“Far be it from me to make light of the demerit of sin. But endless punishment—I admit my inability (I would say it reverently) to admit this belief together with a belief in the divine goodness—the belief that God is Love, that His tender mercies are over all His works.”—John Foster on Future Punishment.
THE considerations just stated illustrate well the growth of morality. In fact we have still vast arrears to make up, for the growth of our moral conceptions has been at once very slow, and very one-sided. In the fierce struggle for success the intellectual faculties have been sharpened, while the sympathetic tendencies have been dwarfed. Even yet we have hardly begun to realise what that saying means, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Take an illustration. All christendom is a vast camp: all Europe is armed to the teeth. What does all this mean?—this at any rate, that our whole life is still permeated with a spirit of revenge. These armaments preach the gospel of hatred of our enemies. They are schools ever open, in which the obvious lessons are a formal contradiction of the Sermon on the mount. Whatever reasonable excuses may be offered, certain it is that all this re-acts on our opinions. It blinds us to the idea of Love as supreme, and of humanity as one family. It sets up resentment as an ideal of duty. And if this be so still, how much more was it the case in those ages in which war was the chief occupation, and the chief glory of civilised (?) human beings?
en living in such a state were wholly incapable of rising to true christian teaching. They held half, or more than half, their neighbours in bondage as mere chattels. They tortured their criminals: they burned them, or boiled them alive, their foes they massacred. Now precisely through such channels as these very much of current theology has filtered down: it is, in fact, an anachronism. We are still drinking largely from poisoned wells. But if our awakening be slow it is sure. A cruel Deity watching unmoved to all eternity the agonies, moral or physical, of His creatures, will seem to our children but an evil dream. Is it credible that, when torture has been banished from human justice, divine justice shall stand alone in consigning offenders to torture without any end?
Pursuing our remarks, I must also remind you of another feature of the popular belief, which seems to present a great difficulty; it is what I must call its paltriness, its unworthiness of God. Let us for the moment not think of God as a good, loving, and righteous Being. Let us now simply regard Him as great, as irresistible, as almighty. Viewed thus, how difficult is it to accept that account which the ordinary creed gives us of this Being’s attempt at the rescue of His fallen creature man. An Almighty Being puts forth every effort to gain a certain end; sends inspired men to teach others; works miracles, signs, wonders in heaven and on earth, all for this end of man’s safety; nay, at the last, sends forth His own Son—very God—Himself Almighty. The Almighty Son stoops not alone to take our nature on Him, but lower still—far lower—stoops to degradation; meekly accepts insults and scourging, bends to the bitter cross even, and all this to gain a certain end. And yet, we are told, this end is not gained after all, man is not saved, for countless myriads are in fact left to hopeless, endless misery; and that, though for every one of these lost ones, so to speak, has been shed the life blood of God’s own Son.
Now, if I may be permitted to speak freely, it is wholly inconceivable that the definite plan of an Almighty Being should end in failure—that this should be the result of the agony of the eternal Son. God has, in the face of angels and of men, before the universe and its gaze of wonder, entered Himself into the arena, become Himself a combatant, has wrestled with the foe, and has been defeated. I can bring myself to imagine those, who reject the Deity of Christ, as believing in His defeat; but it is passing strange that those who believe Him to be “very God Almighty,” are loudest in asserting His failure. And continue this thought. If we think of God at all worthily, we cannot help thinking of Him as working for high and worthy ends. Therefore we cannot help thinking of Him, as in creation, working for some end worthy of Himself. But what end does the popular creed assign to Him? A creation mutilated, ruined, and that for ever. A creation ending in misery and endless sin to infinite numbers of the created; and all this misery and horror brought into sharper relief by a vain and fruitless attempt to save all: by a purpose of love declared to all, and yet not in fact reaching all: a creation which is but the portal to hell for so many of the created. And you gravely ask thoughtful enquirers to believe this; to believe that, contemplating these horrors destined never to cease, the morning stars are described as singing together, and all the sons of God shouting for joy on the morning of creation.
The sons of God shouted for joy, as they contemplated creation; but they should have wept had the popular creed been true. For that creed represents the present life as darkened by the prospect of evil triumphant; our present sorrows made keener by the prospect of a future life, which will be, not to the wicked merely, but to the whole race of man, an evil and a curse—a life which every good man would, if he could, bring to an instant end. To prove this, I will take a definite example. Further, I will concede to the advocates of the popular creed one point of very considerable importance (to which they have no right), e.g., that the number of the saved greatly exceeds the lost. “Suppose it were offered to the father of three children to take his choice whether two should be received into heaven and one condemned to hell, or the whole should be annihilated in death. What would a parent say? Where is the father who would dare to secure the bliss of two children at the cost of the endless misery of one? Which of the family would he select as the victim, whose undying pain should secure his brother’s immortal joy? Is there any one living who would not suffer himself and his children to sink back again into nothingness, rather than purchase heaven at such a price? Now, if so, if we should so act in the case of our own children, we are bound morally to make the same choice with respect to every one. No moral being would consent to purchase eternal happiness at the price of another’s eternal woe. Hence it follows that a future life, on the popular view, is an evil to the human race, not to the wicked, but to all. For if annihilation of the whole race should be tendered as the alternative, no moral being could, as has been shewn, refuse to accept it.”—Barlow, Eternal Punishment.
