IT is a fundamental doctrine of the orthodox church that there is no opportunity for repentance, no possibility of attaining salvation, after the close of the present life. The fate of the soul may be decided long before one’s death, but in no case does a state of probation extend beyond that moment. This doctrine was taught by Clement of Rome, if we may accept the writings ascribed to him. “After we depart from this life,” he says, “we can no longer make confession or repent.” So Augustine says, “God has given men only the time of this life for obtaining eternal life.” And this opinion Peter Lombard, the Master of Sentences, quotes as decisive. Nor does the doctrine of Purgatory, as held by the Roman Church, at all conflict with this generally accepted dictum; for, in the first place, the benefits of Purgatory extend only to the members of the true Church, that is, the Roman or Papal, and, in the second place, souls in Purgatory must be in a state of grace, that is, true Christians, only with some stains of sin to be washed, or rather burned out, before they are fit to enter heaven.
But all orthodox people agree that no unconverted person, no person dying in unbelief, or unrepented and unforgiven sin, can by any possibility be saved. The grace of God is confined to this present life. Our orthodox neighbors seem to interpret literally and in a very stringent way the declaration that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” and that he cannot, or will not, save them only “in the world” to which he came! The present state of our being is one of probation; the future is one of retribution. As Dr. Watts sang in his time, and so many thousands have sung since:—
- Life is the time to serve the Lord,
- The time to insure the great reward:
- And while the lamp holds out to burn,
- The vilest sinner may return.
- Life is the hour that God has given
- To ’scape from hell and fly to heaven;
- The day of grace, and mortals may
- Secure the blessings of the day.
President Edwards perpetually enforces the doctrine that the moment of death closes all opportunities for repentance or reformation, brings an end to all offers of mercy, and to the unrepentant and unbelieving sinner forever seals his damnation. I have already quoted, more than once perhaps, his declaration that “natural men hang over the pit of hell, as it were by a thread that has a moth continually gnawing it. They know not when it will snap and let them drop. . . . A natural man never goes to sleep but that he is in danger of waking up in hell. . . . And how well may it affright you, and strike terror upon you, when you consider that if you die in your present condition, it is as impossible that you should escape this misery as that God should cease to be just and true. . . . If you should die in your present condition, it is impossible that you shall escape eternal misery. . . . Natural men are in continual danger from death. They know not when nor how death may come. But if it comes while they are in that condition, it sinks them into hell.” So Rev. Mr. Love says, —“Let this astonish all of you that are wicked, for as soon as you are dead, you shall go, not into Purgatory, but into hell, where a fire, kindled by the breath of the Lord, shall burn you forever.
“No better place is provided for thee, when thy soul and body part asunder.” “We come into this world fallen creatures,” says Dr. Watts, “children of iniquity, and heirs of death; we have lost the image of God who made us. . . . nor can we ever be made truly happy till the image of the blessed God be restored upon us, till we are made holy as he is holy, till we have a divine change passed upon us, whereby we are created anew and reformed in heart and practice. And this life is the only time given us for this important change. If this life be finished before the image of God be restored to us, this image will never be restored, but we shall bear the image of devils forever. . . . As soon as ever an impenitent sinner has the veil of death drawn over him, all his opportunities of this kind are forever cut off. He that has never repented, never prayed, never honored his God, shall never be able to pray, or repent, or do anything for God or his honor through all the ages of his future immortality.”
Does Dr. Watts here mean, what his language clearly expresses, that it will be no longer possible for the sinner, after leaving this world, to repent or pray or do anything for God or his honor? Then repentance can no longer be required, and failing to repent can be no sin. Then to love God with all the heart and our neighbor as ourselves will be no duty, and cursing God and hating our fellow-men will offend no law; and where there is no law there can be no transgression. Is the Christian world prepared for a doctrine like this? But Dr. Watts goes on:—
“At the moment of death the time of our preparation for the hour of judgment and for the insurance of heaven and happiness shall be no longer. Miserable creatures that are summoned to die thus unprepared! This life is the only time to prepare for dying, to get ready to stand before the Judge of the whole earth, and to secure our title to the heavenly blessedness. . . . There are blessings offered to sinful, miserable men in time; which will never be offered in eternity, nor put within their reach forever. The gospel hath no calls, no invitations, no encouragements, no promises for the dead who have lost and wasted their time, and are perished without hope.” “The Scriptures everywhere represent our life on earth,” says Dr. Pond, “as the seedtime and the only time we shall ever have in which to lay up treasures in heaven.” This learned author finds the present life to be a state of “probation,” while the future is made exclusively a state of “retribution.”
We are here, he tells us, in order that our characters may be formed and tried, and we be prepared for the judgment and the awards of eternity. And he thinks this world admirably fitted for giving us all “a fair and sufficient trial.” Unfortunately for this popular conception, the present life is one of retribution as well as probation. It is a state of discipline, rather than probation, in the ordinary acceptation of that term. Besides, cannot men see that this life affords the most dissimilar, the most unequal advantages for the attainment of the character required by the gospel? One man is born under the fullest light of the Christian religion, while another opens his eyes upon the world in the midst of pagan darkness. One is led by pious parents in the way of life, while another is brought up surrounded by all vicious examples and influences. There is no end to these diversities, and they go very far to explain the different characters formed.
