«my ^ BX 98A1 .A43 1849 Allen, Joseph Henry, 1820- 1898. Ten discourses on orthodoxy DISCOUESES TEN DISCOURSES ON ORTHODOXY, BY JOSEPH HENRY ALLEN, PASTOR OF THE UNITARIAN CHURCH, WASHINGTON. BOSTON: \VM. CROSBY AND H. P. NICHOLS. WASHINGTON: TAYLOR AND MAURY. 1849. ^p-^/ff-d- Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by Wm. Crosby and H. P. Nichols, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: METCALF AND COMPANY, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. NOTE. In revising these Discourses for the press, I have made very few references to texts and authorities, desiring to occupy the plain and well-known ground of the fundamental questions of theological contro- versy, and relying more on reason than on erudi- tion to confirm my statements. It would be easy to give an appearance of the latter, far beyond my claims. Orthodoxy I regard, not merely as a false or defective system, but as standing in the way of a more broad and positive conception of Chris- tianity. Its actual existence and power is my rea- son for treating it as an individual thing, or for treating of it at all. And I have preferred that this volume should be a summary (and even popu- lar) criticism of the present condition of theological speculation, and a preparatory rather than a final statement of the Christian spiritual doctrine. J. H. A. Washington, D. C, April, 1849. CONTENTS. -♦- DISCOURSE I. PACK ORTHODOX THEORY OF CHRISTIANITY 1 DISCOURSE II. GENERAL OBJECTIONS TO ORTHODOXY 21 DISCOURSE III. THE TRINITY . 43 DISCOURSE IV. THE DEITY OF CHRIST 69 ' DISCOURSE V. THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT 89 DISCOURSE VI. DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE .113 VUl CONTENTS. DISCOURSE VII. ETERNAL PUNISHMENT 137 DISCOURSE VIII. 4 SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY • 159 DISCOURSE IX. HISTORY AND POSITION OF ORTHODOXY 183 DISCOURSE X. LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY .• 204 DISCOURSE I ORTHODOX THEORY OF CHRISTIANITY. THIS I CONFESS UNTO THEE, THAT AFTER THE WAV WHICH THEY CALL HERESY, SO WORSHIP I THE GOD OF MY FATHERS. -;- ActS xxiv. 14. It is my intention, in these Discourses, to examine several of the principal doctrines of Orthodoxy, so called, and to discuss their claim to our belief and respect. I shall have occasion to dissent from many things taught in the popular Christianity of our day, and to protest as strongly as I can against what I think false and hurtful in it ; but I shall hope to do it with proper feeling and Christian courtesy. Our religious belief lies at the bottom of all our belief. Let us deal with it frankly and sincerely, — never shrinking from just criticism, nor refusing to give a reason for the faith that is in us. And while I shall examine with the most perfect freedom into the prevalent theology of the churches about us, I trust I shall say nothing in an irreverent and scornful spirit. Firm believer myself in a Christian faith at heart, a Christian life in truth and love, wherein all believers are reconciled to God through his spirit and 1 ORTHODOX THEORY and his Son, I cannot, if I understand myself, say any thing to distress and alienate any religious mind, or widen the breaches of the Christian Church, or un- settle in any man's mind that fundamental faith. What I ask is a fair hearing from those, if they be here, who differ from me ; pledging myself to respect as sacred the sentiment of religious reverence in every bosom, and to perform my task as a high duty which I owe to Christ and the Church. My obligation is first to those who have so long sustained here a dissenting religious body, — to vindicate their position, and set forth the views and convictions which have sustained them thus far ; next, to our religious community, among whom it is the privilege and duty of my office to pro- claim' the high and animating faith of a Liberal Chris- tianity. It is due to both, to give an account of our belief, and to state the reasons which justify us in rejecting creeds more popular than ours, and sustaining an independent church. The word Orthodoxy I use neither for praise nor blame. Its meaning is simply "right opinion" ; that is, that opinion, or set of opinions, which is held to be right by the majority in any time and place. Its op- posite is not falsehood, but dissent, or liberalism, or heresy ; and it was in opposition to the popular belief, or Jewish orthodoxy, of his day that Paul says, " After the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers." There are orthodoxy and heresy in other things as well as in this ; and you will readily recall them in many of our common forms of speech. We apply these terms to what is received and held established, or, on the other hand, novel and innovating ; to methods of art and science ; to maxims of trade ; OF CHRISTIANITY. 6 to political opinions ; to every thing where there is a tendency to split into two parties, — the holders-fast and the movers-on, the men of habit and the men of theory, conserv^ative and reformer, quietist and radical, old school and new school. There is the orthodox (or received) creed of democracy, and the heretical. There are old school and new school Calvinists ; ex- treme right and left in every sect ; even Unitarian " or- thodoxy " matched against heresies without a name. So the distinction is a very simple and common one, implying neither reproach nor blame on either side, only difference of mental habit. As applied to religious be- lief, we use the word Orthodoxy to designate the prev- alent system of modern Protestant theology, — that which we find in most of the neighbouring churches, — that which is sometimes called Evangelical Christianity. This is what I have taken in hand to consider. And my object in the present Discourse is to give as fair and unprejudiced a statement as I can of what it is. One would not spend his time and strength in fighting in the dark ; and so, to prevent any misunderstanding, I be- gin with an exposition of it. The reasons for rejecting it shall appear afterwards. Of the degrees or forms in which we find it, the first is that of the sentiment and religious feeling simply. It takes for granted the received opinions, and makes them the basis of devotion and faith. It raises no questions, and harbours no doubts. It believes implicitly what is taught in the creed or hymn, without scruple or cavil. It finds no difficulty in any of the ordinary re- ligious forms of speech, — no difficulty in the Trinity, the Atonement, the double nature of Christ, the awful penalty denounced on unbelief, — simply because the ORTHODOX THEORY intellect deals not with them, but only the heart. It finds joy and peace in believing, though it be the most astounding and incomprehensible dogmas. Religion comes home to the faith and love, and wakens no troublesome process of reason. With Orthodoxy such as this, we have no controversy, no quarrel. God forbid we should seek to uproot the affectionate faith of the heart in any one, or tear away from the living vine even the rudest trunk, about which its tendrils may be clasped. Again, there is the mystic and speculative Orthodoxy, — which has got beyond the bounds of distinct and logical thought, and deals with vague conceptions and metaphysical problems, and clothes its fancy in the garb of the popular belief. German mystic and American transcendentalist profess a sort of trinity, and bor- row some of the phraseology of Christian dogmatics ; but though their creed may wear the livery and speak in the dialect of the churches, it has not the same mean- ing. The churches disown it ; and I have nothing either way to do with it. As I shall, perhaps, have occasion to show in several examples, it is only one of the forms of belief held by many Unitarians, — only one sort of heresy, disguised in the formularies of the Church. But besides these two, the Orthodoxy of sentiment and that of metaphysics, there is a third, — the Ortho- doxy of sects and creeds. It is this with which I have now to do. I shall deal with it simply as an intellectual system, demanding men's assent, and offer- ing to the intellect its proofs. It claims to be a true account, the only true account, of the method of sal- vation, as shown in Christianity. It claims to rest on OF CHRISTIANITY. Scriptural authority, and to give demonstration from the record for every assertion and every dogma. It claims to be the system or '' plan of salvation " existing in the mind of God before the world was ; implied in every word of the primitive history of mankind ; tes- tified by witnesses from age to age ; vouched by the whole vast apparatus of prophecy and inspiration and miracle ; displayed in the life of Christ, and declared from first to last by his apostles ; the only system safe to believe and know ; perfectly and infallibly true ; the one and only method by which man could have been saved from sin and the horrors of eternal death ; to deny which is to be utterly and for ever lost. I beg it may be distinctly borne in mind, that this system is all that I have just described^ or else that, as Orthodoxy, it is nothing. There is no midway be- tween these two extremes. Either it is the infallible and only saving truth, or it is merely one out of numer- ous methods of Scriptural interpretation, — one out of a thousand forms of human speculation. Either belief in it is absolutely necessary to save us from God's wrath and curse, or it has no other merit than as it commends itself to one and another mind seeking truth. Either the most devoted love to God, the purest self-sacrificing love of man, the utmost earnest- ness of spirit and integrity of life, — honor that shrinks from the smallest stain, and piety that lifts the soul in sweetest intercourse to heaven, — all are nothing, are a mockery and false show, an ignorant and unacceptable offering, without the addition of this form of faith ; or rnan can demand, and God has enjoined, nothing more than sincerity of mind and integrity of life, leaving the form of opinion to each man's unfettered choice. 1* ORTHODOX THEORY This or that system of belief it may be a higher priv- ilege to have, — a better basis of character, more con- ducive to strength and spirituahty of soul ; but this is not the sort of merit on which the claim of Orthodoxy rests. It allows no comparison, it makes no compro- mise. It is nothing, or it is all. If I have it, I may trust, humbly indeed, but still hopefully, in the grace of God for acceptance and salvation. If I have it not, no prayer can be heard, no penitence available, no purity of life a ground of pardon or hope, no tes- timony of the conscience any thing but a flattery and a lie. We may live and work and pray and do deeds of charity together, but the grave is an eternal barrier. No common trust, no heavenly companionship, in the world beyond, can be between the heretic and the true believer. To my terrified spirit at the last great hour, to the stricken hearts of my believing friends, there is no hope for me, but the fearful looking forward to infinite anguish and the flames of eternal fire, from the vindictive justice of Almighty God ! Let it be remembered, then, that the system of Ortho- doxy taught in most of our churches says or implies all this, in virtue of what it claims to be. All this tremendous alternative is taken for granted in every argument and appeal. Listen to the language of creeds, and sermons, and tracts, and popular religious treatises, and you will find I have only understated its terrible significancy. Softened down by this man's gentle temper, refined and spiritualized by that man's sweet and devout heart, it is yet by implication all that I have said. As a system it is imperative, absolutely. It asks and gives no quarter. To accept it is to share a hope of life. To reject it is certain and unending OF CHRISTIANITY. death. If Orthodox teachers shrink from stating this alternative, they are false to the profession of their creed. Either they dare not confess its full meaning, or else their gentler feeling has compelled them, wiih- out knowing it, to desert that creed, and stand upon liberal ground. Now what is this system of belief, which offers so absolute and haughty an alternative .'' I shall endeavour to state it clearly and distinctly, without prejudice or distortion, while T trace it unflinchingly to its com- plete results. Its only merit is as a system. Like an arch, it must be complete or it is nothing. Shake one stone, and it all falls together. It has been con- structed and defended by minds of iron logic, — by men who boldly followed out their propositions, step by step, confident of the first principles they assumed, and recoiling at no consequence they were conducted to. We respect their mental power, while we dissent from their creed. We admire their intellectual honesty and courage, but steadily refuse and disclaim the results they reached and so resolutely proclaimed. The system called Orthodox or Evangelical is in the main that taught by Calvin, and is comprised essentially in six leading points of faith. Many others are included in it besides ; but they are subordinate, and will come up incidentally. These make the framework ; and each ought to be examined on its own particular merit, while still regarded as an essential feature of the scheme. I propose to take them up, one by one, and consider them in order, with such method and fulness as they deserve. They are, the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, the Vicarious Atonement, Depravity of Human Nature, Eternal Punishment, and the Infallible Authority of the Scriptures. 8 ORTHODOX THEORY Each of these six is necessary to all the rest. With- out the Trinity, there would be no basis for the system, — no theory of the Divine nature to which it might correspond. Without the Deity of Christ, the system is stripped of its dignity, the work of redemption takes a wholly different meaning, and the whole great scheme resolves itself into a barren juggle of words. The Atonement is needful to the system, because it is the system, — the nucleus, the key-sione, the main idea, to which all the rest are adjuncts. The native depravity of man, exposing him to God's just curse, explains the reason why such a work of redemption was called for. Endless penalty annexed to unbelief is the only motive strong enough to command Christ's, sacrifice on the one part, or man's assent on the other. And, finally, the complete inspiration of the Scriptures furnishes the only possible test and the only sufficient proof. As T have said, its merit as a system lies in its com- pleteness, — in its being fully rounded out and compact in every part. It is this more than any other thing which makes its recommendation to a certain class of minds, and which has bound it so firmly in the intel- lectual habits of a great portion of the Protestant Church. It will be my duty, in respect both to the claims it presents and the hold it has on our com- munity, to examine it step by step, and give in detail our reasons for rejecting it. But first I must give a succinct view of it as a whole, showing how its main features are developed one by one from a few leading statements or assertions ; and next submit some general considerations, touching it as a whole and not in parts. These two points will occupy the present and the fol- OF CHKISTIAIVUTY. lowing Discourse. In these I shall not speak of the proofs, — leaving them till I come to particulars, — meanwhile contenting myself with a more general and simple exposition. It will not make much difference what point we start from, so only it be in that circle of ideas. According to the character and habit of our mind, we might begin with the character of God, or the condition of man ; with the nature of evil, or the history of the Fall ; with the outward proof of misery, or the inward proof of sin, or the Scriptural proof of redemption, or the his- torical proof of man's need of such a revelation ; with speculations on the agency of evil spirits, or on the freedom of the human will. Either, I say, may be taken as the point of departure, and from either the entire theory may be developed. For its merit, as I remarked, is as a work of logic. Assume either point, and the rest will find their places. Start from any one, and the rest will easily follow. In tracing briefly the course of reasoning by which the system is held together, I prefer, for clearness' sake, to begin with the moral condition of man^ as viewed by the eye of God. This, it seems to me, gives the most plausible and tangible point, and leads most easily to all the others. Besides, it appeals, as it were, to the human consciousness of every man. Our theory of man's condition is not like an abstract dogma, requiring labored proof. Scripture may illustrate it, may bring it before the mind, and may be our final strongest reason for adhering to it ; but, whencesoever derived, it is after all our previous assumption, — the ground we take to build on, — a tacit or gratuitous assumption, perhaps, 10 ORTHODOX THEORY but one that unavoidably shapes and tempers all our thought on religious things. I. Orthodoxy, then, begins by presupposing that mankind is in a condition of rebellion against God, and exposed to his everlasting wrath and curse. That is, such is man's condition, aside from all considerations of the office of Christ, which is to redeem him and remove the curse. Naturally, by himself, he is capable of no good thing ; can make no acceptable offering to God ; stands always in need of forgiveness for the infinite wrong in his own soul ; cannot trust his reason or conscience, through an innate evil tendency, that warps his mind aside from good, and alienates him from his Creator. Left to himself, he must inevitably perish. The destiny of unending happiness and advancement, for which he seems to be calculated if we consider some of his native affections and capacities, has been forfeited ; and," taking him in his actual state, he is no better than an outcast and a rebel. Besides, being under the government of a Being infinitely just and holy, every sinful act bears the brand of infinite guilt, and is justly visited with an infinite penalty. He may have moral sense to know his danger and calamity, but can- not of himself devise a remedy. With no intercessor to plead before the bar of the offended justice of Heav- en, there is no way to reach and make appeal to the Divine mercy. Behold, therefore, man, in his natural estate, at once the greatest and most wretched of God's creation ! No certain truth, no immortal hope, no escape from the threatened doom of vengeance, no access to the presence and favor of righteous Heaven ! But how could so frightful a calamity have fallen upon the human race .'' It is against all the idea we have of OF CHRISTIANITY. 11 God, — against the whole of the account given of him in the Scriptures, — to suppose that he could have designed from the first such a doom for any of his creatures. It would be blasphemy to think he would create beings capable of joy, and torment them delib- erately with hopeless and unending woe. The hardiest advocate of God's omnipotent right could not venture such a plea. It would be to confound and abolish every grateful and holy thought of God. It would be to dethrone him, the all-wise and merciful, and put a malignant devil in his place, — giving the infinite majesty of the universe to the only evil, instead of the only good. How, then, came man into this condition, since it could not have been his first estate ? To account for it, there must have been a Fall, which drew down the entire human race, — an original sin of the first man, whose guilt all share in by inheritance. For his sake and in his name earth and mankind were visited with a curse, which no merely human power can expiate. He cut himself off, as it were, by a wilful act, from the love of God, and could entail only evil on his posterity. But the first man was created upright and free from guilt ; free to sin, it is true, but free to righteousness. Nothing in his nature then enticed him to sin ; no fatal propensity weighed on him then, to overbear and par- alyze his will. Guilt was brought upon him from a higher sphere of being. He was tempted, and he fell. The great Rebel Angel, who had already drawn away a third part of heaven's host from their allegiance, found man in paradise, where the goodness of God had placed him, and, moved with jealousy and spite that another should inherit the blessing he had lost, plotted 12 ORTHODOX THEORY his downfall. The simple and credulous innocence of the first pair was no match for the crafty and deceitful arts of Satan. The pledge of Divine favor was for- feited. The fatal step was taken. The forbidden fruit they plucked and ate. And from that hour, from that one inexpiable act, dates the downfall, the rebellion, the misery of the human race. We have no claim to win back the inheritance they lost. No virtue of ours could retrieve that guilt, or give us a claim to any special fa- vor. And so we are all lost. Though we shared not the guilt, we share the penalty ; as from a dissolute and spendthrift father is left but a heritage of beggary to his child. And this is not the whole story of that loss and fall. For by that act man has deliberately renounced his alle- giance to God, and surrendered himself to Satan, the enemy of God. Hence the dominion of evil spirits, and the whole array of Satanic agency. Evermore we are beset with a host of spiritual foes. The great Ad- versary himself, with power and energy only less than God's, is perpetually seeking to draw men farther away from him. Every temptation to desert our better pur- poses, every whispered thought of sin, every feeling of envy and malice, every enticement of sensual pleasure, is part of that terrible system of treachery, or ambus- cade, or open violence, by which the infernal spirit seeks to confirm his power. Through his evil influence, men turned of old from serving the true and only God to worship idols or devils. By him was set in motion that fearful tide of crime, the lust, and falsehood, and revenge, and craft, and enmity, that have ravaged and made waste the earth. And without a special miracu- lous deliverance, we are all bound over, hand and foot, OF CHRISTIANITY. 18 without resource or hope, in bondage to him, — to serve him in pride and folly and wickedness on earih, to serve him in chains and darkness for ever in the world below. Such is man's terrible condition, such his un- ending doom. II. But it is impossible that God should look with in- difference upon this wretched fate of man. Created in his image, pronounced his child and the head of his creation, God's love yet yearns towards man, and will- ingly would he deliver him. And here comes in that conflict of the Divine attributes which makes necessary the great redemption by the Atoning Sacrifice. On the one hand, God's mercy cannot willingly consent that his child should be for ever in this state of abject and hope- less slavery ; but, on the other hand, stern and inexora- ble justice cannot overlook the fact, that by his rebellion and enmity towards God he has forfeited all his claim upon Divine compassion. Again behold the terrible law of his condition. To God as sovereign is rightfully due all the reverence, homage, obedience, which man can render. Every failure is a sin, an act of rebellion, a forfeiture of Divine grace. Only the most absolute per- fect obedience, extending to every movement of affec- tion or thought, and every act of life, could suffice to pay that infinite debt. Thus the best man, naturally speaking, in his imperfect estate, must fail to render that service which alone could be sufficient to merit pardon and eternal life ; while every least offence, done against the Infinite and Sovereign God, deserves infinite pen- alty. And so, the more closely we look at man's con- dition, the more appalling does it become. Seen from this point of view, there is no remedy, and no hope, un- less some power can be found to mediate between those 2 14 ORTHODOX THEORY attributes of the Divinity, to reconcile the claims of strict justice with the pleadings of infinite love. Here, then, we see the need, and the preparation made, for the Atoning Sacrifice, — to satisfy the twofold claim of man's obedience to duty arid penalty for sin. In both he has incurred an infinite loss and forfeit. Some method must be found to redeem this loss, and make it possible that he should be forgiven, — possible, without lowering the demands of the Divine law, or de- tracting from the honor of the sovereignty of God. For this, only one way is left open ; without it, reconcilia- tion is impossible. A being, infinite in essence like God, mortal in condition like man, must fulfil the law and abide the suffering in the place of man, standing in man's stead before the bar of God, rendering a perfect obedience by a holy and spotless life, so as to discharge his debt, and suffering the infinite agony of death, so as to bear his penalty. Only on such conditions as these can the way be open for pardon, and the preliminary steps of man's salvation be taken. And this course was followed out, step by step, in the life and death of Jesus Christ. The Divine nature put on the garment of humanity ; the infinite majesty of heaven was clothed in the veil of mortal flesh. Such from eternity was the constitution of the Divine nature, that one part or person of the threefold Deity was fore- appointed to this office, and by miraculous birth dwelt in the form of the Son of Mary. Exposed to the at- tacks of Satan in the scene of the Temptation, he vindi- cated his Divine nature by his victory. By a pure and spotless life he fulfilled the righteousness that was due from man ; by his miraculous works of love he approved himself the express representative of God's attribute of OF CHRISTIANITY. 15 mercy ; by his voluntary sacrifice he made his obedience complete, and loosed for man the chains of eternal death. Then was Satan's kingdom broken, himself baf- fled, defeated, and overthrown. Madly he had urged men on, till by their hands the Lord of Glory w^as cru- cified and slain ; and now this crowning act ransomed the human race from his thraldom, and reinstated the dominion and empire of God. III. Still as yet the conditions on God's part only are fulfilled. Something more is needed before the merit of this atoning act passes over and inures to the final blessedness of man. Of itself alone it would not be enough. Else it would inevitably follow, that, as the sacrifice is all-sufficient, so all are equally redeemed ; as Satan's kingdom is overthrown, he can no longer have claim over a single soul ; and that all mankind is restored to its first condition of perfect blessedness. Taking the theory thus far, it leads inevitably to Universalism, and is, in fact, precisely the system of Universalism first taught in this country, about sixty years ago. But here is no room for human duty ; no room for personal hope and fear ; no motive impelling a man to one or another course of belief or practice. One further point remains, — man's share in the work of reconciliation. The con- dition has been fulfilled on one side ; it must be on the other also. God has done his part ; it remains to con- sider what man must do. Repentance, obedience, faith, — these are the sum of the conditions required. The words are easily spoken ; but how is the process they signify to come about .'' How shall man, bound as he is in vassalage to sin and Satan, — how shall he repent ? How shall he obey whose flesh is weak, whose passions are strong, whose 16 ORTHODOX THEORY conscience is gross and seared ? How shall he believe whose mind is clouded in ignorance and fettered through unbelief? How, in other words, is man, the slave of Satan, to find himself free, rejoicing in the glorious lib- erty of the children of God ? This great change in man's heart, the change from darkness to light, from anarchy to peace, is more than a partial change of feeling, or habit, or outward acts. It is a change of the entire man, a new birth, the great spiritual fact of regeneration. It comes, not by man's act, but by God's good grace. The Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier and Comforter, the third person in the Divine nature, takes possession of the heart, works the conver- sion of the soul from sin to righteousness, from death to life ; and of this new, regenerate state, repentance, obe- dience, and faith are but the natural accompaniment and fruit. It is God himself, resuming possession of the soul that had been lost to him. Human agency is lost and swallowed up in the Divine. Before this pro- cess man can do nothing for himself, scarce offer the petition of agony and despair. He must cast himself on God and wait. The Spirit is adequate to his own work, and human interference is a profanation and offence. But not all does God thus choose and save, or we should fall back on the same difficulty we found before. Infinite in knowledge as absolute in power, he foresaw from the first, and predestined those who should be saved to everlasting life. His Divine will overshadows and neutralizes the human will. Whom he would he or- dained to life ; whom he would he left subject to death. Thus we find ourselves again led on, through the unre- lenting course of argument, into the drear and chilling OF CHRISTIANITY. 