Cleared as a stage for these contending principles, the universe witnesses their co-existence and antagonism from the beginning to the end of time.
The great drama has two main acts, and the cross of Christ divides them.
The first is a descending period, accumulating the force of evil to a pitch of frightful triumph. The second is an ascending period, at whose goal the last enemy is gone.
In the opening scene of the first, extending from Adam to Moses, both Flesh and Spirit were there; not yet, however, in conflict; but the latter sleeping as a mere susceptibility, and the former having its own way in the instinctive life of man. The state was not one which, had the comparison been made, would have accorded with the Divine will. It was therefore really, though unconsciously, a reign of Sin, as was proved by the presence of Sin's inseparable sign,—the generations died.
The next scene was marked by the introduction of Law. The effects were, to bring into full consciousness the sin before unmarked, and so make it exceedingly sinful; to set man at variance with himself by giving him discernment, and quickening his longing and his fear, without any new spring of force; and actually to multiply transgressions by enumerating and suggesting them.
Hence, at the close of the period, an utter rotting away of human society, and a confirmed moral incapacity of the widest sweep. The spontaneous law of nature and the written law of Moses being equally set at naught by Gentile and by Jew, any promises God might have given fell through, from human breach of the conditions. This was the moment seized for instituting a new creation; the promised Messiah of the Jews being the vehicle of its accomplishment, and the link of connection between the old and the new.
All the Messianic conditions were fulfilled,—the right tribe, the right family, the right personal marks and characteristics. But they were also transcended. Along with the human infirmities and liabilities was present, in this archetype of a new race, the Spirit in such full measure as to constitute his proper self, or at least win that centre by complete victory over nature and temptation and surrender of all he had and was to a Divine Love. As he had baffled and held off Sin, Death had so far no business with him. Yet what was to be done? for there were conflicting claims upon him. Sinless in himself, he was of a sin-doomed type, the likeness of sinful flesh (ὁμοιωμα σαρκος ἁμαρτιας), and therefore liable to the incidents of such a race. This was at least his property by nature. At the same time, he was internally and essentially of the opposite type; the image of God (εικων του Θεου), and so, foreign to the mortal fate, at once imperishable and life-giving. In the person of this double nature, the contest between the antagonists must come to an issue; and while both gain their due, it is the last triumph of evil, the first opening of eternal good. Sin, recognizing in his suffering and mortal frame its own physical counterpart and shadow, strikes him with death, exerting for that end its own "strength" and instrument, "the Law." But in thus carrying its course upon the guiltless, it overreached and spent itself; and the Law, lending itself to such an act, fell into self-contradiction, and disappeared in suicide. He died, therefore, in virtue of what was really foreign to him, as representative of a Sin which was not his, but which yet involved him, as human, in sorrow and mortality. But no sooner had this happened, than his "Righteousness" vindicated its power. He came out of death, which could not keep one so holy; and now, escaped from nationality, and placed aloft as the ideal of the new humanity, his vivifying spirit penetrates the heart of men below, and, taking them on the side of faith and love instead of will, kindles a divine fire that burns up the dead elements of the "old man," and wraps the "heavenly places" and the earthly in a common blaze. By spiritual affiliation with him, his disciples enter the essence of all holy and immortal natures. And so it comes to pass, that, through the incidence of sorrow and death in the wrong place, an objective power of "righteousness" is set free, that reconciles mankind with God, and restores them to sanctity and life. The past and the future of humanity were concentrated, just at the turning point between them, in one person; the natural element, bearing the burden of the past, perished and fell away; the spiritual and divine principle, containing the germ of the future, asserted its inextinguishable life; and from heaven evinced its self-multiplying power, making him only "the first-born of many brethren."
Thus was the second act initiated, which also presented two successive scenes. During the first, the Christ was still in heaven; and his Spirit on earth, having the community of disciples for its organ or "body," stood in presence still of the opposing powers. In the world, it encroached upon the province of evil continually, and reclaimed a citadel here and there. In the Church, if it infused as yet no perfect grace, it left its "earnest" everywhere;—ecstatic gifts and mystic insights; hearts set free from pride and scorn, and brought to the meekness and gentleness of Christ; the self-seeking will surrendered; the anxious conscience led to trust; the tangles of thought smoothed out by a wisdom not its own; and outward distinctions reduced to naught by faith, and hope, and charity. Nevertheless, Satan disturbed the κοσμος still; and even the children of the Spirit were but prisoners yet, and felt the tent of nature but a poor abode. They had yet to wait for their full adoption; when the tabernacle in which they groaned being dissolved, they should be invested with an unwasting frame.
This was reserved for the final scene, the coming and the reign of Christ. At this culminating crisis, the antagonism which in Adam was as yet unfelt from the ascendency of nature, was to die out and cease on the absolute triumph of the Spirit. Physically, death was to disappear; the departed being finally reinstated in life, and the living "clothed upon" with their new garment ere yet they were stripped of the old. Morally, the remnant of inner strife and temptation, that even the faith of saints might leave unappeased, would pass away, aspiration be harmonized with achieving power, and in conscious presence of the objects of deepest affection and reverence the sighs of separation would cease. As soon as resistance was over, and there was nothing to subdue, the separate function of God's redeeming and sanctifying Spirit would find no work; "the kingdom would be resigned to the Father"; "the Son would be subject"; and "the Trinity would cease."
Whether the Apostle's vision of trust was really of universal success, and included even those who should still be found astray at last, is a question difficult of direct determination; but not very doubtful when tried by the general scope of his doctrine. Mr. Jowett's judgment, given in the following passage, truly seizes, we think, the feeling of St. Paul. The author is commenting on the parallel drawn between Adam and Christ, especially on the words, "As by one man's transgression sin entered into the world, and death by sin," and has shown that they do not teach any imputation of Adam's sin.
"It is hardly necessary to ask the further question, what meaning we can attach to the imputation of sin and guilt which are not our own, and of which we are unconscious. God can never see us other than we really are, or judge us without reference to all our circumstances and antecedents. If we can hardly suppose that he would allow a fiction of mercy to be interposed between ourselves and him, still less can we imagine that he would interpose a fiction of vengeance. If he requires holiness before he will save, much more, may we say in the Apostle's form of speech, will he require sin before he dooms us to perdition. Nor can anything be in spirit more contrary to the living consciousness of sin of which the Apostle everywhere speaks, than the conception of sin as dead, unconscious evil, originating in the act of an individual man, in the world before the flood.
"On the whole, then, we are led to infer that in the Augustinian interpretation of this passage, even if it agree with the letter of the text, too little regard has been paid to the extent to which St. Paul uses figurative language, and to the manner of his age in interpretations of the Old Testament. The difficulty of supposing him to be allegorizing the narrative of Genesis is slight, in comparison with the difficulty of supposing him to countenance a doctrine at variance with our first notions of the moral nature of God.
