speak. I would

save my fellows from having what notion of God is possible to them

blotted out by a lie.

If it be asked how, if it be false, the doctrine of substitution can

have been permitted to remain so long an article of faith to so many, I

answer, On the same principle on which God took up and made use of the

sacrifices men had, in their lack of faith, invented as a way of

pleasing him. Some children will tell lies to please the parents that

hate lying. They will even confess to having done a wrong they have not

done, thinking their parents would like them to say they had done it,

because they teach them to confess. God accepted men's sacrifices until

he could get them to see--and with how many has he yet not succeeded,

in the church and out of it!--that he does not care for such things.

'But,' again it may well be asked, 'whence then has sprung the

undeniable potency of that teaching?'

I answer, From its having in it a notion of God and his Christ, poor

indeed and faint, but, by the very poverty and untruth in its

presentation, fitted to the weakness and unbelief of men, seeing it was

by men invented to meet and ease the demand made upon their own

weakness and unbelief. Thus the leaven spreads. The truth is there. It

is Christ the glory of God. But the ideas that poor slavish souls breed

concerning this glory the moment the darkness begins to disperse, is

quite another thing. Truth is indeed too good for men to believe; they

must dilute it before they can take it; they must dilute it before they

dare give it. They must make it less true before they can believe it

enough to get any good of it. Unable to believe in the love of the Lord

Jesus Christ, they invented a mediator in his mother, and so were able

to approach a little where else they had stood away; unable to believe

in the forgivingness of their father in heaven, they invented a way to

be forgiven that should not demand of him so much; which might make it

right for him to forgive; which should save them from having to believe

downright in the tenderness of his father-heart, for that they found

impossible. They thought him bound to punish for the sake of punishing,

as an offset to their sin; they could not believe in clear forgiveness;

that did not seem divine; it needed itself to be justified; so they

invented for its justification a horrible injustice, involving all that

was bad in sacrifice, even human sacrifice. They invented a

satisfaction for sin which was an insult to God. He sought no

satisfaction, but an obedient return to the Father. What satisfaction

was needed he made himself in what he did to cause them to turn from

evil and go back to him. The thing was too simple for complicated

unbelief and the arguing spirit. Gladly would I help their followers to

loathe such thoughts of God; but for that, they themselves must grow

better men and women. While they are capable of being satisfied with

them, there would be no advantage in their becoming intellectually

convinced that such thoughts were wrong. I would not speak a word to

persuade them of it. Success would be worthless. They would but remain

what they were--children capable of thinking meanly of their father.

When the heart recoils, discovering how horrible it would be to have

such an unreality for God, it will begin to search about and see

whether it must indeed accept such statements concerning God; it will

search after a real God by whom to hold fast, a real God to deliver

them from the terrible idol. It is for those thus moved that I write,

not at all for the sake of disputing with those who love the lie they

may not be to blame for holding; who, like the Jews of old, would cast

out of their synagogue the man who doubts the genuineness of their

moral caricature of God, who doubts their travesty of the grandest

truth in the universe, the atonement of Jesus Christ. Of such a man

they will unhesitatingly report that he does not believe in the

atonement. But a lie for God is against God, and carries the sentence

of death in itself.

Instead of giving their energy to do the will of God, men of power have

given it to the construction of a system by which to explain why Christ

must die, what were the necessities and designs of God in permitting

his death; and men of power of our own day, while casting from them not

a little of the good in the teaching of the Roman Church, have clung to

the morally and spiritually vulgar idea of justice and satisfaction

held by pagan Rome, buttressed by the Jewish notion of sacrifice, and

in its very home, alas, with the mother of all the western churches!

Better the reformers had kept their belief in a purgatory, and parted

with what is called vicarious sacrifice!

Their system is briefly this: God is bound to punish sin, and to punish

it to the uttermost. His justice requires that sin be punished. But he

loves man, and does not want to punish him if he can help it. Jesus

Christ says, 'I will take his punishment upon me.' God accepts his

offer, and lets man go unpunished--upon a condition. His justice is

more than satisfied by the punishment of an infinite being instead of a

world of worthless creatures. The suffering of Jesus is of greater

value than that of all the generations, through endless ages, because

he is infinite, pure, perfect in love and truth, being God's own

everlasting son. God's condition with man is, that he believe in

Christ's atonement thus explained. A man must say, 'I have sinned, and

deserve to be tortured to all eternity. But Christ has paid my debts,

by being punished instead of me. Therefore he is my Saviour. I am now

bound by gratitude to him to turn away from evil.' Some would doubtless

insist on his saying a good deal more, but this is enough for my

purpose.