Thus, there is, I repeat, if the popular creed be true, no alternative, no escape from the conclusion that creation is an evil thing, and a future life a curse to the whole human family. What is to be our answer to the scorn of the sceptic, to the challenge of the atheist? So long as we cling to an immoral creed there is none—absolutely none. What awful mockery is a gospel whose message is, in fact, damnation to countless myriads, whose issue is endless sin—sin ever ripening, ever progressing. And I am to accept such a gospel as good news—glad tidings of great joy—glad tidings of never ending pain and curse and sin.
But again, there comes this very serious obstacle to accepting the popular creed. I shall state it thus, either this creed is true or false If false—the question is ended. If true, can this strange fact be explained—that nobody acts as if he believed it? I say this, for any man who so believed, and who possessed but a spark of common humanity—to say nothing of charity—could not rest, day or night, so long as one sinner remained who might be saved. To this all would give place—pleasure, learning, business, art, literature; nay, life itself would be too short for the terrible warnings, the burning entreaties, the earnest pleadings, that would be needed to rouse sinners from their apathy, and to pluck them from endless tortures. Ask me what you will, but do not ask me to believe that any human being, who is convinced that perhaps his own child, his wife, his friend, his neighbour, even his enemy, is in danger of endless torment, could, if really persuaded of this, live as men now live, even the best men: who can avoid the inevitable conclusion that its warmest adherents really, though unconsciously, find their dogmas absolutely incredible? In fact these men (and it is the best thing to be said for them) teach their creed without real conviction. Their best eulogy is that they are self-deceivers.
These remarks also explain an obvious difficulty, viz., it has been shewn how the popular creed cuts at the root of all religion, poisoning the very fountains whence we draw our conceptions of love, of righteousness, of truth. But if so, it may be fairly asked, how is it that society subsists, that morality is not extinct? Because, I reply unhesitatingly, because no society, no individual, can possibly act, or has in fact acted, on such a creed, in the real business of life. It is simply impossible: who would dare so much as to smile, if he really believed endless torments were certain to be the portion of some member of his household—it may be of himself? Marriage would be a crime; each birth the occasion of an awful dread. The shadow of a possible hell would darken every home, sadden every family hearth. All this becomes evident when we reflect, that to perpetuate the race would be to help on the perpetuation of moral evil. For if this creed be true, out of all the yearly births a steady current is flowing on to help fill the abyss of hell, to make larger and vaster the total of moral evil which is to endure for ever. “The world would be one vast madhouse,” says the American scholar Hallsted, “if a realising and continued pressure of such a doctrine was present.” Remark again how this doctrine breaks down the moment it is really put to the test. Take a common case: a man dies—active, benevolent, useful in life, but not a religious man, not devout. By the popular creed, such a man has gone to hell for ever. But who really believes that? nay, instinctively our words grow softer when we speak of the dead in all cases. Do even the clergy really believe what they profess? I cannot refrain from most serious doubt on this point. If they believe, why are they so often silent? Habitual silence would be impossible to any one believing the traditional creed in earnest. The awful future would dwarf all other topics, would compel incessant appeals. But what do we find? Everything, I reply, that marks a declining faith in endless evil—silence; excuses; modifications; evasions of the true issue.
Take next a grave difficulty which arises on the popular view. How can you on any such principle deal equitably with the mass of men? Let us speak plainly: do tell me who and what are the great, nay, the overwhelming majority of the baptised? They are assuredly neither wholly bad, nor wholly good; they are neither bad enough for hell, nor good enough for heaven. Now how can you adapt your theory to this state of things, which is, I think, quite impossible to deny? Look around you, survey the mass of mankind: of how few, how very few, can you affirm that they are truly devout, converted, Christ-like; take which term you please. Can you affirm this of one in ten, in twenty, in a hundred even, of those baptized into Jesus Christ? Take as an illustration any English parish you please. Take any village, or select some one of our English towns, muster its whole population in imagination, how many true, holy servants of Jesus Christ will you find there? The mass—what are they? Let us meet this question, and look the facts straight in the face. What is to be the doom of the mass of baptized christians; they are not holy, but are they bad? Nobody out of the pulpit—and seldom there in these days—ventures to assert any such thing. For in truth there is abundant good in this crowd of human beings; and still more, there is almost infinite capacity for goodness amid the evil.