"But when the figure is dropped, and allowance is made for the manner of the age, the question once more returns upon us,—'What is the Apostle's meaning?' He is arguing, we see, κατ ανθρωπον, and taking his stand on the received opinions of his time. Do we imagine that his object is no other than to set the seal of his authority on these traditional beliefs? The whole analogy, not merely of the writings of St. Paul, but of the entire New Testament, would lead us to suppose that his object was not to reassert them, but to teach, through them, a new and nobler lesson. The Jewish Rabbis would have spoken of the first and second Adam; but which of them would have made the application of the figure to all mankind? A figure of speech it remains still, an allegory after the manner of that age and country, but yet with no uncertain or ambiguous interpretation. It means that 'God hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth'; that 'he hath concluded all under sin, that he may have mercy upon all'; that life answers to death, the times before to the times after the revelation of Jesus Christ. It means that we are one in a common sinful nature, which, even if it be not derived from the sin of Adam, exists as really as if it were. It means that we shall be made one in Christ by the grace of God, in a measure here, more fully and perfectly in another world. More than this it also means, and more than language can express, but not the weak and beggarly elements of Rabbinical tradition. We may not encumber St. Paul with the things which he 'destroyed.' What it means further is not to be attained by theological distinctions, but by putting off the old man and putting on the new man."—Vol. II. p. 166.
On surveying the picture of time and the history of humanity that lay beneath St. Paul's eye, the question naturally arises, What is its significance and value for us? Manifestly not those of an absolute guide through the labyrinthine depths of the Divine counsels. "We can scarcely imagine what would have been the feeling of St. Paul, could he have foreseen that later ages would look not to the faith of Abraham in the Law, but to the Epistle to the Romans, as the highest authority on the doctrine of justification by faith; or, that they would have regarded the allegory of Hagar and Sarah, in the Galatians, as a difficulty to be resolved by the inspiration of the Apostle."[67] We cannot say of him less than Mr. Jowett says of a greater than Paul, that in many places "his teaching is on a level with the modes of thought of his age." (I. 97.) The ultimate point towards which all the lines of his expectations converged, and all the history of the past appeared to gaze, we know to have had no existence where he placed it; and as the whole scheme was laid out to lead up to this, it might seem to disappear as the fabric of a dream. Yet it is not so; and the very fear implies that we look in the wrong place for the permanent amid the evanescent in the Gospel. Religion—revealed or unrevealed—is no production of the systematizing intellect,—inspired or uninspired. The workings of constructive thought follow, not lead it. Their function is not creative, but simply adaptive;—to find a settlement and orderly method of being and growing for some new principle of divine life, or for some old principle in an altered scene; to ward off from it uncongenial elements, remove dead matter that chokes it, and surround it with conditions whence it may weave its organism around it and send deep roots into the mellowed soil of humanity. Divine truth is the coming of God to man, pathless and traceless: theologic thought is the retrogressive search of man after God, not by "His ways which are past finding out," and invisible as night, but necessarily by such tracks as the age has opened and another age may close or change.
The manifestation of supernatural realities to the human soul involves so much which is mysterious and unique, that only under great qualification can we compare it with the known mental processes. But were we to conceive of it less by the analogy of scientific discovery, and more by that of artistic apprehension, many an embarrassment would be saved. In a work of high art, you give a Phidias or a Raffaelle his subject; he necessarily takes it from that which stirs the heart of his time, and has a solemnity for his own and you do not find fault that there is mythology in the group, or Mariolatry in the picture. Through the conceptions of one time there speaks a feeling for all; and the representation may be immortal, when the thing represented has long been historical. Nor is it that it only reflects honor on its author's name. It springs from an inner harmony with the very heart of things, and it gives a new expressiveness to life and nature, and leaves behind a self-luminous spot in the world, where there was "gross darkness" before. Hence it looks into the eyes, and finds the soul of one generation after another; and, amid the change of materials and the succession of schools, keeps alive the very sense by which alone "materials" can be wielded and "schools" exist. With just the same result do the accidental and temporary media fall away from early Christianity; disengaging a residuary spirit that takes up the life of all times, touches a consciousness else unreached, and breathes upon the face of things, till the meanings writ there with invisible ink come into clearness before the eye. If it pleases God, instead of spreading at our feet the things to be seen, rather to quicken our vision till we see them where they are, it is revelation all the same, only deeper and more various; not an incident of position, but a power that can migrate in place and time, and read the Providential perspective everywhere. This profounder insight into divine relations it has been the especial office of St. Paul to awaken; and none the less that the flashes by which he gives it are incidental, and do not proceed from the Rabbinic lamp which he holds up to his apocalyptic pictures. Indeed, it is he, in great measure, that has carried Christendom into regions other than his own. His thought is everywhere penetrated with an intense heat, leavened with lightning, that fuses the mass containing it, and runs off alive for other media to hold it. The revelation to him of Christ in heaven set in action all the resources of his nature, and gave them a preternatural tension. The sentiments which found satisfaction, the intimations which came into expression, in his form of doctrine, are now for ever human, fixed in the self-knowledge of men by his faithful words, and sure to transmigrate into other forms, when their first embodiment will hold them no more. And so much is the Apostle's later exposition of his hope divested of what is special to himself, that to all ages since it has struck upon the ear of mourners along with the very toll of the funeral bell; and though often indistinct to their mind, it has jarred with no falsehood on their heart, but sounded like an anthem in the dark,—great music and dim words. It needed only time and events to transmute the doctrine into that of a future life. For it included—in order to meet the case of those who had "fallen asleep"—the conception of a path, through death before the time, "to depart and be with Christ"; only that this was the minor provision, the by-path of the early few. Reopened, however, as it always was when a disciple passed away, it became an evermore familiar track; and experience had but to negative the opposite direction by leaving it untraced, in order that the upward track should become the via sacra of human faith. And can any one doubt what the justification by faith means, when construed into the language of universal experience? It means that God wants more from us, and also less, than the anxious will can do; more, because he wants ourselves; less, because he does not want our niceties of work. It means that we are called to spiritual heights we strive in vain to climb; that the most patient feet, step after step upon the ground, will but stand upon the earthly mountains after all; and it is the fiery chariot of love and trust that must bear us into heaven. It means that there is an affectionateness in God that looks to what we are, rather than what we do, and more readily speaks to us of communion than of obedience. True, this is but another way of saying what our religion elsewhere more ethically expresses, that God requires our perfect service, and yet has forgiveness for what is imperfect. But this statement, though it means also that heaven is open to the pure, intent, and single heart, touches a spring less deep and strong. It divides the integral and living fact, even in regard to God, by describing it as a demand of the whole, and then a subtraction of a part; and so exhibiting it rather as a dissolution of justice, than as truth and wholeness of love. And the Pauline doctrine appeals with far more immediate power to human consciousness, especially to that third of mankind whom a fervid enthusiastic mind renders little accessible to the cold solemnities of duty. And, finally, if we are insensible to the grandeur of St. Paul's teaching as to the universality of the Gospel, it is not more because it is entangled with the question of Jew and Gentile, than because the sentiment has become the common atmosphere of Christendom, and we feel not its freshness, because it blows not on us as a breeze, but only as our breath of life. Let Mr. Jowett remove from us the spell of our indifference.