17 region of abstract speculation, Man's agency has dis- appeared, and become as nothing. The sacrifice has had its efficacy for those ordained and elect to eternal life ; but for all others God's inexorable justice holds its steady course. The mansions of heaven are filled with those whom his prevailing spirit has wrought upon to conversion, regeneration, and faith ; while for innu- merable others, who have not heard the word, or hear- ing believed not, there remains the same unrenioved, unexpiated doom, pronounced first on all the race of man. I believe that, in this rapid sketch, I have accurately traced the course of thought which makes up the Ortho- dox theory of Christianity, properly so called. I have endeavoured to do strict justice to its logical merit, not to overstate its several positions, and to show the close dependence of each part on all the rest. I have en- deavoured to state it in all its method and plausibility ; to adopt for the time the tone and way of thinking of those who sincerely hold it ; and to trace, step by step, its several connected portions. And it has seemed in- dispensable thus to set it forth in its completeness as a whole. As I think, and have before said, we must take it all or none. It stands or it falls together. You can- not take its parts at option, omit what you choose. Except, perhaps, the doctrine of Election, and the anni- hilation of man's free agency, with which it closes, — which yet has a close connection in intrinsic character with the rest, — there is not a part, not a phrase, that is not linked in by that iron and inexorable chain of logic. Grant to any one part the strict dogmatic interpreta- tion, and the rest folloW'S by compulsion. The lost and 2* 18 ORTHODOX THEORY rebellious condition of man ; his estrangement from Goo" by the machinations of a malignant spirit, and the for- feiture of his birthright; the conflict between the Divine attributes, justice and mercy ; the need of an infinite atoning sacrifice ; the significance of the life and death of Christ ; the final process of supernatural regenera- tion, by which the mind is turned to God ; and the final rejection of those in whom this process has not taken place ; — all are essential parts and features In that system of thought, all elements needful in the plan of salva- tion so understood and held. As I have remarked before, it Is not so much the par- ticular opinions held, as the tone and character of the thought, that marks the creed of Orthodoxy. Tt is com- paratively of little consequence what particular theories are held, as the honest and frankly spoken opinions of serious minds. It is not so much as two contrary sys- tems of doctrine, that Orthodoxy and Liberalism are set so widely apart, but as different and radically hostile methods of regarding the Divine government and the conditions of spiritual welfare. It belongs to my next lecture to set forth my general objections to the system I have now been exhibiting. At the present time, ray only object Is to show its true character, that we may know beforehand uhat It is we are passing in review. The one characteristic of Orthodoxy, beside which every other feature is subordinate and insignificant, is, that it professes to be the only system of belief by which a man can be saved. Every other claim is lost sight of in the astounding grandeur of this one. It may, if true, be a more accurate account of man's re- ligious experience ; it may throw a broader light on the course of God's providential government, and the mys- OF CHRISTIANITY. 19 teries of man's moral nature ; it may better explain the motives from which men act, and the reasons of crime and suffering in the world ; it may be better calculated to heighten our reverence towards God, and so subdue and spiiitualize our minds, than any other theory that could be framed. But all this is absolutely nothing be- side its great and absolute claim, as the only condition by which man could or can be saved. In all the re- sources of God's power and mercy, there was no other way possible to rescue us from death. In all the fertile expedients of the human mind, in all the testimony of the living conscience, there is absolutely nothing else that can bring us into communion and favor with the Infinite. Let this, its absolute and imperative claim, be con- stantly borne in mind. Let it be remembered, also, that its parts stand or fall together, and that a breach in any portion of the evidence is equivalent to a dissolution of the whole ; and then let us seriously address ourselves to the task of a thorough and patient examination of it. And if, as I shall hope to show, it proceeds from a false theory, and is sustained by defective proof ; if it wrongly represents the design and purport of the Christian Scrip- tures ; if it contravenes the majesty and the mercy of Almighty God ; if it affronts our best reason, and con- flicts with our purest affection ; if it falsely sets forth the condition of our earthly life, and opposes our best and divinest aspirations in reference to the life to come ; — if it does all this, w^hile it cannot claim support from the words of Christ, or from any thing we authentically know of the purposes and works of God, then let us not fear, in a candid and truthful spirit, to set it aside for a form of faith more congenial to our mind. Let not 20 ORTHODOX THEORY OF CHRISTIANITY. the accidental associations of holy memory, let not the persuasions of prejudice and habit and worldly influ- ence, deter us from the sacred duly we owe to God and truth, to examine freely whether these things be so, and from offering the only acceptable gift, of hearty convic- tion, of sincere and manly thought, of an enlightened, and reverent, and confiding faith. Harbour no intel- lectual dishonesty and self-deceit. Tamper not with the clear and honest conviction of your mind. Exam- ine every proposition fairly, and do not refuse to ac- knowledge the conclusion to which you are fairly brought. Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good. DISCOURSE II. GENERAL OBJECTIONS TO ORTHODOXY. THEY RECEIVED THE WORD WITH ALL READINESS OF MIND, AND SEARCHED THE SCRIPTURES DAILY, WHETHER THOSE THINGS WERE SO, — Acts xvii. 11. In the previous Discourse I attempted to give an account — necessarily brief and imperfect, but candid and essentially correct — of the system of Orthodoxy, as held in substance, though variously modified, in the churches called Evangelical. It is my purpose now to present, in a brief and general outline, the principal ob- jections which, to my mind, lie against that theory as a whole. Let it be understood that this discussion is wholly independent of the particular evidence brought in support of particular points. It has to do only with the system as such, and takes in only those previous ques- tions, the right answer to which will incline us towards one or the other side. Every person has some bias, coming from his education or way of thinking generally ; and no one can probably look at any argument with per- fect and absolute impartiality. I freely acknowledge this bias in my own mind, as to various systems of theology. 23 GENERAL OBJECTIONS I confess that I feel Insurmountable objections, In the nature of the case, which make It Impossible for me to approach the evidence of certain doctrinal points, touch- ing my moral condition and spiritual welfare, as I would a chain of reasoning In pure mathematics. There are previous considerations, which affect the weight of proof on either side ; and therefore, before coming to the proof, it Is right that you should be aware of those general ob- jections to the scheme under review which to me are anterior to any proof, and stronger. You will readily recall the train of thought by which we were guided through the circle of Orthodox belief : — 1. Man's condition naturally is one of rebellion, aliena- tion, and hostility towards God, — having been seduced from the innocence of his first estate by the machinations of the malignant spirit, the enemy of God, to whom his allegiance has been transferred. 2, To rescue him from his lost condition, to make up the arrears of his defied and neglected duty, and to save him from the awful pen- alty of his rebellion, there Is needed an infinite sacrifice, — God assuming the form of humanity, so as to fulfil the required righteousness, endure the merited punishment of guilt, and reconcile the claims of justice and mercy in the Divine nature, so as to let man go free. 3. And to prepare the soul of man to receive the benefits of this atoning sacrifice, there must be a conversion or regenera- tion, brought about by the immediate operation of the Divine Spirit, exercised Irresistibly on those who from eternity have been ordained to life ; the rest, of course, to endure endless misery. So far, we have not been Inquiring Into the truth or falsity of the doctrine, .but only endeavouring to see what it Is. And looking at it as a system, we cheerfully ac- TO ORTHODOXY. 29 knowledge that it has considerable merit and plausibility. In the first place, it seems to be very complete and full ; to have an answer ready for every exigency ; to deal with things in a systematic and orderly method ; to com- prehend the entire circle of providential action, so far as we are concerned in it ; and so to give a precise, clear, and consistent account of every relation towards God, man, and the future world, in which we can possibly be placed. I do not say it is satisfactory ; but it is cer- tainly consistent with itself. Its merits in that regard are very great. It has herein a great advantage over its op- ponents. Like a disciplined and compact body of troops, it can bear up long against the uncertain and irregular assaults of a vastly greater number, having no defined system of operations and no common end in view. It has the advantage, too, of being an established and devel- oped form of faith. Very few even of the single minds opposed to it have an equally definite and consistent theory to supply its place, or can pretend to answer the same order of questions with equal positiveness ; and, taking any number of them together, their efforts seem disjointed, feeble, and clashing with one another, beside the precise and orderly movements of those thoroughly marshalled in its defence. The advantage thus gained may be more apparent than real, as I shall endeavour to show presently ; but as an apparent and temporary ad- vantage, it is certainly very great. And, in the next place, it undeniably comes home to the religious sensibilities of men. As I shall attempt to show hereafter in several examples, it probably grew up, in a great degree, step by step, out of the strongly roused devotional feeling, exaggerated by temperament or vari- ous excitements, and extravagantly expressed in hymns 24 GENERAL OBJECTIONS and prayers ; and from these it was transferred or trans- lated into the language of creeds and dogmas and intel- lectual propositions of belief This much is certain, and should always be admitted in speaking of it, — that it does at each several point meet and gratify a certain state of the religious sensibility. In the warmth of devout feeling, we adore the infinite majesty of God, so remote from our misery and sin ; the conscience is stim- ulated by the contrast to reproach us with a greater guilt than our own acts have brought upon us, even that inherited from the founder of our race ; aware of our be- setting moral peril, we tremble at the deceits and temp- tations of an invisible spiritual foe ; we appeal to God's mercy, while we confess our own unworthiness ; we acknowledge gratefully the mediating agency of Christ, appealing to our better nature and reconciling us to God ; and even his death, endured for our sake, seems not too great a sacrifice to infinite justice, to redeem us from the deserved punishment of our guilt : even the penalty of torture, unending and infinite, seems not too great to avenge the ingratitude and wrong with which our sensi- tive conscience reproaches us. Now all these are con- ditions of mind growing out of the strong action of our devout sensibility. It is not the best and most healthful action of that faculty. It is far below that condition of cheerful, trustful piety, which looks up to God without terror, and confides itself, childlike, to the sovereignty of infinite love. It is, as I think, an exaggerated and morbid state of mind, but one by no means unnatural. I have heard persons far from Orthodox in their belief speak in the tone of that sentiment, and seriously accuse themselves of deserving the penalty of eternal misery. And weshould overlook one of the chief sources of the TO ORTHODOXY. 25 power of Orlhodoxy over the general mind, if vye failed to see how exactly it meets, at each point, that roused and strained condition of the religious sentiment, and gives full play and gratification to the spirit of self-accu- sation and implicit surrender to the disposal of the Infi- nite, so characteristic of a religious mind. One other point, that we may stand perfectly fair to- wards every one, when we come to the main argument. I disclaim explicitly any jealous or hostile feeling towards those of another form of faith. Some, I know, have been embittered and alienated by harsh conduct, bigotry, misunderstanding, shown towards them by theological opponents ; and in their case personal feeling has mixed itself in with the preference one naturally has towards a faith congenial to himself, and mingled some rancor with their objections towards a different faith. To these un- fortunate collisions I have never been exposed. It is not only my earnest desire to avoid all such sources of prejudice, but it would be impossible for me to feel them very strongly. Not only have many of those to whom I have felt the strongest affection and respect inclined towards the form of faith which I oppose, — not only do I cherish the most unfeigned admiration for the lives and labors and Christian excellences of devoted men, who have lived and live now in implicit and reverential sub- mission to it, finding in it their strength for labor and hope of heaven, — not only do I regard with sincere and admiring gratitude the indefatigable labors of missiona- ries, and teachers, and messengers of charity, who have planned, and organized, and carried on so vast a scheme of Christian enterprise ; but sacred and intimate commun- ion in various scenes of the religious life, the counsel and sympathy of sickness, the prayer of fraternal faith at the 3 26 GENERAL OBJECTIONS death-bed, participation in the same solemn public ser- vices of religion, have all operated to keep me from blind and wilful prejudice, and, while I dissent from the creed, to make me feel kindly towards those who hold it. I look on this religious theory simply as appealing to my intellect, and claiming my assent. Wholly aside from any personal feeling towards its advocates, I would judge it solely by its own intrinsic merit and credibility. Now, after so much admission as I have made, it might seem a vain and idle captiousness that leads me to inter- fere with men's belief at all. My course, in thus deliber- ately bringing it forward for discussion and attack, might seem to require an apology. And so it would, if we could stop here, — if we thought only of those three points, its logical completeness, its satisfaction to the religious sentiment, and the personal excellence of many of its advocates. But we must go further. We must look at it as it bears on all sides, as it affects our whole tone of thought and feeling on religious things, and especially as it meets the case of sincere, conscientious, enlight- ened, independent, liberal thinkers. It cannot be denied, that many in the Church maintain but a very lax and vacil- lating faith ; that the creed keeps at a distance many of honest mind, who cannot get over their repugnance to its statements ; that many outside the Church find in it grounds of scoff and cavil and religious indifference ; that it gives occasion among some for intolerance towards those who agree not with them, or pretence of a convic- tion more sincere than what they really entertain. And this, wholly aside from its intrinsic truth or false- ness, — wholly aside from the undeniable merits we may ascribe to it. For, from the very law of our intellectual TO ORTHODOXY. 27 constitution, from the nature of the working of our thinking facuhy, when our assent is imperatively de- manded, we ask why and how^ and demand to know^ the reason. We become captious and cavilHng, perhaps, and our mind is not in a condition to receive truth heaUh- ily. To demand assent before the proof is the most unfair way of dealing with the mind. Argument is fore- closed. Candor is made no account of, and set aside. If the inducement to feign belief is strong, some will become hypocritical and insincere. If the argument is weak, it throw^s suspicion on the whole class of topics on which it bears. And, more than all, if threats are super- added to the argument, — if terror is brought in to help out a halting demonstration, — if awful penalties are hinted at for unbelief, — if the inquirer is told that just such an answer he must come to, or else his salvation is lost for ever, — it cannot be but that the mind is un- hinged, and made unfit to reason. Either one yields, in blind and implicit fear, not to persuasion or proof, but to overbearing and despotic dogmatism, and purchases the hope of spiritual safety at the cost of intellectual honor and independence, or else he despises the threat, defies the doom, and turns his back in anger on those who sought to overawe when they could not convince. Now, in however slight a degree, qualified by never so many circumstances, it cannot be denied that these ef- fects of make-believe, hypocrisy, and unbelief have been found wherever it has been attempted, in whatever way, to enforce a religious creed. I say nothing of the amount of truth or error there may be contained in it. I should dread it as much for my own form of belief as any other. Whatever the nature of the propositions, to present them as a foregone conclusion, to anticipate the proof and de- 28 GENERAL OBJECTIONS mand a previous consent, and to denounce a penalty, however slight, on one's failure to be convinced, nnust work that harm in some one or more to whom such a process of thought is addressed. Such, to some extent, has been the result in every church that has attempted it. And if it were only a single one that had ever suffered, or were now likely to suffer, in this way, his case would be reason enough and ample apology for the task I now attempt. It cannot be but that, in an intelligent and thinking community, there should be many dissatisfied, and some in peril of their truthfulness and faith, from such d'emands upon their understanding ; and to them I freely and without fear address myself. What I say w'ill be included in these three main points: — first, objections to the principle involved in the Orthodox system ; next, objections to the nature of the evidence adduced ; and, lastly, objections to the character of the statements contained. I. I trust I have already said enough to indicate the inherent and unqualified objection I find to the principle that lies at the bottom of the system of Orthodoxy. You cannot possibly make me believe, — I challenge all the dogmatic theologians in Christendom to njake me once admit it to be credible, — that God could make the sal- vation of any man depend on the acceptance of particular statements in metaphysics or theology, or the authority of any creed or outward institution whatsoever. The objection is unqualified and absolute. It lies not only against the proof itself, but against the entire system and mode of proof. It forms an inherent and insurmount- able obstacle, and forecloses my own mind utterly to any plausibility that can possibly be advanced in behalf of such a principle. TO ORTHODOXY. 29 I know, as certainly as I know my own existence, that men's minds differ, radically and fundamentally, as to certain points. Whether the difference is innate, or comes by education, — whether it is absolutely insur- mountable or not, — I do not care to say. For all prac- tical purposes, it is certainly impossible that there should be identity of opinion on matters of theological belief. My Catholic neighbour finds no difficulty in believing that the sacramental bread and wine are literally the body and blood of Christ ; while, to a rationalist, any thing positively miraculous is, in his present state of mind, ab- solutely incredible. One regards the Divine nature as existing in a trinity of persons ; while another will not acknowledge theoretically any other mode of the Divine Being than as the diffused Spirit of the Universe. One thinks of man's intellectual and moral powers as closely bound up with and dependent on the bodily organization, to perish with it unless miraculously renovated and sustained ; to another, the human soul is inherently and essentially immortal, so that he cannot possibly think of it as any way subject to decay or dissolution. I do not say that all these ways of thinking are equally true, or equally safe and meritorious, or equally congenial to our intel- lectual faculty. But I do say that they indicate such a radically different mental constitution in different men, that 1 cannot possibly conceive or allow that a righteous God should require sameness of belief on any point as indispensably necessary to receiving any of his favor. And this fundamental objection is a matter of principle, anterior to any argument. It applies not to this or that set of opinions, but to all dogmatic assumptions, and the unqualified requisition of any theological creed whatso- ever. 3* 30 GENERAL OBJECTIONS II. But waiving this, — which I state thus strongly so as to bring the principle of the opposing systems into full relief, — a yet more fatal objection lies against the system under review, regarded as claiming authority over the in- tellect, and demanding assent in the name of God. From the very nature of the case, the evidence for it must be insufficient. Granting it to be true, it can never be proved true. The argument for it must be defective and fallacious, from the nature of the case. For there is no authority. to which w^e can appeal. An umpire or arbi- trator, accepted on both sides as absolute and authorita- tive, is clearly wanted to settle the points of doubt : and where shall we find such a tribunal ? where, at least, a tribunal to which we can go as Protestants ? I can un- derstand a Catholic when he talks to me about the au- thority of his Church. I can understand, at least, how that authority, and the infallible inspiration claimed for it, should settle all disputed points am.ong Catholics them- selves, although I maintain it to be impossible to bridge over the chasm between that authority and our minds, or to bring any one by pure argument either into or out of that exclusive and uncompromising Church. For here, too, the selection of the authority is part of the very question at issue. But how a Protestant, having once disowned that authority on earth, and declared for lib- erty of mind and conscience in the interpretation of God's word, can commit himself to that solecism, that blunder, that defiance and contempt of his own first principles, to assert a creed dogmatically, and declare that a right belief in it is essential to the Christian character and hopes, I do not understand. Will he tell me that the Scriptures are such an infal- lible and Divine authority as we require, to make us sure TO ORTHODOXY. 31 of our faith ? But which of the books of Scripture ? — for all Christians are not agreed as to the canon or true list of the sacred books. The Catholic Bible is in several respects different from ours. Will he say the Bible as held and read by Protestants } But how does he know it to be literally inspired and infallibly true .'' By its own declaration ? Even allowing that this is the true mean- ing of its assertions, (which I by no means think,) it would be reasoning in a circle, taking for granted the very thing we want to prove. How do you convince me that that very assertion is infallibly true, and rightly un- derstood ? Can the book prove its own inspiration to one who does not believe the book, any more than to one who does not think it says so .'' But take it for granted, what then ? Whose interpre- tation of the Bible shall we accept } We know that studious and zealous men, taking very much the same view of Scripture inspiration, have come to very differ- ent conclusions as to various matters of faith. If any of them are right, some of them must be wrong. Setting aside our wholly different view of inspiration, I as sin- cerely think the system of Orthodoxy is not found in the Bible, as my neighbour sincerely thinks it is. And who shall decide between us ^ Now that we have discarded the paramount authority of the Church as over private reason, and w'e find that Scripture reads differently to two different men, equally learned and equally sincere, where is our tribunal ? Shall the test be assiduous study, with grammar and dictionary and the help of the learned tongues ? Then what a mockery to the faith of the simple and ignorant ! Whose learned decision shall they trust .'' To which party shall they go, — the awful alternative being life and 32 . GENERAL OBJECTIONS death, — heaven and hell ? Or is there no sure belief and salvation for them at all ? Av^^ay with this cruel mockery of a revelation, to be found only in dictionaries and grammars and library-sfielves! The true test, then, some will say, is the Holy Spirit, interpreting the Scripture record, and teaching infallibly the saving truth. Yes, the interpretation of the Spirit, — God's own voice to us, — we will take that, and that shall be our guide. Yes ; but do you claim God's in- spiration for yourself, and deny the same to me ? If so, your reliance this time is more weak and foolish than all the rest. It is the height of spiritual arrogance, equal to that of the whole hierarchy of Rome, narrowed dow^n to the pitiful conceit which makes one poor mortal arrogate a monopoly of God's inspired word. As if the Al- mighty should narrow and restrain himself, and whisper to those of one sect or creed the saving truth he arbitra- rily withholds from every other ! No ; we will never consent to this. And let it be borne in mind, besides, that this ultimate resource, this claim of the Holy Spirit's own interpre- tation to the believer's heart, is full as good for one sidt as for the other. It signifies one of two things. Either it is a declaration of the sacred, indefeasible right of every human soul to tru^: its own most earnest thought, and confide itself without fear, in its search for truth, to the guidance of the God of truth, and so is the most simple and absolute liberalism, the very doc- trine I am laboring to maintain ; or else it is the most arrogant, narrow, domineering, unworthy form of spirit- ual usurpation, foreclosing argument by the assumption of personal infallibility, and abandoning the whole ground of appeal to a'ny possible authority recognized in com- TO ORTHODOXY. 33 mon by any two minds. And whichever inlerpretation we accept, we come round at last to an absolute demon- stration of what I said before ; that, from the nature of the case, there cannot be evidence sufficient to establish the creed of Orthodoxy, as the only saving faith. No healthy and sound intellect, I think, can possibly admit that the acceptance of such a creed, or any creed, should be the ground of acceptance with the just God. We cannot conceive of greater dishonor done to him, than, not only to say that such a scheme was necessary to man's salvation, but then to add that one must think 50, or be for ever deprived of all its benefit. III. Again ; besides the objections I have stated, to the fundamental principle and the nature of the evi- dence on which Orthodoxy rests, I have further reasons against the character of the doctrines which compose it. I will state these reasons briefly in order ; — as they ap- ply, first, to the view of the Divine government ; next, to the condition of man here represented ; and lastly, to man's assumed agency in the work of his own salvation. The view of the Divine government contained in the Orthodox theory, disguise, or palliate, or explain it how you will, is such as we cannot possibly admit, when thinking of the character of the Christian's God, — the Merciful and Holy One. It represents him as a Sovereign in the most unamiable and repulsive charac- ter assumed by petty monarchs of earth, — as supreme- ly jealous of his personal glory, and vindictive to the uttermost in punishing the smallest dereliction from the homage due. And here there is no room for the plau- sible extenuations we might use in behalf of an infe- rior sovereign. We cannot speak of the " nature of things " as requiring infinite penalty for guilt done to- 34 GENERAL OBJECTIONS wards an infinite being ; for the " nature of things " is nothing more than the expression of his will ; and, prevaricate as we may, we must come round to this at last, — that every throb of torture, every moment in the infinite duration of agony, (supposed to be mer- ited by the guilt of man,) is the special appointment of God, and by him exacted to the uttermost ; showing a deliberate, vindictive, I might almost say malignant, in- fliction of misery, which sets our imagination aghast, and makes us wonder if it is not some fever-dream of the horrors of Satan's realm we are considering, rather than a calm and well-judged opinion as to the rule of Almighty God. Neither can we speak of '' reasons of state " and the honor of his government demanding such a penalty. It w^ere blasphemy and insult to the Majesty of Heaven, to insinuate any peril of turbulence and anarchy to supersede that beneficent rule. We know that Divine power works steadily, prevails irresistibly. So, by the terms of this creed, it works and prevails on the souls of the elect. Could its energies be expended in inflict- ing tortures on a " rebellious worm," — least of all on the plea of danger and anarchy, — if it were not so ? True, this is only half the Orthodox representation of the Divine nature. True, the attribute of mercy is matched against that of justice, and the impending pen- alty is only the occasion for the display of atoning love. But who taught us that, in the pure and absolute nature of the Deity, there can be such a conflict of attributes, like the conflict of the passions in the human breast ? Does any one seriously mean that justice and mercy are at variance, — except, indeed, in the debates and perplexities of our imperfect reason ? Will any one TO ORTHODOXY. 35 seriously transfer that imperfeciion to the Godhead, and maintain that perfect justice ^vouId demand what man cannot render, or that perfect love could consent to the sacrifice of the innocent for the guilty ? Then what becomes of God's wisdom and omnipo- tence, if his design is thwarted, the harmony of his creation broken up, at the very moment, as it were, of completion, by the contrivance of his subtle foe ? Was God baffled and outwitted by Satan, and unable to save his creation from the devastation and wretched- ness that must inevitably ensue ? Or, on the other hand, (which is even worse to think of,) did he deliberately intend a mockery when he gave Adam his law ? Did he place him there, with ignorant innocence for his only shield, and expose him on purpose to all the deceits and assaults of the Enemy ? Did he leave him at the mercy of such a powerful and malignant spirit, knowing beforehand that he must fall a prey, and appointing be- forehand the extreme and fiightful penalty ? To this shocking dilemma w^e are brought at once by the Or- thodox statement of God's government and the law established over man. We cannot escape it. The alternative is simple and plain. Either, on the one hand, God did not know the peril, or knowing could not prevent it, and Satan triumphed at the expense of his wisdom and his power ; or, on the other hand, knowing it, and having ability to defend man from it, he left him unguarded, with the appalling certainty that he would fall, and that no possible effort, humanly speaking, could save him from infinite misery and despair. Thus, whatever way we look at it, the character of God, as shown in this theory, is full of contradiction and imperfection. Except by a subversion of all our 36 GENERAL OBJECTIONS ideas of right and wrong, — by utterly denying the moral distinctions nnost venerable and sacred, — by ob- scuring every thing in the Divine nature which makes a difference between holiness and sin, good and evil, God and the Adversary of God, — we cannot get over the radical contradiction. We may cover up one half, and think of him as the personation of avenging justice. We may cover up the other, and remember only the attribute of atoning love. But we cannot view the Divine character as a whole, without confounding and denying our very Idea of God. We destroy irretriev- ably either his wisdom, or his omnipotence, or his mercy and just dealing towards his creatures. And I cannot look steadily on such a representation as this, — once putting out of sight the amiable and excellent traits in many who sincerely hold It, — without doubting whether I am In the pale of Christian thought at all. No pagan has done such dishonor to his false god as to give him a character like this. Once put It in defi- nite shape, tell it In plain words, and the conception becomes blasphemy, — a parody and mockery of the holy attributes of God. And this objection, I think, is absolutely inseparable from that system of theology which we are now considering. Nor Is our objection diminished by taking into ac- count the moral state of man, as here set forth. For we must accept one side or the other of the following alternative. On the one hand, if we consider him as born into It, Inevitably, and In the unrestrained course of providence, then we take the guilt from him and throw it back on God. It is useless to say he inherited it from the founder of the race ; for who constituted the organic law which made Adam's sin transmissible TO ORTHODOXY. 