Everywhere you will find unselfish parents, hard workers, loving sisters, true friends; everywhere traces, distinct enough amid all the sin, nay, traces in abundance of goodness, patience, self-sacrifice, sometimes carried even to great lengths. Let an emergency arise, let sickness come, what devotion does it not call forth, what love unstinted, what self-forgetfulness? Now your system, that which you call the good news brought from heaven by Jesus Christ, forces you to believe that God will consign all these hapless children of His, because unconverted in this life, to a doom, which in its lightest form is awful beyond all powers of imagination, to the company of devils for ever and ever. Permit me one question more, would not any creed, or no creed, be a positive relief from such a gospel as this of yours? Can there be a mockery more solemn, more emphatic, than to call this any part of the glad tidings of great joy? Is it not time for the clergy, not merely in private to ponder these things, convinced or half convinced of their truth, but to speak out as in God’s name—as God’s ministers?
And while I am speaking of men as they are, and of the life they lead, let me add here a statement of another very grave difficulty in the way of accepting an endless hell as the doom of any man, the issue of any life. Wherever human beings exist, in what form of community it matters not, in what climate or under what conditions of life soever, there is found everywhere a deep spontaneous belief, call it feeling, instinct, what you please, that connects the marriage tie and the birthday with joyful associations, with mirth and gladness. Now why is this—has it no meaning? So deep an instinct, one so truly natural and spontaneous as this, comes surely from the Creator of all. His voice it is that bids the bridegroom rejoice over the bride, that bids the heart of the mother overflow with tenderness towards her babe. This being so, again let me put the question, and ask, why has this been so ordered? Is it God who has so ordered; do you think He has had no purpose in so doing, no message to convey to those who have ears to hear? Is it possible that our Heavenly Father should bid His creatures everywhere to rejoice with a special joy at the marriage feast, at the natal hour, if these births were in fact destined to add largely to the ranks of hell, to the hosts of evil?
Do think over the matter calmly, and ask yourself if that is possible, if you can believe any such thing? And as you think it over, take with you these words of Jesus Christ (that hint so much). They remind us how the mother, in the “perilous birth” hath sorrow; but add, that all that sorrow is swallowed up in joy— “joy that a man is born into the world.” Dwell on these words, that you may grasp all they convey. Indeed, it may almost be said that in this lies the whole matter. It is a joy that a man—any man—should be born into the world. See how wide the words are. If you tell me that this joy is but a blind instinct of the mother: yes, I reply, it is this very blindness, as you call it, of the instinct constitutes its force, for it thus betrays its origin; it is implanted, and by whom? by the Great Parent, for it is spontaneous and betrays His hand. Do you ask me to believe that He has done this without a meaning, without a certain purpose of good? Can I believe that our Father bids any mother’s heart to stir with joy at the sight of her infant, while He knows that this infant is destined to be, will be, in fact, shut up into endless torment and sin?
And again, can you reconcile the theory of endless evil awaiting so large a portion of our race with that natural thirst for joy, that longing for happiness each one finds within? It matters not whether this has been slowly developed or created at one stroke, all that matters to this argument is its naturalness, its universality. This longing for happiness cannot then have been accidental, there must be in it a design on the Creator’s part. Now, what was that design? To delude us,—is that possible? “If the popular theory of future endless torment were true, what sublime mockery would there be in placing poor wretches first upon earth, where are heard the merry shouts of careless children, the joyous song of birds, where above our heads “with constant kindly smile, the sleepless stars keep everlasting watch,” where beneath our feet the delicate beauty of flowers of every tint gladdens the eye. What would have been thought of the propriety of placing a hundred bright and cheerful objects, suggestive of peace and happiness, in the ante-room to the torture chamber of the inquisition? It deserves, too, to be noted that man, the only animal that laughs, has of all animals, according to the popular theory, least cause to laugh.”—Errors and Terrors of Blind Guides.
But there is much to be said beyond remarking on our natural thirst for joy and happiness, and the difficulty of explaining why it was ever implanted in man, except with a design that it should one day be gratified, fully and freely. There is this to be said, there is stored in every man a vast possibility of growth, of expansion, mental and intellectual, no less than spiritual. There are almost infinite germs in man, so to speak, latent as yet, but capable of a development perhaps practically boundless: they are probably unsuspected by the majority, and it is only at intervals, and as it were by chance, that we gain a passing glance at them. But undoubtedly they exist, and their existence, like that of all other natural facts, requires an explanation. Why do they exist—who planted within us these powers, and for what end? And they have been given to all, not to the good merely, but to man as man. I cannot but see in the very fact of their existence a silent prophecy, an intimation that the spark shall not be quenched in any case. Are they not a very message to man from God, a hint, eloquent by its very silence, eloquent, and instinct with hope?
Consider next how strongly the analogy of nature, which is, after all, a very real revelation of God, bears against the popular view, which limits to the few moments of our present life all our chances of discipline, amendment, and probation; and that though “all reason, all experience, all Scripture unite in this, that the divine work of teaching goes on behind, as well as before, the veil.” To teach that the mere fact of dying is the signal for a total change from all that has gone before, is to contradict all that we know of God’s ways from analogy. Consider this, and say whether any view which interposes so wide a gulf, as that commonly held does, between our present and our future life can be true. In all God’s dealings with us no sharp break intervenes, between the successive stages of life: each condition of being is developed out of a prior, and closely related stage. Now this being so, can I believe that in another age all this is reversed, and that men, with capacities for good still existing, are to be at one bound consigned to hopeless sin, to endless torture? And the difficulty (surely an enormous one) of believing that our Father will deliberately crush out all the lingering tendencies to good in His own children, is increased by the following consideration, viz.:—that the whole of our human life here is so manifestly incomplete, so momentary, that in very many cases it has not afforded a satisfactory time of training, and in not a few cases no training at all.
