Preface
A thought conceived but not expressed is at best only an unborn child, not only without any influence on the world, but of whose very existence the world may be unconscious; but once brought forth it becomes part of the living working universe, to work there its appointed season, and possibly to leave its mark for good or evil on all successive time.
The thought which is now expressed in these pages has long been growing in the writer’s heart. Hidden at first and unconfessed, during the last few years it has from time to time been brought forth in conversation with trusted Christian friends. But the time seems come to give it a wider circulation. Men’s hearts, now perhaps more than in any former age, are everywhere moved to enquire into the nature and inspiration of Holy Scripture, and the destiny of the human race, more especially the future state of sinners, as taught in Holy Scripture. Many are perplexed, hesitating to receive as perfect and divine a revelation, which, they are told, in the name of God consigns a large proportion of those who in some sense at least are His offspring to everlasting misery. And while the conclusion, uttered or unuttered, in many hearts is, either that this doctrine cannot really be a part of Holy Scripture, or else that what is called Holy Scripture cannot be a perfect exposition or revelation of the mind of God our Saviour, few even of those who receive the Bible as divine seem able to solve the difficulty, or throw much light on those portions of the “oracles of God,” which confessedly are “dark sayings” and “hard to be understood.”
A friend, whose mind had been unsettled by this subject, lately expressed to the writer of these pages some part of his perplexity. The following letter was the result. The writer feels the solemn responsibility of dissenting on such a question from the current creed of Christendom; and nothing but his most assured conviction that the popular notion of never-ending punishment is as thorough a misunderstanding of God’s Word as the doctrine of Transubstantiation, and that the one as much as the other conduces directly to infidelity, though both equally claim to stand on the express words of Holy Scripture, would have led him to moot a subject which cannot even be questioned in some quarters without provoking the charge of heresy. Truth is worth all this, and much more.
If we will not buy it at all cost, we are not worthy of it. The writer has felt more the force of the consideration, how far, granting its truth, the doctrine of the Restitution of All Things is one to be proclaimed generally. Truth spoken before its time may be not hurtful only, but even most unlawful. The Christian truth, that “there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek,” and that “circumcision is nothing,” would surely have been unlawful, because untimely, in the Jewish age. So even now there may be many eternal verities which are beyond what St. Peter calls “the present truth,” and which may therefore “not be lawful for a man to utter.” But the fact that God Himself is ever opening out His truth seems a sufficient reason for making it known as far as He opens it. Is not His opening it to His servants an intimation to them that His will is that they should declare and publish it? Age after age the day arrives to utter something which till the appointed day is come has been “a secret hid in God.”
The very gospel which we all believe once jarred on many minds as a doctrine directly opposed to and subversive of the law given by God to Moses. The doctrine here stated, therefore, though it runs like a golden thread through Holy Scripture, may, because as yet it has been hidden from many of God’s children, be condemned by them as contrary to God’s mind, just as Paul’s gospel, when first proclaimed, was charged with being opposed to that old law of which it was but the fulfilment. In every age the man of faith can only say, “We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak.” Truth may, and indeed must, vary in form as time goes on,—Christ Himself, the Truth, at different stages appears differently,—for God has stooped to this, to give us truth as we can bear it; stooped therefore to be judged as inconsistent; because He is Love, and waits to reveal Himself till we are prepared for the revelation. But the end will justify all His ways; and some of His children can even now justify Him.
The night is far spent, the day is at hand. And as in early dawn the stars grow dim, because the day is coming, so now the lesser lights which have been guides in darker days are paling before the coming Sun of Righteousness. And though those who go up to the hill-tops and watch the east may see more of the light than those who are buried in the valleys or sleep with closed shutters, all who look out at the glowing firmament may see signs of coming day. Men must be fast asleep indeed, if they do not perceive that a new age is even now upon us.
The writer would only add that he will be thankful for any suggestions or corrections on the subject of the following pages. Any letter addressed to him, to the care of the Publishers, will be duly forwarded and acknowledged.
March 25, 1867.