37 to his posterity ? Who ordained the system of tilings in which one's character depends on his progenitors ? Or who made the arbitrary appointment, that one who has not sinned should be treated as if he had, because some one else has sinned, — especially when it is utterly out of his own power to alter his own condition, or to have avoided coming into it ? It is no more my fault that I was born a son of Adam, than that I was born at all ; and what power is it that imputes his guilt to me ? On this supposition, the greatest possible punish- ment is inflicted for the greatest possible misfortune ; and that misfortune is brought on us by the selfsame Being who visits it with such terrific vengeance. On the other hand, if we consider that a man's own sin, his own wilful and personal and positive fault, has brought the condition upon him, then the very point and significance of the assertion are lost. The doctrine of inexpiable rebellion and infinite guilt dwindles down to some general and sweeping assertion about the amount of sin and misery in the world. Now this is not the point in controversy. There may be a vast deal of crime and wretchedness in the world, — an infinite amount, to all intents and purposes, — that is, so far as concerns our power of estimating it and relieving it. This is an assertion which I do not care just now to admit or contradict. To my mind it seems exaggerated and one-sided, — a morbid and hypochondriacal view to take of human life. But let it go. All I have to say of it is, that it is not the Orthodox dogma with which I am contending ; that it abandons the theological sig- nification ascribed to the fact of sin ; that it gives up the whole ground of strictly infinite guilt, and the desert of infinite penalty, and becomes a tame and common- 4 GENERAL OBJECTIONS place assertion, to be judged of by our good sense and good taste, rather than by any theological criterion. Whichever way we take it, it becomes equally objec- tionable and inadmissible as part of our religious belief. It may be the transient suggestion of an upbraiding con- science, but cannot be the deliberate conviction of a clear, practical, sagacious, and healthy mind. Lastly, the agency of man in the work of his own salvation. This, in the strict interpretation of the creed, is absolutely nothing. Conversion, regeneration, faith, are superinduced upon him by the irresistible operation of the Holy Spirit. The great turning-point of the spiritual life and destiny is just as much out of his reach to control, as the circumstance of his being born, or being born inheritor of Adam's guilt. And yet, from the very nature of the religious faculty, from the constant testimony of conscience, appeal must be made to him as a responsible being. The whole language of religion would be ridiculous and a solecism, if it did not take for granted his accountability. Man, we are as- sured, can of himself do literally nothing. And yet, this powerless creature, this slave of Satan, this impo- tent tool of a malignant power, this breathing, guilty, suf- fering machine, is addressed, is solemnly appealed to, as if by his own act he were drajving down the impend- ing doom of death. This contradiction in terms no theological ingenuity has ever been able to get over. All attempts to avoid the dilemma have ended in an impotent and barren jug- gle of words. The alternative stares you in the face, — either man is a free agent, or he is not ; if he is, he must be appealed to, to work out his own salvation ; if he is not, it is not his fault if salvation is not put upon him TO ORTHODOXY. 39 fiom without. The intellect will for ever obstinately return, and stick upon that stubborn alternative. And how is this alternative met by the creed of Orthodoxy ? How is the sensitive and excited conscience, awake to the sense of unworthiness, and trembling at the threatened doom, — how is it relieved, or encouraged, or helped, by any assurance coming from that creed ? Alas ! only by the most unworthy dallying with words, — by the most cruel mockery and discouragement to its sincere and sensitive emotion. I have heard the " sinners " of a Christian congregation solemnly assured that they could not take a single step to secure their salvation, — that such was the alienation of their heart, they could not even raise an acceptable prayer to God. Nothing seemed left them but utter despair, so far as the creed was concerned. But the more humane spirit of the speaker encouraged them to hope, that, though a prayer to God would fall on the unheeding air, be lost in the blank and empty sky, yet a petition to Jesus might be heard, and lead the way to the bestowal of holy influen- ces. And this petty casuistry and subterfuge was the only way of escape from the inexorable language of the creed, so as to meet the imperative demand of common humanity. The dogma is barbarous, chilling, horrible. The only refuge from its terrible alternative is in " that glorious inconsistency, which does honor to human na- ture, and makes men so much better than their creeds." Thus I have given you the principal objections, as they lie in my own mind, first, against the principle involved in the creed of Orthodoxy ; second, against the nature and validity of the evidence adduced ; and third, against the character of the propositions contained. It 40 GENERAL OBJECTIONS will be my design hereafter, to speak more particularly of the argument in behalf of the several leading points. But, in conclusion, let me anticipate two objections which may be brought against what has now been said. It may be argued, that I am reasoning, not against the Orthodoxy really held and professed in our churches, but against a theory or phantom of it in my own brain, and arbitrarily got up for the sake of disparagement and attack, — in other words, that I do not fairly represent the system I oppose. If any one says this, I put to him the following question. Does the Orthodox creed or church to which you adhere demand belief in it as a condition of salvation, or does it not .'' If it does, that is the only representation I have made, — the only point against which I have directed my attack. All the rest belong to this ; and, for all my argument is con- cerned, they may as well be what they are as any other. Call it calumny and misrepresentation if you will ; but accuse your creed of it, not me. If it does not, then all I have to say is, that it is not the system I am deal- ing with ; and I am glad to find in you another advocate, consciously or not, of an independent faith. Again, it may be argued that the belief required is not the only condition of salvation. A man's creed will not save him, unless borne out by the evidence of his life. So far so good, if a higher standard of virtue is hereby inculcated. But the appalling, the fatal declaration is, that the evidence of his life will not save him without his creed. Do you say that is the very word of Jesus, — " he that believeth not shall be condemned " ? Believ- eth not what ? Here, again, will you assume it before the proof.'' With my idea of salvation, indeed, as the glorious expansion of the soul, the spiritual growth in TO ORTHODOXY. 41 freedom and blessedness, the life of man in perfect com- munion with the Father of S{)iiits, I can see how truth, as the aim of all earnest search, the perpetual reward of sincere endeavour, how faith, as the holy alliance be- tween the soul and God, should be essential to it. But that it should depend — this alternative of blessedness or woe — on the belief of statements arbitrarily laid down, though by God himself, is what I cannot think. And it is this which neutralizes and perverts the dec- laration, that a life is required in conformity with the creed. The insuperable difficulty is, that the creed should be exacted at all, absolutely and imperatively. Then to demand a good life besides, according to the moral theory of that creed, is only to aggravate the burden ; double the injustice ; superadd another el- ement of vindictive harshness ; make the little finger thicker now than the loins before ; and whereas men were then chastised with whips, chastise them now with scorpions. For relief to this, I present the contrast in as few words as possible. The doctrine I profess adheres strictly to the mercy and perfect justice of God; it does not deny and disparage the claim of human reason, and turn it off with a vague talk of mystery ; it does not underrate the claim of righteousness or deny the infinite value of truth ; it does not mock and torture the tender conscience, as it strives to guide the soul to God. But it says, approach him with a glad, courageous, con- fiding faith. Put off your iniquity, not so much in slav- ish fear of his vengeance, as for the glory of being nearer his benignant presence. Receive the word of truth with all readiness of mind ; and search the Scrip- tures, the Gospel of Christ's life especially, and " the 4* 42 GENERAL OBJECTIONS TO ORTHODOXY. epistle on the heart," freely, candidly, reverently, wheth- er these things are so. Better partial error in a free and true spirit, than abstract truth in a slavish, false, and narrow spirit. '' God requires not the rightness so much as the uprightness of your opinions." The truth saves, only through the free and hearty love of truth. DISCOUESE III. THE TRINITY. TO US THERE IS BUT ONE GOD, THE FATHER; OF WHOM ARE ALL THINGS, AND WE IN HIM. — I Corinthians viii. 6. In the two preceding Discourses, I have exhibited the scheme of Orthodoxy as a whole, in the form in which I suppose it to be held and taught generally ; and have also stated my general objections to it, as fully and dis- tinctly as the nature of my plan would permit. I pass now to another department of my course, namely, the special doctrines included in that scheme, the nature of the evidence brought to sustain them, and my own rea- sons for rejecting them. And let me say briefly, in anticipation, that I do not consider a public assembly a fit place for weighing and estimating duly the whole mass of argument that bears upon the several points. Where the discussion takes the form of debate or oral controversy, the advantage will be on the side of the nimble tongue and quick re- tort. And even in the more deliberate and grave meth- od of a lecture or discourse, time cannot be given for that study and meditation which a subject of this nature 44 THE TRINITY. demands. T do not ask you to listen as if it were pos- sible for me to meet every question, answer every scru- ple, and take up every doubtful point of proof. I fairly warn you, that volumes and libraries of controversy have been written, of which I cannot pretend to give you so much as the faintest outline ; that laborious and thoughtful men have spent often the best of a lifetime in profound investigation relative to some single one of these very points ; and that the transition from one mode of belief to another has often been one of the most earnest and solemn forms of personal experience, in- volving weeks or years of painful study and self-scrutiny, the sacrifice of dear friendships, the perilling of sacred associations, in short, a complete revolution of the whole intellectual and moral state. Such arduous labors, such profound experiences, have been the price at ^which earnest minds have purchased their glimpses of Divine truth. Having suffered comparatively little of that sad and distressing passage from previous belief through doubt towards a different conviction, — at least as to these or- dinarily mooted doctrines, — I may possibly overlook some points which press heavily on many minds. And far from contenting you with the amount of evidence in detail sufficient to answer every inquiry, I can only hope, at best, to suggest to you trains of thought, which you may follow out ; to present the case as it lies in my own mind, after such attention as I have been able to bestow, and then leave it to your own interest and intel- lectual honesty to satisfy yourself as to the sum total of the argument. The Scriptural proof, in particular, I shall be forced to treat rather by masses, and in general terms. The sort of labor needed to appreciate the THE TRINITY. 45 force of words and phrases in a foreign tongue is one alien to and irksome for such a place as this. I cannot give you the study itself, but only the results of study, — more that of others, too, than mine ; and this I can only do with as much fairness, brevity, and thorough- ness, as the nature of the case will allow. My subject to-night is the doctrine of the Trinity, — a doctrine or theory of the Divine nature which serves as the basis for the entire system under review, — the intellectual substratum on which rests that whole view of God's providence and human life. Its importance may be judged from the fact, that the boundary of the two great divisions in Christian theology (or, as some would have it, the dividing line between Christian and unchristian thought) is at this very point ; that the Trin- ity is appealed to in the state papers of many nations, and its name given to a multitude of church structures in every land ; that it forms the first article, or the ex- plicit comment, in the creed of very many churches ; and that it has been the central topic of inquiry to most of the laborious and thoughtful men who have investi- gated the great field of Christian doctrine. Where scholars, and wise men, and pious Christians, have dif- fered so widely, where the war of controversy has so long and so loudly raged, it becomes us to be modest, patient, thoughtful, in making up our minds. At best I cannot claim positively to disprove the doctrine ; but only to expose the insufficiency of the evidence on w^hich it rests. Those who are at all familiar with the history of spec- ulation know that a trinity of some sort has been a fa- vorite formula of thinking, from the very earliest times. 46 THE TRINITY. The number three has had peculiar attraction for those fond of the theory of numbers. It is the smallest num- ber in which there can be both difference and decision, — a minority and majority ; it gives the fewest points that will fix a geometrical plane, or define a surface ; and it is found again in summing up the two combining forces (as in mechanics or magnetism) with their result. Spec- ulative minds have, from the first, run very much upon such theories and forms of thought ; and accordingly a trinity is one characteristic feature in the philosophy of almost every nation. Thus, the East Indian has his trinity, of the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer. The Egyptian hieroglyphics indicate, we are told, a trinity, taught by the Theban priesthood before the time of Moses, almost coinciding with that of some Christian creeds. The number three is continually re- peated in the reckoning of the Roman and Grecian tribes. The Greeks, in their mythology, divided the realm of nature among the three great gods, of the air, the ocean, and the lower world. Plato, the finest philosophical genius of antiquity, conceived of the Divine nature as, first, the abstract, infinite, unutterable Good ; next, the active Intellect, or principle of Thought ; and third, the Vital Power, or the force of organic Life. Some of the Jews, and many of the early Christians, were students of Plato, or of his followers ; and they tried to express the same thought in the main, by Jewish or Christian phraseology. One of the schools of German speculation finds a sort of trinity in every force of nature, — making a system of polarities, each with its force, its counter- force, and the confluence of the two ; while a well-known French philosopher reduces all forms of thought to the threefold expression, the Finite, the Infinite, and the THE TRINITY. 47 Relation between the two. A favorite view of man is, as consisting of body, soul, and spirit : the facuhies of the mind are classed in the three departments of think- ing, feeling, and acting. iVnd, not to weary you with a longer catalogue of triads, Mahomet, who is celebrated for his fierce opposition to any infjingement of the bare abstract unity of God, seems to have heard of Christian belief under the spurious form of a trinity, consisting of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Mother ! * These illustrations will not seem out of place, when we consider the history and the speculative interpre- tation of the Christian Trinity.' They serve to throw light on that habit or propensity of the human mind, to regard things under this threefold aspect, thus giving a certain theoretical roundness and completeness to the thought. Still, they are by no means a fair account of the Trinity, as held by Christians. That is better seen from the point of view of the religious consciousness. If w^e analyze the thought or emotion that fills the mind of a Christian man, as he reflects gratefully on the Divine love and wisdom, or girds himself to the solemn work of hfe, or looks forward with trembling hope beyond the still border of the grave, we shall find, amongst the throng of confused and mingled sentiments, that three great thoughts stand out in more clear relief, or are fixed so deep as to underlie all the rest. I speak now simply of the religious consciousness, which does not deceive, and is substantially alike in every Christian man. It seems a natural and not a fanciful description of that state of mind to say that it consists in reverence towards the Father, the Author and Source of all ; in a sense of personal gratitude and love towards Christ, who, as * Gibbon, Chap. L. 48 THE TRINITY. brother-man, brought the heavenly gift of truth ; and in that peculiar emotion or influence within the soul, to up- lift, counsel, console, or strengthen, which the heart de- voutly recognizes as the direct operation of God's spirit in communion with that of man. These seem to be the three main, perhaps the essential features, of what, for distinction's sake, is called the Christian consciousness ; this is the sentiment conveyed in those beautiful and uni- versally adopted Scripture phrases, the form of words in baptism, and the apostolic benediction ; and it is to this, as to the starting-point and resting-place of the Trinitarian dogma in the religious mind, that I particularly wish to call your attention. You will observe that I am speak- ing now of no matter of controversy, but only of an experience, or mode of thought and feeling, common to us all as Christians, but difl^erently interpreted, according to our differing philosophies or forms of faith. Now, simply as a philosopher, I may interpret this form of experience into something very like the doctrine of the Trinity, as it is sometimes stated. And this is often done, — making one of those transcendental modes of Orthodoxy to which I once alluded. For instance, it gratifies not only my religious feeling, but my metaphysi- cal fancy, to regard God under this threefold relation towards his creatures, — as the Almighty, Infinite Cre- ator, the Sovereign of the Universe, the Father Ever- lasting ; next, as the fountain-head of all spiritual life and wisdom, which have flowed down, as it were, and be- come manifest to us in the flesh, or in the human life of Jesus of Nazareth, the author and medium of faith to so many affectionate disciples ; and thirdly, as the ever- present Spirit of truth and purity, to plead with the sin- ful heart, to console the sorrowful, to nerve and animate THE TRINITY. 49 the soul to the endurance of hardship and the perfecting of its work. This form of thought, I say, may be grateful both to my religious feeling and my speculative taste. It may give a clearness and fulness to my thought of the Deity, and a reality to my sense of his presence, which I could not have to an equal degree in any other way. It makes what has been called a subjective, or philosophical, or modal trinity, — depending for its proof, not on Scrip- ture, but simply on the metaphysical taste and habit of the mind. Not but that the Divine nature is complete within itself, in whatever way we view it ; but this is the way in which it is best recognized by my human faculty. I distinctly feel and realize the* religious meaning of the Scripture phrase. Father, Son, and holy spirit, or in- fluence. This makes up, in general terms, the sum of my religious thought ; that is, as far as the object of my homage and reverence is concerned. And I am thus full and distinct in stating it, partly because it shows how the religious sense preceded the dogmatic^ and partly because in this we see the exact nature and extent of the true Scripture docirine, as I understand it. So far we may go, no farther. As an object of reverent sentiment, we closely associate the three ; any speculative dogma beyond is unwarranted, I think, by any thing in the lan- guage of Scripture, and directly at variance with all we can understand of the laws and processes of human reason. To ilk ♦rate this last point more fully, I ask your attention to the three propositions which I shall seek to establish. The church docrine of the Trinity 's set forth as the foundation and first article of the Oithodox creed ; it is maintained to be essential to a propei under- 5 50 THE TRINITY. Standing of the Scriptures, and even to the soul's salva- tion ; it is vindicated as the only theory of the Divine nature which could make the work of redemption pos- sible ; and asserted, moreover, to be borne out and jus- tified by every variety of proof. I propose to show, first, that the evidence for it is utterly insufficient ; next, that it has always been held or defined with confusion and contradiction among those professing to believe it ; and finally, that the bare assertion of it involves the mind in an inextricable dilemma between two opposing theories, either of which completely contradicts and subverts the proper meaning asserted to belong to it. The word Trinity (or triunity) signifies, as nearly as possible, " three in one," or rather, a '^ threefold one- ness"; and its meaning as a theological dogma is this : that in the Divine nature are three persons, or distinct, intelligent, conscious agents, each capable of separate offices and a separate will, each in some sense embody- ing the full perfection of the Deity, each separately a proper object of adoration, each having his own pecu- liar share in the great work of human redemption, — so distinct from one another, in short, as to be capable of counsel, intercourse, and sympathy, yet so mysteriously connected, that they form together one Infinite, Al- mighty, Eternal God. Of the ideas blended and con- fused in this conception I shall have more to say pres- ently ; but this short statement is enough to make the argument I am about to use intelligible. I. The evidence adduced in support of the Trinity, as thus described, is deficient and inconclusive. Let it be remembered, that I am not arguing now about a meta- physical trinity, which needs and claims no other argu- ment except as its own merit recommends it to the mind ; THE TRINITY. . 51 but about a doctrine claimed to rest on Scriptural au- thority and to be borne out by Scriptural proof. Neither am I reasoning now with those who profess (as the Cath- olics) to take it on th» authority of a visible, infallible church. Their claim does not admit of argument, — at least here* and now, — any more than that of those (if 'there be any) who profess to knoic its truth from the direct teaching of the Spirit. What I desire is to rea- son with Protestants, candid and serious minds, — with those who profess in the views they hold and enforce to go no further than the sense of Scripture will guide them. Their attention I invite to my statement, that the evi- dence for the Trinity, said to be so strong, is unsubstan- tial, defective, and utterly insufficient. I might begin by alluding to the well-known fact, that many theologians, chiefly of the English Church, have acknowledged the insufficiency of the Scripture evidence, and so have insisted on the need of church authority to establish it. The doctrine itself they would not aban- don. It was inherited from the Roman Church, which professes it not from Scripture but from tradition ; and without the paramount authority of that Church, they thought, it must go to the ground. Accordingly, many of this class of theologians have embraced the Roman faith. But I do not insist upon this fact, because it might un- fairly 'warp and prejudice your minds. I only refer to it to show that Unitarians are not alone in contending that the doctrine is not sufficiently sustained by Scripture, — though these, indeed, think it is corroborated and implied there, which we do not. But let this be borne in mind, that the burden of proof rests on that side. Our Ortho- dox friends offer to provg to us the Trinity out of Scrip- ture. What is the amount and value of that proof .'^ 52 THE TRINITY. By their own acknowledgment, the doctrine is one, not of direct revelation, but of inference ; not exphcitly taught in Scripture, but only alluded to, and made out from comparison of various p*rts. Few persons who have not given particular attention to it are aware how scanty is the Scripture proof. The word Trinity itself, it is well known, is not in the Bible, and was not intro- duced till a hundred years after the time of Christ, and then, probably, to express something quite different from what we now mean by it. The only passages in the Bible where the three Divine persons are even supposed to be ii' ntioned together are these : — 1. The formula of baptism (Matt, xxviii. 19), " in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." This form of words is employed in every church where the rite is used, by ourselves as well as others, without any suspi- cion of a different meaning than what I before alluded to. 2. The apostolic benediction (2 Cor. xiii. 14), " The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all." This is used in Unitarian churches every Sunday ; and, to ray mind, beautifully expresses those three features or elements of " the Christian consciousness." 3. The fa- mous passage (1 John v. 7), " There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit." This, to my mind, has no Trinitarian meaning at all, unless the metaphysical theory I spoke of before. It is well known by every critic to be a note or comment, not belonging to the Epistle ; and any person can see, by reading the passage carefully, that it breaks up the connection of the thought, and spoils the sense. Besides these three, the onlj^ passages I find referred to in an Orthodox article on the Trinity, for illustration, THE TRINITY. 53 are these : — 1. " God said, Let us make man," &c. (Gen. i. 26.) 2. " My mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them." (Isaiah xxxiv. 16.) 3. " The Lord God, and his spirit, hath sent me." (Isaiah xlviii. 16.) 4. " We will come unto him [the obedient disciple], and make our abode with him." (John xiv. 23.) 5. " Lie to the Holy Ghost ; .... not unto men, but unto God." (Acts v. 3, 4.) 6. " The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ" (2 Thes. iii. 5) ; that is, for his coming at the end of the world, which they thought was very near. These are all the passages re- ferred to, and therefore may be considered as the strong- est. Where would one find any hint of a Trinity in these ? The argument then, as most fairly stated by its sup- porters, is this : — The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are separately spoken of as God, or as having Divine offices and attributes ; and putting such expressions to- gether, (like the several partial answers to a complicated equation,) we obtain the doctrine, which then becomes the basis of our whole theory of redemption. The argu- ment is briefly answered. Respecting God the Father, of course there is no controversy. As for those passages which seem to identify Christ with God, they properly belong to the next Discourse, where the doctrine of his proper Divinity will be separately considered. And as for those which speak of the Holy Spirit as God, it is quite enough to say that this is no point of controversy between us. We never think, on our part, of the Holy Spirit as any thing separate from God himself, — only God regard- ed in a peculiar manner, as acting directly on the soul of man. Whether we translate the word spirit " breath" 5* 54 THE TRINITY. or " influence," it signifies the same thing ; and refers simply to that fact recognized in the rehgious emotion, — that point of devotional experience and conviction in every Christian soul. And in saying this, vt^e have disposed of absolutely the whole of the Scripture testi- mony supposed to bear upon the Trinity. Thus it is reduced, so far as this branch of evidence is concerned, (and we admit no other,) to the single question of the Deity of Christ, — to be taken up and answered more fully at another time. A third point is very important, as further illustrating the feebleness of this evidence. Not only, as you have seen, or may easily ascertain, every single passage of Scripture may be and has been interpreted by the op- posers of this doctrine so as to conform easily to their views ; but, as we are told on the best authority, each single text has been conceded or explained away by some one critic, himself a firm believer in the doctrine. We need not quote a single Unitarian writer, — we may confine ourselves strictly to Trinitarian authorities to justify our own interpretations. This fact, often as- serted, has been abundantly proved by a volume in- dustriously compiled, in which each passage is taken up separately, and its Trinitarian interpretation set aside and refuted by some Orthodox authority.