Then look at the differences in the length of life, as well as in its opportunities. One man lives, after arriving at the age of moral responsibility, eighty or a hundred years; another lives forty or fifty; another twenty or thirty; and another still but ten, five, or perhaps but one, or even a single month, or a single day. It matters not whether life be long or short; it matters not whether one lives in the blaze of American orthodoxy or amidst the shadows of Asiatic or African ignorance and idolatry. Each human being has his lifetime here to form his character and prepare for the final judgment and its everlasting awards! And as he is found at the moment of death, so his destiny is determined for eternity. True, the longest human life bears no proportion to the endless ages of the future, not so much as a single drop of water bears to all the oceans of the globe, or a particle of sand to the aggregated matter of the universe.
Still the orthodox world insists that the eternity of weal or woe for every human soul depends on the character it forms here in this moment of time. Beyond the grave there is no repentance, no remission of sin, no possibility of securing salvation, and all who die without the true knowledge of God and faith in Jesus Christ, all who die in an unrepentant and unconverted state go immediately to hell, from which there is no deliverance! Is it possible that men who entertain this opinion have ever seriously thought upon it, and so contemplated its character and consequences as to enable them in any degree to apprehend its enormity? Its sweep is tremendous and its consequences simply appalling. I do not wonder, therefore, that Dr. Watts, who seems sometimes to have caught a glimpse of the terrible reality, should have cried out as he did:—
- Great God! on w hat a slender thread
- Hang everlasting things!
- The eternal state of all the dead
- Upon life’s feeble strings!
- Infinite joy or endless woe
- Attends our every breath!
- And yet how unconcerned we go
- Upon the brink of death!
A doctrine is sometimes best exposed, not by a formal refutation, but by exhibiting the consequences to which, if true, it would necessarily lead. I venture to assume that we are not living in a universe created and governed by deliberate and unmitigated diabolism, but, on the contrary, under a moral economy whose leading characteristic is goodness. With Dr. Hodge, whose orthodoxy none will call in question, I wish to avow the conviction “that it is more congenial with the nature of God to bless than to curse, to save than to destroy;” and with this fundamental principle in mind, I propose to consider, and ask my orthodox friends to go along with me in considering, how large a portion of the human race must be hopelessly lost, if God’s grace is, as they generally maintain, confined exclusively to this world.
1. In the first place, if it is true that no soul can be saved which has not previous to death exercised true repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, it follows unavoidably, so far as I can see, that all the heathen must be remorselessly consigned to hell.
Perhaps this naked statement would not greatly disturb what Neander calls “the Christian consciousness” of the Church, since it has for ages been industriously educated in the belief that they are undoubtedly lost. Yet when we reflect that, prior to the Christian era, the whole world was heathen, if we except the little nation of the Jews, and that to-day, after more than eighteen centuries, Christendom embraces, nominally, but about one-third of the human family now on the earth, it must be confessed by all candid persons, and especially by all thoughtful Christians, that, notwithstanding our education, this wide-spread and continuous damnation becomes somewhat startling. It is not precisely what a reverent mind and heart would naturally expect under the government of a God of infinite wisdom, goodness, and power; and, however it may have been in ages past, it is not, let me gratefully acknowledge, what the best Christian thought and feeling can in the present age well bear. It offends reason, and shocks humanity. Still it is what the orthodox church has sedulously taught through all the ages of its history, what has been all but universally believed by it down to the present century, and is no doubt believed by the great majority of the Christian world at this very moment.
The Roman Church has always maintained that all the heathen will be damned; and the Protestant churches have, for the greater part, followed, apparently without thought or inquiry, in the footsteps of that venerable mother. Even within the present generation the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which undoubtedly represents the popular opinion of the orthodox body, says in one of its Reports: “To send the gospel to the heathen is a work of great exigency. Within the last thirty years five hundred millions, for aught we can see in their character or in the Word of God, have gone down to eternal death.” These five hundred millions were then understood to constitute a whole generation of the heathen world. More recent, and it is thought more accurate, statistical information has considerably increased the population of the earth. The Board of Commissioners intended merely to say, what they undoubtedly believed and wished the religious world to consider, that all the heathen, as they died, went down to eternal death.
The Rev. David Abeel, who will be remembered as a zealous missionary, then recently returned from China, in speaking of the favorable condition of our countrymen as compared with that of the Chinese, used the following expressive words: “Here there are few comparatively to be saved; there crowds are lying in hopeless, helpless wretchedness. None of these few are obliged to sink into hell; none of those crowds, we fear, can rise to heaven.