This thought may be pursued further thus: An old proverb says very wisely, “the mills of God grind slowly,” and this divine slowness, or long suffering, is very conspicuous in God’s ways. How very slowly has He been fitting this earth for man’s habitation, and by what a long continued succession of stages, age succeeding age. At length man steps on the earth. Now, is all the divine slowness to be at once changed—and why should it be? Man is to live for ever and ever: we are apt to forget what this means, and how altogether impossible it is to assign any proportion between the fleeting moments of earthly life, and the life that stretches away for ever and ever. If we compare a human life of average duration to one second of time, and compare endless duration to the aggregate of all the seconds that have passed since time was, and that shall pass while time endures, still we assign to human life a proportionate duration infinitely too long. Am I then to believe that the same God Who expends millions of years in slowly fitting this earth for man’s habitation, will only allow to man himself a few fleeting years, or months, or hours, as it may be, as his sole preparation time for eternity? To settle questions so unspeakably great in their issue—questions stretching away to a horizon so far distant that no power of thought can follow them—in such hot haste, does seem quite at variance with our heavenly Father’s ways. Is God’s action outside man so slow, and within man so hurried? Is the husk of far more value than the seed? Are millions of years allotted to fashioning man’s earthly home, while for man’s spiritual training for eternity, but a few brief years are given, and these so largely broken up by sleep, by work, by disease, by ignorance? What should we say—to take a homely illustration—of an arrangement allotting 10,000 years to fashioning a man’s coat, or building his house, while assigning to his whole education but a few hours?
Besides, if we look around, a mass of facts point to the same conclusion,—that the present life is rather the initial stage of human training, than its conclusion. The vast majority of men have not so much as heard of Christ. In christian countries very many die in infancy: some are lunatic, or half witted; many wholly uneducated; very many grow up in virtual heathenism, from no fault of their own; or are born in a state where evil surroundings aggravate evil tendencies, inherited and innate. Are they—these untold myriads of myriads of hapless creatures—first to hear of Christ at the day of judgment? Perhaps I should speak soberly in asserting, that not one in a thousand of the total mass of humanity is at this moment living in the true fear and love of God.
Next let us pass to Holy Scripture for a moment only, reserving a full examination of its testimony to later chapters. Here we are at once confronted by a difficulty so grave, that I confess it seems to me quite decisive against the popular view. This difficulty is, that you are thus forced absolutely to suppress a very large part of the Bible—a very numerous class of passages which clearly hold out a promise of universal restitution, or at least imply a distinct hope for all men. The view generally held is, in short, one-sided, and therefore wholly unfair; it is as though a judge should base a decision of the most weighty importance on one set of witnesses merely, neglecting the others who testify in a directly opposite sense. “Only imagine the book of nature being studied in this way, with one class of facts systematically ignored; with one law, say of gravitation, fully laid down, while the opposite law of centrifugal motion was altogether overlooked, what results in science could follow from such a method? Yet this is the way in which not a few yet read the Scriptures, taking their first partial sense readings for the truth, and shutting their eyes to all that the same Scripture testifies on the other side,”—a most weighty charge, made with absolute truth, as I believe. (see ch. vii.-viii.)—Andrew Jukes.
An interesting illustration of the fact that the New Testament is full of passages teaching the larger hope, is furnished by the undoubted, but often unperceived, occurrence over and over again, in the works of those who hold the popular creed, of language which, if fairly understood, involves the salvation of all men. This no doubt arises from the fact that phrases are used freely, while a traditional creed does, as so often, blind men to the real force of the expressions they employ—blind them in fact to everything outside the line of thought which they are taught to believe constitutes the truth. Perhaps the best illustration that can be given of what I mean will be gained by quoting from some collection of popular hymns. I take, then, the well-known Hymns, Ancient and Modern, and quote a few passages as instances of my meaning. Hymn 45 has this verse:—
- “Thou, sorrowing at the helpless cry,
- Of all creation doomed to die,
- Did’st save our lost and guilty race.”
But this is universal salvation: the race of man saved, if words have any meaning. And this thought—the race saved—finds frequent expression elsewhere in these hymns; nor let any man who regards honesty of speech, and common truthfulness, say that to offer salvation merely, is, or can be, the same thing as to save. See hymns 56, v. 3, 4, 5, 6; 57, v. 3; 81, v. 3; 200, v. 6, &c. Again, listen to these solemn words and tell me what they mean: hymn 97, Part 2, v. 2:—
- Precious flood which all creation
- From the stain of sin hath freed.