As to the justice of God requiring the punishment of the sinner, I have

said enough. That the mere suffering of the sinner can be no

satisfaction to justice, I have also tried to show. If the suffering of

the sinner be indeed required by the justice of God, let it be

administered. But what shall we say adequate to confront the base

representation that it is not punishment, not the suffering of the

sinner that is required, but suffering! nay, as if this were not depth

enough of baseness to crown all heathenish representation of the ways

of God, that the suffering of the innocent is unspeakably preferable in

his eyes to that of the wicked, as a make-up for wrong done! nay,

again, 'in the lowest deep a lower deep,' that the suffering of the

holy, the suffering of the loving, the suffering of the eternally and

perfectly good, is supremely satisfactory to the pure justice of the

Father of spirits! Not all the suffering that could be heaped upon the

wicked could buy them a moment's respite, so little is their suffering

a counterpoise to their wrong; in the working of this law of

equivalents, this _lex talionis_, the suffering of millions of years

could not equal the sin of a moment, could not pay off one farthing of

the deep debt. But so much more valuable, precious, and dear, is the

suffering of the innocent, so much more of a satisfaction--observe--to

the _justice_ of God, that in return for that suffering another wrong

is done: the sinners who deserve and ought to be punished are set free.

I know the root of all that can be said on the subject; the notion is

imbedded in the gray matter of my Scotch brains; and if I reject it, I

know what I reject. For the love of God my heart rose early against the

low invention. Strange that in a Christian land it should need to be

said, that to punish the innocent and let the guilty go free is unjust!

It wrongs the innocent, the guilty, and God himself. It would be the

worst of all wrongs to the guilty to treat them as innocent. The whole

device is a piece of spiritual charlatanry--fit only for a fraudulent

jail-delivery. If the wicked ought to be punished, it were the worst

possible perversion of justice to take a righteous being however

strong, and punish him instead of the sinner however weak. To the

poorest idea of justice in punishment, it is essential that the sinner,

and no other than the sinner, should receive the punishment. The strong

being that was willing to bear such punishment might well be regarded

as worshipful, but what of the God whose so-called justice he thus

defeats? If you say it is justice, not God that demands the suffering,

I say justice cannot demand that which is unjust, and the whole thing

is unjust. God is absolutely just, and there is no deliverance from his

justice, which is one with his mercy. The device is an absurdity--a

grotesquely deformed absurdity. To represent the living God as a party

to such a style of action, is to veil with a mask of cruelty and

hypocrisy the face whose glory can be seen only in the face of Jesus;

to put a tirade of vulgar Roman legality into the mouth of the Lord God

merciful and gracious, who will by no means clear the guilty. Rather

than believe such ugly folly of him whose very name is enough to make

those that know him heave the breath of the hart panting for the

waterbrooks; rather than think of him what in a man would make me avoid

him at the risk of my life, I would say, 'There is no God; let us

neither eat nor drink, that we may die! For lo, this is not our God!

This is not he for whom we have waited!' But I have seen his face and

heard his voice in the face and the voice of Jesus Christ; and I say

this is our God, the very one whose being the Creator makes it an

infinite gladness to be the created. I will not have the God of the

scribes and the pharisees whether Jewish or Christian, protestant,

Roman, or Greek, but thy father, O Christ! He is my God. If you say,

'That is our God, not yours!' I answer, 'Your portrait of your God is

an evil caricature of the face of Christ.'

To believe in a vicarious sacrifice, is to think to take refuge with

the Son from the righteousness of the Father; to take refuge with his

work instead of with the Son himself; to take refuge with a theory of

that work instead of the work itself; to shelter behind a false quirk

of law instead of nestling in the eternal heart of the unchangeable and

righteous Father, who is merciful in that he renders to every man

according to his work, and compels their obedience, nor admits judicial

quibble or subterfuge. God will never let a man off with any fault. He

must have him clean. He will excuse him to the very uttermost of truth,

but not a hair's-breadth beyond it; he is his true father, and will

have his child true as his son Jesus Christ is true. He will impute to

him nothing that he has not, will lose sight of no smallest good that

he has; will quench no smoking flax, break no bruised reed, but send

forth judgment unto victory. He is God beyond all that heart hungriest

for love and righteousness could to eternity desire.