"Let us turn aside for a moment to consider how great this thought was in that age and country; a thought which the wisest of men had never before uttered, which even at the present hour we imperfectly realize, which is still leavening the world, and shall do so until the whole is leavened, and the differences of races, of nations, of castes, of religions, of languages, are fully done away. Nothing could seem a less natural or obvious lesson in the then state of the world; nothing could be more at variance with experience, or more difficult to carry out into practice. Even to us it is hard to imagine that the islander of the South Seas, the pariah of India, the African in his worst estate, is equally with ourselves God's creature. But in the age of St. Paul, how great must have been the difficulty of conceiving barbarian and Scythian, bond and free,—all colors, forms, races, and languages,—alike and equal in the presence of God who made them! The origin of the human race was veiled in a deeper mystery to the ancient world, and the lines which separated mankind were harder and stronger; yet the 'love of Christ constraining' bound together in its cords those most separated by time or distance; those who were the types of the most extreme differences of which the human race is capable.
"The thought of this brotherhood of all mankind, the great family on earth, not only implies that all men have certain rights and claims at our hands; it is also a thought of peace and comfort. First, it leads us to rest in God, not as selecting us because he had a favor unto us, but as infinitely just to all mankind. To think of ourselves, or our Church, or our age, as the particular exceptions of his mercy, is not a thought of comfort, but of perplexity. Secondly, it links our fortunes with those of men in general, and gives us the same support in reference to our eternal destiny, that we receive from each other in a narrow sphere in the concerns of daily life. Thirdly, it relieves us from all anxiety about the condition of other men, of friends departed, of those ignorant of the Gospel, of those of a different form of faith from our own, knowing that God, who has thus far lifted up the veil, 'will justify the circumcision through faith, and the uncircumcision by faith'; the Jew who fulfils the law, and the Gentile who does by nature the things contained in the law."—Vol. II. p. 126.
What the doctrine of universality in the Divine government was to that age,—as new and transporting,—is in our own "the clear perception of the moral nature of God, and of his infinite truth and justice." This is one of the many deep sayings, sad and wise, quietly dropped by our author in a series of disquisitions, that show, among other things, how well he understands its scope. Everywhere his care is to disengage Christianity from the theological conceptions fastened on it by a coarser age; and, having restored the purity of its moral vision, to enlarge its horizon to the whole extent of modern knowledge and experience. Penetrating beneath the figures natural to St. Paul, the very changes of which show them to be figures, he finds that nothing can be more abhorrent from the Apostle's thought than the doctrine of "satisfaction," which is hunted down, in every form, with exhaustive and indignant logic; that even the analogy of sacrifice "rather shows us what the death of Christ was not, than what it was"; and that to draw us into union with Christ, to fix our eye on his pure self-renunciation as "the greatest moral act ever done in this world," to keep us in a mood that harmonizes our trust in God with our distrust of ourselves, and to suggest more than it can explain of hope and peace to a reconciled world, are the real functions, as of his death, so of all the stages of his existence. This pure type of faith emerges, we venture to affirm, without straining the rights of the interpreter. The rest and freedom it gives to the mind is singularly evident in the fine essay on Natural Religion. The author sets forth from the Christian centre, and, consciously marking where he passes the boundary of the apostolic view, surveys and brings to its religious place the whole outlying realm of nature, history, and life, that was unknown to Scripture, but is fact to us. The great Gentile religions, now discriminated and interpreted, and ascertained to follow certain laws of development; the breadth in philosophies, purer and brighter as history passed on; the Natural Religion, which is the counterpart of these in Christian times, and holds its place by the side of revelation; and the ordinary state of character in morally good but unspiritual persons, (state of "nature" rather than of "grace,")—are reviewed and estimated with a breadth of observation and a delicacy of reflection singularly impressive. Indeed, the literature of religious philosophy affords few nobler productions than this essay. With how true a hand and bright a touch is the following picture drawn! We will but hang it up in our reader's imagination, and leave him to commune with it alone.
"It is impossible not to observe that innumerable persons,—may we not say the majority of mankind?—who have a belief in God and immortality, have nevertheless hardly any consciousness of the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel. They seem to live aloof from them in the routine of business or of pleasure, 'the common life of all men,' not without a sense of right, and a rule of truth and honesty, yet insensible to what our Saviour meant by taking up the cross and following him, or what St. Paul meant by 'being one with Christ.' They die without any great fear or lively hope; to the last more interested about the least concerns of this world than about the greatest of another. They have never in their whole lives experienced the love of God, or the sense of sin, or the need of forgiveness. Often they are remarkable for the purity of their morals; many of them have strong and disinterested attachments, and quick human sympathies; sometimes a stoical feeling of uprightness, or a peculiar sensitiveness to dishonor. It would be a mistake to say they are without religion. They join in its public acts; they are offended at profaneness or impiety; they are thankful for the blessings of life, and do not rebel against its misfortunes. Such men meet us at every turn. They are those whom we know and associate with; honest in their dealings, respectable in their lives, decent in their conversation. The Scripture speaks to us of two classes, represented by the Church and the world, the wheat and the tares, the sheep and the goats, the friends and enemies of God. We cannot say in which of the two divisions we should find a place for them.
"The picture is a true one, and, if we change the light by which we look at it, may be a resemblance of ourselves no less than of other men. Others will include most of us in the same circle in which we are including them. What shall we say to such a state, common as it is to both us and them? The fact that we are considering is not the evil of the world, but the neutrality of the world, the indifference of the world, the inertness of the world. There are multitudes of men and women everywhere who have no peculiarly Christian feelings, to whom, except for the indirect influence of Christian institutions, the fact that Christ died on the cross for their sins has made no difference; and who have, nevertheless, the common sense of truth and right almost equally with true Christians. You cannot say of them, 'There is none that doeth good; no, not one.' The other tone of St. Paul is more suitable: 'When the Gentiles that know not the law do by nature the things contained in the law, these not knowing the law are a law unto themselves.' So of what we commonly term the world, as opposed to those who make a profession of Christianity, we must not shrink from saying, 'When men of the world do by nature whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, these, not being conscious of the grace of God, do by nature what can only be done by his grace.' Why should we make them out worse than they are? We must cease to speak evil of them ere they will judge fairly of the characters of religious men. That, with so little recognition of His personal relation to them, God has not cast them off, is a ground of hope rather than of fear,—of thankfulness, not of regret."—Vol. II. p. 416.
"Now the end of the commandment is Charity, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned."—1 Timothy i. 5.
The Apostle gives us here a very simple formula of Christian perfection. He was not fond of long lists of the virtues, such as the moral philosophers draw up; and though he does sometimes pass through a series, it is with a peculiar result. Look at any book upon human ethics, and you are astonished at the number of qualities that go to make up a good man: the ramifications of duty seem never to terminate: you scarcely know how a soul like ours can hold so much: the further the author proceeds in his enumeration, the less does he seem able to stop,—his divisions breaking into subdivisions, and the subdivisions opening new varieties,—till life appears to pulverize itself under his definitions, and become an infinite complexity of moral detail. St. Paul's enumerations, on the contrary, instead of running down into multitude, run up into unity; each term is apt to be larger than its predecessor; he seems impatient of scattering his exhortations, as if each had a business of its own, and rather forces them as he proceeds into denser compression, till he flings out some term of power that holds them all. The graces with him do not present themselves apart, like garden plants that may be tended and watered one by one; but all on the same organism, as the leaves and the blossoms of a single shrub. He felt that in reality the virtues do not add themselves up and subscribe to the final result of a holy soul: but the one simple soul lives itself out into the direction of all the virtues; and there is a certain mood, a temper, a climate of the soul, which grows everything beautiful at once, and without which, while one adornment is elaborately nursed, the rest will be apt to droop and die. This blessed and productive mood, felt to be one thing, ought to have one name: and the Apostle calls it Charity or Love; and presents it sometimes as the greatest of graces, sometimes as the unity of them all.