They know no Savior;” and he beseeches his Christian countrymen, “if there is anything in the eternal and irremediable destruction of millions of immortal beings,” to rouse themselves and engage more earnestly in the work of saving the heathen from hell. The Rev. Dr. Cheever, I very well remember, spoke in the same manner: “The belief of the truth that hundreds of millions of our fellow-beings are, generation after generation, sinking into endless ruin,” said he, “and that God has placed in our hands the means of their salvation,—an appreciation of this truth, with a spiritual vividness and power at all like that which dwelt in the souls of the Apostles, would quite arrest and enchain the mind beneath its influence, so that a man would act with so much resistless energy for the redemption of his fellow-beings that the world would well nigh deem him mad. And such madness would be true wisdom.”
Another writer, whose name I cannot at the moment recall, is still more rhetorical, if not more impressive. “Fifty thousand a day;” says he, “so fast the heathen die! They have sinned and not repented, and are unprepared for heaven. . . . Fifty thousand every day go down to ‘the fire that is not quenched;’ and should we not think of it as often as once every day? Six hundred millions more are going the same road. . . . Christian reader, I have been among them, and have seen many of those thousands. . . . Think of them, I pray you. All can do that.
Think for at least one minute, each day, of the fifty thousand who that day sink to the doom of the lost, and the six hundred millions more who are hastening to the same ruin of the soul!”
Nothing could be more modest than this request, and nothing more reasonable than the duty to which it invites us. Fifty thousand of our fellow-beings, flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, are sinking into an endless hell every twenty-four hours; and a Christian minister, who seriously believes this, beseeches us to think of this mass of inconceivable wretchedness at least once every day, and to give the subject one minute’s thought! One is naturally tempted to imagine that he would have asked his hearers, not only to think of these daily fifty thousand lost souls, but to offer up a prayer for their deliverance from that state of torment, or, if that were not possible, at least for their annihilation. But if a God of mercy could grant neither of these petitions, a Christian heart might certainly appeal to infinite goodness to stop the creation of these countless millions who seem born only to be damned.
The learned Dr. Hodge, who recently died, after more than fifty years of service in the Princeton Theological Seminary, seems to accord entirely with the writers above quoted as to the damnation of the heathen, but finds the cause of it, not in any want of wisdom, goodness, or power in the Almighty, but in the lukewarmness, indifference, and inactivity of the Church. “In the gift of his Son,” he says, “the revelation of his word, the mission of his spirit, and the institution of the Church, God has made abundant provision for the salvation of the world. That the Church has been so remiss in making known the gospel is her fault.
We must not charge the ignorance and consequent perdition of the heathen upon God. We have kept to ourselves the bread of life, and allowed the nations to perish.” Dr. Pond, I observe, takes the same general view of the subject. “Is God in fault,” he asks, “that the heathen have not the gospel? or does the blame attach exclusively to men? “All exhortations to missionary work breathe the same thought. But what shall we say of the divine wisdom which has placed interests of such infinite moment in hands so unfaithful? The damnation of a single soul is something so immense and terrible that no one can contemplate it without horror. And when this is multiplied by millions and millions, when it is extended to embrace whole nations and races, it becomes not simply appalling, but overwhelming. I can only say again, with Miss Catherine Beecher, “There is a terrible mistake somewhere.” But, adopting the opinion of these learned professors, and of the orthodox world with them, we are left to conclude that the heathen are all damned everlastingly because they are ignorant and wicked, and that the Church deserves to be damned for allowing the heathen to be so.
2. The whole heathen world being thus summarily disposed of, to say nothing of the Church itself, let us now inquire into the prospects of Christendom. How large a proportion of what I have generously called a third part of the human race now on earth may with confidence be considered, actually or prospectively, heirs of salvation? That we have many excellent Christians in the world, whom all should regard as walking in the ways of life, is a fact in which I rejoice, though unfortunately too many of them deny or doubt the salvation of each other. The Roman Church is unhappily infallible, or rather has recently discovered that its Pope is so, and thinks no one can be saved who does not belong to its communion and acknowledge its visible head. All other churches are, in its sight, heretical or schismatic, and are therefore excluded from the benefits of the grace of which the Pope is the divinely appointed almoner.
But as this haughty church judges, so she is judged, and with what measure she metes, it is measured to her again. And thus the doubt and condemnation go round, each questioning his neighbor’s orthodoxy, and throwing distrust over the prospect of his salvation. But, dismissing all the doubts they entertain about each other’s Christian state, and believing that all, of every sect and party, who sincerely call upon the name of Christ,—though entangled in many misconceptions and errors,—will finally be saved, I beg to inquire about the prospects of the great mass of our common Christendom, these three or four hundred million souls, scattered over the continents and islands of the sea, and passing in the world as Christians? Tried by orthodox principles, how many of them can be regarded as within the ark of safety, or, judging by what we know of human nature and history, have a reasonable prospect of being saved?