And again, v. 5:—
- That a shipwrecked race for ever
- Might a port of refuge gain.
And hymn 103, v. 5:—
- So a ransomed world shall ever,
- Praise Thee, its redeeming Lord.
Can it be right to talk of a ransomed world for ever praising its Redeemer, and yet to mean that all the time the world is not actually ransomed, and perhaps half, perhaps more, of its population are groaning in endless pain? Is this consistent with truth? Again, other hymns call on all creation to sing God’s praise. Shall this praise then echo from hell? I might well quote, in proof of this address to all creation to praise God, the familiar doxology, but I will only notice here a well-known hymn:—
- O day for which creation
- And all its tribes were made;
- O joy for all its former woes,
- A thousand times repaid.
I will simply ask what these words mean: all creation is to have all its woes a thousand times repaid: if this is not universalism, what is universalism? The same lips, that assure us from the pulpit that half creation goes to the devil, bid us sing that all creation has been freed from sin! Again, over and over, Christ is said to have vanquished sin, death, and satan:—hymns 147, v. 2; 148, v, 2; 196, v. 3, &c. But how can this be true on the traditional creed? To say that sin is vanquished, and death and satan too, while hell receives its myriads of the lost, is worse than absurd; e.g., take this line from hymn No. 196:—
- Death of death, and hell’s destruction,
and say if the universalist’s creed could be more distinctly stated: his utmost hopes have never gone beyond a vision of death abolished, and hell destroyed? To pursue this further is needless, though it would be easy, and indeed full of interest to add quotation to quotation: but I may point out how significant it is to find the very opponents of the larger hope forced, unconsciously, to employ language directly teaching universal salvation. The explanation is simply that they have been using the words and ideas of Scripture, while the fair, honest meaning of their own words is obscured for them by the spell of a narrow traditional creed.
Before passing on, let me remark once more on the injurious moral tendency of the popular creed. Not merely has it fostered in man a spirit of cruelty (p. 41-4)—not alone does it promise a heaven which is one of utter selfishness (p. 43)—not merely does it point to evil as finally triumphant (p. 36), but it scatters broadcast lessons of equivocation and untruth. For if to say one thing, while meaning something totally different, be falsehood, then with falsehood is the popular religious literature honey-combed from end to end. Everywhere it repeats that the race of man is saved, that Christ is the Saviour of mankind, while it really means that half mankind is damned. It tells us, I quote the Record (Easter, 1885)—how “satan is utterly subdued,” “his empire completely demolished,” “his power for ever fallen.” This teaching it repeats in a thousand forms, in countless hymns, in sermons, tracts, books; but it really means that satan is triumphant, and his empire as enduring as God Himself. Well may the sceptic exult, and the thoughtful christian mourn at this duplicity, which stains our religious literature: this terrible perversion, in the holiest matters, of those words by which we shall be judged.
Again, there are, apart from all direct promises, certain tendencies in the Gospel, whose drift and character are impossible to mistake. That these tendencies exist, I am far more certain than I can be of the meaning of any number of highly figurative texts, alleged to prove endless evil. Now these tendencies are too clear, too distinct, to be considered accidental. So far from being a product of the age in which the New Testament was written, they are in conflict with the spirit of that age, and in advance of it. They must therefore represent something inherent in the Author of christianity, and something essential to His design. I put the case very moderately in saying, how extremely difficult it is to reconcile the popular creed with these undoubted tendencies of the New Testament. Can I reasonably believe that a system which, beyond all other creeds, has been distinguished by promoting mercy, goodness, love, tenderness for body and soul; a system which these qualities are the very essence, does indeed teach a doctrine of punishment so shocking, so horrible, that if really believed, it would turn this earth into a charnel-house, and spread over all nature lamentation, mourning, and woe? Who can believe, that a creed which has banished every form of cruelty, so far as its influence is felt, in the present life, yet contains a special revelation of terrible cruelty in the life to come?
Let me next shew that certain great principles of Revelation conflict with the popular creed. “I am sure,” says a thoughtful writer, “these are the two fundamental features of the christian Revelation, of which all its utterances are the manifest expression, viz.:—(1.)—The parental love of the Father. (2.)—The solidarity of mankind to be conformed to the image of His Son.”—Letters from a Mystic. (1.)—No one can deny that the New Testament contains a special revelation of the parental tie uniting us to God. When we pray and say, “our Father,” these two words convey the spirit of the whole Gospel. Now, it is not too much to assert that the view generally held is an absolute negation of all that the parental tie implies. It robs the relation of all meaning. We have the very spirit of popular christianity conveyed in the well-known line which tells us that we are “ever in the great Taskmaster’s eye.” The great Taskmaster! note the term, for it reduces to a mockery the divine Fatherhood, though that is of the very essence of christianity. What, for instance, shall we say of such a Father’s appeal to those who, as He knows, will never hear? To Him there is no future—all is present; the “lost” are lost, and yet He calls them; they are, on the traditional creed, virtually damned; and He knows it, and yet invites them to come and be saved.
But all this difficulty comes from uniting two things absolutely irreconcilable—endless love and power, and yet endless evil. If we want to retain endless sin, let us return to the God of Calvin: nowhere else shall we find solid footing. This God at least is Lord and Master. He issues no invitations, knowing them to be in fact futile. He saves all whom He wants to save. His will must prevail. His Son sheds no drop of blood in vain. All for whom He dies are in fact saved, while the rest go to the devil. All this is hard—nay, cruel; but it is at least logical, intelligible. Contrast with this system the flabby creed of our pseudo-orthodoxy. Long ago it was shrewdly said by an old Calvinist, “universal salvation is credible, if universal Redemption be true.” For it shocks the reason to be told of an univeral Redemption, when all that is meant is an attempt at the redemption of all the race, which fails; it shocks the reason no less to be told of an unchanging love which wholly ceases the moment the last breath leaves the frail body.
I repeat, the essence of christianity perishes in the virtual denial of any true Fatherhood of our race on God’s part. Follow out this thought, for it is of primary importance. We lose sight of the value of the individual soul, when dealing with the countless millions who have peopled this earth and passed away. What is one among so many? we are tempted to say, forgetting that the value of each human being is not in the least thereby altered. Each soul is of infinite value, as if it stood alone, in the eyes of God its Father. And more than this, we are altogether apt to forget another vital point, to forget whose the loss is, if any one soul perishes? it is the man’s own loss, says our popular creed. But is this all? No, a thousand times no. It is God’s loss: it is the Father Who loses His child. The straying sheep of the parable is the Great Shepherd’s loss: the missing coin is the Owner’s loss. In this very fact lies the pledge that He will seek on and on till He find it. For only think of the value He sets on each soul. He has stamped each in His own image: has conferred on each a share of His own immortality—of Himself: do but realise these things; put them into plain words till you come thoroughly to believe them; and you must see how impossible it becomes to credit that unworthy theology, which tells you that such a Father can ever permit the work of His own fingers, His own offspring, to perish finally. One step further to make this clearer: how has He shewn His sense of the value of the human spirit? The Incarnation must say. It is human life taken into closest alliance with the divine—man and God meeting in the God-man. And then follows the Atonement, proof on proof of the same truth, when He tasted death for every man, He in Whose death all died. Such is the chain, whose golden links I have been endeavouring to follow and trace, whose links bind to the Father above every human soul; every human soul, be it distinctly affirmed. Or stay, is there not yet wanting the final link to complete this chain? That link is to be found in the great truth, which completes what I have been saying, the truth of the oneness of the human race, its organic unity. Let us consider this.
(2.)—The principle of the organic unity of our race is that which underlies the whole divine work, alike in Creation, and in the Incarnation. It is the divine idea, so to speak, to regard humanity as one organic whole, one body summed up in Adam, summed up anew in the second Adam—a whole which must stand or fall together. All this, too, is very legible in the divinely-given symbolism of the old law, and is reflected in the Gospel with perfect clearness. What but is the teaching of the “firstfruits,” and the “firstborn” in Scripture? These imply and include the one, the whole harvest; the other, the whole family, and not less. Now Christ is the “firstfruits.”—1 Cor. 15:23, and Christ is the “firstborn.”—Col. 1:18. And what follows let S. Paul say, “If the ‘first fruits’ be holy, the ‘lump’ is also holy,” the whole race. Thus this principle is affirmed in the great central doctrine of the Incarnation. For in Christ, Who is the “firstfruits,” mankind, i.e., the aggregate of humanity, is taken into God. And so in His death all died, as the New Testament assures us, and in His resurrection all rise, nay, are risen. In other words, Christ’s relation, as the last Adam, is not to individuals but to the race.
Further, it is an actual, not a possible or a potential relation; an actual relation giving salvation to all, in a sense as real as the first Adam gave death and ruin to all. “Once introduce the belief in Christ’s divine nature, and His death and resurrection are no longer of the individual but of the race. It was on this belief the Church was founded and built up. The belief was not indeed drawn out with exact precision, yet it was always implied in the relation, which the believer was supposed to hold toward God. The formula of Baptism, which has never changed, is unintelligible without it. The Eucharist is emptied of the blessing which every age has sought in that holy Sacrament, if it be taken away. If Christ took our nature upon Him, as we believe, by an act of love, it was not that of one, but of all. He was not one man only among men, but in Him all humanity are gathered up: and thus now as at all time, mankind are, so to speak, organically united with Him.”—Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection. And this union of the race of man with Himself, it is that Jesus Christ would teach in one of His many pregnant hints, by always speaking of Himself in His redeeming work as the Son, not of the Jew, not of the Gentile, not of Mary, not of the carpenter, but the Son of Man.