But this simple grace is to have a triple source. In the midst of the garden of the Lord the Apostle plants but a solitary tree of life,—his divine and fruitful Charity. Only it must be nursed by the threefold root, of which should any part be wanting, the beauty of the form and the healing of the leaves will soon be gone. "Charity out of a pure heart,—and a good conscience,—and faith unfeigned." The Heart, the Conscience, the Faith, must all be right; and it is no Pauline Charity that is not sustained by concurrence of them all. And, observe the order. In the centre, striking its fibres deepest down into the substance of our world, is the Conscience, the Moral element of life; and on either side, held to their due balance by its intermediate power, we find the Heart,—the fresh human affections,—and the Faith,—the heavenly trust and aspirations,—of our nature. Tenderness and pity on the one hand, devotion and hope on the other, are to hold on to the sense of duty in the midst; and there only will a noble and majestic Love arise, casting no baneful shade upon the earth, and in its branches giving no shelter but to birds that sing the songs of heaven. A charity, therefore, that flows only from the genial heart, that looks with kindly complacency on all things and persons, and with a sort of animal sympathy licks every sore of humanity that lies at its gate;—this is not the "end of the commandment";—for it has in it no moral, no religious element: it condemns nothing; it worships nothing: its eye neither flashes in rebuke, nor lifts itself in prayer: it is sensitive to suffering, not to sin: and, if it can but wipe out pain, will do it even upon guilty terms, and charm away a God-sent remorse as freely as it would an anguish of the innocent. And, on the other hand, a charity that flows only from the sincerity of faith, and limits itself to the fellowship of belief; that feels perhaps for many, but only with a few; whose warmest sympathies are little else than a partnership of antipathies; that transfers to the infinite God the narrowness of its own consecrated circle, reduces the universe to a temple of orthodoxy, and turns the Heaven of Immortals into the May-meeting of a sect;—this also misses "the end of the commandment": for it abuses the true power of religion over life, and flings in the branch of faith only to embitter, instead of sweeten, the waters of natural affection; it blinds and bewilders the moral discernment, overlooks undeniable nobleness, and glorifies not a little meanness; and, applying its perverted admiration to the past as well as the present, crowds the statue-gallery of history with ill-favored and questionable saints, whose features have so grown to the mould and pressure of a creed, that they look like casts of an abstract theology, more than emblems of a living humanity. Take away the wisdom of Conscience; and Charity, surrendered to mere affection, will fail to see sin where it is; or, constricted by Faith, will suppose it where it is not. Both errors will shape themselves into deliberate doctrines, deviating on either side from the simple creed of our moral nature and of Christ. Let us look for a few moments at the central truth on this matter; and then glance from it at the lateral heresies.
The central truth may be described under the phrase, The Personal nature of sin. In affirming this, I mean both that each man is a person, and not a thing; and that his sin is his own, and not another's. If there is anything within the compass of heaven and earth which we can be said to know from ourselves, and to have no need that another should tell us, it is the nature of sin. There is no arrogance,—there is only sorrowful confession,—in protesting that this is a matter on which we cannot be mistaken. It is the nearest of all things to us; the shadow that follows us where we go, and stays with us when we sit; the clinging presence that penetrates the very folds of our nature, and is known only from within, where its fibres strike and draw their nutriment. No external observer, though he have the divination of a prophet or the glance of an archangel, can add one iota to our insight into this sad fact, unless by sharpening our sensibility to feel and interpret it better for ourselves; or by any testimony, any miracle, take one line away of the handwriting of God that burns and flashes on the inner walls of the soul. Here at least our apprehensions are first-hand; and to trust them, to cast out as Satan what tampers with them or contradicts them, is not scepticism, but faith,—not infidelity, but faithfulness to the ever-living Word of God. What the finger of Heaven has written, neither the tapestries of ancient theology nor the varnish of the newest philosophy can permanently hide; the light is alive, and will eat through, clearing its everlasting warning and consuming our perishable work.
What then does this first and last revelation declare human sin to be? In the moments when we know it best,—when we cover our face because we can hide our transgression no more,—when we cannot bear the placid silence of things, and cry in our agony, "Smite us, O Lord, but tell us what we have done,"—does He not answer us, "You have abused your trust; I showed you a better, and you have taken the worse; I drew you by a secret reverence to the nobler, and you have sunk by inclination to the baser; I gave you a will in the image of my own, free to realize the good, and you have yielded yourself captive to the evil; therefore have you a burden now to bear, that none can lift off,—a burden which you will feel it more faithful and wholesome to carry than to lose." This is surely the tone in which the voice of God's Holy Spirit speaks to us when we have grieved it: and if we believe it not, I know not whither we should go; it is the highest oracle of truth below the skies, having authority more positive even than the eye that assures us of the sun above us, and the feet that tell us of the earth beneath.
According to this oracle, then, the essence of the sin lies in the conscious free choice of the worse in presence of a better no less possible. And to make us guilty in its commission three conditions are required;—(1.) Our mind must be solicited by at least two competing propensities; (2.) We must be aware that of these one is worthy and has a claim upon us, and the other not; (3.) It must be left to us to determine ourselves to either of these, and we must not be delivered over by foreign causes to the one or to the other. Take away any of these conditions, and guilt becomes impossible. If the mind has not the option of two propensities, but is possessed of only one, that single impulse, being its entire stock and constituting its only possibility, affords no scope for good or ill, and leaves the being a mere creature of instinct. Or if, while rival passions struggle at his heart, he knows no difference among them, or only this, that some are pleasanter than others, then also he is blameless, though he takes only what he likes. If, finally, while he is drawn by conflicting tendencies and taught to regard some as his temptations, and solemnly set in the midst to choose, the whole appearance of option turns out a semblance and a pretence, and the matter is long ago determined outside of him and now only performs the ceremony of passing through him,—then, as before, he is irreproachable: the strife within him is the illusion of mimic passions wrestling for a dreamer's soul; and while the tragic agony goes on within,—a dance of fiends, a rescue of angels,—he is stretched all the while sleeping on the bed of nature, and cannot wake but to find remorse and responsibility a dream.