In the first place, we cannot overlook the fact that there are many in Christendom who do not believe in the Christian religion, and are not only unbelievers, but entirely reject its claims, spurn it, and would gladly destroy it from the earth. How large this class may be, we have no statistics to show, but such persons are found in almost every Christian community, and are as numerous at Rome as at Berlin or London or Boston. Where there is freedom of speech and the press, they speak and write against this religion, and make war upon it in every way in their power; and where they cannot destroy faith in it, they strive to oppose its progress and lessen its influence.
What is the prospect of their salvation? That they may be converted before the close of their life is possible, but the probability is not by any means assuring. Then there is another class, much larger than is honorable to the character of our religion, who are so ignorant and degraded as but poorly to deserve the Christian name. What shall become of them? Are they to be saved on the ground of “invincible ignorance,” as our Catholic neighbors sometimes talk, or be damned everlastingly for lack of repentance and faith? After these we have another class, quite Christian by profession, but vicious and criminal by practice, whom all give over to damnation unless they repent and are regenerated.
But, beyond all these classes, there is another, larger and more important than all the others together, made up generally of intelligent, well-meaning people, industrious and honest, and reputable in all the relations of civil and social life, who, while they constitute a large proportion of orthodox parishes, and of almost every community, yet “have no religion,” or none at least that would gain them admission to the fellowship of the very churches they help so essentially to maintain. They are “the world’s people,” “natural persons,” who, though born and educated in a Christian land and under Christian institutions, and are largely governed by the principles and spirit of this religion, have never made any “profession,” have never experienced that vital change which is deemed essential to salvation, and are consequently regarded by the religious world as in a condition of the greatest danger. In accordance with a wide-spread orthodox opinion this large class of persons is as far from the Kingdom as the heathen themselves; and sometimes they are represented as more unlikely to be converted and brought to glory than the openly irreligious and profane.
Such persons, it is said, are apt to trust to their morality,—a self-righteousness no better than filthy rags,—and hence neglect the only means of salvation. In a sermon specially addressed to this class of people President Edwards says: “It may well be a dreadful thought to you that you have no goodness in you, nor have ever done anything which has the least goodness in it; that you have never exercised one act of love, nor true thankfulness or obedience to God in your life; nor ever did the least thing out of true respect to God. The consideration of the dreadful depravity and wickedness of your heart may well be frightful to you; to think what a sink of corruption it is, how full of all manner of wickedness, how full of enmity against God; to think that there are the same corruptions in your heart as in the heart of the devil, and that there are the seeds of the same enmity against God, and that you are in the very image of the devil;. . . that you are a poor desolate creature that have no God to protect you and guide you, and provide for you in the world. . . . You may flatter yourselves that you are not so bad as others. Herein you deceive yourself.
“It is because you are ignorant of your own heart. What has been said of the depraved state of natural men, of their blindness, their deadness, all belong to you. You may flatter yourself that your condition is not so doleful, because you have always walked orderly, have been moral and religious. Here, also, you deceive yourself. For, notwithstanding your moral and religious behavior, and all your sobriety, you never did the least thing out of a gracious respect to God. You have a heart in the likeness of the heart of the devil. You are without God in the world. God is angry with you everyday; his wrath is not at all appeased. You may flatter yourselves that you are the children of godly parents, that you have many godly friends who may put up prayers for you, and that your case is not so doleful on that account, and that your danger is not extremely great. But in this you miserably deceive yourselves. You are children of the devil notwithstanding all this. If you die in your present condition, it is impossible that you shall escape eternal misery. And there is great danger that you will die in it. You have no security that you shall not be in hell before tomorrow morning.”
Dr. Hodge, after reciting various passages of Scripture which exhibit, as he thinks, the prerequisites necessary to an admission into heaven, asks with becoming emphasis, “Who then can be saved? If the Bible excludes from the kingdom of heaven all the immoral; all whose hearts are corrupted by pride, envy, malice, or covetousness; all who love the world, all who are not holy; all in whom the love of God is not the supreme and controlling principle of action, it is evident that so far as adults are concerned, salvation must be confined to very narrow limits. It is also evident that mere natural religion, the mere objective truth, must be as inefficacious in preparing men for the presence of God, as the waters of Syria to heal leprosy.”
Assuming the doctrine of total depravity, as orthodoxy does, these opinions of President Edwards and Dr. Hodge seem not only just, but unavoidable; and this great class of honest and reputable men, as the world Judges, are as far from heaven, and in as manifest danger of hell, as the darkest pagan or the most flagrant transgressor. It follows, therefore, that while all the heathen, making even to-day two-thirds of the human race now living, are necessarily lost, a very large part of Christendom is left to share the same terrible fate. Indeed, if we may believe the highest authorities, the future condition of those born and educated in Christian lands, and yet dying unsaved, will be unspeakably worse in the future world than that of the most unhappy pagans. They have had greater light, and abused greater privileges, and their damnation will therefore be the more condign. On this point President Edwards often insists.