If you say the best of men have held the opinions I stigmatize, I

answer, 'Some of the best of men have indeed held these theories, and

of men who have held them I have loved and honoured some heartily and

humbly--but because of what they _were_, not because of what they

_thought_; and they were what they were in virtue of their obedient

faith, not of their opinion. They were not better men because of

holding these theories. In virtue of knowing God by obeying his son,

they rose above the theories they had never looked in the face, and so

had never recognized as evil. Many have arrived, in the natural

progress of their sacred growth, at the point where they must abandon

them. The man of whom I knew the most good gave them up gladly. Good to

worshipfulness may be the man that holds them, and I hate them the more

therefore; they are lies that, working under cover of the truth mingled

with them, burrow as near the heart of the good man as they can go.

Whoever, from whatever reason of blindness, may be the holder of a lie,

the thing is a lie, and no falsehood must mingle with the justice we

mete out to it. There is nothing for any lie but the pit of hell. Yet

until the man sees the thing to be a lie, how shall he but hold it! Are

there not mingled with it shadows of the best truth in the universe? So

long as a man is able to love a lie, he is incapable of seeing it is a

lie. He who is true, out and out, will know at once an untruth; and to

that vision we must all come. I do not write for the sake of those who

either make or heartily accept any lie. When they see the glory of God,

they will see the eternal difference between the false and the true,

and not till then. I write for those whom such teaching as theirs has

folded in a cloud through which they cannot see the stars of heaven, so

that some of them even doubt if there be any stars of heaven. For the

holy ones who believed and taught these things in days gone by, all is

well. Many of the holiest of them cast the lies from them long ere the

present teachers of them were born. Many who would never have invented

them for themselves, yet receiving them with the seals affixed of so

many good men, took them in their humility as recognized truths,

instead of inventions of men; and, oppressed by authority, the

authority of men far inferior to themselves, did not dare dispute them,

but proceeded to order their lives by what truths they found in their

company, and so had their reward, the reward of obedience, in being by

that obedience brought to know God, which knowledge broke for them the

net of a presumptuous self-styled orthodoxy. Every man who tries to

obey the Master is my brother, whether he counts me such or not, and I

revere him; but dare I give quarter to what I see to be a lie, because

my brother believes it? The lie is not of God, whoever may hold it.

'Well, then,' will many say, 'if you thus unceremoniously cast to the

winds the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice, what theory do you propose

to substitute in its stead?'

'In the name of the truth,' I answer, _None_. I will send out no theory

of mine to rouse afresh little whirlwinds of dialogistic dust mixed

with dirt and straws and holy words, hiding the Master in talk about

him. If I have any such, I will not cast it on the road as I walk, but

present it on a fair patine to him to whom I may think it well to show

it. Only eyes opened by the sun of righteousness, and made single by

obedience, can judge even the poor moony pearl of formulated thought.

Say if you will that I fear to show my opinion. Is the man a coward who

will not fling his child to the wolves? What faith in this kind I have,

I will have to myself before God, till I see better reason for uttering

it than I do now.

'Will you then take from me my faith, and help me to no other?'

Your faith! God forbid. Your theory is not your faith, nor anything

like it. Your faith is your obedience; your theory I know not what.

Yes, I will gladly leave you without any of what you call faith. Trust

in God. Obey the word--every word of the Master. That is faith; and so

believing, your opinion will grow out of your true life, and be worthy

of it. Peter says the Lord gives the spirit to them that obey him: the

spirit of the Master, and that alone, can guide you to any theory that

it will be of use to you to hold. A theory arrived at any other way is

not worth the time spent on it. Jesus is the creating and saving lord

of our intellects as well as of our more precious hearts; nothing that

he does not think, is worth thinking; no man can think as he thinks,

except he be pure like him; no man can be pure like him, except he go

with him, and learn from him. To put off obeying him till we find a

credible theory concerning him, is to set aside the potion we know it

our duty to drink, for the study of the various schools of therapy. You

know what Christ requires of you is right--much of it at least you

believe to be right, and your duty to do, whether he said it or not:

_do it_. If you do not do what you know of the truth, I do not wonder

that you seek it intellectually, for that kind of search may well be,

as Milton represents it, a solace even to the fallen angels. But do not

call anything that may be so gained, _The Truth_. How can you, not

caring to _be_ true, judge concerning him whose life was to do for very

love the things you confess your duty, yet do them not? Obey the truth,

I say, and let theory wait. Theory may spring from life, but never life

from theory.

I will not then tell you what I think, but I will tell any man who

cares to hear it what I believe. I will do it now. Of course what I say

must partake thus much of the character of theory that I cannot prove

it; I can only endeavour to order my life by it.