Yes, the organic unity of mankind is a principle that, from the Fall to the story of the Incarnation, runs through the texture of Holy Scripture. Have you ever quietly thought over the very strange fact of what is called original sin? Have you asked yourself what it means, that you are suffering for something done thousands of years before your birth? All the questions raised by this enquiry we need not try to settle, but we may say that it means at least this, that in the divine plan the race falls and rises together; that mankind is not a collection of separate units, but an organised whole. Each individual is not, so to speak, complete in himself, but is a living stone in the great building—is so truly a member of one great body that, if withdrawn, there would ensue no less than a mutilation of the body. And so Adam’s sin sent a shock through the whole race, exactly as when a hurt to any part sends a shock through our present body. This is the painful side, but it is only one side; and unfortunately the popular creed, as so often, persists in looking at one side only, and that the dark side, and in looking away from the bright side; or at least in so looking at it, as to miss its real aspect. But here the New Testament comes to our rescue and assures us that “as in Adam all die, so in the new and better Adam all shall be made alive.” The race is fallen; true, but the race is risen; quite as true. Both facts strictly correspond; but, if so,
- “Of two such lessons why forget
- The nobler and the Christlier one?”
A partial salvation is thus in absolute conflict with this fundamental principle which the Fall affirms, and to which the Incarnation testifies; the organic indivisible unity of mankind. A partial salvation is no less in direct opposition to the great truth put by S. Paul so clearly: “If through the offence of one (the) many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift of grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto (the) many * * * as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.”—Rom. 5:15-8.
Observe, the offence is a thing actually imparted to, actually staining, ruining all men. And Jesus Christ came to bring to every man, to humanity, a salvation which shall be to mankind much more than the Fall. But the popular view reads much less; and in millions of cases, as much less as hell is less than heaven. I may in passing point out the tendency of modern scientific thought towards the conception of an unity underlying all the various forms of life. The facts of evolution and the facts of heredity confirm this. Individual responsibility is not the less true, because it requires to be supplemented by another fact, that of organic unity. Individuality does not contradict, but is complementary to solidarity. The individual is a whole; but the race is a whole as truly. The individual is truly free and responsible, and yet truly bound by those myriad ties of inherited capacity and character that link each inseparably to the whole. We are “members one of another” in the fullest sense, i.e., parts of a whole from which no act of will can sever us. This far reaching conception of an unity of the race is S. Paul’s too. See a striking passage, 1 Tim. 2:4, 5, where he bases universal salvation not on God’s love, but on God’s unity. The connection is worth tracing: “God wills all to be saved. For He is one;” such is the Apostle’s assertion. The meaning is—As an ultimate fact we have unity. It is the law of creation. The “All” run up into and are bound together into unity by His will, Who is “one.”
I may here briefly note how scientific researches illustrate human solidarity. “The definite result of these researches—and the point is so important, that it must be again and again repeated,—is that heredity is identity as far as is possible: it is one being in many.”—Ridot, Heredity, p. 280. This law may be traced everywhere. Not a sentiment or a desire exists: not an excellence or defect, bodily or mental, which is not capable of transmission, and actually transmitted. Why is this? “The cause of this heredity,” says Heckel, “is the partial identity of the materials which constitute the organism of the parent and child.” This shews how vast a part heredity plays, and how close its relation to morality. We assert freely the facts of individuality; we forget the less obvious, but no less true, facts of heredity; we fail to see all that is involved in the Apostle’s words, “we are members one of another.”
But again, the traditional view conflicts with another great principle, viz., the unchangeableness of God. “If God be unchangeable, then what we see of Him at any moment, must be true of Him at every moment of time; true of Him also both before and after all the moments of time; always and for ever true of Him. If His purpose be to save mankind, that purpose stands firm for ever, unaffected by man’s sin, unshaken by the fact of death, unaltered and unalterable by men, by angels, by aught conceivable.”—Salv. Mundi. Redemption is no after-thought, it was planned in the full knowledge of all the extent of man’s sin: knowing all, God declared His purpose to be to save the race. Redemption, then, is something indefeasible, except indeed God can change, or the will of the created be stronger than the will of the Creator. “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.”—Rom. 11:29. That is, what God wills must be done; those whom God calls must obey finally. And this unchangeable purpose of God is stated afresh in the words that describe Jesus Christ as “the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever”—words deeply significant, and yet whose true teaching so very often escapes attention.
And here let me illustrate this part of my argument by introducing a story, for whose truth I vouch, to shew how practical these considerations really are. In a certain quarter of London, one of the many evangelists employed for that purpose, had gone forth to preach to the people. When he had concluded an eloquent address, he was thus accosted by one of his hearers: “Sir,” said the man, “may I ask you one or two questions?” “Surely,” said the preacher. “You have told us that God’s love for us is very great and very strong.” “Yes.” “That He sent His Son on purpose to save us, and that I may be saved this moment, if I will.” “Yes.” “But, if I go away without an immediate acceptance of this offer, and if, a few minutes after I were to be by any accident killed on my way home, I should find myself in hell for ever and ever.” “Yes.” “Then,” said the man, “if so, I don’t want to have anything to do with a Being Whose love for me can change so completely in five minutes.”