He tells his unconverted hearers that they are greater sinners than the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. Many others speak in the same way. Dr. Pond asks if God is unjust “in punishing the idolatrous heathen in the other world, not as though they had enjoyed and rejected the offers of the gospel, but according to their deserts,” clearly implying that their damnation would be less severe than that of the most common sinners among Christian people. But be this as it may, it is obvious, from the general representations of orthodox writers, that of “adults,” as Dr. Hodge says, even in Christendom, very few, relatively, will be saved!
3. But speaking of “adults” naturally suggests the problem about the salvation of “infants dying in infancy.” What is to become of them? I am quite aware how delicate this question has now become, and how averse the orthodox world is to its serious consideration, whether in the light of orthodox history or theology. But it is a question that cannot be lightly passed, and ought not to be settled, as is sometimes done, either on the ground of dogmatic partiality on one side, or mere feeling on the other. Several facts give the subject a grave interest. In the first place, the number of infants dying in infancy is very large. I need not here appeal to statistics, but every community, and almost every family, knows by sad experience how frail the life of children is. Then I hardly need say what a tender interest gathers about them.
Infancy has a peculiar claim upon the human heart, a claim which even the doctrine of their native depravity has been unable to destroy. The most orthodox seem to love their children as well as the world’s people, or even the heathen, and lose them with the same bitter pain.
No one possessing the affections and sympathies of our common nature can look on an infant without being touched by a sense of its innocence and its helplessness; and our own children appeal to us with a force that no good heart can resist. They are objects of our profoundest love. We live in them, and their welfare makes a good part of our own. And when they die, they leave a gap in our hearts that time can never fill. Their images live in our memories long after their little forms have mouldered into dust, and one of the sweetest thoughts of the future is that of meeting them in a world where death is unknown. While the living about us are perpetually changing, they remain the same; others may grow old, but to us they are infants still.
It is not to be thought singular, therefore, that in an age like this, to speak of the damnation of infants should seem like an offence against religion, as well as human nature.
And I rejoice that it does so. I rejoice that under the best forms of Christian civilization this terrible doctrine, which was so long the disgrace of Christendom, is no longer held, and that the severest schools of theology reject it with something of the abhorrence with which it ought to be contemplated. As a prominent and honored representative of such schools, the late Dr. Hodge said, with a definiteness and a frankness worthy of all praise, and in spite of all the Confessions of the orthodox world, that “all who die in infancy will be saved. . . . The Scriptures nowhere exclude any class of infants, baptized or unbaptized, born in Christian or heathen lands, of believing or unbelieving parents, from the benefits of the redemption of Christ.” But he could hardly have been unconscious of the sharp antagonism this noble utterance exhibited to the Confession of Faith he acknowledged, and the whole system of theology with which his life was identified.
That infants are sinners is a doctrine upon which the whole orthodox world is agreed. They are born sinners. They open their eyes to the light of the sun under the wrath of God and curse of the law, and are at their birth, “subject to death, with all miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal. “Connected with the native depravity and sinfulness of infants, stands the doctrine that there is no change after death; that he who is not regenerated and saved before leaving this world is placed beyond the reach of mercy and salvation. How, then, are infants to be saved? The Bible reveals but one method by which sinners are saved. It is by repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
“But infants are incapable of exercising either of these graces. They are burdened with damnable sin, for which they have no power of repentance, and of which indeed they are wholly unconscious. They are offered salvation, but are unable to accept it, or even know that a Savior has come. Thus loaded with guilt, thus ignorant of their condition, they live their little life and die as they live, unrepentant and unsaved; and as there is no possibility of salvation beyond the present life, one readily sees no means in the orthodox system to rescue a single infant from the damnation they all so richly deserve for being born the accursed heirs of Adam.
But so sweeping an act as this is intolerable; and hence several parties have, at whatever cost of consistency, provided means by which their own children at least may, as they hope, be saved. The Roman Church, which believes in the divine power of sacraments, makes provision to save its infants by regenerating baptism; and some of the older Protestant sects practically adopt the same unreasonable and unscriptural theory: as if, by the ordinance of a wise and good Creator, the condition of infants, his children, is to be determined for eternity by an outward rite of this kind, and especially where the recipient is utterly unconscious both of the rite and its purpose! In the New Testament, certainly, there is no instance of Christian baptism antecedent to Christian faith. But the Roman Church attaches such importance to infant baptism that it will not allow the burial of an unbaptized child, though of Catholic parents, in consecrated ground!
I was once acquainted with a case in Central New York, where the body of such a child had to be exhumed and removed before the Bishop would consecrate a cemetery; and the scene was rendered memorable by the frantic grief of the poor mother, who seems to have felt that such a removal of the body of her child was equivalent to the damnation of its soul. The Augsburg Confession affirms that “baptism is necessary to salvation,” and that children are to be baptized, who, “being offered to God, are received into God’s favor.” The English Church declares that baptism is not only a token of a Christian profession, but rather a sign of God’s good-will, “by the which he doth work invisibly in us.” In other words, these early churches followed essentially the doctrine of the Roman Church from which they sprang, and ascribed regenerating power to the rite of baptism.
