CHARACTER OF GOD.
It has been shown (chapter 24) that _emotive_ love, in view of noble and
interesting traits of character, affords a most powerful motive in
securing _voluntary love_ or _good willing_ according to the laws of God.
This is the grand reason why it is so important that all his creatures
should regard their Creator, whose laws they must obey, as perfect in
every noble and lovable quality. This would render it easy and delightful
to obey his will.
The principle of gratitude is the strongest in our nature, in calling
forth desires to please another. This renders it so important that we
should regard our Maker, not only as noble and lovely, but as the
dispenser of innumerable and constant favors to ourselves and to those
whom we love.
The highest emotions of love and gratitude are evoked when a noble and
lovely benefactor condescends to humiliation, suffering, and even to death
to rescue from great calamity. And the greater the danger and suffering
from which this goodness rescues, the stronger the gratitude and the
desire to please the benefactor.
In this view we can conceive of no way in which our Creator could so
powerfully influence his creatures to virtuous self‐sacrifice for the
general good in obedience to his laws, as by such an exhibition on his
part.
It has been shown [Chapter 28] that by the light of reason and experience
alone, we infer that our race are exposed to dreadful risk and danger of
evils, which to _some_ will prove interminable. If, then, it can be made
to appear that our Creator has submitted to great humiliation and
suffering to rescue us, and that his _chief desire_ is that his creatures
should obey his beneficent laws, the strongest conceivable motives would
be secured to lead to glad obedience to the rules of virtue. And having
shown that the chief end of our Creator is to do all in his power to make
the most possible happiness, we should infer that he had made or would
make such a manifestation of his character to his creatures. And were this
revealed to us as done, such a revelation would properly be called “glad
tidings,” as that which was best fitted to save men from sin and
suffering.
According to the system of common sense, our Creator is presented as the
Almighty Father, who forms each finite mind an embryo image of his own all
perfect mind, with the great design of making all the happiness possible.
Although the highest happiness of each and of all, depends on the perfect
action of every mind, such action is not possible in the nature of things
except as a knowledge of his laws and of the motives to secure obedience
are made known by finite educators, who must first be trained themselves
by a long and slow process. Thus every mind is dependent for its final
success in attaining perfect obedience to law, and for perfected
happiness, on God, on finite educators and on self.
In carrying forward the development and education of our race, the Creator
always has done and always will do the _best that is possible_ for the
good of all. And yet, so far as reason and experience teach, some will be
_ruined for ever_. The deteriorating process begun in this life, and its
baleful results, will continue for ever.
The great consummation, when those that are hopelessly ruined will be
separated from the good, is at an indefinite period ahead, and may be many
ages, while the same process of labor and training are proceeding in the
unseen world, and yet so that the conduct and character formed in this
life have a _decided influence_ on the whole course of existence that
follows.
Thus when the good man dies we may hope that his upward career is
eternally secure. But when the wicked die there must be “a certain fearful
looking for of judgment and fiery indignation.”
The Creator does, has done, and will do _all that is __ possible_ to save
all that _can_ be saved from this doom, and as the highest possible
motives we can conceive to secure this end, would be the appearance of our
Creator in human form as a teacher of his laws, an example of virtue and a
self‐sacrificing Saviour, we infer that he has done or will do this, at
the time and in the manner which is best fitted to the great end in view.
The Augustinian system presents a view of the character and conduct of the
Creator in mournful contrast to this.
Our only idea of a perfectly benevolent being is that of one who prefers
happiness to suffering, and who does _all in his power_ to promote one and
prevent the other. Our only idea of a malevolent being is, that he wills
misery when he has full power to make happiness in its stead. Our only
evidence of the _moral_ character of a being (or that exhibited in
_willing_) is _the nature_ of his works. On the Augustinian theory, all
the chief works of the Creator’s hand, the immortal minds, which alone
give value to any other existences, are depraved so totally that there is
no really good act done by any one of them till created anew.
In other words, the Creator, having full power to make every mind perfect
in nature, and who still has power to re‐create all with perfect natures,
has instituted a system by which the sin of one man entails a depraved
nature on a whole race, while the evil as yet has been remedied only in
the case of a small, “elect” number. All the rest are doomed to eternal
misery for conduct which is the certain consequence of this misformed
nature.
To save men from the punishment of the sins consequent on their depraved
nature, Christ, the most perfect and only unsinning being that ever
visited earth, undergoes deep humiliation and excruciating sufferings.
To call such conduct as this _just_, or _kind_, or _merciful_, is a
violation of all our ideas of the meaning of such terms. What kindness is
there in giving existence to _any_ being on such terms? What blessings are
all the comforts and enjoyments of this life, so soon to be snatched away,
thus making the contrast of future misery so much the more horrible? What
mercy is there in any mode of rectifying a wrong so needlessly inflicted?
What mercy, or what justice is there in adding to all the miseries of our
race the sufferings of so noble and lovely a being as Jesus Christ, when
all, and more than all, effected by his agonies, could be so much more
justly and reasonably secured by regenerating all the minds thus
needlessly ruined in their nature? This strange and mysterious transaction
only adds to the terror and gloom that shroud such a Creator, whose
character can be learned only by the _nature_ of his works.
To call all this a _mystery_ is a misuse of terms, for there is no mystery
about it. More direct, clear, and open injustice, folly and malevolence,
can not possibly be expressed in human language than that here set forth
and ascribed to God.
Every mind instinctively asks, why did not the Creator give us a perfect
nature when he has the power to do so? Why does he not stop all the sin
and misery resulting from the depraved nature of man by regenerating all,
when he has power to do so? How can we either respect or love a being who
has done such awful and endless wrong to our race, and for no conceivable
good made known to us? What cause of gratitude for the sufferings and
death of Christ to save the few of us who alone are to escape from such
needless and intolerable evils?
Meantime, the various theories invented to relieve the baleful impression
thus made as to the character of our Creator, only add new difficulties.
To say that this perpetuated mode of bringing ruined minds into existence,
is a penalty for a single sin of the first pair, thousands of years ago,
what a violation of all our ideas of justice! To say that this transaction
is _just_ because Adam was “_regarded_” by God as “the federal head” of
our race, and that he “imputes” the sin of the father to all his
descendants, what is this, to our conceptions, but puerile folly added to
the baldest cruelty and injustice?
To say that we all “sinned _in_ Adam,” thousands of years before we were
born, and are punished by a ruined nature, so far as we can conceive of
such an absurd proposition, what is this penalty better than inflicting
endless tortures on myriads of new‐born infants for their first ignorant
and unconscious sin?
To say that _man_, or _Adam_ is the author of all this ineffable wrong,
because it is done by “a constitutional transmission” from parent to
child, of which God is the author, when he had full power to make each
child perfect in nature, what is this but adding to cruelty and injustice
a mean subterfuge in order to cast the blame on Adam and his race?
The mind turns from a God so represented, with horror and dismay, and it
is only by concealing this system, by representations that are _perfectly
contradictory_, that the baleful impression is lessened.
The view of God’s character thus presented by the Augustinian theory, not
only lessens the power of motive which the common‐sense view of the
Creator’s character affords, but brings a powerful positive influence to
turn the human mind from that love and obedience toward God which is so
indispensable to peace and happiness.