* . Now I do not urge this point so strongly as some might do, becaulse 1 know that men professing Ortho- doxy may very often be regarded in their own church as very loose and unsound critics. The fact, no doubt, * The Concessions of Trinitarians. Being a Selection of Extracts from the Writings of the Most Eminent Biblical Critics and Com- mentators. By John Wilson, Author of "Scripture Proofs and Scriptural Illustrations of Unitarianisrn." 8vo. pp.614. THE TRINITY. 55 is worth something ; but to me it is not as interesting as another, namely, that the classes of proof once relied on with almost equal assurance have been abandoned one by one, till now only an insignificant number of " proof-texts " remains, to which any candid reasoner is willing to apply. For instance, the plural name of God in Hebrew — once very much insisted on — is completely shown to be no argument at all, — the same thing being the case with Hebrew names of magistrates and other titles of honor. The number three — often found in the Old Testament, (as in the " three men " who appeared to Abraham, the " mouth of three wit- nesses," the '' threefold cord not easily broken,") — and the ascription, " Holy, holy, holy," addressed to God in the Revelation, are no longer held to have a mystic meaning, or to hint at the trinity of persons in the God- head. The form of argument has very much changed, its scope being narrowed down to the few points al- ready spoken of. And the most confident assertions of the Trinitarian dogma made at the present day, (except by those who take it expressly on church authority,) are, after all, from the point of view of speculative phi- losophy, and not of Scriptural interpretation. With the theories of speculative philosophy, except what I said at the commencement of my exposition, I have nothing at present to do. II. I come, then, to my second proposition, which is, that the Trinity has always been interpreted in the most contradictory and uncertain way by those who have professed to hold it. As is well known to every reader of church history, the early centuries were full of controversy on the sub- ject of the ideas incorporated in this doctrine ; and it 56 THE TRINITY. was not till " later than the middle of the fifth cenluiy " that the final shape was given to it in the Athanasian creed. And this controversy is by no means difficult to account for, if we suppose that the first Christians cherished simply the devout emotion, the living faith, the obedient conscience, and were content not to pro- nounce dogmatically on an abstract theory they had never heard of. But, as I think, it is perfectly unac- countable, if we suppose the doctrine of the Trinity to have been revealed. A single sentence, explicitly said and unequivocal in its language, would have put the whole question to rest, if such a sentence could have been quoted from Christ or his apostles, — which was never pretended, unless in the traditions of the Roman Church. And if he left his own nature unex- plained, except in vague and ambiguous hints, which either side interprets easily to its own pleasure, it seems very clear that the more entirely we believe in him, the more we shall be convinced that no such doc- trine can be an essential part of his religion. The force of this circumstance will be seen yet more clearly, when we consider that these first controversies, which brought the doctrine into shape, were with a very different purpose from the style of argument held now. The " plan of redemption," requiring the vicarious atonement and the suffering of a Divine being, was not the prominent idea, — if, indeed, it was ever thought of, — unless in some heretical. Gnostic theories. To satisfy the speculative tendency of the Greek philoso- phy, and to vie with each other in doing supposed honor to Christ, — to assign to him (so to speak) a rank in the universe equivalent to the national sover- eignty claimed by the Jews for their Messiah, — seems THE TRINITY. 57 to have been the motive uppermost. The coequal Divinity of the Spirit was an afterthought, unknown to the Nicene creed (A. D. 325), which (after a full statement of the Divine origin and nature of Christ) says briefly, " And [I believe] in the Holy Spirit," — which may be no more than the Divine influence on the soul. The Trinity, in its present dogmatic sense, — framed to meet the exigencies of the Orthodox idea of an infinite sacrifice being needed, — I do not think was once approached in the earlier centuries, unless in those -schools of Oriental speculation called Gnosticism, which were one and all condemned as heretical. So that we have, as I conceive myself justified in assert- ing, a total diversity and contradiction, at the outset, between the ancient and modern Trinity, — the mean ing, intention, and fundamental idea of the doctrine be- ing quite oppositely held. And a few words will show the reason of this dif ference. In the earliest form given to the doctrine, we see the influence of three elements completely for- eign to the modern mind, — the vague Oriental The- osophy and idea of incarnation of the gods ; the Greek speculation, consisting very much in technical distinc- tions and verbal analysis, wholly divorced from objective scientific truth ; and the mystic symbolic representations of the Egyptian priesthood. But the last two in par- ticular were not so alien from the scholastic and mystic theology of the Middle Ages, and the Trinitarian dog- ma became thoroughly engrafted on the received creed. Still, as I have said, its meaning in course of time be- came quite different. The modern dogma retains the ancient form, but interpolates a new significance, and makes it merely the basis of the whole Orthodox 58 THE TRINITY. scheme of redemption. From a primary, it becomes a secondary point of faith. The Athanasian creed says, that without belief in it, (the highest-toned state- ment of the Trinity,) a man shall "doubtless perish everlastingly" ; simply adding, that Christ '' died for our salvation," and is to be our judge. Modern Orthodoxy says the Atonement is the main point of faith, — the other being subsidiary, and only essential because of that ; while the absolute need of the sacrifice and of belief in it is most explicitly set forth.* The abstract doctrine then^ the reason of it noio, we find to be the real point of faith. This difference shows strikingly the change that has come about in the central signifi- cance of the Trinitarian dogma. But even among the supporters of the modern dogma, there is no more agreement in its interpretation. This was my reason for not insisting more strongly on the fact, that some one or other among them rejects the Trinitarian meaning from each single passage brought in support of it. But this diversity, while it weakens the force of that particular argument, is itself even more fatal to the doctrine. It cannot be so stated^ that the mass of its supporters will accept the statement. Once get beyond a iew vague and general phrases, which mean much or little according as we please, and which are worn threadbare by use, so as to be not much more than substitutes for thought instead of its expression, — you launch at once into a sea of contradictions. The Church (i. e. the " Orthodox " portion of it) has vi- brated from the first between the two horns of a dilem- ma, grasping either according as there seemed more peril from the other. * See Religious Encyclopaedia, Art. " Athanasius." THE TRINITY. 59 The xVthanasIan creed says we must " neither confound the persons, nor divide the substance " ; and one or the other of these two has been done, in every attempt to make a plausible comment on the doctrine. One class of expounders is always accused of destroying the per- sonal identity of Christ, or else of detracting from his true dignity ; and the other, of setting up three distinct gods on the throne of the universe, — a notion utterly strange and idolatrous to the general sense of Chris- tendom. I am not speaking now of the controversy between Trinitarians and Unitarians ; but of that among the Or- thodox themselves. Some dangerous heresy has always been detected, lurking under the disguise of every pos- sible interpretation ; and those have uniformly succeeded best who have simply stated the bald dogma, in the most paradoxical form possible, and have left the explanation as a " mystery," to shift for itself. Thus in the Eng- lish Church the debate has been plentifully waged, — South and Clarke, on the one hand, being regarded as Sabellian or Arian heretics, while Sherlock, Bull, and Waterland have the reputation of having even overstated the intrinsic paradox, in their bold and zealous defence of Orthodoxy. The Trinity of Coleridge, though he praises these last defenders of the faith, and is even big- oted and intolerant in alluding to his old associates, the Unitarians, is looked on by some w^ith no little suspicion, as a metaphysical, German, half-spurious Trinity, after all, savoring more of Schelling than of Paul or John. The most sincere believers have now and then to pro- test against the extreme dogmatism and extravagant lan- guage of some Trinitarian advocates, while very few w^ould adopt the old test-phrases of Orthodoxy, — such 60 THE TRINITY. as to call Mary the mother of God, or to say that the Father, or the Trinity, suffered on the cross. The whole tone of declaration on the subject has become softened down from dogmatism, and is tending towards mysticism or metaphysics. And it is not hazarding too much to say, that, if those professing Trinitarianism every- where were to make a frank and full explanation to one another of what they mean by it exactly, very many of them would find more real sympathy in the views of some heretics or dissenters than in the majority of those in their own ranks, III. I have but little time or space left for my re- maining proposition, — that the Trinitarian dogma in- volves the mind in an inextricable dilemma between two opposing theories, either of which completely contra- dicts and subverts the proper meaning asserted to belong to it. Neither, after what has been already said, is it necessary to illustrate this point at any length. Indeed, I may appear to have anticipated in one way what I am about to repeat in another. In other words, what has just been shown as an historical fact, I wish to exhibit now as a logical necessity. And this I cannot prove, but only state. I have said that minds of a certain class find a satis- faction in representing to themselves the Divine nature as manifested in three different ways, or modes ; and this habit of thought I have called a modal or philosoph- ical trinity, — regarding God in his several capacities or attributes, as Creator, Teacher or Redeemer, and Sanc- tifier. This way of thinking I have been careful to dis- tinguish from the Orthodox dogma with which it is some- times confounded ; and, indeed, the advocates of that dogma are as anxious as any one that one should not be THE TRINITY. 61 taken for the other. I bring it up, partly to put that distinction in clearer light ; but chiefly to show that, in abandoning the doctrine, we do not abandon the religious truth which it may be held to represent. We do not divest the Deity of any of his functions, or remove him farther from the human soul. What seems to us bar- barous, scholastic, and unsound, in the language of the creeds, we freely reject. But our idea of God is not as if we took away those attributes of mercy and grace^ or counsel, which are especially assigned to the second and third persons of the Trinity. The Divine nature, in its threefold or manifold modes of operation, express- es to us the entire sum of those ideas of majesty, ten- derness, and near communion which have ever been held to belong in peculiar to the Christian's God. But when we have said this, we have said all. This is the only concession or abatement we make in favor of a dogma so long associated with and shaping the Chris- tian belief. We not only refuse it wholly in its dogmat- ic meaning, but we say it cannot be stated intelligibly, so as to make it clear to our reason what it is we are called on to believe. We can go no farther than the religious or philosophical sentiment, declared before. If we advance a single step beyond, we fall at once upon that dilemma which the best minds in Christen- dom have vexed themselves in vain to solve, these thou- sand years. We say freely, that, not only it has not been solved, but in the nature of things it cannot be solved. We must either divide the substance or con- found the persons. Once get beyond the most vague statement of an intangible and inexplicable dogma, and one or the other of these two we must do. Either we have three gods for one, three objects of worship in 6 62 ' THE TRINITY. every sense, three beings as distinct as Peter, James, and John, or else we simply regard the one God from three several points of view, to facilitate our imperfect comprehension, and our Trinity reduces itself to the harmless, convenient theory which has been stated be- fore. The only relief from this is in a form of words which may mean as much or as little as we please ; which says and unsays the same thing in a breath, — inter- changing the words three and one, one and three, more like a verbal legerdemain or sophistical play of words, like a riddle or a phrase studied to bewilder and deceive, than like a proposition meant to be understood. We may say, if we will, that we believe in the words, es- pecially if repeated to ns on an authority we respect ; but if you ask whether we believe what the words mean, we must frankly acknowledge we do not know what that is, and have never been able to ascertain. What has perplexed the best minds in Christendom, and set them at variance, we may well be excused if we refrain from the attempt to solve. And let us not be put off with the assurance that this is a mystery, which is above our power to comprehend. We know what a mystery is in things^ and trust we have the modesty reverently to set limits to our intellect- ual pride or ambition. But a mystery of ivords^ as we think, cannot be any thing more than an enigma or puz- zle. If you ask us reverently to adore the infinite and incomprehensible nature of God, we readily join with you. If you ask us to acknowledge our ignorance of the modes of his working, even in so simple a thing as the forming of a grain of sand, or the growth of a blade of grass, no less than in the majesty and glory of his boundless univ-erse, it is wljat, with unfeigned humility, we THE TRINITY. 63 must always do. It is only when a proposition contra- dictory or unintelligible in terms is offered us, and our belief of it demanded under that abused name of mys- tery, that we recoil, and say we must first know what the proposition means. With so plain an alternativ^e be- fore us, of two interpretations, which we are told are equally false and perilous, we must say that, to our sim- pler understanding, there seems nothing left to believe at all. It is not true that where mystery begins religion ends ; but it is both true and necessary, that where mys- tery begins there is an end of human dogmatism, — there is an end of demanding assent to particular opinions and definitions, whether yours or mine. Such, then, in conclusion, is the position in which we find the Church dogma of the Trinity ; — a doctrine made up of inferences and obscurity ; established, by an uncertain and fluctuating majority, in the midst of contro- versy, doubt, and bitter feuds ; resting on so scanty and fragmentary evidence ; held differently and defended on different grounds from age to age, from place to place, from church to church ; constantly liable to the hazard of fatal misinterpretation on either hand ; trembling (as it were) always, in its best estate, in that position of unstable equilibrium between two contending heresies, each of which has the merit of being distinct and logical, while it is doubtful whether this has any signification at all that can be expressed in words. I appeal to your good sense and candor, I will not say to pronounce the doctrine false, — believe and think as you will in regard to it, — but to say whether my assent is to be so sharp- ly demanded, whether we are to be exiled and accused of irreverence, and denied the Christian name, because we refuse it. 64 THE TRINITY. Its evidence we regard as insufficient and unsound.' Its meaning its best friends are not agreed upon. Its statement involves inextricable confusion, and an alterna- tive between two virtual denials of it. Can such a per- plexing mystery as that be a lest of faith ? My reason- ing may not show it to be untrue ; but so much uncer- tainty, at least, is shown to rest upon it, that dogmatism is utterly out of place. Sharing, we trust, in the Chris- tian consciousness of believers, we do not deny the re- ligious significance which its terms perhaps imply, — God is our Father. Christ is our Teacher and Saviour. The Holy Spirit is our Connforter. But not in that vague, mysterious, unintelligible sense in which we are told that these three, as separate, coeternal. Infinite be- ings, combine to make the Triune God. "To us," in the words of Paul, " there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him ; and one Lord Jesus Christ,^by whom are all things,* and we by him." DISCOURSE IV. THE DEITY OF CHRIST. IF HE CALLED THEM GODS UNTO WHOM THE WORD OF GOD CAME, AND THE SCRIPTURE CANNOT BE BROKEN; SAY YE OF HIM WHOM THE FATHER HATH SANCTIFIED AND SENT INTO THE WORLD, THOU BLASPHEMEST, BECAUSE I SAID, I AM THE SON OF GOD? Johfl X. 35, 36. The object of the last Discourse was to review the doctrine of the Trinity, — its evidence and its interpreta- tion ; and to show that, whatever may be claimed for its truth in the abstract possibility of things, yet it never has been and never can be so established as to serve for a sufficient basis to our faith. If what I then said was accurate, the Trinity cannot be used to prove the Deity of Christ ; my aim now is to show that the Deity of Christ cannot be used to prove the Trinity. Both are essential parts of the theory of Atonement, which is the keystone of the whole fabric, the characteristic feature of the whole plan. The Orthodox statement is, that Jesus of Nazareth was really and truly God ; that the Divine and human natures were mysteriously blended in his soul ; that hav- 6* 66 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. ing existed from all eternity, " not made nor created, but begotten," coeternal with the eternal God, the per- sonal, conscious agent in the work of creation, he volun- tarily took the condition of humanity, and became son of a woman ; that, for the sake of fulfilling the only terms on which man could be pardoned and reconciled, he under- went the burden, humiliation, pain, and death necessary to the infinite sacrifice ; and that in rising from the dead, and ascending to heaven, he was only resuming the glorious state and robes of majesty, with which he had been invested through countless ages before. I omit whatever may seem contradictory or out of taste in the representations often made, only stating the essential doctrine in its plainest and simplest form, so as to begin with as distinct a notion as possible of what it means. Such, in general terms, is the proposition, or series of propositions, which I am to discuss. In many respects, all discussion on the subject must be unsatisfactory. The nature and office of Christ are almost always spoken of in terms which appeal rather to our religious affection than to our intellectual discernment. Partly from sin- cere veneration or love, partly from a wish not to be behindhand in an essential article of faith, different sects have contended how they should most highly exalt the claims and dignity of Christ. If they have called him the infinite and only God, it has been to make his place and claim paramount, and to enhance the greatness of his redeeming work. If, finding too little evidence for this, they have regarded him as a preexistent angelic being, a spirit of great power and honor, the first of created beings, the agent in the formation of the world, and only inferior to God himself, it has been from a shrinking dread of confounding him with the race of men. And THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 67 if they have held to his pure and simple humanity, it has generally been with a protest first, that absolute freedom from moral imperfection set him apart suffi- ciently from other men, while his human thought, expe- rience, love, brought him into closer sympathy with us than if he had been of another order of beings, and gave him a more genuine, legitimate, and powerful influence on us, as our exaniple. From this emulation in rendering due honor to the Saviour — so creditable in general to the loyalty and religious feeling of Christians — has resulted a state of mind which makes it very difficult to deal with the plain question of his nature, offices, and claims. In some respects it is more embarrassing than either of the other doctrines. If we speak of the metaphysical mystery of the Trinity, of the confusion of ideas involved in the doctrine of the Atonement, or Fall of Man. of the lior- rors in the popular notion of hell, or Satanic agency, we have something to appeal to in the common sentiment of Christians. But when we touch upon the Divinity of Christ, we are on ground appropriate and set apart to the exclusive sentiment of personal reverence ; and the most delicate and cautious handling of the argument will scarcely shield one from the imputation of doing wilful dishonor to the Son of God, and wantonly affronting the religious feeling of all Christians. Still, a service is due to each man's understanding of the simple truth. And, whatever the delicacy and skill required, however strongly this peculiar difficulty of the task may press, yet, believing that insincerity here is worst dishonor, that an exaggerated and contradictory claim is most adverse to the simplicity of Christ, and above all, that our whole religious belief is vitiated and 68 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. confused by error on this point, or any other, when wil- fully and timidly adhered to, I proceed to the subject under review. The Deity of Christ is intimately and vitally connected, as doctrine, with a religious system which we hold to be false and injurious, and alien from his spirit. This must be our justification in undertaking a task which to some will appear a studious detraction from the dignity of Christ, and is in some respects alien and distasteful to our own private feeling.* First, however, let me make even more explicitly the disclaimer which I urged in the last Discourse. We leave to the religious sentiment complete and undisputed possession of its own ground. There is a region there with which we have no disposition to interfere. The devout spirit, the experience of prayer, has a sphere and language of its own, inalienable. On that ground our criticism and logic shall not tread. What the grateful heart recognizes, in its simple, strong emotion, shall re- main untouched. The ascription of praise and homage, the personal sense of gratitude, the appeal, the love, the veneration, which the religious mind renders in unques- tioning sincerity to its Saviour, we will not refuse or blame. Neither will we intrude our own interpretation of that sentiment, to explain away this or change the meaning of that. A part of the homage we pay to Christ has be- come thoroughly blended with the religious sentiment * Not to quarrel about terms, I shall generally use the words "Divinity" and " Deity" in the same sense, although this is quite a needless concession, and one which many Unitarians would pro- test against. It is proper to add, therefore, that these generally insist on Christ's Divinity^ as belonging to his commission and work, while they reject his Deity, as belonging to his absolute and intrinsic nature. THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 69 and character. Its appropriate place seems to be in the province of devotion. We have no wish to super- sede the language or the sentiment which has become as it were part of our religious nature, — at least, part of our culture and habit. Only, when it is taken from the sphere of reverence into that of logic, when the emotion is stiffened into a dogma, and the breathed affection becomes petrified in a creed, when the warm declaration of devout feeling is arrested and frozen to a solid shape, and we are told that must be our historical or theological opinion, — then w^e demur, and claim our right to our own better exposition, as we think it, to serve as the basis of the same faith and hope and love. For the sake of simplicity, I shall confine myself at present to the single doctrine, as I have stated it. The diversity of opinion is so great among those who dis- sent from it, and the shades of opinion are so many and so nicely discriminated, between the high Orthodox be- lief and the other extreme of rationalism, that it would be unfair to take any one person's statement as the alternative, or make the whole various body responsible for his assertions. Towards the close, I may allude again to some of these diversities, for further illustra- tion. I have now to do only with the single proposition, that Christ is God. Of this 1 shall attempt to show, first, that it rests on the wrong, or at least doubtful, inter- pretation of a few passages of Scripture, while it is op- posed by its general sense and spirit ; and next, that, in all the forms in which it has been held, it fails of the great aim of religious enlightenment, while it is unes- sential to the Christian faith or hope. Its failure, at any rate, to meet the exigencies of the theory of Atone- ment, will be considered at another time. 70 ^ THE DEITY OF CHRIST. I. It will save confusion and misunderstanding, if I begin witli a brief view of the Scripture language in reference to Christ. It is not to be concealed or denied, that the writers of the New Testament speak of him in very peculiar terras. In general, — and from this an argument has been derived for the genuineness of these writings, — we may trace a marked difference in the tone and style from the first period to the last of the New Testament history. In the Gospels, our Saviour is scarcely mentioned, except by his proper name, Jesus. If we omit one or two places where the word Christ refers to the office simply, and not to him at all in person, it occurs in all the Gospels put together only as many times as in the single Epistle to the Ro- mans, which is only as long as the shortest Gospel, and is occupied with a different class of subjects, and so has less occasion to mention him. And in every case, without any straining of the words, " Jesus " may mean the man, and '' Christ " the office ; while afterwards, and among those who (as Paul) had not known him personally, the word Christ tends more and- more to become an integral part of his proper name. This circumstance will appear from the slightest exam- ination of the Testament or of a Concordance. And we see, in general, as in the lapse of time he was more and more viewed in relation to his office, and less in his pure and simple individuality, that epithets of honor came to be more commonly added to his name. The title " Lord " * occurs first in the book of Acts, in direct connection with his name, and is frequently used * The vagueness and generality of " lord " and " worship," as the object and act of homage, are seen in Matthew xviii. 26. THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 71 by Paul. And all the characteristic expressions refer- ring to him, (such as " in Christ," " for," " against," (( by," " withChrisl,") in connection with our religious life and hopes, occur in the later writings of the Tes- tament. They came spontaneously from the grateful and religious feeling of the disciples, which seemed to bring them most near to him. And they acquired that vagueness, spirituality, and elevation which make them seem applicable to God, only after a considerable lapse of time had intervened. Indeed, so strikingly is this the case, that it occasioned serious difficulty to the first Orthodox interpreters ; and some of them found no better way of accounting for it, than to say it was necessary his Divinity should be concealed while he was on earth, lest it should come to the knowledge of his subtle and malignant enemy, Satan, and work harm to the truth. The doctrine, as they supposed, was studiously hidden^ and not revealed. It was only an afterthought that Jesus himself had plainly declared it to his disciples, — still less, in the words of our existing Gospels. A second point is equally evident, and equally im- portant, as throwing light on the New Testament phra- seology. It is, that the name Christ (which came by degrees, as we have seen, to be his ordinary designa- tion) signifies not so much his person as his office, — or rather the peculiar and intimate relation in which he stood towards God. The word Christ (or Messiah) means " anointed." At first, and among the Jews, it meant consecrated to the particular national office of the Messiah ; but by degrees a sense more spiritual and appropriate came to be attached to it, which we may explain somewhat thus. It is, indeed, the sentiment of 72 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. all spiritual religion, that '' in God we live and move and have our being." But most men are conscious of an unwillingness or an unworthiness, which separates and estranges them from him. And the baptism or "anoint- ing " of the Spirit, (signified in the name Christ,) seems to imply that fulness of the Divine power or presence, that immediate, controlling, pervading influence of the Deity upon the soul of Jesus, which made him, in the reverent affection of his followers, wholly apart from and above the ordinary race of men, — the special representative, so to speak, of our religious nature and capacity, — the mediator between God and men, — the image or representation of the glory of the Divine attributes, especially of mercy, justice, and love, — in a new and peculiar sense the Son of God. All, says Schleiermacher, are children of God, — Jesus only, his Son. Such vi^as evidently the feeling the early Christians entertained towards Jesus Christ ; and they expressed it in a variety of ways, with as much strength and fervor as they could, in those many phrases which have come to be so closely associated with his name. Nor in this, as I conceive, were they departing from the idea of his simple and proper humanity. There is no break, no abrupt change, no sudden transition, from their first thought of him, as the carpenter's son of JNIazareth, to their strong and emulous ascriptions of all possible dignity and glory to their risen Lord, — nothing but the gradual progress of their thought, as just described, as he became more and more blended with their religious ex])erience and hope. And, at any rate, whatever was the nature of that relationship to God which they ascribed to him, it was what it were THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 73 no impiety in ihein to aspire for, themselves. There might, indeed, be a peculiarity in position, which made him what no other could be to the world and them ; but those spiritual gifts which w^ere " the hiding of his power," it was their privilege and their duty to seek. Thus Jesus himself is represented (John xvii. 22) as saying, " The glory which thou gavest me 1 have given ihem" ; i. e. the intimate sense and blessedness of the Divine presence. As he says, " I and my Father are one," so he prays " that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." Peter (1 Pet. iv. J 4) encourages the disciples in persecution, by assuring them that " the spirit of glory and of God resteth on them," as on Jesus at his baptism ; and John (1 Ep. i. 3), says, "Our fellowship is with the Father"; and again (iii. 2), " When he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is " ; and again (ii. 20), " Ye have an unction [anointing] from the Holy One, and ye know all things." Paul desires (Eph. iii. 19) that the disci- ples " might be filled with all the fulness of God " ; and Peter (2 Pet. i. 4) says the Gospel promises are given, " that by these ye might be partakers of the Di- vine nature," — thus applying to the disciples generally almost the very phraseology which Orthodoxy applies to Christ, and using in this connection the strongest ex- pressions that can be quoted to prove his absolute Divinity. One other expression has given peculiar difficulty to interpreters, but seems easily explained, as containing a slight modification of the same idea. It is the title Lo- gos, or Word, as used in the first chapter of John. I cannot go into an exposition now of the style of philos- 7 74 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. ophy which made these expressions easy and familiar once, obscure as they may be now. Nor is this at all necessary. Though the expression be a technical one, the thing expressed is a simple religious sentiment or idea. It is enough to say, that this form of speech was naturalized among' the Jews in Egypt about the time of Christ ; and that the introduction to John's Gospel (we are told) can be matched word for word, except where Jesus is personally spoken of, out of the writings of these Jews. As we shall see by careful attention, every other explanation is confused and obscure, except that which makes the " Word " signify simply the ac- tive spirit or energy of God ; or rather, the utterance or expression of God in his works, and especially in the soul of man. The phrase occurs more than sixty times in the Old Testament, often with a kindred meaning ; as in this passage, — " By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth " ; besides (a similar idea) where it is said, "God spake, and it was done," &c. Its significa- tion is almost identical with our word " inspiration," taken in the broadest sense ; and it may be regarded as a refined, less niaterial way of speaking of the acts of God. And if we understand it simply of the Divine spirit, energy, reason, or creative word, we shall find its mean- irig clear and plain enough. It is that Divine power or wisdom, manifest in the works of creation, and in the soul of man. And because that Divine spirit was es- pecially manifest in the life of Jesus, and this was felt to be, in a special sense, a moral revelation of God, therefore this phrase is used to introduce fitly the story of bis hfe, and prepare us to understand his marvellous THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 75 influence on all who knew him. So far as there is a consecutive train of thought in the passage, it seems to be, that God has made a threefold revelation or expres- sion of himself; namely, of his power (in nature),' his wisdom (in the soul), and his love (in Christ) ; or, as we should say, by his providence in nature, in history, and in the life of Jesus. A moral revelation could only have been made in such a life ; which accordingly stands to us as the representative or declaration of precisely those attributes which seem least clearly revealed in the other manifestations of the Infinite. After speaking of the great w^ork of creation, done by the wisdom, energy, or creative word of God, — the Almighty himself, and no inferior being, for '' the Word was God," — and al- luding to its manifestation in the soul of man, and his spiritual or providential history, the writer goes on to say, — " The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." To one who enters at all into the spirit of that Gospel, or understands, however faintly, the sentiment of affection- ate veneration the disciples felt towards Jesus, — who first had opened their eyes to the glory of God's creation, and made them aware of their spiritual destiny and the abiding presence of God, — there will seem no difficulty in such words as these. After this exposition of the general tone and spirit of the New Testament language in respect to Christ, there will be little difficulty, I apprehend, in the few pas- sages that have not already been considered. I men- tion them more to show their scanty number, and the slenderness of evidence for any thing more than has already been shown respecting the honors paid to Christ 76 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. in the Testament, than for any weight they have In sway- ing our opinion. In the Hebrew Scriptures there are two passages which have an accidental connection with this argument. 1. Isaiah vii. 14, where the name " Immanuel " Is applied to the expected Jewish prince, or some other child, meaning "God with us," — as Elijah signifies " God the Lord," and Israel " Prince of God," and Timothy " Glory of God." There is nothing in the passage to make us suspect its referring to Christ, ex- cepting that it is gratefully quoted by Matthew, to illus- trate the new deliverance through Jesus. 2. Isaiah ix. 6, — " His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father." Of course this could not mean Jesus, — for the name given Is the Father, not the Son, and the best critics are agreed in applying these titles of honor to the triumphant reign of the pious and prosperous Hezeklah ; and It was not till comparatively late, that it was even suggested that they might be said of Christ. It is plain to see, by the con- nection, that they were spoken of a temporal and warlike prince, not of a spiritual teacher* In seven places of the New Testament, and only seven, the name God has been asserted to be given to Jesus. Of these, two are set aside by the critics as not belonging to the true text, viz. : — I. Acts xx. 28, '' The church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood." It should be, " church of the Lord," or " master." The phrase " blood of God " is abhorrent to Christian feeling, and was not used till the ninth century, the darkest of the Dark Ages. 2. 1 Tim. ili. 16, '' God was manifest in the flesh," — a phrase easily explained by what I have just said of the Word, THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 77 as the declaration or manifestation of God ; but the true text is " he who," or " which." Three others depend on grammar and punctuation, and are as easily rendered one way as the other. These are, — 1. Rom. ix. 5, which can be rendered several ways ; perhaps the simplest is, " Christ came, who is above them all ; God be blessed for ever " ; or, " God who is over all be blessed for ever." 2. Heb. i. 8, which is quoted literally from the Greek Alexandrian translation of the Old Testament (Psalm xlv. 6), and which the best Hebrew scholar in the world translates, " Thy throne is of God for ever," i. e. established by God. It was first addressed to Solomon, on his mar- riage with the princess of Egypt. 3.' 1 John v. 20, " This is the true God, and eternal life," — which may or may not refer to Christ, just as we choose, not even being in the same sentence where his name is men- tioned. Our seven texts, then, are reduced to two, — abso- lutely the only ones wnth which Unitarians find any dif- ficulty ; and that difficulty is only as to the frame of mind in which they were said or written. 1. John xx. 28, where Thomas, in his excitement and surprise at recognizing Jesus, says, " My Lord and my God," — as if a man in that state of mind, who the minute be- fore had declared his entire unbelief of Jesus' resurrec- tion, could be the chief witness to the most momentous truth of the Gospel ! Some suppose it is an ejaculation addressed to God, as if calling him to w^itness his new faith ; others that the word is addressed to Jesus in the qualified sense in which it is used in my text, " He called them gods unto whom the word of God came." Either way, it is of too trifling value as evidence to create a 7* 78 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. doubt or justify a controversy. 2. Last of all, and cer- tainly most difficult, if we wish to know the precise shade of meaning implied, is the passage (Phil. ii. 6) which says of Jesus, that, "being in the form of God, he thought it not robbery to be equal with God." It is in the course of an exhortation to Christian humility. We are to be like Christ in this respect. What ! in as- piring to absolute equality with God .'' Certainly not ; but just the opposite, — for the word itself means just as well, that he " did not make it his ambition " to be equal with God, — i. e. to claim divine honor, such as was given to Greek heroes and Roman emperors. Paul was writing to Greeks under the Roman rule ; and it is thus that he contrasts the impious ambition of their pre- tended gods and heroes with the simple majesty of Jesus, who, "godlike "as he was, ("in the form of God,") never aspired to that sort of worship from his followers which their superstitious devotees claimed for them. These are all the passages ever supposed to name Christ as God. Of the expressions, " Lord," " wor- ship," "fulness of God" in him, I have spoken already. If he says, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Fa- ther," on the Trinitarian interpretation it would cer- tainly be to " confound the persons," and make no dif- ference between Father and Son. He evidently means, that in the human qualities of dignity, mercy, love, we see all we can see of God, and have only to add the infinity of the Divine nature to the beauty of the spirit- ual traits. The only other passage of any moment is that (Col. i. 16) where it is twice said, " All things were created by him." The prepositions used are com- monly translated " in " and " through," — which would materially alter the sense ; but I am inclined to think THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 79 the whole paragraph is a parallel, and that the sense is, " Christ Is like God in this ; that as in him (God) are established the glory and strength of the outward world, so in him (Christ), the head of the Church, are found the source of spiritual authority and the fountain-head of religious truth." I have taken up these " proof-texts," as they are called, one by one, to show in detail what I asserted in general, — that the doctrine of the Deity of Christ rests on a false, or at least doubtful, interpretation of a very few passages, and is opposed by the general sense and spirit of the Testament. Not that these critical dis- cussions have any weight in influencing my own belief; but they are necessary to avoid misunderstanding, and to interpret special points into conformity with the whole. Nor that I contend for the precise expositions I have given them ; of course, our particular interpretation is shaped by our general belief, and not the reverse. Critics equally learned and candid will read such things difTer- enlly. If the Deity of Christ could be proved on other grounds, doubtless these passages might be so explained as to accord with it. But this is the very thing which cannot be proved. But I do not see how any one can doubt that the sense and spirit of the Testament ^enemZ/j/ make Jesus wholly different from God. There seems (saving the few doubtful sentences) no confusion, no room for varying opinion. And, indeed, the only real reluctance to regarding Christ as a " mere man " (as is sometimes depreciatingly said) comes, I think, from the morbid and false view of human nature studiously fos- tered by the prevalent theory of Christianity. This I shall have occasion to review presently ; at present, it is enough to allude to the simple fact. Take the attributes we ascribe to God, and see how 80 THE D£ITY OF CHRIST. the life of Christ expressly contradicts them. Eternity, « or necessary existence : he " came forth from the Fa- I ther." Omnipresence: he '' goes his way to him that ^ sent him." Omnipotence : he says, " Power is given me "; " Of myself I can do nothing"; " My Father is greater than I." Omniscience : "Of that day knoweth not the Son, but the Father only." Absolute perfection : " But one is good, that is God." Self-sufficiency : he prays, acknowledges his dependence, and says, " I thank thee that thou hast heard me." These examples are enough. I quote them, not for proof, but merely as specimens of the Gospel style. They show, as plainly as can be shown, that the general sense of Scripture is utterly hostile to the Orthodox theory ; and that, without attributing strange dissimulation and ambiguity to the " Son of Man," as he almost always called himself, it is impossible to think of him as being at the same time the Infinite God, absolute in knowledge and supreme in power. The verbal jugglery by which we are told of two natures in him, a Divine and a human, — if it means any thing more than that the Divine spirit interpenetrates and is the sustaining life of every human soul, — has no countenance and can find no excuse in the Testament. Make Jesus in a peculiar sense the representative to us of that divine or spiritual element common to us all in less degree, and you make his claims intelligible, the language of Scripture plain. Go beyond, though but a step, and you bring darkness and confusion, destroy the simplicity of the word, and perplex yourself with a vaiji and complicated theory, for which there is no justification in reason, Scripture, or the religious sense.* * I omit the argument respecting the preexistence of Christ. 1. Be- THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 81 II. Thus defective and doubtful as the evidence is, at best, which by means of Scriptural assertion or interpre- tation makes Jesus identical with God, the doctrine has yet been supposed to be borne out by other proofs, and justified on other grounds, independent of these. Of course, no other mode of direct proof is legitimate except the Scripture testimony. But it has been assumed to meet a great want of our minds, which otherwise could have no sure knowledge of God, and of our hearts, which could have no sure avenue of approach to him but through this medium. I have, then, to show that this assertion is incorrect ; that mind and heart do not require such a doctrine of the Saviour ; or, in the words of the proposition before stated, that it " fails of the great aim of religious enlightenment, while it is unessen- tial to the Christian faith or hope." The doctrine of Christ's Divinity, while it certainly bewilders and perplexes the mind, affords us no more certain knowledge of God. It is an error to suppose, that, by bestowing the name of what is unknown on a familiar object, we become better acquainted with its real character. To call charcoal diamond may be said to have some degree of scientific truth ; but, familiar as the one may be, it will not help explain the properties of the other, unless we know that too. No one, surely, will deny that Jesus lived and was known among his contem- cause it has nothing to do with the question of his Divinity, and Unitarians are of various minds about it. 2. The three or four passages which seem to imply it are no more explicit than those which speak of men as " known," " glorified," " favored," «S:c., be- fore their birth (Jer. i. 5; Rom. viii. 30; 2 Tim. i. 8, 9). 3. Because the general speculative notion of the preexistence of souls would naturally, if shared by John, be applied peculiarly to his supposed sinless and glorified precixistent state. 82 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. poraries as a man. As such he was loved, welcomed, followed, entreated ; as such he was arrested, tried, ac- cused, and put to death ; and even his nearest friends were so far from suspecting a superior nature in him, that on his death they fell into complete despair, as if his project of restoring " the kingdom of Israel" had wholly failed. Evidently, then, during his ministry he had displayed only the qualities, attributes, characteristics, of a man. It was only human traits, such as benevo- lence, justice, moral courage, devoutness, that he exhib- ited, however set off and exalted by superiority of char- acter or inarvellousness of works. Where, then, do we find any relief to our perplexity, or light to our doubts of God, by being told that his nature was mysteriously pres- ent in that soul ? If this signifies that the benevolence, justice, moral purity, spirituality, of the Divine character are akin to such qualities in the human soul, and that in this way Jesus, most pure and exalted of mankind, was *' the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person," what is it but to make more vivid our sense of the Divine attributes by a process of mind perfectly understood before, only better illustrated and further carried out .'' Or what is it, again, but to acknowledge ourselves unable, as indeed we are, to con- ceive of God otherwise, excepting from what is most pure and perfect in man ? Of course, it must always be so. We cannot go beyond the region of our experience. We must take what we know as the hint, and project from that our idea of what we do not know. And just so far as Jesus displays to us new traits of excellence, or makes us conscious of new germs of spiritual life in our- selves, just so far he brings us to a better knowledge of God. This is a truth of reason and experience, — one peculiarly illustrated in him. THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 83 But if we go any farther, we confuse ourselves by words without a meaning. The germ, the hint, the suggestion of a better moral knowledge of God, we find in the life of Jesus. But as a matter of definition, of accurate scientific knowledge, we are as much to seek as ever. Every definition we can frame, every phrase we use, every conception we entertain of God as distinct from man, gives us equally God as distinct from the Jesus of the Gospels. I say this not hastily or irreverently, or in any want of honor towards the Son of God. Every person claiming to be a Christian gives Jesus precisely the honor he understands him to claim. I am simply stating a contradiction which occurs necessarily in every (however Orthodox) representation of Christ. Every form of words is used by which implicitly or explicitly he can be distinguished from the Infinite God. Except for a few express assertions now and then to the contrary, not a sermon or hymn or prayer but implies the diff'er- ence and inferiority of Christ in respect to God. Nine tenths of every Christian service are strictly Unitarian ; only in the other tenth is the Trinitarian reservation made. And if this difficulty is evaded by saying that he was the human image of God, a finite representation of the infinite, the evasion is simply a contradiction in terms ; for infinity is the very distinctive essence and character- istic of the Divine in itself, the only way you can repre- sent it as differing from the human. The hypothesis of a double nature is an awkward and groundless fabrica- tion, except as signifying the blending of the Divine and human element in every soul. For we are all children of God, as well as children of the earth, and share the very immortality and spiritual essence of our Heavenly Father, as well as the corruption of mortal flesh. 84 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. And the other hypothesis, that the Divine Spirit took the place in him of a human soul, is no more satisfactory. If it means that his will, affection, thought, were abso- lutely and personally identical with those of God, — that he had no individuality as a man, and no human affec- tion other than the love the Infinite feels for all his off- spring, — that the volition which prompted a word of sympathy or rebuke, at the very same moment and in the sphere of the same consciousness, was controlling the movements of the stars and the great course of Providence, — then, for so stupendous an assumption, a very different warrant from any we can find is needed, and a degree of evidence from the nature of the case unattainable. Any thing less than this is either the most unintelligible mysticism, — that doctrine which merges all human thought and will in the universal Deity, and so again confounds God, Christ, and man too in one vague identity, — or else is simply the doctrine which I have partly illustrated before, of the Divine presence in the human soul. Even if I went so far as to allow that the New Testament writers, or the early Christians, illus- trated their idea of Christ as the image of God by the familiar Oriental idea of an incarnation of the Deity, (such as we find in all accounts of the Hindoo mythol- ogy,) still I should hold that their real sense and mean- ing was simply as I have already explained, when speak- ing of the baptism or anointing of the Spirit, and the spiritual presence of God in every faithful soul. And finally, I maintain that such a view is all that is essential to our religious faith or hope. After all, the doctrine of Christ's Divinity has its strongest hold in the devout heart, and as being supposed to meet a peculiar religious want. And, in a certain modified sense, this is THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 85 SO far from being denied, that it is expressly asserted and vindicated in the whole course of my argument. The real want is, to be assured of God's presence and aid to ourselves. In the dark era of superstition and distress, near a thousand years after the birth of Christ, when the earth seemed desolate and forsaken, as if God had abandoned it utterly to confusion and crime, — then it was a relief, a point of joyful, enthusiastic faith, to be assured of the "real presence" in the sacramental host. God, it was reverently believed, was bodily seen, felt, handled, tasted, in the bread and cup of com- munion. This was the sign men craved and welcomed then, of his abiding presence, — their proof that he had not deserted his children. And then it was that Christ was most closely identified with God, in terms that would seem shocking and blasphemous to us now, though then the utterance of sincere religious affection and faith. The great truth that God never deserts us, that he is still with us, though we see and know him not, could be expressed tlien in such symbols only as appealed to men's grosser senses, and in terms of which the paradox best stated the amazing and incredible truth. From a similar feeling, men have clung to a belief in the Deity of Christ, lest otherwise they should seem to lose their hold on God, — who was thus brought com- paratively near, and into the compass of their affection- ate thought. But the simpler statement of his Divine nature, in that sense in which we can be partly con- scious of the same in us in our better moods of mind, not only is quite as near (as I think far nearer) the Testament phraseology, but it does not perplex or con- front our reason ; it does not bewilder our mind ; it does not repel by a dogma, when it should cheer and 8 86 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. comfort by an element of falih and love. Do you say it is a degradation to the pure and exalted soul of Jesus to bring him thus within the range of our personal sym- pathy, into the circle of our human brotherhood ? Ask yourself, first, whether your own view of humanity, of man the child of God, made in the image of God, has not been degraded and profaned ; whether the knowledge of man's guilt has not clouded your mind with despair for man ; whether it is not your distrust in the promise of God for ali, your unbelief in the Divine influence and presence with all, that makes you un- willing to acknowledge Christ as perfectly and simply a brother-man. Renew your hope ; revive your faith in God's universal providence ; and you will no longer think it strange and a profanation to represent Christ as the Son of Man. The profanation will rather be in the unwillingness to speak of man as the Son of God. The Divine presence in nature and the soul, — the countenance of love and pity with which God looks on us, — the merciful dealing of Providence towards us, — the devout rapture that assures us we are not forgotten or despised of Him without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, — these will be the object of your thought. The religious want will be amply met and satisfied, ac- cording as you cherish such a sentiment as this. And then it will seem the most natural and beautiful thing in the world, that he who for long ages has stood foremost in men's thought as the most perfect representative of the Divinity, who has not only been honored as the Son of God, but worshipped in afiectionate faith as the In- finite One himself, — that he should be regarded as dif- fering from us, not in kind, but in degree ; as a brother- man, whose faith was so lofty and serene, whose thought THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 87 SO clear, whose mind so free of evil stain, that he stood, as it were, within the very border of the spiritual world, and nothing was betw^een his soul and God. As the very Infinite, his words can have no sincere meaning, — his suffering must be unreal, — his tempta- tion a dramatic show, — his prayers an insincerity, — his sorrowing affection an assumed disguise, — his ex- ample of no application to our mortal state. x\nalyze your own thought of him, and you will find it resolves itself very much into what I have said. Whether Or- thodox or Unitarian, — adhering to a form of words as- serting his Divinity, or trusting to your general regard for him, and sense of what the Scriptures teach, — in point of fact, the sentiment of all involves the same fun- damental view. A hundred differences there may be in points of criticism, in particular opinions here and there ; but the legitimate, true, and only sense in which it is possible to conceive of Jesus as the Son of God is as representative of the spiritual faculty in ourselves, and as exalting our own nature by a nearer moral like- ness to our Father. Forced and strained beyond this simple truth, the doctrine is one reposing on insufficient evidence, and in the highest degree confounding to our reason. He is taken from the sphere of our sympathy, and put in a position merely official towards us. An arbitrary and artificial array of " offices '^ is assigned him, in place of the free, natural, spontaneous exercise of spiritual power by a gloriously endowed and sincerely faithful soul. The charge of assuming such a character he re- pels as explicitly as possible, in the w^ords which best express his true spiritual relation toman and God: — "' If he called them gods unto wiiom the word of God 88 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. came, how say ye of him whom the Father hath sanc- tified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, be- cause I said, I am the Son of God ? " His own exposition of his lofty claim, " I and my Father are one," is when he prays for all his disciples throughout the world, " that they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us ; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." I DISCOUESE V. THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. IF, WHEN WE WERE ENEMIES, WE WERE RECONCILED TO GOD BV THE DEATH OF HIS SON, MUCH MORE, BEING RECONCILED, WE SHALL BE SAVED BY HIS LIFE. -^ RomariS V. 10. In the two preceding Discourses, I have endeavoured to show that the doctrines of the Trinity and Deity of Christ, whatever their possible truth in the abstract reality of things, cannot be so established and prov^ed as to serve for a basis to our theory of the Divine govern- ment. The evidence is too imperfect, the interpreta- tions too contradictory, to them both, to suffer them to be either a sufficient or an intelligible foundation of our faith. The doctrine of the Atonement, closely con- nected with and presupposing both, must be taken on its own merits ; it cannot derive any collateral support from them. If this is true, they are also true ; but this has got to be established first, on its own independent evidence. And as the Atonement is the cardinal point in the Orthodox theory, and the strong point in Orthodox inter- pretation, so I freely confess that it brings more difficulty, 8* 90 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. creates more diversity of exposition, and is less satisfac- torily treated, among those who dissent from that theory, than any or all the other points. Not that there is any doubt in our minds as to th« essential correctness of our opinion. On the contrary, we more expressly and defi- nitely and consistently oppose the theory of the Divine government which it implies, than perhaps any other one of the Orthodox positions. Elsewhere we make conces- sions, — yield one point to religious feeling, another to obscurity of interpretation ; while, this is the very doc- trine, the very system, which we contend against. But our concessions elsewhere, the style in which the con- troversy is carried on, are just what make it difficult to meet point-blank the arguments urged here. On the usual acknowledged principles of Biblical interpretation, there is certainly an apparent advantage on the other side. Our difficulty is not as to the doctrine, but as to the style of argument and illustration used by the writers of the New Testament. Our general objections to the doc- trine, as connnonly laid down, are sufficiently decided. We are quite clear in our own minds when we say, in general, that Scripture language is to be interpreted, not like the strict and scientific language of a creed, but ac- cording to the exigencies of the religious sentiment and the way of thinking of the time. We cannot, indeed, always draw the line, and say how much latitude we may allow to the religious feeling, how much is to be ascribed to the customs of religious thought. And so we are sometimes hard pushed on particular expressions, and forced to remain in doubt of the precise intention of many an obscure passage. Still, of our general principle we have no doubt whatever ; and as to the points of THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 91 critical perplexity, they yield one by one as we study the mind and history of the apostles, until, in these last few years, we have (we think) as consistent and full and learned an exegesis as any class of commentators, and the teachings of the Testament throughout are felt to be in almost, if not quite, unbroken harmony with our essen- tial views of religious truth. The exposition of the Scriptural view of the life and death of Christ has been so fully and admirably stated, by several well-known writers, that it need not be de- tailed here, and I pass it over with only the briefest men- tion.