The Reformed or Calvinistic churches adopted, in harmony with their system, a different method of securing the salvation of infants. Believing as they did in eternal election and reprobation, some infants, it was reasonable to suppose, were to be found among the elect.
The Westminster Confession, therefore, affirms that “elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when and where and how he pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word.” The necessity of baptism could not be affirmed in connection with eternal election, since being chosen “without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature moving God there unto,” it would be unreasonable to suppose that infants, dying in infancy, and heathen, beyond the reach of the gospel in this life, were wholly excluded from the divine favor, and consequently provision must be made for their salvation quite outside of all ordinary means.
Thus the doctrine of no salvation after death was quietly surrendered, and liberty was generously conceded to the Holy Spirit to work, for the regeneration of infants and pagans, “when and where and how” he pleases—here or hereafter, on this side of the grave or beyond! Why might not good Christians trust God so far as to permit the Holy Spirit to work in the same free manner with other sinners? Why is it necessary to limit the Savior of men to this little world and the present life in the accomplishment of his divine pleasure? The Methodist Articles of Religion involve infants in sin and damnation, and make no other provision for saving them than the Church of England had done before, that is, by regenerating baptism.
So the Church at large is reduced to two expedients for the salvation of infants dying in infancy,—one by the fiction of sacramental baptism, and the other by practically denying the great fundamental maxim of orthodoxy that there is no salvation except in the present world, and thus necessarily opening the gates of life beyond the grave!
But these ingenious devices were intended only for very partial application. Sacramental baptism reaches hardly a quarter of the infants dying in infancy, while the extended power of the Holy Ghost, “who worketh when and where and how he pleaseth,” was never designed for any but “elect infants,” and other “elect persons” whose unfortunate “environment” left them outside of the ordinary means of grace. Both of these contrivances for the salvation of a few infants only emphasize the grim and now unpalatable fact that, in the economy of God’s infinite love, millions of infants are really placed beyond the reach of mercy and must suffer endless damnation! No orthodox scheme has yet been devised, certainly no one has ever been promulgated, which would at all justify Dr. Hodge’s broad assertion that “all who die in infancy will be saved.” That this is becoming the popular Christian faith, may be true, but it affords no solution of so unorthodox a fact. It stands in harmony with no orthodox theory with which I am acquainted, but is plainly inconsistent with them all, as well as with the history of religious opinions through the last fifteen centuries.
Dr. Hodge not only avows his own conviction on this subject, but evidently wishes to give the impression that this has been the current thought of the orthodox world through the ages, or at least with that portion of the Church—the Calvinistic or Augustinian—with which he was personally associated. Dr. Krauth, Professor of Theology in the Evangelical Lutheran Seminary, had charged the Westminster Confession with teaching “that only a certain part of those who die in infancy will be saved;” to which Dr. Hodge replies: “We can only say that we never saw a Calvinistic theologian who held that doctrine [the doctrine of infant damnation]. We are not learned enough to say that no Calvinist ever held it; but if all Calvinists are responsible for what every Calvinist has ever said, and all Lutherans are responsible for everything Luther or Lutherans have ever said, then Dr. Krauth, as well as ourselves, will have a heavy burden to carry.”
The argumentum and hominem is here well taken, for on this point the Lutheran Church stands essentially on the same ground as the Reformed. Both believed and taught expressly, or by plain and necessary implication, that hosts of infants dying in infancy are not saved! Indeed, neither the Roman Church nor any of our orthodox Protestant Churches ever entertained any other belief till quite recent times.
Since the days of Augustine the doctrine of infant damnation has been the constant faith of the Catholic Church. It naturally grew out of the doctrine of original sin and eternal election and reprobation, which Augustine maintained, and of which he was perhaps the inventor.
At times he seems to have been shocked by the enormity of such a doctrine, and expressed the belief that infants would suffer mitissima damnatione, the mildest torments of hell; but at others, when hard-pressed, he insisted that there were only two states of being in the future,—heaven on one side, with its felicities, and hell on the other, with the devils in eternal fire,—and that in one or the other of these abodes all souls must dwell forever. And this continued for many ages to be the unquestioned faith of the Catholic Church till Peter Lombard in the twelfth century invented the doctrine of a limbus infantum, by which infants were saved from being eternally burned, but were still deprived of all Christian grace and all possibility of salvation, and left to drag out an existence which, if not, indeed, as bad as it might be, is still a very doubtful blessing. That the doctrine, in the hands of intelligent and Christian people, has undergone still further improvements would appear from the manner in which Rev. Mr. Oxenham treats it in his Catholic Eschatology. It is grateful to note any modification of this as of other ancient abominations with which our religion has been burdened and deformed, and the reader will be glad, therefore, to see how the most advanced Catholics now represent infant damnation.
