by the testimony of Scripture.—“To quote Scripture,” he observes, “as
fully as I might upon this subject, would be, in a measure, to
transcribe the Bible. I shall content myself with producing three
passages, which, though not of the directer kind, bear, I think,
irresistibly on the point. The first is Ezek. xxxiii. 11. ‘As I live,
saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but
that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye, from all
your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?’ The second is
Isa. v. 3, 4. ‘And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah,
judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done
more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I
looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes.’
The last which I shall quote is Matt. xxiii. 37, 38. ‘O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent
unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even
as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.’” “Is this, then, I would
ask any fair and candid person, who looks as if the All-gracious being
who employs it, had any relief or remedy in reserve for those who
wilfully reject the mercies he has freely offered them? Are these like
the expressions of one who could bestow salvation in any other way, or
any other terms? Do they not resemble rather the tender complaints and
anxious warnings of a parent who had done all he could do, and proposed
all that he had to propose, to rescue his child from ruin, and who must
at last, with agonizing reluctance, give up that child, if he would
still pursue those courses whose end is inevitable destruction? And if
such be the characters in which God has been pleased to reveal himself;
if such be the words which he has actually spoken, are we to be wise
above what is written? Is it honouring God to say he uses a language to
work upon our feelings, which language is in reality a misrepresentation
of the truth; a misrepresentation, nevertheless, so ill contrived, that,
after all, it does not deceive us? Or is it exalting his great name, to
magnify the mere natural attribute of his power, above those moral
attributes in which consist at once his essence and his glory? No. If it
be indeed reverence to God, to dismiss him altogether from our minds,
then all such considerations are set at rest for ever. But if it be our
duty, not only to think of him, but to bear him in all our thoughts,
then in all around us we see this truth inscribed, that there is a limit
in power or a limit in love. In which shall we place it?—In power? Then
we place it not in God, but in his lowest attribute.—In love? Then
indeed we place the limit in God himself—‘God is love.’”[605]
The reasoning of this passage is most cogent, the dilemma is inevitable.
If there be eternal sin and eternal perdition; if there be not ultimate
and universal regeneration, limit there must be in love or in power: but
holding as we do the doctrine of progressive discipline, we place limit
in neither, and we glorify both. Strange it is, that while thus
magnifying God in the highest of his attributes, in the harmony and
perfection of his nature, while thus trusting him with the faith of
children, notwithstanding many things in his providence mysterious and
inexplicable, in despite of the sin and misery that surround us, filling
the human mind and human destiny with painful and perplexing problems,
we believe him to be all-powerful as he is all-good; yet in thus
believing we are set down by Trinitarians as rebels against heaven, and
blasphemers of our Creator. If reverence to God demand us to believe
that the smoke of eternal torment from the depths of an unfathomable
hell is an incense well pleasing in his sight, or an evil which he must
endure but has no power to remove, then that is an honour we do not and
we cannot give: that is not the God we worship; that is not the God we
can love: and if to believe in God be to think him such as Calvin and
others have pictured him, then at once take not only the name of
Christians from us, but in addition stigmatize us with that of atheists.
III. To limit the power of God in order to justify his love, is the
struggle of a humane and benignant nature against a dark and stern
theology; but writers in orthodox divinity, whom it would be too tedious
to catalogue, have not scrupled to go the whole length along the line of
fearful consequences to which their system led them. They have not
hesitated to plead for the eternity of hell’s torments _the glory of
God_; strange idea indeed of the glory of God, to contemplate him as the
author of everlasting pain and everlasting sin. We think that every
attribute of God, in every manifestation, is directly against this
doctrine. His omniscience is against it. He must have known from all
eternity the destiny of the lost: and with this knowledge, on the
orthodox theory, he made creatures with the direct foresight of their
everlasting misery and everlasting destruction. His omnipotence is
against it. I have shown by the long extract I have before quoted, that
the profound and consistent theological reasoner who believes in eternal
perdition cannot believe in a moral omnipotence. An all-powerful being
must be either infinitely malignant or infinitely benevolent. If God
were the one, he could find delight only in the suffering of his
creatures; and he wills not to relieve them, because he does not will
them to be happy. But this idea is utterly repugnant to the first
principles of religion. If God be, as we believe he is, the other, he
can have no motive to make his children, the work of his own hands,
endlessly wretched; and having the power, he has also the will to redeem
them. A progressive universe is, therefore, the only true solution to
God’s providence, and God’s prescience. Divine justice, it is said,
demands it. What, then, is divine justice? Is this divine justice
identical with vengeance? Is it divine justice, to make the everlasting
torture of a race—for the saved are but the gleanings—a sacrifice to
boundless self-glorification? Is it divine justice to array all the
force of infinite attributes against a limited, a weak, and erring
creature? Is it divine justice to meet the offence of ephemeral
mortality with the agony of deathless torture and of resistless wrath?