* The words of my text suggest clearly enough the principle we follow ; and they are, I think, wholly irreconcilable with the Orthodox statement of Christ's atoning work. " If, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." Here it is not the death of Christ that saves us, but his life, — evidently by creating the faith and moral energy and religious affections essential to the spiritual health (or salvation) of our soul. It is not God that is reconciled to man by the death of his Son, but man that is recon- ciled to God ; that is, the reconciling (or atoning) agency is wrought on man's mind, in the sphere of our affections, conscience, and reason. Whatever the influence is, then, it is a moral influence, acting according to the laws of the development of human character and the con- ditions of human life. It is a moral, not a legal work, done in the sphere of man's life, and not in that of God's. He needs no reconciliation with man ; it were * See Liverpool Lectures, Lect. VL One part of this exposition I have briefly stated below (p. 97), by way of illustration. 92 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. Strange impiety to think it. Nothing is needed except that state of man's heart which makes it possible for the Divine love to be felt there. The self-devotion of Jesus Christ to humiliation, pain, and death brings about just that state, — no matter hov\^, — by laws God has written on the heart, and effects just that reconcil- ing work ; this then is to be followed up by the series of moral lessons and religious influences from his life, that the spiritual growth and blessedness of the soul may be complete. This, as I understand it, is the religious lesson taught, not only in this passage, but throughout the Testament, in connection with the life and death of Christ. It is dwelt on continually, fondly ; with the affectionate con- stancy we might expect in the personal friends of Jesus ; with such emphasis and illustration as the exigencies of the time required. I presume that all Orthodox com- mentators cheerfully accept this rendering, — of the moral influence on man of the life and death of Christ, — not thinking (which I do) that it is at variance with their theory. But they add to it besides, that that event fulfilled a purpose in the Divine economy wholly above and aside from any moral influence on man ; that it was the appointed sacrifice to expiate the guilt of the whole human race ; that it was in the strictest sense vicarious, or accepted instead of the corresponding suffering to be endured by men, taking the place of their just punish- ment ; that its efficacy was infinite, as involving an in- finite being in its doom ; that by a previous appointment of God, wholly independent of any thing in the human will, its merit passes over, and becomes the purchase- money, the ransom, the seal, of man's redemption ; and, in fine, that on this condition, and tliis alone, could the THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 93 claims of God's justice and mercy be reconciled, or any single man escape the penalty due to the infinite guilt of the human race. It is in this region of specula- lion and dogma that we find ourselves confronting a hostile theory. This is the view of the Divine govern- ment to which we express and maintain an unqualified opposition. Of the class of ideas involved in this hypothesis, their bearing on the Divine character and man's condi- tion, I have spoken somewhat fully before. My ob- ject now is to examine the grounds on which this theory is sustained, and to show its variance with Scripture and right reason. My argument will, therefore, be contained in these two main points : — first, the insufficiency of the evidence on which this doctrine is supposed to rest ; second, the contradictory and impossible nature of the ideas contained in it. And for the sake of a clearer un- derstanding, T will first recount shortly the different forms in which the doctrine has been held. The leading idea now, as is well know^n, is that of an infinite sacrifice, supposed to be required by the consti- tution of the Divine government, to vindicate its maj- esty, pay the penalty due to sin, and (in the strange language of its defenders) " enable God honorably to pardon human guilt." This is its present, hs modern form ; not its first or ancient form. As I stated in my remarks on the Trinity, the idea of an infinite sacrifice did not enter definitely into the statements of the earlier creeds. The motive then was simply to give the great- est possible honor to Christ, as well as to satisfy the Greek or Eastern spirit of speculation. Finding, how- ever, the death of Jesus spoken of as a ransom, the 94 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. dogmatists naturally asked, For uhat and to whom was the ransom paid ? To deliver man from hell, was the reply ; and it must have been paid to Satan, for his power it was that bound men's souls in hell.* And so the received opinion was, that Christ's death was the ransom or equivalent paid in due form of covenant to Satan, as the literal purchase-money of man's redemp- tion. And this interpretation was further carried out, by saying that Christ outwitted Satan, as he had done to Adam in paradise. He cheated iVdam, by promis- ing gifts which proved treacherous, — as, in legends and fables, the coin the Devil pays is said always -to turn into dry leaves and dust. And just so, in retaliation, Christ persuaded Satan to take him as substitute for the whole human race ; then, he consenting, and so losing his hold on man, Christ, in virtue of his omnipotence, escaped and foiled the Adversary at his own weapons. " Under the bait of the flesh," to use a favorite ex- pression, " the hook of the Divinity was hid." Strange as this sounds to us, it is yet perfectly in keeping with the spirit of those times, — especially of the Italian or Etruscan priesthood, from which many ideas were in- herited in the Church of Rome. This was the first distinct and consistent form in which the doctrine of Christ's sacrifice was held, — not regarded then as strictly infinite, but only as of such a sort as to serve for a sufficient decoy and bait to Satan. A thousand years after the apostolic times, another theory was developed, — still most prominent in the Roman Church, and making one part of the modern Orthodox scheme. It was, that the merits of Christ, * Christian Examiner, July, 1845. Prospective Review, Vol. I. No. 4. THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 95 and his death, were the literal payment of our debt to God, and so entitle man to his forgiveness. For man owes all to God. The perfect obedience of every thought, act, wish, would 'not be more than enough. No man does or can pay off his own account ; but the merits of Christ being infinite, and " imputed " to man, there is laid up as it were an infinite treasury of good works, out of which benefit will be had by certain conditions. And the Catholic theory is, that the Church is the depositary of this resource ; its ministers keep the treasury-keys ; and it can make dispensation, in its own way, to remove the penalty of man's guilt. And hence the whole theory of indulgences. And lastly, out of this, by an easy transition, was de- veloped the modern doctrine, which I have more fully set forth. In this the prominent idea is the vindication of the honor or Integrity of the Divine government, together with the metaphysical impossibility of remov- ing the penalty of sin except its infinite guilt be atoned for by an infinite corresponding sacrifice ; which, again, could only be offered by God himself. It will be observed that the metaphysical part of the theory, or that which is out of the range of man's char- acter and ability, has been gradually retreating, — be- coming more refined and abstract, — while the moral part has come more and more clearly into view. The rude and coarse idea at first w^as, an actual compact between God and the Devil, for the purchase of man, as a piece of goods, or his ransom, as a literal prisoner or slave ; while now it is the most remote and abstract point of metaphysical reasoning to define moral evil in such a w^ay as to make it require, or even allow, the actual sacrifite of atonement. Then, man was held to be in 96 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. passive bondage, and passively transferred : now, a thousand moral influences are acting on him, to deter- mine his spiritual state, — at most presupposing a cer- tain previous condition or method of administering the government of God. Even those who hold the Ortho- dox view abstractly yet prefer to dwell upon the human side ; and it is not hard to see that this element will soon outgrow and swallow up the other wholly. And my purpose now is to show that this result is both necessary and right ; in other words, that the meta- physical element, included in the so-called doctrine of the Atonement, is a gratuitous and needless inference from Scripture, and repugnant both to reason and our highest view of right. *• I. The Scripture proof, adduced in support of the Orthodox view of Atonement is imperfect, and not to be relied on. The word itself is found only once in the New Testament, and then in a passage (corresponding to my text) where, by universal allowance, it should be " reconciliation." It is a word which, in its proper meaning, belongs only to the Old Testament, where it signifies something very like the Roman Catholic idea of penance, only paid m the form of sacrifice, — that is, the design being not to make up for a moral offence com- mitted, which would have been an encouragement to immorality, but to expiate some legal offence^ or dis- ability, or " impurity," from which one was ransomed, and restored to his full religious privileges as a Jew, by a certain prescribed form of sacrifice, — the ar- rears, or residue unatoned for, being made up in the manner which I shall presently mention. This is the idea of " atonement," as found among the Jews. It had nothing to do with moral guilt ; only pagan priest- THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 97 hoods professed to expiate that by gifts. But it refer- red to the ritual law, and the Jewish national observ- ances of sacrifice. And so, in the legitimate and proper meaning of the word, it evidently has nothing to do with the death of Christ. At the same time, it is easy to see how the religious customs of the Jews, established for centuries, would be constantly used among them in illustration of religious ideas ; and especially how Jewish Christians would seek to blend the new faith with the old, by tracing every possible analogy that could be found or fancied in the Old Testament. To explain this fully requires far more time and attention than can be given to it here ; but a single illustration will show partly what I mean. The Epistle to the Hebrews (which was very prob- ably written by Apollos, the friend of Paul) endeavours, from first to last, to meet the Hebrew prejudices, and reconcile the Jews to the simplicity of the Christian faith. This could be done only through the medium of their previous ideas. Christianity, without priest or rit- ual, was a thing they could not comprehend ; and even those inclined towards the new religion contemplated this feature of it with vague terror and dislike. Now the writer must show, if possible, on Jewish principles^ how the ritual not only might be, but actually had been, done away. One main point of his argument may be stated thus.* On the great annual festival of Atonement, or expiation, the high-priest went within the vail of the tem- ple, and sprinkled the blood of the victim on the mercy- seat, expiating thus the thousand legal offences for which due propitiation had not been already made. At that moment the burden of legal debt was lifted off from Liverpool Lectures, Lect. VL 9 98 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. the entire people ; and while he remained within the vail, the usual sacrifices were superseded. Now Christ, the great high-priest of the new dispensation, had passed with his own blood as victim, behind the vail of mor- tality, to the mercy-seat, or immediate presence of God. By the strictest interpretation of the Jewish law, all sacrifices are therefore suspended ; and, pn their own principles, while he is within the vail, the ceremonial worship is no longer required. Christ's peculiar fitness, both as priest (for he is near to us in human sympathy, and can " be touched with the feeling of our infirm- ities ") and as victim (for in the innocence of his life he is "a lamb without spot or blemish"), is elaborately argued and illustrated ; and the reasoning is brought to a focus, as it were, by comparing the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus with the ninth of this Epistle. But there were still other points that gave uneasiness to the mind of Jews taught to believe implicitly in the ancient faith. Among the rest, the sacred line of the priesthood, unbroken from the time of Aaron, must not be broken in upon, they thought ; and even granting Christ to be such a priest as was needed in the new dispensation, how will he satisfy this claim ? To an- swer this, the writer reminds them of a royal priest, who lived in old traditionary times, long before Aaron, to whom Abraham himself, the father of the faithful, did honor ; far higher, then, in dignity than any son of Abra- ham could be. And here, says he, is just such a priest as Christ. This old Melchisedek, — without any record- ed father or mother, — of whom you know not so much as when he began to live or when he died, — he is the great royal priest of our ancient history. God's own anointing gave him his priestly dignity, — not any hered- itary descent ; and just so it is with Christ. THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 99 . Now, this turn of argument shows how impossible it Is for us to reason, with any confidence, from the style of illustrations used in arguments to the Jews and Gentiles of that period. As to this very instance, all sorts of strange hypotheses have been invented to account for the mention of old JNIelchisedek, and set aside the plain and simple meaning. Some have gone so far as to con- jecture vaguely that he might be God himself, revealing himself to Abraham ; others, that he might be Christ in a preexistent state, or a man miraculously made, like Adam, without any human parents. He has also been supposed to be the Holy Spirit, an angel, or Enoch, who lived before the flood. Calmet elaborately argues that he was probably Shem, the son of Noah. And a sect arose in the early centuries affirming him to be the superior of Christ, and adopting his name, instead of Christ's, for their designation. The plain meaning seems to be, that he occurred to the Apostle's (or writer's) mind, as an excellent instance to show the very point he was urging, — a case in hand to prove the simple, and to us very obvious proposition, that one can be just as good a priest, even if his father was not a priest before him, and we know nothing whatever of his history. It seems to me, then, entirely impossible and unauthor- ized to force an argument from the style of illustrations used in the Testament, so as to give a particular dog- matic meaning to the life and death of Christ. It is undeniable, that only by such a style of argument can the doctrine of the Atonement be sustained a single hour. Deprive it of the support found in a few appeals, illus- trations, religious phrases of speech of this class, and it falls directly to the ground. To uphold it, you must take a certain class of arguments, similar to that I have 100 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. just cited in reference to Melchisedek ; you must insist upon their literal and extreme construction, divorce them from their connection with the prevalent religious ideas and the subject-matter of the Christian faith as a whole, read them as closely and severely as a formula in alge- braic signs and symbols, and in that way evolve your metaphysical theory, which thenceforward you make the keystone of your structure and the cardinal point of your whole religious scheme. It would be tedious and un- profitable to go critically over the whole ground, and expound one by one the phrases and figures of speech supposed to favor that theory. From the general state- ment I have made, which (whatever the abstract truth or falseness of the doctrine) is plainly and undeniably correct, you will see how false must be the principle, and how unsatisfactory the evidence, by which a doctrine so derived must be sustained. I do not deny or disguise the difficulty of special passages ; but I do say, that to found one's theory on those difficulties, and make dark things serve as the basis and interpretation of what is plain, is utterly to reverse the process of a healthy mind, and to set us all afloat as to any principles of belief whatever. Now, contrast with this obscure and uncertain style of Scriptural reasoning the simple, affectionate, spiritual style which we find at the fountain-head. To Christ himself we should surely go to learn the intention of his mission, especially from his hints to interpret if we may the mystery of his death. And, as if expressly not to leave us in the dark on so interesting a matter, or to cor- rect beforehand the abuses and crude superstitions that were sure to come up, there is left recorded a conversa- tion of Jesus with his disciples on this very point, — the THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 101 saving influence of his life and death, — held just before he suffered, and longer than all his other recorded dis- courses put together, excepting one. And what does he say of an atoning sacrifice, the discharge of an infinite penalty, the ransom of the guilty by the suff'erings of the innocent ? Not a word, not a syllable. So far as I am aware, not a single sentence from this discourse of Christ, or any other, has ever been brought up in support of the Orthodox theory ; at least, except in illustration of those points of motive and affection which belong in common to every Christian. The Gospel ground has been quietly abandoned, for purposes of theological argument, to those of differing belief. To sustain that theory, recourse must always be had to the involved and perplexing train of argument or style of illustration used in combating the scruples, and braiding in the Christian idea with the pre- vious religious thoughts and habits and prejudices, of Jews or pagans, — and these often violent, bigoted, way- ward, cavilling adversaries of the simple truth. No won- der this w^ay of reasoning w'as adopted, for there was none other. Nothing but the most perverse ingenuity, the most singular love of paradox and hidden meaning, could possibly imagine any thing in the Gospel story but the personal appeal, the living faith, the spiritual presence, the sanctifying influence, of the living or departed Sav- iour, as felt and recognized in the affectionate mind of those who saw him and listened to his words. His death, as he speaks of it, has no supernatural and metaphysical efficacy on the purposes and w^ays of God. It is sim- ply a return to the Father ; the seal of his living tes- timony ; the condition of his spiritual presence, and of the coming of the pure Spirit of Truth, to dwell in their hearts. 102 THE VICARIOUS ATONEBIENT. II. Having remarked thus much of the quality and style of the Scriptural argument, I proceed briefly to consider the merits of the theory itself ; taking its own claims and pretensions, accepting its most plausible and consistent shape, and endeavouring to see how it comes recommended to our intellectual and moral sense. The first thing we observe in it is, that a huge defi- ciency is left in the theory of redemption, which there is not even the smallest pretence to supply. The very terms in which it must be stated carry their own refuta- tion along with them. Of the strange and pagan idea of a " conflict of attributes " in the Divine nature, I have spoken before. I need not repeat now what I said then, or stop to prove (what is very plain) that this con- flict is essential to the scheme. But here we are met by the inquiry. If there was a chasm or conflict between the qualities of mercy and justice in the mind of God, and if Christ (which is also essential to this theory) was really and truly God, coequal with the Father, must there not have been the same conflict of attributes in him too ^ Is the Father deficient in mercy, that he re- quires so terrible a sacrifice ? Or has the Son only an obscure and feeble sense of justice, that he can " hon- orably," not only overlook man's guilt, but so love the world as to give himself to die for it ? If the honor of God did not allow him to pardon the guilty, could that same honor allow him to punish the innocent ? Or else, would not the "justice" of the Son require satisfac- tion too, — and so a series of infinite sacrifices be de- manded, ad infinitum 9 Or if one is enough, why is any needed at all ? If the rest of the series be remit- ted, why not this ? The answer will be, that God re- quired the sacrifice, and God endured it, and so the cir- THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 103 cle is complete. So it is ; and it is simply a circle of operations in the mind of God. And I say the state- ment of the doctrine carries its own refutation ; be- cause, when fairly presented and reasoned out, it reduces itself to this : — Whatever the demands of Divine jus- tice^ suppose them even infinite, they are perfectly and adequately met by the infinite love of God. We have not so much to dread from his sovereignty, as to trust in his power. x\nd the fiction of a suffering God, endur- ing a penalty exacted by himself, is only a device to render that glorious conception familiar to our imperfect mind. But the dogmatist will insist that the sacrifice was actually and historically accomplished in the death of Christ. To this we can only reply by the unanswer- able dilemma which has been employed from the first, and from which no refuge can be found, except in an unmeaning form of words. Either the infinite nature of God suffered upon the cross, or the finite nature of man. If you say the former, you commit the strange and un- intelligible blasphemy of saying, that the infinite and per- fect is subject to limitation, distress, and harm, — to all the worst and most humiliating conditions of man's im- perfection. If you say the latter, then the doctrine of an infinite sacrifice falls to the ground at once. Or if you insist, yet further, that both natures were mysterious- ly blended in Jesus, you do not yet evade the difficulty. One or the other nature in him must suffer : which was it ? And if you take the last resource, of saying that the union of attributes in him was of such a sort that the sufferings of the man were "judicially attributed" to the God, and it was regarded in the Divine economy as if the infinite nature had suffered to redeem an in- 104 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. finite amount of guilt, then you fall back just where I wish, — on the free and abundant mercy of God. And your real meaning is, not that God does demand, but that, in consideration of his own infinite perfection and the feebleness and misery of man, he does not demand an infinite penalty to expiate our human guilt, and, though conscience may tell us we deserve it, has yet symbolically shown, in the death of Jesus, that the re- sources of Divine love are boundless, so that no human being need despair. Here, evidently enough, whether you retain the symbol or not, you desert the dogmatic meaning, and fall back on the pure, simple, religious truth, appealing only to the mind, conscience, and heart of men. A further illustration may be addressed to those fa- miliar with the theory of mathematics. Allowing the full and literal exactness of the statement, that the suf- fering endured by an infinite being constitutes an infinite sacrifice, we have not got to the bottom of the difficulty. We may thus admit that the agony of Christ was equal in intensity to the infinite agony of hell, but it was only momentary in duration. In hell, infinite intensity and duration are supposed to be combined, while the penalty is liable to be inflicted on an infinite number. Thus " an infinite quantity of the first degree " (in the language of mathematics) is compared with " an infi- nite quantity of the second degree," and the ratio be- tween them, as all mathematicians know, is nothing ; or with one of the third degree, where it is infinitely less than nothing. Or, taking in the difference between a divine and a human soul, to set off against the endless generations of the human race, the comparison will be only one degree improved ; so that Christ himself could THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 105 not make good the penally for all, and would be pre- cisely as far from it as a mere man from making atone- ment for a single person. Remember, it is the Ortho- dox creed which forces on us this discussion of infinites, and makes its strong point from it. It is no choice of ours ; but if we must take it, we will go with it as far as any one. Take the doctrine at its word, concede its leading principle, and we see how it instantly con- futes and swallows up itself. The difference, on its own terms, is enormous, infinite ; and all it can reply is, that the free mercy of God allows this difference. But still further : granting all that the doctrine would imply, its practical signification is lost and cast aside in the concessions of its advocates, or rather in their stren- uous and urgent demand for something more. I find in the course of reasoning employed in illustrating a com- paratively moderate view of the Calvinistic scheme, the following extraordinary paragraph : — "Notwithstanding the unlimited provision of the Gos- pel, all, when left to themselves, with one consent re- ject the overtures of mercy, and will not come unto Christ that they might have life. Even when the spirit strives, they do always resist. No sense of guilt and danger, no consciousness of obligation and duty, no pressure of motives, will constrain a living man to lay down the arms of rebellion, and be reconciled to God. If the Spirit of God does not put forth the power and glory of his grace, to wrest the weapons of revolt from his hands, and put a new spirit within him, and make the sinner willing in the day of his power, all are lost, and Christ is dead in t"«in." In perfect accordance with this, I have heard it rep- resented, that, even after his death and resurrection, 106 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. Christ may be supposed as still doubtful whether his sac- rifice would be accepted, until he rose to heaven and took his place beside the eternal throne. That is, in plain words, the whole vast apparatus being brought in play, the infinite agony having been endured, it is doubt- ful whether God will even yet relent, and perfectly cer- tain that man will spurn the boon of mercy. If any thing could be added to the hideous atrocity of such a statement, it would be the dogmatic inference which follows. " When Christ, in the covenant of peace, en- gaged to lay down his life for the world, a stipulated number was given him as his reward." These are the " elect.'''' God can now choose whom he will to eter- nal life, and is perfectly clear of partiality or blame in condemning all the rest to eternal death ! In other words, by making an offer which he knew beforehand would be rejected, he finds the excuse he wanted for condemning the vast majority of mankind to the inexora- ble torments of hell for ever ! Thus is this doctrine strictly and logically reasoned out to its last results. There is no over-statement or caricature in what has now been said. The worst things I have shown you are quoted word for word from a moderate and popular exposition of a milder form of the Calvinistic creed. It is such theology as it is sup- posed will go down now in New England, where the popular mind is no doubt more liberalized than in any country where Calvinism has extensively prevailed. By going back a hundred years, and taking another class of writers, I could display far more extravagant and terri- ble representations than these. But what I have repre- sented is precisely the last result of the Orthodox the- ory, as consistently held at the present day ; and I do THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 107 not know very well how to describe it in milder lan- guage than I have now used. And I think I have said enough to show that, in whatever way you look at that theory, it reduces itself to an incredible paradox. It annihilates its own first principles ; it is involved in a dilemma from which there is no escape ; by acknowledg- ment, it does not answer its end ; and it results at last in what, to one not familiar with such ideas, seems a fright- ful and appalling blasphemy. And, in fine, our objections to this doctrine may be summed up in this one word. We do not, we cannot, believe in any such God, or such theory of sin and its consequences, as is taken for granted here. The moral difficulty in it is worse tban even the intellectual, and absolutely insurmountable. Besides the radical contra- diction of God being unable honorably to forgive the world, and then able not only to forgive but to suffer and die for it ; besides the strange and barbarous assump- tion, that the torture of an infinite and holy being could restore God's damaged honor and make amends for hu- man guilt ; besides the dilemma of supposing that the Infinite nature can suffer harm, or else of finding no ex- piation after all ; besides the matching of one infinity against a combination of three, — time and number being superadded to intensity, to make the sufferings of man by a double infinity more than those of Christ ; besides the acknowledged failure of the whole scheme, unless a new order of Divine operations be brought in to compel its partial success ; — all which objections we have found lying against the scheme of vicarious sacrifice ; — the moral theory of man's nature which it Involves is worse than all. As if moral guilt could be even "judicially " transferred, and assumed by some one else, like a pecu- 108 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. niary debt ! As if the great retribution which every soul must undergo for its own wrong, in virtue of its own moral nature, could be averted by another's suffering ! As if a conscience awake to the reality of sin and the glorious prospect of holiness and spiritual life could con- sent to receive, or entertain the possibility of receiving, absolution on such terms, transferring its own penalty, and appropriating another's righteousness ! If the moral influence of Christ's death creates such a spirit in man as to wipe away his guilt, then nothing more is required. Guilt itself, speaking morally, is the penalty, the bond- age, the revenge of guilt ; and the faith and love that have superseded it are the very blessing that w^as to be sought. If the guilt is not removed, the salvation is not possible. Spiritual blessedness cannot be put upon a man from without, like clothes or riches. It is inconsis- tent with the condition of a guilty soul. And if the guilt is removed, what do we want besides ? So here, again, we find ourselves reduced to an alter- native, either branch of which destroys the force of the Orthodox dogma. Either the moral influence of Christ's life and death, in combination with other providential influence, prevails on the human heart to renounce its sin, or it does not. If it does, it would be daring im- piety to say that God requires any thing more before he will abate the penalty of sin, and so the Atonement is no longer needed ; or if it does not, then man is not in a condition to receive salvation at all, and the Atone- ment is no longer possible. If you escape from this by saying that God in addition will work upon the hearts of the elect, and compel them to receive the favor they had refused, then you commit two more blunders ; first, by defying all the laws of man's moral constitution, which THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 109 cannot receive any form of blessedness without being morally fit for it ; and second, by ascribing to the free and even compulsory mercy of God after the sacrifice of Christ what you maintained it to be dangerous and im- possible for him to grant before. I do not suppose that these inconsistencies and sole- cisms are present consciously in the mind of those who advocate this scheme. Or if they ever become faintly aware of them, they are overborne by the single point of practical religious faith contained in it. This I have en- deavoured to bring out in clear relief, as the conclusion of each section of my argument, lest you might think I overlook or deny the religious significance of the dogma. This I by no means do. 1 have represented it uniformly as a symbolical or mythological or dognnatic way of rep- resenting the perfect love and infinite mercy associated in the Christian scheme with the awful sovereignty of God. The statement, that the sacrifice was literally required and actually made, I treat as a symbol or "myth"; and the real meaning of it I consider to be the glorious truth which I have already expressed. And this is in point of fact the very meaning which is always seized and held in the religious heart. No man, when he is told to repose his hope of God's mercy on the sufferings of Christ, thinks of God's previous inexorable wrath, which made such sufferings essential before he would forgive ; neither does he think of the lost condition of the mass of men, to whom the Atonement does not apply ; still less of the immense probability (according to this scheme) that he himself is of those abandoned by God and lost. It is a curious fact, and one which does infinite honor to man's natural confidence in God, that 10 110 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. every person tacitly assumes (whatever his religious theory) that he himself is one of the electa — at least so far as this, that, if he does his part, he has nothing to fear on God's part. This, I say, is a part of every man's natural faith ; and is never shaken, except at some crisis of momentary excitement, or some condition of religious frenzy. It is the normal and healthy attitude of the soul ; and it is always taken advantage of in urging the motive of hope in the Calvinistic scheme, even though its more dreadful and implacable features are held in reserve. Ask any believer in it what it is that recommends it, and he will tell you, the point of hope it gives him, — the countenance of Divine compassion it shows to him. Ask him, further, how it bears on the world in general, and he will acknowledge perhaps enough to make him cherish his private hope more preciously in contrast, or dread to quit his hold on it. But he will not bring that part of it into a definite propo- sition ; and it is only with reluctance that he admits it at all. Or, with still more creditable inconsistency, he tacitly assumes that such is the inevitable condition of things naturally ; and considers that the creed, which in fact is the only ground for believing it, is instead the only way of escaping it. And, finally, this point of personal religious faith is the only thing which could have made it possible for the doctrine to be so long received and cherished. In what- ever way we take it, when looked at narrowly, it con- ducts us to the same result, as we have seen. And that result is perfect faith in the love of God, as prevailing over every degree of sin. Whatever is added to this on God's part is a barbarous and obscure statement of metaphysics, confounding and bewildering our whole idea THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. Ill of the Divine government. Whatever can be added to it on man's part is that order of motives, of moral appeal, which should direct the spiritual discipline and heavenward aspiration of the soul. And, as none of God's works is made in vain, and no development of man's religious thought without its use, I suppose that, even in the crude and imperfect forms under which the Christian doctrine of reconciliation has been held, it has served a most important purpose in educating the con- science and the mind of men. I do not think the appeals and arguments by which the theories have been sustained were without their use. That would be to discredit too much the providential training man's relig- ious thought has undergone. But I think these appeals and arguments have served their turn, and had better be dispensed with. The moral and intellectual difficulties with which they are found to be inextricablv involved are forced more and more strongly upon our notice. But one invaluable thing we owe in great measure even to this harsh and imperfect statement of the truth. Conviction of sin and confi- dence of access to God are certainly the characteristics, the two coordinate features, by which the religious life of Christendom has been distinguished from all other forms of human development. In whatever degree these have been due to the earnest enforcement of those creeds which have sought to account for the expiation of man's guilt through the sufferings of Christ, we owe them many thanks. But while we retain the spiritual truth, we need not adhere to the baseless, illogical, unscrip- tural error which may happen to be connected with it. The ultimate ground of trust, at any rate, is the free mercy of God, as illustrated in the life and word and 112 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. death of Christ. To make our theory perfect, we have only to transfer this glorious faith, beyond its present limits, to the whole circle of the Divine government, and adore the God of love in " all his w^orks, in all places of his dominion," , DISCOUESE yi. DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. I KNOW THAT IN ME (THAT IS, IN MY FLESh) DWELLETH NO GOOD THING : FOR TO WILL IS PRESENT WITH ME, BUT HOW TO PERFORM THAT WHICH IS GOOD I FIND NOT. FOR THE GOOD THAT I WOULD I DO NOT ; BUT THE EVIL WHICH I WOULD NOT, THAT I DO. — Romans vii. 18, 19. In the three preceding Discourses, I have considered the three cardinal doctrines of Orthodoxy, as applying to the nature and purposes of God, — those which be- long strictly (by the old scholastic division) to the de- partment of Theology, or the religious system on its Divine side. These are the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, and the Vicarious Atonement. In the three to follow, I am to consider it on its human side, or the direct bearing of the Divine economy on the condition, the destiny, and the culture of mankind. The topics which will come accordingly in review will be Human Nature, Retribution, and the Scriptures. These will complete the circle of the dogmatic or controversial points which we are passing in review. As we easily see, our view of human nature must serve as the basis and point of departure for all our re- 10* 114 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. ligious theory. If we think of Christianity in its bear- ing on the human race in general, its method of opera- tion, its progress, history, and present state, of course the view we presuppose of man's moral condition makes the element by which we determine all the rest. Or if we think of it as a personal matter, as applying to our own condition, and appealing to our own conscience, then our view of human nature as a whole is reflected as it were in ourselves ; our conscious or unconscious philosophy, our dogmatic belief one or the other way, is what determines the meaning and force and direction of all our views of duty, and of any moral appeal. The alternative between the two systems is simply stated. If man is in a lost, rebellious, and ruined state, — if you and I by nature share in the disaster and doom of the Fall, from which no natural strength or wisdom could, in the ordinary course of Providence, deliver us, — then salvation is a rescue, a ransom on given conditions, the bringing of all or a chosen number out of infinite misery and darkness into a degree of peace and a hope of glory which, in their natural estate, there was not the smallest reason to anticipate ; and no terms could be judged strange or unreasonable by which such redemp- tion might be brought about. If, on the other hand, man's condition is one of sin, indeed, and misery, of weakness and imperfection, yet not of curse or natural enmity towards God, then the true meaning of salvation is not so much rescue from a specific calamity as spirit- ual health and groicth ; religion is a method of culture, by means of whatever nourishes the soul in goodness ; and all the discipline and experience of life, when rightly used, is part of the Divinely appointed training of the immortal spirit. DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 115 These two ways of regarding the condition of man, and the consequent work and meaning of religion, are radically different and hostile, and are the most charac- teristic and central point of difference between the op- posing systems. And though the difference be one of philosophy full as much as of theology, though it apply full as much to our entire view of life as to our in- terpretation of the Christian records, yet it serves to mark and separate the two schools of religious thinking no less than our various understanding of the Trinity, or the sacrifice of Christ. The doctrine of man's native and total depravity, in the sense in which I take it, was set forth somewhat fully in the first of these Discourses, where I assumed it as the point of departure for the re- ligious system of Orthodoxy. I need not repeat what was said then, but proceed rather to those questions of character, evidence, and result, which belong more prop- erly to the argument I have now in hand. I have just said that our view of human nature in gen- eral is very much a transcript, or amplification, or (in some cases) an exaggerated contrast, of the view con- science and reason give us as to our own moral state. Hence it is exposed to all the extravagance, to all the bigotry, and narrowness, and morbid eccentricities, which, according to health, temperament, good or ill success in life, and various other causes, may affect our moral judgment of ourselves. Our judgment of man- kind is a species of egotism. Every man looks on the world in a light colored by the medium it must pass through before it strikes his eye. What we see is al- ways affected more or less by what we are. The judg- ment of the character and condition of the world, among religious men, makes no exception to this rule. 116 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. According to the type and character of their faith will they take a sanguine or gloomy view of things. A hap- py trust in God, or anaiable feeling towards nien, will^ incline them to see things hopefully, and make every possible allowance for existing evil. Sensitiveness of conscience and honest self-reproach will make them use strong words in speaking of impiety, inhumanity, and wrong generally. The Bible abounds in examples of both these states of feeling. The cheerful piety of some of the Hebrew Psalms, speaking of man as '' a little lower than the angels," has been the support of all encouraging views of human character ; while the lan- guage of humble penitence or of honest moral indigna- tion has been made the evidence of doctrines such as this, — strange for their extravagance, and horrible for their signification. I think this is a fair account, in general, of the way in which dogmas so monstrous and incredible as this of the total native depravity of man must have had their rise. It is held, as it were, from a vague feeling that it must be true, as making part and parcel of the Bible. No man would wish beforehand that it should be true. No one (except a cunning priesthood that loved it for the sake of the spiritual power it gave) could take any satisfaction in urging it on other minds, unless it were from the sincerest conviction that it was perilous not to believe and feel it. All our natural feelings rise up against it, as indeed, by the very terms of it, they must. Its very signification is, that natural emotions and spon- taneously formed opinions are necessarily and altogether wrong, — wrong, of course, by its standard of right and wrong. No man would wish to believe that a curse, infinitely more tremendous than any earthly doom of DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 117 wretchedness, rested on him from his birth ; or that his dear child, or parent, or friend, in passing from this mortal state, has almost inevitably fallen into inconceiv- able and hopeless torture. By the very terms in which such a doctrine is stated, all human sympathies and nat- ural emotion must be utterly hostile to it. And at times these will assert their irresistible sway. Natural affec- tion triumphs over theological prejudice, even in the coldest breast, when the statement is brought home to it, and becomes practical. The sternest bigot cannot see his infant dying, or his friend unconscious in the last hour, but his previous opinion must break down ; and he cannot bring himself to think of any thing but a blessed immortality for those he loves. He cannot watch a child's careless sport, or receive its winning caress, and persuade himself that all is evil, and hateful to the eye of God. He may say so, but with a mental reservation that takes away the force of what he says. A blessed inconsistency makes the full and hearty re- ception of this central point of the Calvinistic creed for ever im.possible to the mass of those professing it. And so I need not harrow up your feelings, or excite your prejudice, by reciting the horrible conclusions that follow close upon the Orthodox statement of man's na- tive guilt. I need not lead you through the wearisome round of debate, and quibble, and inference, respecting the old theological questions that have been broached ; — whether infants are inevitably damned if they die unre- generate, or may possibly all be saved, or, as this would make their longer life a peril and calamity, may not take their chance as elect or reprobate ; whether baptism is a sufficient safeguard, and by whom it may be adminis- tered ; whether the first conscious act is necessarily a 118 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. sinful one, and incurs the penalty of infinite guilt ; wheth- er heathen men before the time of Christ, who acted up to their light, might possibly be saved ; or whether the innumerable millions of human beings, who are falling off by thousands in a day, old men and babes, in pagan or Christian lands, are certainly (the great mass of them) lost for ever. These and similar questions, only hinting at the frightful circle of ideas that men have been famil- iarized and hardened to in their theological debates, we may leave untouched. In dealing with a doctrine that implies the sternest answer to all of them, I seem to be combating, not a hearty and practical conviction of men in earnest, but only the ghost or shadow of what was once a terrible reality. The difficulty seems, not so much to disprove the theory as to account for it, — to explain how it ever came to exist in the human mind at all. Men believe in practice, now, only what is necessa- rily implied in their general system of religious thought. The remoter consequences are forgotten, or kept studi- ously out of sight ; and a moderate, though still harmful, measure of belief lurks in their mind, because they take it for granted, rather than because of any proof; be- cause without it the whole theory they hold to would be impossible and absurd, rather than for any intrinsic merit that commends it to their minds. The statement and the refutation may be alike unsatisfactory ; yet, as really a very necessary and important part of my course, I must present this subject in the best and most tangible shape I can. Before we come to the reasoning employed in favor of this doctrine, I wish it may be distinctly fixed in our minds what, precisely, is its nature and meaning, and DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 119 what sort of evidence it is which we may expect to find. Having done this, I shall*- next consider the insufficiency of the evidence with the erroneous style of interpreta- tion on which it rests ; and finally, the evil consequen- ces, intellectual and moral, that result from it. I. The question is not about the amount of sin or guilt there may actually be in the world. Those who deny native depravity have often been accused of mak- ing too light of the fact of moral evil, — of dwelling too much on the bright side of things, and winking out of sight the actual wickedness of men, for the sake of keep- ing a fair and smooth theory. Perhaps it has been so sometimes, — a natural reaction from the over-statements on the other side. If human nature itself, which is the w^ork of God, is pronounced altogether corrupt, it seemed no more than proper reverence to the Author of our being to vindicate his work, and call on men to remem- ber the glorious capacity of their nature, even at the expense, for the moment, of overlooking the actual cor- ruption and degradation of it by their own fault. Still, they have never knowingly or intentionally confounded the eternal distinction between right and wrong, holiness and sin. It was never said of them that they were be- hind others in general practice of virtue, and they have certainly shown their full share of zeal in opposing vice and error, — only, vice and error when they saw them in a distinct and palpable shape. I believe that more hu- mane legislation and actual reforms of social evils have had their root and strength in that class of thinkers, in proportion to their numbers, than in any ten others put together. The real difference is not in the feeling with which we regard the fact of guilt, but in the point of view from 120 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. which we regard it. The point of the Orthodox doc- trine on the subject is, not that mankind is generally wicked and corrupt, but that it is altogether and abso- lutely so, and cannot, in the nature of things, except by miracle, be otherwise. This is the position which its advocates have chosen. They see the subject from the point of view of theological opinion, not from that of the natural reason and conscience ; the guilt they speak of is not men's actual or apparent guilt, but their theological or constructive guilt. By the very terms of the theory, our natural sentiments of right and wrong cannot be trusted. In fact, where all is on one dead level of sin, there can be no real difference of right and wrong. The most amiable feeling, the most heroic self-devotion, the purest love of God, and man, and truth, or what seems so in the eye of reason and conscience, is just as likely to be deceitful, corrupt, and hateful in the eye of God, as the most atrocious crime. There is no room left for subordinate moral distinctions.* All are lost and swallowed up in the one gulf of original depravity. All differences of faithful and treacherous, kind and cruel, generous and malignant, are melted down in that one stern judgment, pronounced without reservation or abate- ment on the entire human race, — that " the wickedness of man is great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually.'^^ To every age, to every nation, to every man, is applied without qualification that terrible description of the wick- edness of the w^orld before the flood. Of course, evidence might be expected as peculiar and as strong as the ' assertion is overwhelming. One * S^e post, page 130.. DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 121 would say, that on notliing less than proof positive and unequivocal, — demonstration outweighing every doubt, crushing every scruple, superseding every other process of moral argument or experience, — could he receive such a declaration as this for true. And we cannot have re- course to any of the ordinary ways of proving any other class of facts. By the very terms of the theory, we are warned that our moral sense is corrupt, our reason deceitful, all our faculties blinded and perverted by sin. So we cannot trust any natural mode of proof ; for once to listen to reason on such a subject would be to begin by renouncing the theory in order to prove it, — to con- fide, for argument's sake, in the integrity of those very powers and faculties which we are assured beforehand are altogether deceitful and depraved. The common sense of men is utterly at fault, and condemned before a hearing. And our moral sense, our natural discrimina- tion between right and wrong, will not serve us any bet- ter. The obscure consciousness of guilt, or personal unworthiness, which most men acknowledge, which all earnest men deplore, must pass for nothing, and cannot be introduced as proof. How should conscience be a safer guide than sense and passion, if the whole nature is depraved ? If we may trust one sentiment, one fac- ulty, why not all, — or the nature we are born to as a whole ? The theory itself, you will observe, drives us from every other possible method of proof than the ex- traneous evidence of theological doctrine. It cannot fairly and honestly appeal to any thing in the range of human philosophy or ordinary experience, because it first deprives us of the test to judge them by. And if it should, its case is gone ; for, first, it deserts itself, by appealing to a tribunal forejudged to be worthless, and 11 122 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. next, the answer it gets from that tribunal is not such as it wants. The statement of reason is certainly very dif- ferent from that of dogmatic theology. If there are germs of evil in man by nature, so there are also germs of good ; for reason and conscience assure us of one full as much as of the other. He is no more pure tiger in innate capacity and tendency than he is pure angel. Nero was no more a man than Socrates or Howard. And once granting the native capacity for spiritual life and culture, without which there is no possibility of any good on any theory, there seems very little left to con- tend about, but an empty form of words. So much for the answer of reason. If, then, the theory is true, we can know it by no other method or faculty our Creator has given us, but only in the terms of a dogmatic statement. Its evidence is not rational or moral, but theological. If we believe it, it is either from the necessity of a system which re- quires it, and which we accept as proved on other grounds ; or else from the most cogent, convincing,- overwhelming evidence of inspiration. The Bible ar- gument, then, ought certainly to be secure and impreg- nable. If we detect any weakness in it, any flaw, any thing detracting from absolute and unanswerable proof, we shall be forced to set it aside. Such a doctrine could be accepted on nothing less than such a demon- stration. Whether the other parts of the Orthodox the- ory are sufficient to bear this out, we may judge from the argument touching them severally, or as a whole. At present I am dealing only with this single one, and the evidence alleged to sustain it. As I have said, this evidence must not be sought anywhere but in the Bible. And my purpose now is to examine what is the nature of this evidence, and what is its just interpretation. DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 123 II. In Studying the language of the Bible, or any part of it, we certainly ought to consider the purpose for which it was written, and judge its meaning by that. Considering, then, that a very large part of the Bible is in the form of very earnest moral appeal, or else of personal moral conviction and penitence, — that it almost always takes the point of view of conscience, made sen- sitive, too, by the most exalted standard of perfect right, and the highest activity of the religious sentiment, — we may naturally expect to find very strong language used in reference to human guilt, whatever the particular the- ory which it intends to teach. Such confessions or ap- peals depend on temperament, or the present state of mind, far more than on any theological opinion. Moral reformers, for example, have in general the most com- placent view of all men as to the native excellence and powers of mankind ; and yet their very trade is to deal in the most bitter and sweeping rebukes of wrong. In sternness of denunciation, they often outdo any thing that can be matched against them from the Bible. That is the very nature of the human mind, when the con- science is in active exercise in some single direction. Now the Bible is by far the most natural and unso- phisticated, in its tone of sentiment, of all books dealing with right and wrong, duty and sin ; and its language, in respect to human guilt, is certainly very strong. But there is no cold-blooded and argumentative statement of man's depravity in the manner of theologians. Vehe- ment and fiery, desponding, remorseful, reproachful, it may be by turns ; but to use its scattered fragments to build a dogmatic theory of guilt is utterly to falsify its meaning. It will not bear such handling. To neglect the sentiment and retain the form, to forget the circum- 124 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. Stances while we insist on the verbal statement, is as if we should carry the tone and manner of tragedy into a mathematical demonstration, or take for Hteral descrip- tion all the splendid and diversified imagery by which the Scriptures set forth the power and glory of Almighty God. Bat what is the actual and positive amount of proof that can be brought by constraint from the Bible pages to sustain the argument for the total native depravity of man ? Six or eight passages in all are the only ones that would be relied on with any certainty ; and the force of these will disappear at once, if we keep in mind the caution in interpreting which I have just been laboring to impress. I will take them up in order, but very briefly, and rather to show the outline than to discuss them with any fulness. And I cannot take the feebler ones; which may be used as illustration, but only the stronger ones, which are cited as proof. My object is not now to give a particular exposition of each, which would be mere repetition and weariness, but to show how they should be classified to make their application plain. They may be ranged in the three divisions which follow. 1. Those which speak of hereditary evil. It is com- monly supposed, or taken for granted, that the narrative of Adam's fall contains the declaration that it entailed the corruption of nature and the ruin of mankind. So it does in Milton ; but so it does not in Genesis. A glance at the passage will show that the most that can be made from it is the sentence to labor, disease, and liability to death. Not a syllable is breathed of any thing further than this, even where Paul comments on it afterwards, and says (Rom. v. 17) that " by one man DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 125 sin entered into the world, and death by sin." Nobody- doubts that Adam sinned, and that all grown men since have sinned. That is not the point at issue. Neither does any one acquainted with physiology doubt that moral tendencies are inherited by some organic law of descent ; so that a bad man's child comes into life at a disadvan- tage, so to speak, and will not so easily reach so high a degree of culture as another. These are facts of obser- vation, not dogmas of a creed. And these are all that, by the most strained construction, can be fairly made out from any thing said in the Bible of Adam's sin. The disadvantage I spoke of is not guilt ; it is mere misfor- tune, which is often made up in a hundred ways, — by some kind providence, — by sentiments of pity and char- ity in other men towards the spoiled child of circum- stance. iV terrible misfortune it often is, — a terrible warning always to a parent's sin, — but one which ift the child a wise man will only pity, not condemn ; and " shall mortal man be more just than God ? " Try as you will, you cannot make any thing more than this from what the Scripture says of our hereditary guilt. 2. 'The next class is strong general descriptions of the moral condition of the world, or a particular nation, at some particular time. The first is that most emphatic one I quoted a little back, of the time before the flood, the lewd and insolent temper of which time was, in the WTiter's view, the reason and justification of that stupen- dous judgment. A similar description, more pathetically detailed, is given of Sodom and Gomorrah. In the same list we must include the striking objurgations of the Jewish prophets, whose point of appeal was made in be- wailing or reproaching the idolatry and corruption of the declining Jewish state; as where Isaiah says (i. 4), 11* 126 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. '' Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity"; or where Jeremiah says, in his sombre way (xvii. 9), " The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wick- ed : who can know it?"' But incomparably the most striking passages of this sort, next after our Saviour's denunciations of the hypocrites of his day, are those in which the Apostle Paul paints the corruption of the pagan world, to make more evident the moral need of such a faith as Christianity. These passages, chiefly in the Epistle to the Romans, are too well known to need repetition here. It is from him that such expressions as " there is none righteous," " children of wrath," " the understanding darkened, " " the Scripture hath con- cluded all under sin," are chiefly taken ; sufficiently em- phatic and true as suiting his particular object of passion- ate remonstrance or appeal, but too high-wrought and sweeping to stand for a deliberate judgment or descrip- tion of human nature as such, lohich they never assume to be. And as to all these, I think it must be evident enough that it would be unauthorized and unfair to insist on the literal rendering of every high-toned description or vehement rebuke, as containing a deliberate, positive, unanswerable matter of fact, equally true for all time, for every place, and for each particular man. For such a rendering there is no warrant in the terms of Scripture, — no justification in reason or truth. 