“God so loved the world,”—dwell on these words. The world, then, must have been in some real sense worthy of love. He cannot love—He may pity—the unlovely. Has He ceased to love it? If so, when? I challenge a reply. “Love is not love that alters, where it alteration finds;” even human love, if true, never changes. Yet this love is but a faint, far-off, reflection of our Father’s love. God is not love and justice, or love and anger. He is Love, i.e., love essential. Therefore His wrath and vengeance, while very real, are the ministers of His love. To say that God cannot change, is to say that His love cannot change. Hence His love being changeless, pursues the sinner to the outer darkness, and, being Almighty, draws him thence. An earthly parent, who, being able to help, should sit unmoved, month after month, year after year, watching, but never helping, the agonies of his own offspring, is a picture more hideous than any of the records of crime can furnish. What shall we say to those who heighten enormously, infinitely, all that is shocking in such a picture, until its blackest details become light itself; and then tell us that the parent in this ghastly scene is one who is Love, love infinite, almighty, and our Father?
And this brings us face to face with a blunder of our traditional creed, which is radical. It talks of God’s love as though that stood merely on a par with His justice though it were something belonging to Him which He puts on or off. It is hardly possible to open a religious book in which this fatal error is not found; fatal, because it virtually strikes out of the Gospel its fundamental truth, e.g., God Is Love. The terms are equivalent. They can be interchanged. God is not anger though He can be angry, God is not vengeance though He does avenge. These are attributes, love is essence. Therefore, God is unchangeably love. Therefore, in judgment He is love, in wrath He is love, in vengeance He is love— “love first, and last, and midst, and without end.”
But in fact the traditional creed knows nothing of what love really is. For love is simply the strongest thing in the universe, the most awful, the most inexorable, while the most tender. Further, when love is thus seen in its true colours, there is less than ever an excuse for the mistake still so common, which virtually places at the centre of our moral system sin and not grace. This it is which the traditional dualism has for centuries been doing, and is still doing. Doubtless retribution is a most vital truth. Universalists rejoice to admit it; nay, largely to base on it their system; but there is a greater truth—which controls, and dominates the whole, the truth of Love. We must not, in common phrase, put the theological cart before the horse. Retribution must not come first, while love brings up the rear; nor must we put the idea of probation, before that of God’s education of His human family. In a word, to arrive at truth is hopeless, so long as men virtually believe in a quasi-trinity—God and the Devil, and the Will of Man.
I desire in closing these chapters to point out that, in proportion to the excellence of christianity, are its corruptions especially vile—corruptio optimi pessima. These flow mainly from the characteristic unwillingness of theologians to accept as fundamental, the dictates of the moral sense; a reluctance which is the opprobrium of the noble science of theology. Those versed in the great controversy (so imperfectly discussed in these pages) must have noticed how constantly the advocates of endless evil evade the great moral issues. They will not face the question of the utter injustice of visiting finite guilt with an infinite penalty. They prefer to observe a discreet silence. They practically ignore the clear evidence of experts, which shews that moderate penalties are far more effective in repressing crime, and reforming the sinner, than are excessive punishments. They will not meet the arguments, which prove that the true conception of penalty is one, which, recognizing the need of retribution, yet lays the chief stress on its reformatory character. They, in fact, substitute the “Great Taskmaster” for “Our Father,” thereby obscuring, nay, almost denying, the fundamental fact of christianity. They are strangely blind to the vital question of the dualism virtually involved in teaching eternal evil. They do not seem aware that so to teach is to proclaim the defeat of Jesus Christ. They forget how indefensible is a dogma which, in fact, divides God into two Beings, which represents the unchanging One as changing from love here, to wrath hereafter. They have never explained when God Who “so loved the world” has ceased to love it, or how such a change is possible to Him, Who never can change. They attempt no answer when the moral degradation is pointed out, which a heaven involves, where we are to rejoice while our dear ones, or our fellow-men, for ever agonize. They are dumb, when asked to explain how sympathy can expire at the very gate of heaven; or how, if sympathy with the lost survive, the Blessed can know a moment’s true joy. They do not explain how a process of degradation in hell can be endless: how moral rottenness can share the dignity of immortality: or how God can go on punishing His own children for ever, when all hope of amendment is past. They will not face the awful difficulty involved in God’s free creation, in His own image, of myriads whom such a doom as hell to His certain knowledge awaits. They evade the difficulty, no less great, of conceiving a God, Who is Love, as watching to all eternity, unmoved and unloving, the agonies of His own children. They will not tell us why the savage is wrong, who mutilates his body to please his God; and the christian is right, who mutilates his moral sense, his noblest part, by calling those acts good in God which he loathes in his fellow-man.
This list, incomplete as it is, is sufficient to explain why those who would gladly, yet dare not, remain silent. God’s honor is at stake: God’s truth is at stake, when, in place of the Gospel, horrors are taught that especially wound that which is best within us, horrors that contradict alike man’s conscience, primitive christianity, and the express teaching of Holy Scripture.