If this be _divine_ justice, we have reason to rejoice that it is not
_human_ justice. Such justice is but naked malignity; and this view of
it is the more firmly established when we further consider that, by the
orthodox theology, all is the result of a foregone conclusion, the last
term of a dark progression, the execution of a cause uttered in the
black womb of eternity, for which the wretches are prepared by the
inheritance of a corrupt nature in a corrupt world, and lest all natural
causes should be insufficient, by an exposure to the unseen snares of a
Satan profound in cunning, mighty in malice, and, by himself and his
agents, all but omnipotent and omnipresent. This argument from divine
justice is urged so frequently and earnestly, that I shall here
transcribe a few remarks from a writer who has treated the subject with
equal force of logic and fervour of eloquence. “Justice and goodness,”
he observes, “are the same. Justice requires no more punishment for sin
than goodness: goodness requires the same as justice, but the manner in
which benevolence manifests itself under the form of goodness and of
justice is different, and, therefore, requires a different appellation.
A person who forgives an offence upon repentance and reformation is
good: this is one modification of goodness, which, by way of eminence,
is often called goodness itself, or more strictly mercy: the person who
visits an offence which is neither repented of, nor amended with a
proper degree of pain, is also good: this is another modification of
goodness to which the term justice is applied. Mercy and justice,
therefore, do not differ from each other in their nature, since they
equally arise from benevolence, and they differ in aspect only according
to the moral condition of the being with regard to whom they are
exemplified. This account of divine justice explains, in the most
satisfactory manner, the principle on which Deity rewards and punishes
mankind. Did men never violate the laws of rectitude, he would make them
invariably and completely happy. But there is no person who is free from
fault: the moral state of every individual is, in some respect or at
some period, such as it ought not to be. Every bad disposition, and
every improper habit, must be rectified before happiness can be enjoyed.
It is necessary, therefore, that the moral governor of the world should
vary his conduct according to the character of the person whom he has to
treat; that he should visit the good with favour, and manifest his
disapprobation of the wicked; for, if he were to make happiness
compatible with sin, it could not be corrected. The effect of pain is to
make us dislike and avoid that which causes it. It is for this reason
pain is annexed to sin. Sin is an evil which it is necessary to remove;
pain is employed as the instrument of its destruction; and that
principle by which Deity has established this constitution of things, by
which he so regulates events as invariably to secure the ultimate reward
of goodness, and the punishment of wickedness, is distinguished by the
term justice.... Were it necessary to add any thing more to show that
divine justice is not inconsistent with the attribute of goodness, but a
part of it, the consideration of the design of its inflictions would
afford further evidence of this truth. Every violation of the law of God
involves the transgressor, sooner or later, in suffering; and of this
constitution of things, by which pain is inseparably connected with
deviation from rectitude, the Supreme Being is the author. Why did he
appoint it? Why did he so dispose the whole tendency of his moral
government as to ensure this consequence? Why does he, who is a being of
unerring wisdom and infinite benevolence, never suffer any offence which
is unrepented of to escape punishment? Since his very nature is love,
and since he created all his intelligent offspring in order to make them
happy, it can be no gratification to him to involve them in suffering.
Their groans can be no music to his ear. If he afflict them, it must be,
not for his own gratification, but for their benefit.... Viewing then
the attribute of justice, which has been supposed to require the endless
misery of the greater part of the human race, as that very principle
which is designed to prevent this terrible consequence, (a man) feels
himself capable of relying with implicit confidence on the decisions of
the judge, both with regard to himself and all mankind. He is satisfied
that he will treat even the most criminal with perfect equity; that he
will place them in circumstances the best adapted to their unhappy
condition; that his discipline will ultimately accomplish its end, and
extirpate sin and misery from the creation.”[606] If the doctrine of
eternal torment be contradictory to God’s justice, much more is it to
his wisdom: for surely it is not wise to create only to destroy;—to
perpetuate endless moral conflict—not only to destroy and confuse, but
to destroy and confuse the best and noblest of his works—to inflict
undying anguish on capacities suited for undying happiness, to ruin
every faculty and to blast every hope. Nor is the doctrine less opposed
to his holiness than to his wisdom. Improved ideas on the philosophy of
our spiritual nature, and on the real purport of moral retribution, with
the penalties of sin, imply the continuance of sin. A material hell or a
material heaven by the thinking portion of all sects is in general
exploded. Sin carries with it and creates its own punishments: if sin
then be eternal and progressive in its sufferings, it must also be
