offence of Adam, and here the phrase ‘all men’ must necessarily be
understood to signify every individual of the human race. Though the
style of the apostle in this passage is remarkably intricate and
perplexed, yet his meaning is clear, and scarcely to be misunderstood.
He affirms that death entered into the world by Adam, and that in
consequence of his offence, death passed upon all men, or all men became
mortal. Thus many were made sinful or mortal by one. In this sense Adam
was a type of Jesus Christ: for as all mankind became subject to great
privation or suffering in consequence of the offence of one, namely
Adam, so the greatest privileges and blessings are bestowed on all
mankind in consequence of the obedience of one, namely, Jesus Christ.
But it is only in this single circumstance that all suffer and all are
benefited by one, that there is any analogy between them: for in every
other respect there is the greatest possible difference between Adam and
Christ. The act entailing such important consequences upon the whole
human race, was, on the part of Adam, an act of transgression, on the
part of Christ an act of obedience. And there is a still further
disparity between them; for the calamities resulting from the act of
transgression were the legal punishment of the offence; but the
blessings accruing from the act of obedience were not such as could be
claimed by law, but were the free, unpurchased unmerited gift of God.
And the consequences of the act of transgression and the act of
obedience may be placed in still more striking contrast: for the act of
transgression was but one, and yet death, with all the calamities
connected with it, passed upon the whole human race; while the act of
obedience provides justification for many offences: nor is this all; for
the blessings procured for all mankind by the obedience of Christ are
unspeakably greater than the calamities brought upon them by the offence
of Adam.”
“This is undoubtedly the argument of the Apostle. Notwithstanding all
the obscurity and perplexity of his language, whoever reads the passage
with attention, must perceive these were the ideas which were in his
mind. And in the whole compass of Christian truth, there is no doctrine
more important or more glorious than that which is thus disclosed. It is
a direct and positive declaration, that the blessings, provided by the
obedience of Christ, shall, in number of persons who partake them, be
co-extensive with the calamities produced by the offence of Adam, and in
their magnitude and value greatly exceed them. This is sufficient; this
is decisive; these ideas were in the mind of the apostle; this is the
doctrine which he plainly and indisputably teaches, and nothing more is
necessary. For, even though it should be proved that he illustrates his
doctrine by a fanciful allusion to what was itself only an allegory;
that his reasoning is not in every respect complete, and even, that he
did not himself fully comprehend all the glorious consequences of the
sublime truth he disclosed, that truth would be neither the less
important nor the less certain. The great fact itself, the fact which it
was his object and his office to teach, and in which he could not be
mistaken, was, that the blessings produced by the obedience of Christ
shall be as extensive as the evils occasioned by the offence of Adam;
that all who suffer from the one shall partake of the benefits of the
other, while these benefits themselves shall infinitely exceed and
overbalance the calamities entailed on mankind by the first
transgression. The conclusion is inevitable, that the whole human race
shall ultimately be restored to virtue and happiness. By one passage of
Scripture then, at least, the doctrine which it is the object of this
work to establish, is positively and expressly affirmed; and this is
decisive.”[604]
To sustain this doctrine we hear analogy also pleaded. Pain, it is said,
has no tendency to correct. This is not true. Pain often does
correct—and many are led back to virtue by means of a sad experience.
