MY DEAR A----: The two questions that press upon every mind, and
that Mr. ---- has shown again and again, with wonderful pathos, by
dying beds and at open graves, are pressing upon his, are these:
Is there a God? Is there a future state of existence? To these
questions the best answer Mr. ---- has to give is, "We do not know."
He seems confident that there is no personal God, and "we cannot
say whether death is a wall or a door, the beginning or the end of
a day, the spreading of pinions to soar or the folding for ever of
wings, the rise or the set of a sun." With all this uncertainty, he
is absolutely sure that there is no future state of suffering for
evil-doers. He does not know whether there is any future at all, but
he does know that there is no future of sorrow. He is profoundly
ignorant as to the _fact_ of a future, but has decisive knowledge as
to the _nature_ of the future, if there is one. "Rather than that
this doctrine of endless punishment should be true," he says, "I
would gladly see the fabric of our civilization, crumbling, fall to
unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion broods and even
memory forgets."
Now, it may be quite true that Mr. ---- has this preference, yet
this does not settle the case. We can fully understand how any man
should shrink from the terrible possibility of future suffering.
Orthodoxy has no more delight in it than has infidelity. But it is
not a question of preference: it is a question of fact; and the
point I submit for your reflection is this--whether Mr. ----, on his
own ground, is authorized to affirm that there is no future state
of suffering for any. He says we do not know whether there _is_ any
future state. Very well. Then, certainly, we do not know what _kind_
of a future state there may be, if there is one. If Mr. ---- is not
able to assure us that there is no future for us at all, he surely
has not the ground to assure us of any kind of a future, good or bad.
There may be a future of joy, there may be a future of suffering;
there may be both. Mr. ---- is too good a lawyer to undertake to
prove anything by mere negative evidence. He "leaves the dead with
Nature, the mother of all," and "Nature," as to any sure utterance
upon the future, is as silent as are the lips of the dead themselves.
Mr. ---- does not believe in a personal God. _You_ are not sure
whether there is one or not. There may be; there may be none. If
there is, we cannot know it. Let us see what we gain on either
supposition.
Suppose there is a God, though I cannot know it or I cannot know him.
Then, clearly, I cannot know what he is; I cannot know what he may
do. It is quite possible that this unknown God may be a God who hates
what we call sin, and who will punish it, and who will punish it just
as long as it stands an offence in the moral universe, whether it
be in this world or in the world to come. No agnosticism can deny
this conclusion. The darkest as well as the most radiant scenes that
Christian faith brings within our view _may_ be eternally true. I may
be immortal, and it may be an immortality of joy or of sighing for
me as I use this life and the truth that God has made known to me in
this life.
Let us take the other hypothesis. Suppose there is no God; suppose
Mr. ---- has satisfied me that there is no supernatural revelation,
and no personal God to make one. Has he made it well for me
hereafter? Has he delivered me from all fear for the future? Has
he saved me beyond question from "the serpent of eternal pain"? If
there is no God, does that make it certain that there will be no
future suffering for any man? Let us see. We are here in a world of
suffering. How came we here? and how did suffering come here? If we
came without a God, who will prove that without a God we may not go
elsewhere, and that suffering may not go with us? Here we are--by
natural law, by evolution, by chance--as part and particle of the
one eternal unity; however it may be, we are here, and we suffer.
We know what pain of body and pain of mind are. We have felt the
sting of death, and no law of nature, no power of evolution, has
ever lighted up for us the darkness of the grave. Now, the question
we want answered is this: If "Nature" has brought us into this state
where there is so much of what we call sin, and so much bound with
it that we call suffering, how do we know that the same "Nature" may
not continue the same facts hereafter? Nay, what assurance can Mr.
---- give us that "Nature" is not a power that may in some future
frenzy cast us into a state _far worse_ than the present? Is he so
far possessed of all the secrets of "Nature" that he _knows_ the time
will never come when she may strike us with a force more terrible
than any retributive judgment of God? If "Nature" works now in storm
and fire, in earthquake and pestilence, in disease and torture and
death, in the sorrows of memory, the horrors of remorse and dread
forebodings of coming woe, _how do you know that she may not manifest
herself thus hereafter and through the ages to come_?
If Nature is, as Mr. ---- says, the mother of us all, there are times
when she manifests her motherhood appallingly. And when are these
manifestations to end and how are they to end? If under her regal
sway we find that, as a fact, sin and suffering are connected here,
can any man prove that it may not be a law of "Nature" herself that
sin and suffering shall be connected eternally? If in the imperial
reign of "the mother of us all" there are chains and scourges,
prisons and scaffolds, thunderbolts and flames, cyclones and famines
and ocean-graves, will any man prove that somewhere in the darkness
and mystery of the future there may not be, in the long outworking of
this reign, something worse than a hell, worse than an undying worm,
worse than a quenchless fire?
It is, I admit, a fearful thing to fall unprepared into the hands of
the living God; but if I must choose, give me that, a thousand times,
rather than the terrific possibilities that overhang us all if we are
to be eternally at the disposal of a blind, inexorable, soulless,
merciless "Nature." The Judge of all the earth will do right; at the
worst we shall receive no more at his hands than we deserve; but no
created being can tell us what we shall receive at the hands of an
irresponsible, pitiless "Nature" though she be "the mother of us
all." There is nothing so dark and terrible in all the woes of the
Bible as the possibilities that Mr. ---- offers us in his gospel; and
there is this difference: the Bible opens wide a door of hope for all
who care to enter it; Mr. ---- leads us out into the outer darkness
and leaves us there. Is it worth while for any man to spend his life
in persuading us to make this exchange of despair? And is it worth
our while--yours or mine--to make it?
Truly yours,
C----.