“Unbaptized infants,” says Mr. Oxenham, “who have been raised by no sacrament from the condition of original sin, and who, dying before the use of reason, have had no opportunity of corresponding with grace, are indeed ‘damned,’ in the sense that they cannot attain to the Beatific Vision, for which their natural capacities do not qualify them. As they had not been raised on earth to the state of supernatural grace, they have no aptitude for the life of supernatural glory. And this is, of course, in itself, a most momentous ‘loss’ (or damnation) as compared with the future state of the glorified. But it is no conscious loss to them. Still less does it imply any suffering of body or soul. On the contrary, it is consistent with the highest enjoyment of natural beatitude, and with a natural knowledge and love of God.” And he quotes Thomas Aquinas, who tells us that “they are united to God by a participation of natural goods, and are able to rejoice in a natural knowledge and love of him.” Some of the theologians in the Council of Trent went perhaps somewhat further, maintaining, according to Sarpi, that these children dying without baptism amuse themselves in philosophizing, and employ themselves in the knowledge of natural things, tasting that great pleasure and contentment of mind which is found in gratifying one’s curiosity in the invention of beautiful things; and one surpassed all others by declaring that they were visited and consoled by the angels and the blessed saints.
But all did not entertain these humane sentiments, but believed they were kept in limbo under darkness. The Council was exceedingly anxious to condemn the Protestant doctrine upon the damnation of infants, but could not do it without condemning Augustine, and, indeed, the whole Church for seven hundred years after his time. Catharinus was very urgent for an express declaration on the subject, for the purpose of curbing, as he expressed it, “the audacity and ignorance of some preachers, who preached this doctrine [of Augustine] to the great scandal of the Church.”
We are not to accept Mr. Oxenham’s rose-tinted views of the condition of unbaptized infants as the popular opinions of the Roman Church. Let any one read Father Furniss’s little Tract for children, on the Sight of Hell, before referred to, and he will at once recognize the vast difference between a gentleman and a scholar writing for educated people and a mere “priest” instructing the lower strata of Roman Church life. If unbaptized infants hold the respectable place in the future world ascribed to them by Mr. Oxenham, it is quite unaccountable that their bodies are not permitted to rest by the side of their friends in a Catholic cemetery, and that the remains of an infant of a family of his flock must be removed from its burying-place before the Bishop, now our American Cardinal, would perform the rite of consecrating the ground where it lay!
Among intelligent Catholics the following statement of Cornelius à Lapide probably expresses the prevailing opinion at the present day. He was commenting on the final judgment, and, after saying that they would take their places in this great transaction, he adds that unbaptized infants, “being separated from others, will receive from Christ their own sentence mediam (midway) between the adult saints and reprobates; for neither will they be condemned to the fire of Gehenna, like the adult reprobates, nor adjudged to heaven for the vision of God, like the adult elect.”
The fact is that, however it may affect us at the present day, the doctrine of infant damnation did not disturb the equanimity of the best of Christians a few centuries ago. That they admired it, I would not say, but Augustine taught it plainly without offending orthodox people of his time; and it continued to be taught and believed for long centuries after his day; and in the Reformation, as Augustine became the great teacher of both Luther and Calvin, so this doctrine took its place in the Protestant churches. No one supposes that Calvin, for instance, loved the doctrine of infant damnation. Yet the logical treatment of his theory of religion forced him to it, and he allowed no weak sentimentalism to interfere with his principles, whatever their result might be. “The Scripture proclaims,” says he, “that all men were, in the person of their father, sentenced to eternal death. This, not being attributable to nature, it is evident must have proceeded from the wonderful council of God. . . . I inquire again how it came to pass that the fall of Adam, independent of any remedy, should involve so many nations with their infant children in eternal death, but because such was the will of God. . . .
“It is an awful decree, I confess; but no one can deny that God foreknew the future final fate of men before he created them, and that he did foreknow it because it was appointed by his own decree. If any one here attacks God’s foreknowledge, he rashly and inconsiderately stumbles. For what ground of accusation is there against the heavenly Judge for not being ignorant of futurity? If there is any just or plausible complaint, it lies against predestination.” And that is precisely the point which neither Calvin nor any of his followers have explained. Why a good Being, as all acknowledge God to be, should adopt such a plan, foreseeing the fearful consequences in which it must issue, is a question that no mortal can either answer, or for which one can suggest a plausible reason. The counsel which ordained such an awful decree may be “wonderful,” but it is, to all human apprehension, also demoniac rather than divine. In this almost universal damnation are we to be surprised if infants suffer with others? It certainly did not surprise our Reformers or their followers for two or three centuries. I have before me a sermon by “that faithful servant of Jesus Christ, Mr. Christopher Love, minister of Lawrence-Jury, London,” as the title-page informs me, preached two hundred years ago, in which that excellent man did not shrink from bearing his testimony to what he and other saints of that day regarded as wholesome truth.