I believe in Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, my elder brother, my

lord and master; I believe that he has a right to my absolute obedience

whereinsoever I know or shall come to know his will; that to obey him

is to ascend the pinnacle of my being; that not to obey him would be to

deny him. I believe that he died that I might die like him--die to any

ruling power in me but the will of God--live ready to be nailed to the

cross as he was, if God will it. I believe that he is my Saviour from

myself, and from all that has come of loving myself, from all that God

does not love, and would not have me love--all that is not worth

loving; that he died that the justice, the mercy of God, might have its

way with me, making me just as God is just, merciful as he is merciful,

perfect as my father in heaven is perfect. I believe and pray that he

will give me what punishment I need to set me right, or keep me from

going wrong. I believe that he died to deliver me from all meanness,

all pretence, all falseness, all unfairness, all poverty of spirit, all

cowardice, all fear, all anxiety, all forms of self-love, all trust or

hope in possession; to make me merry as a child, the child of our

father in heaven, loving nothing but what is lovely, desiring nothing I

should be ashamed to let the universe of God see me desire. I believe

that God is just like Jesus, only greater yet, for Jesus said so. I

believe that God is absolutely, grandly beautiful, even as the highest

soul of man counts beauty, but infinitely beyond that soul's highest

idea--with the beauty that creates beauty, not merely shows it, or

itself exists beautiful. I believe that God has always done, is always

doing his best for every man; that no man is miserable because God is

forgetting him; that he is not a God to crouch before, but our father,

to whom the child-heart cries exultant, 'Do with me as thou wilt.'

I believe that there is nothing good for me or for any man but God, and

more and more of God, and that alone through knowing Christ can we come

nigh to him.

I believe that no man is ever condemned for any sin except one--that he

will not leave his sins and come out of them, and be the child of him

who is his father.

I believe that justice and mercy are simply one and the same thing;

without justice to the full there can be no mercy, and without mercy to

the full there can be no justice; that such is the mercy of God that he

will hold his children in the consuming fire of his distance until they

pay the uttermost farthing, until they drop the purse of selfishness

with all the dross that is in it, and rush home to the Father and the

Son, and the many brethren--rush inside the centre of the life-giving

fire whose outer circles burn. I believe that no hell will be lacking

which would help the just mercy of God to redeem his children.

I believe that to him who obeys, and thus opens the doors of his heart

to receive the eternal gift, God gives the spirit of his son, the

spirit of himself, to be in him, and lead him to the understanding of

all truth; that the true disciple shall thus always know what he ought

to do, though not necessarily what another ought to do; that the spirit

of the father and the son enlightens by teaching righteousness. I

believe that no teacher should strive to make men think as he thinks,

but to lead them to the living Truth, to the Master himself, of whom

alone they can learn anything, who will make them in themselves know

what is true by the very seeing of it. I believe that the inspiration

of the Almighty alone gives understanding. I believe that to be the

disciple of Christ is the end of being; that to persuade men to be his

disciples is the end of teaching.

'The sum of all this is that you do not believe in the atonement?'