Accordingly, whenever we want to make excuse for our wrong-doing, the false plea takes the form of a denial of one of these conditions. "Blame me not," we say, "for I knew of no other course"; or, "I did not think it signified which I did"; or, "I saw it all, but I could not help it." Often the gnawings of self-reproach are felt upon the heart at the very instant that these excuses escape the lips. But sometimes they are the suggestions of sincere self-deception, and proceed from men who are their own dupes; and whenever this is the case, the sense of responsibility is entirely dissipated; remorse is extinguished; the confession of guilt is turned into complaint of a misfortune; and the offender considers himself rather as the injured of nature than the insurgent against God. These excuses then must be wholly excluded, if the sanctity of the moral life is to be preserved. They are the various forms under which the personal nature of sin may be denied. They all assert that the person either did not contain within him the requisite conditions, or was hemmed in by natural preventives, of true obligation. Whoever offers us such pleas is justly regarded as self-condemned, and indeed as presenting a sadder spectacle in his defence than in his transgression. Nor are they improved in their character when they are expanded from excuses of individuals into doctrines of churches; for they explain away the essence of sin, and leave us without intelligible faith in anything holy in heaven or on earth. Thus:—
Whoever maintains that the human heart is invariably wicked, and can think no thought and prompt no act, except such as are odious to God, mistakes the whole nature of moral obligation, and virtually excludes it from the entire system of things. Confront this assertion with the facts of life, and ask what it really means. Do you mean, I would say to its defender, that, whenever two principles contend for the mastery in a man's mind, he always abandons himself to the lower?—that no one, in short, was ever known to resist a temptation? Such a position is surely too bold for the paradox of cynicism itself, in a world where there are many in want that do not steal, and in suffering that do not complain; where a Pericles could administer the revenues of a state, yet die without having added to his little patrimony; and a Socrates could live pure amid corruption, and truthful amid lies, and die the martyr of injustice rather than offend his reverence for law; where not a school nor a family can be found that has not its annals and anecdotes of conscience. You allow, therefore, that victors there have been in many a temptation. Did it make then no difference to the sentiments of God respecting them whether they were victors or vanquished? Was it neutral to him whether they nobly held their post, or basely betrayed it? Then you simply deny the holiness of God; for you allow the greatest contrasts of character on earth, with no responsive feeling, no variety of estimate, in heaven; and make our human discernment, our natural admirations, more susceptible as moral barometers than the Omniscient Perception. Or will you say that, although men differ in moral effort, and withstand temptation in various degrees, and the Infinite Eye sees through the whole history with unerring exactitude, yet the entire scale of human character lies below the point of Divine acceptableness, and in the view of perfect purity is equivalent to mere variety of guilt? Then do you deny again, only with a change of form, the personal nature of sin; for you try the soul by the law of another nature, and not her own,—by a law beyond her ken or beyond her power; and while she is striving to be faithful to her best thought against the seductions of the worse,—in which alone the essence of all goodness dwells,—you tell her that her God despises a conflict so far down, and that "this people that knoweth not his law," however true to their own, "is cursed." What is this but to make Moral Excellence something quite different in heaven and on earth?—not veracity, not justice, not purity of thought, not self-sacrificing love; nothing that here makes our hearts burn within us as we look at the dear face of long-tried friends or saintly strangers, or leaving the Jerusalem of the noisy present pace the quiet road of history, talking by the way with the saviours of nations and the prophets of a world;—not this, but some hidden charm that finds neither place nor answer in our souls; so that the God who loves it leaves us herein without a point of sympathy with him, or a possibility of approach. In that case, he is a Being without moral perfection; for, however you may apply to him a circle of holy names, the things you denote by them are a set of unknown quantities bearing no relation to our types of thought. Or, finally, do you allege that the distinctions of character are not entirely different in heaven and on earth; only that through all their varieties in the natural man there is interfused a certain invariable taint, an irremovable tinge of guilt,—a stain of self, a thought of pride, a want of faith? Even were it so, still, if this be the constant coloring of the soul, pervading it by nature and not personally incurred, it is but a sad condition under which it is given us to work out our problem, and not any unfaithfulness in dealing with it as it comes: it is an inherent incapacity, which, however unlike the beauty of God's holiness, he can no more regard with penal disapproval, than he can hate the deformed or persecute the blind.
Again, whoever teaches that men are, through and through, the creatures of circumstance, with no more voice as to their character than as to their birth, but are the predestined products of nature, working partly within them and partly without,—no less surely insults all moral convictions, and denies the reality of duty. For he abolishes entirely the distinction between a person and a thing; and conceives of every man as a mere growth or development from the physiology of the universe, no more responsible for his place in the scale of excellence, than the plant which, according to its seed and soil, becomes the hyssop of the wall, the lily of the field, or the stately cedar of Lebanon. All moral ideas vanish instantly at the touch of this doctrine; and the solemn language on which Law and Conscience have stamped their venerable impress, and ruled among the nations "by the grace of God," is defaced in the revolutionary mint of fatalism, and made current with the superscription of a pretended equality where all are low, and liberty where none is free. It is quite clear, that, if the soul has no originating causality, but in every step she takes is simply disposed of and bespoken by agencies provided and set in train, without any question asked of her, she can have no duties, she can win no deserts; she can incur no guilt, merit no punishment; she is deluded in her remorse, and suffers a vain torture in esteeming herself an alien from God. All that remains is this: that by natural laws there may be pain consequent, and known to be consequent, on some of the directions which we may take; and it is at our peril that we enter on these paths. But so is it at our peril if we go up in a balloon, or put to sea in a small boat to save a drowning crew. You can get nothing out of this consideration but more or less of Prudence; hope of happiness, fear of suffering, can consecrate nothing as a Duty, but only present it as interest; and if a man chooses to disregard his interest and risk the result, I know not who, in heaven or earth, can tell him with authority that he has no right to do it, or can say more to him than that he is a fool in his folly. Who on these terms could cast himself, in tears of penitence, upon the bosom of Infinite Mercy, and sob out his prayer that he might be reconciled to God? Who would ever tremble beneath the lash of a fiery reproach, and own, as it quivered over him, that there was justice in the terror of its look? Rather must the sinner feel himself the victim of a cruel doom; whom it is as little suitable to punish, as to chastise the patient in fever, or torture the cripple in the street. A doctrine which reduces duty to interest, retribution to discipline, guilt to disease, holiness to symmetry and good health, and God to the neutral source of all things good and ill;—which frightens us with fears we may defy, but awes us with no authority we can revere; which pities iniquity and smiles on goodness, but only in order to patronize enjoyment;—whose faith in human nature is a reliance on the ultimate docility of the wild animal man; and whose worship of God is taken, like a morning walk, for the sake of exercise;—is so alien from the whole spirit of religion, and such an affront to the first instincts of conscience, that it can only escape indignant condemnation by withdrawing altogether into the sphere of natural history, and quitting as a foreign province the domain—whose language it corrupts—of Morals and of Faith.