Opening Letter
My Dear C——
The account you give of your perplexity, and of the answers with which it has been met by some around you, reminds me (if one may refer to it in such a connection), of what happened some months ago in a Sunday-school. The boys in one of the classes were reading the chapter which records how David, as he walked on the roof of his house, saw Bathsheba. One of the boys, looking up through the school-room window at the steep roofs of the houses opposite, after a pause, said,— “But, Teacher, how could David walk on the roof of his house?” The teacher, on this point as ignorant as his scholar, at once checked all enquiry by saying, “Don’t grumble at the Bible, boy.” Meanwhile the teacher of an adjoining class had overheard the conversation. Leaning over to his fellow-teacher he whispered, “The answer to the difficulty is, ‘With men it is impossible, but not with God, for with God all things are possible.’” Such was the solution of “the difficulty;” too true a sample, I fear, of the way in which on the one hand honest doubts are often met, as though all enquiry into what is perplexing in Scripture must be criminal; and on the other, of the absurdities which are confidently put forth as true expositions of God’s mind and word.
Your difficulty is, how are we, as believers in Scripture, to reconcile its prophetic declarations as to the final restitution of all things, with those other statements of the same Scripture, which are so often quoted to prove eternal punishment. Scripture, you say, affirms that God our Father is a Saviour, full of pity towards the lost, seeking their restoration; so loving that He has given for man His Only-Begotten Son, in and by whom the curse shall be overcome, and all the kindreds of the earth be blessed; and yet that some shall go away into everlasting punishment, where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. How is it possible, you ask, to reconcile all this? Are not the statements directly inconsistent? And if so, must not the statements of the Bible, as of other books, be corrected by that light of reason and conscience, which is naturally or divinely implanted in every one of us?
Now I grant at once that there is a difficulty here, and further that the question how it is to be solved is one deserving our most attentive consideration. I entirely agree with you also, that “though indifference or devout timidity, calling itself submission, may set aside such enquiries as unpractical or even dangerous, though indolence under the guise of humility may refuse to look at them, and spiritual selfishness, wrapt in the mantle of its own supposed security, may forbid such investigations as presumptuous, Christ-like souls can no more be unconcerned as to what may or may not be God’s mind as to the mass of humanity, than they can stand by unaffected when the destitute perish from hunger, or the dying agonize in pain.” All this to me seems self-evident. But agreeing with you in this, I cannot grant that the difficulty you urge is unanswerable, or that, even if it were, you would be wise for such a reason to reject the Scriptures. Is there any revelation which God has given free from difficulties? Are there not even difficulties as to the present facts of life which are quite inexplicable? Is it not a fact that man comes into this world a fallen creature; and yet that God who made man is just, holy, and merciful?
But how do you reconcile the facts? You think that man is not a sinner only because he does evil. You rather believe that he does evil because he is a sinner, and that, guard and train him as you will, evil will come out of him because it is already in him; that in the best there is an inability to do the good they would; that in all there is a self-will and self-love, the pregnant root of sin of every kind. And yet you say that God is good. Say that the evil came through Adam’s disobedience; yet how is it just to make us suffer for a trespass committed thousands of years before we were born? That there is a difficulty here is evident from the many attempts which have been made to solve it. Yet you and I believe both sides of the mystery. We believe that man by nature is corrupt, his heart wrong from his mother’s womb, a dying sinful creature, who cannot change or save himself, utterly hopeless but for God’s redeeming mercy; and yet that God is good, and that He does not mock us when He declares that not He, but we, are blameable.
Why then, seeing that life is such a mystery, and that there are contradictions in it which seem irreconcilable, and for the true answer to which we have often to wait, should you take the one difficulty you urge as a sufficient reason for hastily rejecting those Scriptures, which you have often found to be as a light in a dark place? Rather look again and again more carefully into them. Then you will see, as I think I see, how these Scriptures, rightly divided, open out far more exalted and glorious hopes for man than his own unaided imagination or understanding has ever yet dared to guess or been able to argue out.