eternal and progressive in its existence and its evils. Hell is not
merely a region of unutterable horror, where wretches writhe in eternal
torture, but also a region of boundless sin, of malignant wickedness, of
hopeless corruption, of vilest affections, of basest passions. What
shall we then say of an infinite holiness, enlightened by infinite
wisdom, armed with infinite power, allowing this condition to exist? If
the doctrine of eternal torment be true, no such attribute as divine
mercy can have being: if this doctrine be true, a God of goodness is a
fiction of imagination, the creation of a brain-sick enthusiasm, the
dream of amiable but unfounded hopes. It is of no purpose to qualify in
these things: there is no room in the same universe for a good God and
an eternal hell: if this doctrine be true, the past is a wreck, and the
future a curse. To such a condition of existence annihilation were a
preferable alternative. It were better the brain should at once moulder
with the thoughtless sod, than be tortured with the wilderings of
everlasting contradictions; it were better the affections should perish
with the last earthly sigh than throb through an eternity of agonized or
selfish existence. On the orthodox supposition, either man must lose his
identity and go to heaven without remembering whom he knew and loved in
life, or he must lose his sympathy, become apostate to all his better
feelings, and see without pain or pity many given over to despair with
whom on earth he walked in dearest friendship. Instead of the big tear
which would have burst from his eye in the years of mortality at the
thought even of a partial separation; instead of the affectionate and
instinctive anguish which would have torn his breast, as he saw the last
vision in the sun, and the last flutter in the breeze of the sail which
was wafting his friend to another clime; he must approve the sentence,
nay, some maintain, he must see its execution with triumph, which may
consign his nearest and dearest to endless damnation.—If the belief
could be habitually and practically realized, that human souls were
every minute over the wide earth dropping into hell, that amongst the
sighs of death with which the world is filled, the greater number are
the knells of infinite perdition, that the graves on which the mourners
weep, which to us all, at one time or other, make earth a vale of tears,
are so many monuments of irreparable wreck, the silent witnesses of
God’s anger and man’s despair; if any one, I repeat, could constantly,
and in very truth, believe that souls were thus quitting the present
scene, souls with enlarged capacities, but enlarged for eternal sorrow,
and ever smile again, he might wear the form of his species, but he
should have the heart of a fiend. Faith in such a doctrine should kill
at once the life of joy; every sound should be funereal, brightness or
beauty there should be none. Each of us, like Job, should curse the day
of his birth, but with a more terrible earnestness; the exclamation of
Jeremiah would be in every mouth an appropriate utterance, “Oh that my
head were waters, and my eyes were fountains of tears!” Is there the
human being that could feel joy in the midst of an hospital, could laugh
in a city of the plague, while death went from couch to couch, while
mirth was banished from each hearth, and the grass of desolation growing
in the streets? But how much more should all delight be banished from
the soul, if in the Creator’s universe there be a dark and measureless
region, filled with hideous abominations and unexpiring torments! If
thus it be, let there, I repeat, be no look of happiness, let there be
no voice of sweetness; let garment of praise be changed for the spirit
of heaviness; let all heads be bent in grief, and all eyes dim with
weeping, in lamentation for the sorrows of the universe. But be it not
so—leave us at least a gleam of light from heaven.
“Cease every joy to glimmer o’er my mind,
But leave, oh! leave, the light of hope behind.”
Oh no! God has no pleasure in the death of a sinner, no glory in the
pain or punishment of his creatures: it is the progress towards
universal blessedness, and its final consummation, that truly shows
forth the glory of God, and manifests the grandeur of his name and
nature—more sweetly than the earth, more majestically than the heavens.
It shows forth his justice: he punishes, terribly, it may be, but not
cruelly or hopelessly; he punishes, but he amends; he chastises, but he
purifies. It shows forth his wisdom: for universal holiness and
universal happiness are the mightiest objects which infinite wisdom
could select, the highest purposes in which infinite wisdom could be
manifested: It shows forth his power, not in a blasting malediction, but
in a creative and all-dispensing love; not in the thunder of
destruction, but in the hand of a Father full of gifts and full of
blessings:—subduing evil, distributing happiness, drawing out of
apparent confusion order and harmony, more fair and beautiful than the
worlds he has called out of darkness; “moving upon the face of many a
stormy wave, and blending into calm what seemed only the chaos of
contending elements.”
It is marvellous that we can think seriously on existence or on
providence, that we can reflect on human nature or survey human life,
without feeling the need as well as the truth of the doctrine of the
full mercy of God, and of his universally benignant designs for all his
children. True, creation is fair, and much of existence is happy; but
still there are evils and miseries which ever perplex us for solution.