Finally, those who teach that guilt and merit, with their penalties and rewards, can be transferred, deny in the directest way the personal nature of Sin. That men should find a foreign remedy for their perpetrated wickedness, is not less shocking than that they should trace it to a foreign source. If they know what it is at all, they feel it to be inalienably their own; which none could give them and which none can take away. And nothing is more amazing than that good Christians, who seem truly cast down in humiliation, oppressed with the sense of their short-comings, penetrated with the sadness of baffled aspiration,—and who therefore, one would think, must really have a consciousness of the personality of sin, and know how it is chargeable only on their individual will,—can yet obtain relief by flying, as it is said, to the cross, and persuading themselves that the evil has been stayed and cured by transactions wholly outside themselves, and belonging to the history of another being. What can possibly be meant by the statement that Christ has borne the punishment, some eighteen hundred years ago, of your sins and mine,—of people non-existent then, and therefore non-sinful? Can the punishment precede the sin? Can it be inflicted and gone through before it is even determined whether the sin will be perpetrated at all? Or can merely potential sin, which may never become actual, be dealt with at ages distant, and its accounts be settled ere it arise? If so, what is the death of Christ but the provisory accumulation of a fund beforehand, ready to be drawn upon as the everlasting "treasure of the Church," for the free discharge of guilty debts and the release of divine obligations? And in what respect does this differ from the Roman Catholic doctrine,—except that the treasure is at the discretion of no chartered sacerdotal company, but is open on more popular and looser terms?
Moral relations, by their very nature, exclude all vicarious agency; you cannot fall, you cannot recover, by deputy: the ill that haunts you is the insult you have put on the divine spirit in your heart, and it is as if you were alone with God. An interposing medium can as little divert the retribution, as it can intercept the complacency of the Infinite and Holy Mind. What more fearful charge could you bring against any government, than to say that its penalties may be bought off? A judge who accepts the voluntary sufferings of innocence in acquittance of the liabilities of guilt, shocks every sentiment of justice, and does that which the worst judicial caprice would never dare to imitate. A law that does not care whether the right persons feel its retribution, provided it gets an equivalent suffering elsewhere, is an affront to the most elementary notions of right. And an offender who can welcome his escape by such device, permits his moral perceptions to be blinded by personal gratitude, and is content to profit by a transaction which it would fill him with remorse to repeat upon his own children.
A Mediator may do much indeed to reconcile my alienated mind to God. He may personally rise before me with a purity and greatness so unique as to give me faith in diviner things than I had known before, and by his higher image turn my eye towards the Highest of all. He may show me how, in the sublimest natures, sanctity and tenderness ever blend, and so touch the springs of inward reverence that, in my returning sympathy with goodness, all abject and deterring fears are swept away. He may direct upon me, from the hall of trial or the cross of self-sacrifice, the loving look that prostrates the impulses of passion and the power of self, and awakens the repentant enthusiasm of nobler affections. He may renew my future; but he cannot change my past. He may sprinkle my immediate soul with the wave of regeneration; but he cannot drown the deeds that are gone. From present sinfulness he may recover me; but the perpetrated sins—though he be God himself in power, unless he be other than God in holiness—he cannot redeem. These have become realized facts; and none can cut off the entail of their consequences: whatever the Divine Law has avowedly annexed to them will develop itself from them with infallible certainty. The outward sufferings by which God has stamped into the nature of things his disapprobation of sin, and made it grievous here and hereafter, stand irrevocably fast, clinging to guilt as shadow to body, as effect to cause. This debt of natural penalty is one which must be paid to the utmost farthing; by penitent and impenitent, by the reconciled and the unreconciled alike: miracle cannot cancel, nor mediator discharge it. In this sense,—of rescue from the penal laws of God,—I know of no remission of sins; nor would Christians have retained so heathenish a notion, had they not frightfully exaggerated, in the first instance, the retributions of God by making them an eternal vengeance; and so created a necessity for again rescinding the fierce enactments of their fancy, that hope and return might not be quite shut out. It is only in man, however, and not in God, thus to do and undo. His word, whether of warning or of promise, is Yea and Amen; and his great realities will march serenely on, and, heedless of our passionate deprecations and fictitious triumphs, rebuke our unbelief of their veracity.
But while the past can never be as though it were not, the present may lie in the shelter of reconciliation, and the future in the light of boundless hope. The outer burden we have incurred we may still have to bear; but once brought by Divine conversion to an inner sympathy with God, and seeing by his light rather than our own, we can suffer our wounds with a patient shame, and scarcely feel their anguish more. The averted face of the Infinite has turned round upon us again; and the pure eyes look into us with a mild and loving gaze, which we can meet with answering glance, and feel that we are at one with the universe and reconciled with God.
"Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, nay, but
rather division."—Luke xii. 51.
Such was the account which the Saviour himself gave of a religion whose promise was hailed by angels as an occasion, not only of "glory to God in the highest," but of "peace on earth, and good-will to men." The contradiction between the two passages is so obviously merely of a verbal nature, that it can perplex only the blind interpreter who penetrates no further than the letter of the sacred volume. I should only be giving utterance to your own spontaneous reflections, my friends, were I to tell you that my text speaks, not of the design, but of the consequence, of the dissemination of the Gospel; and that it indicates no more than a prophetic knowledge on the part of Christ of the diversities of sentiment and feeling which would spring from the diffusion of his religion. This prophetic knowledge, however, it does clearly indicate; and this is a fact of no mean importance. The unbeliever objects to Christianity, and the Roman Catholic to Protestantism, the endless catalogue of discordant opinions which have resulted from their prevalence; and to both we are furnished with one reply. This infinite diversity indicates no failure in our system; it is not an unexpected effect which startles and alarms us; it was foreseen by the Author of our religion, and announced by him as the necessary consequence of the genuine preaching of his Apostles. And though he had this evil (if such it be) full in view, he did not retreat from the office he had assumed, nor feel it at variance with his deep and tender philanthropy, to implant among mankind a faith that should break up their united mass into a thousand repulsive groups.
He must then have known that his Gospel would carry with it blessings which this seeming disadvantage would not cancel,—blessings far surpassing the evils of division,—a peace which no jarrings of controversy could disturb,—a good-will that could triumph over the alienations of party. Were it my object, it would be easy to show that the distribution of the Christian world into sects has achieved incalculably more good than it has inflicted injury; that the rudest conflicts of a militant theology are preferable to the hollow peace of universal thraldom; that the fluctuating surface of human opinion, with all its restless lights, is a fairer object than its dark and leaden stagnation; that discussion multiplies the chances of truth, diffuses the thirst for knowledge, leads forth reason from the mist, converts prejudice into conviction, and gives to a dead faith a moral and operative power. It would be easy to show that our religion, especially since it has issued from the cloister into the light of day, has accomplished a vast amount of good, with which no controversy has been able to interfere; that it has imparted nobler sentiments of duty, given to conscience a more majestic voice, raised the depressed portions of society; that it has enabled moral refinement to keep pace with the intellectual advancement of mankind; that it has given modesty to the sublimest exercise of reason, by erecting towering and eternal truths beyond whose shadow reason cannot fly. It would be easy to anticipate the time when the benign principles of Christianity shall mellow down the ruggedness of party feeling, and extract the lingering selfishness that poisons discussion with its bitterness; when the unrestricted and disinterested love of truth shall no longer be an empty fiction; when the differences between mind and mind will be but so many converging paths by which mankind, with one heart and one speed, hasten to the same goal of certainty. But it is not my object to insist on the advantages of controversy, or to predict its future triumphs; but rather to warn against some of its dangers, and to suggest a few thoughts which may throw light on the duties of Christians in an age so controversial as ours. To me, reflecting on the principles of the Association at whose anniversary I speak, no topic seems more appropriate. Our grand uniting principle is, the rejection of all creeds and human formularies of faith, and a simple adherence to the sacred volume, as being "able," without comment or interpretation, "to make wise unto salvation." We think confessions enough have been tried, and been found wanting; that every such attempt to produce uniformity is utterly chimerical, and an impotent rebellion against the laws of the human mind. Believing then that unanimity is one of the weakest dreams of the visionary and the fanatic, we expect to see diversity of sentiment among Christians; we cannot be surprised, and ought not to be displeased, to see the religious world full of the activity of discussion. But since we agree to abandon mankind to their divergencies of opinion, it is peculiarly incumbent on us to consider what new moral aspect society assumes, when distributed into differing denominations, and what new duties arise in an age of doctrinal debate.