I believe in Jesus Christ. Nowhere am I requested to believe _in_ any

thing, or _in_ any statement, but everywhere to believe in God and in

Jesus Christ. In what you call _the atonement_, in what you mean by the

word, what I have already written must make it plain enough I do not

believe. God forbid I should, for it would be to believe a lie, and a

lie which is to blame for much non-acceptance of the gospel in this and

other lands. But, as the word was used by the best English writers at

the time when the translation of the Bible was made--with all my heart,

and soul, and strength, and mind, I believe in the atonement, call it

the _a-tone-ment_, or the _at-one-ment_, as you please. I believe that

Jesus Christ _is_ our atonement; that through him we are reconciled to,

made one with God. There is not one word in the New Testament about

reconciling God to us; it is we that have to be reconciled to God. I am

not writing, neither desire to write, a treatise on the atonement, my

business being to persuade men to be atoned to God; but I will go so

far to meet my questioner as to say--without the slightest expectation

of satisfying him, or the least care whether I do so or not, for his

_opinion_ is of no value to me, though his truth is of endless value to

me and to the universe--that, even in the sense of the atonement being

a making-up for the evil done by men toward God, I believe in the

atonement. Did not the Lord cast himself into the eternal gulf of evil

yawning between the children and the Father? Did he not bring the

Father to us, let us look on our eternal Sire in the face of his true

son, that we might have that in our hearts which alone could make us

love him--a true sight of him? Did he not insist on the one truth of

the universe, the one saving truth, that God was just what he was? Did

he not hold to that assertion to the last, in the face of contradiction

and death? Did he not thus lay down his life persuading us to lay down

ours at the feet of the Father? Has not his very life by which he died

passed into those who have received him, and re-created theirs, so that

now they live with the life which alone is life? Did he not foil and

slay evil by letting all the waves and billows of its horrid sea break

upon him, go over him, and die without rebound--spend their rage, fall

defeated, and cease? Verily, he made atonement! _We_ sacrifice to

God!--it is God who has sacrificed his own son to us; there was no way

else of getting the gift of himself into our hearts. Jesus sacrificed

himself to his father and the children to bring them together--all the

love on the side of the Father and the Son, all the selfishness on the

side of the children. If the joy that alone makes life worth living,

the joy that God is such as Christ, be a true thing in my heart, how

can I but believe in the atonement of Jesus Christ? I believe it

heartily, as God means it.

Then again, as the power that brings about a making-up for any wrong

done by man to man, I believe in the atonement. Who that believes in

Jesus does not long to atone to his brother for the injury he has done

him? What repentant child, feeling he has wronged his father, does not

desire to make atonement? Who is the mover, the causer, the persuader,

the creator of the repentance, of the passion that restores

fourfold?--Jesus, our propitiation, our atonement. He is the head and

leader, the prince of the atonement. He could not do it without us, but

he leads us up to the Father's knee: he makes us make atonement.

Learning Christ, we are not only sorry for what we have done wrong, we

not only turn from it and hate it, but we become able to serve both God

and man with an infinitely high and true service, a soul-service. We

are able to offer our whole being to God to whom by deepest right it

belongs. Have I injured anyone? With him to aid my justice, new risen

with him from the dead, shall I not make good amends? Have I failed in

love to my neighbour? Shall I not now love him with an infinitely

better love than was possible to me before? That I will and can make

atonement, thanks be to him who is my atonement, making me at one with

God and my fellows! He is my life, my joy, my lord, my owner, the

perfecter of my being by the perfection of his own. I dare not say with

Paul that I am the slave of Christ; but my highest aspiration and

desire is to be the slave of Christ.

'But you do not believe that the sufferings of Christ, as sufferings,

justified the supreme ruler in doing anything which he would not have

been at liberty to do but for those sufferings?'

I do not. I believe the notion as unworthy of man's belief, as it is

dishonouring to God. It has its origin doubtless in a salutary sense of

sin; but sense of sin is not inspiration, though it may lie not far

from the temple-door. It is indeed an opener of the eyes, but upon

home-defilement, not upon heavenly truth; it is not the revealer of

secrets. Also there is another factor in the theory, and that is

unbelief--incapacity to accept the freedom of God's forgiveness;

incapacity to believe that it is God's chosen nature to forgive, that

he is bound in his own divinely willed nature to forgive. No atonement

is necessary to him but that men should leave their sins and come back

to his heart. But men cannot believe in the forgiveness of God.

Therefore they need, therefore he has given them a mediator. And yet

they will not know him. They think of the father of souls as if he had

abdicated his fatherhood for their sins, and assumed the judge. If he

put off his fatherhood, which he cannot do, for it is an eternal fact,

he puts off with it all relation to us. He cannot repudiate the

essential and keep the resultant. Men cannot, or will not, or dare not

see that nothing but his being our father gives him any right over

us--that nothing but that could give him a perfect right. They regard

the father of their spirits as their governor! They yield the idea of

the Ancient of Days, 'the glad creator,' and put in its stead a

miserable, puritanical martinet of a God, caring not for righteousness,

but for his rights; not for the eternal purities, but the goody

proprieties. The prophets of such a God take all the glow, all the

hope, all the colour, all the worth, out of life on earth, and offer

you instead what they call eternal bliss--a pale, tearless hell. Of all

things, turn from a mean, poverty stricken faith. But, if you ate

straitened in your own mammon-worshipping soul, how shall you believe

in a God any greater than can stand up in that prison-chamber?

I desire to wake no dispute, will myself dispute with no man, but for

the sake of those whom certain _believers_ trouble, I have spoken my

mind. I love the one God seen in the face of Jesus Christ. From all

copies of Jonathan Edwards's portrait of God, however faded by time,

however softened by the use of less glaring pigments, I turn with

loathing. Not such a God is he concerning whom was the message John

heard from Jesus, _that he is light, and in him is no darkness at all_.