If the view of God’s government which we receive, does not solve all the
difficulties, at the very least it softens them; if there are
inscrutable things in the providence of God which it cannot explain,
there are atrocities ascribed by other systems to this character which
it does not involve. We may mourn over the wrongs, sufferings, and sins,
which exist with fatal abundance in our present state; we may wonder and
think why they exist at all; but to what an extent of perplexity and
pain are we driven, if we are to believe that all these evils are to be
for ever, and to have no remedy. When I see those who bear want and
sorrow through many and heavy years, I rejoice that there is at last a
home and refuge for them in their father’s kingdom where they who were
poor shall be made rich; where those who mourned shall be comforted:
when I hear the sigh of pain, when I behold the power of death; when I
know, as all must, in how many human dwellings grief sits lonely on the
hearth, I am saved from a fearful and dangerous distrust by the belief,
that in times to come, and in regions which we know not of, there is a
balm for every grief and a remedy for every sin. None are unaware of the
physical and the moral evils that hang over and around this existence;
and both from the felt experience of our own hearts, and the recorded
experience of many others, we can judge the infinite complexity of moral
struggle, the subtleties of sin, and the miserable consequences of evil
doings; and we cannot think that a good, a holy, a just, and merciful
God can ordain such a state to be perpetual and eternal. We know,
moreover, how many are in the thick darkness of barbarism, each having
within a universe of infinite and improvable capacities; we know what
millions are in the dens of indigence, of crime, and ignorance, for whom
earth is barren and life a burthen: and in what thought are we to take
comfort, in what sentiment are we to find hope, if we believe not there
is a God who does not forget his orphan children in their worst estate;
that as here they have received their evil things, there is a heaven
where they have their good? And when we observe in this life so much of
antagonist passions; so much war and strife; so much of bitter and
hopeless alienation, our tired spirits wish for a retreat of peace; and
with the Psalmist we long for the wings of a dove that we might flee
away and be at rest; for a calm sky after a heated atmosphere; for a
union of heart and charity which no mistakes could again divide. We have
no need to fear that our high aspirations for the future shall make us
proud or presumptuous; for we have all enough in our present lot to keep
us humble. When we look within, we find a melancholy strife between our
nobler and our higher existence, which we can never entirely overcome:
when we cast our gaze over the face of the world, and the inequalities
of life, and there in the strong-holds of sin and selfishness see so
many causes of wickedness and pain, which the most believing and the
most hoping can never hope entirely to overcome; when we regard our
feeble powers and our short existence; our desires ever growing and
wants ever deepening, and our passions ever craving; when we think of
the knowledge we longed for, and could not have, the visions we dreamed
of that never came, the good we resolved on and never did, the felicity
we sought and never found, the wishes that were as empty as the echo in
the desert, the ideas, the plans, the aspirations, and the purposes that
vainly struggled for life, but found in our breasts their prison and
their grave; we shall be in no danger of thinking of ourselves more
highly than we ought to think.
Blessed and beautiful doctrine is this, of universal redemption and
restoration, which pours such a radiance over our groping obscurity,
which gives our troubled hearts such peace, which softens grief and
glorifies affection, which corrects the perverse and dignifies the
lowly, which nourishes whatever in our nature is great or god-like,
renders religion transcendent and lovely, and opens before the rejoicing
eye of faith the grandeur of a renovated and an emancipated universe.
------------------------------------
Footnotes for Lecture XII.
Footnote 601:
See Ex. xxi. 1-6. Eccles. i. 4. 1 Cor. viii. 13. Gen. xvii. 8, 13, 19.
Numb. xxv. 13.
Footnote 602:
1 John iv. 16; John iii. 16, 17.
Footnote 603:
Ps. xcv. 8, 9, 10; Ps. xxxiv. 8; Ps. lii. 1; Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7; 2
Chron. xxx. 9; Ps. ciii. 8, &c.; Matt. vi. 9; Ps. xxx. 5; Ps. ciii. 9;
Ps. lxxxvii. 7; Isa. lxvii. 16; Wisdom of Solomon, xi. 23-26.
Footnote 604:
Dr. Southwood Smith on the Divine Government.
Footnote 605:
Essays, &c., by the Rev. Henry Woodward: Essay xv. On the Nature of
the Divine Omnipotence.
Footnote 606:
Illustrations of the Divine Government, by T. Southwood Smith.
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LECTURE XIII.
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST, AND WITHOUT RITUAL.
BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.
“TO WHOM COMING, AS UNTO A LIVING STONE, DISALLOWED INDEED OF MEN, BUT
CHOSEN OF GOD, AND PRECIOUS; YE ALSO, AS LIVELY STONES, ARE BUILT UP
A SPIRITUAL HOUSE, A HOLY PRIESTHOOD, TO OFFER UP SPIRITUAL
SACRIFICES, ACCEPTABLE TO GOD BY JESUS CHRIST.”—1 _Peter_ ii. 4, 5.