“Learn, hence,” says he, “that little children and young infants, though they live but a day, they are in as great danger as men that live a hundred years for it is not for your time that God will censure [judge] you, but for the odious nature of sin. And the reason why I draw this inference from hence is to take off that blind conceit of people [under which] they will call children innocent, as if they were harmless, as if they were without sin; and many women will wish themselves where that [dead] child is, though that child may be damned. Yet mistake me not; I do not say that all children are damned, for God hath secret ways to work grace in them as he hath open ways to save others. Yet children, I say, though they live but a minute in this world, God may justly punish them for the sin of their nature.”
Such was the orthodoxy of the Church two hundred years ago; and it is the orthodoxy of the creeds to-day. If Dr. Hodge had never seen a Calvinistic theologian who entertained it, the fact only shows how widely the Calvinists of the present age have departed from the Calvinism of Calvin, just as the Catholics have departed from Augustine. Their definition of Catholic doctrine, that it is what is always, everywhere, and by all believed, would make a very short creed and a very small church.
It is easily seen that under the popular but formidable doctrine that there is no change after death, no repentance and no salvation, that is not accomplished in this present life, we are logically forced to believe, first, that all the heathen are lost; second, that of adults, the great majority of those called Christians or living in Christendom are damned; and, finally, that no infants dying in infancy can be saved, unless, with some, we are good-natured enough to believe in the regenerating power of baptism, or, with others, in direct contravention of the doctrine we began with, allow God to regenerate and save infants and all others, “when and where and how he pleaseth,” that is, without regard to place or time.
Now it ought to require no argument to convince any candid person that a doctrine which leads to consequences so disastrous and sweeping cannot be of God; or if it is still insisted that it is revealed in the Scriptures, it obviously demands an amount of evidence, and evidence so clear and so decisive as to admit of no denial and no doubt. There is nothing in the nature of the case, whatever some may fancy to the contrary, to suggest a termination of God’s benevolent measures with a sinner, at the moment of death, and a total reversal of his whole government over him. The soul is the same after its separation from the body as it was before, and in a moral point of view neither better nor worse. God is the same on the other side of the grave as he is on this. And the great moral laws of the universe should be deemed as unchangeable as their Author. All that we can reasonably conceive as having undergone a change is simply the place or mode of the soul’s existence. Itself, its relations, its duties, remain the same. Some Universalists, interpreting literally the expression of St. Paul that “he who is dead is freed from sin,” have indulged the opinion that death does much for the sinner, and that, having passed this change, he is at once translated into a higher and better life.
This mode of thinking has been exposed to infinite contempt and ridicule on the part of our orthodox friends, who seemed profoundly unconscious that they themselves were fostering precisely the same kind of opinion only in the opposite direction. If some Universalists have believed that death would prove a minister of good to wayward souls, the orthodox world has at the same time, and for no better reason, believed that it was to be a minister of unmitigated evil to the vast majority of the human race. It closes their probation; it fixes the unconverted soul in evil; it changes millions of honest, moral, benevolent people instantly into infernal demons. It does far more than this. Not content with working changes in man, it revolutionizes the moral government of God, and finally God himself, transforming the benevolent Ruler of this world into a relentless Judge in the other, and making Him who is the Father of mercies here, a monster of remorseless hate and insatiable revenge hereafter.
To say, with these facts before us, that there is no change after death, seems a misstatement so obvious and so gross as to require great ignorance or great audacity. These two opinions of the moral effects of death, that of some Universalists on one side and this of the orthodox world on the other, are, I conceive, twin errors,—though the latter is infinitely more mischievous,—resting on a common misconception and ending in opposite results. Both are advocated in the simple interest of preconceived and adopted dogmas, and are employed in carrying out a system. Why can we not agree in seeing that death, in itself considered, does nothing morally for us, that it makes us neither better nor worse? It does not change a sinner into a saint, nor transform a moral, honorable “natural man” into a devil. Both enter the world before us as they leave this. Both are the same beings there they were here: both are under the same moral government, subject to the same moral laws, holding the same relations to God and their fellow-beings, and changed in no respect, save in their place or state.
God is still their Creator, and they his creatures; he is their Father and they his children; he is their Governor, and they his subjects. There, as here, they are bound to love him with all the heart, and to love their neighbor as themselves. And as long as they exist, it matters not where or how, these obligations will rest upon them. They cannot shake them off; sin will not annul them; punishment itself, however severe or protracted, can have no other purpose than to teach them the lesson of obedience. “My son, give me thy heart,” is what God is saying to every human soul; obedience to this divine call is what he demands, and what he will continue to demand till we offer the sacrifice he asks. Supreme love is what we owe him, and nothing short of this—no duration or amount of suffering—will pay the debt. Nor will he accept hatred for love or blasphemy for the praises that are so justly his due. If the soul refuses obedience to-day, the command rises fresh and strong to-morrow, and at last, delay as long as we will, the happy hour will come when without any violence done to human volition the soul will confess itself conquered by divine grace and sweetly submit to Christ and God. We are on probation, if you please to call it so, but a probation that ends only in willing obedience to the royal, the imperial law.