3. The remaining class consists of passages express- ing personal emotion, of humility or contrition, with a few instances of gloomy moralizing. Thus David, in his penitential psalm (doubtless sincere), after his base and atrocious conduct towards Uriah, when his conscience was roused and stung by his child's death and Nathan's bold rebuke, says (Ps. li. 5), " I was shapen In iniquity. DErRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 127 and In sin did my mother conceive me "; — bitterly true as the hmguage of remorse and self-contempt, but mon- strous as a charge to be laid indiscriminately at the door of every man. So the Preacher (supposed to be the sensual and idolatrous Solomon, who had so much more head-wisdom and so much less heart-wisdom than his father) says (Eccl. ix. 3), " The heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart," — seen chiefly in their weary chase for pleasure, and ambition that never fills the measure of its craving. Here, again, the words of Paul are more deep and earnest than any other, in the expression or interpretation of this sen- timent. Especially in the chapter from which my text is taken, he speaks profoundly of the great moral conflict that goes on in the bosom of every earnest man, — the struggle from doubt and darkness towards light and peace. '' I well know," he says, " that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing : for to will is pres- ent with me, but how to perform the good which I would I find not." Here is a statement which every man of deep moral experience will readily accept. No one sup- poses that in the flesh, that is, the natural propensities and desires, there is any moral merit, innocent or amia- ble as they may be in some of their forms. And every one knows, too, that it is a most high and difficult part of duty to contend with the excess or perversion of these very propensities and desires. They do, indeed, make virtue difficult ; but for that very reason they make it possible. For virtue consists in moral effort, — in con- tending with a moral obstacle. And so far from being intrinsically depraved and corrupt, our natural constitu- tion is only the point of departure, and the God-given condition, from which the spiritual life must proceed. 128 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN JSATUKE. The strength of a man's natural passions is always men- tioned as an extenuation of his faults, or an enhancing of his virtue, — never as intrinsically a matter of blame. The reality of the moral struggle, its necessity, not the absolute depravity of what causes it, is all that we can find contained in this well-known chapter. It is doubt- less the story, rapidly told, of Paul's own inward his- tory, representing, as Neander says, the class of sincere Pharisees. The blind groping and conflict with his own thoughts and doubts and temptations of the flesh are what he shared with all serious men of an imperfect faith, while longing for the pure and true ; the peace he found in conviction is the result that is sure to crown the faith- ful striving of the soul, in the light and blessing of spirit- ual truth. Man's moral condition is powerfully and truly told ; but it is one not of abject despair, not of rebellious hate, — only the mortal imperfection, the weary and pro- tracted struggle, waiting the radiant light of immortality. In these three classes may be ranged all the evidence from Scripture which has ever been brought to sustain the doctrine of man's original and total depravity. The strongest passages I have already quoted ; and, once re- garding them in their natural connection, they certainly do not seem to me overstrained representations of human sin, — certainly very far from strong, or explicit, or nu- merous enough, even on the strictest theory of Scripture inspiration, to bear out such a doctrine as they are cited to prove. If an inspired note or comment were affixed to each several passage, to assure us that it was equally asserted of all men everywhere, and universally true of every grade of character, unless supernaturally changed or raised, there would be some show of reason for it. It would then be only essential to prove the inspiration DEPKAVITY OF HU3IAN NATURE. 129 of that comment. As it is, granting the very highest degree of inspiration to the Bible as we find it, it is totally inadequate to meet the case. The evidence fails here ; and there is no other testimony we can call in to make it good. III. I come now to the intrinsic objections to the theory, over and above the insufficiency of evidence. These objections are partly intellectual and partly moral. Let us give a few thoughts to each. I have before spoken somewhat fully of the contradic- tion into which we fall when we presuppose man to be born into a rebellious or ruined state, — how we impli- cate the Divine character, and deny either his power and wisdom, that he could not prevent, or his mercy and justice, that he deliberately inflicted, so frightful a catas- trophe upon the human race. And in the present Dis- course I have already spoken of the difficulty, nay, im- possibility, of squaring any natural sentiments of justice or virtue, of right and wrong, with all the requisitions of this theory. In all this, I have taken for granted its ex- treme and harshest form, neglecting the modifications which common sense and humanity have by degrees brought into it. I have hitherto considered only the stern and terrible dogma, as it was produced by the dark spirit of the Middle- Age theology ; that which is repro- duced in high-toned Calvinism ; that which has been preached popularly^in the churches of our own country, and is assumed m most popular religious treatises ; that which fearlessly pronounces the entire and utter corrup- tion of the natural man, and asserts that no one who has not received conversion can be saved from eternal woe. And I have done this, because it seems the only way to treat the doctrine fairly. To make any abatement in it 130 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. seems to me virtually to abandon it. Those who main- tain it in general terms, without being willing to admit its extreme consequences, .are reduced to a miserable in- consistency. The alternative is simply between accept- ing or denying it. To accept it is to accept it all, with all its deficiency of proof, and all its mountain-load of difficulties. To deny it is to desert the ground of Or- thodoxy, and to make one's whole religious system pro- ceed upon a different set of principles. This makes the intellectual difficulty that must for ever lie at the bottom of such a scheme, as I shall now proceed to show. I am well aware that the advocates of the doctrine in name shrink from the application I have given it, and even protest against such ©xtreme interpretation, as a piece of folly in their fellow-believers, or of unfairness in their opponents. They studiously avoid pronouncing positively on the doom of all the unregenerate after death. They shudder at the horrible declarations of old Calvinistic preachers, that hell is paved with infants' bones ; and do not like to dwell too explicitly on the destination of heathen nations before or since the time of Christ. A humanizing process has been going on, and denunciations of the world's wickedness take more a moral and less a theological tone. Sin is deplored more as a fact, and dwelt on less as an inexpiable rebel- lion and curse. And the statements of the more en- lightened defenders of the dogma are such as we should hardly refuse to accept ourselves. At most, we should consider them rather exaggerated descriptions of exist- ing evil, — too unqualified, but in the main true. What we complain of is, that they should adhere to the dog- ma in form, which they virtually give up in fact. DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 131 Chalmers, for instance, complains of the exaggera- tions of the ultra Orthodox, and allows the existence of real virtue, disinterestedness, moral heroism, and pure love, distinct from the peculiar fact of conversion and regenerate life, — only saying that in such a case duty is not referred immediately to God, which may or may not be true, according to the circumstances of the case. " Whether it be," he says, " the kindliness of maternal affection, or the unweariedness of filial piety, or the earnestness of devoted patriotism, or the rigor of un- bending fidelity, or any other of the recorded virtues which shed a glory over the remembrance of Greece and of Rome, — we fully concede that they one and all of them were sometimes exemplified in those days of heathenism ; and that, out of the materials of a period, crowded as it was with moral abominations, there may also be gathered things which are pure, and lovely, and just, and true, and honest, and of good report." And in this, I presume, he only makes the concession and presents the modification of the Orthodox dogma which would be very widely accepted among its advocates. But when such allowances as these are made, we put the following question : — Do you consider these natu- ral distinctions of right and wrong as real or as delu- sive ? If they are delusive, then they are the worst, most fatal evidence of depravity, — and it is the grossest mockery to call them by the name of good at all. If they are real, then they must be real in the eye of God as well as ours ; and we cannot suppose he would judge them more harshly and scrupulously than we. Then there is the real distinction of right and wrong, aside from any theological category ; and a just God will re- ward the right and punish the wrong, irrespective of any 132 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. such criterion. And if we have ah-eady a basis of moral judgment, irrespective of the supernatural work of grace, it follows inevitably that grace is only to com- plete and perfect the work which nature has already be- gun, — that is, which is begun, not in the scornful, im- pious, passionate nature of a bad man, but in the sincere effort, the love of hoHness and truth, the upright and conscientious nature, of a good man. And in this we have stated, in so many words, the whole theory of lib- eral Christianity. Thus it is in vain to modify the excessive harshness of the dogma, and plead for its milder form. The least concession yields the entire ground. The smallest abatement or reservation is fatal to its intrinsic and es- sential meaning. And no departure can be made from the downright and sweeping assertions of the old-school Orthodox, who confound on purpose all moral distinc- tions naturally existing, and swallow up all natural right and wrong, hate and love, in one horrid gulf of total depravity, without changing wholly the dogmatic force of the theory, and coming down to a simple exaggera- tion, more or less highly colored, of the actually exist- ing evil in the world. And this, as I have said, is by no means a point of controversy. It depends wholly on the keenness of one's moral sense, or the breadth of his observation, not on the exigencies of his particular re- ligious creed. The alternative involves one's whole conception of the Christian religion. I might dwell on other ethical absurdities that result from this doctrine. Thus, for argument's sake, a man may be conceived as all wrong, — that is, by some stand- ard presupposed in the general sense of right and wrong ; but these being relative terms, and each involving its op DEPR^WITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 133 posite, it would be nonsense to deny the existence of such a standard, and still retain the terms. In other words, as right and wrong are moral distinctions, how can they exist where there is nothing to distinguish ? Again, there is no one to whom this can be an available category of wrong, even suppose it true ; for to the un- regenerate there is no capacity to receive its truth, and to the regenerate it of course no longer applies. And again, if it were true, it defeats itself, and renders re- ligion impossible except by miracle, and religious appeal consequently absurd, — useless to those not converted, and needless to those who are. But I must pass all these by, and hasten to say a kw words of its moral effect. And here we must always distinguish sharply between the religious conviction and the dogmatic opinion. There is a saving efficacy in the religious spirit, which seems to keep the temper and character from the harm that would naturally come from a false point of faith. Where it is the feeling of per- sonal contrition that quickens the sense of general de- pravity, then we know that this is part of God's way of dealing with the soul, and trust the experience will have its perfect work. Or where, as in the missionary, it is the impulse and nerve of devoted and zealous action to save some from a lost and perishing race, then the re- ligious feeling gives an actual practical trust in men's capacity, and patience in dealing with their faults, which may well put to shame the lagging zeal of those of a more complacent faith. But there are evils on the other side. Among those who do not enter into that spirit, who have not those re- ligious sympathies or that healthy tone of religious life, the sweeping theological declarations of the depravity J2 134 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. and corruption of mankind cannot do any thing but mischief. They do not have the effect to bring such to feel or acknowledge their own ^deficiencies, while they do succeed in blunting, or embittering, or rendering sus- picious, their feelings towards the mass of their fellow- men. At best, it is a strained and exaggerated tone of feeling, which cannot be kept up long without hurting the health of mind and conscience. The terrible view it presents of God and providence, if sincerely held, must strike heaven and earth with a curse. We cannot entertain the right sentiment of affectionate reverence towards a Being who is made responsible for such a state of things. Our selfish fear of being included in the all but universal doom, — our personal and selfish sense of gratitude, when we think we are saved from it without any merit of our own, to the exclusion of a multitude of others at least equally deserving with ourselves, — can- not be the right foundation for a healthful, manly, cheer- ful piety, which is the highest condition of the religious mind. And if we at all take in the force and meaning of the doctrine we profess, we must be appalled and overpow- ered with continual gloom, to think of that dreadful curse, resting on all God's creatures, which we can do nothing at all, which God himself will do compara- tively so little, to remove. The thought of the Cre- ator loses one of the chief motives it should include, to move our love and reverence. When we think of him as the highest Good, as naturally allied to and infinitely expanding in his nature those germs of good which we are conscious of in ourselves or one another, then he is the God our soul naturally seeks and loves. But to blot over these distinctions, and to make all ideas of DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 135 right and duty depend (as they must) simply on the ar- bitrary dictates of an inexorable and capricious will, is to abolish the only distinction conceivable between God and Fate, and to dry up the most abundant fountain of spiritual life in the soul. And finally, this substituting of a theological or con- structive responsibility for the simple, sound, moral sense of an enlightened mind is to strike at the root of all natural principles of right. It must steel the heart against human sympathies, beget an unconquerable sus- picion, alienate men in mutual crimination and distrust ; and so weaken that natural bond of faith in men generally, which is the real and substantial foundation of all human duty and human intercourse. Even if it has not this effect in its sincere advocates, yet by their defence of it they put a formidable weapon into the hands of bad men. It is telling them in plain terms that there is no differ- ence between them and other men, unless supernaturally changed ; that they are following the dictate and carry- ing out the plan given in their natural constitution ; that nothing but a selfish fear, which is as bad as selfish pas- sion, and perhaps meaner, prevents other men from be- ing in all respects as bad as they. It cuts off all natural ground for hope, and all motive for moral effort, and challenges their scoffing and resentful scrutiny, to ascer-' tain whether the virtues of the elect and regenerate do, after all, differ so completely from what is called deprav- ity and corruption in the non-elect. And if there should be the smallest flaw in the virtue of these others, — any trace of inferior and selfish motive, any relaxation of the purest moral principle, — what would follow but an utter and complete denial of all virtue and all difference of right and wrong .'' 136 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. This radical moral skepticism, this infidelity of the heart, is the worst moral disease that can befall a man. And nothing seems more certain to lead men into it, than first to assure them that naturally they are capable of no good thing, and that their imperfection is total depravity in the eye of God, and then to offer them the example of just the same imperfec- tion, — a little modified, perhaps, but not very palpably different in kind, — as the only substitute. The other extreme, of bigotry, and merciless persecution of those whom God is supposed to have deserted and cursed, I need not dwell on now. At the present day we do not see so much of it, or in its coarser forms. But this moral skepticism, which knows no holiness in duty, no loftiness of aim, no difference of right and wrong, — this is warning enough against a system which declares beforehand that in man's natural estate there is and can be nothing to correspond to these judgments of our moral sense. Such a system we find in the Orthodox doctrine of total native depravity. As we have seen, its evidence is uncertain and unsound ; its full signification so fright- ful, that its best advocates are gradually recoiling from it in alarm ; its terms at the same time such as to allow of no abatement, no concession, no compromise, with- out destroying its distinctive meaning ; and its whole character calculated to bewilder the simple, stimulate the bad, and sow the seeds of radical and utter skepti- cism as to all moral and religious truth. Such is the doctrine which has too long held its place as the founda- tion of Christian ethics, — a doctrine which we rejoice is giving way, though slowly, before the light of a purer interpretation of Christianity. DISCOUESE VII. ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. HE THAT SOWETH TO HIS FLESH SHALL OF THE FLESH REAP COR- RUPTION ; BUT HE THAT SOWETH TO THE SPIRIT SHALL OF THE SPIRIT REAP LIFE EVERLASTING. — Gal. vi. 8. I HAVE now examined, one by one, the several doc- trines of Orthodoxy, as they bear on the Divine economy generally, the nature of God, and on the moral con- ditions under which we live. A further point remains : that, namely, which refers to the destination of mankind in the future world. No nation of men has ever existed which did not believe, more or less clearly, in immor- tality. No system of religion has ever been taught, which did not have some answer as to this topic of solemn and awful inquiry. And our purpose now is to inquire, What answer does Orthodoxy give, and with what sort of anticipations does it bid men look for- ward to the unseen world ? What evidence does it offer to sustain its assertions, and what are the merits and advantages of the view which it presents ? In answer to these questions we may say. In brief, that the Orthodox doctrine of the future world is of a 12* 138 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. piece with the whole system of which it forms a part. Its style of assertion is the same ; the nature of its evidence is the same ; and the intrinsic objections which we have found lying against the other features of the scheme apply here in equal or added strength. What that doctrine is in general, I have implied or asserted all along. I have shown how the very nature of the scheme under review requires endless perdition to be presup- posed of the natural condition of the human race ; and that this idea, in all its strictness, must be held, as offer- ing the only motive for Christ to make, or man to ac- cept, the sacrifice of atonement. As it is essential to the significance of the scheme throughout, so it makes its fitting crown and consummation. It forms the point of appeal in all the representations of that style of theol- ogy ; it is very confidently supposed to be proved by the explicit terms of Scripture ; and, by its vague terror, it doubtless does very much to perpetuate the hold of that system upon the general mind. Respecting a doctrine so tenaciously held, so vehemently urged, our investiga- tion should be serious and deliberate. I ask your atten- tion, therefore, to a careful inquiry as to its character and its proof. The nature of my argument, appealing in the severest manner to reason, and not to passion or imagination, does not allow me to prejudice you beforehand with highly-wrought statements T)f what the popular idea of hell implies. I should be sorry to offend your taste by descriptions that to me are simply repulsive and barbar- ous. I am willing not to hold the majority of Orthodox believers responsible for such pictures of the future world ; to regard them merely as the imagery, coarse, revolting, and grotesque, by which a certain class of minds have ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 139 sought to express a sincere horror of sin, and an honest sense of the penahy it deserves. As you know, many persons make free use* of such imagery, without remorse or scruple. Taking the hint from some figurative de- scriptions in Scripture, they have accumulated unspar- ingly material images of horror. And not unfrequently they have deliberately tried to harrow up men's feelings, by drawing on their fancy for exaggerated comparisons of the supposed tortures of hell with those of racks, flames, and the horrible enginery of the Inquisition ; or else have outraged their affection, by declaring that God so schools and disciplines the minds of the saints in glory, that part of the joys of heaven will be to witness the infinite and hopeless agonies of the damned. All appeals and descriptions such as these, though still included in the coarse popular representations of Christianity, I shall dismiss with very few w^ords of com- ment. I consider them simply as showing a morbid and distempered condition of the mind. Their plainest state- ment is their plainest refutation. They are heathen in their origin and barbarous in their spirit. Reduced to their plain meaning, and taken in connection with the other kindred doctrines of election, predestination, and natural depravity, they are bald and shocking blasphemy, without a parallel in any system of paganism that the world has known. Heathen religions have indeed repre- sented a jealous and remorseless deity as exacting to the uttermost the hardest penalty they could conceive ; but even they scarce dared deliberately to sum up the full meaning of the word eternal^ as applied to such a doom, and above all, they never committed the tenfold horror of ascribing it to a perfect God. A deity treacherous, licentious, cruel, cowardly, and in terror for his throne, 140 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. might be imagined capable of exacting such a penalty, if he had the power ; for to such a one there was no need of pretending it to be right. It was reserved for the incongruous blending of the worst horror of pagan super- stition with the Christian theory of an infinite and perfect God, to affirm and justify such a sentence as that passed on a large majority of the human race. One word more, that we may have fairly done with the extreme and revolting form in which this doctrine has been held. The moral argument against it, as soon as it is once announced, is so strong and imperative, as utterly to overbear any possible attempt at proof. It is useless to talk of evidence for a proposition so intrin- sically frightful and incredible. Insist as you will upon strict interpretation of the Christian Scriptures ; still, to a healthy mind that knows what it is about, it is only to present a plain alternative. Granting the authority of the record, there must be some mistake about its mean- ing. Granting the accuracy of the interpretation, there must be some fault in the authority. I cannot suppose it possible that any man can seriously maintain that any writing or tradition whatsoever, never so imposingly vouched or implicitly received, should be able, in the name of God, to overthrow^ all ideas of his mercy or justice or power, as such a doctrine must do. Cover it over with what phraseology we will, — and putting out of sight just now all the bearing it may have on us individually as men, — the statement is a flat declaration that God has failed in the great purpose of his creation, and in spite of his wisdom, omnipotence, and love, he has been unable to make the universe in great part any thing but a wreck, a dungeon, a house of horror, an eternal monument of his baffled will and vindictive wrath. ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 141 A sound mind, say what we will, cannot agree to such a statement ; and the more closely the argument for it is pressed, the more evident is the way of escape — if that is the only one — to infidelity. I should feel humiliated to use any other argument in reference to it than this one appeal to your honest sense of right and wrong. I am willing to believe that the real meaning of those who contend for the Orthodox doctrine of retribution is different from the gross and material view w^hich we have been considering. Even here I have said nothing of the physical absurdity involved in the idea of the two separ- ate, eternal kingdoms of absolute bliss and woe, — the material heaven, with its continual light and music and its pavement of trodden gold, the material hell, with flame and chains and instruments of horrid torture. I have spoken only of the moral idea contained ; and this, in great measure, applies to every form in which the doc- trine of vindictive punishment can be held. Still, I will grant its defenders the benefit of the admission, that they do not intend strictly the two visible and outward regions of happiness and torture ; that they regard the material images as symbols of a spiritual fact ; and that the chas- tisement and vengeance of guilt they speak of are in- flicted on the living spirit, not the organized frame, and in virtue of laws deep and fundamental in the constitution of the soul itself. This is a great, and to many will ap- pear a dangerous admission for my argument ; but in spite of it, I shall hope to make that good. This much, then^ of spiritual meaning, I consider to be essentially involved in the Orthodox dogma, when stripped of its material imagery : that the penalty for 142 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. sin is absolute and final, affecting the everlasting con- dition of the soul ; that it has no object to serve in the possible reformation of the offender, and no respite to hope from Divine justice ; that there is not only the moral retribution of all wrong w^hich the reason knows and the conscience feels, and which in some degree affects all men, good or bad, but that there is super- added to this an arbitrary and inexpiable doom, when the sum of a man's offences has reached a certain point ; that in the laws of the Divine government there is in strictness of speech an " unpardonable sin," of w^hich the penalty is " eternal death"; that the chastisement of conscience, the agony of remorse, is not for warning, but for vengeance ; and that, though repentance were conceivable, it must go on hopelessly aggravated without end, a blank and pitiless and fruitless horror ; and, in fine, that all we know on earth of the stings of self-condemna- tion and reproach, of terror at one's own haunting accu- ser in his conscious heart, of the unspeakable agony of soul which makes guilty men choose the shame of ex- posure and the punishment of human laws and the coun- tenance of the Eternal Judge before their silent convic- tion of wrong, is but a type of the penalty in store for the future world, where God arbitrarily imposes it as the final doom of man's guilt. This, I say, is involved necessarily in the Orthodox dogma, and by many sup- posed to be involved in the very fact of sin. And I present it thus, apart from images of a morbid fancy, and apart from the aggravation of making it the doom of simple unbelief, that we may be clear and untram- melled in speaking of it. The only points we have now to consider are its evidence and its intrinsic character. Under these two heads I shall comprehend what I have to say of my reasons for rejecting it. ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 143 J. The evidence of a doctrine that concerns so nearly the fundamental laws of our moral constitution ought to be most severely scrutinized, and to abide all investigation clear and unimpeachable. It is in this character, as professing to pronounce with authority, on grounds wholly different from those on which scientific or philosophic truth is established, that we should view it very critically. The philosophical belief of some men, it is true, is very similar to the substance of this doc- trine ; but in their case it rests on the reading of their moral consciousness, and may be confirmed or over- thrown by a profounder method of philosophy. Not so with this. It rests on evidence extrinsic, and outwardly binding. It is sustained on authority, — the authority of texts and their interpretation. Comprising a philosophy of sin, its proof is critical and Scriptural, not philo- sophical. Of the essential idea I shall speak more fully towards the close of my remarks, and state my objec- tions generally to this view of sin and its consequences. At present my purpose is to show that it is not neces- sarily implied, or positively taught, in the words of the Christian Scriptures. The burden of proof being thrown upon that side, I wish to show that the evidence is not strong enough to bear it. * i^assg^^ ' CAVLONO