Pain physically and morally is the great instrument of warning. But
though it were fully granted that pure pain were not a corrective
agency, it may, in connection with other influences, bring healing to
the soul. We never see it unmixed in this world, and we have no just
ground to conclude it will be so in another. How often is it the means
of drawing forth a mercy and a grace from others that softens the stony
heart of the transgressor. How often, when the sinner is laid low—yea,
and by the very effect of crimes, will a kind look or word, an instance
of forbearance or forgiveness, work a regeneration on his nature. How
often will the son who plagued his parents’ life, and whitened their
hair with sorrow, when driven by misery to seek again the shelter of a
home, be sweetened into meekness by a mother’s love, and be raised again
to dignity by a father’s generosity. If pain then, by making us feel the
goodness of others, will so frequently incite us to deserve it, are we
to conceive that an experience, with clearer knowledge of God’s love,
shall be entirely ineffectual? It is said, that men grow more hardened
in sin the longer they continue in it. I allow it was a generous truth:
and yet the thought of a moment—the visit of one pure memory, may
suffice to change a life of crime. But our argument is, that men will
not continue in sin; and it will not be asserted, that if reformation is
at all possible, God will refuse the means, and make crime eternal. It
is further stated that the wicked, by force of numbers and society with
each other, grow increasingly worse: it is to be proved, which it is not
and cannot, that in a future existence there is any such distribution
either local or moral. This doctrine is not only unfounded in analogy,
but contradicted by it—there must be either destruction or renovation:
so it is in the natural world, and so it is in the moral. Nothing can
sustain continued existence in a state of extreme disorganization; a
certain amount of consistency and harmony is an essential condition of
every being—without this, there must be dissolution and destruction. Sin
being then confusion in the soul and in society, an eternal state of
progressive sin is inconceivable. Pain, being in like manner
disorganization in body or mind, an eternity of growing pain is equally
inconceivable. Continued and extreme pain therefore must either destroy
its subject or destroy itself; and then on this argument alone we
perceive that eternal torture is a theological figment; a nonentity and
impossibility.
The belief is further pressed upon us on grounds of moral influence.
This is but an additional argument against it, for it either has no
effect or a bad one. It has no effect, from its vagueness and its
incomprehensibleness. It does not fasten on the moral feelings—it sinks
dead by its own ponderousness. It has no effect from its inconsistency
with human nature; there is no affinity between a finite being and
boundless torture; and thence from the want of truth there is also a
want of power. It has no effect, because there is an instinctive
abhorrence in the heart against it; and there is an instinctive justice
which repels it; the imagination reels before it—the mind retreats from
it, and finds that it is too odious even to be looked at. That it has no
effect may be seen to a vast extent: millions in all countries profess
to believe it, and among these have been, and are, many of the most
abandoned that ever brought shame upon their nature; and yet a faith in
hell gave them no fear of vice. So far as it has influence it is of a
bad kind; because it familiarizes the mind with coarse images; because
it breathes into obedience a spirit of slavish fear; because it makes
terror an instrument of religion; because it throws darkness on the ways
of providence; because it undermines filial confidence in God, and puts
a limit either to his power or his love. The doctrine of ultimate and
universal salvation lowers the sanctions of righteousness. But what is
the true motive to goodness, what is the spirit of it—that which unites
us most to God? Love, not fear; not fear of hell; and in the sense of
terror not even fear of God himself. Fear is mere submission to force,
not the willing service of heart-felt appreciation; the crouching of a
slave in outward show to the despot whom in his soul he thoroughly
detests. Now as we cannot love by constraint, what ideas of God are most
likely to move our affections, and consequently produce in us the true
spirit of obedience? Evidently his benevolence, his purity, his
disinterested goodness, his fatherly nature—to be drawn to him with the
cords of our hearts, we see him in the clear light of his moral beauty.
It is rather paradoxical that these doctrines on the power of fear, the
righteousness of vindictive punishment, and the limits of moral
reformation, should be propagated in our times, when all the practical
tendencies of society are in contradiction. The influence of conviction
and not of force, the influence of mind and not pain, is the growing
spirit of the time, and a faith, which puts no bound to hope; for the
love of man is a motive deepening ever in the great social heart. This
is the blessing of our day,—it has enlightened education, and softened
the rigour of instruction; it is mingling the gentleness of mercy with
the austerity of punishment; it is working to restore the criminal and
not to destroy, tempering discipline with wisdom, believing that
corrective amelioration is most useful and most just; in the same
believing spirit it is sending a vast spiritual agency into every realm
of vice: while thus philosophy and philanthropy labour in the trust they
shall leave men better than they found them, exploding the errors which
had been the greatest curses to mankind, these are the very errors which
theology sanctifies, which it is heresy to deny: whilst a moral and
merciful civilization is exerted to exalt man, theology continues to
deface the image of God; the one scattering beauty on mortality, and the
other spreading darkness on eternity; the one removing pain, and the
other preaching it.