I. It is the duty of Christians to remember how many are their points of union.
Is our religion, my friends, a matter of the intellect only,—a mere mine of inexhaustible speculation? I grant that it is in perfect unison with the dictates of enlightened reason, and that it administers the noblest stimulus and worthiest employment to the faculties of the mind. But are not its ultimate dealings with the affections? Does it not present to us new objects of love, new scenes of hope, a new system of desires? Does it not unlock the springs of human feeling, and pour the full tide of emotion upon the soul? What else can so melt in penitence, so solemnize with awe, so prostrate in fear, so enkindle with joy? What else can impart such majestic power to human will to trample in the dust peril and anguish and temptation, to conquer the solicitations of self-love, and pursue with meek inflexibility deserted and solitary ways of duty? For the greatest triumphs of our faith we must go where it is matched with the passions of the heart, the impulses of unregulated nature, and see how it prunes their exuberance, enriches their sterility, purifies their pollutions, expands their littleness, refines their ruggedness. Now these influences are common to every form of Christianity; its appeals to the affections are not uttered in the vocabulary of sectarianism, but in the universal language of the human heart. Some may prefer to deck the form of our religion in the gorgeous colors of an imposing ritual; some may throw round it the ample folds of mystery; others may love rather the grace of its primitive simplicity; but beneath all these varieties the same living figure breathes, the same radiant features smile. Where is the system of Christianity that does not present to our affections an Infinite Being, who has shadowed forth his invisible glories in the splendors of the universe, who rolls the silent wheels of time, whose presence, felt in other worlds, is secretly shed around each human home, who traces the tear of grief and lights up the smile of peace, who has an eye on every heart, and carries on his parental discipline in scenes beyond our vision and without an end? Where is the system of Christianity which does not lead us to the Saviour as the image of the invisible God, as the bright reflection of his character, and the noblest assurance of his love,—which does not trace to Jesus innumerable moral blessings, and call us to reverence him for guidance amid the intricacies of duty, for light in the chamber of grief, for power of endurance amid the struggles of suffering nature, and prospects of attractive grandeur beyond the grave? Where is the system of Christianity which does not cast upon this state the shadow of an eternal tribunal,—which does not associate with sin the horrors of the outer darkness, and impart an infinite value to every pure tendency of the soul, by inviting virtue to a never-ending progression replete with ineffable joy? What Christian has not enshrined in his memory and his admiration the most beautiful and touching portions of the volume of our faith? Is there a Christian parent that can read the invitation of the benevolent Jesus, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not," without a heart of love to the Heavenly Teacher, without a purified conception of that kingdom which infantine docility alone can enter, without an uplifting of prayer that no rude world may ever brush from the mind of his child the morning dews of his innocence? Is there a Christian sister that has not blessed the Divine Teacher, who, himself touched by the sorrows that he quelled, restored the lost Lazarus to his weeping and defenceless home? Is there a Christian mother who has not lingered with the bereaved Mary around the cross, wondered at her awful sorrows, and thought how in the watches of the night memory would bring back upon her ear that last appeal, "Woman, behold thy son"? The tears which flow at passages like these, the admiration with which they burden the heart, the images of moral loveliness with which they fill the imagination, are not the exclusive possession of any sect; they are the unrestricted boon of God to the human soul. In private, then, we all ponder the same book, gather from it the same refreshing influence, the same impressions of duty, the same impulses to prayer. And on our Christian Sabbath, while we tread the threshold of differing temples, are they not all dedicated to Him "who dwelleth not in temples made with hands," and regardeth not their trivial distinctions? While the worshipping multitudes utter a various language and ill-harmonizing thoughts, are they not addressing a Being to whom language is but a breath, and human thought but like an infant's dream, and who looks only to that heart of love that animates them both? It is an exhilarating thought, that though on that sacred day Christians may be separated by land and seas, gathered around myriads of sanctuaries, and speaking in a thousand tongues, their praises blend like kindred fires as they rise, and burst into the courts of God, one brilliant flame of incense from the universal shrine of the human heart.
These, my fellow-Christians, are thoughts which we should cherish, to convince us how much, amid all our diversities, we have in common; to show us that the best, the living portion of our faith, is others' as well as our own; and to soften those strange animosities that embitter our weak tempers, and enfeeble the heavenly ties that encircle the whole family of God. If there be any truth in the remark of a philosopher, that the essence of friendship is to have the same desires and aversions, how much ground have all Christians for mutual love! Widely as their speculations may diverge, the great concern of all is with God, the Infinite Father; with Christ, the commissioned prophet, the merciful redeemer, the inspired teacher, the perfect model, the heavenly guide; with eternity, the seat of our deepest and most permanent interests, the receptacle of our lost friends, the grave of virtuous sorrow, the home of the tossed and faithful spirit. No one can live habitually under the influence of these grand and affecting objects, and turn from them to condescend to the littleness of a polemical temper. They will impart their own greatness to his soul, and give him that best of powers,—the power over himself. Such a one may use the pen of controversy without fear.
II. But I confess that the contemplation of these points of union would impart little peace to our minds, or serenity to our tempers, if at the same time we believed that the differences of our faith would follow us into the eternal future, and determine our condition there. I therefore observe, in the second place, that, amid all our controversies, it is of moment that we should remember the moral innocence of mental error. This principle, my friends, seems to me to be intimately connected with our right of private judgment. We might claim for men the privilege of free investigation, and affix no temporal rewards or punishments to any system; yet this would be but a worthless boon, if we upheld over any creed the penal menace of eternity. We should thus only transfer the bribe from men's interests to their fears; we should push our exclusion from earth, only to give it a vaster theatre in heaven. As many Christians, not otherwise disposed to be narrow in their spirit, have some lingering doubts respecting this primary principle of Christian charity, suffer me to say a few words with a view to establish the perfect innocence of mental error. The exclusionist rests the burden of his argument on one text, which, unhappily for Christian love, has been left somewhat elliptical in its expression. "He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved; he that believeth not, shall be damned." Believeth what? Transubstantiation, says the Catholic; miraculous conversion, says the Wesleyan; the vicarious atonement, replies the Calvinist; the Trinity, says the Athanasian Creed. Every one has an anathema for the opponent of his favorite tenet; and the still, small voice of charity is swept away by the conflicting winds of controversy, and dies unheard. Let us see whether our Heavenly Father will not permit us to open those gates of mercy which others have so sternly closed.