The doctrine we oppose is further defended on the ground that sin is an
infinite offence, that man is therefore an infinite offender; and that
an infinite offender deserves unending punishment. The assertion, that
man can be an infinite offender, is wholly inconsistent with the views
which the orthodox themselves present of man. To be a transgressor in
any degree, implies the possession of a noble nature, much less to be an
infinite transgressor; but with the miserable and contemptible creature
which Calvinism describes as man, it is impossible to associate any idea
that is either noble or infinite, for good or for evil. We may assume
another mode of reasoning. The obedience of the law is righteousness,
the transgression of the law is sin. These are correspondent
definitions. By every rule, therefore, of logical deduction, if a single
act of sin is an infinite evil, a single act of obedience is an infinite
good; and on the same grounds of justice by which one man is doomed to
an everlasting hell, the other merits an eternal heaven.
But to speak of man at all as an infinite offender, is to set common
sense at defiance. Whence can be the infinitude of his offence? Not in
its origin, not in its effects, not in its duration: not in its origin,
for it is produced in limited faculties; not in its effects, for the
errors of a created nature, counteracted by an uncreated omnipotence,
can never be infinite, can never be irremediable; not in its duration,
for the life of one man, the lives of all men to the end of human
generations, are but a point in the universe and government of God. Sin
is either a state of mind or a state of action; but whether as one or
the other, it must of necessity be limited. Were the career of man
extended to that of Methusalem, and his powers as capacious as his years
were many; were the whole of that existence a succession of crime,
uncheered by a solitary virtue; were the energy of the mightiest
intellect devoted to contrive guilt, and the efforts of the most
ingenious sinfulness given to its execution; were every creation of
fancy a vision of impurity, every instinct an impulse to cruelty, every
emotion a movement of malignity, yet even thus horrible, we could not
with truth call man an infinite offender. Neither in desire nor in
action can he be such. Not in desire, for there is no man that wishes,
there never has been the man that wished, absolute, unmingled, endless
evil; not in action, for there is no man, whatever the malignity of his
intention, has unlimited power of execution. If sin is an infinite
offence, then all sins are equal, for infinity has no degrees; if
sinners are infinite transgressors, then criminals have no distinctions;
transgression has no gradations, and the whole moral space is
annihilated between him who stands on the very margin of heaven, and him
who is already plunged into hell; the same impassable gulf which exists
between their conditions, exists also between their characters.
Man is not an infinite offender, nor yet is he an incorrigible one.
There is nothing in his nature or history which justifies the
conclusion. There is no point of moral baseness so low that we can mark
it as a hopeless condition. He is not immutable; and as change is
possible, changes for the better may be looked for, as well as changes
for the worse. Such changes have been; the painful experience of evil
and wrong-doing, however slow and vacillating, always drives towards
them; all observation, therefore, is in favour of our expectation. We
look not on the deepest, the deadliest, and the worst instance of human
depravity, as beyond correction, beyond improvement, beyond the power of
Almighty God; we look upon no ignorance that may not be enlightened;
upon no vice that may not be removed; upon no human countenance so
scarred with the traces of depravity, as to leave nothing visible but
the hand-writing of reprobation; God forbid that we should behold any
human being with humanity’s capacities, destined, beyond amendment, to
hopeless corruption and to incorrigible misery. I deny not the existence
and the delusion of vice. I deny not the abuse of the noblest faculties,
or the perversion of the best affections, but I do deny that the human
soul is ever so wrecked or lost as to become utterly hopeless. The man
of pleasure may turn from joy to joy, and collect nothing for his home
but weariness and disgust; the man of ambition may sacrifice health and
repose, honour and probity; the covetous man may, during a long life,
drudge away days of labour, and toss through nights of care, to die in
the possession of what he never enjoyed; the indolent and the prodigal
may live as if there were no _tomorrow_; the vicious and profane may
reel on, reckless of a future existence and a future judgment. We have
all seen every human passion making havoc upon virtue; but we have also
seen the passions, carrying with them their own sting and their own
punishment, and in that sting and punishment, to a certain extent at
least, they have contained their own amelioration and amendment. That
human beings have been raised from their lowest debasement, that they
have been emancipated from the worst of moral bondage, that they have
been purified from the deepest of pollutions, we have many consolatory
evidences. In every nation of earth that now enjoys the blessings of
religion, of liberty, of arts, of moral and social refinement, we have
proofs, that by gradual and progressive improvement, these human beings
may be delivered from the very worst estate of ignorance, vice,
destitution, and brutality. For what are the nations that we now glory
to acknowledge, but instances the most undeniable, that man is not only
an imperishable, but also an improvable creature? I have seen beings in
their thoughtlessness, the victims of their own vanity, sink miserable
and despairing into the terror which they had prepared for themselves:
but must I say, that they shall never throughout eternity discover the
littleness of the objects they desired, nor abstain from chasing the
phantoms that misled them? I have seen men insanely and foolishly toil
for all that makes life a trifle, at the loss of all that makes it a
glory; I have read in history, and I can recal by memory, the experience
of those who spent all they had of energy or misused all they had of
goodness to obtain that which at last they felt their torture; I have
seen the turbulent nature soften into peace, the thoughtless awakened
into wisdom and action, the profane elevated into reverence, the impious
bending to pray, the angry subdued into meekness, the proud converted to
the wisdom of humility, the hard-hearted melted to the goodness of
mercy.
Should it be said that this argument is too narrow, and appeals only to
immediate feeling, let us then take a wider sphere, and try the
principle by a larger test. Call to your attention the varieties of
mankind, of their present and past condition, of their present and past
circumstances. Many millions exist on the wide surface of the globe,
among whom the elements of moral redemption have never had operation, on
whose benighted souls a ray of Christian light has never dawned, hearts
which have never felt the bliss of holy liberty, and bosoms that have
never burned with heavenly fire. Take up a map of the world; cast your
eye over its boundaries and divisions, from pole to pole, and from
meridian to meridian; conceive the myriads of rational beings who swarm
along that surface; reflect on the wonderful diversities in their
conditions and their training; pass over the dreary frosts of one
country, and the deadening heat of others; wherever you turn, humanity
meets you under different forms, and in various circumstances—with
habits more or less corrupted, with morals more or less pure, with
religion more or less enlightened or absurd; let me then ask any
enlightened thinker, any one who has studied human nature, whether all
these are to be arranged under one general classification. Consider the
tribes around the arctic, buried in darkness; pierce into the unexplored
regions of Africa; go over the deserts of Arabia; walk among the tents
of its predatory and pastoral populations; traverse Persia, India,
Tartary, the islands that dimly gleam through the Southern Ocean, and
wherever you go, mankind are in various moral positions, and
consequently under various terms of moral probation. Shall then that
all-seeing Creator, to whom every heart is open, place all these motley
tribes under one system of judgment? It cannot be. Shall beings born in
regions of darkness be condemned for want of light—beings who had never
breathed but of impurity, for not being sanctified—beings bred amidst
idols, for being idolatrous? Taking thus into view the populations of
the earth, we have before us an infinity of moral conditions; and yet
the differences are not greater between the extremes of them than those
we might select in a single country or a single city; than those, in
fact, which we know to exist. Respecting the terms of probation, a New
Zealander is not at a greater distance from an Englishman, than some
Englishmen are from others. When we think then how many are ignorant and
suffering by the very necessity of destiny, and by the same fate vicious
and depraved, if the passage of a breath end all hope of amendment, our
faith must cease in divine justice, as well as divine wisdom, and our
perplexity be turned to despair.
We look on man, not as a member of a sect, but as a child of God; and
once more, we ask, if he is not an infinite offender, nor yet
incorrigible, is he not worth the correction? If his purity and
happiness be within the bounds of possibility, if his eternal misery by
any degree of energy can be averted, are we to believe that a God who
has infinite benevolence _wills_ him to perish; are we to believe that a
God who has infinite power will exert none of it to save the most
glorious of his works from utter destruction? Can we suppose that God,
omnipotent and most wise, would reverse eternally such capacities for
goodness and happiness, and instead of training them to be instruments
of boundless utility, would condemn them to be agents of eternal evil?
Will not God rather choose to sow the field of everlasting life with
seeds of holiness and bliss, than to scathe it to a ruin and a
wilderness? I would not strip the future of its awe; no terror can be
equal to the truth; it is the most solemn anticipation that can ever
come upon the mind, and I maintain that nothing the most fearing
imagination conceived in its wildest apprehensions ever equalled the
reality: but, for God’s universe and for God’s creatures, there is
always hope; in God’s power and wisdom there are limitless means, and at
last there will be universal peace and universal emancipation. If
creatures are not ultimately and universally happy, it must be either
from the want of ability in God, or the want of inclination; and this
difficulty pressing itself on the mind of a powerful and pious orthodox
writer, he chose, in accounting for the loss of souls, to suppose that
theologians had mistaken in their theories the nature of divine
omnipotence; that love and power have distinct offices; but if he were
to circumscribe either attribute in God, it would be power and not love.
On the ground of an eternal perdition, such attribute as a _moral_
omnipotence can truly be ascribed to God. The able writer to whom I have
alluded has seen to the bottom of the difficulty, and believing as he
does most sincerely in eternal suffering, believing also as he does with
equal sincerity in the infinite love of God, he is compelled so far as
the human will is concerned to circumscribe the sphere and action of
divine omnipotence, or rather to deny it altogether. “The truth is,” he
says, “that the only rational conclusion we can arrive at in the matter,
is that in the nature of things no such attribute can exist. And until
the cloud, which its supposed existence throws on every procedure of
divine providence, is dissipated, we must either not think at all, or
think amiss on that subject in comparison of which all other subjects
are unimportant, namely the character of God: I know that many may, at
first sight, be startled at the assertion, that the power of God can in
any sense be limited. In this, as in various instances, they will object
to the same truth as a distinct proposition, which they will freely
assume and take for granted in all their reasonings. These very persons
will speak of Providence as devising means and moving by gradual
advancement to the accomplishment of an end. If asked, why not decree
the end without the means? they answer, because it could not be
attained, at least so well, without them. If then, the term _could not_,
be at all admitted, (and how freely is this term applied to God in
Scripture!) no such thing as unrestricted omnipotence exists. It is not
that there is any limit in God. God forbid that I should dare to say so.
It is, that power in its own nature is limited. It can act only on
possibilities.... Even power itself is but a vague and unintelligible
notion, unless displayed to us as triumphing over difficulties, and
rising superior to obstacles. A sweeping omnipotence, which could by one
sovereign act of will, decree that in the nature of things neither
impediment nor resistance should exist, leaves no field even for power
itself to act on. Omnipotence such as this, at least supplies no
materials for man to comprehend or adore. No: we are constructed
otherwise. Our faculties are so framed as to correspond with the truth
and reality of things. The power that fills the soul with wonder and
with praise is that which the Scripture of truth exhibits: that power in
which God arises that his enemies may be scattered; that omnipotence by
which he produces good out of evil, and subdues the most unyielding
substances and stubborn elements into himself. But still more, as it
respects the wisdom of God, is it necessary to dismiss the notion of an
absolute omnipotence before the former attribute can shine forth in its
true glory. For surely, according to our conceptions, it would be more
wise to arrive at once, if that were possible, at all that means, and
contrivances, and processes can accomplish, than to prefer elaborate and
circuitous courses, merely for the sake of going round about to do what
could be done as well in the twinkling of an eye. And yet in what does
the divine wisdom as apprehensible by us consist? What are the views and
discoveries which lead us, with the apostle, to exclaim, ‘Oh, the depths
of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God?’ Is it not in
those very procedures which if unbounded power existed would be folly
and not wisdom, that all the treasures of the infinite mind are
manifested? in adapting means to ends, in pursuing the path of light
amidst surrounding darkness, in harmonizing discordant principles, and
bringing order out of confusion?”