It is not necessary for our present purpose to inquire what are the salvation and condemnation of which the passage in question speaks. It may be conceded without injury to our argument, that they have reference to the destinies of a future world. Every reader of Scripture will acknowledge that the unbelief which our Saviour menaces, is unbelief in his Gospel, as preached by his Apostles, and confirmed by visible miracles;—it is a rejection of Christianity. From this it would seem clear, that no form under which the religion of Christ is professed, however erroneous it may be, can be comprised within the sentence of condemnation. But the argument of the exclusionist is this:—My own system is, in my view, the only one that is identical with the Gospel; therefore I must believe that those who reject my system are exposed to the penalties annexed to the rejection of the Gospel. It is surprising that so many should fail to detect the fallacy of this reasoning. Compare the case which our Saviour is supposing with that of the man who, in preferring one profession of Christianity, rejects all others; and you will find that there are two most momentous points of distinction,—the motive of the rejecter is different, and the thing rejected is different.
What can be more obvious, than that our Saviour refers to the hearer's intentional rejection of the Gospel,—a rejection of his own Christianity, not of his neighbor's. When punishment is held forth as the consequence of any act, is it not always implied that the act must be intentional? Is it not an understood principle of every law, human and divine, that a deed of accident and inadvertence is exempted from the penalties which, were it designed, it would deserve? To condemn for murder the man who through mistake should administer a poisonous draught for a restorative, would be as just as to put the erring believer and the wilful unbeliever on the same level. To charge this enormous immorality on God, would be the height of impiety. Widely as the professing Christian may err, remote as his faith may be from the truth as it is in Jesus, his intent is to believe; he yields his assent, no less heartily than his wiser brother, to the evidence which God has placed before him; he only mistakes what it is which that evidence proves; he reverences, no less than others, the authority which Jesus claims; but he does not discern all the truths which that authority establishes. Strange would it be, brethren, if God, who in all other cases looketh at the heart, should in this look at the understanding only.
But perhaps it will be urged that the same perversion of mind which Jesus condemns is displayed by the modern inquirer, who does not discern in the Gospel the great essentials of Christianity; that his disbelief in them, in short, is not wholly involuntary. A few words to this objection.
I admit that faith is a compound result of the will and the understanding; connected indeed most obviously with the latter, but determined more remotely by causes having their seat in the former. In the process of investigation, the last step, of weighing arguments and making up the mind, is undoubtedly involuntary. When the evidence is once placed before the inquirer, no energy of will can repel the conclusion which is forced upon the judgment. When, however, we perceive that the very same reasoning produces different results on different persons, that one man is forcibly impressed by an argument which to another appears weak and worthless, it becomes necessary to account for these varieties in the effects of evidence. And there can be no doubt that the perception of truth is very materially influenced by the moral condition of the mind. How powerful are the arguments in favor of the Gospel derived from the moral beauty and symmetry of the system, from the originality and loftiness of our Saviour's character, from the adaptation of his religion to the wants of the human mind under all its countless varieties! And yet this species of evidence will be wholly without effect on those whose minds are destitute of moral sensibility and refinement. Moreover, it is notorious that the sanguine are always apt to believe what they hope, the timid what they fear; and the hopes and fears of conscience will exert this influence on belief no less than any other. Prejudice which might be conquered, indolence which ought to be shaken off, passions which blind and corrupt the judgment, uneasy conscience which alienates the desires from God, all these may exercise a powerful moral sway over the faith; and for the influence of these every man is certainly accountable.
But at the same time there is no reason to doubt that God has created us with intellectual differences which are wholly involuntary, and which must tend to fix the determinations of the judgment. There are some men who, from their earliest years, seem incapable of admitting a truth without double the evidence with which others would be satisfied. Who then among us is to determine what mind is most correctly strung? Is the man who admits a proposition on one degree of evidence to condemn his brother who requires two? And is it credible that God will accept of none but him whom he has himself placed at the only true point in the gradation? Impossible! As well might we say that his heaven is closed against the insane or the deformed.
It appears then, my friends, that belief flows from causes partly moral, partly intellectual. But can any human eye, I ask, discern in what proportion they are mingled in any one's faith? Dare you say of your differing brother, that he differs from a prevailing depravity of heart, and not from constitutional causes? If not, then is there no human tribunal to which opinion may be called. We are not forbidden to love any fellow-creature, however remote his views from ours. As we are unable to discover how far diversities of sentiment flow from the will, we are bound to treat them all as if they were entirely involuntary, and to leave to the Searcher of hearts the award of approbation or displeasure.
Again, the faith rejected in the case which our Lord condemns, is not the same that is renounced by the erring Christian. What is the Christianity, the disbelief of which is pronounced by Jesus to be so dangerous? Is it the Christianity of Luther, of Calvin, of Arius, of Wesley? No, but the Christianity of the Apostles, which they were "to preach to every creature." Now in this all professing Christians believe; and from it they derive those views which, when once severed from their origin and entering the province of human reason, so rapidly diverge from each other. It is in vain to urge that all these systems, contradictory as they are, cannot coincide with revelation; and that there must, therefore, be some that do not constitute Christianity. The Gospel itself, considered as a revelation, bears the same relation to all the rival creeds whose credit hangs on its authority; like the beam of the balance, which determines the scale neither way. Let me not be mistaken, my friends. I mean not to say that all systems of Christian faith are equally true, or equally accordant with the sacred writings; but that their relative truth is undetermined by the authority of revelation, and dependent on the correctness of the reasoning by which they are deduced from Scripture. All begin with reverencing the Gospel; and this screens them from our Saviour's condemnation. They then employ themselves in reasoning on the sacred writings that lie before them; and if they then separate from each other, it is through the same fallibility of mind which multiplies opinions on other subjects, and for which assuredly God will bring no man into judgment. The various systems of Christian faith are but the diverging streams which flow from the fountain of living waters: some may take a straighter, others a more devious way; some may receive a scantier, others a more copious admixture from a different source; some may roll over a purer, others over a fouler bed; but all contain the healing current which gushed from the smitten rock, and all, I doubt not, are bearing onwards to meet at last in the ocean of eternal rest.
Why then, my brethren, must we be handling terrors which it is not ours to distribute, and sending forth into the dark these fearful guesses at judgment? Why must our feeble hand be playing with the lightning, and letting loose the hurricane? Rather let us imitate God. Does he brand the heretic with his curse? Does he pour the elements in fury around his dwelling? Does he set a mark on him, that any one finding him may slay him? See, the sunshine still smiles upon his roof; the shower still refreshes his field; the charities and hopes of life are still poured upon his heart. And cannot we cheer with our human love the creature whom our Father disdaineth not to bless? Are we so sinless as to stand apart in our holiness from the being with whom the Majesty of heaven can condescend to dwell, whom Infinite Purity stoops to cherish? At least let us wait for the disclosure of those secret counsels which we dare to scan. It will be time enough to hate when God condemns, to shun when God driveth away. Be assured, my brethren, no soul ever perished for too much charity. "Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect."