YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the Library of
HERVEY D. LELAND, YALE 1885
Gift of
JAMES R. JOY, YALE 1885

THE

DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF,

IN CONNEXION WITH

THE CREATION AND THE FALL,
REDEMPTION AND JUDGMENT.

THE

DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF,

IN CONNEXION WITH

THE CREATION AND THE FALL,
REDEMPTION AND JUDGMENT.

THOMAS RAWSON BIRKS, M.A.
PEOFESSOE OF MOEAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY,
AND
VICAR OF HOLY TRINITY, CAMBRIDGE.

SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED.

HonUon :
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1876.

[All Rights reserved.]

ffamtrfBge:
PBINTED BT C. J. CLAY, M.A.,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

i
B53

Mp ks-h

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.
PAGE
ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD  1

CHAPTER I.
ON THE POWER OF GOD  15
CHAPTER II.
ON THE NATURE OF EVIL  28
CHAPTER III.
ON THE CREATION OF FREE AGENTS  36
CHAPTER IV.
ON TEMPTATION IN FREE AGENTS  57
CHAPTER V.
ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF ANGELS  68
CHAPTER VI.
ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN  88

vi CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VII. PAGE

ON THE PERMISSION OF SATANIC

TEMPTATION  HO

CHAPTER VIII.
ON ORIGINAL SIN  117
CHAPTER IX.
ON ORIGINAL SIN, CONTINUED  139
CHAPTER X:
ON THE INCARNATION  166

CHAPTER XI.
ON THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT  '. . . ' 175
CHAPTER XII.
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT  193
CHAPTER XIII.
OBJECTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS  207
CHAPTER XIV.
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT, CONCLUDED ...  229

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The object of the following Essay is to remove some
of those difficulties which have often haunted thoughtful
and inquiring minds, when they reflect on the deeper
truths and more solemn aspects of religion, both natural
and revealed. As it is to readers of this class alone
that it is addressed, the work should be read with re
ference to its own object. There are some, perhaps, whose
childlike faith is content to follow the plainer lessons of
natural conscience and of Christian revelation, without
being ever troubled by the dark shadows that lie around
them. The aim of these pages is not to awaken the
sense of difficulty in their minds, but to relieve the depth
of these shadows, where they have been felt in their
chilling and depressing power. In the hope that the
views here .partly unfolded, and which are not hastily
entertained, may be to some weary spirits like a streak
of morning light upon the distant mountains, when the
gloom of night is passing away, they are committed to
the blessing of the true Fountain of all wisdom.
Kelshall, Nov. 1855.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

In the "Ways of God", published in October 1863,
the line of thought in the first edition of this work
was continued, and applied to the difficulties in Provir
dence and Redemption. The subjects there treated were
the long continuance of moral evil, the perils of human
probation, the infrequency of miracles, the vanity of
human life, the moral anomalies of providence, the In
carnation, the Atonement, Regeneration, Predestination,
and the Supposed Failure of Christianity. In the pre
face I was able to mention, with deep thankfulness,
that many testimonies had reached me, both from dear
and intimate friends, some of them since removed by
death, and from strangers personally unknown, of help
and comfort received from the former work, in l-emoving
dark clouds, -which had burdened their spirits, and ob
scured their vision of the Divine goodness. Some of
these were from missionaries, both in the north and
south of India, who had found help from it in their
conflict with the dark fatalism, by which Mohammedans
and Buddhists are alike fenced, as with a buckler, from

x PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
the appeals of the Gospel. Many other testimonies of
the same kind have reached me, from various quarters,
in the thirteen years that have since followed to the
present day.
The "Victory of Divine Goodness", published ten
years ago, continued the same line of thought, in con
nexion with the special perplexities of a private cor
respondent, personally unknown to me, and with the
two main subjects of Atonement and Judgment to
Come. But nearly one half of the work, the notes on
Coleridge's Confessions, had no proper unity with the
rest, and the letters to my correspondent were too
fragmentary in form to deal worthily with so many
subjects of high importance. The remarks on eternal
judgment gave birth to strange misrepresentations, of
which I do not seek to revive the memory. But I have
here included. the two Essays on the Atonement and
Eternal Judgment, somewhat revised, in the series of sub
jects treated in the former edition of the Difficulties, so
that the treatise will now range onward from the Creation
and the Fall to the Redemption and the New Creation
still to come. I have also prefixed a brief summary of
the direct Scripture evidence for the doctrine, and some
examples ofthe strong and deep prejudices awakened by
it in leading writers of the present day. These will prove,
I think, convincingly, the great need for such an effort as
I have honestly made, in entire dependence on the teach
ing of. the Word and the Spirit of God, to clear away-

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xi
false representations, and causeless additions to the truth
Divinely revealed, to show its harmony with other great
truths no less plainly, and even more fully taught,
and thus to strengthen the defences of the Christian
faith ; and show that, even when clouds and darkness
are round about the Almighty Creator, justice and
judgment are the habitation of his throne, that his
goodness is infinite, and his name is Love. While I
humbly desire his forgiveness for every defect in my
treatment of themes so high and mysterious, I com
mend the work, in its enlarged and revised form, to
his favour and blessing, in the prayer once offered
before: — "May the great Head of the Church, all
whose works are truth, and his ways judgment, accept
the humble offering, and make it minister to the glory
of his excellent name, and the ripening and perfecting
of the faith of his true servants."

Trinity Parsonage, Cambridge,
September, 1876.

INTRODUCTION.
ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.
The existence of One First Cause, powerful, wise, good,
and holy, the Lord and Governor of the universe, is the
foundation of all natural and revealed religion. It is the
fountain out of which every other truth must really flow.
" I AM THAT I AM. I AM THE FIRST AND THE LAST, and
beside me there is no God." In these messages, God has
announced to mankind his own prerogative of unchange
able, eternal, essential being. All creatures, compared
with Him, are less than nothing, and vanity. His majesty
dwarfs the splendour of all created beauty ; and the uni
verse, apart from Him who formed and sustains it, would
almost appear, to the eye of reason, like a shadowy dream.
But there may be a great contrast between the cer
tainty and dignity of a truth in itself, and the clearness
with which it is apprehended by men. What is first and
highest in its own nature, may possibly be latest in the
order of human knowledge. The laws on which the
movements of our earth, and the changes of its seasons
depend, existed for long ages before their discovery. So
also that primal truth, on which all others are secretly

2 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
suspended, may require slow and successive steps of
thought, before we can reach the mountain-top where
we can gaze on it with a clear and steadfast vision.
The child becomes familiar with many objects, its toys
and playthings, and the countenances of its nurse and
parents, before it kuows the source of the light by which
all these are made visible, or has ever beheld the, calm
beauty of the rising or setting sun. And when it is seen
at last, its brightness must be tempered by clouds, or by
the mists of the morning or evening sky; and the number
is small of those who borrow the help of art, in order to
gaze directly on its meridian brightness. In like manner,
to behold with steadfast and unclouded gaze the true and
uncreated Light is a hard and high attainment. Its
brightness dazzles and confounds the reason of man. It
O
must be seen reflected upon the objects of earth, or
tempered with some veil which heavenly love itself has
provided, before the vision of sinful creatures can endure
its glory. This contrast between the nature of the truth, and
our faint and variable apprehensions of it, has led to some
perplexity with regard to the evidence on which it rests.
The pious mind shrinks from the thought that a doctrine
so momentous should be viewed merely as a high proba
bility. It claims for it instinctively some absolute de
monstration. Now demonstrative reasoning usually descends from
generals to particulars, from causes to their effects, from
principles to their necessary consequences. But when
we reverse the process, and ascend from effects to causes,
the result often appears to be tentative and imperfect.
After much labour and a wide induction, we arrive at
conclusions not absolutely, but only partially true; which

INTRODUCTION.

have to be modified by further investigation, and a more
comprehensive range of experience. Must, then, our faith
in the Being of God be of this vague, uncertain kind ? Is
it only, after all, a probable and imperfect guess, instead
of a sure and firm foundation for our whole moral being ?
To remove this doubt, we must distinguish between
partial and absolute knowledge. To infer a cause from
an effect, and an effect from a cause, are processes in
themselves equally sure and demonstrative. Whether we
ascend or descend in the chain of reasoning, it is the
nature of the links alone which determines the degrees of
evidence. But while we may deduce a large variety of
effects from a single cause, clearly defined and fully
known, our knowledge of the cause must be imperfect
and limited, if it be gained from a few effects only. A
planet acted upon by a constant central force, varying
inversely as the square of the distance, will describe an
ellipse, with the areas, measured from the focus, pro
portional to the time. The cause being assumed to act
undisturbed, the result is capable of a strict and absolute
demonstrajien. ~^AirdTconversely, if such motions are ob
served through one revolution of the planet, the existence
of a central force, varying by such a law and no other,
may be concluded with equal certainty. But we cannot
infer that this force will remain constant through succes
sive revolutions. It may vary by a periodical and inter
mittent action. We cannot be sure that the same force,
or any force, will be exercised on a body in a different
plane of motion, or that the same law of intensity will
extend to all distances, nearer or more remote, in the
same plane. These extensions of the law are inferences
from other facts, or from the observed simplicity of natural
laws in general, and may be either confirmed or disproved
A2

4 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
by the lessons of a wider and more prolonged experience.
In most departments of physical science, these hypotheti
cal-extensions of laws derived from a partial experience
will sometimes prove erroneous, and thereby will seem to
reflect doubt upon the very process of inductive reasoning,
But this is a mere illusion. The reasoning is firm and
demonstrative on its own nature, and only fails us, when
Ave mingle our imperfect guesses with the actual results of
pure and simple induction.
Now these remarks apply to the higher truths of the
moral universe. No finite being can fully comprehend
the nature of God. It is a mystery too deep for us to
fathom in all its real profundity. He "dwelleth in light
which no man can approach unto, Avhom no man hath
seen or can see, the King of kings and Lord of lords." All
our conceptions must be very imperfect, and fall far short
of the glorious reality. We cannot, by searching, find out
the Almighty unto perfection. It is only a faint whisper
of his greatness that our ears can receive ; but "the thun
der of his power who can understand?" But those sepa
rate elements, which, when combined, form our highest
conceptions of his being,, may be separately capable of
pure and absolute demonstration, as well as those inter
mediate steps by which we rise to them ; although few,
comparatively, may apprehend the whole of them, or com
bine them harmoniously into one pure and perfect idea of
Supreme and Absolute Goodness. Hence may arise all
the existing varieties of religious faith, in which truths,
demonstrable and sure in themselves, are either seen
through a mist, or held down in unrighteousness; so that
'¦'gods many, and lords many," usurp the homage due to
Jehovah; or dark shadows, where his supreme power is
ownedj obscure his perfections and his glory. Wherever

INTRODUCTION.

superhuman and unseen powers are worshipped, which, in
the view of the worshippers themselves, have not supreme
dominion or essential being, the religious instinct is in
exercise, but stops short entirely of its proper object ; and
the first great commandment is transgressed, "Thou shalt
have none other gods but me." Where the worship is
directed to a Being supreme above all others, but under
false representations, whether of the senses or the imagi
nation, by which his true character is obscured or denied,
there is a breach of the second commandment, and a more
or less aggravated form of religious idolatry. But if the
separate truths, which underlie this mass of religious in
stincts and traditions, are cleared from the dross of human
errors, each of them will be found capable of a true
demonstration by principles which lie at the foundation
of our daily life ; while their various rays, all converging
to one centre, will reveal to our minds that Awful and
Glorious Presence, which decks itself with light as a gar
ment, and sits enthroned on the riches of the universe.
And first, that every event and every object must
have some cause, is a principle so rooted in our minds,
that our whole life involves its hourly application. We
are conscious of it in the motions of our own bodies. We
discern it in all the changes of physical nature, and apply
it by an unalterable instinct to the actions and conduct of
our fellow-men. Hence we ourselves, and the objects that
surround us, must have some cause of our being. But we
are conscious that we ourselves are not the cause. We
did not make ourselves, nor create the objects which we
see around us. Experience shows, as plainly, that our
fellow-men, living with us, are not the cause of their own
being, nor of the outward world which is our common
home. If we refer to our parents, and prolong the chain

THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.

backward, we have no key at all to the existence of the
lower creatures, and have advanced no nearer to a full
and adequate explanation. The whole series of genera
tions, and the generative power itself, are effects that
need to be explained. If we conceive some being, finite
and mutable, a mere Demiurge of limited faculties, and
born in time, yet endued with might and wisdom to
fashion the lower creatures, and give birth to the whole
human race, a higher Cause will still be required to
account for his existence. Reason, Avhen once it wakes to
the simple truth, that every effect requires a cause, leads
us upward, with swift and irresistible progress, to the feet
of the Almighty. It cannot rest till it has pointed us to
one great First Cause, on which all lower causes and all
created beings must depend. There may be, for aught we
can tell by experience, "gods many and lords many," un
seen by the eye of man, and superior to human power ;
but there is and must be one Only God, of whom are all
things, the Fountain of Being, and self-existent cause of
all created things.
Again, we are conscious to ourselves, and observe the
presence in others, of a faculty of design. We can choose
for ourselves objects of desire, and combine various means
for their attainment. Life is one stream of human pur
poses, hopes, and fears, either disappointed or fulfilled. In
the choice of ends to be pursued, and of the means for
securing them, we perceive by experience the widest
varieties, both in ourselves and our fellow-men. To some
plans we give the title of wisdom, to others, of folly. But
whether successful or unsuccessful, whether wise or fool
ish, the idea of design is the same. We are conscious of
it in ourselves. We perceive it, without a shade of doubt,
in the conduct of our fellow-men, and even in the instincts

INTRODUCTION.

of the lower creatures. But we also discover the clearest
traces of it in the events of Providence, and in the frame
of the world, where we can trace it to no human agency
whatever. Reason tells us plainly, that these marks of
design prove the existence of a Designer. Still further,
the same reason teaches us that the first cause of ex
istences, themselves capable of design, and gifted with
various degrees of wisdom, must itself be wise. A blind,
unconscious fate could never be an adequate cause of con
scious wisdom. And thus, by a double inference, which
grows in clearness the longer our thoughts dwell upon it,
we are assured that the First Cause must be also the
Supreme Architect and Designer of the universe, and that
the Creator of beings gifted with the faculty of wisdom
and foresight must Himself be the True and Absolute
Wisdom. But, further, we are moral agents. We are conscious
of a will and power of choice, and cannot avoid passing
judgment on ourselves and others with regard to the
manner in which this power of choice is exercised. We
praise and blame, we approve and condemn. We do this
by an instinct which it is impossible to control, and the
sophists who strive to quench it are themselves unwilling
witnesses to its mighty and unquenchable power. The
Epicurean kindles into zeal when he denounces in super
stition the guilty curse of mankind ; and the Materialists,
who would resolve our being into a concourse of atoms,
often inveigh against the crimes of priests and kings with
a strange and instructive inconsistency. The moral in
stinct, violently repressed in its natural outlets, forces
itself a passage some other way. The deep-seated con
trast of moral good and evil lies at the root of all our
daily judgments. The conscience of all men, as the

8 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
Apostle tells us, bears witness to its truth, and their rea
sonings among themselves, while they accuse or else ex
cuse one another. But the same law of thought, which
compels us to look up through all the long vista of second
causes, till we reach one First Cause, self-caused and
absolute, constrains us no less to trace all derived and
partial goodness in the creatures to a perfect and absolute
goodness, the uncreated and hidden Fountain, whence
every stream of blessing must flow. And thus Power,
Wisdom, Goodness, in one common source, in which every
one is found absolute and perfect — the First Cause, the
Supreme Architect, the Purely Good — together constitute
our fundamental conception of the Godhead. These three
letters compose his ineffable and glorious Name, who is
the Maker of all things, the only wise God, a Being of
spotless holiness and perfect love.
There is nothing arbitrary, uncertain, or hypothetical
in this threefold cord of reason, which binds the soul of
man to the footstool of the Almighty. We may, through
a careless and ungodly heart, stop short in the ascent of
wisdom, and thus fail to attain, even in its bare outline,
this knowledge of the true and only God. We may rise,
for instance, to the apprehension of manjr second causes,
higher than man, and unseen by our bodily eyes, and rest
on these, as the agents in all the events of Providence and
the changes of the outward world. These secondary
powers may be many in number, as well as limited and
imperfect in their power. Born in time, like ourselves,
they may be conceived subject to changes and decay. We
may take the signs of wisdom and design in the universe,
and distribute them among these unseen powers. We
may also ascribe to them distinct forms of moral excellence
or chequer these with varieties of moral defect, such as we

INTRODUCTION.

meet with among our fellow-men. In such a creed we
have the system of Polytheism. So far as it recognises
the existence of such higher powers, it may be a truth.
But it is not the truth to which reason conducts the
patient inquirer. It stops short at the foot of the mount.
And hence, in an age of active thought, such a system of
Polytheism must either sink into mere Atheism, or rise
into a pure Theism, as the sensual or spiritual element
prevails in the minds of men. Jove, the son of Saturn,
who reigned, by deposing his own father, on the snowy
heights of Ida and Olympus, amidst a family of gods and
goddesses, must either give place to the atoms of Demo-
critus and the philosophy of Epicurus, or be transmuted
into a higher object of faith — the Living One and the
Supreme, whose offspring we all are,
"Undo nil majus generator ipso,
Nee viget quidquam simile aut secundum."
The object of a heathenish worship is here displaced by
a dim apprehension of the true and only God, ignorantly
worshipped, though still practically unknown. Reason lies
down and sleeps midway on her journey, and Polytheism
is the child of her dreams. She awakes and pursues her
journey, and the morning light of heaven dawns upon her
footsteps, and greets her with a vision of the blessed
and only Potentate, the true Lord of heaven and earth.
Again, we may trace up all effects to a great First
Cause, and forbear to dwell on those proofs of design of
which we are conscious to ourselves, and of which the
universe is full, Our conception will thus remain essen
tially and radically imperfect. Faith in such a Deity is
vain and useless for every moral purpose. We are not
believers in an All-wise God, but in a Supreme Fate — ¦
unwise, unconscious, and unreasoning — wh;ch acts with

10 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
relentless vigour, by some blind and unaccountable neces
sity. In this case there can be no providence, and no
moral government. There will brood over creation the
dark shadow of an Absolute Power, which works it knows
not why, and cares not how, and crushes in swift succes
sion under its wheels the creatures to which it has given
birth. This creed of fatalism, though disguised, is often
the chief element in false religions. Compared with the
fatal Sisters, even Jove himself was feeble in the Greek
mythology. This serpent hid itself amidst the festoons of
flowers with which the Pagans wreathed the statues of
their divinities, and asserted a true and awful supremacy
over the practical faith of mankind.
But a further step may be taken, and the soul may
still come short of the fundamental truth of natural and
revealed religion. The outward and the inner world may
alike be recognised as full of the evidences of design. All
the rays of power and natural wisdom in the various
creatures may be seen converging upward to one common
source in whom they centre, and from whom they must
flow. The great First Cause is then owned to be a wise
and conscious Being, the Supreme Architect, the Natural
Governor of the universe. But the consciousness of moral
good and evil may still slumber; and hence the highest
and most distinguishing element may be wanting entirely
in our conception of the Supreme Being. Providence is
now recognised, but in forms of natural goodness alone.
From the minutest speck which the microscope discovers,
to the Avide range of infinite space which the telescope
vainly seeks to explore, this Power revels in the display of
its ever-varied wisdom, amidst the mechanism of suns and
systems, and all the countless wonders of animal and
vegetable life. But no moral purpose is discerned in this

INTRODUCTION. 1 1

display of superhuman power and sagacity. We have only
a Mechanician of unrivalled skill, who has formed the
universe, like an immense toy-shop, to display with a
capricious prodigality the inexhaustible resources of his
mechanical ingenuity.
Such is the abstract Deity which meets us too often in
the writings of natural philosophers, whenever they suffer
their conscience to go to sleep amidst their profound scien
tific inquiries. Such students of nature fail to learn the
first and simplest lesson of true religion, that God is no
abstract and lifeless Being, but the Moral Governor of
accountable creatures; perfect not only in natural wisdom,
but in righteousness and holiness; supremely good, no less
than supremely wise.
But Avhen we reach the last mountain-top, from which
the glory of the true and living God begins to dawn upon
our spirits, new mists gather around us, and threaten to
rob us of the vision, and plunge us into darkness again.
The same deep instinct which reveals to us the contrast of
moral good and evil, and compels our reason to ascribe
perfect goodness to the Supreme Source of all being, dis
closes also the mournful fact, that moral evil does exist
and prevail widely through the universe. How, then, can
we explain this fact, if there be a God of infinite power
and goodness? Surely, either the power or the will to
remove it must be wanting. If the power, then how can
God be Almighty? If the will, then how can He be
infinitely good? The minds of men, as reasonable beings,
would acquiesce readily in the simple and glorious truth,
that there is a God, All-wise, Almighty, and All-perfect;
but this fact, the existence and power of moral evil, and
that for long ages, flings them back into sceptical doubt
and perplexity. The infidel appeals to it with a kind of

12 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
malicious joy, to warrant his own unbelief; and even the
devout Christian is often afraid to trust himself into these
deep waters, and, while conscious of a doubt still unsatis
fied, is tempted to stifle it, if possible, by a violent effort of
the will. But, in spite of these efforts, the doubt and
perplexity still recur. This dark shadow, which shut the
heathen Avorld in a hopeless gloom, hovers still over the
various schools of Christian theology; and the bright dis
covery of Divine love in the Gospel has not succeeded in
driving away entirely this pall of night from the spiritual
heavens. When the faith of the Christian borrows the aid of
reason to remove the darkness, it tends to lose itself in
two opposite labyrinths, from which no outlet is found.
In one direction we encounter the Manichean doctrine,
that there are two original independent powers of good
and evil, the Ormusd and Ahriman of Zend theology,
which contend with balanced might for the dominion of
the universe. In the other, we meet a Christian fatalism,
which only avoids the admission of an evil Power, by
introducing dualism into the bosom of the Godhead. The
Supreme Sovereign is placed above the laws of righteous
ness, which He has implanted in the heart of his own
creatures. Moral good and evil, happiness and misery,
salvation and ruin, are viewed as alike the results of his
arbitrary and sovereign will. Between the Scylla of Mani
chean heresy, and the deeper gulf of this blasphemous
perversion of truth, which makes God himself the author
of all evil, how shall we guide the vessel of our reason in
safety, so as not to make shipwreck of our faith? How
shall we avoid either limiting the almighty power, or
denying the spotless and perfect holmess, of the God whom
our hearts inwardly adore ?

INTROD UCTION. 1 3

All the difficulties which obscure the wisdom and good
ness of their Maker from the eyes of men, and tempt
numbers to doubt even the firm and simple conclusion
of awakened reason, when it assures them of his power
and Godhead, resolve themselves into this one question
— the nature of moral evil, and the righteousness and
goodness of God in the moral government of the world.
It is the presence of moral evil alone, which disposes men
to doubt the goodness and wisdom of the Most High, It
is the fact of moral evil, borne with, but not removed,
which gives force to all their questionings against the ways
of Providence. It is the solemn threatening of judgment
to come upon the workers of iniquity, which forms the
stumbling-block of the unbeliever in coming to the word
of God, and persuades him that the Bible contradicts the
pure instincts of perfect benevolence. If this one problem
were solved, all other petty cavils would die away of them
selves. While darkness broods over it, these spectres will
start up in ten thousand forms; and every part- of God's
word, every act of his providence, will be a fresh occasion
for unwilling perplexity in the humble, and for open
blasphemy in the proud and arrogant sinner. It is a pro
blem, too, with which it seems impossible to deal sepa
rately, by natural reason and the light of supernatural
revelation. Without the light which the word of God
supplies, we cannot even make any approach to a solution
of the immense difficulty. And when we take Revelation
for our guide, the darkness which seems removed in some
directions, thickens and deepens in others; and all the
miseries and wrongs of the present life seem often more
tolerable to the awakened reason, than the prospect of
the retribution which is declared to await the rebellious in
the world to come.

14 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
It is comparatively an easy task to rove through all
creation, and come back laden with evidence of the Divine
power and greatness, and of the bounty displayed in the
formation of innumerable worlds. The mind, enriched
with the treasures of science, and gifted with eloquence,
may compose a beautiful and glowing panegyric on the
countless tokens of the Divine beneficence. But amidst
all the beauty of these lovely songs, the plague-spot of the
spirit will remain untouched and unhealed, unless a cure
can be found for those cruel suspicions which flow out of
the prevalence of sin and sorrow in the present life, and
the repeated warnings of strange judgment to come here
after on the workers of iniquity. If further light, however
feeble and imperfect, can be thrown upon this mystery, it
will be a real and lasting boon to the Church of Christ,
and, indirectly, a new power for the triumphs of Divine
truth in the world. If this mystery remains in total dark
ness, all declamation on the benevolence of the Almighty,
and attempts to answer cavils, are almost utterly vain.
The believer must be content to own himself a child, who
cannot answer the aspersions thrown out against the
Father whom he loves, but believes that his Father will
himself scatter them in due time.
To throw some light upon this great problem, and
thereby to vindicate the wisdom and goodness of Jehovah,
is the aim of the following Essay. May He, who searches
the deep things of God, bestow a blessing upon the effort,
and enable us to pierce a little further, in the spirit of
reverence, into the thick darkness which surrounds the
throne of the Most High !

CHAPTER I.
ON THE POWER OF GOD.
The word of God reveals to us the existence of holy
angels, who delight in the service of their Creator, and
render Him the tribute of their continual praise. It
speaks of a time Avhen man himself was upright and sin
less, and surrounded by the beauty of an earthly Paradise.
And when it withdraws the veil from the future, we see
multitudes of our race recovered to perfect holiness, and
dwelling in the presence of God, where they enjoy a hap
piness undimmed by one cloud of sorrow.
Now we may conceive a plan of Providence where
nothing should meet the eye but these joyful images of
peace and purity. We may picture to ourselves the
worlds, which science reveals in the depths of infinite
space, all peopled in succession with holy beings, like un
fallen man or sinless angels, who should abide in spotless
innocence and perfect love for ever. From these innume
rable worlds we may imagine the hosannahs of holy
worship to rise perpetually before the throne of the Most
High; while the variety of wisdom which we perceive
among the lower creatures might only be a type of ever-
varying forms of love and sympathy, which should be
displayed in the intercourse of these reasonable creatures

1 6 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
Avith each other, in the feast of reason and the flow of
deep affections through the course of eternal ages. In
this wide range of blessedness, we may assume that not
one trace shall be found of rebellion against the Almighty
Creator, and that not one wail of sorrow and misery ever
mingles with the chorus of universal thanksgiving. It is
natural to inquire, Would not such a universe have been
far preferable to what we see around us, or to that che
quered prospect, of mercy mingled with awful judgments,
which Christianity discloses in its visions of the world to
come ? Does it not meet all the instincts of a true bene
volence ? Is it not a scheme worthy of Infinite Goodness
to devise, and for Infinite Power to execute ? Where is
the power of God, if He were unable to frame a universe
full of unmingled happiness ? Where his perfect goodness,
if He were able to frame a world, in which the happiness
of every creature, though lower in degree, would have
been pure and unmingled like his own ; and preferred to
let in upon them a flood of evils, that would involve im
mense multitudes in present sorrow and eternal ruin ?
This difficulty, which has haunted thoughtful and lov
ing hearts for ages, has been stated, with almost malicious
clearness, by the sceptic historian, in his account of the
creed of Zoroaster. " The appearance of moral and physi
cal evil had established the two principles in the ancient
philosophy and religion of the East. A thousand shades
may be devised in the nature and character of Ahriman,
from a rival God to a subordinate demon, from passion
and frailty to pure and perfect malevolence. But, in spite
of our efforts, the goodness and the power of Ormusd are
placed at opposite extremities of the line, and every step
that approaches the one must recede in etrual proportion
from the other,"

ON THE POWER OF GOD. ij
The solution of this difficulty, which seems to be most
usual among Christian divines, is by no means satisfactory
to the thoughtful mind. It has been often assumed for a
self-evident truth, that God, by virtue of his omnipotence,
could easily have hindered the first entrance of evil into
his moral creation ; and that He could also banish it in a
moment by a simple act of his sovereign will, now that
its dark shadows have overspread the universe. But it is
alleged that there are wise reasons why evil has been per
mitted, and is still allowed to continue. A greater good is
hereby to be secured in the end, and the various attributes
of the Creator are to be more signally displayed in the
severity of his justice, and the riches of his grace.
There are two reasons which conspire to prove the in
sufficiency of this explanation, however current it may be
among a large class of Christian divines. And first, if the
omnipotence of God makes it certain that the entrance of
evil might have been prevented, or that, after its first en
trance, it might still be crushed in a moment, will it not
equally prove that the end proposed might also have been
gained by a simple act of the Divine will, without recourse
to a process so painful and terrible ? If God is almighty
to destroy at once every trace of moral evil, is He not also
almighty to bestow at once every varied form of moral
excellence, instead of leaving them to be slowly and ardu
ously gained, through years of perilous probation, and
long, dark ages of abounding iniquity and sorrow ? There
can be no room for a wise choice of means to attain some
worthy end, if the end be just as attainable without any
means whatever. In this case wisdom is only a mockery
and a name. The whole apparatus of means becomes a
laborious and troublesome superfluity. Warnings, promises,
invitations, threatenings, examples, precepts, are alike un-

1 8 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
real and collusive, if the true meaning of Omnipotence is
a power to supersede them all at any moment, and to se
cure the very end proposed by these various agencies and
influences, by a pure and simple volition of the Almighty,
But there is another, and perhaps even a still weightier,
objection to this view. Besides abolishing the very possi
bility of wisdom, it seems directly to impeach the Divine
goodness. An Apostle has taught us, concerning those
who do evil that good may come — " their condemnation is
just." The general conscience of mankind has affixed
the stamp of blasphemy on the doctrine that God is the
Author of evil. Now the word of God, the true standard
of moral judgment to his creatures, places sins of omission
and commission very much on the same level. " To him
that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is
sin." "If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn
unto death, and them that are appointed to be slain, doth
not he that pondereth the heart consider it ? — and he that
keepeth thy soul, doth he not know it ? — and will he not
render to every man according to his works?"
The law of duty, which God enjoins upon his creatures
in this solemn appeal, must be the transcript of his own
moral perfections. To forbear to do the good, which is
within our power, is here placed on the same footing of
crime with the active working of evil. But the alleged
purpose, that good may come, will not shield active wrong
doing from deserved condemnation. How, then, can it be
a moral justification for the forbearance of good, which is
really in our power to be done ? If the Almighty has for
borne to deliver myriads upon myriads of his reasonable
creatures, who are ready to be slain with a worse than
temporal death, when a simple act of will would alone suf
fice for their deliverance, how can we avoid the conclusion

ON THE POWER OF GOD. 19
that He has done, on the largest scale, what He proclaims
to be an inexcusable crime, and threatens to visit with his
severest displeasure ? Do we not, by such an hypothesis,
make God too much like ourselves, whose conscience often
slumbers under the mere neglect of duty, while it would
revolt from the direct commission of open crimes ?
When this conviction has taken root in the mind, that
the entrance of moral evil, and its long continuance, are
due to the active agency or passive connivance of the
Almighty, all the stupendous Avorks of his love, to repair
the miseries of the fall, quickly lose their power over the
heart. The Gospel of Christ can then hardly escape from
the charge of being a vanity and an illusion. For can we
reasonably ascribe the perfection of wisdom and goodness
to conduct, which we should impute at once, in our fellow-
creatures, to a criminal folly ? Suppose that a parent has
it in his power to secure the happiness, obedience, and
virtue of all his children, from their first infancy, and that
he prefers to leave them all to spend years in brutish vice
or wicked passions, and many of them to perish in theii?
vices at the last, that some may be recovered through a
fearful course of suffering; in order, by this means, to show
his wisdom and sagacity in the remedial measures he
afterwards employs, and which have only a limited and
partial success ; could we praise him for his wisdom and
goodness ? Should we not rather condemn him for de
fective benevolence even to his OAvn children, and be
ready to account his very acts of kindness, to reclaim
these prodigals, a course of laborious folly ? Yet is not
this the very charge which would lie, in spite of our
efforts, against the perfections of the Godhead, if we
accept the views which have been widely current with
regard to the true meaning of Omnipotence ?
B2

20 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
"God could, doubtless, convert and save all men and
ail devils; but He has wise reasons for not doing it."
These words of a judicious commentator express the
popular impressions of our modern theology relative to
the power of God. The Scriptures, it is evident, have
nowhere- directly affirmed what is here said to be an un
doubted truth. It is an inference of human reason from
a Divine attribute. Now such inferences require great
caution, that we may not confound mischievous illusions,
due to our own ignorance, with the real truth of God.
The world has plainly been full of misconceptions of the
Divine wisdom and goodness. Is it likely that its current
and popular notions of Divine power would alone be free
from the infection of serious error? One falsehood, re
ceived blindly for an undoubted truth, may possibly
infect the whole system of theology, and cast a dark and
gloomy shadow around the throne of the Most High.
And since the alternative, here examined, wears this
threatening aspect towards two main perfections of the
Godhead, ought we not, before receiving it into our creed,
to search very narrowly into the secret assumption on
which it rests ?
What, then, is the true meaning of the Divine Omni
potence? Is it the power to do whatever is conceivable
by the thoughts of men, or simply whatever is possible in
its own nature ? Or do both definitions agree, so that
every hypothesis, capable of being propounded "by the
human faculties, is proved to be possible by that circum
stance alone ?
If the mind of man were perfect in knowledge, no con
ception it forms could ever involve contradictory elements.
But this is not really the case. An ignorant and errino-
fancy may associate many things in words which are quite

ON THE POWER OF GOD. 21
incompatible. The greater our ignorance, the wider must
be the sphere of these illusions. It is true that, in these
cases, the mind cannot form a clear and full conception.
This is the reason why the real incongruity remains con
cealed. But it is plain that such impossibilities may be
accounted possible, and may pass current for a while in
the forum of human speculations. The child who has just
learned the meaning of an angle or triangle, may think it
possible and easy to construct a three-sided figure, whose
angles shall be greater or less than two right angles ; or to
vary the dimensions of a right-angled triangle, so that the
square on its hypothenuse shall exceed those on its sides
by a definite quantity. So, too, the novice in dynamics
may conceive such motions to be impressed on a system
of atoms by their mutual action alone, that their centre of
gravity may revolve in a circle. The geometer knows
that these problems are impossible in their own nature.
They do not come within the province of Omnipotence to
execute, but of Omniscience to discern their inherent con
tradiction. Thousands of similar examples may. be drawn
from the range of pure science, and prove that many
things are really contradictory and impossible, in which
the eye of ignorance can see no contradiction what
ever. This distinction, which science reveals to us in the ma
terial universe, betAveen things possible and impossible in
their own nature, or in other words, between essential
truth and essential falsehood, is clearly extended in the
Scriptures to the very nature of the Godhead. "God,
that cannot lie," is one of the glorious titles of Jehovah,
which the Apostle of the Gentiles sets before us to con
firm our faith. We are reminded that " if we believe not,
he abideth faithful, he cannot deny himself." And to

"2 2 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
the character of essential truth, another Apostle adds the
-like attribute of essential goodness : " Let no man say,
when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God can
not be tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man."
There are things conceivable by the mind of man, which
are not possible to the Almighty, because they would in
volve a denial and contradiction of the real perfection of
his own being. The Judge of all the earth cannot do
wrong. He, who is a God of truth, and without iniquity,
•cannot behold iniquity with pleasure. " He is not a man,
that he should repent." He cannot reverse his own es
sential perfections. His name is I AM, and He cannot
by an act of will, cease to be. His name is Love, and He
cannot become hatred. His name is God the only wise,
and He cannot be deceived. That glorious title, by which
the seraphim adore Him continually, implies his essential
holiness, which makes it impossible that He should be
subjected to error, or tempted with evil. He is the true
Light, and all darkness and shadow must lie perpetually
without his all-perfect Being ; and to suppose Him capa
ble, by an act of his own will, of introducing them into
that Holy of holies, is nothing else than a contradiction
and lying blasphemy.
But this principle, being once established in the lowest
walk of creation, amidst its material elements, and also
with reference to the Creator himself, must be further
applicable to all his moral creatures, and the relations
they bear to one another, and to the First Cause on
whom they depend. Good and evil, wisdom and folly,
in all moral agents, are no changeable, arbitrary things.
If their seat is the bosom of God, their voice, resounding
through all creation, is the harmony of the universe.
A woe is denounced on all those who put darkness for

ON THE POWER OF GOD. 23
light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet,
and sweet for bitter ; while it is the very test of spiritual
progress to "have £he senses exercised to discern good
and evil." If these foundations be destroyed, what can
the righteous do ? But they never can be destroyed :
heaven and earth may pass away, but the deep founda
tions of God's holy law can never pass away. The es
sential contrast of moral goodness with all things evil
has its source in the perfection of the Divine nature,
but extends, through the whole range of the intelligent
universe, and repeats itself, in ten thousand forms, through
all the various messages of the word of God.
What, then, is the true conception of Omnipotence,
so far as our dim-sighted faculties can apprehend so lofty
a truth ? It may be summed up in the three main as
pects of Creation, Providence, and Grace. It is a power,
first of all, to call innumerable creatures out of nothing,
by the simple fiat of the Divine Will, and to endow them
with various activities, by which they are differenced
from each other and from the Creator who bestoAvs them,
and are gifted with a real though dependent being. The
power of God in creation ranges from the simplest monad
endued with a law of force, and so constituted a point
in the world of matter, to the seraph who veils his wings
in holy worship before the throne, and rejoices in the
union of a pure and large intelligence with the highest
fervour of love and the most intense activity of will. It
includes the mysterious gift of life, which can overflow
the narrow fountain wherein it is first contained, and
diffuse and multiply itself in the production of new
existences, resembling its own parent being. "He spake,
and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast," is
the sublime formula of Creative Omnipotence, and our

24 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
imagination faints in the effort to conceive the vastness
of its inexhaustible treasures.
But the Almighty Power of God as seen, further, in
the work of Providence. And here it consists in the
power to sustain and govern all creatures Avith absolute
authority and control, according to their distinct natures,
whicih God himself has bestowed. In the material world,
it is the power to move, transport, and modify every
thing which He has created, from the mote which plays
in the sunbeam, to the systems of innumerable worlds
which science discovers, as they lie scattered; with a Avild
profusion of Divine bounty, through the depths of space.
In the moral and spiritual world, it is the power to act
on mind, in all its varieties, according to the essential
laws of its constitution. It includes all varieties of
moral suasion by motives addressed to the understand^
ing and conscious will, with no other limit than may
arise from the incapacity of the creature to apprehend
the truth proposed, or the reluctance of the will to feel
the power of the motives addressed to the heart. How
far this limit may extend, is a subject for more profound
inquiry. At present, it is enough to observe, that, even
assigning these limits their fullest significance, they must
leave a wide field for the harmonious exhibition of the
Divine Wisdom and Omnipotence, in disposing all the
events of life towards a consummation worthy of the God
of love. But Omnipotence may be conceived to have a distinct
and higher sphere than the common arrangements of Pro
vidence, in the secret operations of Divine grace. It is
clear that many creatures are, really sunk in a fearful
depth of moral evil. It is also evident that every gift
of active powers must involve certain passive capabilities,

ON THE POWER OF GOD.

which may be equally definite with the powers on which
they depend. Every convex has its concave, and the
curvature of the one determines that of the other, since
they are two inseparable aspects of one and the same
thing. Reason and experience combine to prove that
the same powers which constitute man a moral agent,
are joined in him with a capacity for being recovered to
holiness again. It is reasonable to believe that this
capacity may have its essential laws and limits, like those
active powers of choice and will upon Avhose presence it
seems to depend. And hence the Omnipotence of Divine
grace denotes the sovereign power of God to recover fallen
creatures out of their moral ruin, with no other limit than
their essential capabilities of receiving the influences of
his grace — a limit which we can only hope to determine
by a reference, conjointly, to reason, experience, and the
word of God.
The illusion which professes to enlarge the range of
Divine Omnipotence — while it really contradicts its es-
sential character, and, replacing the reality by a shadow,
tends to impeach alike the wisdom and goodness of the
Almighty — may thus present itself in three different
forms. It may refer to the Being of God, to the work
of Creation, or to his acts of Providence and Redemption.
In its first variety, it must be met by the fundamental
truth, that God cannot lie, that He cannot deny him
self, that He cannot do iniquity, nor look on it with
pleasure ; and that He cannot be tempted with evil,
neither tempteth He any man. In its second form it
must equally be resisted and exposed by the great truth
: — that God cannot create another God, equal to himself,
that He cannot give his oaati glory to another, nor make
any creature that shall not be essentially and eternally

26 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
subject to his own dominion, dependent on the great
First Cause, and obedient, either in act or obligation,
to the Supreme Lawgiver. In its third variety, as it
affects the relations of God to his own creatures, there
is a still wider range for a similar exercise of spiritual
wisdom, to discern between essential truth, and the false-!
hoods which seem to be possible, and are only a deceit
and a lie. The Almighty himself can act upon his
creatures, only in conformity with the nature of the
being' He has himself bestowed. Atoms or worlds may
be transported by his almighty fiat from place to place
with the speed of lightning ; but they cannot be impressed
by arguments, allured by promises, or terrified by warn
ings. On the other hand, conscious spirits must be open
to every variety of moral suasion ; and motives, high
as heaven and deep as hell, may be brought by the
Supreme Governor to bear upon the conscience and the
heart. But they cannot be the subject of merely mechani
cal impulses, like unconscious matter ; and must be acted
upon, so far as we can comprehend, even by their Creator
himself, in strict agreement with the essential laws of
spiritual being. Repentance, the deepest work of grace,
is not a physical, but a moral change. Of such an effect
no physical force whatever is an adequate cause ; and it
can result only from the moral suasion of warnings and
promises, hopes and fears, acting with conjoint and power
ful energy upon the will, and subduing it into captivity
to the will of God.
From these principles some light may begin to dawn
upon the great problem which has ever exercised the
minds of men, and some help be gained to disperse the
elouds which have obscured alike the wisdom and good
ness of God, by a crude and false conception of the Divine

ON THE POWER OF GOD. 2J
Omnipotence. In the material world there are innu
merable relations, which science discovers to be certain
truths, and which Almighty Power can never transgress
in its agency upon the natural universe, because Infinite
Wisdom must have previously recognised their essential
and unalterable validity. The same must be equally true
in the field of moral government, though here our dim
understandings may be less able to trace out the eternal
truths, which the Most High God, in virtue of his perfect
knowledge, must recognise as unalterably true in all his
dealings with the souls He has made. In a subject so
.deep and mysterious, we are not at liberty to assume,
from our crude notions of almightiness, that the pre
vention of the first entrance of moral evil must have been
possible with God, or that it must be equally possible
to banish it in a moment from the universe, by a bare,
¦simple act of Divine volition. The lessons of experience,
and the tenor of revelation, lie plainly and strongly the
other way. There is a tone of earnestness and reality
in all the appeals and reasonings of God with fallen
creatures in his word, which sounds unavoidably like a
painful and almost heartless mockery, if such an impression
is received for a fundamental truth. Let us search, then,
still further, with reverence and humility, into this
obscure and perplexed labyrinth, and see whether we
cannot discern some glimpses of light, by which to justify
the ways and dealings of the Almighty with the children
of men.

CHAPTER II.
ON THE NATURE OF EVIL.
" Every good gift, and every perfect gift, is from above,
and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom
is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." His Being
is the perfection of all goodness. So far as any creature
derives its being from Him, it must be good — purely and
simply good. But every created being has a further re
lation to that original nothingness, out of which it has
been called by the fiat of God; and this relation gives
birth to the idea of evil. It is the want or defect in the
creature of some perfection which is found in the Creator.
This defect, so far as it consists in the necessary limitation
of created being, is metaphysical evil ; while the changes
which may result from the exercise of its imparted
faculties are the source of natural and moral evil.
Let us begin with the lowest forms of existence, the
atoms of the material world. Their goodness consists
in their being itself, and the active power they have
received from God. But the entire want of sense,
thought, feeling, and intelligence, is the evil inseparable
from their very constitution. A universe, composed of
such atoms, and left to its own powers, could never rise
above its own level. No trace of design, no tokens of

ON THE NATURE OF EVIL. 29
life, could reveal themselves in the unfathomable abyss
of confusion. Its only description would be that of our
poet, where the imaginary voyage of the Tempter is
portrayed — Before his eyes in sudden view appeared
The secrets of the hoary deep, a dark
Illimitable ocean, without bound,
Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height,
And time, and place are lost ; where eldest Night
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold
Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise
Of endless wars, and by confusion stand.
Such is the Chaos of the old cosmogonies. It brings
before us the idea of a whole universe of matter, without
form and void, where darkness broods upon the abyss, and
the Spirit has not begun to move upon the face of the
troubled elements with the energy of life and conscious
intelligence. But now let us suppose that the laws and conditions of
this multitudinous mass have been selected, at first, by
the Great Architect, with a view to some higher purpose,
and to prepare the way for the production of nobler
forms of being. The time will come when, out of the
seemingly fortuitous mass of infinite confusion, order and
beauty will begin to appear. Suns and planets, and
systems of worlds, will gradually evolve themselves out
of the Chaos, where thought seemed to be lost in a gulf of
utter darkness. Matter and ether, condensing or diffused,
will issue in mysterious landscapes of light and beauty,
spread in rich profusion through the depths of infinite
space. And if it be one part of this great design, that
worlds shall be prepared in succession for the abodes of
life, there will be traceable, by an eye that can inspect
the Avhole universe, a gradual progress from undistinguish-

30 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
able and nebulous confusion, or volcanic and convulsive
changes, to the quiet, tempered, and gentle harmony of
planets like our own ; where the seasons hold their mystic
dance, and hills and valleys, capable of receiving various
forms of life, are lit up with the splendour of suns, and
moons, and stars, and drink water from the rain and dews
of heaven. But these traces of design in the material world refer
chiefly to some higher forms of being, which these worlds
and systems appear fitted to receive and sustain. This
leads us a step higher in the ladder of creation. Vegetable
life is a nobler gift than mechanical and chemical forces^
such as the simple or compound atoms of matter exercise
on each other. It seems to be a power of assimilation,
striving after a prescribed standard of being, different, in
every species, capable of producing other derived powers
like itself, and superior in its energy to the forces of
those substances which it incorporates into its own being.
Every seed, in its germination, seems to represent the
essential duality of the universe.- It strikes root down-
Avard into unconscious matter, from whence it derives the
means of growth, and its own separate standing-place iii
creation. But it also strives upward into the air and light
of heaven, where it develops the nobler part of its being.
It seems, by a natural appetency, like the sunflower, to
seek out those ethereal influences, by which alone it can
be unfolded into maturity and perfection. This life of the
plant is good and beautiful, as a gift of the bountiful
Creator, and by its varied energy clothes the unconscious
earth with its own beauty. But it is limited in its power
to realize its own law, unconscious, and void of intelli
gence, and herein may be called evil. This defect is
shown in abortive, growths, where the powers of veo-e-

ON THE NATURE OF EVIL.

31

tation have been unable to surmount the opposing powers
around them ; as in the seeds which, in stony ground, have
no depth of earth, and wither under the scorching sun
beam, or those Avhich are choked in the thorny ground,
and bring no fruit to perfection. We may see it also in
the pathless and untrodden wilderness, where the luxu
riant vegetation runs to waste through the absence of
wise control; and putrid exhalations are bred from its
decay, Avhen its limited powers have exhausted and spent
themselves, and resign its products back to the chaos of
forces, which are always blindly at work in every part of
the material world.
Let us turn from vegetables to animals, and we meet
with a new and higher form of good and evil. The life
of the lower animals, though hard to define, may perhaps
be viewed as a power of perception, appetite, and self-
motion, endowed with organs suitable for its exercise, and
also with the poAver of reproduction. It is bounded, in all
these faculties, by the range of the visible creation, is
finite in its energies, incapable of apprehending spiritual
and eternal truth, and is liable to decay when the limit
of its natural activity has been attained. In these essen
tial limitations of the animal life consists its metaphysical
evil. And since these limitations are joined with a faculty
of perception, and a certain power of choice, according to
the variety of objects perceived, they involve the possi
bility of natural evil, or suffering, under a form which
bears a close analogy with moral evil. For the animal
instinct which pursues blindly its own satisfaction, when it
involves the pain and death of another, resembles closely,
in its working, the effect of wickedness in higher natures,
that rejoice maliciously in- the infliction of torture and
misery. It differs from it, as metaphysical from moral

THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.

evil, or the natural absence of a noble faculty, from its
abuse and perversion. And since the higher animals are
capable of instincts of attachment, and habits of obedience
to a superior will, by which they seem to rise above their
own level into the likeness of moral agents, so in these
cases, the development of those instincts which cause
injury to others awakens a dim notion of responsi
bility ; and the Avords, vice, malice, and punishment, are
instinctively applied to them in the current language of
•men. In proportion as any animal seems capable, under
•the eye of man, of apprehending a higher being than its
own, we seem forced to recognize in it the dawn of a
higher responsibility. The attachment of the faithful dog
or horse to its master is the subject of instinctive praise ;
while the blind rage of the angry bull, or the bloodthirsty
appetite of the tiger, that slaughters victims wantonly,
when its hunger is appeased, excites instinctively a feel
ing of reprobation ; and these emotions differ, perhaps,
in degree, rather than in kind, from those which belong to
moral agents. With the dawn of a moral faculty, which
can own a master, and apprehend the supremacy of reason,
Ave discern, as in a twilight, the entrance of new emotions
of praise and blame, and a dim apparition of the great
contrast between moral good and moral evil.
We now reach a higher point of observation. It has
pleased the Almighty to create spiritual beings, endowed
Avith conscience, reason, and will; capable of knowing,
loving, and serving their Creator, of apprehending those
eternal perfections which constitute his own felicity, and of
gazing upon his infinite goodness and beauty. Such powers,
in kind, appear to be the highest which it is possible for
the Creator himself to bestow. But in extent and degree
they may vary widely, from the weakness and nescience of

ON THE NATURE OF EVIL. 33
the new-born infant, to the powers of the loftiest arch
angel who stands before the throne of the Most High, and
who may hold a real vicegerency of dominion over ten
thousand thousand blessed and holy spirits in the king
dom of (God.
Now the very existence of creatures endowed with
a power of free choice and a reasonable will, involves,
by necessary consequence, the idea of moral obligation.
Matter, in all its varieties, has a law imposed in the hour
pf its creation, which it must obey. There is no choice,
and therefore no responsibility. But a moral agent, en
dowed with will, is not under such a physical necessity.
The idea of choice excludes it, and the word must applies
no longer. A sphere of active power is entrusted to its
own keeping, and it depends on its own choice what line
of conduct it shall pursue. Yet, since it is a creature, it
must be under law to its Creator. That law, having for
its object such a gift, by which the creature is found to
resemble the Creator, must also have for its rule that
essential perfection which is inseparable from the will of
God. Necessity being excluded by the nature of the gift,
obligation must supply its place. It is the only form of
law which is applicable to a creature so endowed ; and since
a law there must be, or it would not be a creature, it
ought to be like God, because it is formed in his image ;
it ought to do the will of God with a free and willing sub
mission, because it is really the work of his hand. These
two maxims, derived from the very constitution of every
moral agent, created in the image of its Maker ; that it
ought to serve Him with the complete submission of un
conscious matter, which cannot choose but obey, and to
reflect his perfect goodness, with a liberty and purity like
those of the Creator himself; are the poles around which
** c

34 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
the whole universe of moral obligation must revolve per
petually. Such agents, however noble the faculties with which
they are endowed, have limitations, which arise from the
fact that they are creatures, and constitute the metaphy
sical evil inseparable from their being. They may be
immortal, but they are not from eternity. They may be
pure, but they are not immutable. They may have vast
powers of intelligence, but there is a bound to their actual
knowledge. They may apprehend God, by a spiritual in
tuition ; but they cannot comprehend Him, or search out
all the depths of his infinite being. They may be good,
Avearing the image of their Maker ; but, unlike Him, they
can be tempted with evil. They may be dwelling in the
truth ; but it is in their choice to abide in that truth, or to
depart from it into falsehood and darkness. As created by
God, they have a Divine capacity for attaining higher and
higher degrees of moral insight and pure intelligence. As
formed out of nothing, they may be called children of an
eternal night, and are equally capable of losing themselves
in an awful abyss of moral darkness. The greatness of
the gifts bestowed upon them must measure the greatness
of their possible fall ; since godlike powers abused, while
their natural excellence remains, must issue in a moral
chaos, abounding in every hateful form of diabolical wick
edness. Thus every creature of God, called out of nothing by
his almighty power, is like a planet in the sunlight, with
one hemisphere of natural good, and another of natural
evil. As born of God, it is simply and purely good ; as
born out of nothingness, it is purely and simply evil. But
this evil, in the first state of creation, is not the same with
impurity or moral guilt. In natural things, it is simply

ON THE NATURE OF EVIL. 35
defect, or the essential limitation of their being. In moral
agents, it is defectibility as well as limitation, and includes
the possibility of abusing the power of choice, that highest
gift of the bountiful Creator. Every creature, as soon as
created, casts from it a shadow on the side opposite to the
true Sun. From the very . fact of its existence there
result inevitably many possibilities of evil. No simple
act, even of Almighty Power, can set aside this eternal
truth. But it is the very province of Infinite Wisdom to
dispose, overrule, and control all the creatures Omnipo
tence has made ; and, recognising the unalterable contrast
of light and darkness, of moral good and evil, so to unfold
it before the eyes of the moral universe, that the unfallen
may be maintained in their sinless purity; and the fallen
and rebellious either recovered to purity again, or com
pelled, while enduring the righteous judgment of the Most
High, to manifest, through eternal ages, the height and
depth of his victorious goodness.

c2

CHAPTER III.
ON THE CREATION OF FREE AGENTS.
The creation of moral and accountable beings is the first
main step in those ways of Divine Providence, which have
caused deep and perplexed questionings in thoughtful
minds. If it was decreed, by the wisdom and goodness
of the Most High, to create beings like angels and men,
so nobly endowed, why did not his almighty power secure
them against the fearful- inroads of moral evil, with its
present undeniable fruits of world-wide sorrow, and those
still sadder results, which revelation sets before us, of ever
lasting shame and ruin ? How can the permission of such-
a fall, if it could easily have been averted, be reconcilable
with the simplest notion of benevolence ? or what possible
gain can result, that might not have been secured by the
hand of Omnipotence, without an experience so unutterably
awful ? And again, if it be held that such a course was
impossible in its own nature, the difficulty seems to recur
in another form. Why did not the Almighty refrain from
the exercise of his creative power, when He foreknew cer
tainly that the issue, to an innumerable multitude, if not
to the great majority of the spirits He made, would be to
involve them in a dark abyss of hopeless despair and awful
misery ?

ON THE CREATION OF FREE AGENTS. 37
These difficulties were fully stated by the philosopher
Bayle, at the close of the seventeenth century ; and Leib
nitz, in his " Theodicsea," has exercised the powers of his
eminently fertile and profound intellect in furnishing a
reply. If the views he there propounds were altogether
just and valid, the only aim of a later writer should be
to expand them into fuller detail, and bring them out
into clearer relief by a popular exposition. But though
no previous writer has perhaps done more to throw light
upon the subject, his theory appears too metaphysical and
cold, too closely mixed up with his baseless hypothesis of
the pre-established harmony, and borders too nearly on the
fatal maxim, that evil may be chosen on account of its sup
posed good results, to give full satisfaction to the intelligent
Christian. The statement, however, he has made of the
difficulties to be surmounted, will form a suitable preface
to our further inquiries. May the Spirit, who searcheth
even the deep things of God, go before us with a torch of
heavenly truth, that we may not lose our footing amidst
these ocean pathways of Divine Providence !
"It may be objected," the German philosopher ob
serves, in prefacing his reply to the arguments of Bayle,
"that all the reality, and what is called the substance of
the act, in sin itself, is the work of God, since all creatures
and all their acts derive from Him whatever is real in
them; whence it might be inferred that He is not only
the physical, but even the moral cause of sin; since He
acts most freely, and does nothing without a perfect know
ledge both of the thing and all its consequences. And it
is not enough to say, that God has made himself a law to
concur with the wills and resolutions of men ; for, beside
the strangeness of his having made such a law, of which
He must have known the consequences, the chief difficulty;

38 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
is, that it seems the evil will itself could not exist Avithout
some concurrence, and even predetermination on his part,
which contributes to excite this will in man, or any other
reasonable being. For an action, though evil, is not the
less dependent upon God. Whence it might be inferred,
finally, that God does all things without distinction, the
good and the evil ; unless we admit two principles, with
the Manicheans.
" But even if God only concurred with a general con
currence, it is enough, it may be said, to render Him a
moral cause of evil, that nothing happens without his per
mission. And, to say nothing of the fall of angels, He
knows all that will happen, if He places man in such and
such circumstances after He has created him, and still He
does not forbear to place him in them. Man is exposed
to temptations, to which it is known that he will yield,
and thereby be the cause of frightful evils ; that by this
fall the whole human race will be infected, and put under
a kind of necessity of sinning, which has been called
Original Sin ; that the world will hereby be brought into
a strange confusion ; that by this means sickness and
death will be introduced, with a thousand other calami
ties, which affect both the good and the evil; that wicked
ness will reign, and virtue be oppressed here below ; and
that thus there will almost seem to be no Providence.
But it is much worse, when we consider the life to come ;
since only a small number of men will be saved, and all
the rest will perish eternally. Besides, these men, destined
to salvation, will have been drawn from the corrupted
mass by a choice without reason, whether we say that
God had regard to their future good actions, their faith,
or their works; or it is affirmed that He chose to give
them these good qualities, because He had predestined-

ON THE CREATION OF FREE AGENTS. 39
them to salvation. For though it is said, in the more
mitigated systems, that God has been willing to save all
men ; and is allowed, in those more generally received,
that He made his Son to assume human nature, to ex
piate their sins, so that all who believe in Him with a
lively and lasting faith will be saved ; it still remains true
that this lively faith is a gift of God ; that we are dead to
all good works, and that it needs preventing grace to ex
cite our will. And whether election be the cause or con
sequence of the design of God, to give faith, it still remains
true that He gives faith or salvation to whomsoever He
pleases, without there appearing to be any reason for his
choice, which only falls upon a very small number of men.
So that it is a terrible judgment, that God, having given
his Only-begotten Son for the whole human race, and
being the only Author and Master of the salvation of
men, notwithstanding saves so few, and leaves all the rest
to the devil, his enemy, who torments them fpr ever, and
makes them curse their Creator, although they were all
created to show forth His goodness, justice, and other
perfections. And this result is the more frightful, since
all these men are miserable through eternity, only be
cause God exposed their parents to a temptation which
He knew they would not resist ; and that this sin is in
herent and imputed to men, before their will has part in
it ; that this hereditary vice determines their wills to com
mit actual sins, and a multitude of men, infants and adults,
who have never heard of Jesus Christ, die before receiving
the help that is needful to rescue them from this gulf of
sin, and are condemned to be for ever rebels against God,
and engulfed in horrible misery, with the most wicked of
all creatures; although in reality these men have not
been more wicked than others, and perhaps some of them

40 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
less guilty than a part of the elect, who have been saved
by a grace irrespective of character, and enjoy thereby an
eternal felicity, Avhich they never deserved."
Such are the serious difficulties which appear to lie
against the scheme of Providence, as experience opens it
before us ; or as deducible, in the judgment of many
theologians, from the statements of the Christian reve-
lation. The first main subject to which they refer is the
creation of free agents, with the foresight, or even the
fore-appointment of their fall, and of all its fatal con
sequences of misery and ruin.
The solution of this first difficulty, which Leibnitz
has proposed, is of the following nature. The wisdom
and goodness of God require that out of all possible
worlds or systems of Providence He should choose the
best. But the essential truth of things implies that a
world into which moral evil enters, and enters widely, is
really best on the Avhole, since a greater good results from
its permission. Therefore the wisdom of God requires
that He should permit the entrance of evil, and forbids
that exercise of Omnipotence by which alone it could
have been averted. This permission is not the same with
direct causation, since evil, from its very nature, can have
no other than a deficient cause. It is also free from all
moral blame, because its real motive is the purpose of
securing a greater good, than would be otherwise possible
to be achieved.
So far as this theory recognises the perfect wisdom of
God's providence, it commends itself instinctively to the
natural conscience. But the main difficulty remains un
touched — how a world in which sin and sorrow have
made such immense ravages can really be the best of all
possible Avorlds. What is that greater good, for the sake

ON THE CREATION OF FREE AGENTS. 41
of which innumerable beings, capable of immortal hap
piness, are exposed to temptation, sunk in the depths of
sin, and consigned to a gulf of eternal misery? This
greater good must have respect, either to the glory of
God or the happiness of creation. But is it not more
glorious for the Divine goodness to delight in sustaining
the universe in unmingled and perfect bliss, than to have
the hosannahs of praise and joy mingled with the smoke
of perpetual torment, and the wail of ceaseless despair?
And is not the same alternative, while it would reflect
more brightly the glory of the Divine goodness, equally
conducive to the fullest happiness of all creation ? The
antithesis, then, remains in its full force and perplexity.
You say that the present world is the best possible, be
cause only such could proceed from a Being infinitely
good and wise. We affirm, the objector may retort, that
it is not the best possible, because, without perplexing
ourselves with subtle inquiries, or losing ourselves in the
infinite, we can conceive one plainly more conducive to
the Divine glory, and to the happiness of creation. That
world so clearly to be preferred is one over which moral
evil should never be suffered to cast its dark and hateful
shadows. It is one where the Almighty, by his sovereign
power, should at once unveil to countless numbers of sin
less and happy spirits all those glorious perfections, which
now only a few of them attain to perceive and enjoy, after
a long and perilous course of probation, wherein multi
tudes of their fellow-creatures are sunk and stranded for
ever. The only way in which this objection can be parried
is by an intermediate hypothesis of the following character.
We may conceive that it is competent to the Divine power
to sustain all moral agents in a state of parity and sinless

42 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
perfection, but not to endow them, in this case, with all
the wisdom and holiness, or the comprehension of the
Divine goodness, which results from the permitted en
trance and continuance of sin. It may thus be urged that
the higher bliss of the redeemed, and the fuller display of
the Divine attributes, in their depths of holy justice and
heights of victorious grace, more than compensate for
those mournful and terrible results which flow from the
actual permission of moral evil.
This is, perhaps, the stage in the solution of this grand
difficulty which is most usually attained by thoughtful and
devout Christians. It is a conclusion in which those who
cannot help starting the inquiry, and still desire to pursue it
in the spirit of humble faith and holy reverence, may rest
with a partial satisfaction, since it reconciles, at least in
some imperfect manner, the more solemn revelations of
the Gospel with the attribute of Divine wisdom. At the
same time it remains exposed to moral and intellectual
difficulties not easily removed. For on this view every
redeemed saint must be exposed to reflections of a strange
and perplexing kind. " I might have been as happy," he
may say, " as the sinless angels, and all who are now in
misery might have shared with me this measure of felicity.
But that I might enjoy an overplus of blessing, and a
deeper insight into the Divine goodness, numbers of my
own fellows have been left to sink for ever into an abyss
of woe. And I am called upon to adore this arrangement
as the perfection of wisdom and love, and to celebrate the
infinite riches of that grace which has raised me so much
higher in glory, by the fearful price of eternal misery to
many of my fellow-sinners. How can I, without a hateful
selfishness, regard this result as preferable to the other ?
Can selfishness, then, have a deeper insight into the abysses

ON THE CREATION OF FREE AGENTS. 43
of Divine goodness than perfect brotherly love ? If this
be impossible, then it must be equally incredible that
creatures saved in such a way, and at such a terrible price
of misery, can see further and deeper into the Divine
glory than if they had been happy and holy dwellers in a
sinless universe.
But the intellectual difficulty is no less formidable.
The Almighty, on this hypothesis, could certainly have
prevented the fall both of men and angels ; but He could
not bestow upon them, if unfallen, the same happiness
and glory which may now be attained through the bitter
experience of sin and misery. What ground of reason
can there be for a double assumption, one-half of which
is so plainly arbitrary ? If Omnipotence forbids a limit
in one direction, why not in the other ? It is even harder
to believe that there are heights of knowledge and hap
piness which the Almighty is unable to bestow on sinless
creatures, who accept and desire the gift, than that moral
agents, mutable though sinless, may plunge themselves
into sin by their own choice, in spite of every means that
can possibly be used to preserve them from a fall so
terrible. In the eye of reason, the former assumption
is more incredible than the latter. And since either the
one or the other must be admitted as true, before we can
clear the Divine wisdom and goodness, in our thoughts,
from the dark cloud with which the reign of evil has
obscured them, or obtain any tolerable resting place for
our understandings, in gazing on the abyss of Providence,
it remains to weigh the other alternative, which has
perhaps never been fairly and fully examined, either by
philosophers or divines.
To meet the exigency, then, of that great problem,
which forces itself on our notice, in spite of ourselves,.

44 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
in a thousand forms, and has exercised thoughtful minds
in all ages, we must advance, I conceive, a step further
than Leibnitz has ventured to do, in the recognition of
the unchangeable laws of being. We must enlarge still
further the sphere of Omniscient Wisdom, even at the
price of seeming (and it is an appearance only) to con
tract the range of Omnipotence. We must transfer to
one Divine perfection what the darkened mind of man,
seeking an excuse or palliation for his own guiltiness, has
falsely referred to another, and thereby confused his own
conscience, and thrown a veil of night around the ways
of an all-Avise Providence. We must maintain — and
show the truth and consistency of the doctrine — that
moral evil has neither been positively decreed, nor nega
tively permitted, but simply foreseen, by the God of in- '
finite holiness, who cannot behold it without an intense
abhorrence; that its entrance is an inseparable result of
the creation of free moral agents ; and is the object of
foresight to the Omniscient Wisdom, but not of prevention
even by Almighty Power ; but that, having been foreseen,
infinite poAver, wisdom, and love have conspired to provide
a wonderful remedy ; so that where sin hath abounded,
grace Avill much more abound, and death shall at last be
swallowed up in a glorious victory. Two main principles
have thus to be established. First, that the entrance of
moral evil is due entirely to the mutable will of the
creature, and in no respect to the decree of the Al
mighty, or even to that active permission which consists
in the voluntary withholding of some needful and pos
sible succour. And, secondly, that the foresight of its
first entrance, and all the awful results that have foi-
lowed, are no sufficient reason why God should have
forborne the highest and noblest exercise of His crea-

ON THE CREATION OF FREE AGENTS. 45.
tive power ; since evil would then have achieved a more
fatal triumph, in the bare contemplation of it as pos
sible, than now in its actual entrance and reign. The
Uncreated Life would have been sealed up perpetually
within its hidden fountain. God would have been de
frauded of his glory, and the universe of its being.
Our first point of departure, in this difficult inquiry,
must be from those facts which are already known. Men
and angels are the only two races of moral agents of
whose existence we have any certain information. In
each instance we learn, either from revelation alone, or
from revelation confirmed by daily experience, the mourn
ful certainty of the entrance of moral evil. It is true that
fertile imaginations have often busied themselves with
inventing unknown races of intelligent creatures, the
inhabitants of other suns or planets, among whom sin
has never found a place; and have sought to gather,
from beautiful dreams of their unbroken felicity, more
cheerful views of the divine Benevolence, than they have
thought it possible to gain from the actual history of our
own world, or even from the revelations of the word of
God. But these conjectures have no single grain of direct
evidence. Experience teaches us nothing respecting these
unknown races ; and Scripture, while it reveals to us the
existence of angels, both fallen and unfallen, and is rich
in messages that throw light upon the ways of God, main
tains on this subject a total and expressive silence. Our
only safe mode of reasoning is from facts that are known,
and not from the fairy dreams of imagination; which,
even when most attractive on a casual glance, are apt
to seduce us from the thorny ascent of truth, by which we
might attain a more glorious prospect, and learn to gaze
on the universe in the light of heaven. The reality,

46 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
which proceeds from the Infinite Wisdom itself, could
Ave view it in its true light, must be fairer, nobler, and
more wonderfully beautiful, than all the flights of mere
fancy, however captivating they may appear to be.
It is further evident that the word of God nowhere
asserts what has been so often assumed by metaphy
sicians and divines, that the prevention of moral evil,
in a world of free agents, was possible in its own nature.
The fall, either of men or angels, is never ascribed, either
directly or indirectly, to the will of God. Men have often
added this doctrine to God's word ; but they have never
found it revealed. The Scriptures assume the fact, in
the case of angels, and recount it, in the case of men,
but without one hint that more effectual means might
easily have precluded this dark apparition of evil alto
gether. Their most distinct revelations on this mysterious
subject look rather in the opposite direction. They warn
us solemnly against a dangerous delusion to which the
sinner is naturally prone. " Let no man say, when he is
tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be
tempted of evil, neither tempteth He any man." They
disclaim, on the part of God, any pleasure in the con
tinued evil of His creatures, when actually fallen. " Have
I any pleasure at all that the wicked dieth, saith the
Lord God, and not that he should turn from his wickedness
and live?" They announce the fall of man in these
expressive words : " that God made man upright, but
they have sought out many inventions." And the apos
tasy of the first apostate, among the angels, is described
in words, which still more strongly seem to discountenance
the idea, that an arbitrary choice of God was a concurrent
cause of his rain. " Ye are of your father the devil, and
sthe lust of your father ye will do. He was a murderer

ON THE CREATION OF FREE AGENTS. 47
from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because
there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he
speaketh of his OAvn, for he is a liar, and the father of it."
The Almighty Power of God is proclaimed and magnified
in a thousand forms; but is never once applied to the
subject before us, or asserted to include a power to have
prevented altogether the entrance of evil into the moral
universe. The way is thus left entirely open, so far as the autho
rity of Scripture is concerned, for the supposition here
advanced, that the prevention of all evil, in a world of
created free agents, may be strictly impossible in its own
nature. We have even, perhaps, a partial presumption in
its favour, since, in the two only races of moral agents
whose existence is known to us, the presence and wide
prevalence of moral evil is a revealed and certain truth.
There are four questions which have now to be an
swered, before we can determine the truth or falsehood
of the supposition which has to be examined. What is
the meaning of creation, in general? What are the
meaning and the necessary results of creation, in the
case of a free agent? What is the nature of tempta
tion to evil, or the mutability and defectibility of the
creature ? And finally, what are the means, possible in
their own nature, by which their apostasy could be pre
vented, and their continuance in holiness and happiness
have been more effectually secured ? What could have
been done more by the all- wise Creator, for the vineyard
He had planted, that He has not done ? or Avhat is there
in his dealings that can warrant the notion of a volun
tary and active concurrence, by way of direct permission,
in the entrance of evil ?
I. A view of creation has been current in the schools,

48 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
which goes far towards denying it altogether, and opens
the door to a thorough Pantheism. The preservation of
creatures, it is affirmed, is a continual creation. It is
unfolded by Leibnitz, who adds the inferences of Bayle,
and endeavours to disprove them : —
"In consequence of this doctrine, it seems that the
creature never exists, that it is always being born and
always dying, like time, motion, and other successive ex
istences, Plato has believed this of material and sensible
things, saying that they are in a perpetual flux, and are
always becoming, but never are. But he has judged quite
differently of immaterial substances, which alone he con
sidered real; and in this he was not altogether wrong.
But the continual creation respects all creatures without
distinction. "The Cartesians, after their master, seek to prove it
by a principle not sufficiently conclusive. They say
that the moments of time having no necessary link one
with another, it does not follow, from my existing this
moment, that I shall subsist the moment following, unless
the same cause which gives me being now, gives it me
also for the instant following  M. Weigel of Jena
drew up a proof of the existence of God, which came
really to this continual creation. Each moment of the
existence of things depended, he said, on God, who revives
everything out of himself every moment. And since they
perish every moment, there needs always some one to
revive them, who must be God. But this is not exact
enough to be called a demonstration. It would be needful
to prove that the creature is ever rising out of nothing,
and falling into it again, and especially to show that the
privilege of lasting more than a moment belongs by its
nature to the necessary Being alone  What we may

ON THE CREATION OF FREE AGENTS.

49

affirm Avith safety is, that the creature depends continually
on the Divine Power, and not less after it has be'gun to
be, than at the beginning. This dependence implies that
it would not continue to exist, if God did not continue to
act ; and further, that this Divine activity is free. No
thing hinders but that this conservative action may be
called production, and even creation. For the dependence
being as great afterward as at first, the extrinsic character,
of being neAV or not new, does not change its nature."
He then proceeds to mention the inferences of Bayle,
which he himself disclaims. "We must conclude that
God does everything, and that there are neither first,
nor second, nor occasional causes among all his crea
tures, as it is easy to prove. For at this moment, when
I speak, I am such as I am, with all my circumstances,
such a thought, such an action, such a posture ; and
if God creates me at this moment such as I am, as we
must affirm on this hypothesis, He creates me with such
a thought, action, motion, and determination. We can
not say that God creates me first, and then, being created,
He produces with me my movements and determinations.
For, •since God creates me this instant, if we say that
afterward He produces my actions along with me, we
must of necessity conceive a second instant for this
action. It is certain, then, on this hypothesis, that the
creatures have no more any bond or relation with their
actions than with producing themselves in the first
moment of their own creation."
This doctrine, however, of the Cartesians and some
scholastics, that preservation is a creation perpetually
renewed, is alike opposed to Scripture and reason. It
is opposed to Scripture, which speaks of creation con
stantly as a finished work, and puts it in contrast with

50 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
the Divine government of creatures already made. For,
even if we refer the- seventh day and its rest to a reconsti-
tution of our earth, rather than to the first origin of the
universe, the natural conclusion from the history will be
the same. The six days' creation, completed once for all,
and followed by a day of rest, cannot but imply, a similar
contrast between the original act of creation, which called
the universe out of nothing, and that ceaseless Provi
dence which admits of no end.
The doctrine is equally opposed to sound reason. If
the existences of every moment proceed immediately
from God himself, and not at all from the existences of
the previous moment, we have a series of perpetual
illusions, a phantasmagoria momentarily produced by
the Almighty, but no proper existences whatever. We
have innumerable phenomena, but no beings. For con
tinuance is essential to the very notion of a being. We
may conceive of one whose duration is very short ; but
if it has no duration at all, it cannot possibly have a
real existence; Creadasna, in its very nature, implies the
communication of active' powers to a nothing which
becomes something by the very aet of receiving them.
It is a mysterious generation of being out of nothingness.
But while acts may be momentary, powers are and must
be continuous. And hence to affirm that preservation
is a continual creation is really to deny a creation
altogether, and plunges us into, an abyss of Pantheistic
darkness. But it may be urged that the dependence of the
creature on its Creator must be as complete afterward
as at the beginning. This, however, is a mere fallacy.
Before creation, it depends on the will of God whether
or not tho creature shall receive any being. After its

ON THE CREATION OF FREE AGENTS. 51
creation, it depends on his creative will for having
received those particular poAvers and no others. The
dependence is clearly different in kind in the one state
and the other. Now the moment of creation is the
transition from one kind of dependence to the other ; and
this transition can never serve to define either kind of
dependence, between which it is the transition. As soon
as created, the dependence of the creature begins to be
of the very same nature as it continues afterward to
be ; but this can never prove that it is created afresh
every moment.
How, then, may creation be defined ? It is the calling
of a fresh existence out of nothing, by the bestowment
of certain active powers, in which consist the essence
and character of the new being. These powers maybe
perishable, if they refer to perishable objects, or in
clude conditions of activity which cease to be fulfilled.
They will be imperishable, when they have respect to
indestructible objects, or to eternal and unchangeable
truth. But, in either case, they are gifts of God without
repentance. Creation is virtually denied altogether,
when we refer all action immediately to God, and sup
pose a further action of his power, distinct from creation
itself, to be needful for the bare continuance of all
creature activity.
But does not this view interfere with the perfection
of the Almighty, as the Preserver of the creatures He
has made, who upholds all things by the word of his
power ? The reverse seems to be much nearer the
truth. That cannot be preserved which has no proper
existence of its own. The shifting phenomena of each
moment are not preserved, but vary perpetually; and if
all action were properly the action of God himself, all
D 2

52 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
preservation becomes a contradiction in terms. The
title is applied to Him in the Scriptures with no refer
ence to a metaphysical idea that eludes our grasp, of
a perpetually renewed creation, but with distinct relation
to those creatures whose life is perishable and liable to
decay, or else to that wise foresight which has ensured
the continual adaptation of the material universe to the
great puiposes it was intended to fulfil. He " preserveth
man and beast," when He so arranges all things by his
Providence, that no fatal hindrance interferes with the
development of their powers, and cuts short the thread
of their frail being.
The creation of free agents involves a deeper mystery.
The active powers bestowed are in this case the nobler
endowments of self-consciousness, choice, reason, and' will. ¦
Matter, in receiving active power, receives a law which
it must implicitly obey. Obedience to the ordinance of
the Creator is the necessity of its being. But it is not
so with moral agents. The power of choice, the faculty
of reason, the gift of will, imply a higher and more
responsible mode of existence. Created in the image
of God himself, and reflecting the spontaneity of the
Divine Will, they are not his tools, but his subjects
and stewards. They have a trust committed to them,
and a law they are bound, but not necessitated, to obey.
It is this liberty of choice, this immunity from passive
and compulsory subjection to a law which enforces itself
and must be fulfilled, which constitutes their peculiar
dignity, as the highest and noblest of all the works of
God. The conception, however, of such a power of choice,
or the free will of a moral agent, leads at once into the
heart of a difficult controversy, which has tasked 'the

ON THE CREATION OF FREE AGENTS. 53
intellect, and divided the judgment, of a host of meta
physicians and divines. If the will is entirely deter
mined by the circumstances in which it is placed, when
combined with its own previous state, the power of choice
seems to dwindle into a mere point, and free agency would
be lost in a fatal necessity, as firm and unalterable as
that by which water finds its level, or atoms obey the
law of gravitation. If, to escape from this danger, we
assume a liberty of indifference, or a power in the will
to choose without a motive, like the fanciful deflexion
of the atoms of Epicurus from a straight line, we intro
duce a reign of mere chance, in which all foresight is
impossible. All reasoning from causes is destroyed, if
innumerable events may occur continually Avithout any
assignable cause, either in the creature or the Creator;
and all predictions of the future would be impossible,
even to Omniscience itself. How can we escape from this
perilous alternative, in which Chance and Fate threaten,
each in its turn, to thrust down the living God from the
throne of the universe ?
To solve this hard problem, let us dwell for a moment
on the conceptions we are led to form of the Divine
nature. The Being of God is infinitely necessary, and
yet his will is infinitely free. He cannot deny himself,
but He does all things according to his own good plea
sure. This glorious antithesis, which reason itself unfolds,
appears to be further illustrated in the primal mystery
of the Christian faith. "As the Father hath life in
himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in
himself." "To have life in himself" is equivalent to
essential perfection, the necessity of unchangeable and
perfect goodness. But the Father hath given this to the
Son, and in the idea of a gift is involved the conception

54 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
of entire freedom, and the absence of all constraint and
compulsion. The necessity of being infinitely good, to
speak with reverence, is the first and deepest ground of
the Divine Being — the abyss where thought loses itself
in pure adoration of the unsearchable. To have a free
and infinite delight in all goodness, and in communicating
that goodness freely, is a second aspect of the same
Infinite Perfection, eternally flowing from that hidden
fountain; and. though equally incomprehensible in itself,
is more capable of being apprehended, while it stoops to
our weakness, and unveils itself in ten thousand forms
of condescending love.
Now it is the very constitution of a moral and reason
able being, or free agent, to have been created in the
image of God. Each of them was designed, like a dew-
drop sparkling in the sunbeam, to be the reflection of his
pure and perfect being. And hence the same antithesis
of liberty and necessity must be found here also, as in
the glorious Archetype himself. The will of such a crea
ture is neither undetermined, which would resign the
dominion of the world to chance, nor necessitated and con
strained by outward circumstances, which would equally
establish the supremacy of a blind and inevitable Fate.
It is strictly self-determined. Circumstances and mo
tives persuade, but do not compel. There is a real
liberty, but it is not the liberty of pure indifference, or
the power of deciding without any motive and reason
whatever. The self which determines is the deep and
hidden ground of the creature's whole being ; and, as it
is good or evil, decides the weight of the motives them
selves, and the practical result of the circumstances out
of which they arise. On ,the other hand, to an eye that
can fathom the good and evil, actual or potential, of every

ON THE CREATION OF FREE AGENTS. 55
moral agent, the results of its choice will not be unde
termined, but may be foreseen in the moral cause out of
which they will actually flow. This, however, can only
be attained, in all cases, by that Infinite Wisdom which
knows all the possibilities of existence, and compasses
about the very roots of all created being. That the will,
when tempted, must fall, is a falsehood which reason and
the word of God equally condemn. It is a choice, and not
a fatal necessity, when it does occur. That it may fall, :'s
a conclusion which might be drawn from even a partial
experience, and a limited insight into the laws of crea
tion. That, in such and such cases, it will fall, is a
certain truth to the eye of Omniscience ; but the grounds
of this knowledge, except in the simpler cases of con
firmed and habitual transgression, lie too deep to be
readily approached by mere human wisdom. When we
say that the will has chosen good or evil, because such was
its own character, we have gone as deep as it is possible
for us to do ; and whatever would persuade us to refer
its choice, either to the necessity of circumstances with
out, or a capricious, uncaused, and unaccountable impulse
within, is a falsehood which deadens the conscience,
and tends to undermine all the foundations of moral
government. Now if such be the nature of free agency, it must
involve important consequences Avith regard to the mode
of the Divine operation in dealing with creatures thus
fearfully and wonderfully made. They can be dealt with
only according to the nature which the Creator has
bestowed upon them. Physical impulse and forcible
constraint are here as inapplicable as reasonings with
a stone, or expostulations with a lump of clay. So far
as we can gather, either from the voice of reason, or the

56 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
tenor of Scripture, persuasion, command, entreaty, threat
ening, and promise, are the only legitimate and possible
modes of Divine government. A power has been given,
for Avise and worthy ends, the dignity of which refuses to
be dealt with on lower terms ; and the Almighty would
deny his own workmanship, and contradict his own
wisdom, by seeking to deal with such creatures in any
other way. The facts which the word of God reveals,
with regard to the possible recovery of guilty and rebel
lious souls by Divine grace, when fairly examined, do not
impeach this conclusion of reason, which finds such a mass
of consenting testimony in the word of God. They do
not prove that even the Almighty can change the will
of man without its own consent, but only that, in certain
cases, to be considered hereafter more fully, that consent
may be secured. Repentance is no piece of celestial
machinery, but a great and stupendous moral change.
Moral agencies are always employed in producing it,
though it lies deeper than the ordinary sphere of moral
suasion. From the first command in Paradise, to the
parting invitation, where the Spirit and the Bride say,
Come, and invite the wanderers of earth to slake their
thirst with the living waters of salvation, the whole of
Scripture confirms the principle here advanced — that
moral agents can be ruled only by moral influence ; and
that mechanism, compulsion, and mere physical con-.
straint, are means incompatible with the essential laws
of their nature, which Almighty Power cannot, and In
finite Wisdom refuses to employ. And hence the supposi
tion that such remedies can avail, when all others have
. failed, can be nothing else than a mischievous delusion,

CHAPTER IV.
ON TEMPTATION IN FREE AGENTS.
It has now been endeavoured to show that the creation
of free agents implies the bestowment of active powers,
by which the creature is exempted from physical con
straint ; so that Omnipotence is self-limited, by its own
gift, to deal with it in the way of moral suasion and
influence alone. How far this influence may extend, in
the case of a Being infinitely wise and powerful — Avhat
mighty moral engines may be brought to bear upon the
spirit, or whether it may not be persuaded, by its own
consent and the consciousness of need, to abdicate its
own vicegerency for a season, so as to be re-created
morally by a deeper work of Divine power than creation
itself — are questions to be solved rather by the light of
revelation and experience, than by the force of abstract
reasoning. But the fundamental maxim must still be
maintained, without which all Providence becomes a sea
of darkness ; that moral means alone are open, even to
Omnipotence itself, whereby to govern a moral creation,
and control the thoughts, actions, and desires of reason
able and immortal spirits, created at first in the image
of God. We have now to enter on the further inquiry — What
is the nature of temptation to evil? What is that
mutability and defectibility of the creature which it has

58 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
been supposed that Almighty Power might hinder from
passing into reality, by a simple act of the Divine will ?
And, first, it seems clear that the created spirit cannot
be made participant of all knowledge by a dirept act of
power alone. For if the creature could be thus endued
by the mere volition of the Creator, it would follow that
it might be at once invested with the Divine Omni
science. But an omniscient being, so far as our eyes
can pierce into such mysteries, would be another God,
equal to his Maker. Being infinitely wise, he must also
be mfinitely good, and have an infinite hatred of all evil,
be infinitely happy in the knowledge of his own goodness,
and infinitely remote from the possibility of being de
ceived, or tempted with evil. On the other hand, he must
know himself to be a creature, dependent on the Creator,
and debtor eternally to a goodness greater, earlier, deeper
than his own. Now this appears to be an essential con
tradiction. God cannot create a second First Cause of all
things; and for the same reason He cannot exalt a
nothing, by creative power, into a second omniscience.
The communication of knowledge, then, to the rational
creature, must have its laws and limits. And since God
cannot be known as He is in himself, in his own un-
searchableness, it seems to follow that He can be known
by his words and acts exclusively — by acts of creation
and messages of providence, all referred to the great
unknown First Cause. These are the means by which
his nature and perfections become partially known to
his creatures. The Scriptures confirm this view. They
tell us, that " no man hath seen God at any time : the
only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,
he hath revealed him." And the title under which the
Son begins his revelation of the Father, is "the Word

ON TEMPTATION IN FREE AGENTS. 59
of God." The revelation implies a condescension, in its
very nature, towards angels and men. To the former
the Son appears from the first to have been manifested,
as the Angel of Jehovah ; and to the latter, from the
hour of creation, He revealed himself apparently in a
human form.
The means of knowledge, which created spirits would
enjoy, must be drawn from their own consciousness, from
their intercourse with spirits like themselves, and from
direct revelations of God, within the limits of their
creature capacity, by the great Angel of the Covenant,
and their own observation of the material universe. All
these rays, converging to their centre, and referred to the
unknown First Cause, would constitute the earliest and
primitive revelation of the Divine Being. Those moral
obligations, also, which are inseparable from their nature,
would be revealed to them in the shape of a Divine
command, a "categorical imperative" of duty, stream
ing down upon them from the unknown Creator, and
carrying along with it its own evidence of eternal truth.
By this golden, but invisible chain, while the great law
of love is obeyed, their dependent nature would remain
linked with the great Source of all created being, and
abide under the approving smile of the eternal King.
The temptations to evil, in such a creature, must
result from the essential limitations of its own being.
It is limited alike in power, wisdom, and goodness. Its
will has bounds which it cannot surpass ; and whether
placed lower or higher among its fellows, it can easily
conceive a range of activity, or a degree of authority,
larger and fuller than its own. Its intellect knows some
thing of the Maker and his works ; but still more remains
unknown ; and it is able to speculate far and wide among

60 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
these conceivable possibilities of being. It may strive
in its thoughts to reconcile things incompatible, which
its ignorance deems reconcilable, and thus revel- amidst
the seductive combinations of an ideal universe. Its
goodness is limited and dependent. It continues only
so long as the will abides in submission to that Divine
command of love, which is its chief link of union
with its Maker, and with the whole universe of being.
In the observance of that law is its only safety. It is
the path by which it may rise into higher and higher
knowledge of the truth, and more intense activity and
joy of will, in the service of the Most High, and main
tain dominion over those lower creatures which He may
have placed in subjection under it. But all the possi
bilities of good, which the intellect may conceive to lie
in the undiscovered universe of being ; and all the energy
of the will, when it chafes, like an ocean on its shores,
against the primary law of subjection that limits its
independence, constitute temptations to disobedience.
There is a shadowy universe of possible felicity in un
tried, self-chosen pathways, which arrays itself against
the experience of present happiness in the service of
God, and the authority of a law which commends itself,
by its own light, to the deepest consciousness of the
spiritual being.
Every moral agent, therefore, by the mere fact of its
creation, is placed between two unknown worlds, which
solicit its choice in opposite directions. It finds itself,
from the first birth of inward self-consciousness, placed
under a moral law, which contains its own evidence of
binding obligation, but which it clearly has the power to
disobey. All its actual experience, whether brief or long,
has been one of happiness in obedience, But unknown.

ON TEMPTATION IN FREE AGENTS. 6 1
regions of hope are before it. On either side the prospect
is immense, of growing felicity in the tried pathway of
obedience, or of conceivable happiness, higher than has
yet been enjoyed, in the wider fields of independence and
self-will. One road, in its first entrance, appears steep
and narrow, though it leads onward and upward to the
heights of celestial glory. The other is wide and facile,
and seems to offer a vast range of free enjoyment, unvexed
by the restraint of law, with heights and depths that
appear to rival the happiness and independence of the
Creator; though it leads really to a dark abyss of gloom
and misery, from which only infinite wisdom and goodness,
by amazing depths of condescending grace, can rescue
those who have once gone astray.
Assuming, then, the creation of free agents, are there
any means the Almighty has forborne to employ, by which
the door might have been barred for ever against the
entrance of moral evil? Could something more have been
done, which He has not done, for the vineyard of immortal
spirits, whether planted in the heavenly or the earthly
Paradise? There are three ways in which the opposite view may
be sustained, whether it be regarded as a vindication of
God's almighty power, or an imputation on his goodness.
We may assume that God could have removed the sources
and occasions of temptation to sin; or have abolished his
own creation, the moment it was ready to fall; or have
necessitated the spirit to goodness by a secret and inscrut
able action of his sovereign will.
Now it is clearly within the range of Divine wisdom
and power to vary the modes and forms of temptation to
which his creatures are exposed. This is eminently true
of man, in his present condition; but we must conceive it

62 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
to be also, though less apparently, true of pure, unfallen
spirits in heaven. But the temptation itself, apart from
its special form, arises immediately out of the very laws
and limitations of the created will; and hence its entire
removal must be simply impossible. It is the prerogative
of God alone, that He cannot be tempted with evil.
While there is an active energy of thought and will, and
a wide region of the unknown, which it has not traversed,
there must be temptation to break loose from the com
mands of God, and rove into those fields in search of some
higher degrees of unknown felicity. It is the province of
Divine wisdom to dispose and control the forms under
which these temptations may appear, so far as they de
pend, indirectly, on positive agencies ; but it is equally its
province to discern that the temptation itself is the serious
and solemn ordeal which every free agent, besides God
himself, must undergo.
But might not the creature be annihilated, in the
moment when it is foreseen that temptation would prevail
against it? This suggestion is loaded with difficulties,
which make it manifestly unworthy of the Divine wisdom.
In the case of man, it would imply his destruction, almost
as soon as created, while yet sinless; and the abolition of
the whole race, without any cause that would be percepti
ble to the rest of creation. It would replace the punish
ment ofthe sinful by the annihilation of the innocent, on
grounds cognizable by the Creator alone. In the case of
angels, the sudden extinction of those who fell, while they
were still perfect and holy, must have been a new tempta
tion to those who were spared; leading them to regard
the Creator as a capricious despot, who delighted as much
in the destruction of the innocent as in their creation ; and
might, for anything that we can tell, hav.e been the surest

ON TEMPTATION IN FREE AGENTS. 63
method of tempting them also into rebellion, or else have
required their annihilation, to hinder a second and total
apostasy of all the survivors of the first destruction. But
surely it is less unworthy of the Divine wisdom to abstain
from creation altogether, than to destroy all his rational
creatures, almost as soon as made, and while still abiding
in their uprightness, because of the foreseen strength and
victory of unborn evil. It may be added, further, that
the assumption itself, that a spiritual being is capable of
annihilation, is liable to very grave and serious doubt,
when we reflect deeply on the messages of Scripture, and
the natural meaning of creation and immortality.
The third alternative is the form of the hypothesis, in
which, perhaps, it finds the most general acceptance. Out
of the doctrines of Divine grace the impression has arisen,
and prevailed widely in the Church, that God, by a super
natural gift of grace, might have preserved men and angels
infallibly in their first uprightness. We are thus taught
that "because Adam had not received constancy to perse
vere, he so easily fell. If one objects that the will was
placed in a slippery position, because its power was weak,
it may be answered that the degree conferred Avas suffi
cient to take away every excuse. For surely the Deity
could not be tied down to this condition, to make man
such that he could not or would not sin. Such a nature
might be more excellent; but to expostulate with God is
more than unjust, seeing He had full right to determine
how much or how little He would give. Why He did not
sustain him by the virtue of perseverance is hidden in his
counsel; but no necessity was laid upon God to give him
more than that intermediate a,nd even transient will, that
out of man's fall He might extract materials for his own
glory."

64 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
In this statement two things, widely different, are con
founded together — what was due to man himself, and what
is consistent with the infinite perfection of Divine good
ness. I may give an alms to a beggar, who has no claim
to it; but if I let him commit suicide before my eyes,
when a single motion of my arm would have arrested the
fatal act, I should appeal in vain to the alms I had given,
in proof that I had manifested a high degree of benevo
lence. In the revealed facts themselves of what the
Creator did for Adam, there is no possible ground for
impeaching his goodness. The temptation to charge Him
foolishly arises entirely from the unproved assumption'
which has been grafted on the sacred narrative, that there
was some gift, far greater and better, by which the catas
trophe would easily have been averted, and which God
was unwilling to bestow.
Now this fancied necessitation of the unfallen creature
to goodness, however widely the hypothesis has been
received, appears to involve a moral contradiction. It
must be either Avith or without the consent of the creature
itself. If without its consent, it supposes God to .violate
the fundamental law of the being He has just bestowed,
Avhile it still abides in its original perfection; and to deal
with a son as with a passive lump of clay. If with its
consent, it supposes the unfallen spirit, before any experi
ence of evil, and in all the conscious energy of a pure and
upright will, to abdicate its own stewardship, and to anti
cipate, by a voluntary act, the hardest and deepest results
of the stupendous economy of redeeming love. And be
sides, if the creature might withdraw its consent from a
law so simple and plainly reasonable, as that which called
upon it to love its Creator with all the powers He had
bestowed, how far stronger would be the temptation to.

ON TEMPTATION IN FREE AGENTS. 65
refuse consent to a further revelation, that should call
upon it to abdicate its own will, and reduce itself to a tem
porary state of passive impotence, in order to be thereby
secured against some unknown evil of which it had no
present experience ? Either alternative is equally unten
able in the eye of calm and sober reason ; while it runs
counter to the whole drift and current of Divine reve
lation. A tacit appeal seems made, however, in the words just
quoted from one of the first of theologians, to the experi
ence of Christian believers, as if the assumption could be
easily proved by their perseverance in the service of God.
But "the virtue of perseverance '' in the two' instances has
little in common but the name. There is a provision, in
the scheme of redemption, for many a partial fall, even of
believers, and many stages of recovery. The argument
lies really the other way. Even in the case of His own
people, whom the Lord loves with a special and distin
guishing love, there can be found, in the judgment of most
Christians, no example of perseverance in sinless perfec
tion. And if this were possible, as other Christians
believe, in a few cases of eminent holiness, a result so rare
and exceptional, under all the richer revelations of Divine
grace, is rather a presumption that the gift was entirely
impossible to be imparted by any act of mere power,
before the grace of redemption had dawned on the night
of sin and sorrow. On every ground of reason and ex
perience, we may well accept the conclusion that every
provision was made, by the all-wise Creator, for the con
tinued obedience of men and angels, which was consistent
with the essential laws of created being ; and the expostu
lation addressed to the rebellious Jews is equally true in
its earlier and wider application to the twofold rebellion in
E

66 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
the earthly and the heavenly Paradise. " What could
have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done
to it ? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring
forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?" Thus God
will be justified in his sayings, and be clear when He is
judged. His goodness and equity will be fully cleared at
the last from those dark clouds, which the blasphemy of
his enemies, and the dim-sighted faith of his own chil
dren, more ready to magnify his power than to apprehend
the purity and perfection of his goodness, have caused to
obscure the righteous providence of the Most High.
On this view, however, that the prevention of moral
evil, in created free agents, is impossible in its own nature,
the original difficulty appears in an altered form. Why
did the Almighty exercise his creative power, in forming
spirits with such lofty but perilous endowments, when He
foresaw the fearful ruin into which multitudes would
plunge themselves by their fall ? Were it not better to
have forborne a work so awful in its consequences, and
rather to have sacrificed the possible happiness of the un
fallen and the redeemed, than to purchase it by the fore
seen misery and despair of a vast multitude, perhaps even
a majority, of the creatures He has made ?
There are many reasons which may be offered in reply
to this objection, and some of which will come before us
in the progress of the inquiry. But there is one which
ought to be sufficient alone to silence every such doubt,
and clear the Divine wisdom and goodness from the charge
implicitly brought against them. For how can we con
ceive a more awful triumph of evil, than that its dark
and hateful spectre, while yet unborn, should tie up the
hands of the Almighty from the noblest exercise of his
creative wisdom, and imprison his infinite riches of good-

ON TEMPTATION IN FREE AGENTS. 6 J
ness within his own bosom ; so that matter should never
exist, because it might issue in a soulless and infinite
chaos ; and no reasonable souls ever spring to life, to love
and adore their Creator, lest the dark power of evil should
seize upon them, in spite of all his perfection, and drag
them down into an abyss of ruin. To deny life to infinite
numbers of holy and happy beings, whom his power
could create and his wisdom govern, and in whom his
goodness might delight itself for ever, through the fear of
the victory of evil, in the abuse of his own gifts — what
were this, but for the Supremely Good to play the coward
and the murderer, and thus to deny his own being, and
renounce his Godhead, lest the abusers of his free bounty
should suffer the just punishment of their crimes ? Must
not the life, which refused to flow forth through such fears
as these, at once begin to stagnate in its hidden source ;
and evil achieve its most fatal and awful triumph, by
planting its victorious standard within the very citadel of
all perfection, and turning the pure and infinite Fountain
of living waters into a dull marsh, from whence no stream
of goodness should ever flow ? Far must it be from the
Infinitely Wise thus to veil his perfect Avisdom before the
mere possibilities of unborn evil, and to immolate his own
glory, and the being of the whole universe, on the altar o:'
a dark and gloomy destiny. He is Light, and over Him
darkness can have no power. He is the Only Good, and
must do good continually with a free delight, or renounce
the primal law of his holy and all-perfect being.
From these preliminary views of the nature of God,
and the true source of evil, let us proceed to consider, in
succession, some of the earliest acts of divine providence,
that we may see more clearly the wisdom and goodness of
all the counsels of the Almighty. E 2

CHAPTER V.
ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF ANGELS.
The first main fact of God's moral government, which
the word of God reveals to us, is the creation of angels,
and that subsequent rebellion by which multitudes of
them became apostates from their original glory. It is a
truth which looms dimly and awfully upon us through the
mists of a past eternity. In the hour of creation, when.
the foundations of the earth were laid, these morning stars;
" sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."
But no sooner was man planted in Eden, than amysteriousi
Tempter appears, by whose fraud he is led astray into ruin.
His names in the Scripture are descriptive of a fearful
power and activity of evil. He is the Adversary of God and
man, the Deceiver of the nations, the God of this world,
the Prince of the power of the air, and the whole world is
described by one Apostle as lying in his arms. Such de
scriptions must import no slight degree of power, malice,
and moral influence. They open before our vision a terrible
gulf, in which the noblest faculties and endowments have
been fatally entombed, and lend a new emphasis to the
sublime apostrophe ofthe prophet on the king of Babylon 
" How art thou fallen from heaven, 0 Lucifer, son of the
morning ! "
To illustrate, so far as we are able, with our limited
faculties, the wisdom and goodness of the Almighty in

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF ANGELS. 69
this great act of power, there are several questions to be
solved, and weighty difficulties to be removed. Why did
God create angels before men, when He foresaw that their
fall would give birth to the temptation by which Adam
fell, and which involved his posterity in moral ruin? How
can it be explained that some angels have fallen, and
others have continued upright, without such a recourse to
the Divine Sovereignty and Omnipotence as must infer
that all alike might have been sustained, and that a sin
less universe is by no means a moral contradiction? Since
God is infinitely good as well as holy, why do we find in
his word no trace of means employed for the recovery of
angels as well as men? How can we reconcile with the
Divine goodness that permission of Satanic temptation,
through long ages, which is clearly taught in the Holy Scrip
tures? Lastly, how can we reconcile the usual view ofthe
instant punishment of evil angels, in the moment of their
fall, with the fact that they are still at liberty to tempt
and deceive the nations, or with the infinite long-suffering,
which is one main perfection of the Almighty ?
I. The creation of angels, when compared with that
of mankind, has many striking features of contrast. Un
like men, they are either pure, unembodied spirits, or
more probably, are clothed with ethereal bodies. Being
free from the load of grosser matter, they can range
throughout infinite space, and go and return like a flash
of lightning, so as to visit at pleasure every region of the
universe. Their knowledge as well as their power, being
derived from a larger sphere, is higher ¦ than that of
man. All of them have proceeded separately and imme
diately from the hand of the Creator, and, like Adam
himself, enjoy, from the mode of their birth, the high title
of sons of God. Unlike man, they neither marry, nor are

JO THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
given in marriage. Their being, separately bestowed, is
also self-contained, and no provision is made for its diffu
sion, as in the human race, by celestial generations. Their
number is counted by ten thousand times ten thousand,
and compared to the innumerable stars of heaven; but,
however vast, it is finite ; and without new acts of creation,
of which no hint is given us, admits of no further increase.
And while the ministry of good and the temptations of
evil angels, are truths clearly revealed, it is plain,- from
Scripture and almost universal experience, that a strict
law of non-intercourse has been imposed upon them,
whether by some conditions of their present being, or the
direct fiat of the Almighty; so that angel visits are pro
verbially " few and far between," and man has very rare
communications with this higher and spiritual world.
Why, then, did the creation of angels take precedence
of that of man, when their fall would introduce so mighty
and dangerous a Tempter, to take a leading part in the'
drama of human probation? Why was the Prince of
fallen angels permitted to ply his seductive arts on a
creature feebler and less richly endowed than himself, and
thus to concur with man's own folly in plunging the new
race into deep and lasting misery ?
Now, first, it is plain that the character of God, as the
Fountain of life, implies a free necessity, and a necessary
freedom, to overflow in the production of active and sen
tient being. His fulness is a living fulness; and life in all
its forms is never self-contained, but issues either in cease
less activity, or in the generation of new life, which owns
the former for its source and parent. Since the idea of
God includes all conceivable perfection of power, wisdom,
and goodness, it must include this virtual necessity of
wisdom and love to call a possible universe into being.

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF ANGELS. 71

This conclusion, it is true, may be met by a formidable
difficulty. Creation cannot have existed from eternity,
since a past eternity can never be actually traversed, any
more than we can reach the bound of an eternity to come.
But since God is from all eternity, an eternity must have
elapsed before any act of creation. If He could exist so
long without any creatures, why not through the second
eternity, which is begun, and still in progress ? But this
reasoning rests on a fundamental error. A past eternity,
in succession, is only an imperfect and contradictory con
ception ; just as the eternity to come is not a positive fact,
but an imperfect expression for that finite existence of the
creature which is ever stretching onward into the infinite,
but can never attain it. The being of God is one eternal
Now, inconceivable to finite minds. Time began with
created existence. And since the creature is not directly
cognizable of God's eternity, it can only dimly reach after
it, by extending its own experience into a conceivable
past, and an actual or possible future. But a successive
past, before creation itself, can have no real existence.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth." The beginning of time is the same with the act
of creation. The transition, by the fiat of God, from the
uncreated and infinite to finite and created being, is a
real, unsearchable mystery ; but a past eternity, stretching
dimly backward by successive moments, years, and ages,
while there was no creature in the universe, is merely a
spectral, unreal image of a truth, too deep for us to com
prehend in its own nature. It is the exponent of a tran
sition from absolute, unsuccessive eternity to the actual
succession of temporal things.
The certainty, then, of creation (a term which seems
best to express the harmonious antithesis of freedom and

72 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
necessity, where each alike is infinitely perfect) results at
once from the wisdom and goodness of the Creator. Such
is the view which the word of God reveals in the song of
the heavenly elders — "Thou art worthy to receive honour,
and glory, and power, for thou hast created all things,
and for thy pleasure they are and were created." But the
same reason infers that creation would not be limited to
mere matter and the lowest forms of sentient life, but
would include rational creatures — the noblest workman
ship of the Creator's hand. If creation is a necessary
inference frOm the perfect goodness of the Almighty, a
spiritual creation is a consequence no less certainly de-
ducible from the same truth. If all things proceed from
his good pleasure, and are formed for his glory, He must
eminently delight in producing immortal spirits, who wear
his own image, and reflect the beauty of his own per
fections ; and be glorified mainly in the worship and
adoration which such intelligences will rejoice to render
to the great Author of their being.
But if such a creation of spiritual beings flows as a
simple corollary from the perfection of the Creator, it is
also natural that it should first be exhibited in its purest
and simplest form. With regard to their Maker, this
implies that each of them should proceed directly from
his hand, so that their sense of entire dependence on
his bounty may not be obscured by the intervention of
any second cause. They would- thus stand on the highest
step of the ladder of being, and enjoy every help, acces
sible to the creature at first, for gazing on the uncreated
Goodness. Their morning would thus be one without
clouds; and, without any interposing mists of creature
parentage, each of them would gaze upward on that
Infinite Cause and Perfect Love, which had given them,

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF ANGELS. JT,
being. With regard to the universe, the same simplicity
would infer that they should be bound down to no local
habitation, like ourselves, but be free to visit every field
of creation, and to gaze impartially, as far as thought
could reach, or wing could traverse, on all the material
handiworks of God. As far as we can infer from the
scanty hints of revelation, this appears to be the actual
constitution of the angelic Avorld : " He maketh his angels
spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire." The purest
and most diffusive elements of nature are chosen to
represent the condition and nature of these blessed spirits.
Swiftness of wing, and the speed of wind, of fire, and of
lightning — all concur in exhibiting the same truth, and
set them before us, in contrast with our earthly and
limited being, as real freemen of God's universe.
Such a constitution, so far as our understandings can
enable us to judge, would be the most favourable to the
moral stability of spiritual creatures. The links by which
every one of them was consciously united to the source
of his being, would be the simplest and most immediate.
He would stand in the presence of his Maker, out of
whose hand he had so lately come. No consciousness of
earthly trammels would provoke his will to fret against
the narrow limits which Providence had assigned for its
action, and no temptation from the flesh could solicit its
pure and sinless intelligence. A wide range over the
universe would seem to give the most favourable means
for apprehending the Divine glory, and escaping the
delusive influence of a narrow and contracted vision.
All would be favourable to stability, but, perhaps, in
the same degree adverse to recovery, when once fallen.
The primal sin would be more aggravated and inex
cusable, and fewer means be left which the all-wise

74 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
Creator oould employ, should justice allow the attempt
to restore such rebels to their lost happiness and holiness
again. Now if the primal idea of Divine love be, as it cer
tainly must be, the pure desire that His creatures, formed
sinless and upright, should abide in their first estate of
purity and obedience, a further reason will noAV appear,
besides the greater simplicity of their nature, why angels
should have a priority over the race of men. To borrow
a significant term of some writers, the former creation
has more direct reference to the antecedent, the other to
the consequent will of God. In one the chief truth
unfolded is the sincere will of God that his creatures
should abide in that happy state in which they were
created. In the other the cardinal truth is the purpose
of God, in the foresight of the aAvful fact that rebellion
will manifest itself, to exhaust the treasures of his wisdom
and grace in providing a remedy. Angels were so con
stituted that, if it were possible, though mutable, they
might stand. Man was so created, that, in the case of
a fall through his own mutability, there might be the
fullest concurrence of means and helps for his recovery
out of that fearful ruin. And hence we may conclude
that the creation of angels, earlier than man, is a signal
illustration of the goodness and wisdom of the Most High,
who has no pleasure in the ruin of his own creatures;
and only when the mournful fact has been shown, under
the most favourable circumstances for their preservation,
that multitudes of them will rebel without reason, bends
all the resources of his infinite wisdom, in a second
creation, to provide an effectual and mighty antidote for
their foreseen and anticipated crime.
II. But how shall we explain the fall of some angels,

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF ANGELS. 7^
and the steadfastness of others, without recourse to a
view of the Divine Sovereignty, which brings the clouds
of thick darkness once more over his awful countenance,
and forbids us to see in it any longer the lineaments of
a pure and perfect love ? It can never be reconciled with
the instincts of natural conscience, and still less with
the tears of the Son of God, that the Almighty, because
He is almighty, should use immortal spirits as mere
counters, and, when He might glorify himself in their
universal happiness and holiness, prefer to construct out
of them a dark, tesselated mosaic of alternate holiness
and wickedness, happiness and misery. Yet if some
were maintained against temptation, why might not all
have been made to stand ? If the delivering power were
in the Divine will, why was it not vouchsafed to all
equally ? If in the Divine foresight alone, why were not
those alone created of whom it was foreseen that tempta
tion to evil would be overcome ?
Here we do indeed lose ourselves in deep mys
teries, and need to tread softly, with holy reverence.
We cannot err on the right hand or the left, without
obscuring some Divine attribute, and either limiting
presumptuously the sovereign power of the Holy One of
Israel, or obscuring in our thoughts the pure brightness
of his eternal bounty and love. Yet, perhaps, a little
patient thought, Avith the help of those hints which the
Scripture supplies, will enable us to find a path through
this moral labyrinth.
The first truth, which may serve to throw light on this
obscure problem, is the Scripture statement that all the
hosts of angels were created by the Only-begotten Son
of God. "Thrones and dominions, principalities and
powers, all were created by him, and for him; and he-

76 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
is before all, and by him all things consist." And since
He appears in the Old Testament under the customary
title of the Angel of God, we may reasonably infer that
his manifestation, as the Head and Chief of all angels,
is a truth ofthe spiritual world from the very hour of
their first creation.
But the same passage, and many others, reveal to us
various orders and degrees among the spirits of heaven.
Archangels, thrones, dominions, princedoms, powers, and
virtues, are terms which must imply a real subordination,
and an ascending scale of spiritual authority. We have
also mention of " the seven angels that stand in the pre
sence of God," and of " chief princes " among the armies of
heaven. Again, there are obscure hints in Scripture, which
seem to imply that Satan, before his fall, was foremost and
chief among the ruling angels of the celestial hierarchy.
All the descriptions of his power, and the titles given to
him, as the Adversary of God, and the God of this world,
would lead to the conclusion that in natural capacity he
is truly the foremost of all created beings.
It is further evident, from the Scriptures, that the
form of evil by which the first apostate was tempted,
was pride and ambition. There was no seduction from
without, or from other creatures; but his own heart was
lifted up with the proud aim to rival his Creator, and
set up a throne of coequal or superior dominion. Thus
St. Paul, in describing the office of a bishop, gives the
warning advice, " Not a novice, lest being lifted up with
pride, he fall into the snare of the devil." In like manner
our Lord speaks of his sin with indignation : " He was a
murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth,
because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF ANGELS. J J
lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar, and the father
of it." He was created, then, under a law of eternal truth,
which enjoined obedience to the will of his Maker. No
impulsion from without led him astray; but his own spirit,
endowed with vast powers, and placed highest in the
created universe, chafed against subjection to the Unseen
Jehovah, as manifested in the great Angel of the Covenant,
who doubtless proclaimed to all the hosts of heaven the
will of the Eternal Father. But there was another infinite
unknown, besides that which could be approached only
through the narrow pathway of obedience to the Son of
God. By abiding in the law of his creation, he seemed
doubly subject to the Son of God, the visible King of
heaven, and to, the invisible Father, the Unsearchable, in
whose name the Son claimed the allegiance of all creation.
By renouncing that law, as the highest in creation besides
the Son of God, and unconscious of the vast gulf which
the fact of creation interposed between himself and the
Uncreated Word, he might hope to be the supreme deputy
and vicegerent of a second invisible and infinite, wider,
vaster, and more comprehensive than the Infinite Good,
which claimed his obedience. Thus pride, ambition, curi
osity, and presumptuous speculation on the unknoAvn, in
contrast with the still, deep voice of conscience, propound
ing the eternal law of duty in obedience and love to the
Creator, were the temptations which he obeyed, and thus
fell irretrievably from his original glory.
This fall, like Creation itself, is an ultimate truth, and
must ever remain a mystery to a finite intelligence; yet
the analogy throws some light on their common but con
trasted nature. In all creation there is a veiled and latent
necessity, since we cannot conceive a perfect Fountain of
power and goodness, without its overflowing in works and

78 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
acts of beneficence. But its more prominent feature is
freedom ; since here is the contrast between the great I
AM and every creature, that He is, because He must be,
and cannot cease to be ; but all other things exist, because
He has freely called them into being. Now evil, viewed
in its widest sense, includes the necessity which underlies
the whole universe of the possible, and is a shadowy re
semblance of the Divine necessity of being, with no share
in the spontaneity and freedom of the Godhead. By vir
tue of its character, it can never touch the Divine nature ;
but seizes upon every created being which might possibly
not have been, and attaches to it, as a metaphysical evil,
from the moment of its birth, in the form of a necessary
limitation, and privation of still higher modes of being.
But in the form of moral evil it cannot exist, since it has
nothing spontaneous or free in itself, till it has allied itself
with the freedom of some positive existence. Now this
can only be when the Creator, besides creating all things
freely, creates moral agents endowed with his own prero
gative of internal choice and freedom of will. But this
marriage between metaphysical evil, which is necessary,
and the free-will of the creature, out of which is born
moral evil, must remain a mystery different in kind, yet
very similar, to the mystery of the Divine Existence. We
conceive that the Being of God is necessary, and that his
will is perfectly free, and that these contrasts, in Him,
must have an eternal harmony, though the mode surpasses
our understanding. In like manner moral evil implies a
similar union between the eternal necessities of all crea
ture existence and the freedom of moral agents ; but of
this union, unlike the other, we can merely perceive by
reasoning that it is necessarily possible, while the fact is
proved by experience, But how the transition is made.

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF ANGELS. 79
by which the necessarily possible becomes actual, without
such a ground of foresight as shall make it simply a ne
cessity, and thereby alter its essential character from a
moral to a purely natural evil, is perhaps almost as in
conceivable to our minds as the infinitude and necessary
freedom of the Divine nature itself. We can only recog
nise the solemn fact, and pause with reverence on the
threshold of the Infinite and the Unknown.
Still, without pretending to solve this deep mystery,
the thought must naturally suggest itself, that it was the
actual primacy of the first apostate which proved the
special occasion of his fall. Our great poet seems here,
as in several other points, to have mixed the truest and
deepest philosophy with his flights of creative imagina
tion, when he thus portrays the supposed reflections of
the lost archangel ; " Lifted up so high,
I 'sdeigned subjection, and thought one step higher
Would set me highest, and in a moment quit
The debt immense of endless gratitude,
So burdensome, still paying, still to owe."
It is true that this lofty position would give a deeper
intensity to the voice of conscience, Avhen it claimed un
equalled gratitude for gifts unequalled through the wide
range of created things. But' the temptation to aspire
still higher, and break loose from the one law which
alone seemed to place him below the Son of God, seems,
by the sad and awful fact, to have grown in a more than
equal degree, with the vastness of the obligation. And if
this be true, it seems to follow that the foresight of such
a catastrophe was involved in the very fact of a spiritual
creation? and would not have been altered by any con-

8o THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF*.
ceivable arrangements in the varied powers, numbers, and
constitution of the celestial hierarchy.
But Avhen once the Fall had become an awful fact, in
the person of the chief apostate, the Father of lies, the
moral conflict, in every other instance, would inevitably
assume new features. A spirit endued with the largest
powers bestowed upon any creature, would seem, to all
inferior spirits, apart from the great moral distinction of
good and evil, a complete rival to all that they could
know and apprehend of the Most High, when self-humbled
in the person of the Word, to meet the range of their
limited understanding. This great rival, by his own dis
obedience, would now be able to wield all the manifold
possibilities of evil, in seductive hopes, and racking and
terrible fears, and gloomy suspicions of the Divine good
ness, which the infinite abyss of the unknown could
supply. There would be fresh and endless engines of
temptation, when this dark void of all possible and con
ceivable evil, of which the Scripture name is Death, had
gained a living and actual vicegerent, its lord and slave
at once, the Prince of evil, who hath the power of death.
And there would also now be room for fresh revelations
of the Only Good, founded on this sad experience of the
creature's mutability, and the awful" disclosure of spiritual
wickedness. With such rival powers, each nearly equal
in apparent, visible potency, and each alike reposing on a
secret, infinite necessity, that might seem, because un
known, equally firm, powerful, and boundless on either
side, so that only the Omniscient Eye could discern the
immense contrast between them ; it is quite conceivable
that the preservation of the whole universe of spirits may
have been, to the same Omniscience, a clearly discerned
impossibility ; while his power and wisdom, by the secret

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF ANGELS. 8 1
disposal of His All-wise Providence, might secure the pre
servation of the holy angels when the others fell. The
patent and obvious source of this great contrast is the free
choice of the righteous ones to abide in the truth of God,
and the free choice of the apostates to renounce their
allegiance, and, in league with the Arch Apostate, to
plunge boldly, in search of a higher felicity, into all the
unknown possibilities of a rebellious freedom. But the
result, in each case, may be so really shut in by the secret
disposal of the wise Creator, that the holy may be truly
styled the elect angels, and ascribe to the Lord their own
continued steadfastness of will in the narrow pathway of
sinless and unswerving obedience.
The fall of angels, we may infer from the united
voice of reason and revelation, consisted essentially in
a double crime of the intellect and the will. In the
intellect, it was the renunciation of a known truth, em
bodied in the great law of obedience, and commending
itself by its own light to the pure consciousness of the
spirit, for a phantom of boundless happiness in the Avide
regions of the unknoAvn, to be attained by the aAvful
experiment of disobedience. In the will, it Avas the
ambitious pride which affected rivalry with God, and
ungratefully repaid the richest and noblest gifts of His
love, by seeking to turn them into engines for supplanting
his authority, and thereby set up a mightier empire of
evil over the intelligent universe. Hence it is described
under these two essential characters, in the word of God,
as an object of intense and perfect abhorrence to the
Holy One. We are told of the great Adversary, that " he
was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in
the truth, because there is no truth in him;" while his
crime, and its final result, are described in the vivid
B. F

82 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
language of the prophet : " Thou hast said in thine
heart, I will set my throne above the stars of God; I
will sit in the mount of the congregation, in the sides of
the north ; I will ascend above the height of the clouds ;
I will be like the Most High. Yet thou shalt be brought
down to hell, to the sides of the abyss." That one great
act of sin enclosed in its womb every variety of hateful
wickedness, with every fruit of aAvful misery that would
desolate the universe, and make some of its fairest por
tions, for long ages, like a howling wilderness of sin and
sorrow. III. But however deep and awful the crime of the
apostate angels, there is something which seems almost
to grate upon the instincts of the Christian heart in the
popular view of their instant and overwhelming punish
ment. How shall we account for the notorious fact that
in the work of our great poet, such an unwilling interest,
sometimes amounting to a conscious sympathy, is often
felt, in spite of the purpose of the writer and instincts of
the reader, for the great Author of evil ? In the descrip
tion of the crime itself, and its probable occasion and
character, Milton has kept very close to the intimations
dimly scattered through the word of God. Is it clear
that this is equally true with regard to the sentence on
the fallen spirits; and that there was really, in their
case, no exhibition whatever of God's infinite long-suf
fering ? This is a weighty inquiry. And perhaps it will
be found that the instinctive feeling alluded to betrays a
wide departure, in the popular impressions which the poet
has adopted, from the real facts of Divine Providence ;
and that, instead of trembling at the spectacle of a justice
awfully severe, with no trace of patience and long-suffer
ing, we ought rather to adore a depth of forbearance to-

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF ANGELS. 83
wards the most aggravated and wicked abuse of mercies,
that will fill the redeemed with awe and wonder through
the ages of the world to come.
The view which has long been current in popular theo
logy, that the Great Adversary and his angels were in
stantly cast down from heaven into the lowest pit of hell,
and there tormented with fiery judgment, is chiefly found
ed on two passages of the word of God — 2 Pet. ii. 4 ; Jude
6, 7. But these are very far from bearing the weight of so
vast an inference. Angels, in both cases, are mentioned
indefinitely; so that the words do not apply, by any neces
sary construction, to all the angels who have sinned. And
besides, while both passages evidently refer to the same
event, the second, in its further mention of the cities of
the plain, affirms the sin of these angels to have been
some form of unnatural lust. Accordingly, in the early
times of the Church, they were usually applied to the
event in Gen. vi. 2, 4, and viewed as a fuller statement of
the sin of the sons of God, with its deserved punishment.
This view of the meaning has been revived in modern
times, and is supported by the simplest laws of criticism, in
one of the passages, while it agrees with all the other
features of the sacred text. It will follow that this was a
second, and not a first, angelic apostasy; and because of
the unnaturalness of the crime, and its more external and
visible character, was visited with instant judgment.
This difficulty being once removed, the whole evidence
of Scripture will point, in perfect harmony, to a view of
God's dealings towards the fallen angels, widely different
from that which has been popularly received, and which
the sublime fancy of Milton has almost rendered, with
many, a part of their habitual faith. The clearest light
thrown on the subject in the Old Testament, is in the
F 2

84 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
books of Job and Daniel. In the former Satan appears
as one who ranges at liberty through the whole earth, and
presents himself boldly in heaven amongst the sons of God.
In the latter we have mention of chief princes among the
angels, with whom the Angel of the Covenant sustains a
prolonged and balanced conflict, and only one of the angel-
princes is said to be on his side in the celestial warfare.
In Zechariah we have a vision, where Satan appears before
the Angel Jehovah, to resist openly the exercise of His
grace towards Jerusalem, and, instead of instant judgment,
he hears only a prayer significant of his future doom:
"The Lord rebuke thee." In the New Testament he meets
us first as the Tempter of our Lord, with the boastful
profession on his lips that he has power over all the king
doms of the earth, and their glory, and gives them to whom
he will. This is not the language of a criminal who is
undergoing already a most terrible and crushing sentence.
All tbe sorroAvs and diseases which our Lord relieved and
healed, are ascribed to his wicked and malicious activity:
"He healed all that were oppressed with the devil." Our
Saviour styles him "the Prince of this world," and speaks
of his casting down as the future result of His own won
derful sacrifice. The same truth he describes elsewhere,
in these expressive words, — "I beheld Satan as lightning
fall from heaven." And the whole context proves that
this denotes a future triumph, to be achieved through that
preaching of the Gospel which had just begun, and does
not describe an event far away backAvard in the records of
eternity. In like manner, St Paul refers every hindrance
thrown in his path to the agency of this mighty enemy.
He calls him the God of this world, the Prince of the
power of the air, the Spirit who energizes in the children
of disobedience, whose overthrow is not an accomplished

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF ANGELS. 85
fact, but a hope of the true Church of Christ in days to
come. St Peter describes him, in similar language, as
free and active in his works of malice, a roaring lion, loose
and bent upon his prey — not caged and fettered, or sunk
in a gloomy dungeon of despair. St John tells us, with
reference to the extent of his power, that the whole world,
in his days, was lying in the arms of the Wicked One.
In another place we are reminded that the conflict of the
Christian warrior is "not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities and powers, the rulers of the dark
ness of this world, and spiritual wickednesses in heavenly
places." Finally, in the latest message of the Spirit of
God, three stages of the overthrow of Satan are revealed.
In the first he is cast down from heaven to earth. In the
second he is chained in the abyss, to' deceive the nations
no more. In the third and last he is consigned to his
final punishment. But all alike, from the first to the last,
are events which were still future when the prophecy was
given. In reality, the doctrine which has been enshrined in
glorious poetry, and embodied in treatises of theology,
till it has become almost like an article of Christian faith,
that instant and terrible judgment was inflicted at once
upon the fallen angels, and that they were loosed after
ward to become the tempters of mankind, is hard to recon
cile with the moral instincts of a spiritual mind, or with
any just and true conceptions of the infinite wisdom and
goodness of the Almighty. We may conceive, however
solemn and fearful, an instant and irreversible judgment
to fall upon rebel angels in the very hour of their enormous
crime; and that the severity of the Divine justice might
thus be shown, without mixture of long-suffering. Or we
may conceive of a continued and wondrous forbearance,

86 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
until the measure of their guilt was full, and new crimes
against mankind had redoubled the blackness of their first
apostasy from the will of God. But this alternation of
terrible punishment, suspended to give an opening for
fresh crimes, does violence to the fundamental notions of
equity and wisdom in & moral government. What should
we think of an earthly sovereign who should loose con
victed murderers, under sentence of death, in whom there
was no trace of penitence, that they might be the occasion
of tempting other subjects, still comparatively or entirely
innocent, to become sharers in their guilt, so that the
executioner at last might have a double harvest of blood?
But if the thought would revolt us in the dealings of an
earthly ruler, what is there, in, the Almighty Power of
God, to erase these moral outlines, which His own hand
has engraven upon the consciences of men? "Far be it
from God, that he should do wickedness; and from the
Almighty, that he should commit iniquity." The concep
tion of sovereignty must have grievously overshadowed
those of infinite goodness and wisdom, before we can
accept such a view of God's dealings with rebellious angels,
when it departs so widely from the inference that flows
naturally from all the consenting testimony of the word of
God. The further questions which grow out of this mysteri
ous subject would be more conveniently examined in a
further stage of the inquiry. For the present, we may
receive provisionally a view of God's Providence towards
the fallen angels, in which justice has been hitherto less
conspicuous than infinite patience and long-suffering. The
subtlety of evil is no less awful than its desperate wickedness ;
and in the person of the Great Adversary, whose first name
is the Serpent, aspires to rival the wisdom of the Creator.

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF ANGELS. 87
If Judas remained long undetected among the twelve Apo
stles, it is conceivable that the crime of the Arch-deceiver
may have remained concealed for a time, except from the
eye of the Omniscient alone. We may conceive that the
Adversary was still permitted to appear among the sons of
God, and to seek, in the courts of heaven itself, to veil his
dark malice under the show of a zeal for the Divine justice,
and his fraudulent temptations under the specious show of
genuine benevolence towards angels and men. We may
conceive, further, that one main object of God's Providence
in the creation and redemption of mankind may be to
unmask all these subtleties of wickedness in the heavenly
places, to expose the frauds of the Great Deceiver and his
accomplices in their true colours, and only to execute upon
them their righteous sentence, when the quiver of their
deceits has been 'exhausted, and the awful consequences of
their malice have been fully displayed. Thus hell from
beneath will be moved to meet this King of Babylon in his
final downfall; and not only the saved, who have been
rescued by Divine grace, but the lost who see in Him the
Destroyer who has effected their ruin, will own the awful
righteousness of the Supremely Good and Holy, when this
Deceiver of this universe is crushed under the victorious
feet of the once crucified and now exalted Son of God.

CHAPTER VI.
ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN.
The moral difficulties connected with the Fall of man
come nearer home to the heart and conscience of mankind
than those which refer to the history of angels. Self-love
takes occasion, from the depth and obscurity of the Divine
counsels, to awaken doubts, fears, suspicions, and question
ings, which lead, in too many instances, to open blasphemy.
Christian divines themselves have not been altogether
blameless in this matter. They have had a zeal for God, but
not always according to knowledge. Too often a sincere
desire to maintain the authority of Scripture has been
separated from a loving and humble spirit. In this case
the sin of the Pharisees, with respect to the ceremonies of
the law, has been transferred to the deeper mysteries of
the Gospel ; and heavy burdens, grievous to be borne, have
been laid upon the natural conscience, which the imposers
have not cared to lighten with one of their fingers. A
strange notion seems almost to have been entertained, that
faith was magnified, in proportion as the truths of revela
tion were presented in a shape repulsive to the moral
instincts of thoughtful men. When conscience has been
disposed to revolt against the burden, it has been sought
to silence it by an appeal to the authority of the Bible,

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. 89
without any answering efforts to enlighten it on the ways
of Divine Providence. The great Enemy of souls has
seized the advantage given him by a misdirected cham
pionship of truth. Objections have been dressed up in
their most seductive and specious form : and distortions or
exaggerations of revealed truth, in the Avritings of pious
men, have been used to allure men away from the God of
the Bible, whose character has been clothed in austere and
gloomy colours ; so as to transfer their worship to an
imaginary Deity, who is satisfied with a vague, dreamy,
sentimental religion, and who is supposed to be gifted with
a more diffusive and all-embracing benevolence.
The history of the Fall, after being obscured by the
additions or comments of human theology, and further dis
guised by the mists of the carnal heart, has been one fre
quent source of these infidel illusions. The thrice Holy One
has been boldly defamed and maligned as a monster of reck
less cruelty. Can we believe, it is asked, that the God of
love should forbid the eating of an apple to our first
parents for no reason but to proA'e his own authority ; and
then, for so slight a transgression, should condemn count
less millions of their posterity, who never saAV or tasted the
forbidden tree, to eternal and infinite torment in the
flames of hell ? Can such a picture of Divine Providence
be reconciled with any just views of infinite benevolence ?
If such are the first lessons of the Old Testament, must Ave
not cast it aside as a superstition unfit for an age of light ;
and adopt a purer and gentler creed from modern science,
which looks through Nature up to Nature's God, and
adores, in sun and plant and flower, a benevolent Deity,
who is preparing all His creatures alike for a felicity
without end ?
There are several great questions which need to be

90 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
answered, before the mists which have gathered round the
history of the Fall can be cleared away, and disclose to
us, in the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, a land
scape fairer than that of Paradise. Why was man created,
flesh as well as spirit, since a new source of temptation
was hereby added to those purely spiritual delusions which
had proved so fatally potent in the angels that fell ? Why
were the whole race created in Adam, as the common
stock and root of their being, instead of being formed
separately, like Adam and the holy angels, since it was
also foreseen that their common head and parent would
fall, before their own separate existence had begun ? Why
was the tree of knowledge of good and evil planted in
Paradise within reach of man, and then forbidden to be
tasted, instead of every prohibition being removed, and
the tree of life alone set before him, with its precious boon
of immortality ? Why was woman given to be a help
meet, when it Avas known that her greater weakness would
expose her more easily to temptation, and smooth the
descent for man into a precipice of ruin ? Why was so
mighty a Tempter permitted to ply his seductive arts upon
creatures Aveaker than himself, who proved unequal to
contend with his sagacious wickedness, and fell at once
into the snare he had woven for their destruction ? Why
were the consequences of the Fall made to extend to
unborn millions, who had never tasted of the forbidden
tree ? If by positive and arbitrary appointment, Avhy was
a covenant made, that seems to trench on the laws of
distributive justice ? If by a natural and necessary con
sequence, how could that original constitution of human
nature be good and wise, which made the moral corruption
and guilt of untold millions the necessary fruit of one brief
and solitary act of individual transgression 2

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. 9 1
Now it is not enough to say that the facts are revealed,
and that God is just and holy, good and wise, and there
fore all further inquiry is presumptuous and dangerous.
The conscience of man is too mighty a power to be set at
rest by theological evasions. We may not, without folly,
expect in this life to see all the reasons of the Divine
counsels. But when we build up laboriously a human
system on the basis of revealed facts, we are bound to
require that the results shall not clash violently with the
consenting voice of Scripture and reason concerning the
fundamental attributes of the Most High. We are not at
liberty to call that conduct justice and wisdom in the
Almighty, which we should charge with folly or cruelty in
a human governor, nor to silence doubts, which may have
arisen from our own unskilful handling of the word of life,
by a bare appeal to the Divine Sovereignty, as if the Most
High were exalted above those eternal laws of justice
and goodness which are binding on all the reasonable
creatures He has made. This is nothing else than that sin
of accepting persons, which the God of truth and holiness
has so sternly and repeatedly condemned. Such erring
advocates of Divine truth, however sincere in their mis
chievous course, must expect to hear from Him the reproof
which Job addressed to his friends — " Will ye speak
wickedly for God ? and talk deceitfully for Him ? Will ye
accept persons ? will ye contend for God ? Is it good that
He should search you out ? He will surely reprove you,
if ye do secretly accept persons." We may and ought to
acquiesce humbly in the justice and wisdom of his ways,
when we cannot comprehend them. But we ought not to
be guilty of the presumption of claiming to manifest their
justice by principles, which we should discard at once as
injustice or folly, when applied to the conduct of earthly

92 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
sovereigns. By a reverent and humble search into Scrip
ture, we may gain some light, even here, upon the wisdom-
of His holy Providence. But if our dim vision leaves
lis still in twilight, or almost in darkness, let us
beware that we never confound the dark spectres that
flit before our eyes, and which will be dispelled by
one glimpse of the Sovereign Goodness, with the real
lineament's of the Only Good and the Supremely Wise.
Clouds and darkness may now be round about Him ;
but of this we may have full assurance, that justice
and judgment are the strong and eternal foundations of
His throne.
I. Let us first inquire, with humility, why man was
created with a nature so different from that of angels, and
constituted with an earthly body, which would be the
inlet of a new variety of temptations? Why was he
fashioned of the dust of the ground, instead of being
formed, like celestial spirits, by a pure act of creative
power, and with a purely spiritual being ?
That the constitution of human nature does open a
Avider range for temptations to evil, is not only the voice
of natural reason, but seems directly asserted in the word
of God. Such is, perhaps, the true sense of that passage
in Gen. vi. which has caused so much discussion — "My
Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he is
flesh also ; yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty
years." A contrast is here implied between some crea
tures, who were spirit only, and punished at once, and
man, who was flesh as well as spirit, and should therefore
have a long reprieve from deserved judgment. The sons
of God, mentioned just before, are thus implied to have
been angels, that had been guilty of crime unnatural and
doubly inexcusable, from their spiritual nature; and for

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. 93
whom there had been no such reprieve, as for the sinners
of mankind. But this plainly teaches that man's bodily
constitution, in the eye of the righteous Judge, Avas the
inlet of strong temptations, which would not have equally
assailed a purely spiritual being. Why, then, was he
created still more exposed to temptation than the angels
themselves before their fall ?
The real key to this difficulty seems to consist in
that fundamental contrast which, has been hinted before.
While all the attributes of Jehovah abide in perfect
harmony in His own infinite being, in His acts of
Providence they have each to be separately displayed—
never in complete isolation, but still with an alternate
predominance of Divine glory. The key-note in the
constitution of angels is the pure delight of God in the
sinless perfection of his reasonable creatures. He has
made all things for his own glory ; but it is the glory
of unselfishness. He, the Infinitely Good, does not seek
that his creatures should fall, that his purity may shine
the brighter by their guilt, and his blessedness by the
darkness of their misery. The selfish and cold-hearted
might, perhaps, if invested with almightiness, aim to
illustrate their own perfection by laying snares and pit
falls for the blind, and planning temptations for the weak
and mutable; but far be such thoughts from the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus, who shed tears of grief
over the sin of Jerusalem. And hence, in the creation
of angels, all things were disposed with a view to their
continued stability; as if the Holy One, having blessed
them so highly, and gifted them with a being so closely
resembling his own, with no external inlet of tempta
tion, would not even contemplate the possibility of their
wicked rebellion against the bountiful Creator. But

94 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
when the truth, already known to his Omniscience, had
become a mournful fact in the eyes of the universe, the
God of truth recognises the mutability of the creature
in all the arrangements of a second creation. The key
note, in the formation of man, is no longer sinless and
unfallen perfection, but the possibility of redemption out
of a fall distinctly foreseen. Seen in this light, what
might else appear dark and perplexing becomes lit up
with a mysterious beauty of Divine love. With the
entrance of sin redemption begins its course ; and the
voice of mercy, pointing to the promised Seed of the
Woman, takes precedence of the sentence which banished
the guilty sinner from the Paradise of God.
Now there are two great facts which meet our eye in
the Avord of God, and throw light on the present diffi
culty. The first is that no hint is ever given of redemp
tion, as either actual or possible, in the case of pure
spirits, who have once left their own habitation and
departed from their God. It is certainly conceivable
that their recovery may be possible in its own nature,
but that the holiness of God, from the asrarravated nature
of their rebellion, may choose to deny them the succours
of his grace. Yet, when we remember the riches of his
mercy in the most aggravated forms of human iniquity,
we may well incline to the other view, that his holiness'
simply acquiesces, with infinite consent, in a solemn fact,
which his Omniscience may recognise, that for such
creatures there is no possible remedy.
Secondly, it is equally clear that the whole economy of
man's redemption rests entirely upon the duality of his
being. The central fact on which it depends is thus
announced: "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us." "Forasmuch as the children are partakers

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. 95
of flesh and blood, he himself likewise took part of the
same, that through death he might destroy him that
had the power of death, that is, the devil ; and deliver
those who, through fear of death, Avere all their lifetime
subject to bondage. For verily he took not on him
the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of
Abraham." "God, sending his Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." In
these and other passages, the whole gist of redemption
is made to turn on the assumption of flesh by the Son
of God, whereby the Just and Holy One had a link of
natural unity with the fallen and sinful, and laid hold
upon the lost, to raise them into holiness again. Whether
we reflect upon the objective work of our Lord in his
atoning sacrifice, or the subjective application in the
moral power of his cross and resurrection, the same
truth is equally conspicuous. It is through that element
of man's nature which he does not share Avith angels,
and which at first made him more open to the wiles of
the Tempter, that alone he has the blessed hope of re
covery out of his ruin into the image of the incarnate
Son of God.
It is in full agreement with the same idea, that the
whole course of this recovery, in every righteous man, is
described as a perpetual conflict of the flesh and the
spirit, in which the flesh is tamed, subdued, mortified,
and abolished, that the spirit may be renewed day by
day; till at length the redeemed spirit receives back
the body, no longer fleshly, but spiritual and glorious,
to be its garment of light and praise for ever. And
hence we may safely infer, that man was created
Avith a twofold nature, although the inlets of tempta
tion were hereby increased, because in this way alone

96 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
his redemption was possible, and the Redeemer could
unite himself with a fallen race, and bear up, with
almighty grace, the sinking pillars of the moral universe.
Viewed in this light, as a provision for a future
redemption, the wisdom of the Divine workmanship
stands out in striking and bold relief. Pride was the
sin by which angels had fallen, and would continue
the grand snare to entangle and ruin the souls of
fallen men. What remedy, simply of a moral nature,
could tend more powerfully to their recovery, than the
consciousness of being formed out of the dust, and the
spectacle, daily before their eyes, of the sinner turning
to dust again? The first sentence was a deep moral
lesson, no less than a just punishment of sin, — "In the
sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread, until thou return
unto the earth, for out of it thou wast taken; for dust
thou art, and to dust thou shalt return." There is thus
a deep emphasis in the phrase of the Apostle, where he
calls the human frame "the body of our humiliation."
It is, since the Fall, the most universal sacrament and
standing ordinance of the Most High, by which He stains
the pride of all glory, and brings into contempt all the
honourable of the earth, Heathen moralists, in a
thousand forms, have taken up this humbling message.
"Hi motus animorum' atque hsec diserimina tanta
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quieseunt."
" His breath goeth forth, he turneth to his dust, in that
very day his thoughts perish." Earth to earth, ashes to
ashes, dust to dust, is a voice resounding in the ears of
each passing generation, to reclaim the prodigals from
their pride, and bring them back, in lowly penitence, to
the footstool of Divine mercy.

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. 97
II. But, assuming this twofold constitution of man's
nature, why were the whole race created in one common
root, out of which innumerable multitudes were to pro
ceed, when it was foreseen that their first parent would
fall from his original righteousness, and thereby involve
them in his own ruin?
Now it is plain that the reply to this question, to be
complete, must involve a decision on the degree of respon
sibility which attaches to the children of Adam for the sin
of their first parent, and the extent to which they are
personally implicated in the effects of his original crime.
This subject is so important, that it Avill require a separate
discussion. At present, there are a few more general
remarks, which Avill furnish a partial explication of this
new principle of the Divine economy.
And first, it may be observed that there has been a
tendency, in some modern divines, to draw a strong con
trast between the parental and the federal character of
Adam. They conceive that specific blessings were pro
mised him, by a special covenant, as the head of a whole
race, and that these chartered gifts alone were forfeited by
the whole race upon his transgression. This covenant of
works, made with our first parent, has been sometimes
drawn out with all the details of a legal document, in the
contracting parties, the conditions prescribed — the promise
of eternal life upon perfect obedience, and the punishment
of eternal death upon disobedience, to Adam himself, and
his whole race. But this large superstructure, whatever
portion of truth it may contain, rests upon a very narrow
foundation. This notion of an artificial covenant, and the
broad distinction between the federal and the parental
character, have no warrant at all on the face of the sacred
narrative- There is much reason to fear lest, by addi-
B. G

98 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
tions of our own, we should merely darken the counsel of
God, and increase the real perplexity of the subject by
every element of a purely arbitrary and positive kind,
which we introduce for the sake of a fancied symmetry.
The word covenant is never applied to this constitution in
Paradise, though Israel's transgression of the Sinai cove
nant is once compared to Adam's original breach of the
Divine law. And the word itself does not include, of
necessity, the idea of a mutual agreement, founded on the
deliberate consent of two parties, but is applied to any law
or promise which proceeds simply from the will of the
Divine Lawgiver. No trace, also, can be found in the
narrative, of a contrast between the parental and federal
character. On the contrary, every effect of Adam's sin
upon his posterity is clearly described as resulting from
the laws of human generation. The sacred text evidently
gives no hint of a specific term of probation, to be fol
lowed by the reward of a higher happiness. There is an
implied promise of continuance in his actual felicity, during
his obedience, with a threatening of death from the first
moment he should disobey. Nor can any trace be found
of a distinct and positive stipulation, affecting his posterity.
They would, by the original law of his creation, have been
born like their parent, had he continued upright and
holy ; and after his fall, they are simply described as being
still born in the likeness of their father. The only ele
ments of the moral problem, in which sovereignty appears,
are the original constitution of human nature, and the
solitary prohibition and warning. All besides is described
as the natural result of obedience on one side, or of dis
obedience on the other.
There are several objects, directly secured by this new
constitution of human nature, if the difficulty can be re-

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. 99
moved, which relates to the equity of God in dealing with
every individual of the race. In the first place, the creative
power of the Almighty was exceedingly glorified by this
new gift bestowed upon man, to be the parent of reason
able creatures, born in the image of God ; so as to reflect,
in a way unknown to angels, the living perfection of his
Creator, who is the Fountain of life and reason to the
whole universe. In the next place, there Avas a provision
in this new arrangement, if so it pleased the bountiful
Creator, without any fresh act of new creation, for a per
petual increase of holy worshippers of God; so that the
infinitude of the Divine nature, absolute and complete in
itself, might be imagined in this relative infinitude of
man's nature, which was created capable of unfolding,
enlarging, and multiplying without end, through the course
of innumerable generations. There was, further, a new
and variegated bond of love, by which the different mem
bers of the new race might be united to each other ; and
parental, conjugal, filial, and brotherly affections, in im
mense varieties of goodness, might diversify the simplicity
of creature love, which had been previously unfolded in
the fellowship of the holy angels in heaven. The Apostle
tells us that principalities and powers in heavenly places
learn, through the Church, the many-varied Avisdom of
God. And certainly, apart from the deeper wonders of
redemption, there were capacities of blessedness, and neAV
capabilities of loving and being loved, in man's original
law of being, the view of which might alone account for
the gladness of that hour when "the morning stars sang
together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."
Even in the prospect of the Fall, which quickly marred
this beautiful landscape of hope and praise, two great-
ends were plainly fulfilled by the same mysterious arrange- G 2

IOO THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
ment. The mournful lesson of mutability and corruption,
and the bright hope and promise of redemption, were made
at once objective truths to the whole race. Each member
of it would enter upon his separate probation, with the
dark shadow of a common calamity around and behind
him, and a common hope held out, like a bow of promise,
before him. He would thus be taught practically, from
the first rise of a personal consciousness of sin, the three
fold lesson of humiliation for a fallen estate, of dependence
on the promise of God for a possible restoration, and of
brotherly sympathy with all men; since they are seen to
be involved along with ourselves in one common fall, and
are visited alike, by the mercy of God, with the invitations
and promises of one wide and glorious redemption.
III. Another main difficulty, which has given occasion
to unbelieving spirits for questioning the wisdom and
goodness of God, is found in the probation imposed on
Adam, and the narrative of the threatening connected
with the Tree of Knowledge. The usual explanations of
Christian divines go a little way, and only a little way,
towards removing this perplexity. It is true that God,
as the Supreme Sovereign, must have had full right to
impose conditions upon his own creatures, and to require
obedience to his own command. It is further true that
the insignificance of the forbidden object would rather
aggravate, than excuse, wilful transgression of the Divine
command. But a harder question remains, — how far it
consists with the perfect benevolence of God, no less
than with his justice, to have planted this tree in Paradise ;
and after thus exposing his own creature to a real temp
tation, to suffer the entrance of a most subtle Tempter,
who would ply all his art, only too successfully, to mar the
beauty of God's works, by deceiving Man their new lord,

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. ioi
and in the person of our first parents destroy at once the
whole race of mankind.
The name of the tree itself has been found not easy to
explain. Some interpret by the foreseen event, that the
knowledge of good would be acquired by losing it; and
that of evil, by experiencing it. Others refer it to the
Lawgiver, Avho would test by this tree whether his sub
ject would be morally good or evil. Others expound it,
"the tree of prudence," because the faculty of prudence
was to be signally exercised by means of it. But it may
Avell be doubted whether any of these offers the true key
to its meaning. On the first view it should rather be
called, "the tree of the knoAvledge of evil," since only good
was experienced before tasting it, and only evil afterwards.
The second view is still more unnatural, since the phrase
clearly refers to Adam and Eve, and not to the Almighty.
The third view agrees very ill, either with the form of the
temptation, or with the words of God, when Adam was
expelled from Paradise — "Behold, the man is become as
one of us, to know good and evil." For although these
are often stated to be a solemn irony, a comparison with
the previous statements, Gen. ii. 9, 17, iii. 5, 6, 7, will at
least render it very doubtful whether this can be the true
and full meaning.
Let us now inquire whether a careful comparison of
revealed truths will not reflect a fuller light on this affect
ing narrative, and do much to clear away the mists which
have been thrown up, from the evil heart of unbelief, to
obscure the wisdom and goodness of the Creator in this
first main act of Providence towards the race of mankind.
Now if we assume, as appears to have been often done,
that this avenue of temptation was arbitrarily introduced
by the Almighty Creator for the mere pleasure of dis-

102 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
playing his own sovereignty, and that the dreadful sen
tence was affixed in the same arbitrary manner, includmg
the fearful doom of eternal misery ; we may, by an effort
of faith, adore the Divine justice in this arrangement, but
it must seem strangely isolated from the sister perfection
of a full and perfect benevolence. And if we further
assume that the guilt of this act, by the same arbitrary
decree of God, or even by the consent of Adam, ignorant
of what the promise involved, was extended to the infants
of all coming, generations, and brought them under a sen
tence of everlasting misery, it is difficult not to feel the
doctrine to be wholly at variance with our conceptions of
the Divine justice itself. And it does not relieve the diffi
culty, to speak of the rich grace manifested in redemption.
For unless the original sentence reveal the lineaments of a
spotless equity, no later acts of grace can remove the im
putation on the Divine government. Grace loses its very
nature, if it needs to be resorted to, in order to vindicate
the justice and equity of the sentence for Avhich it pro-«
vides a remedy. All doubts respecting the wisdom, equity,
and goodness of the Almighty, in the history of the Fall,
must paralyse the moral power of the Gospel, and rob
that celestial message of all the brightness of its glory.
But there is no need that these dark clouds should be.
suffered to obscure our view of the Divine goodness in
this original dispensation to mankind. For, in the first
place, it is clear that the presence or absence of tempta
tion did not depend simply on the presence of the tree of
knowledge. Angels had sinned and fallen, without any
such visible test ; and it was equally possible that man
might copy the sad example of their rebellion. The law
of obedience and love was essential, in its very nature, to
man's felicity; and its transgression through pride and

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. 103
ambition, without any visible symbol, would equally have
plunged him into a gulf of moral darkness. The way of
life and of death was before him by the very fact of his
moral and spiritual being; and the reality of his proba
tion did not depend on any arbitrary choice or volition of
his Creator. Divine Omniscience knew the solemn fact ;
Divine Omnipotence did not call it into being. It followed,
as an inseparable shadoAv, on that gift of free agency, by
which man, like angels, was created in the image of God.
The same probation, through which the angels were
still passing, and by which so many principalities in
heavenly places had fallen, was inseparable from the moral
being of man. It only remained open to the Divine
goodness to diminish its perils, and contract the danger
within the narrowest compass. The strength of the snare
depended mainly on the ignorance of the creature, whose
narrow understanding was placed between two vast un
knowns, of which the good appeared to have a narrow
and steep entrance, and the evil a wide and easy access ;
since the way of life is one, but disobedience and self-will
may assume a thousand forms. It was worthy of the
Divine wisdom to provide a remedy, so far as was possible
with the unfallen creature, for this deceptive contrast
between the narrowness of the good and the width and
largeness of the evil. The twofold nature of man supplied
the means for this Divine provision. The body of man
was a kind of reflection and image of all the powers of
his spirit, and the outward world a mirror for all the
unexplored truths of the moral universe. The Almighty
Creator condescended, then, to construct a faithful type
of man's inevitable probation, and to place it openly
before his eyes. The tree of life was a type of the im
mortal life and unfading joy to be found by communion

104 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
with his bountiful Creator, and submission to his wise
and holy command of reverence and love. The tree of
knowledge of good and evil denoted the tempting range
of intellectual enterprise, by which he might seek to pry
but and fathom all the unexplored mysteries of the moral
universe. The rich variety' of goodly trees in the garden,
all accompanying the tree of life, proclaimed loudly that
goodness was no narrow and contracted thing, but that
obedience was linked with a large and inexhaustible en
joyment of the Divine bounty. The solitary tree of knoAV-
ledge, seductive by its name, but standing alone amidst
the large variety of freely imparted blessings, taught that
the way of death, though wide in its seductiveness to the
finite intellect of the creature, was one in principle in the
sight of Omniscience ; and its avoidance a small, insig
nificant sacrifice, amidst such treasures of actual and pos
sible enjoyment. Finally, the solemn warning of the
consequences which would follow the indulgence of this
vain, intellectual thirst for knowledge hurtful to the
creature, completed the economy of Divine benevolence.
The way of life, though narrow in its entrance, Avas repre
sented in its blessed effects by all the countless flowers
and fruits of Paradise, with the ambrosial tree of life as
the centre and crown of the lovely vision; while the down
ward path of temptation, contracted within its narrowest
limits, and represented by one forbidden tree alone, was
joined with a warning of its results, so simply and sternly
solemn, that it might have been expected to deter any
sinless creature from ever daring to set his foot within
that dark valley of the shadow of death.
This view of the nature and meaning of the Divine
prohibition rests on no doubtful and fanciful theory. It
results directly from two simple premises, combined to1-

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. 105
gether; the essential laws of moral probation, which a
little Calm reflection must reveal, and that typical and
symbolical character of the visible creation, and especi
ally of Eden and Paradise, which is clearly taught us
in the word of God. Once let us recognise this double
truth, and the consequence appears unavoidable. The
tree of knowledge of good and evil was no arbitrary
source of temptation, planted by a sovereign caprice
within the reach of man. It was really a type and pic
tured image, into which the Divine love had contracted
the possibilities of evil, so as to strip them of their de
lusive width and vastness, and by a faithful warning to
announce the fatal gulf to which they would lead. And
thus the justice of the Creator is not more signally dis
played in the whole arrangement, than the riches of His
wisdom, fulfilling the laws of a pure and deep benevo
lence. To the eye which has attained any clearness of
spiritual vision, it is a signal proof that the Almighty
has no pleasure in the death of a sinner, but uses every
motive of experience, hope, and fear, to allure his sinless
creatures onward in the happy pathway of holiness, and
to deter them from the tempting, but gloomy and down
ward road, of sin and misery.
This same view of the typical significance of the Tree
of Knowledge alone reconciles all the allusions to it in the
sacred history. The two rival constructions, which regard
it as a tree of prudence, or a tree connected with the ex
perimental knowledge of evil, each expresses only half the
truth. The gift implied is the intellectual knowledge of
good and evil, in the full meamng of the terms. God
alone is essentially good, and every creature, by contrast,
in one way or other, in act or capability, in limitation or
defectibility, is essentially evil. (Matt. xix. 17.) Yet the

106 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
creature, as God's workmanship,, so long as it abides in
communion with the Supreme Good, may partake of His
goodness, and remain unconscious of its own inseparable
shame of mutability, and liability to guilt and ruin. The
same knowledge, which to the Infinitely Holy One is the,
self-consciousness of infinite and exclusive perfection, to
the creature is the fatal consciousness of either actual
or possible evil, too deep to be fathomed by the thought of
man. The All-wise and All-gracious God does not seek,,
then, to expose the souls He has made to this terrible dis
covery. He is content to receive from them that narrower
and more partial recognition- of his creative bounty and
goodness, which alone, in their unfallen and sinless state,
they are able to render before his throne. He even em
ploys all possible persuasives of heavenly wisdom, to deter
them from the fatal luxury of a wider gaze into the vast
gulf of all possible things, there to discover the dark
shadow of their own possible shame, guilt, and hopeless
ruin. But when, in spite of all his gracious prohibitions,
they will interpret the commands of his infinite love into
the restrictions of a selfish envy, and rush blindly on their
own destruction, He begins to unfold the deeper abysses
of his own eternal goodness ;. in order to recover the lost
and guilty, rebels, so far as they are still recoverable, to
holiness and happiness, deeper, fuller, and more enduring,,
than that which they had recklessly cast away, through
the pride that refused to obey the counsels of Infinite
Wisdom. On this view of the tree of knowledge, its relation to
the subject from which it derives its, name, the knoAvledge
of good and evil, is exactly the same with the relation of
the body to the soul of man. It was the exponent selected,
by the good pleasure ofthe Creator, to reveal and embody

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. 107
a higher truth, which thereby was linked with it inseparably.
All the allusions to it agree fully with this explanation.
When the Tempter solicits the Avoman, it is with a half
truth, that veiled a practical falsehood. It was true that
their eyes would be opened by tasting the forbidden
tree. It Avas true that it was pleasant to the eyes, and
a tree to be desired to make one wise. It was true that,
in this one particular, it would render man like God, by
partaking of a knowledge which the Creator seemed to
reserve for his OAvn peculiar prerogative. But the false
hood lay here, in concealing that this knowledge had been
reserved, because it was too awful and solemn for the crea
ture to bear without ruin. The depth of possible evil it
revealed was too fearful for the finite mind to gaze upon,
without being dazzled and overcome. The intellect would
have dragged down the will along with it ; since it would
be impossible to look down from a narrow ledge without a
battlement upon a dark and infinite abyss, without being
precipitated headlong by the terrible vision. And it lay
further in the blasphemous suggestion, that God denied
the gift out of envy, and that the threatening, being an
arbitrary act of power, was too severe and unjust ever to
be fulfilled. The result throws further light on the moral signifi
cance of the name. "Their eyes were opened, and they
knew that they were naked." Their nakedness was a fact,
before they tasted of the tree, but until then they did not
know it. They had no consciousness of defect, no sense of
shame, no perception that they stood in need of clothing.
The truth denoted by their nakedness cannot then be
moral evil, since they were naked while still unfallen. It
signified rather the, essential defectibility of the creature,
9& a creature, which might be veiled by their ignorance,

108 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
while they stood in sinless perfection, but was known to:
their Maker from the first, and as soon as they themselves
knew it, was the source of mingled shame and terror. It
is not said that the fact of their transgression led to their
use of fig-leaves, or to their concealment when they heard
the voice of God. Their transgression discovered to them
a great truth of their being, which was true before they
discovered it. Their terror did not arise, simply and im
mediately, from the sinful act; but from the knowledge they
had attained of the fundamental gulf which separates the
defectible creature, liable to every depth of apostasy and
rebellious wickedness, from the indefectible and glorious
I AM, who alone is incapable of being tempted with evil,
and on whom its dark and baleful shadows can have no
power. And hence, too, arises the need of a Divine
clothing, or that imparted and supernatural grace by which
the creature faculties, naked in themselves, are invested
with a new life, and put on the beautiful garments of a
living and heaven-imparted righteousness.
It results from these remarks, that the sentence of the
Judge is no mere irony, as many have held it to be, and
have thereby obscured the calm and almost plaintive
dignity of the simple announcement — " Behold, the man
is become as one of us, to know good and evil." They have
already been dealt with as criminals, for their wilful rebel
lion. They have now to be dealt with as creatures whose
intellect has become at once enlarged and diseased, by
tasting of the tree of knowledge. They would now have
learned, by the bitter effects of the forbidden tree, and the
plain contrast with the tree of life, to long, if possible, to
repair their error, by tasting of the tree which they had
neglected before, and which then would have been a
pledge of immortality. But the type was now shattered

ON THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN. 109
by their sin ; and what before might have conveyed or pre
served life, both for the body and spirit, could now exercise
its virtue upon the body alone. The inner and higher
blessins: had been sundered, when sin entered into that
Paradise, which had once been a type of heaven. And
now immortality in the flesh would be a curse, and not a
blessing, and would seal down the fallen spirit in its guilt,
like the rebellious angels, without the hope of redemption.
Hence the expulsion was an act of mingled mercy and
justice — of justice with reference to the original standing
of man in Paradise, and of mercy when considered in the
light of his actual fall. It is not now in yielding to the
instinctive desires of his fallen creatures, that the Al
mighty can manifest the reality and depth -of his own
love. It must rather be proved by that severe and whole
some discipline, which teaches them the exceeding bitter
ness of rebellion against their Maker ; and, writing vanity
and vexation of spirit upon all the joys of sense, shuts
them up to the earnest longing for the promised Redeemer
of the lost, and for their own restoration to the Divine
image ; when they shall have access once more to the tree
of life, which blooms for ever in the midst of the heavenly
Paradise.

CHAPTER VII.
ON THE PERMISSION OF SATANIC TEMPTA
TION.
One great perplexity, in the History of the Fall, re
mains to be noticed; and it is so intimately connected with
the later course of Providence, as revealed in Scripture,
that it calls for separate consideration. Why was the
mighty Tempter permitted to ply his arts upon our first
parents, to their ruin ? And why, since the Fall, has the
same mysterious agency of evil been suffered still to work
busily from age to age, as if the Most High designed to
aggravate to the uttermost the moral calamities of a
fallen race ?
We are not at liberty here, without evident falsehood,
to resort to the supposition of any strict, absolute, and
metaphysical impossibility. The Prince of evil, as a
creature, must be under the control of the Almighty
Creator; and He who will at last make his sword to
approach him in judgment, and execute upon him the
sentence of doom, must have been able, from the first, to
interdict him entirely from the exercise of his murderous
arts, either on our first parents, or on the later generations
of mankind. We have here to contemplate an exercise of
Divine wisdom, not in the recognition of an eternal necessity,
anterior to any positive act of the Supreme Will ; but in

PERMISSION OF SA TANIC TEMPT A TION. 1 1 1
a sovereign choice, where either alternative, in its own
nature, was equally possible. There is no natural, neces
sary, inevitable connexion between Satanic agency and
human probation. The malignant Adversary and Temp-*
ter might, from the first moment of his fall, have been
sealed in the abyss, and prohibited from all active efforts
to deceive the nations. How can we account, then, for
the solemn fact which Scripture reveals, that he was per
mitted to enter even in Paradise, and has continued to
exercise his powerful seductions through the long course
of six thousand years ?
Now it must be plain, first of all, that every arbitraiy
restraint on the activity of free agents, except as a penal
visitation for open crime, must so far violate the simplicity
and dignity of God's moral government. The creatures
were formed to display the Divine glory. And this can
only be by the development of their own powers, so that
they may be blessed and a mutual blessing in the right
improvement of them, and only in the case of their delibe->
rate abuse the Divine justice be revealed in their deserved
punishment. There seems no middle course, consistent
with a just conception of the Divine wisdom, between the
refusal to create, lest the gift of existence should be
abused, or the concession of liberty to every moral agent
to manifest freely its own character up to the time of
actual judgment, in the full assurance that the wisdom of
God can overrule all their acts and purposes, whether good
or evil, for some final issue worthy of his own greatness,
On this ground alone, it is difficult to see how the Infinite
Wisdom could have interdicted the Prince of evil from all
activity of seduction, unless by executing the sentence
upon him at once for his original crime. But surely the
Divine forbearance and righteousness will both receive

112 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
a more signal display by the course of government which
Scripture reveals, than if judgment had been inflicted
at once upon the lost archangel, before his malice had
been proved, in all its intensity of guilt, by his persevering
conspiracy against the peace, order, and happiness of the
whole moral universe.
But does not such a course wear an aspect of cruelty
towards Man himself, the object of these spiritual temp
tations ? Here the question will arise — Were these temp
tations due to Satan alone, or would they have still
existed, had the Tempter been sealed in the abyss ? The
true answer is self-evident. The secret and inevitable
spring of temptation was in man himself, and neither in
the Creator nor in the great Adversary. "Let no man
say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God
cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any
man. But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away
of his own lust, and enticed." The form and circumstances
of the trial alone Avere affected by the permitted activity
of Satan. Its substance must have been the same, if the
Tempter had never appeared on the scene. The know
ledge of good and evil, in their height and depth, as they
exist in the region of eternal possibility, would have been
equally fatal. The liability of the finite intellect to long
after this dangerous knowledge, would have been still the
same. The only means of prevention, so far as we can
discern, which the Divine Avisdom could employ, would be
those which were actually employed ; to link the inevit
able danger with a type, which might serve to shoAv its
reality, and the utter unreasonableness of transgression,
and to reveal, in a simple and earnest warning, the fatal
consequences that must ensue. Left to his own reflections
.alone, it is conceivable that the catastrophe might be

PERMISSION OF SATANIC TEMPTATION. 1 13
longer delayed ; but, so far as we can reason at all on the
choice of a free agent, we may reckon it morally certain
that the fatal moment would come at last. After all the
other trees of the garden had been tasted and enjoyed, the
thought — why this solitary restriction, and this too of
a blessing, like knowledge, far more precious than all
those pleasant fruits which merely gratify the palate —
would recur again and again with a fresh seductiveness,
and would prevail at last over the fading recollection of
the Divine command.
Let us suppose, then, to borrow the conception of our
great poet, that the vigilance of the angel Avatchers had
been crowned with success, and the Prince of darkness,
detected in his first attempt to transgress the bounds of
Paradise, had never been suffered to enter again within
the sacred territory. The gain, on man's part, it is highly
probable, would have only been a short, and possibly a
very short delay, of a sin to which a vain desire of for
bidden knowledge would have urged him, soon or late,
without the impulse of any external suggestion. But the
loss, on the other side, would have been immense. The
moral guilt of the crime, on his part, would have been
deprived of its chief, perhaps its only mitigation. The
Avhole of that righteous displeasure, which was now shared
between the three criminals, and fell chiefly on the mali
cious Tempter, who knew what would be the consequences
of his own success, and delighted in his murderous lie,
must then have rested exclusively on Man himself. He
Avould have been, morally, a second Satan, the sole author
of his own crime.
But when we turn from the sin itself to the means of
recovery, the benevolence and wisdom of God's actual
providence, in' the permission of Satanic agency, are still
B. H

114 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
more conspicuous. All experience proves that it is a hard
and almost hopeless problem to recover a soul, once captive
under the power of evil, to purity again. How can the
spirit hate itself? How can it strive against a mere
shadow, which has no separate existence, but dogs its foot
steps, and claims to form a part of its own inmost being ?
Some help towards this difficult work is found in the
duality of man's nature. The spirit may thus learn to
strive earnestly against the flesh, and see in its lusts the
ceaseless tempters to evil. But all the varieties of evil
are not easily referred to the bodily appetites alone. It
is a mighty help, then, in the task of regarding evil, not
as a part of ourselves, but a separate foe, when we can
actually refer every temptation to a real, powerful, and
malicious Adversary, who is perpetually bent on leading
us astray. The doctrine of Satanic influence thus be
comes one main and most effective engine in the work
of our moral recovery. It is very hard to teach souls,
degraded and stupefied by sin, tp realize the necessary
conflict with evil, in its abstract form, and to view it as
a power which must be resisted and vanquished, or else
prove their ruin. But the dullest and most ignorant
of men may well be stirred up to seriousness and vigi
lance, when he hears the Apostolic warning, and recoo-nises
it for a revealed and certain truth — " Be sober, be vigilant,
for your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, walketh
about, seeking whom he may devour." And thus the
permission of this great Tempter to exercise his utmost
subtlety of deception on the minds of men, while it may
aggravate the wickedness of the wicked into a fouler in
tensity, is a powerful means which the Divine Wisdom
knows well how to employ, for arresting the careless,
alarming the secure, humbling the self-confident, and

PERMISSION OF SATANIC TEMPTATION. 115
creating a wholesome and most profitable reaction in the
minds of sinful men ; by which they may learn to see the
nature of transgression in its true light, flee from it as a
serpent, and seek for refuge from the dangers which assail
their weakness in the protecting care and love of the
great Shepherd and Bishop of souls.
We need only to read the Scriptures of the New Testa-,
ment with care, or study the actual history of the Church
of Christ, in order to see the reality of this Divine purpose
in the suffered continuance of Satanic temptation. What
an emphasis of love it gives to all the history of our blessed
Lord himself, that "he went about doing good, and
healing all that were oppressed of the devil !" What a.
startling lesson it reads to the whole Church, when we see
the Tempter daring to assail the Son of God in the wil
derness, filling the heart of one of the twelve Apostles to
betray his Master, and then hurrying him into his awfuL
doom ; and again, thrusting in falsehood and deceit into the
bosom of the Church, as soon as it was founded, and resist
ing the progress of the truth, wherever its messengers
appeared ! And when the word of prophecy draws aside
the mysterious veil of Providence, we see the overthrow of
this great Adversary linked inseparably with every step of
progress toward the world's redemption ; so that, until he
is finally cast into the fiery lake of judgment, the full
brightness of redeeming love, and the perfect reign of
peace and righteousness, can never dawn upon our troubled
world. Now if the laws of the Divine government required
that the Tempter should be permitted to exert his activity
and display his malice, with only a moral counteraction,
they would equally imply that no absolute and total re
striction should be placed on his use of instruments, which
H2

1 1 6 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
it lay within the range of his capacity to appropriate and
employ. The serpent, though sinless in itself, was a form
of life, typical, as science itself seems to show, of evil,
under its features of tortuosity, defect, and degradation.
Its power, in all its varieties, to fascinate, to poison, or to
crush its prey, implies a natural instinct, designed by anti
cipation to image forth the processes and results of moral
evil. The introduction of such a creature into Paradise
was essential to its typical completeness, but also implied
a Divine foresight of evil that was about to come. And
when the mighty Tempter, with the subtlety of an arch
angel's perverted wisdom, seized on an instrument so
adapted to his purpose, a new means would be provided,
through his own act, for exposing his real character, and
the immense degradation which had passed over his ori
ginal faculties by their wicked abuse and perversion. The
enmity between the race of mankind and the serpent
tribe, which formed part of the judicial sentence of God,
became a standing prophecy of Satan's final overthrow.
It proclaimed the Divine purpose that, after enjoying for
long ages no better food for his mighty spirit than the
foul garbage of sin and corruption, he should at last be
completely overcome by the promised Seed of the woman,
and his works of darkness be abolished for ever in the
kingdom of God.

CHAPTER VIII.
ON ORIGINAL SIN.
The doctrine of Original Sin has always been felt to
be one of the most difficult and mysterious in the whole
range of Christian theology. The explanations of Divines
have been almost as various and conflicting as the objec
tions of unbelievers have been unremitting and zealously
sustained. How can millions, themselves innocent, be
involved in moral guilt by another's transgression ? How
can it consist with the justice of God to inflict on them
the severest penalty, and even denounce them as worthy
of eternal misery, for an act of which multitudes among
them never so much as heard, and the breach of a cove
nant to which they were never consenting parties ? And
even if such an extension of moral guilt beyond the first
agent to millions of his posterity were just in itself, how
can that constitution of things agree with the Divine be
nevolence, which led to such fatal results, and involved a
whole race in degradation and moral ruin for a single
transgression of their parent, long before their own birth ?
This is the hard problem, which has exercised the deepest
thoughts of reflecting and pious minds, and given birth
to various hypotheses to remove the immense difficulty.
There is no subject more fundamental to the present in-

Il8 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
quiry, since no aspect of Providence has suggested so many
gloomy and unwilling doubts, or wilful and open blasphe
mies, against the wisdom and goodness of the Almighty.
It has appeared to multitudes in Christian lands a dark
and spectral vision, which has scared them away from the
revelation of the Bible, to discover a Deity of purer and
higher benevolence in the seducing bye-paths of human
speculation. The views of this doctrine among Christians them
selves have varied not a little from each other. At one
extreme we find the creed of Pelagius, that the sin of
Adam affects his race purely by way of example, and
that each individual is born into the world in a state
answering almost entirely to that of Adam before he
fell. At the other extremity of the scale may be placed
the high Augustinian view, or perhaps rather the off
shoot from it by Illyricus, who maintained that original
sin was a positive substance, transmitted from Adam to
all his children. Apart, however, from this gross con
ception, which has had very few patrons, the view itself
is, that Adam and his posterity constitute simply one
moral person ; that they all existed in him from the first,
sinned when he sinned, and fell when he fell; that his
crime was committed by each of them, as Avell as by
him ; that their birth in a mortal state, and with a cor
rupt will, is the equitable punishment of a sin they have
previously committed, as well as the source of all their
later transgressions ; and that in virtue of it every one
of them, infants and adults alike, is justly under the sen
tence of everlasting torment and misery.
This more rigid form of the doctrine, which Augus
tine applied consistently to prove the eternal damnation
pf all heathen and unbaptized infants, has found too little

ON ORIGINAL SIN. Tig
response in the conscience either of worldly or pious men,
to have passed current without undergoing various modi
fications. Two or three of these varieties call for a brief
notice. And first, it has been usual, among the Reformed
Divines, to conceive the whole transaction between God
and our first parents under the light of a formal cove
nant, to which the name has been given, the covenant
of works. The Creator is supposed to have promised
to Adam, for himself and his posterity, eternal life in
heaven, after a limited period of probation, as the reward
of his sinless obedience to the Divine will, including
this one positive test of submission in abstaining from
the tree of knowledge. On the other hand, the penalty
of disobedience Avas to be the forfeiture of God's favour
and image, and of the grace of the Spirit, and imme
diate exposure to temporal, spiritual, and eternal death,
both for himself and all his descendants. Adam ac
cepted the covenant, not only on his own behalf, but for
the whole race. He sinned, and incurred the penalty,
which was exacted according to the full Avidth of the
original covenant.
The doctrine has been further modified by some re
cent authors. The main stress is still laid on the notion
of a special and voluntary covenant ; and a wide contrast
is set up between Adam's parental and federal character.
But the Adamic constitution, like the Gospel, is said to
be a covenant of grace, and not of works. It did not
refer to a debt of Divine equity, but to gifts of sovereign
grace, bestowed conditionally by charter and covenant
alone. The promise was continued life in Paradise, so
long as he abstained from the forbidden tree, and in
cluded also an assurance of Divine help to keep him from

1 20 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
falling in any other way. The result of the fall was
subjection to temporal death, and the privation of super
natural grace, with a penal withdrawment of the Holy
Spirit, so as to lead to actual transgression in every
instance, as soon as the moral faculties begin to reveal
themselves. Original Sin, on this hypothesis, is a pri
vation of special gifts, to which man had no claim
•superadded to his first • state of creation. These were
Tbestowed under covenant, on one simple condition, upon
Adam and the whole race, and were lost for ever when
Adam fell.
Others, to lessen the moral difficulty, would lower the
meaning of the penalty. Some affirm that the death of
the body is the sole result of Adam's sin to his posterity ;
while others include the death of the soul, in the sense
of annihilation. On their view, natural immortality is
a direct fruit and privilege of redemption only. The
Articles of the Church of England make Original Sin con
sist simply in the fault or corruption of man's nature,
•derived from Adam by natural generation. But, in the
systems of most Reformed Divines, it includes another
¦element, and the imputation of the primal act of sin is
imagined to precede, and account for, this actual partici
pation of a corrupted nature by all mankind.
These varieties, which might easily be multiplied to
a great extent, show the obscurity which still rests upon
the doctrine in the minds of thoughtful men. St Au
gustine, whose writings are occupied with it so largely,
and have done so much to fashion it into its popular
form, remarks himself that " there is here, perhaps, some
secret which is reserved to be made known hereafter, by
the grace of God, to holy men." And certainly we may
hope, if we follow simply the light of Scripture, and use

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 12 1
all the helps that sound reason and an upright conscience
can supply, to approach nearer to a just view of the Divine
economy, and clear away some of those aspersions which
have been so widely cast against the wisdom and good
ness of the Judge of all the earth.
I. It will be a first step towards removing the seem
ing antithesis between the doctrine of Original Sin and
the voice of natural conscience, if we observe attentively
the real proportions of revealed truth, which have been
often departed from, very widely, in human and artificial
systems of theology. Some Divines appear to have thought
that the history of Adam's fall supplies a strictly logical
and scientific key to all the records of sin and wicked
ness in the later history of mankind, so that every parti
cular sin might be referred to it, and explained by it,
like the motions of the planets by the law of gravitation.
Hence the personal element in all transgression, which at
once appeals directly to the conscience, has been thrown,
in their systems, completely into the shade, and a kind
of mechanical necessity has replaced the real and eternal
laws of moral probation. Such a course, instead of arous
ing the conscience, has thrown it into a deadly slumber,
and puts a plea of fatalism into the lips of the careless
and profane, which tends directly to defeat the main object
of the Christian revelation.
When we turn to the Scriptures themselves, how dif
ferent are the proportions in which the truth of God is
set before us ! We seem to have escaped from a stifling
and mephitic atmosphere, where the springs of conscience
are weighed down by the incubus of a hopeless necessity
of evil, to breathe the free mountain air of heaven, and
brace our spirits by the most moving, earnest, and loving
appeals, addressed immediately to the individual con-

122 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
sciences of men. The fact, indeed, which all experience
sets before us, of the wide prevalence of moral evil among
men, is recognised in every page; and the wide range
and fearful depth of ungodliness in the human heart are
portrayed in the most solemn and alarming colours.
But it is recognised also, throughout, as an ultimate
fact, which the word of God affirms, because it is true,
and needful to be known, but does not pretend to resolve
it into any prior cause that can. render it less mysterious.
Never once, throughout the Old Testament, or in the
histories of the New Testament, are we taught to ex
plain the dark secret by any reference to the Fall of
Adam. Once, however, and only once, in the Epistles
of the New Testament, this common relation of the whole
race to its first parent is declared to be either the oc
casion, or the cause, of the universal reign of sin and
death. But the simple fact that the Holy Spirit has
only once presented the truth of our moral being in this
aspect, Avhile appeals to the individual conscience are
repeated in every page of Scripture, and almost in every
sentence, should teach us how widely artificial systems
of theology have often departed from the true standard
of practical wisdom, in dealing with the hearts and under
standings of sinful men ; and what a prejudice they may
thus have created against the whole superstructure of
revealed religion, when it seemed to be founded on a
doctrine of a fatal necessity of moral evil, destructive to
all the moral instincts of our spiritual being.
But besides the utter inversion of the Scriptural pro
portion of truth in too many systems, by which the
attention has been diverted from our own. sin to the
transgression pf Adam, and the individual conscience
deadened and pacified with a false and fatal excuse, that

ON ORIGINAL SIN.

God himself, and Adam our forefather, are mainly charge
able with our misdoings; when we compare the usual
forms of the doctrine with the simple statements of
Scripture, Ave can hardly escape the conclusion, that
serious liberties have been used, in the way of addition
and invention, to render it more symmetrical and com
plete, and fill up the imperfect outlines of one or another
artificial theory. These additions must be firmly cleared
away, before we can hope to see the lineaments of
Divine wisdom and goodness in this fundamental law of
God's dealings with the human race.
And, first of all, the assumption of a formal covenant,
in which Adam contracted with God on behalf of all his
posterity, has no foundation whatever in the inspired
narrative. There was doubtless a covenant, in that
simpler sense Avhich the Greek word StaOrjKrj naturally
bears ; or a disposition and arrangement of the Supreme
Lawgiver, with a command proclaiming his will, and a
penalty on disobedience. But no trace at all can be
found of a mutual compact, and still less of any formal
representation of Adam's unborn posterity. The com
mand to increase and multiply, the gift of dominion over
lower creatures, the statement that it Avas not good for
man to be alone, and the promise of a help meet for him,
were doubtless generic, and not simply personal, and
would apply prospectively to all Adam's children. But
this cannot prove the existence of any formal and federal
covenant. We should else be driven to the strange in
ference, that the serpent was a federal and covenant head
to the whole serpent tribe which shared in its sentence,
and Eve a distinct federal head to her own sex, to whom
her OAvn sentence applies in all later generations. Why,
then, resort to a supposition in the case of Adam alone,

1 24 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
of which the Scripture says not a word, and which leads
to absurd consequences, when applied to the other parties
in the same history ?
It has been assumed, indeed, that the transfer of
Adam from the spot where he was formed of the dust,
to the earthly Paradise, implied a new relation, which
was then first assumed, and that a federal character was
then superadded to his previous condition, as the parent
of the future race. But this also is a gratuitous as
sumption, without the least evidence in the sacred text.
It would be more naturally inferred from the record
itself, that if children had been born in Paradise before
Adam's fall, the same law would have applied to each
member of the race ; and that whoever transgressed would
alone have been expelled from the holy ground, involving
their unborn children in the loss, and have become mortal
along with all their own posterity.
A further assumption, even more entirely groundless,
is that a limited season of probation was assigned, and
the rewara promised of translation to heaven, if that
period should elapse without transgression. This idea
has been justly abandoned by one of the latest writers
on the subject of the Fall, as entirely devoid of Scrip
tural evidence. "From the confidence," he remarks,
"with which some men speak where Divine revelation
is silent, it is wonderful that they have not assigned the
precise duration of the probation allotted to him. The
words of the record do not justify such statements.
Nothing was expressly promised to Adam. The promise
is merely couched in the threatening ; and a threatening
of death in case of disobedience cannot possibly include
more than a virtual assurance of remaining in possession
of the life he then enjoyed, if he did not disobey."

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 1 25
Again, to vindicate the wisdom of the federal compact,
supposed to have been made with Adam expressly on
behalf of his children, an appeal has been made to the
powerful motives thus enlisted on the side of obedience.
Much eloquence has been sometimes employed, to amplify,
on this ground, the aggravated enormity of Adam's guilt,
and the wisdom of the original covenant, as increasing
the moral probability of man's perseverance. Thus it-
has been argued by the able writer already quoted :
"How unparalleled the force of the motives which Avere
brought to bear upon Adam ! How incredibly superior
to those which have been brought to bear upon any
other man, except the God-man, Christ Jesus ! The
condition of the whole race was practically in his hands.
He could bless the world, or destroy the world ; and he
chose to destroy it. He put forth his hand, and took
the fruit, which denotes the spontaneity of the act, and
ate it, and brought death upon himself and the race.
Can any sin, even the sin of Judas in betraying his
Lord, or the sin of the Jews in crucifying Him, or the
sin of the infidel in rejecting the inspired testimony
concerning Him, be compared in atrocity with the sin
of Adam in eating this apple ? Transgression gathers
its guilt from the magnitude of motives to avoid it, and
from the amount of ruin and wretcheduess into which it
plunges. WTho, then, can calculate, the guilt Adam
contracted, in eating the forbidden fruit?"
Now far be it from any Christian to extenuate the sin,
Avhich experience and revelation have conspired to mark
Avith awful colours. But it is not the less our duty to
"judge righteous judgment" in comparing the sin of our
first parent with our own. The statement just quoted is
excessive and untrue. It would falsify the first principles

126 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
of Divine equity, since we knoAV that the way of repentance
Avas open to Adam after his fall. But we are told that
there is a sin unto death, among Adam's children, for
Avhich there is no remedy, and all intercession is forbidden.
The sins of parents bring sorrow and misery upon their
children still ; and each of them has far greater helps for
realizing this possible diffusion of the consequences of his
transgression, than Adam can be supposed to possess,
before the peopling of the earth had begun. His means
of knowing the full significance of the threatening were
far less than sad experience has given to his posterity;
and the exhibition of the Divine goodness in creation is
far less complete and glorious than we have received in
the gospel of the Son of God. It evacuates all the moral
force of the great lesson taught us by the Fall, when we
represent the first transgression as some unequalled and
unexampled atrocity. The real instruction which it teaches
is to be found in the opposite direction. For if a single
act of sin, with far inferior light, and scantier experience
than we have now attained, has let in upon the world such
a sea of miseries, of how much sorer punishment must they
be counted worthy, who surpass the guilt of their first
parent, sin against clearer and, fuller light of truth, and do
despite to the Spirit of grace, when he calls them to re
pentance, and opens to them the way of life once more
through the dying agonies of the Son of God ?
In reality, the Scriptures themselves yield us no trace
of this broad and total contrast betAveen the relation which
Adam bore to his own posterity, and that which is sus
tained by any individual parent with regard to his own
progeny. The truth that God visits the sins of the fathers
upon their children is stated and enforced many times
with reference to others, and only once or twice is applied

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 1 27
to him. His standing as the parent of the whole race
Avould alone serve to render him a type of Christ, in a
way that would apply to no other person, whose parental
influence must be confined to his own descendants. And
this parental connexion with a posterity, so as to be a
source of a curse or a blessing, is both earlier and more
emphatically revealed with regard to others, as Canaan,
Abraham, Jacob, and Esau, than with reference to Adam
himself. The effects of his sin are doubtless more com
prehensive, since they include the whole race; and more
visibly conspicuous, since they involve the contrast be
tween sinlessness and a fallen condition. But we ought
to pause and require distinct evidence of the fact, before
we assume that they rest on some different principle than-
is involved in every other case of parental responsibility.
With regard to the penalty denounced, there have
been opposite deviations from the testimony of Scripture.
He must have read its statement with a superficial eye,
Avho can think that the first death, the sentence involved
in the original warning, has no reference to the spirit of
man, and relates solely to the dissolution of the body. It
is clearly an evil influence, described as the rival and ad
versary of Divine love, to whose secret and constant activity
Man thenceforward became a prey. But it departs equally
from the tenor of Scripture to confound this result of the
fall with the final doom of the wicked, and thus to identify
the first with the second death. On the contrary, they
form such a total contrast, that the first death is said to be
destroyed, at the very moment when the doom of the
second death is pronounced upon the guilty at the final'
judgment. The aim of the previous remarks is to remove spurious.
additions, by which the sacred narrative has been overlaid,

128 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
and the doctrine itself proportionally obscured. Every
arbitrary element introduced, to explain the nature of the
Divine constitution in Paradise, increases immensely the
difficulty of a real vindication of the goodness and wisdom
of the Almighty. For if Adam was allowed to stipulate
for unborn millions besides himself, in the confidence of a
strength which was perfect weakness, and they were all
held down strictly to the fatal consequences of his error —
if the prohibition was a purely arbitrary test, intended
merely to display the Divine sovereignty — if the help of
the Spirit, bestowed for every other end, was arbitrarily
withheld on this pne point only, to give them the oppor
tunity of committing a moral suicide — if the Tempter was
allowed to enter, merely to increase the severity of the
probation — and if, on Adam's fall, his personal guilt, by an
arbitrary act of sovereign power, was charged upon the
millions of his posterity, who did not yet exist, and had
never sinned, but were created afterwards by sepai-ate acts
of Omnipotence,— -then it must be owned almost or alto
gether impossible to vindicate the goodness of the Lord
in the fundamental laws of his providence towards man
kind. But if the true lessons are widely different, and the
most solemn features of the history grow out of the eternal
laws of moral being, while the elements that were open
to the exercise of a sovereign good pleasure were all com
bined with deepest wisdom, so as to be most favourable
to man's recovery out of a ruin that resulted from his
foreseen but forbidden iniquity, then we may still adore,
with grateful reverence, the grace which mingles with just
severity in these counsels of the Most High.
II. Let us now approach more immediately to this
great problem of the Divine government. The chief in
quiries to be answered are these. What was the real

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 12^
nature of man's probation before the fall? What was the
nature and purpose of the threatening, and the evil which
ensued to Adam himself, on his transgression? What is
the principle by which the consequences extended and
overflowed to his posterity? How far do these results ex
tend, or what are the distinct effects on, the race of Adam's
first sin, and of their own individual ungodliness and trans
gression I Finally, what reason can be assigned, consistent
equally with the benevolence as with the justice of God,
why a constitution of human nature should have been
appointed at the first, which was foreseen to involve this
tremendous fall and wide-reaching ruin?
A view has been sometimes taken of Adam's proba
tion, which obscures greatly, I think, its real character,
and approaches perilously near to the doctrine, that God
is the author of sin. His uprightness, or the image of
God ascribed to him, is represented as the result of a
supernatural presence and work of the Holy Spirit, by
which he was kept from the possibility of sinning, except
with reference to the one prohibition of the forbidden tree.
He might equally, by the like influence, have been upheld
on that point also, but this help was purposely forborne,
and therefore he fell. His fall was punished by an instant
withdrawal of that supernatural grace of the Spirit he
before enjoyed, and this privation constitutes original sin,
or the universal depravity of mankind. It was a char
tered boon while it lasted, and was equitably withdrawn
when the condition of the covenant was broken.
There is one simple scriptural disproof of this hypoT
thesis, besides the evident fact that it is a virtual im
peachment of the Divine goodness, and represents God
to have withheld a gift arbitrarily, which it was both easy
and natural to bestow, and to put a. solitary restraint, on
I

130 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
the inward action of his Spirit, with the express design
that Adam might thereby plunge himself and his race into
a gulf of misery. The holiness which Adam possessed,
so far as it is revealed, is all included and compressed
in that one expression, the image of God. But this image
was the very gift of creation itself, and not a supernatural
endowment bestowed on him after his creation. He was
an upright, sinless, moral free-agent, and, so far as the
record teaches us, neither less nor more. In those high
natural powers of choice, reason, and will, free hitherto
from any deflection from the will of the Maker, consisted
his original uprightness. He was not created unholy, and
holiness bestowed by a separate act, under conditions, as a
chartered benefit. His being itself, the moment it was
given, was pure and holy. It was a breath of life from
God, the effect ofthe creating power of the Holy Spirit;
but when once bestowed, it was pure and holy in itself,
and needed no second creation to render it acceptable in
the eyes of the Creator. It is said of man, as of the other
creatures, when creation itself was finished, that God
looked upon him, and he was very good. This reference
pf Adam's uprightness to a further indwelling and subjec
tive work of the Holy Spirit, distinct from the creative act
itself, evacuates the meaning of creation, confounds it with
the special processes of redemption, the spotless virginity of
the creature spirit with its recovery and bridal glory, and
has no trace of evidence in its favour in the word of God.
The influence of the Holy Spirit upon Adam, in the
creation state, cannot then be reasonably distinguished
from that of the other Persons of the Godhead. That
mystery of the Divine nature was still unopened, beyond
the personal revelation of the Word, by whom the woman
was brought to the man, and who must, probably, have

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 131
appeared in human or angelic form. There was the ob
jective exhibition of the Divine wisdom, power, and free
bounty, to a creature fully qualified to apprehend them
by the fundamental law of his creation. No further mode
of action on his new-born spirit is revealed. And the
more deeply we reflect on the subject, the stronger ground
we shall find for the conviction that it was even impos
sible, without reversing and annulling the faculties of the
creature in the moment they were given, or requiring its
own consent to their entire suspension, and to a self-im
posed passiveness of being, before any reason for this
voluntary suicide could be presented to the sinless under
standing. The gratuitous hypothesis of a subjective hy
per-creation activity of the Holy Spirit, within the mind
of the sinless creature, confuses our view of Divine Provi
dence at its fountain-head, and involves unavoidably the
result of such an arbitrary withholding of help when most
needed, as throws a dark cloud over the perfect love of
God, and makes Him the virtual and direct accomplice in
Adam's transgression. If a physician were to confine a
patient, known to be disposed to commit suicide, in a
chamber from which all knives and means of destruction
were carefully removed, and were to guard every avenue
except a single door, that opened on a precipice and was
purposely left wide open, would not the universal con
science pronounce that he was really a party to the fatal
crime, although the victim would dash himself to pieces
by his own folly ?
The supposed provision, then, of a subjective work of
the Spirit, by which Adam was kept infallibly from sin
ning on any other point, has no direct evidence in its
favour ; and, while it is thought to illustrate the gracious-
ness of the dispensation, really brings a dark, impenetrable 12

132 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
cloud over the attribute of Divine benevolence. In this
case God may have done all that mere justice could de
mand, and even more; but He would have done much
less than human benevolence, even though imperfect,
would prompt a good man to do.
But the question may now arise — Were there other
conditions, besides abstaining from the tree of knowledge,
a failure in which would have involved the sentence of
death ? Why might not Adam have sinned in any other
way ? And, in this case, what would have been the result
to himself or his posterity ?
The true answer seems to be, that inordinate thirst for
forbidden knowledge, in preference to obedience to the
Divine will, is the only way in which a sinless creature
can be conceived liable to fall. So far as God was evi
dently the bestower of blessings, there was nothing even
for the fallen heart to rebel against, and still less could
there be any temptation to want of love in a sinless crea
ture. Its danger arose from the limitation of its faculties,
and from no actual infection of sin. It must have been
where the desire after something still unknown was met
by a Divine restriction, that the creature would be tempted
to grasp at a seeming good, and to disbelieve the wisdom
and kindness of the prohibition. The tree of knowledge
was planted, virtually, at the first entrance of that Ache-
ronian pathway which led down to the chambers of death.
A deliberate preference of knowledge still unattained,
rather than obedience to God's restraining will, must have
been the real essence of all possible temptation; and when
the type was constructed, in which this moral conflict was
embodied, both in the alluring title of the tree, which was
not concealed from Adam, and in the stern warning of
death, the entrance of sin into the heart of man could not,

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 1 33
perhaps, have occurred in any other way. The two rival
principles, one actually in possession, and the other striving
to allure it, were here brought fairly into conflict, face to
face ; so that the standing of Adam in sinless purity, or
his lapse into rebellion, depended really on this one test
of obedience alone. Other duties, though real, were spon
taneous, and free from temptation; but here the mu
tability and finite knowledge of the creature rendered
probation and danger inevitable.
III. Our next inquiry must be into the nature of the
threatening, and the sentence which it implied. What
is that death to which Adam himself became exposed?
Was it the dissolution of the body, or did it include the
soul's annihilation, or its moral corruption, or extend still
further to the infliction of eternal and fiery judgment?
Was it the decree of a sovereign, or the warning of a wise
counsellor, concerning the natural and certain result of
disobedience ?
Now if, laying aside all preconceptions, we read the
narrative in the light of this last supposition, every part
is consistent with itself, and illustrates the goodness and
forbearing love of God. Free liberty was given to enjoy
all the trees of the garden, and eat of their pleasant fruits.
But the warning was given, that there was one tree, to
taste of which would prove fatal, and be followed by death.
While tman believed the command to be one of wisdom
and love seeking his real good, he was in safety : as soon
as he suspected it was an arbitrary restriction, capriciously
invented to keep him back from a fuller blessing, the
Tempter had done half his work of delusion, and his fall
was near. Yet this false notion, the fatal result of the
fall itself, cleaves still to nearly every popular explanation
of the narrative, and reads a threatening of arbitrary

134 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
power, where there was really the predictive warning of
faithful and holy love.
It is true that this idea must be carefully guarded,
that it may not lead to danger on the other side. God is
not, and cannot be, simply the Friend of his creature ; He
must also be a Sovereign. When once the command was
given, man was bound to obey. His transgression was
guilt as well as folly ; and the righteous King must have
viewed it with infinite and just displeasure. But the
moral contrast lies here, whether we conceive the primary
character of the message to be the faithful love which
warns of a real danger; and only its secondary feature,
the sovereign authority which has a right to command,
and sees guilt as well as folly in the transgression ; or
whether it is an act of naked sovereignty, which imposes
restrictions merely to show its own dominion, and creates
by its own act the danger which it foretells.
On the view of the tree of knowledge, which has been
unfolded before, the former is plainly the just view of the
Divine warning. We may thus perceive in it the harmo
nious exercise of all the perfections of the Godhead. The
love of the Creator desired and delighted in the continued
happiness of his own sinless creature. The wisdom of
God foresaw the moral danger inseparable from its limited
powers, and devised the means whereby that peril might
be made conspicuous, and the most powerful motives
combined to dissuade from the downward path. The
sovereignty of God, when those means were devised, was
exerted to give them a deeper efficacy, and to render the
descent impossible, without an act of presumptuous rebel
lion against a simple and easy command of the Supreme
Creator. While man recognised all these characters of
the prohibition, it was natural and easy to obey. But

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 135
when unbelief divorced the power of God, as a Sovereign,
from his love and wisdom, the Tempter had won the
fortress of man's spirit. He was first persuaded that the
command itself was an arbitrary, capricious restriction on
his own liberty ; and next, that God, although unreason
able enough to give the command, was too kind to enforce
so arbitrary and severe a penalty for disobedience.
This view of the history, while it honours the wisdom
and goodness of the Divine Lawgiver, is directly established
by the order of the sacred narrative. Before the Almighty
interferes with any directly penal sentence — nay, even
while He has yet to inquire judicially whether the crime
has been committed — the tree has realised its predicted
character, and the work of death is begun. Their eyes are
opened, the fatal gift of forbidden knowledge is gained,
and its first effect is to cover them with shame. " They
knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig-leaves to
gether, and made themselves aprons." Shame is followed
at once by terror. They hear the voice of the Lord God,
and hide themselves amidst the trees of the garden.
While the inquiry is still pending, the moral desolation is
almost complete. Deceit has taken the place of holy
peace and confidence, prevarication of truth, and recrimi
nation of mutual love. Death is already busily at work
in their hearts. That holier Paradise of the spirit had
been as the garden of God before that fatal entrance ; and
now, while the Judge has not yet opened his lips for the
sentence, it is changed already into a desolate wilderness.
The predictive part of the warning was accomplished be
fore the decision of the Judge is recorded, and their souls
were brought under the awful power of spiritual death.
But the voice was that of a Sovereign, no less than
of a Friend, and the rights of sovereignty must be main-

I T,6 THE DIFFICUTIES OP BELIEF.
tained, while the truth of the prediction is mournfully
verified. The outward form of the prohibition, we have
seen, arose from the special appointment of the all-wise
Creator, though the substance was inseparable from cre
ated existence. The same relation appears in the ful
filment of the warning. The inner and deeper part was
purely predictive, and fulfilled itself from the very moment
of transgression. But the violated rights of the Sovereign
had further to be maintained, and led to the sentence —
"Cursed is the ground for thy sake. Dust thou art, and
to dust thou shalt return." The essential temptation, in
the desire after dangerous knowledge, was inevitable.
The voioe which warned against yielding to it Avas one of
wisdom and love ; and spiritual death was the inevitable,
and mot the arbitrary result of the transgression. The
choice of the typical tree of knowledge, as tbe shroud
for a deep and -eternal truth, was due to the sovereignty
of God. So far the voice was a solemn threatening,
and the death of the body was the penalty exacted by
the righteous Judge, as soon as the crime had been
clearly proved.
This view, which results alike from the nature of the
Divine attributes, in their mutual harmony, and from
the order of the inspired narrative, reconciles also con
flicting statements, based on a partial induction of scrip
tural evidence, and avoids the serious -errors to which they
lead. Thus many have maintained that the death de
nounced on Adam was temporal only, since this alone
appears in the -sentence of the Judge. This inference
would be perfectly just, if the words were a legal threat
ening only, since temporal death alone appears in the
legal sentence. But the warning was much more than
a legal threatening, a sanction artificially attached to

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 1 37
a particular crime ; and hence the results of the fall are
far wider than the dissolution of the body, in turning to
its native dust. Others have conceived the doom to be
eternal death, or the retributive and final sentence on
the ungodly. But this is to contradict scripture, instead
of expounding it, since the first death, the result of the
fall, and the second death, the result of Christ's judgment,
are contrasted with each other in the plainest manner,
and the commencement of one is the final abolition of
the other. A third class have seen that spiritual and
temporal death, together, are the real effect of the fall.
But viewing the whole as a purely legal act, they have
been embarrassed by a great difficulty — for how can the
holy God inflict depravity as a punishment ? They have,
therefore, substituted a penal desertion of the Spirit for
spiritual death itself. But this merely strives to conceal
one error by introducing two others ; for the creation
state of man did not imply a personal indwelling of
the Spirit, which is a gift exclusively of redemption.
No mention of such a presence, or of its withdrawment,
occurs in the whole narrative ; it is a gratuitous addi
tion to the Word of God. On the other hand, death
is really denounced. So that, on this view, the real
consequence is not named, and that is named which
God could not inflict without a fearful impeachment of
his own perfection. But the whole of these perplexi
ties disappear as soon as we return to the view suggested
by the narrative, that simple prediction and warning
was the essence of the prohibition, and that the death
of the body was a further penal sanction, added to the
main sentence, to vindicate the authority of the Lawgiver,
whose faithful counsel and plain command had been to
gether cast away.

138 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
But when we take the principle already established
as a key, it will unlock the words of all the various
statements of Scripture respecting the nature and results
of Adam's transgression. The death of the spirit is its
separation from God, the Fountain of all true life, as the
death of the body consists in the loosing of that bond
which joins it to the soul. In this deep and awful sense,
death is truly the wages of sin. It follows it by no
arbitrary act of Divine sovereignty, but by the necessary
and eternal laws of moral being. Sin, when it is finished,
bringeth forth death. There needs no direct and positive
act of Divine interference. Let the Lawgiver forbear to
judge, and sin betrays the soul into the hands of God's
enemy, the last enemy that shall be destroyed, — a mys-
sterious and awful power, that can sink it deeper and
deeper in remorse, destruction, and utter misery ; and no
one but the Prince of life has power to lead captivity cap
tive, and rescue the victims of this fatal destroyer, re
storing them to holiness and peace again.

CHAPTER IX.
ON ORIGINAL SIN.
The chief difficulty in the doctrine of Original Sin has still
to be considered. Supposing that the Divine economy
was just, wise', and gracious, in reference to Adam himself,
by what principle are his posterity involved in the fatal
consequences of his sin ? How far are they, or can justly
be, yiewed as responsible for the act of their first parent ?
What reason can be assigned for a constitution, which
seems at first sight either positively unjust, or at least
harsh, unwise, and severe, and opposed to all the natural
lessons of true benevolence ?
I. And, first, does the extension of the effects of the
fall depend on some arbitrary relation, some special charter
or covenant between God himself, and Adam, as a legal
representative, consenting to act for others, or does it de
pend simply on the parental character alone ?
The former view has been very widely received. Some
recent writers have made this supposed distinction be
tween parentage and federal headship bear the whole
weight of the argument, by which they would justify the
Divine government. But when we turn to Scripture it
self, the hypothesis resembles the Cartesian vortices, and
is not only unsupported by direct evidence, but inconsis
tent with the constant tenor of the inspired declarations.
The only key, in the early history, to the extension of the

140 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
results of the fall is given in the simple words — "And
Adam begat a son in his own image, after his likeness."
The rescue of Noah, in the deluge, without any special
compact beforehand, involved the gift of life to his pos
terity alone, while all the possible descendants of the rest
of mankind were like an untimely birth. They might
otherwise have been born, but never came into being.
The curse on Canaan, and the blessing on Shem, with
out any special compact, passed on to their descendants.
The promise to Abraham had the same tenor — "I will be
a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee." When the
corruption of fallen man is described in general terms, so
far as resulting from Adam's sin, it is referred to the
course of natural generation. "Who can bring a clean
thing out of an unclean? Not one." "Behold I was
shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive
me." " That which is born of the flesh is flesh." In these
and many other passages, the communication of guilt and
corruption, so far as they are actually communicated, is
ascribed directly to the parental relationship, to the natu
ral course of human generation, and to that alone.
The words of the Apostle in Rom. v. lend no counte
nance to any other view. He states the fact, that in
consequence of Adam's sin death has passed through to
all men ; but he gives no hint that this wide diffusion of
its effects has any other source than the parental rela
tionship alone. Nor does the parallel which he draws
require a different view. On the contrary, the funda
mental idea, under which the word of God exhibits the
diffusion of life from Christ to His people, is expressly
that of a spiritual, but real parentage : " When thou
shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his
seed, he shall prolong. his days." "Behold I and the

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 141
children whom God hath given me." The communica
tion of natural life in one case, and of spiritual life in the
other, is made the evident basis of the whole economy of
Providence and grace. The superinduction of an arbitrary
element, of which Scripture gives no evidence, merely
encumbers the subject with new difficulties. For if the
arrangement was not justifiable, wise, and gracious in its
own nature, how could any fancied consent of Adam to act
on behalf of unborn millions, without any choice of theirs,
and when he was ignorant of his OAvn weakness, relieve in
the slightest degree the scruples of any thoughtful and
intelligent mind ?
II. Let us next inquire how far, in the view of Scrip
ture and of reason, the parental relation itself extends ?
Does it include the body only, or at most the animal life,
or embrace really the whole of man's complex being ?
This question has caused a great diversity of judgment
among metaphysicians and divines. Three main opinions,
Leibnitz observes, have prevailed. The first maintains
the preexistence of human souls, which are afterwards
sent to begin their probation, when the body is prepared.
The second, to which Augustine inclined, and which has
been usual among Lutheran divines, is the traduction of
souls from the parents, along with the body. The third
view, more generally received among the Reformed, is
that of their creation at the time of each individual birth.
He himself propounds a middle theory, that each soul
preexists in the parent, as an animal soul merely, and that
the faculty of reason is superadded as they are successively
born into the world.
The notion of a successive creation has probably been
most usual in modern times. Its advocates, indeed, have
sometimes denounced the other hypothesis in very strong

142 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
terms. Thus we read, in a recent treatise on Original Sin,
already quoted: "The assertion that one created being
actually communicates existence to another, is absurd and
impious. A parent is as little (much ?) able to create the
universe as to impart existence to the soul of the child,
or to his body either. God must be regarded as the ex
clusive agent in the formation. of both  The law of
propagation will not account for the character of the race,
except on the absurd and profane hypothesis, that the soul
is generated together with the body. Even on the absurd
notion of the propagation of the soul by generation, its
physical properties must originate with God himself!"
It would assuredly be wiser to abstain from such strong
expressions with reference to a view held by many ortho
dox divines, and on a subject confessedly so mysterious.
The view thus denounced as absurd, impious, and profane,
will be found, I think, the only one consistent with plain
and repeated testimonies of Scripture, and also the most
agreeable, by far, to the lessons of sound philosophy ; while
the hypothesis preferred to it is entirely wanting in every
kind of evidence, whether of revelation or experience.
And first, we are expressly told that God finished the
Work of creation, and rested on the seventh day from all
his works. Creation then ceased, and Providence began.
But if human souls are created successively in multitudes
every day, the main work of creation was still future on
the first Sabbath. The sacred history is thus contradicted
in its main feature. Creation and redemption, on this
hypothesis, run on constantly side by side. New-created
spirits are formed every moment, to be first steeped in the
consequences of a fall, with which they have no native
connexion whatever, before they have any part in the
blessings of redemption. Such a fact would hold a fore-

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 1 43
most place among revealed truths, if it were really true ;
yet not one hint of it is found from the beginning to the
close of Divine revelation.
Again, there is a perfect symmetry in the actual record
of creation. Vegetables are first formed, the tree yielding
fruit, whose seed was in itself, after its kind ; or with a
natural power of self-multiplication. Next, the fishes and
fowls are created, with the same property, and receive the
law of their creation : " Be fruitful and multiply, and fill
the waters, and let fowl multiply in the earth." The liv
ing things of the earth follow ; and the same law, though
not expressed, is clearly implied in their case also. Lastly,
man is created in the image of God, and receives the same
law of increase, after his own kind, as the lower creatures :
"Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and
subdue it." And when the course of human generations
is actually recorded, its conformity to this original law
is recorded also. " Adam begat a son in his own image,
after his likeness." The gift was not the power of pro
pagating animal souls, or mere idiots in human shape, but
of propagating rational creatures, qualified to replenish
and subdue the earth, and to have dominion over the
lower works of God. The opposite hypothesis seems to
deny the fact of a Divine gift, which is expressly revealed,
and substitutes an endless series of direct, successive crea
tions, for which no grain of evidence can be found in the
whole compass of the word of God.
Again, in the numerous statements of Scripture rela
tive to the birth of children, it is the whole person, and
not the body merely, which is represented as proceeding
from the human parent. The very form of God's cove
nant involves this fact: "I will be a God unto thee, and to
thy seed after thee." The seed is equivalent to the whole

144 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
human being, and cannot, without evident absurdity, be
restricted to the body alone. Nay, the promise of God
marks the Divine law of Providence still more clearly, in
these words of the prophet : " I will sow the house of
Israel, and the house of Judah, with the seed of man, and
with the seed of beast." What can teach more plainly,
that, as every species of lower animal produces its like, so
men, and not bodies, are the direct and proper result of
the laws of human propagation?
The New Testament continues - and repeats the same
view. It ascribes the immediate origin of the whole
being of the child to its human parent. This doctrine
meets us in its first page : " Abraham begat Isaac, and
Isaac begat Jacob" — not their bodies, but the human
persons. The Apostle tells the Hebrews that " Levi was
yet in the loins of Abraham, when Melchizedec met him."
And still further, if the law of generation were strictly
confined to the animal nature, and could not rise higher,
how should it be applied, as it is plainly in the Gospel,
to the Divine nature itself, and express that deep mystery
of the Godhead on which the whole scheme of redemp
tion depends ? If human generation were of bodies only,
what meanmg could there be in the analogy of that
Divine message: "Thou art my Son, this day have I
begotten thee"? The Jews inferred from our Lord's
assertion, that God was his own father, that He made
himself equal with God. , But if rational beings generate
bodies, or animal souls only, and the rational spirit has
to be supplied by a separate and independent creation,
the opposite inference would be more just, and the Son-
ship of Christ would rather prove his essential inferiority
of nature. The words of pur Lord seem to crewn and ccmplete

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 1 45
the Scripture evidence of this proper derivation of the
Whole human being from the human parent: "That
which is born of the flesh, is flesh; and that which is
born of the spirit, is spirit." A great law is illustrated
in two opposite forms of its manifestation, and is made
the common basis of the reasoning. That law is, that
like produces like. But the same principle infers, that
a mere animal life will produce a mere animal, and that
a rational life will produce a rational being. No offspring
can rise above the level of its own parentage, without a
supernatural creation ; nor sink below it, without a pre
ternatural degradation. Idiocy may produce idiocy; but
human parents, without some special agency of the
destroyer, in corrupting God's workmanship, and de
ranging the primal law of creation, must and do produce
a reasonable offspring.
The voice of true philosophy is the same. All nature
bears witness to the fact, that generation is the highest
and most distinctive function of life, in all its varieties.
The bee can build cells, and manufacture honey; but
its highest gift is the power to continue a race of living
architects. The cherishing of their own young is the
centre of all animal instincts, and exhibits them in their
highest perfection. In the drama of human life, whether
real or fictitious, marriage and its mysterious fruits are
always the point of culmination. The word of God carries
the same law still higher ; and shows us that, however
wonderful may be the power of God in simple creation,
the noblest mystery of the Divine nature lies above and
beyond it, in the mysterious and incomprehensible name
of the Only Begotten Son of God. It may be affirmed,
with much reason, that the idea of a generation of human
bodies on]y, and a direct and independent creation of
B. K

I46 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
their souls, runs counter to the universal analogy of -all
creation, and to the uniform testimony of all Scripture,
It is merely a legacy of that frigid, corpuscular, me
chanical philosophy, imported into theology, which is
yielding to the ceaseless advance of natural science,
For truth discovers matter itself to be really a magazine
of power ; and life, in higher natures, to be a mysterious
fountain, which overflows perpetually, and tends to rise
to the level of. its source, however widely its streams are
diffused and multiplied.
But it is urged that a parent is as little able to
impart existence to the soul of a child, as to create the
universe. The notion, it is thought, is absurd and im
pious. But how can it be impious to believe what is
implied in every page of Scripture, or absurd to accept
the natural result of daily experience ? The voice of
common sense instinctively pronounces, that while our
first parents must have been immediately formed by
God, all their posterity are mediately created, through
powers bestowed on their immediate parents. To affirm
that God is the exclusive agent in the birth of every
human being, is itself the strange absurdity. The facts
are plain, and consistent with the deepest philosophy of
existence. Trees can produce trees, and animals can
produce animals. Human parents also can generate a
human offspring, in virtue of a mysterious power of life,
given at first by the Creator; but they cannot create
either children, or a particle of matter, by a direct act of
mere volition. They have plainly a derived and dele
gated power, but they cannot overleap the limit of the
.original delegation.
Now if it be true, as Scripture and experience com*
Jrine to prove, that the whole being of every child of

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 147
main is given mediately, through powers! originally be
stowed on our first parents, and not by ah independent
work of creation at any later time, it is not surprising
that many results of Adam's fall should naturally and
inevitably overflow, along with imparted life, to his
whole posterity, without any separate, penal act of tbe
Supreme Governor. The universal law of all creation
would have to be suspended and reversed to hinder such
consequences, instead of a special, arbitrary fiat of power
being required to bring them to pass. It remains only
to inquire how far these consequences extend, and in
what way they consist, first of all, with the perfect
equity, and next with the real benevolence of the Creator
of mankind. III. And first, it is plain from Scripture, that one
consequence of Adam's transgression and: fall is the uni
versal exposure of mankind to temporal death. This is
implied on the face of the history, when compared with
the original sentence : " Dust thou art, and to dust thou
shalt return." "Man that is born of a woman is of few
days, and full of trouble. He cometh up, and is cut
down as a flower ; he fleeth as a shadow, and continueth
not." " His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth ;
in that very day his thoughts perish." " All go unto one
place, all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again."
And it is clear that the. death which reigned from Adam
to Moses, of which the Apostle speaks, and on which he
founds his argument, must refer eminently to temporal
death; since the appeal is to an evident fact of human
history, and not to hidden truths of the spiritual world.
Again, it. is equally plain that the second death, or the
sentence of final judgment on the ungodly, is always
referred exclusively to their own personal guilt, and never
K2

148 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
once to Adam's transgression. Thus we are told, that
"every man shall bear his own burden;" that "the son
shall not die for the sin of the father, nor the father for
the sin of the child;" that "the righteousness of the
righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the
wicked upon him;" that "every one shall receive the
things done in his body, according to that he hath done,
whether it be good or bad ;" that " the dead are judged
every one according to their works;" that "he who soweth
sparingly shall- reap sparingly, and he who soweth bounti
fully shall reap bountifully;" that "he who soweth to the
flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, and he who soweth
to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting."
This great truth of a strictly personal judgment in the
last day, according to the. individual character — so that
each degree of personal righteousness will have its degree
of reward, and each degree of guilt few or many stripes in
the judgment — is the woof which runs throughout the
whole of Scripture, and intersects and binds together its
rich promises of Divine mercy and grace. No allusion to
the sin of Adam, either as the sole or even a concurrent
cause, is to be found in any Scripture revelation of the
final judgment.
But the main difficulty still remains — how far actual
or virtual sin, and legal guilt and moral corruption, with
their effect of spiritual death, are traced directly to
Adam's sin, in the case of all his children. For although
the sentence of final judgment be directly ascribed to
personal transgression alone, still, if that transgression is
the inevitable result of a nature vitiated by the act of
another, the moral perplexity is not removed.
To solve this hard question, we must first of all recol
lect the threefold ccnstitution of man's nature, which is

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 149
affirmed by Scripture, and recognized by the deepest
schools of mental science. Man consists of spirit, soul, and
body; or, in the terms of one school of philosophy, he has
the faculties of reason, understanding, and sense. He has a
spirit, or a reasonable will, endued with the power of choice,
or self-reflection, and the apprehension of immutable and
eternal truth. He has a soul or animal life, similar in kind,
though higher and nobler in degree than those which are
shared by lower animals. He has an animated body, the
organ and vehicle of the soul in its double intercourse, by
sensation and appetite, with the outward world. By his
spirit, he has fellowship with the angels, and the preroga
tive of the Divine image. By his soul and body, he
stands at the head of the animal creation, and may be
included in the systems of universal zoology.
Before the Fall, the union of his whole being was
complete. The body was entirely controlled by the animal
life; and this lower, animal life, by the higher, rational
intelligence and will, which itself was in abiding harmony
with the will of the Creator. The natural desire for the
pleasant things of Paradise was only the outward expres
sion of the Maker's will, when He said, " Of every tree in
the garden thou mayest freely eat." The inner subordina
tion of human nature was complete. But when tempta
tion prevailed on the one point, where the natural, sinless
desire was withheld from act by a Divine prohibition, and
the conscious will affected the revolt, the whole frame of
man's being was loosened and disjointed. The body, only
imperfectly subject to the life within, received the seeds
of death. The animal life, no longer in perfect union
with the reasonable will, became a source of ungoverned
and tumultuous appetites, that craved their own indul
gence for their own sakes, apart from the voice of con-

150 THE DIFFICULTIES OF' BELIEF.
science, or the will of God. And the will itself, conscious
of its own wilful transgression, became subject to shame
and fear, that would tend to lead it into a gulf of utter
despair, without some interposition of grace; since the
conscience and the reason could themselves devise no way
of deliverance from the curse of the violated law of God.
The mere contemplation of God in his holiness would
noAV become alarming and terrible, and repel the spirit
further and further from the only Source of true life and
light into outer darkness.
When we turn from Adam to his posterity, the propa
gation of this evil state, with respect to the soul and the
body, seems to be the clear voice of Scripture, reason, and
experience. "That which is born of flesh is flesh," and
"the minding (tppwrjfm) of the flesh is enmity against
God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed
can be." The animal nature, Pnce loosed from its original
standing of perfect union with the pure and reasonable
will, is propagated in its actual state; as a natural or
animal man, with no instinctive submission to any human
or Divine rule of right or wrong. This infection of nature
remains, even in the regenerate. The sinful habits, or
holy disposition and practice, of the immediate parents,
may increase or lessen its intensity in their children ; but
the fact itself is a law of universal experience, confirmed
by the whole tenor of the word of God.
But what shall we say with regard to the spirit itself,'
the seat of conscience, the highest and noblest part of
human nature? Is a sinful will directly propagated, in
the same manner as a sinful nature in the animal beinff ?
o
If we confine the effect of the Fall to the loAver and sepa
rable elements of our nature, do we not come short of the
statements of Scripture, the lessons of sound theology, and.

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 151
the facts of experience ? If we say that the will is propa
gated from the human parents, and under the actual
dominion of evil, do we not make God virtually the
Author of sin by such a constitution, and so undermine
the very foundations of conscience and of all just, ideas of
moral government ?
There are two or three facts, either revealed in Scrip
ture, or deducible from close reflection on the nature of
conscience, which will perhaps go far to remove this
difficulty, and help us to approach, at least, to a just
view of this mysterious arrangement, that seems at first
hard to reconcile with the wisdom and goodness of the
Almighty. And first, it is clear that the spiritual effects of the
Fall on Adam and Eve, which alone are recorded, were
the direct fruit of their own consciousness of a personal
transgression. They knew that they were naked, and
were ashamed. They heard the voice of God, and hid
themselves in fear from his presence. They knew them
selves guilty of a wilful act, and sought to throw the
blame upon others, Adam on Eve, and Eve on the Ser
pent. In the whole of this mental process, the con
sciousness of their wilful act was an inseparable element.
This working of death in the inner sanctuary of the
spirit, so far as we can gather from this first record of
Scripture, could not be propagated, unless the individual
personality could be propagated, which is evidently im
possible. A like consciousness of guilt in the spirit,
from a similar cause, may arise afterward in Adam's
children; but the consciousness of that personal sin,
which wrought fear and shame in our first parents,
cannot be transferred. To the sin of Adam, in this one
view of it, the words of the Holy Spirit must apply, that

152 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
every man shall bear his own burden. This could not
be, if the personal act of Adam, of which he alone
was the conscious cause, was reckoned to each of his
children in the list of their own acts of personal transr
gression. Again, it is a revealed truth that children, before
their birth, and some time after, have no such knowledge
of good and evil, as originates a moral responsibility.
Thus it was said to the Jews in the wilderness: "Your
little ones, which ye said should be a prey, and your
children, which in that day had no knowledge between
good and evil, they shall go in thither." Of the promised
child Emmanuel, it is written, " Butter and honey shall
he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and to choose
the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the
evil, and to choose the good, the land thou abhorrest
shall be forsaken of both her kings." The Apostle
remarks of Jacob and Esau, while unborn, as a self-
evident fact, that they had done nothing either good
or evil. And the words in the history of Jonah re
specting the children of Nineveh, who knew not their
right hand from their left, may be reasonably transferred
to the higher subject, the faculty to discern between
moral good and moral evil. To crown these testimonies,
the Apostle James lays down a principle, which may
clearly be viewed as a universal axiom of morals, excluding
sin on the one side, and defining it on the other : " To
him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him
it is sin."
Experience and philosophy illustrate and confirm
these truths. There is a law observed in the natural
propagation of life, by which its development ascends
through the lower to the higher functions. The power

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 1 53
of assimilation, or vegetable life, is first developed. The
embryo is then quickened, and acquires the power of
spontaneous motion. The development of a self-con
scious, reflective intelligence, must be a still later stage.
All the later faculties are virtually included in the first
production of new life, in all its varieties, from the lowest
insect up to man himself; but there is an order in their
actual exercise and possession. Moral responsibility, and
the proper consciousness of guilt, can only begin with the
possession and exercise of a personal will, capable of
knowing good and evil, and at liberty consciously to
choose between them.
Let us now conceive a case which has never occurred,
but which throws light on the moral elements of the pro
blem. We may imagine the new-born will, as soon as it
awakes to a consciousness of good and evil, to choose the
good continually by its own strength, and reject the evil
in spite of the strong seductions of that animal nature
which is born along with it, and has become disjointed
from the spirit by the effects of Adam's fall. Such a
being, sinless in will, could not be treated as a guilty,
wilful rebel, without contradicting the fundamental laws
of Divine equity. It could not, however, dwell in the
presence of God, and the enjoyment of His perfect favour,
without a like contradiction of His spotless holiness. It
must remain, for a season, under probation. Persevering
inwardly in its uprightness, it could not cease from that
probation, till the animal life had been destroyed, in
virtue of its corruption, and the spirit had endured, with
out murmuring or rebellion, or deviation from entire
obedience, the full weight of the Divine aversion to a
nature that has broken loose from its original law, and
rebelled, to the extent of its own faculty, against the

1 54 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
will of God. But if this severe probation Avere endured
without failure, the sinless will must be doubly acceptable
to the God of holiness, beyond the sinless angels, from the
trial which it has endured, and the severer test of its
unswerving allegiance to the Divine will. This fearful
gulf would have to be traversed, and then a Paradise of
joy and peace would greet the spirit on the other bank of
the dark river of death. But a failure in this necessary
trial would let in sin to the sanctuary of the spirit ; and
its recovery, when once fallen, by its own efforts, would
be utterly impossible.
Such, however, is not the character of the human willj
when it first awakes to individual consciousness, and the
sense of personal responsibility. It cannot, it is clear,
have that disposition to evil which results from habitual
transgression, nor that remorse which arises from the
consciousness of personal criminality. In these respects
there is an innocency of childhood, to which our Lord
seems to refer in those words : " Of such is the kingdom
of heaven." On the other hand, it has the mutability
of all free agents, the nescience and weakness of child
hood, and is surrounded by the urgencies of a fleshly
nature, which has broken loose from its entire subjec
tion to the spirit of man and the laws of God. If Adam
fell, .in sinless perfection and the strength of mature
reason, when .there was no internal discord to mar and
disturb the harmony of his own being — then a will, so
circumstanced as has just been described, will be sure
to fall. The moral declension from the holy and perfect
rule of the Divine law, which appeared in Adam as a
grievous, inexcusable abuse of freedom, will here approach
to the features of a fatal necessity. Yet since a right
choice must still have have been possible, or man would

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 1 55
not be a moral agent at all, and the law of right is binding
by its own authority, and can suffer no circumstances to
oxcuse transgression — this moral necessity, which may
be allowed to exist, is still removed by a wide gulf from a
purely physical fatality, which would destroy the founda
tions of all moral government.
But the hypothesis, just considered, does not express
the real facts of human probation. It exhibits a part of the
truth, but not the whole. Before Adam became a parent,
and even before his expulsion from Paradise, the economy
of redemption began. The revelation of God's name was
no longer confined to his goodness in creation, the holi
ness of his law, and his anger against rebellion; it in
cluded a promise of grace to the fallen. Before any curse
was pronounced, inclusively, on mankind, as the children
bf Adam, they had all of them, inclusively, received a
significant promise, as the offspring of tbe woman. The
special and emphatic meaning of the phrase, the Seed of
the Woman, which time has disclosed, cannot set aside its
more immediate and wider reference to the posterity of
Adam, as all woman-born, in contrast to the serpent race.
This meaning of the promise is formally sealed, in the
name, which the woman receives from her husband, be
fore the guilty pair themselves are excluded from Para
dise. And hence every child of Adam, from its birth,
would enter on its probation, not only with the adverse
effects of the fall around it, which would tend to drag down
its will into a course of fatal disobedience and ungodliness,
but under the canopy of a Divine promise, addressed to it
as also a child of Eve, and with a way of life opened
before it, which would lead upward to peace and hap
piness again.
These views of the consequences of the Fall, and of

156 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
the nature of original sin, may be thus briefly summed.
All mankind were created, seminally, in Adam, by virtue
of that mysterious and wonderful power which the Crea
tor imparted from the beginning, when He said — "Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." The
work of creation then ceased ; and a later, successive,
independent creation of human souls adds to the word
of God what it has nowhere revealed, and sets aside its
express statement with regard to the nature of the gift
originally bestowed. We read, accordingly, in Gen. vi.,
that the Adam was multiplied upon earth. Hence all
mankind are naturally, and necessarily, by the law of
their creation, involved in the results of his fall. So far
as these relate to the lower, animal life, and the body,
they follow simply and absolutely, by the law of pro*
pagation. " That which is born of the flesh, is flesh,''
and naturally resists the restraints of the Divine law, and
becomes the source of perpetual temptation to the reason
able will. The will, or highest part of man's nature, is
also derived from the human parent, but in a latent or
nascent form, and only acquires a consciousness of distinct
personality, and along with it, moral responsibility, after
the natural birth. Left to its own mutability and weak
ness, and temptations of the flesh alone, it would fall,
even more certainly than Adam fell. The whole being
of man — spirit, soul, and body — would then become en
tirely depraved and ruined. Even apart from its own
fickleness or perverseness, the difficulties opposed by the
fall to its full recovery, in a persevering resistance to all
evil, far surpass the probable measure of any created
virtue. But each child of man has not been left to these
results of the fall, without any countervailing influence.
By virtue of his birth into the world he becomes also

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 1 57
one of the seed of the woman, and thereby is brought
within the scope of a gracious economy of redeeming
love. The conflict of good and evil, in which his first
parent Avas overcome, is renewed in other forms, and
mightier influences are arranged on each side than be
fore. The great Deceiver bends all his skill to com
plete his conquest, and detain his prey in a hopeless
captivity of evil; and the world and the flesh are his
allies in the work of ruin* But a mighty Redeemer,
who is stronger than he, has also begun his work of
love, and pours out the stores of his heavenly wisdom
in promises, warnings, example, invitations, threatenings,
and messages of grace, that He may recover the lost
sheep out of the dreary wilderness of sin, and bring
them back on his shoulder, rejoicing, to join the family
of heaven. The Fall, then, as it affects the soul and body, in the
special sense already defined, is accomplished once for
all — a sorrowful certainty, that encompasses every child
of man from the hour of his birth. But as a still deeper
fact of the spiritual being, it is repeated perpetually,
when the new-born conscience wakes up to the sense of
its own powers, and the new-born will first departs from
that moral rule which asserts its own unalterable claims.
But, before the first of Adam's children was born, a
Divine remedy had also been provided; and the voice,
which announced enduring enmity between the seed of
the woman and the seed of the serpent, opened a new
world of hope to "man that is born of woman, and full
of trouble," by which to reclaim his spirit, upAV-ard and
heavenward, into the path of recovered peace and holi
ness. It is therefore a great departure from the standard of

158 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
truth, to excuse our own sins by charging our first parent
with a guilt of unequalled atrocity. His sin indeed was
great and inexcusable, and its consequences most griev-r
ous ; but the sin is heavier of those who despised and
rejected the law of God, as given by Moses ; and heavier
still, of those who trample under foot the Son of God;
by rejecting the Gospel, and do despite unto the Spirit
of grace. IV. It remains now to consider what light can be
thrown on the reasons for this mysterious constitution of
human nature, proceeding in successive generations from
one common parent, and involved in his fall; and how
far we may read in it a new lesson of the wisdom and
benevolence of the Almighty. , ;
Before the creation of man, the history of angels, and
the rebellion by which multitudes of them had fallen, re*
vealed in a most impressive and solemn light the muta
bility of all created free agents. No circumstances, we
may well suppose, could be more favourable for continued
stability than theirs. No temptation from without as
sailed them; no burden of flesh confined and limited
their being. They were created godlike, with as near an
approach to Divine perfection as creaturehopd would
allow ; and we read of no positive ordinance superadded
to the great universal law of obedience and love. But
their greatness was turned by pride into the occasion of
their ruin. The foremost and brightest, the Son of the
morning, fell ; and a large proportion of them became
his partners in daring rebellion against the Almighty
Creator. There are thus two main reasons which may be con
ceived to lie against a second angelic creation. Such, a
creation, in its very conception, must be, finite and

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 1 5 9
incapable of increase, and thereby fall short of a full
reflection of the Divine infinity. And when sin has
once entered, as it had now shoAvn its power to enter,
there seems to be no way of possible recovery. The
simplicity of their spiritual being appears to preclude
the separation of the fallen and rebellious will from its
own perverseness. Their fall was an entire and hopeless
ruin. It became the wisdom, of the Almighty, in his further
Avorks of creation, to provide against the fearful dangers,
the reality of which, in the case of his intelligent crea
tures, had now been so sadly and terribly established.
A second race of angels would have been exposed to the
same dangers with the first, with the added perils of a
systematic, powerful array of spiritual temptations, and
the fears that might well be awakened by the knowledge
of others' fall, and of their own mutability, with no visible
contrast to assure them against the ever-threatening dan
ger of plunging into the same gulf of sin and ruin. The
furthest and deepest revelation of the Divine character
would thus be one of distributive justice only ; and His
creatures might be tempted to regard Him as a severe
Judge, who created them indeed with high and noble
powers, but placed them on a dangerous pinnacle of
being, and, standing out of the reach of temptation
himself, abused his power in the severe punishment of
his own offspring, while they were drifted successively
away from his holy presence into unsuspected pitfalls of
moral degradation by secret and awful influences of ine
vitable evil, that seemed justly to dispute with the Most
High God the dominion of his own universe.
In the creation of man a provision was to be made for
these deeper objects of the Divine government, whiph

160 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
grew out of the proved existence, and awful intensity and
subtlety, of moral evil in spiritual beings. And first of all,
a new attribute was bestowed, which rendered the neAV
creature a closer resemblance of the life-imparting power
of the Creator ; and gave the new race, in its original con
stitution, a passive infinity, a capacity of boundless and
illimitable increase, as the stars of infinite space, and as
the sand by the sea-shore innumerable. But a still fur
ther object had to be attained. Instead of an arrange
ment for the stability of the new creature, it was the
deeper lesson of wisdom, to provide all, and arrange all,
even in the hour of creation, to meet the moral certainty
of an approaching fall. Creation and sinless purity is the
key-note of angelic being, but redemption is the master-
key of the history of mankind.
To secure this great end, there were three main condi
tions which had to be satisfied in the constitution of the
new race of moral agents. These refer to the subjective
and objective possibility of redemption from the power of
evil, and the choice of circumstances most favourable to
the reception of those great truths of the spiritual world,
by which alone the great work of recovery could be suc
cessfully and powerfully carried on.
To render this redemption of the fallen subjectively
possible, the creature must be so formed as to admit of an
actual, internal separation from the evil wliich has gained
an inward mastery. And this appears to be one great
purpose of the actual constitution of human nature. The
fallen will is taught to project its own corruption upon
the flesh which has proved its tempter ; and hating its
own life, under this evil and corrupted form, can set out
in the pathway of repentance, and receive the better life
of the spirit. It is by the sacrifice of the. polluted, animal

ON ORIGINAL SIN. l6l
life, the crucifying of the flesh, with its affections and
lusts, that the whole internal process of redemption has
always been carried on. That companion of the spirit,
against which it so often frets in its pride, and Avhich
makes it, by creation, a little lower than the angels, is the
means, by its own death, and the Avilling consent of the
spirit that it should die, of its recovery to perfect holi
ness again. The duality of man's nature, while it places
him below angels, renders fallen man internally capable
of being redeemed.
But redemption needed also to be objectively possible.
There behoved to be some means provided, by which
the holiness of God might be fully cleared, in visiting
a ; second race of intelligent creatures, guilty of rebellion
against his laws, with the promises of his favour, and
the hope of recovered peace. If it was the design of
God to unfold towards the new race his deepest attri
bute of mercy, and to meet them with all the varied
appliances and hopes of a neAV economy of redemption,
it was needful that there should be, objectively, with
reference to the whole race, a capability of manifesting
the spotless perfection of his justice as the Moral Go
vernor of the world. There was not only to be solved
the question of individual equity, with regard to each
member of the race, but the Thrice Holy was him
self to be justified in departing from the rigour of a
sentence, like that which rested, without change or hope,
upon the angels that fell. No one but the Eternal Word
could satisfy this demand of infinite wisdom ; and it was
one condition required in the new creation, that the Word
might be capable, by an act of incarnation, of linking
himself at once with the whole race, and thus reveal iii
his own person the harmony of justice and infinite love.
B. L

102 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
But it was eminently the part of Divine wisdom to
devise such a constitution for the new race of creatures,
that the great moral truths, on which their recovery
Avould depend, might be clearly and forcibly brought out
in relief before each individual, when he first entered on
his term of probation. What then are the most important
and fundamental of these truths ? How did holy angels
fall from their first integrity ? First of all, through their
entire inexperience of the deep curse and practical misery
of all moral evil, which left them open to the delusion of
conceiving it a vast unexplored region of happy inde
pendence and godlike liberty of being. Secondly, the
self-dependence of a purely spiritual nature, that, being so
highly endowed, forgot the wide gulf which separates the
mutable creature from the immutable Creator, and through
pride broke loose from the golden chain of obedience
Avhich bound them to the throne of God. And thirdly,
Avhen they had fallen, not only the simplicity of their
nature seems to have rendered their redemption sub
jectively and objectively impossible, but there was no way
by which a deeper attribute than simple justice could
reach their rebellious will, and reclaim it into repentance ;
and the spiritual repulsion of the unholy from the spotless
holiness of the Most High seems to have hurried them
swiftly into a gulf of utter separation, where no glimpse
of light could dawn upon the thick darkness of their
inward being.
Now the constitution of man, and the successive birth
of each individual into the world under the circumstances
Avhich result from Adam's fall, eminently satisfy all these
conditions. The creature has been made subject to vanity,
not willingly, but for the sake of man ; and from the first
cry of infancy, when it enters into a fallen Avorld, all is full

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 1 63
of sad but profitable lessons of the vexation of spirit,
which is the fruit of rebellion against God ; and the
experience of all mankind, accumulating from age to age,
rises in the face of every new child of the dust, to say that
it is an evil and a bitter thing to wander from God into
the dark by-paths of moral evil.
But the angels fell by pride, no less than by inexpe
rience of the miseries of sin. Their godlike faculties
raised them so near the throne, that their leader wai
tempted to the awful experiment of setting up for the
rival and adversary ofhis Creator. And what means
could be so powerful for abating pride, and bringing the
creature into its safe and right state of dependence upon
the arm of its Creator, as that fearful and wonderful work
manship, the nature of man ? He was fashioned out of
the dust at first, and since the fall is turning continually
to dust again. And this is not the whole lesson of humi
liation. By a humbling pathway, over which the instincts
of his nature compel him to draw a veil of silence and
secrecy, he comes into being, and his will begins its course
of self-conscious responsibility amidst all the weakness and
dependence of infancy and childhood. How powerfully
is his spirit thus allured into its true position of simple,
childlike dependence upon the arm of God ! Thus we are
reminded that God perfects strength out of the mouth of
babes and sucklings ; and the moral heroes of our race
have the lesson taught them, by their own birth, as well
as from the lips of Infinite Wisdom, that except they
become in spirit as little children they cannot enter into
the kingdom of heaven.
The third condition, favourable to moral recovery, is
also fully satisfied in the actual constitution of mankind.
We cannot escape, from our birth, the voice of those
L 2

1 64" THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
Divine messages which tell of goodness that still visits
the unthankful and unworthy, and invites them back to
the arms of Divine love. The light may shine more
dimly on lands long sunk in spiritual darkness by their
own rebellion ; but it cannot be extinct, while man is born
of woman, and enters on a world where sinners every
day breathe the air of heaven, are warmed with the sun
shine, and refreshed and nourished by the showers of
rain and the plenteous fruits of the earth. Man, how
ever vicious, cannot in this life sink himself into an outer
darkness, Avhere no beam of Divine love reaches the fallen
spirit, to attract it upward into the region of purity and
peace again. He walks under the blue sky, which de
clares the glory of its Maker, and bends doAvn over him
on every side, as if to embrace him within the arms of an
infinite and Divine compassion. He moves amidst the
hills and valleys, which the Creator's hand has clothed
with beauty, and which drink their life continually from
the dews of heaven. " The earth is full of the goodness of
the Lord." But goodness, so plentifully displayed towards
conscious sinners, is mercy begun. Even where the noon
day brightness of the Gospel has not appeared, its dawn
ing light visits the nations, and looks down upon the soul
from every star in the firmament, while it beams with
a calm and holy light upon spirits that might well be
visited with severe strokes of Divine judgment. The
things which are made not only proclaim the power and
Godhead of the invisible Creator, but are an hourly
witness of his forbearing mercy ; while He shows kind
ness to the undeserving and the guilty, and makes his
sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain
upon the just and the unjust. All things around them,
from the cradle to the grave, are teaching mankind the

ON ORIGINAL SIN. 1 65
threefold lesson : that sin is certain misery — that their
native strength, For regaining the lost image of the Crea
tor, is the helplessness of mere infancy — and that they are
not cast off into a region of hopeless despair, but are still
the prisoners of hope, and shut in on every side with abun
dant tokens of their Maker's undeserved and persevering
goodness. By a thousand acts of bounty and wisdom the
wandering prodigals are allured to return once more to
the true home of their spirits ; to find, through peni
tence and prayer, that way of life which still lies open
before them, and to experience that richest of all earthly
blessings, which constitutes the dehghtful foretaste of
heavenly felicity, —
" A Father's kindness in a God of loye.''

CHAPTER X.
ON THE INCARNATION.
The doctrine of the Incarnation, or in Scripture language,
that the Word has been made flesh, and dwelt among us,
and that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, is the foun
dation truth of Christianity. It has naturally been en
countered by a large variety of difficulties and objections.
The bitter controversies to which it gave rise, in the fourth
and following centuries, have lent a keen edge to the sar
casms of sceptical writers ; and the syllable which parted
Arianism from the orthodox creed, and the prepositions
used in the subtle disputes of the Fourth General Council,
have given repeated occasion for contemptuous declama
tion on the folly of theological controversies.
We cannot wonder that a doctrine, so mysterious in its
own nature, and surrounded by such an atmosphere of spi
ritual litigation and debate, should awaken many doubts
in some thoughtful and serious minds. How can we
reconcile an incarnation with the Unity of the Godhead ?
How can we conceive that two wills, the uncreated and the
created, should coalesce into one; or that remaining two,
they should constitute only one personal agent? Why
should the race of men receive a privilege so peculiar, and
so impossible to be repeated for any other race of beings,

ON THE INCARNATION. 167
without introducing conceptions altogether incredible ?
And if we admit the reality of a condescension so strange
and wonderful, how is it that the moral effects are so
limited and partial? After such an act of Divine con
descension, how is it that the adversary can still hold in
bondage the greater part of that race, which has been
taken into union with the Godhead itself, the uncreated
essence of the Most High ?
The objection, so far as it relates to the essential na
ture of the Divine Being, and the conceivableness of such
an act of condescension, does not come within the scope of
my present inquiry. My aim is to deal with the difficulty
on its moral, rather than its metaphysical side ; to show
that such a union of the Divine nature with the human,
its possibility being assumed, is both good and wise ; that
the object to be attained is worthy of the Divine wisdom
and love ; and that sceptical doubts gain their only seem
ing strength from dwelling upon the past alone, and re
fusing to recognise the truth of God's revealed promises
concerning the width and grandeur of redemption, and the
glories of the world to come.
And first, every communication from God to his crea
tures must involve an infinite condescension. He who is
unsearchable cannot have his nature or perfections fully
comprehended by a finite understanding. The words of
the Apostle, when he contrasts the partial knowledge of
this life with a perfect knowledge in the life to come,
ought not to be strained beyond their due limit ; so as to
overlook his own illustration from the knowledge of a
child, in contrast to that of the full-grown man. All our
experience of Providence on earth, the statements of Scrip
ture as to the lessons learned by angels from the history
of the Church, and the promises of the perpetual increase

1 68 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
of Christ's kingdom, conspire to prove that the felicity of
the life to come includes a ceaseless progress in wisdom
and love. The creature, by the necessary limits of its
being, cannot attain absolute infinity. But it may attain
and enjoy the relative infinity of rising nearer and nearer,
for ever, to the full apprehension of the Divine goodness.
The time. may come when the least in the kingdom of God
may surpass the present attainments of the foremost Apo
stle, or the highest archangel. But the disparity may still
remain as great as it is now among the hosts of the re
deemed children of God. Every communication made to
a finite capacity must stoop to the level of the recipient.
And hence it Avould seem that a virtual incarnation is im
plied in the very idea of a message from God to men.
Unless the Most High were to veil himself from all his in
telligent creatures in clouds and thick darkness, which no
eye of man or angel can penetrate, there must be a thou-'
sand repeated acts of Divine condescension to the bounds
of angelic or human nature. And these appear to involve
the principle of an incarnation, though they may not alone
avail to establish a fact so wonderful as the real and per
manent union of the uncreated Word with' -one of the
reasonable natures He has made.
Now if some condescension of God to his creatures is
virtually implied in the very fact of a revelation, and its
fuller exhibition is suitable to the dignity and harmony of
the Divine government, its most reasonable form must
surely be when the nature assumed is eminently central
to the Avhole universe of created being. When we com
pare in this respect the only two races of rational creatures
Avhose existence is knoAvn to us, there is one plain reason
Avhy human nature, rather than that of angels, should
receive this honour. For man occupies a central place

ON THE INCARNATION. 169
among all the works of God. His spirit links him Avith
the hosts of angels, and he is only a little lower than they.
But his animal life links him equally with the whole range
of animated being, and his body, in its material substance,
is no less connected by the laws of gravitation and chemi
cal affinity with the planetary spheres, and the whole
inorganic universe. His inferiority to angels, as less sim
ple and purely spiritual in his being, is compensated by
the variety of the bonds which thus unite him with all
creation, from the mote that dances in the sunbeam, or
the insect that sports among the flowers, up to the loftiest
seraph who veils his face in the immediate presence ofthe
Divine glory.
Now if it were the purpose of God, in taking a created
nature into union with himself, to manifest the goodness
which unites Him perpetually to all his works, then of all
forms of being actually known to us, human nature is the
most suitable to this great design. The Son of God has
hereby united himself with all the forms of created exist
ence, through man, who is closely linked with them all ;
and still further, with all degrees of rational intelligence,
from the latent, undeveloped reason of the new-born in
fant, up to the noblest eminences of celestial and seraphic
wisdom. The work of love, once for all to be accom
plished, is thus realized in the most comprehensive form
which it is possible for us to conceive.
There seems to be a further reason for this preference
in the closer intimacy of union thus attainable. Every
angel is a separate creature of God. We may conceive one
fresh individual of this kind to be created, and a union,
like that of the incarnation, to be effected Avith it by
Divine power in the moment of. its birth. But it would
be a union Avith that one angel alone. The Avhole race of

170 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
mankind, on the contrary, as they proceed from one root
or source, are partakers of one common nature. The Son
of God, in assuming it, became intimately united with every
child of man whose created being is derived from Adam
and Eve. The Mediator of God and Man is the Man
Christ Jesus. The law of creation, in the case of man,
has thus provided, with deep foresight, for what seems a
fundamental necessity in the great work of redemption.
Again, it was fit that this most surpassing proof of
Divine goodness, the real union of the Godhead eternally
with a creature being, should be reserved for the deepest
claim of love, and that hardest work, which demands the
exercise of all the moral perfections of the Almighty.
That work is redemption ; or the recovery of moral agents,
endowed with free will, and still retaining the power of
choice, though now in bondage to evil, out of that gulf
into which they have plunged themselves by rebellion and
disobedience. The creation of man, we have seen already,
in contrast to that of angels, has reference throughout to
a coming work of redemption from a foreseen fall and
ruin. And hence there is a deep congruity between the
Arery constitution of human nature and that central work
of Divine love, whereby the Son of God, assuming our
mortal flesh, came to bear up the pillars of a sinking uni
verse. The work of the six days did not more truly point
forward to the creation of man, the destined lord of all the
lower creatures, than the nature of man himself, Avith an
eye which could pierce into the secret moral causes of
things, pointed onward, to a coming fall, and the sure pro
mise of a recovery, to be wrought by the Word of God,
invested for that end with a new and mysterious title,
the Seed of the Woman. He " is before all things, and
by him all things consist." Man, in the hour of his crea-

ON THE INCARNATION. 171
tion, was fearfully and wonderfully made ; so that his
nature, beyond that of angels, was capable of receiving
the vast and inestimable treasures of Infinite Love.
There is a further reason which may, with reverence,
be assumed to exist for this choice of man's nature to be
adopted into the Divine. For the nature thus assumed,
in its original constitution, admits of a perpetual increase,
by which it may reflect, in the largest measure conceivable,
the absolute and infinite fulness of the Uncreated Being.
This capacity of human nature, now marred and defaced
by the Fall into a thousand shapes of vice and impurity,
is assumed, in the form of hope most current among
Christians, to be never repaired into its original dignity,
but to be extinguished for ever. The thousands of genera
tions, or perpetual generations, of which the Scriptures
speak so often with accents of hope and praise, dwindle
down, in the usual form of Christian hope, into less than
two hundred, which alone can be crowded into the narrow
limit of seven thousand years. But if once we accept
those statements in their natural meaning, and cease to
limit the range of redemption to the Church of the First
born alone, the firstfruits in the harvest of the new
creation, a further and powerful reason will appear why
human nature should be selected to receive this highest
gift of the Creator's love.
All the earliest promises of the Messiah are accompa
nied by some express allusion to this prolific virtue,
impressed on man's mysterious being. When the Seed of
the Woman is announced as the world's Redeemer, to
crush the head of the serpent, the promise to Eve in
stantly follows : — "I will greatly multiply thy conception."
In the covenant with Abraham, the promise of the Seed
who shall possess the gate of his enemies is joined with

172 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
another, of increase as the stars of heaven and the sand of
the sea shore. And when Isaiah renews the hope in those
tones of rapturous praise, " Unto us a Child is born, unto
us a Son is given," the promise at once follows, that " of
the increase of his government there shall be no end."
An objection, however, has often been conceived to lie
against the doctrine of the Incarnation from the discoveries
of modern science. The telescope reveals myriads of suns
and systems, scattered throughout the depths of infinite
space. Can we conceive, it is asked, that all these systems,
compared with which our earth is a mere speck, are
devoid of rational and intelligent races, equally capable
with our own of knowing and honouring the great Author •
of the universe ? Various writers have devoted many pages
of ingenious speculation, and even separate works, to dis
cussion of the probable characters, physical or moral, of
the inhabitants of these sidereal worlds. But if it is cer
tain that they are habitable, and probable that they are
actually inhabited, can we believe that a mystery like that
of the Incarnation should be wrought for our little planet
alone, amidst thousands or millions of races, by which
Avorlds on worlds may be peopled throughout the depths
of infinite space?
This objection labours under one fatal defect, the entire
want of all positive evidence in its favour. On the ground
of a mere conjecture, which cannot be verified, it Avould
set aside the central fact of a Divine revelation, attested
by a large variety of concurrent evidence. It is argued
that other suns and planets must be peopled with rational
creatures, because otherwise the Creator would have been
guilty of unwise profusion in forming such a multitude of
worlds, either devoid of all inhabitants, or occupied by
mere animals, that could render Him no worthy tribute pf

ON THE INCARNATION. 173
praise. But if our judgment were not warped and moulded
by our own experience, surely the idea that rational crea
tures must needs be tied down in space to one sun or
planet, so as to be strictly inhabitants of one spot alone,
or else that the Creator would be robbed of all due praise
and worship, must be unnatural in the extreme. The
normal state of such a spirit is rather to be like the winds
of heaven, or the flames of fire, and free denizens of the
whole visible universe. To be tied down to one spot seems
more like a special humiliation and imprisonment than a
natural condition.
Again, the discoveries of geology, succeeding those of
astronomy, seem to reveal long ages of our earth's history,
before it was prepared and furnished to be the abode of
man. Whether, then, suns and planets were directly
created, or result from laws of material aggregation and
chemical change, the effects of which were foreseen and
foreordained by the Infinite Wisdom, it is most unlikely
that the time would be the same for all of them, in Avhich
they became fit for the abode of an intelligent race. The
world which was first peopled, whichever it might be,
would be exposed to the illusion of supposing other worlds
to have reached already the same stage, and be equally
the dwelling of some other race of intelligent creatures
like its own.
Now since some world or other must probably be the
earliest peopled, and our earth seems to have been for long
ages entirely void of life, and then peopled only with its
lowest forms, before man appeared on it, the universe may
possibly be in the stage thus described. And even the
mere possibility that such is the case should restrain the
folly and license of speculation, when it would draw in
ferences from something entirely unknown, and on which

I 74 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
no grain of direct evidence exists, to destroy our faith in a
Divine message, clearly and distinctly revealed. AH that
science can assure us of with regard to these starry worlds
is that they form a vast and illimitable theatre/where, from
ten thousand different centres, children of the dust, Avhe
ther of our own race, or fashioned like ourselves, may
perhaps hereafter be trained to enter on a still liigher life
of celestial happiness and glory.
Two races only of rational creatures, men and angels,
are made knoAvn to us by any certain evidence. In each
case the existence of the race is not more certain than the
first entrance and present spread of moral evil. When
we invent beautiful pictures of Arcadian innocence and
simplicity in the system of Sirius or Arcturus, or the
depths of the Milky Way, Ave may thus be overlooking
very solemn lessons of daily experience or of direct reve
lation, which reveal the wide interval betAveen defectible
creatures and the Uncreated Goodness, and blot out from
our own view some of the most humbling, but most pro
fitable, truths in the whole compass of the revealed Avord
of God. The vastness of creation may be made an excuse
for shutting our eyes to the certainty of the fall of man,
and our own condition as sinners, and to our need of the
great redemption, wrought out for our fallen race through
the condescending love and mercy of our Heavenly Father,
and of the Only Begotten Son of God. Our wisdom is
to cleave to certainties clearly revealed. Secret things
belong to the Lord, but the things which are revealed to
the sons of men, to give light to them in their present
darkness, and to guide their feet into the way of peace.

CHAPTER XI.
ON THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
Atonement by the sacrifice of Christ is the heart and
life of Christianity. The Gospel rests upon the truth
that "Christ died for our sins, according to the Scrip
tures," that He "was made a curse for us," and "bore
our sins in his own body on the tree." But a clear appre
hension of this great doctrine is a hard and high attain
ment, and no slight obscurity rests on it in many minds,
which desire to hold it with a reasonable faith. Great
questions arise, to which conflicting answers have been
given. Did our Lord bear the sins of the saved only, or
of all mankind ? How far is the transfer of guilt to the
innocent consistent with the eternal laws of truth and
righteousness ? Is the substitution total or partial ?
Does it include all sins, and sin in all aspects, or some
only ? What is the nature of the curse which Christ
endured ? What are the results of the sacrifice itself, and
what are those which depend on the faith and repentance
of the sinner ? Is all punishment of those for whom an
atonement has been made illegal and unjust ? If Christ
died for all, how is it that it is still "appointed for all
men once to die" ? Can the sentence be repealed by
atonement, and still remain ?

176 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
In the " Ways of God," chap, vii., I have attempted to
throw some light on these difficulties. But the thoughts
there published are too briefly expressed, and liable to
misconstruction ; and have been approved by some, and
condemned by others, on mistaken or insufficient grounds.
A clearer exposition of them will, I trust, be a real help
to many perplexed and thoughtful minds. Heresy itself
is often the natural recoil from a distorted and lifeless
orthodoxy. The moral government of God can hardly
be subject to a Avorse travesty than when lowered to this
one claim, that a certain amount of suffering must be
exacted, it matters not from whom, for a certain number
or amount of sins. The conscience revolts from a vieAV
so unworthy of the Divine holiness, so alien from the
Avhole tenor of Divine revelation. A creed in which
there is no substitution, and a creed in Avhich there is
nothing but substitution, depart equally, on opposite
sides, from the truth of God. Let us try, with modesty
and reverence, to disentangle, one by one, the difficulties
in this part of revealed religion.
I. First, what is the extent of the atonement ? Did
Christ die for the saved only, or for all mankind ?
Here the answer of the Bible is plain. There are
texts Avhere Christ is said to give himself for the Church,
for his sheep. There are others where, indefinitely, He
is said to die for many, for sinners, for men unjust.
There are none where He is said to die for the Church
only, for his sheep only. Such alone could exclude
a wider message ; Avhile these agree with it, and are in
cluded in it; as a part in the whole to which it belongs.
On the other hand, the language of many texts is
strictly universal. " All we like sheep have gone astray ;
we have turned every one to his own way ; and the Lord

ON THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT. 177
hath laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. liii. 6).
" Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin
of the world" (John i. 29). "The bread I will give is
my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world''
(vi. 51). "If one died for all, then all died : and he died
for all, that they who live should not henceforth live to
themselves, but to him that died for them, and rose
again" (2 Cor. v. 14, 15). "God was in Christ, recon
ciling the world unto himself" (v. 19). "That he, by
the grace of God, should taste death for every man"
(Heb. ii. 9). "Who gave himself a ransom for all"
(1 Tim. ii. G). "And he is the propitiation for our sins ;
and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world"
(1 John ii. 2). " We have seen, and do testify, that the
Father sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world"
(1 John iv. 14).
The same truth is implied in the very nature of the
Gospel. It calls on the sinner to believe what must be
true before he believes it, and this on the authority of
God's message, not of some secret hidden revelation to
himself alone. What he has first to believe is what the
Corinthians received first of all from the Apostle, that
Jesus Christ died for our sins (1 Cor. xv. 3), If He died
for the saved only, then the faith of the sinner, when he
first hears the Gospel, cannot rest on the simple word of
God. It must be builded rather on a secret persuasion
of his own final safety, for which that word, as yet, gives
him no warrant. None of the signs of grace, which it
supplies to the believer, can precede, but all must follow,
the first act by which he believes that Christ died for his.
sins, and rests his hope on that atoning sacrifice.
The Church of England, in full harmony with Scrip
ture, announces plainly the same truth, that Christ died

178 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
for all men, and for all their sins. We read it in Art.
XXXL, in the summary of the Creed, in the Catechism,
and in the Communion doubly — both in the prayer of
consecration, and in the sublime thanksgiving near the
close. Thus it meets us in the first and the last steps of
that ladder of Jacob, by which babes and sucklings are
promoted into fellowship with the anthems and the wor
ship of heaven.
II. Our Lord Jesus Christ, then, died for all. He
tasted death for every man. He is the propitiation, not
for Jews only, nor for believers only, but for the sins of
the whole world. And now the question must arise, Did
He die for multitudes wholly in vain ? Can sins be
atoned for, and the sinner still perish? Can punish
ment be exacted from a Divine substitute, and those be
punished for whom this costly ransom has been paid ?
If the atonement includes all men, and still all men are
not saved, but many lost, must we not lower its efficacy,
and admit that, in many cases, Christ has died in vain ?
In what sense, then, can He have borne the sins of the
whole world ? What are the proper and direct results
of this atonement ? And what are those which Aoav
from it, but still depend on that moral change which is
Avrought by the Gospel in the hearts of true penitents
alone ?
The answer to these questions must be sought in a
further truth. Christ bore indeed the sin of the world,
the collective guilt of all mankind. A truth how
strangely solemn, how sublimely glorious ! But all sin
has two different, almost opposite, characters. In one of
these it can, in the other it cannot, be transferred. It is
an act done once for all, which cannot be undone. Once
committed, it stands engraven on the scheme of Provi-

ON THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT. 179
dence, a transgression of God's law, a rebellion against
the Supreme Lawgiver, which needs some public vin
dication of his outraged authority. But it is also the
act of a conscious agent, a sign of his present state,
which may be changed or even reversed, but which, while
it lasts, must make him hateful in the sight of a holy
God. Sin is a debt, and also a disease. It is a transgression
of the Divine law, without and above, the sinner. It is
a transgression, also, against the health and life of the
spirit within. Each view of it is equally Scriptural,
equally important. The debt needs a ransom, the disease
a cure. If sin were only a disease, there would be much
room for sympathy, none for substitution. Atonement
and propitiation would be wholly out of place. Our only
want would be the healing, soothing power of some at
tractive pattern of perfect love. If sin were only a debt,
substitution would be a complete Gospel, and all for
whom an atonement was made would be heirs of salva
tion, because of that substitution alone. Those for whom
Christ died would then be saved, even before they believe.
Their debt once paid, no punishment or loss could reach
them any more. Again, those who are not saved, on
this view, must have had no sacrifice provided, no glad
tidings sent. The Gospel, if preached to them at all,
would only be a falsehood, a snare, and a delusion. They
would be wholly beyond the redemption of Christ, like
the fallen angels. The Saviour would neither have lived
nor died for them, and to invite them to believe this
would be simply persuading them to believe a lie.
These tAvo aspects of sin, outwardly towards the law
of God, and inwardly as the present sign of a state of
heart displeasing to God, and ruinous to the soul's health,
M 2

180 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF. "
have an opposite relation to the doctrine of repentance.
An act once done cannot be undone. No repentance
can wipe out the stain, or reverse the record' of rebellion.
But sinful acts cease to be the index of a sinful heart,
when the heart itself is changed by true repentance.
The sinner then dies to the sin, and the sin itself expires
in its character of a moral test. Thus the disease of sin
needs to be healed by an inward work in the heart, and
not by substitution. The debt may be borne and paid
by a substitute, but can never be done away by repent
ance alone. So also, in actual life, a Avorkman, disabled
by grievous illness for his work, may contract a debt he
cannot pay. He now suffers under a double burden — a
debt unpaid, aad a disease uncured. A physician might
cure the complaint, but the debt would remain. A
benefactor might pay the debt for him, and still the
disease be unhealed. It is only a double gift, a payment
and a cure, which can restore him to a state of freedom,
health, and peace. And these two benefits might be
linked with each other. If there is a medicine that
can heal, and the sick man, through ignorance or pre
judice, should refuse to apply, it, he might be degraded
into a helpless and worthless pauper, a mere drain on
wasted benevolence, by help unwisely given. A wise
benefactor might then make his promise to pay the debt
already due to depend on proof of willingness to consult
the physician, and use the prescribed remedies. The
medicine would not pay the debt, nor the payment heal
the disease ; and still the payment and the first step in
the cure would be linked inseparably in one work of love.
These two distinct aspects of all sin, when we look
below the surface, enter into the whole economy of re
demption, and even serve to define the very form of

ON THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT. l8l
Divine revelation. It consists of two distinct parts, the
LaAv and the Gospel, the Old Covenant and the New.
Again, the Law may be viewed in a double light, either as
the earnest and preparation for the Gospel, containing all
the germs of the later message, or else as its antithesis
and contrast. The former aspect of the Law is unfolded
in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the latter, mainly, in
those to the Galatians and the Romans.
What, then, is the nature of this contrast, which de
termines the whole structure of the word of God ? The
Law exhibits a perfect standard, and exacts a penalty for
every failure. The Gospel assumes the moral bankruptcy
of those to whom it is given, and provides a ransom for
their guilt, and healing medicine for their moral and spi
ritual sickness. One deals with man as a creature, sets
before him the rule of perfection, and severs all creatures
into the unfallen and the fallen, the sinless and the sinful.
The other deals with men as fallen creatures, sets before
them a way of recovery, and severs them into the im
penitent and the penitent, the faithless and the believing,
those who still turn their backs upon the God of grace,
and those who seek Him diligently, to regain his lost
image in righteousness and true holiness. And thus the
Law, as law, makes no provision for repentance. Its
message is simple and solemn. " The soul that sinneth,
it shall die." " Cursed is every one that continueth not
in all things written in the book of the law, to do them."
But it also recognizes the truth, that sin, though repent
ance cannot undo it, may be transferred from the sinner,
and be the object of a Divinely-provided atonement. The
Gospel reveals a true and Divine atonement, as the basis
on which it wholly rests. But its own message, from the
first, is a call to. repentance, and a promise of forgiveness,

1 82 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
adoption, and every blessing, to the penitent alone. It is
the voice of the Law, that sin is a debt, a moral bank
ruptcy, a just exposure to death and the curse, which no
mere repentance can do away, and which it needs a sin-
offering to remove ; and also that human help is vain,
since " no man can redeem his brother, or give unto God
a ransom for him." It is the voice of the Gospel, that a
Divine atonement has been made, that Christ is "the
Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world;"
and that an inward, personal change of heart, a present
acceptance of God's mercy, a genuine faith in Christ, is
the needful moral condition, that the disease of sin may
be healed, and the sinner may be restored to the favour of
God in this life, and the full enjoyment of his glorious
presence in the life to come. The Law deals thus with all
sin objectively, in reference to the strict claims of Divine
justice, and the rights of the Supreme Lawgiver. The
Gospel, first of all, reveals this claim as already satisfied
by the death of Christ alone ; and then deals with sin
subjectively, in the actual rebellion of the heart, and
brings the power of the Cross, and the energy of the
quickening Spirit, to bear on these strongholds of the
kingdom of darkness in the hearts of sinful men.
III. What, then, apart from the Atonement, is the
state of mankind before God ? What is their legal stand
ing, and the nature of the curse and sentence under which
they lie ?
The Law of God is the standard of right and moral
perfection. Its claim is unalterable, and cannot be lowered :
perfect love to God, and love to man, and the actions that
flow from perfect love. This is God's righteous claim, and,
whenever it is not satisfied, the soul is morally bankrupt.
Sin once committed, debt once incurred, can never be

ON THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT. 183
cancelled by later obedience. That obedience is already
due, and its absence would be a new debt added to the
old. Thus, when sin has once entered, the Law, as law,
provides no remedy. Its promise is to the sinless alone.
To the sinful it denounces God's sentence — " The soul that
sinneth, it shall die."
The sentence of the broken law is death. But what is
the meaning of this death, the curse denounced by the
law on every transgressor ? It needs some care and
thought to answer this question aright. The death meant
must be the same which was threatened in Paradise, and
which entered the world through Adam's sin. Again, it
is a contrast to the second death, the final sentence of the
last judgment. When one is inflicted, the other is abo
lished. " And death and hell were cast into the lake of
fire" (Rev. xx. 14). It is not the mere act of dying. In
all Scripture it is ascribed to the soul, even when separated
from the body. " In death there is no remembrance of
thee; and who will give thee thanks in the pit ?" The
words temporal and eternal, often applied to death, tend
rather to mislead, than to explain the true nature
of this contrast. The first death is temporal, because its
future abolition is a revealed promise; but in its own
nature, apart from Christ's redemption, it would be ever
lasting. Neither the faculties of the creature, nor the
nature of sin, nor the justice of God, assign it any limit
or bound. It is due to a mighty work of redemption
alone, that it is swallowed up in eternal victory.
This death, the sentence of the law, extends to the
whole man, both soul and body. To see its nature as
respects the soul, we must reflect on its work with refer
ence to the body. One is the visible sign and sacrament
of the other. The body is then parted from the soul, its

184 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
life; and being thus parted, becomes the 'prey of inAvard
corruption. So, also, death is the separation of the soul
from God, the true source of life; and all the confusion,
chaos, and moral corruption and dissolution which follows
that awful separation. Without, there is banishment from
the presence of God, and from all the light of his favour
•and blessing. Within, there will follow the unrestrained
working of moral corruption, degrading, perverting, dese
crating all the faculties and powers of the immortal spirit.
Sin would thus become, under the name of death, a
"finished" evil, its own ever-growing torment, and the
soul sink deeper and deeper in an abyss of hopeless
misery. On this view we may see the force of the contrasted
figures, by which the first and second death are portrayed.
One is "the lake of fire," solemn indeed and most awful,
yet bounded in its range, shut in by firm land on every
side. The other is "the deep," the abyss, "the bottomless
pit," fevil reigning, rioting, growing, deepening without
limit and without end, in its fatal descent, farther and
farther, from light, happiness, and heaven. By the sen
tence of the law, fulfilled without atonement or redemp
tion, mankind, once fallen, would be shut out from God's
-presence, and sink and sink, and sink for ever, in this
abyss of hopeless and endless ruin. There would have
been, through ages without end, the awful reality of a God-
dishonouring, God-hating, God-blaspheming, self-torment
ing, God-abandoned universe. Such death is the wages of
sin, its due desert, and the issue to which it naturally
tends. It is the fatal harvest from the seeds of moral
corruption harboured in the soul, " Sin, when it is
finished, bringeth forth death."
IV. What, now, is the nature of Christ's Atonement ?

ON THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT. 185
What is the curse He endured for sin ? What is the
direct and proper result of that Atonement, apart from
the mighty moral change, in all Avho obey the Gospel.
wrought by the magnetic, transforming power of the Cross
of Christ? Here the testimony of Scripture is plain. " The Lord
hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." "He made
him to be sin for us, who knew no sin." " Christ hath re
deemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse
for us." " He suffered for our sins, the just for the un
just." " Who himself bore our sins in his own body on
the tree." " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away
the sin of the world." A sinful character was never once
ascribed to our Lord. He was, and was ever held to be,
in the midst of his sufferings, the Holy One of God, who
might not see corruption, the Lamb of God without
blemish or spot, who " knew no sin." Sin was ascribed or
imputed to Him, not as, the sign of a sinful character, but
in direct contrast to the claims of a character declared to
be free from all spot ot stain of sin. It was in its other
aspect, as a series of acts done, that could not be reversed,
of transgressions against the authority of the Supreme
Lawgiver, that the sin of the world, one vast collective
whole, was laid, like the wood of the sacrifice, upon the
shoulders of the world's Redeemer. And the curse Avhich
He bore was death, the first death, so far as it was due to
the demerit of sin and the claims of Divine justice alone,
and was not aggravated by the further working of moral
corruption in the heart of God-abandoned sinners.
When God reveals his justice in dealing with the
moral character of men, He must deal with them accord
ing to the truth. The Holy One, who loved righteous
ness and hated iniquity, whose life was sinless, and whose

i86 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
love is perfect, must then be anointed with the oil of glad
ness above his fellows. But when He deals with sin in
its other aspect, as transgression of the law, reversible by
no repentance, the perfection of the Victim on whom the
guilt is laid, and from whom the penalty is exacted, serves
only to place in the clearest light the essential sinfulness
and hatefulness of sin, and the authority of that law which
the sinner has despised. The claim of God's holiness is ill
explained by a law of mechanical compensation, as if the
sufferings, for a few days and nights, of an Infinite Person,
were exactly equal to those of the multitudes of mankind
through a whole eternity of ruin and sorrow. Sin and its
punishment are not such finite, measurable things. What
is needed for the full vindication of God's authority is that
his holy anger against all sin, as sin, should, once for all,
be displayed to the uttermost, before any soul that has
fallen from God, and rebelled against Him, can be restored
to the perfect enjoyment of his favour and blessing. This
is the baptism of fire, of which our Lord said, " How am I
straitened, till it be accomplished ! " He endured for our
sakes that death which is the curse of the broken law, and
in his case its sting was not removed. He cried upon the
cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
He suffered the pains, the pangs of death. He was laid
"in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps," and was
vexed with all the storms and waves of God's holy dis
pleasure against the sin of a guilty world. The Highest
and the Holiest stooped to the lowest abasement of shame
and sorrow. He endured death, the sentence of the Law
in all its darkest terrors, so far as these are separable from
the aggravations caused by reigning sin, gloomy remorse,
fierce, untamed passion, deep self-torment, and utter de
spair.

ON THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT. 1 87
When once this claim of Divine justice against sin, as
sin, had thus been fully satisfied, and the Holy One had
descended to the deep of Sheol, enduring the bitter anguish
of sojourn in the dark land of death, then the further
claim of the same justice, that all shall be dealt with ac
cording to their true moral character, began forthwith to
assert its unchangeable authority. The pains of death
were loosed, because it was not possible that the Sinless
One should be holden thereby. No sooner had He entered
the deep, fathomed its dark abyss, and endured the worst
extreme of separation from his heavenly Father, than the
curse exhausted its bitterness, and the blessing began to
reveal its power. That same day He left the deep of
Sheol or Hades, and entered its Paradise, the sheltered
resting-place of the faithful dead. The third day He left
the under-world of the dead, and rose victorious from the
grave, to die no more. The fortieth day He completed
his upward return, and "journeyed into heaven, angels,
and authorities, and powers being made subject unto him."
Because He had stooped unutterably low, He was raised
unutterably high, "far above all principality, and power,
and might, and every name that is named, not only in this
world, but in the world to come."
The direct and immediate result of this great atone
ment answers to its character, as thus defined, and is
clearly pointed out in the word of God. The world is now
reconciled to God. Rom. xi. 15. 2 Cor. v. 19. The veil
of the law's condemnation, spread over the face of all
nations, is taken away and destroyed. Isa. xxv. 7. No
amount of past sin is now any barrier to the instant resto
ration of the sinner to God's favour and blessing. The
middle wall of partition, which no bitter repentance could
remove, is broken down, and there is free and instant

1 88 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
access for every returning penitent to the house and
home of love, from Avhich their sins had banished them.
There is left no hindrance, no barrier without, on the part
of Divine justice, administering a perfect Law; but only
the hindrance within, from the present unbelief and pride
of those who will not accept a Divine remedy, and who
resist and cast aside the grace of the Gospel. The curse
and condemnation of the Law is done away in the cross of
Christ. The condemnation , of the Gospel alone remains,
"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the
world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because
their deeds were evil." And thus the effects of Christ's
Atonement, common to all mankind, are these : the re
moval of an impassable and hopeless barrier between
sinful creatures and a holy God ; the provision of a day of
grace, in which mercy may be found ; rich forbearance and
long-suffering towards years and ages of abounding sin ;
the abolition of the first death, the wages of sin, which is
to be swallowed up in eternal victory ; the resurrection of
the body ; and the transfer of men from the reign of death,
and the curse of utter vanity, to a state in which God, the
God of love and holiness, will be for ever glorified — though
by some in the height of heavenly glory, and by others
only in the depth of just retribution and eternal shame.
V. What, in the last place, is the connection between
the Atonement and the special benefits obtained by those
who believe and obey the Gospel ?
Sin is both a debt and a disease. It is doubly a debt,
both directly, as a transgression, or series of transgressions
of God's law ; and indirectly, as the sign of a rebellious
state of heart, involving guilt as well as corruption before
God. The Atonement, in itself, removes the debt only,
and in its first and simplest aspect alone. But the guilti

ON THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT. 189
of present rebellion, and the disease of reigning siu, can be
removed only by an inward change of heart, the work of
the regenerating Spirit of God. Here the Atonement
avails, not by the mere fact of its accomplishment on the
cross, but as a moral magnet, a mighty fountain of new
and heavenly life to the souls of men. The substitution of
Christ belongs to his sacrificial death alone. But his in
carnation, his sinless life, his glorious resurrection and
ascension, are all equally the source of those gifts which,
as the federal head of mankind, and more especially of
the Church, He pours down abundantly upon all his
people. He bore the curse of the Law, that men might not
bear it. He died, that men might not taste of death in its
full bitterness, armed with its deadly sting, nor remain
under its power, but that it might be destroyed for ever.
But He stooped from heaven, that He might raise us to
•heaven. He obeyed, that we too might obey. He hum
bled himself that He might make us humble. He rose
from the dead, that we too might rise. He ascended, as
our Forerunner, that in due season we also might ascend,
and sit with Him in heavenly places in the world to come.
In these aspects of his redeeming work, substitution has
no place, but federal headship alone. The Atonement
prepares the way for these further benefits. It is the only
foundation on which they rest. But it does not secure
them by the mere fact that a full sacrifice has been made.
They depend on a further work of repentance and faith in
the heart of the sinner, whereby the soul is engrafted into
the true Vine, and becomes a living member of the mys
tical body of Christ. Till this change is wrought, the
curse of the Law is removed, but the curse of the Gospel
remains. " He that believeth not is condemned already, be
cause he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten

190 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
Son of God." And the disease of sin also remains still
without a cure. The rebellion is even aggravated by the
greatness of the mercy which is still despised, and the rich
provision of grace, which the soul refuses to receive. But
the same Atonement, which removes the legal curse, is the
grand instrument appointed by God, and applied and
used by the Holy Spirit, for working this inward and
mighty change in the hearts of men.
When a rich and kind, friend pays a debt for a prisoner,
the substitution properly belongs to the payment only, and
its immediate effect is his immediate release from prison.
But the same friend, when the debtor is released, may re
ceive him into his family, provide him with a fresh educa
tion, and introduce him into a new sphere of life, leading to
riches, happiness, and honour. The prisoner, condemned
before to the society of criminals, and sinking fast in moral
degradation, may come under better and nobler influences;
and gratitude for the benefit he has received may lead
him to copy the moral excellences ofthe beloved benefactor,
by whom his ransom was paid, and on whom all his pre
sent comforts and blessings depend. All these results are
no part of the payment which was first made. No law of
justice requires that they should exactly equal that sacri
fice of comfort or ease to which the rich friend submitted
on his payment of the debt. And yet they are so entirely
dependent on this first act of love, that, in a looser sense,
they may be called the purchase of that first ransom. In
strictness of speech, however, this phrase does not apply,
and rather tends to obscure the true nature and condition
of these latter benefits. And thus we find in the Scrip
tures that Christ is never said to have bought blessings
for His people : nor are adoption, regeneration, holiness,
peace, resurrection, ever styled the purchase of his pre-

ON THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT. 191
cious blood. It is his people themselves who are pur
chased, bought, redeemed from the power of the curse, the
bondage of sin, the dominion of Satan ; that being brought
out of the prison-house, and made once more the freemen
of the Lord, they may freely receive, with no impediment
from Divine justice, whatever blessings the free bounty of
God the Father is pleased to bestow. And yet all these
gifts and blessings come to them through Christ alone.
He is the Vine, and they are the branches. He is the
Head, and they are the members. He is the great Foun
tain, from whom and through whom alone every stream
of grace must flow down to a sinful world. Spiritual
union with the risen Saviour is the fixed, unalterable
condition on which all the blessings of personal salvation
must for ever depend.
The curse of the Law can be removed by the Atone
ment alone, believed or disbelieved. The curse of the
Gospel, the moral guiltiness of present rebellion, the sore
sickness and disease of indwelling sin, can be removed
by repentance and faith alone, and in no other way.
Here substitution can have no place. Each must repent
for himself. Each must believe for himself. Each for
himself must lay hold upon the promises of the new
covenant. To bear the burdens of others is the law of
Christ, which finds its highest fulfilment in his atoning
sacrifice alone. But this work of the Redeemer in our
stead must be followed by a work of the Holy Spirit with
in us, in which the spirit of man is a fellow-worker with
God, before salvation can be ours in the fulness of its
revealed blessings. And here the further truth applies,
that " every man shall bear his own burden." " He that
soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but
he that soAveth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life

192 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
everlasting." A great work of Divine love has been
wrought for mankind,, once for all, upon the cross, whereby
the first death has been abolished, and will be swallowed
up in eternal victory. But a further work is needful,
wrought by the Spirit of God in every contrite heart,
through faith in that Divine atonement; that the soul
may attain a full salvation, and being freed from the
power of the second death, may have right to the tree
of life, and enter in through the gates into the celestial
citv.

CHAPTER XII.
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT.
The doctrine of Eternal Punishment is the most solemn
of all those revealed in the word of God. It has awakened
deep repugnance and antipathy not only from the openly
unbelieving and profane, but from many who may claim
the character of pious and devoted Christians. Many
accept it, in submission to what appears to them the plain
testimony of the Scriptures, but with much inward per
plexity and distress of mind. Others cherish the hope,
which they hardly venture openly to profess, that the
Church on this point has failed to expound the warnings
of God's word aright, and that its solemn threatenings are
either conditional, and may never be realised through some
act of Divine mercy and omnipotence, or temporary, so as
to be followed either by restoration to holiness and happi
ness, or by an utter extinction of being. The various
alternatives proposed exclude and contradict each other.
They agree only in the common principle that the eternal
punishment of a large proportion, if not tbe great ma
jority, of the human race, is a tenet so aAvful and over
whelming in its nature, that scarcely any evidence is suffi
cient to establish its truth. I shall propose, first, to
inquire directly what is the real testimony of the word of
God, and next, to consider whether the moral difficulties,

194 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
alleged to rest upon the common faith of Christians, may
not be lightened or removed by other truths, inwrought
into the whole texture of the word of God. May He who
is the God of love and holiness, and the Fountain of all
wisdom, enable me to treat the subject with due reverence,
and to give some help to those w'hose spirits have been
perplexed or overwhelmed by meditation on this solemn
aspect of divine revelation.
The passages "of the New Testament in which future
punishment is spoken of, and either its reality, its
severity, or its continuance affirmed, are these: Mat. iii.
10, 12, v. 21, 22, 26, 29, 30, vii. 13, 14, 23, viii. 12, 29,
x. 28, 39, xi. 22, 24, xii. 31, 32, xiii. 30, 41, 42, 48, 50,
xvi. 26, xviii. 8, 9, 34, 35, xxii. 12 — 14, xxiii. 14, 33, xxv.
41, 46, xxvi. 24; Mar. iii. 28—30, vi. 11, viii. 35—38,
ix. 43—48, xvi. 16; Lu. xii. 4, 5, 10, xvi. 19—31; Joh.
iii. 15, 16, 36, v. 29, viii. 24; Acts i. 25; Rom. i. 18, ii. 5,
16, ix. 22; 1 Cor. i. 18, iii. 13, 15; Phil. i. 28, iii. 19;
1 Th. i. 10,. v. 3; 2 Th. i. 7—9, ii. 10; 1 Ti. vi. 9; Heb. ii. 3,
vi. 8, x. 26—39, xii. 25, 29; Ja. ii. 13, v. 20; 1 Pet. iv. 17,
18; 2 Pet. ii. 9, 17, 21, iii. 7, 16; 1 Jo. v. 16; Ju. 13;
Rev. ii. 11, xiv. 9—11, xix. 3, xx. 6,-10, 11, 15, xxi. 5—8,
xxii. 11, 12, 18. These texts, and some hundred others in
the Old Testament, when read with care, and compared
together, have been felt by most Christians to contain
these doctrines, as revealed truths of God; that there is' a
life after death, and a judgment to come ; that this judg
ment includes the ' acceptance of the righteous, and the
public condemnation of the unrighteous and unholy; that
their existence does not cease, either at death or the resur
rection, but lasts for ever; and that the sentence upon
them is never to be annulled or reversed, but is to be an
eternal manifestation of the evil of sin, and the righteous

ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 195
anger of a holy God; and that their doom is one of anguish
and sorrow Avithout end. Or in the words of Christ him
self, "that their worm dieth not, and their fire is not
quenched," but their punishment lasts for evermore.
This awakening and solemn message of eternal judg
ment does not depend on these texts alone. It seems
really imvrought into the whole texture of the word of
God. It results from the combination of four separate
truths, which pervade the whole course and series of God's
messages to mankind.
The first of these is the fundamental contrast in the
moral condition of men, even in tbe present life. "All
have sinned and come short of the glory of God." In this
common character of men, as sinful and fallen, "there is
no difference," Rom. iii. 22, 23. "There is not a just man
on earth, that liveth, and sinneth not," Eccl. vii. 20. But
still there is, in God's sight, an entire contrast between the
state of penitent and impenitent sinners, of believers and
unbelievers, of those who forsake and turn aAvay from
their sins, and those who abide under the power of rebel
lion and iniquity. These two classes are set before us
under a large variety of names, but in constant opposition
to each other. They are called variously the righteous
and the wicked, the just and the unjust, the holy and the
unholy, the meek and lowly in heart, and the proud and
haughty, those who fear God. and those who fear Him not,
the faithful and the unfaithful, wheat and chaff, wheat and
tares, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent,
the children of God, and children of the devil. This con
trast meets us in all the histories of Scripture from first to
last, from the death of righteous Abel, and the saving of
righteous Noah in the ark, when the flood came on the
world of the ungodly, to the descriptions of moral conflict
N 2

I96 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
between ungodly rulers and people, and the followers of
the Lamb, called and chosen and faithful, in the latest
prophecy of the word of God. No truth, perhaps, has a
greater amount of Scripture testimony, than this doctrine
of a fundamental contrast in the present moral condition
of men. And the main scope of the Gospel is to invite
those who are now careless and disobedient to repent and
turn to God, and to do works meet for repentance, that
they may be delivered from the wrath to come, and which
rests, even now, on the unbelieving and the profane.
The second great truth is that death is not the end of
human existence. One main element of the faith of the
Gospel is " the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the
world to come." This great doctrine of a further and con
tinued life of men after what we call death is taught in
many places of the Old Testament, so that the Sadducees,
in denying it, erred, not knowing the Scriptures; but much
more plainly and fully in the New Testament. Many
passages affirm or imply the continued existence of the
soul, after the death of the body, when it is consigned to
the grave; but the clearest and fullest affirmation of it is
given in the great doctrine of the resurrection. "As in
Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
"We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,
that every one may receive the things done in his body,
according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."
This doctrine that "it is appointed to all men once to die,
but after this the judgment" was revealed gradually, under
the law and the prophets, with growing clearness, but was
brought most fully to light by the Gospel, and its message
of the resurrection of Christ, and his future return in
glory, to be the Judge of both the living and the dead.
A third truth follows, in agreement with the two others.

ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 197
The present moral contrast, in God's sight, will have its
issue hereafter in a like contrast in the Divine sentence
pronounced on sinners in the great day of account. Some
will be justified, others will be condemned. Some Avill
be heirs of salvation, others will be visited with de
struction. Some, like wheat, will be gathered into the
garner; others, like chaff or tares, will be burned Avith fire.
Some Avill be placed, like sheep, at the right hand of the
Judge, and receive a sentence of blessing; others, as the
goats, will be placed at the left hand, and hear from his
lips the awful sentence, Depart from me, ye cursed. Those
who have sown to the flesh will of the flesh reap corrup
tion; while those who have sown to the Spirit, shall of the
Spirit reap life everlasting. The contrast of reward and
punishment in the judgment to come is repeated many
times, and forms one main feature in the Psalms and
later Prophets, and the whole of the New Testament. It
is conspicuous alike in the last chapter of both. "For
behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and
all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be
as stubble, and the day that cometh shall burn them up,
saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither
root nor branch. But unto you that fear rny name shall
the Sun of righteousness arise, with healing in his Avings."
And again, "Blessed are they that do his commandments,
that they may have right to the tree of life, and enter in
through the gates into the city. For without are dogs,
and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and ido
laters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie."
Fourthly, the nature of this judgment, whether in
reward or punishment, is not temporary and transient, but
abiding and eternal. "He that blasphemeth against the
Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of

198 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
.eternal damnation." "Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt
by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the
uttermost farthing." " These shall go away into everlasting
punishment, but the righteous into life everlasting."
"Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from
the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power."
To the presumptuous and self-willed, who are not afraid to
blaspheme dignities, who walk after the flesh in the lust
of uncleanness, "the mist of darkness is reserved for ever."
They are "wandering stars, to whom is reserved the black
ness of darkness for ever." Among the first principles and
foundations of the Gospel is the doctrine "of the resurrec
tion of the dead, and of eternal judgment," Heb. vi. 2.
And in the book of Revelation, the crown and close of the
messages of God, the same phrase is used three times to
denote the continuance of future punishment (Rev. xiv.
11, xix. 3, xx. 10), which is also used nine times to express
the duration of God's own existence and dominion, Rev. i.
6, iv. 9, 10, v. 13, 14, vii. 12, x. 6, xi. 15, xv. 7, and once
also for the continued blessedness of the redeemed, xxii. 5.
The rejection of this doctrine admits of three varieties,
inconsistent with each other, and each of them loaded with
difficulties of its own. The first is the doctrine that death
is the extinction of being to the ungodly, so that a future
life of any kind is limited to the faithful. The second is
the view that agonian punishment is not eternal, but that
a long period of severe suffering, after the resurrection, is
then followed by utter extinction and loss of being. The
third is the creed of universalism, or that after a season of
punishment, wicked men and angels are all finally re
stored to the Divine favour and blessing, and share, per
haps with some difference of degree, in the bliss of the
redeemed.

ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 199
The first of these views is directly opposed to all those
passages, which speak of the continued existence of evil
men, after their bodily death, and to those, if possible still
plainer, which distinctly affirm a resurrection of the unjust
as well as the just. A being which is wholly extinct
cannot be revived. It would be the creation of a new
and different being. The revealed truth of the resurrec
tion of the dead wholly excludes the notion that death is,
in the case of men, an entire annihilation or destruction
of the individual being.
If death meant ceasing to exist at all, there could be
no resurrection of the dead, but only a creation of new
beings, to replace others which had wholly perished.
There could also be no possibility of a second death, if
the meaning of death were an entire abolition of the in
dividual being. For this plainly could occur only once
for all, and never be repeated. This first of the three
substitutes for the usual faith of Christians is therefore
most plainly opposed to the whole series of Scripture
statements with regard to the survival of the spirit, when
the body has crumbled to the dust, the resurrection both
of the just and the unjust, and description of the doom
of the ungodly as the second death.
The second and third opinions admit a coming resur
rection of all the dead, whether righteous or unrighteous,
and the continued existence of their souls, when separated
from the body. They agree, further, in recognizing, as
a revealed truth, a long or age-lasting season of suffering
and penal infliction to the ungodly. They alike affirm
that this punishment is not strictly eternal or without
end, but comes at length to a close. They diverge as to
what then ensues. One class holds that the being of
sinners is burnt up and destroyed by the severity of their

200 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
sufferings, so that they are utterly extinguished, and cease
to exist. The others hold that their sufferings are like
a purgatorial fire, and that they are afterwards recovered
to share eternally in the bliss of the redeemed.
But this construction of the word "everlasting" in
Matt. xxv. 41, 46, 2 Th. i. 9, and of " for ever and ever"
in Rev. xiv. 11, xix. 3, xx. 10, to denote an age or season,
which comes to an end, when it is used in the same verses
to express the eternal felicity of the redeemed, and in the
same context to describe God's own eternal being, is most
forced and unnatural. The word alcovios occurs more than
seventy times in the New Testament. Seven of these
refer to future punishment, everlasting fire, destruction
or judgment, Matt, xviii. 8, xxv. 41, 46, Mark iii. 29,
2 Th. i. 9, Heb. vi. 2, Jude 7. All the rest, with three
exceptions, Rom. xvi. 25, 2 Tim. i. 9, Tit. i. 2, refer either
to the duration of the future bliss of the redeemed, or to
the Divine eternity. And in these three exceptions the
plural form, and the association with xpovo<s, evidently
require a partial modification of the strict and usual
meaning. They refer not to the future but the past,
those birth-ages of the world which lose themselves in the
abyss of the Divine eternity. As applied to the future,
the usage is unbroken, and the word is constantly em
ployed to denote that which has no termination. The
only text where a doubt could arise is Rev. xiv. 6, where
the angel is said to preach "the everlasting gospel" to
every kindred on the face of the earth. And this most
naturally denotes a message of glad tidings, not limited to
this mortal life, but reaching onward to eternity.
But if the construction of these texts, required in
common by both forms of the doctrine, which denies
eternal punishment, is unnatural and untenable, each is

ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 201
pressed by separate difficulties, where they diverge from
each other. And first, the doctrine of annihilation or
destruction supposes that all the ungodly survive the
death of the body, most of them for hundreds or thou
sands of years, that they are afterward raised from the
dead, that in resurrection-bodies they hear and undergo
the sentence of the Righteous Judge, that they are tor
mented with fire and flame for long ages, and then at
last their very being is blotted out and extinguished, like
chaff which wholly disappears when burnt, and leaves not
a trace behind. This view, of course, must abandon every
argument based on the assertion that death and destruc
tion mean annihilation. For on this theory all those who
die, are lost, or destroyed, do not cease to exist, but first
abide in Hades, awaiting the resurrection, and then con
tinue to exist in bodies of the resurrection, for long ages,
enduring a penal sentence from God. It is self evident
that the words death, the loss of the soul, or destruction,
are applied only to the first death, or dissolution of the
body, or the state of a soul that still exists, when the
day of grace has ended, or to the sentence which casts into
outer darkness or the lake of fire. The awful name of
" the second death" is not applied to some point of time,
conjectured, not revealed, when penal suffering comes to
an end by the guilty soul ceasing to exist, but to that
state of penal suffering itself. To be cast into the lake of
fire is the second death.
But while the admission of the double truth, that the
ungodly are raised from the dead, and suffer in the body,
at least for a long season, a penal sentence, sets aside
every argument, which assumes that death and destruc
tion mean the end of conscious existence, this involves
moral and metaphysical difficulties of the gravest kind.

202 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
The gifts and calling of God are " Avithout repentance".
If then a conscious being, not dependent on bodily organs,
and fitted in itself to endure for ever, has been given, and
should afterwards be withdrawn, this would seem to re
verse a great law of God's moral government. If, to avoid
this difficulty, we look upon consciousness as depending
on the compound nature of the soul, so that it can be
resolved into unconscious elements, the difficulty is in
creased on the other side. Such a view is simple mate
rialism, and involves a denial of man's responsibility as a
personal and individual being.
Again, if later extinction of men's spiritual being were
granted to be possible in itself, the revealed fact of the
resurrection must render it highly unnatural and impro
bable. A great and miraculous work of Divine power
Avould thus have been wrought, only to be reversed once
more. It is hard to conceive of the work of creation as
reversed by utter extinction. But that a being, half ex
tinguished, and buried in the land of darkness, should be
brought into the full possession of natural powers, once
suspended, and the light of manifest judgment, only to be
reduced again to utter nothingness, and sink into a more
total darkness than before, seems like a strange vacillation,
quite unworthy of Him who is perfect in wisdom. If
God's work, in the creation of men and angels, is the irre
versible gift of an intelligent and responsible being, and
this " without repentance," or incapable of being with
drawn, consistently with the perfections of God, we may
then see a clear reason for the fact of the resurrection,
both of the just and the unjust. In all his creatures God
must be glorified, however strange and solemn the forms
which, in some cases, this great truth may assume. But
if souls are perishable as to their natural existence, and

ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 203
may be reduced to nothing, it is hard to imagine any rea
son for protracted torture of the rebellious, instead of cut
ting short the duration of evil, and blotting them out at
once, without delay, from the universe of God.
It is claimed for this view, that, in contrast with the
usual doctrine, it maintains the non-eternity of evil. But
it seems to me that exactly the reverse is true. Evil is
not abolished, if the All- wise Creator is obliged to undo in
part bis own work of creation, and destroy multitudes of
his creatures, the noblest and highest in their natural
powers, because He cannot find means whereby to glorify
himself in their continued being. The principle is the
same as in the wider hypothesis, that God should abstain
from creation altogether, through a foresight of the moral
evils that would ensue from the existence of mutable and
responsible creatures. In this case, as I have said before,
evil would achieve its most fatal and awful triumph, by
planting its victorious standard within the citadel of moral
perfection and goodness, and turning the Fountain of
living waters into a dull marsh, from which no stream of
grace and blessing should ever flow. The same reasons
which forbid the Infinitely Wise to forbear creation,
through fear of the evils sin would introduce into his uni
verse, equally forbid the total destruction of any of his crea
tures, fitted by their creation to enjoy life for ever, because
He is not able, through their sin and rebellion, to glorify
himself in them in any other way.
Let us now consider the other alternative. It admits,
in deference to the express words of Scripture, a long last
ing punishment of those who die without having embraced
the offered grace of the gospel. It agrees with the de-
structionist creed that this period, however long it may
be, will come to an end. But it diverges from it in main-

204 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
taining that the later result is not utter extinction, but
restoration to happiness and the Divine favour. The con
trast comes to be, not between the saved and the lost, but
between those who are saved through the sufferings of
Christ, and others who are saved through penal anguish,
sorrow, and fiery vengeance upon sin, which they them
selves haAre endured in their own persons.
Does this doctrine of universal restoration, and a com
mon and equal salvation to be enjoyed, with a difference
in the date alone, by those who have lived and died in
faith and in unbelief, agree with the plain unforced teach
ing of the word of God ? I cannot, for myself, understand
how any honest and simple readers of the Bible, however
deep their shrinking from the doctrine of eternal punish
ment, can accept such a view as the real testimony of the
inspired Scriptures. The contrast of present moral state
and future doom between two opposite classes of men, the
just and the unjust, the holy and the unholy, believers
and unbelievers, the humble and the proud, those who
fear God and who fear Him not, the penitent and the im
penitent, those who confess their guilt before the Most
High and forsake it, and those who cover and conceal it,
and refuse to let it go, seems one of the most central and
vital truths in all the messages of God's word from first to
last. On this contrast it is that all the warnings of God's
Law and the promises of the Gospel alike depend. From
the first sentence on the Serpent, " I will put enmity be
tween thee and the woman, between thy seed and her
seed," onward through the histories of Cain and Abel, of
Noah and the world of the ungodly, of Abraham and his
intercession for Sodom, and Israel in the wilderness, to
the warning, at the close of Malachi, of the day that will
burn as an oven, and the rising of the Sun of righteous-

ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 205
ness with healing in his wings ; and again, from the men
tion of the wheat and chaff, of the strait and wide gate,
the narrow and the broad way, the wedding guests and
the man Avithout a wedding garment, the wise virgins and
the foolish, the sheep and the goats, in St Matthew's Gos
pel, the great gulf fixed between Lazarus and the rich
man in the Gospel of St Luke, and onward to the very
close of the New Testament, the same contrast meets us
in almost every page. The purpose of the Gospel is to
turn men " from darkness to light, and from the power of
Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of their
sins, and an inheritance among them that are sanctified."
Its actual reception answers ever to those words at the
close of Acts — "Some believed the things which were
spoken, and some believed not." And the final result is
expressed or implied in that parting message of the Son
of God, which announces the present forbearance or time of
probation, and the sequent judgment — " He that is unjust,
let him be unjust still ; and he that is filthy, let him be
filthy still ; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous
still, and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And be
hold I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give
every man according as his work shall be."
The doctrine of universalism seems thus to nullify and
set aside one of the most fundamental and pervasive
truths in the whole compass of Divine revelation. All the
exhortations, warnings, invitations, and appeals of the
Gospel, rest upon the revealed fact, that this life is a sea
son of probation, and that on the present acceptance or
rejection of the offered grace of God, eternal results de
pend; namely, a contrast of acceptance or rejection, of
reward or punishment, in that great day when the secrets
of all hearts shall be revealed. To contradict and reject

206 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
' this solemn truth is really to break one of the two main
springs of the Gospel, and abolishes one chief element cf its
double appeal, by hope and by fear, in promises of salva
tion, and warnings of certain judgment, to the hearts and
consciences of men.
The statements, then, in the next chapter, are not de
signed to contradict or set aside that doctrine of a future
punishment of the unbelieving and the ungodly, never to
end, which I believe, and have always believed, since I
first meditated closely on this solemn subject, to be dis
tinctly revealed. My starting-point, in my earlier treat
ment of it, was an express adoption of the words of a
correspondent, who sought for relief from his inward per
plexities, that " nothing can be more positively laid down
by our Lord, than that the reward of heaven and the
punishment of hell are eternal, and strange warnings of
judgment to come pervade almost every page." The same
conviction remains unchanged, after a perusal of much
that has been written on the other side. Death is not a
cessation of existence, else there could be no resurrection
of the dead, and no second death. All are not to be saved
alike, for the most conspicuous truth in the warnings and
promises of Scripture is the contrast between those who
are saved and those who perish, and who perish, not by a
total extinction of being, but by enduring for ever a
solemn sentence of eternal judgment.

CHAPTER XIII.
OBJECTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS.

The doctrine of judgment to come, as taught in Scripture,
has not only caused deep inward perplexity to many de
vout minds, but has been turned by multitudes into an
excuse for their entire rejection of the Bible as a super
natural and inspired message. Perfect love seems to
imply a sincere desire for the happiness of every conscious
and intelligent creature. A perfect victory of almighty
love seems further to require that this desire for the
happiness of others shall not fail and be frustrate in any
case by the strength of evil, but that it shall be at length
fulfilled. Here, then, at first sight there is a direct con
tradiction between express and repeated .statements of
Scripture, and natural and almost inevitable inferences
from those moral perfections of God, which are shoAvn
dimly by the light of nature, but have been most clearly
and abundantly revealed in the word of God. No wonder,
then, that many Christians still feel great inward per
plexity, when their thoughts turn to this solemn subject,
the future doom of the wicked, and that unbelievers and
half-believers should inveigh loudly against the common
view of Christian believers, as an unreasonable and gloomy
superstition. . .

208 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
Let us listen first to Theodore Parker, a favourite
author, some years ago, with young Hindoos who had
broken loose from their natiA'e superstitions, while still
adversaries to Christian Faith. In his Discourses on Ab
solute Religion he declaims against the grand and striking
narrative of Num. xiv., on the report of the spies, the
rebellion of the people, and the intercession of Moses, in
these frightful terms :
" If an unprejudiced Christian were to read this for
the first time in a heathen writer, and it was related of
Kronos or Moloch, he would say — What foul ideas these
heathen have of God ! thank heaven, we are Christians,
and cannot believe in a Deity so terrible ! Is God angry
with men, passionate, revengeful, offended because they
will not war and butcher the innocent ? Would he violate
his holy law, by a miracle to destroy a whole nation,
millions of men, women and children, because they fall
into a natural fit of despair, and refuse to trust two
rather than ten witnesses ? Does God require men's words
to restrain his rage, violence, and a degree of fury, which
Nero and Caracalla, butchers as they were, would have
shuddered to think of? Is he to be teazed and coaxed
from murder? Are we to believe this in the name of
Christianity ? Then perish Christianity from the face of
the earth, and let man learn of his religion and of his
God from the stars and the violets, the lion and the
lamb ! There are some things which may be true, but
must be rejected for lack of evidence ; but this story no
amount of evidence could make possible."
The supposed views of ordinary Protestant Christians
as to the future sentence on the ungodly are portrayed
in a similar tone, in these words :
" The saints and martyrs, who bore trials in the world,

OBJECTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS. 209
are to take their vengeance by shouting Hallelujah, when
they see the anguish of their old persecutors, and the smoke
of their torment ascending for ever and ever. Do the joys
of Paradise pall on the senses of the elect ? They look off
in the distance to the tortures of the damned, where de
struction is naked before them, and hell hath no covering ;
where the devil stirreth up the embers of the fire that is
never quenched ; where the doubters, whom the church
could neither answer nor put to silence, the great men of
antiquity, the men great, gifted, and glorious, who mocked
at difficulty, softened the mountains of despair, and hewed
a path amid the trackless waste, that mortal feet might
tread the way of peace ; where the great men of modern
times, who would not insult the Deity by bowing to the
foolish word cf a hireling priest; where all these writhe
in their torture, turn and turn, but find no ray, but yell
in fathomless despair ; and when the elect behold all this,
they say, striking on their harps of gold, Aha ! we are
comforted, and thou art tormented; for the Lord God
omnipotent reigneth, and our garments are washed white
in the blood of the Lamb." (pp. 248, 346.)
Mr Lecky, in his able History of European Morals,
touches on the same subject, and writes as follows:
" That an all-righteous and all-merciful Creator, in the
full exercise of those attributes, deliberately calls into
existence sentient beings, whom He has from eternity
irrevocably destined to endless, unspeakable, unmitigated
torture, is a proposition at once so extravagantly absurd,
and so ineffably atrocious, that its adoption might well lead
men to doubt the universality of moral perceptions. Such
teaching is, in fact, simply dasmonism, and dsemonism in
its most extreme form. It ascribes to the Creator acts of
injustice and cruelty, which it would be absolutely im-
B. 0

2IO THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
possible for the imagination to surpass, before which the
most monstrous excesses of human cruelty dwindle into
insignificance; acts, in fact, considerably Avorse than any
Avhich theologians have attributed to the devil. If there
were men who, while vividly realizing the nature of these
acts, naturally turned to them as exhibitions of perfect
goodness, all systems of ethics founded upon innate moral
perceptions must be false. But happily this is not so.
Those who embrace these doctrines do so, because they
are still in that stage, in which men consider it more irre
ligious to question the infallibility of an Apostle than to
disfigure by any conceivable imputation the character of
the Deity. They esteem it a commendable exercise of
humility to stifle the moral feelings of our nature, and at
last succeed in persuading themselves that their Divinity
would be extremely offended if they hesitate to ascribe to
him the attributes of a fiend." (H. E. M. Vol. I. pp. 99,
100.) The language of Mr Mill in his posthumous Essays
is equally strong.
" Even in the Christianity of the Gospels, at least in
its ordinary interpretation, there are some moral difficul
ties and perversions of so flagrant a character as almost
to outweigh all the beauty, benignity, and moral. greatness
which so eminently distinguish the sayings and character
of Christ. The recognition of the highest object of worship
in a Being who could make a hell, and create countless
generations of human beings with the certain foreknowledge
that he was creating them for such a fate. Is there any
moral enormity which might not be justified by imitation
of such a Deity? Is it possible to adore such a one
without a frightful distortion of the standard of right and
wrong? Any other of the outrages to the most ordinary

OBJECTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS. 2 1 1
justice and humanity involved in the common Christian
conception of the character of God sinks into insignifi
cance beside this dreadful idealization of wickedness."
(pp. 113-4.)
In these passages the real statements of Scripture, the
faulty impressions of some imperfect and immature be
lievers, and illusions of the writers themselves, axe so
strangely blended and confused, as to create a picture most
odious and repulsive to every benevolent and pious mind.
We are painfully reminded of those " hard speeches "
of direct reproach against the Lord of glory, Avhich St
Jude predicts as to be spoken by scoffers in the last days.
The taunts of the first writer, in which he represents the
saved as gloating over the tortures of the lost, though
founded on the expressions in Rev. xviii. 20, xix. 2, 3, are
alien from the true spirit of those solemn passages, and
from the feelings and conscience of all pious men. To
believe that God is" good and wise in all his ways, and will
be seen hereafter to be good and wise, even in the doom of
lost souls, when the veil of sense is removed, and we see
all things in the light of heaven, is the hardest exercise of
Christian faith. Christians succeed in it, however, not by
quietly accepting cold, heartless, selfish pride as the cha
racter of all the saved, but by a secret conviction that in,
this aspect of God's dealing with his creatures, there is
some mystery, not yet plainly revealed, and such as will
hereafter make plain to us what we cannot now under
stand. The invectives heaped on the history in Numbers,
and on the thrice holy name of the God of Israel, are
based on a shameless perversion of the facts of the record.
The charge to Israel was not to murder an innocent people,
but to execute God's own righteous sentence against the
most guilty and polluted race existing on the face, of
02

212 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
the whole earth. And a decree of absolute reprobation,
whereby millions were foreappointed to eternal torment,
in a way wholly independent of their own guilt and
rebellion, so that this rebellion was decreed in the second
place, to prepare them for their doom, is a doctrine
held by some few, to the great dishonour of God, and
injury of their own souls, but always repelled and de
nounced by the main body of Christian believers, as a
hateful perversion and parody of the Divinely revealed
warnings of future judgment.
Apart from details, and the hateful and blasphemous
inversion of the moral features of the history in the Book
of Numbers, of which the sublime beauty and grandeur'
might well awe even the proudest scoffers into silence and
shame, the main force of the objection in these three
writers depends on that falsehood, secretly assumed, which,
it has been the chief object of the previous pages to expose
and overthrow. I mean the doctrine that the conflict of
good and evil is an arbitrary thing, and that Divine Om
nipotence means the power to condense into any single
moment of time all those great results of redeeming,
mercy, which in God's revealed plan are seen to spread
over the past millennia of the world's history, and the
countless generations of the age to come. It is the false
assumption that, because God does not put an end to moral
evil, and avert all its fatal consequences from those who
despise his commands, and rebel against them, He must
be, in some way or another, an accomplice in their
crimes, and hatefully and causelessly cruel, should He exe
cute threatened judgment on the disobedient in a life to
come. A doctrine, nowhere affirmed in Scripture, and
incapable of any proof from sound reason, but derived
only from crude, imperfect conceptions of almightiness,.

OBJECTIONS AND EXPLANA TIONS. 2 1 3
that God could any moment save all men and devils if He
thought fit so to do ; a doctrine which has no surer ground
in reason than two other assertions plainly false, that
God can lie, and that He can create a second God, equal
to himself; has blotted out from men's minds the solemn
oath of God by the prophet, that He has no pleasure in
the death of the' sinner, and has caused a dark cloud to
settle down over the whole firmament of truth Divinely
revealed. But even when this mischievous and fatal perversion
of God's message has been set aside, and we recognize the
sincerity and earnestness of the Divine warnings addressed
to sinners, to persuade them to forsake the paths of evil,
and to guide their feet into the way of peace, a grave
difficulty remains in these revealed warnings of judgment
to come. Let us inquire, with reverence, what the exact
nature of this difficulty is, and whether any light can. be
thrown upon it, by which the dark cloud may have some
bow of promise and hope impressed upon it, though its
darkness may not and cannot be wholly removed on this
side of the judgment day.
First, then, it is a solemn truth, plainly revealed, that
there is a life and a judgment to come. " It is appointed
unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." "We
must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ." " Sp
then every one shall giAre account of himself unto God."
And in that judgment there is also revealed a great
separation. The King will set the sheep on his right
hand, and the goats on his left. On both He will pro
nounce his righteous sentence. "And these shall go away,
into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life
everlasting." There is an opposite character in the two
states that follow, but the same duration, expressed by the

214 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
same word, which denotes the eternity of God himself.
It is true, further, with regard to this great moral contrast,
that the word of God, in all ages of the world down to the
visions in Patmos, speaks of the ungodly as many and the
righteous in God's sight as a little flock, or comparatively
few, though their last gathering is also described as "a
multitude which no man can number." The words of
Christ are most awakening and solemn. "Wide is the
gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and
many there be which go in thereat; because strait is the
gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth to life, and few
there be that find it."
What, then, is the question which must, apart from all
the invectives or misrepresentations of unbelievers, weigh
on the heart and mind of every thoughtful and devout
Christian, when he meditates on the works and ways of
his Father in heaven? Does his word set before us a
scheme of providence, in which salvation and destruction
run side by side for ever, where the lost are many, and the
saved comparatively few, where the misery of the lost is
as unbroken, intense, and complete as the happiness of the
saved; and hopeless damnation and perfect misery, even
more widely than bliss and salvation, are the final issue
of God's dealings with mankind, and the whole intelligent
universe? Is this the consummation, for the speedy fulfil
ment of which every Christian is called upon to pray and
to hope with eager and intense desire ? Does a right and
orthodox faith in eternal judgment, and the double testi
mony of Scripture and experience on the past and present
abounding of ungodliness, compel us to accept this view of
the world to come ? Can this faith constitute the glad
tidings of great joy, the sum of the everlasting Gospel,
which the Son of God came down from heaven to proclaim

OBJECTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS. 215
to mankind, and of which He has secured the future fulfil
ment by his life-long humiliation, his bitter agonies and
atoning death ?
To avoid these perplexities, some Christians would
advise us to stifle all thought, and forbear all inquiiy into
the ways of God. But that remedy is worse than the
disease. For the careless worldling the only answer should
be that of our Lord himself — Strive to enter in at the
strait gate. But the children of God must not borroAV
from the doctrine of annihilation, and strive to extinguish
the noblest faculties and instincts of a spiritual being.
They must seek to understand the character, mind, and
will of their Father, and to read his love and wisdom in
all his ways. It is their bounden duty to seek for this
light, so far as it is attainable, and to suffer no cloud to
rest, on their view of his love, holiness, and wisdom, which
patient thought and careful study of his word can remove ;
but to wait with patience for fuller light, whenever clouds
and darkness, which they are unable to pierce, still sur
round the ways of the Most High.
The first main step towards the removal of that sore
moral perplexity, which seems inseparable from the view
of redemption usual among Christian Divines, is the
doctrine I have unfolded in the Four Prophetic Empires,
and the Outlines of unfulfilled prophecy, and which has
since then been accepted by many other students of Scrip
ture, and embodied in their works. The church of the
first-born, the mystic bride of Christ, does not sum up and
exhaust all the fruits of redeeming love. In the glory of
that Church the truth of electing grace will be manifested
for ever. But a wider truth of redeeming grace will also
be seen in successive generations of redeemed men, the
subjects of Christ's kingdom, over whom He will reign

2l6 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
with his Church in that new earth, where righteousness is
to dwell for' ever. To these generations, and the increase
of the saved, there is no limit revealed. The absolute
infinity of the Divine nature will thus have a fit theatre
for its display, and a kind of passive image and reflection,
in this capacity of man's nature for multiplication and
increase, and successive and wider unfoldings of the Divine
goodness. Of the increase of Christ's kingdom there shall
be no end. Thus the number of the elect church may be
far less than of the souls that are condemned in the judg
ment, but the number of the saved who walk in the light
of the celestial city may be vastly greater, and continually
increase world without end.
The second truth, which may help to remove the dark
cloud resting on the Divine character in the popular creed
of Christians, is the view of omnipotence, unfolded in the
earlier part of this work. God's warnings and threatenings
are not arbitrary and capricious things, the result of naked
sovereignty alone. The conflict of Divine goodness with
the power of evil is no mere pretence or empty show,
which might cease any moment by a bare act of G°d's
sovereign will. The solemn oath of the Most High must
be received in its unforced and natural meaning, and not
made void by the groundless assertion, that of course God
could save all men and devils any moment, and only for
bears to do so for some wise reason. "As I live, saith the
Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the sinner, but
rather that he should be converted and live. Turn ye,
turn ye, for why will ye die, 0 house of Israel ? For I
have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth; wherefore
turn yourselves and live." The ruin of those who perish
must thus be ascribed wholly to their own sin, and not in
part or wholly to a denial, on God's part, of some grace,

OBJECTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS. 217
which might easily have been given. And thus, in the
great day of account, God will be justified in his sayings,
and be clear when He stands in judgment. The contrast,
taught by St James, will come out clearly into view in the
face pf the whole universe, that God cannot be tempted of
evil, and tempteth no man, that every good and perfect
gift is from the Father of lights, and that all sin and evil is
from the creature alone. Men may strive, in their un
belief and perverseness, to cast the blame of their own
sins upon the Creator. But all such vain excuses will
cease, and their hard speeches be silenced, when He
who wept tears of sorrow over Jerusalem, and shed
drops of blood in his agony in the garden, shall be seen
upon the throne of his glory, the appointed Judge of all
mankind. But there is a further truth, which, I believe, may be
learned from a strict comparison of all the statements of
Scripture with reference to the future punishment of the
unsaved, and is a further help for seeing the real harmony
between this solemn part of the Divine message, and the
perfect wisdom and goodness of the Most High. It is a
truth, not lying on the surface of the harvest field of
Scripture, but beneath its surface, as treasures are hid in
the mine. The mines of a country, however; are no less
really a part of its riches, than its oaks and cedars, its
vineyards, olive yards, and cornfields. The faith and rever
ence of the Christian are due, not only to what he reads in
the express words of Scripture, but to every thing which,
when we seek Divine wisdom as silver, and search for it as
for hid treasure, is found hidden in this blessed field, and
may be proved thereby.
I will now endeavour to unfold, in some distinct pro
positions, what I believe to be the real teaching of Scrip-

218 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
ture, negatively and positively, on this solemn subject of
the Second Death and Eternal Judgment.
I. First, the Second Death is not the reign of Satan in
a kingdom of his own, in which he reigns over those whom
he has deceived, and actively torments them for ever.
This view has been very often held and set forth in popular
appeals to the fears of men with regard to the coming judg
ment. It is found, not seldom, in the pages of Christian
Divines. Of the two authors by whom my own view, when
first published ten years ago, was vehemently assailed, while
one agrees with me in rejecting it, the other has main
tained it, as if it were an integral part of the orthodox
creed upon future punishment. But of all men's vain
additions to and corruptions of Scripture doctrine, none is
more groundless than this, or more wholly opposed to the
real teaching of the word of God. We read in St John
the great end of our Lord's advent- and work. "For this
purpose was the Son of God manifested, that he might
destroy the works of the -devil." The fire, to which the
ungodly are sentenced, is said to have been "prepared for
the devil and his angels." Before their judgment that
solemn announcement is made, "And the devil that de
ceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone,
and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever."
The foremost and chief in guilt will then be foremost and
deepest in punishment. He who is "king over all the chil
dren of pride" will be crushed, beyond all the proud, under
the heaviest strokes of Divine judgment. The head of
the serpent will be bruised under the feet of the Seed of
the Woman, the destined Redeemer of mankind.
No trace of any permitted reign of this Prince of dark
ness can be found, when once death and hell have been cast
into the lake of fire. Death is the last enemy to be

OBJECTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS. 219
destroyed. All others, Satan included, must therefore,
in their power of active rebellion, have been destroyed,
before death and hell are cast into that lake of fire.
"Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased." This is
the great, unalterable law of God's moral government.
And hence this Lucifer, son of the morning, who once
exalted himself the highest in blasphemous pride, as the
rival and adversary of God, will then be lowest in shame
among those vanquished enemies, the appointed footstool
pf the lowly Man of sorroAvs, who is also the " King of kings
and Lord of lords."
An opposite assertion has been made, that "Satan will
still reign supreme in the realms of perdition, and possess
a greater amount of mingled malice and power, to render
miserable those who died in this world as his subjects
and slaves." And it is said further to be needless to quote
any passages from the Bible in proof of this doctrine.
Its wide acceptance is a sufficient proof without one grain
of Scripture evidence, since the 'Writer had met with no
believer in future punishment, who ever doubted, much
less denied it.
In the place of evidence which Scripture does not
supply, but the reverse, a moral argument for this vieAV
has been proposed. " It Avould be strange if there should
be less enmity, ferocity, and fighting, than prevail amongst
the most depraved of wicked men in this world. This
must imply that the ungodly will be much better charac
ters hereafter than on earth. The just punishment of
Satan and his angels has not in the least improved them,
though they have been tormented without a moment's
intermission for six thousand years."
This last statement has no warrant in God's word,
but is rather directly opposed to it. Satan is there called

2 20 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
the God of this world, exercising a large permitted power
through Divine forbearance, appearing in heavenly places
among the sons of God, and looking forward with dread
to a time of judgment still to come. The daemons in the
Gospel, also, utter the cry, Art thou come hither to torment
us before the time ? There is thus the widest contrast
between the present time of Satan's permitted activity and
reign, and the future season of his punishment, when all
his power to tempt or accuse the brethren, or to reign
over evil men, will have ceased for ever. It is not strange,-
but natural and certain, that sinners should have less
freedom for active wickedness under the fiery anger of
God than in the time of his forbearance and longsuffering.
Nothing can be more monstrous than the notion that,
under the holy eye and righteous hand of the Supreme
Judge, they both can and will rebel more freely and fiercely
than ever before. Such a prison, in which criminals
should be allowed to cultivate their own wicked habits
and practices to the uttermost, would be a foul reproach
to any earthly government. How great, then, must be
the evil of bringing this charge, Avithout the least grain
of Scripture evidence, nay, in the teeth of its express
statements, against the government of the Righteous
and Eternal King !
Satan, in the judgment, is not loosed but bound, and
not only bound, but cast into the lake of fire. The lan
guage may be figurative. But the figures are those which
most entirely exclude the freedom to tempt, or the power
to tyrannise any longer over those who are the partners
of his doom. The object of our Lord's mission will then
be fulfilled. The works of Satan will be destroyed. The
deceiver can tempt no longer, and the Prince of the
power of the air can rule no more. The height of his

OBJECTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS. 221
proud and aspiring claims will only measure the depth
of his utter humiliation and punishment.
II. Again, the Last Judgment and the Second
Death are one main part in a wise, holy, and perfect work
of the God of love.
At the close of the law we have this striking pro
clamation of God's name — "He is the Rock, his work is
perfect; all his ways are judgment; a God of truth and
without iniquity, just and right is he."
The work of God is perfect. There is no flaw, error,
or mistake, in his scheme of universal providence. On
the side of the creature there is a vast and awful amount
of sin, folly, and perverseness. But in that dominion of
God, whereby He overcomes evil, there is no defect either
of wisdom or goodness. Though "clouds and darkness
are round about him," yet "justice and judgment are the
habitation of his throne."
When the prophet was told to go down to the potter's
house, "the vessel he made of clay was marred in the
hands of the potter, and he made it again another vessel,
as it seemed good to the potter to make it." (Jer. xviii. 4.)
But the scheme of providence is one mighty whole. Once
begun, it can never be reversed, or begun anew. One
single flaw, in this case, would be irreparable, and could
never be cured. One unjust or unwise act of the God of
Providence, like, one sin in the spotless and perfect
obedience of Christ, would mar the perfection, and change
the character, of the whole work. Creation, Providence,
Redemption, would be reduced to one gigantic and irre
trievable failure. But this can never be. " His work is
perfect." The forbearance towards evil, while it lasts,
and seems even to triumph, is a perfect forbearance,
meted out by infinite wisdom and grace. The victoiy

222 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
over evil, Avhen that forbearance is ended, must be a
perfect victory. The issues of judgment, however solemn,
must be such that the All-wise, whose understanding is
unsearchable, the All-good, whose tender mercies are over
all his works, can not only acquiesce in them, but even
rejoice in them, with a deep complacency of divine love.
" The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever, the Lord
shall rejoice in his works." His delight will be evermore
to exercise " loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness
in the earth."
Now this revealed perfection of the whole work of
God, Avhen we reflect on it calmly, must throw a steady
light on this mysterious and solemn subject of the Second
Death. The first death is God's last and greatest enemy.
It may be borne with for a time, but its continuance
would be a fatal barrier to the dominion and glory of the
Most High. " God is not the God of the dead, but of the
•living." And hence that indignant sentence — " 0 death,
I will be thy plagues ; 0 grave, I will be thy destruction."
But the second death proceeds directly from the appoint
ment of the Supreme Judge, who is perfect both in
wisdom and goodness. However terrible and solemn, it is
his Divine remedy for all that is most fearful and appal
ling in the actual or possible evil of a fallen and rebellious
universe. The God of love and holiness can and will
acquiesce in it, as one main element in his foreordained
counsel of wisdom and goodness. The attempt to deepen
its terrors by heaping up all kinds of moral and spiritual
horrors, the unchecked ravings of fiendish malice, the
blasphemous utterances of raging despair, and to see in
it the stereotyped continuation of rebellion, hatred and
blasphemy for ever, is to reverse and deny the revealed
object and aim of the work of Christ. "For this purpose

OBJECTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS. 223
Avas the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy
the Avorks of the devil." The grand purpose of the judg
ment which He will execute can never be to stereotype
and eternize active rebellion against God, but to abolish
it for evermore.
The Second Death, therefore, however solemn, com
pletes a work of the only wise God, which is perfect, and
cannot be improved. It crowns the victory of his perfect
goodness over the worst malignity and the most inveterate
forms of evil.
III. The doom of the lost, Ave are further taught,
Avill be the object of acquiescence and holy contemplation
on the part of all the unfallen and the redeemed.
With those views of hell torment which have been
widely current in the church, to hide it from the thoughts
must be almost essential to happiness, in hearts not
wholly dead to feelings of compassion. The bliss of
heaven must then be conceived to depend very mainly
on the removal of its inhabitants far away from sights
and sounds so unutterably mournful. Such, however, is
not the revealed description of saints and angels in the
kingdom of God. Their happiness is not made to depend
either on their ignorance or their forgetfulness of the
doom of the lost. On the contrary, this is placed among
the objects of their ceaseless contemplation. That punish
ment is said to be "in the presence of the holy angels,
and in the presence of the Lamb."
These descriptions, again, are made the ground, by
unbelievers, of the severest and keenest invectives against
the horrible selfishness which the orthodox creed imputes
to all the redeemed. One passage has been given, where
this charge is made in language of the most bitter sarcasm.

224 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
Yet the apostle, on whose descriptions of coming judg
ment these charges are founded, is the same to whom
Ave owe those sublime definitions of true piety : " God
is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God,
and God in him." " If a man say, I love God, and hateth
his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his
brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom
he hath not seen ? "
The texts, then, on which these invectives have been
founded, teach really an opposite lesson. The acquies
cence described will not be that of stern, fierce, revengeful,
unloving hearts, but of the spirits of just men made
perfect, dwelling in the light of the pure, all-perfect
goodness, and baptized by the Spirit into fullest sympathy
with the tears, compassion, and agonies of the Son of
God. That doom, however solemn, can hardly be one of
unmingled horror and darkness, much less of abounding
and eternal blasphemy, which is the object of complacency
and holy adoration to saints and angels, free from all
taint of mere selfishness, and moulded into the full and
perfect resemblance of the Divine love.
IV. Fourthly, on the day of judgment the honour
due even to the wicked, as God's creatures, and gifted
by Him with high and noble powers, will, in some way
or other, be still recognized by the righteous Judge.
The law of God is the reflection of his own right
eousness. And the life of man is there fenced by this
threatening; — "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man
shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made
he man." Many murdered persons have been themselves
most degraded and vile. Yet the sacredness of man's
life is measured, not by the debasement sin has caused,

OBJECTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS. 225
but by God's own creative ordinance. " In the image of
God made he man."
This principle, the voice of God's own truth and
wisdom, must therefore apply to his own acts of righteous
judgment. Even when He punishes guilty rebels, He
does not cease to honour in them the workmanship of his
own hands. And hence this reason is assigned for the miti
gation or suspense of his temporal judgments : "for the spirit
would fail before me, and the souls which I have made"
Again, in the law we find this limit assigned to
the judge, when a wicked man was to be punished for
his transgressions : " Forty stripes he may give him, and
not exceed : lest, if he should exceed; and beat him above
these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem
vile unto thee."
Here a double lesson is taught. The wickedness
which deserves and requires stripes is not to destroy the
sense of brotherhood. Even while punished, the wicked
man is called a brother still. And the punishment must
be so measured, that his due honour as a brother may
not perish. He who gave this law is the same in whose
heart, as the Son of man, it was afterwards written, and
who will pronounce the final sentence on the ungodly.
The stripes, few or many, in the great day of account,
Avill be fixed by his sentence alone. Luke xii. 45 — 48.
The doom He will pronounce, having for its measure the
deep malignity of sin, may be unutterably severe. But
this law is a pledge and assurance that the Righteous.
Judge will still remember the honour of all men as God's
creatures, made at first in his image, and that brotherhood .
which, through the incarnation, has linked Him so closely
with even the most guilty and rebellious of mankind.
V. Once more, the last judgment is the wprk of
B. 9

2 26 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
God's mercy as well as of his judicial righteousness.
This is plainly taught us in those striking and impres
sive words' of the Psalmist — "Also unto thee, O Lord,
belongeth mercy; for thou renderest to every man ac
cording to his work."
In the judgment of the righteous it is easy to see
and feel the truth of this inspired message of God. The
works rewarded are the fruits of the Spirit, and can flow
from redeeming mercy alone.* Hence the reAvard, as in
the baptismal prayer of our church, must be traced back
to its true fountain head of Divine mercy and love.
But when we seek to apply the words, in their Avider
range, to every man, to the lost as well as the saved,
the message is deeper and more mysterious. Can it be
true, even of the souls that perish, that there is mercy
in that sentence, which dooms them to the lake of fire ?
The deep thought, which Plato dimly apprehended by
the light of nature, seems here to receive a direct sanction
from the Spirit of God. Punishment is set before us in
the light of a Divine medicine for the diseases of the
soul. Compared with that most awful of curses, that
evil should be left to work out fully its own terrible
issues in the darkness of utter banishment from the
Divine presence, even the justice of God, however severe,
is medicinal to guilty sinners. Their doom is awful,
but a world abandoned to the reign of unrestrained and
triumphant wickedness would be still more awful. The
abyss or bottomless pit, boundless in its breadth and
depth, and insatiable in its craving, is to be destroyed
and abolished by the power of the Redeemer. The
revealed scene of judgment is not a sea, an ocean or
abyss, but simply a lake of fire. It is mercy to the
Avicked to deny them the fatal power of adding sin to

OBJECTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS. 11 J
sin. It is mercy to keep them from the power of
tormenting each other, by the free indulgence of their
own sinful and hateful passions. It is mercy to force
them back, even though captive and in chains, to the
presence of that infinite goodness, from which their own
rebellious hearts would lead them farther and farther
away, till they should lose themselves deeper and deeper
in delusion and darkness for ever.
VI. Again, the Second Death is the sequel of a
resurrection, but a resurrection to "shame and everlasting
contempt." Dan. xii. 2. It thus involves in its very
nature contrasted elements. For resurrection is a work
of redemption, a triumph over death, and a fruit of the
atoning work of the world's Redeemer. But a resurrec
tion to shame and contempt must also be a perpetual
manifestation of the creature's moral emptiness, in con
trast to the immutable and glorious perfection of Him
who is the Only Wise, and the Only Good.
It obscures the Gospel, and distorts our view of the
whole course of Providence, when we ascribe a result so
awful to some capricious, unaccountable withholding of
Divine grace. This would surely imply some great defect
either of wisdom or goodness in the Almighty, and his
deliberate preference of the destruction of multitudes of
sinners to their salvation. An oath of the Most High
has been sworn, to shield his name from this dark sus
picion of unbelieving hearts, which have never fathomed
the sinfulness of sin, or the stubbornness of evil. And
even in spite of God's solemn protest, the falsehood has
often entwined itself Avith the most sacred truths and
mysteries of the Gospel. But when we refer this solemn
fact to the essential contrast between the Only Good
and the creatures of his hand, we may see hoAV redemp-P 2

2 28 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
tion turns what might else appear like an incurable
triumph of evil into the crown and seal of a perfect
victory of redeeming love. It may be this continual
spectacle of what the creature is in itself, which alone
maintains the whole universe of unfallen and ransomed
creatures in its only true and safe position of entire
dependence on the great Fountain of life and love.
The Israelites, in entering the land of promise, were
warned of a great moral danger, that their heart might
be lifted up when once their victory was accomplished,
and they might forget the Lord their God. And when
the work of redemption is complete in countless myriads,
of ransomed souls, and successive generations of the right
eous, so that no trace of sin, corruption,, or mortality
remains in the dwellers on the new earth, or in the
heavenly city, how easily might pride creep in once more,
and a second and more fatal apostasy ensue ; if the lessons
of the past, fading ever into the far distance of by-gone
years, were not renewed and deepened by the present spec
tacle of those in whom there is an everlasting memorial
of the past reign of evil, and of the creature's self-empti
ness and utter shame ! Their solemn doom, though no
result of the choice of the Most High, whose love has
displayed itself to the utmost in solemn warnings to
deter sinners from the path of ruin, may yet be the
object of his deep and holy acquiescence ; because in this
way alone a ransomed universe can be upheld for ever in
a blessedness based on perfect humility, and capable on
that very account of enlarging and unfolding itself, with
out risk of fresh apostasy, for evermore. And thus it may
be that, through the resurrection to judgment and shame,
the bulwarks will be completed of that celestial city,
whose walls are Salvation, and her gates Praise.

CHAPTER XIV.
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT, CONCLUDED.
The New Testament throws further and perhaps still
clearer light on this solemn truth of eternal punishment,
Avhen we look below the surface, and strive to combine
the indirect with the direct and open lessons which its
sacred messages convey.
I. Every created being may be viewed in two differ
ent aspects, personal and federal, or what it is of itself,
and its character as part of a greater whole. This warp
and woof runs through the whole of Scripture, and occa
sions a frequent antithesis in its statements of Divine
truth. Thus in "Adam all die," and still "the soul that
sinneth, it shall die." In Christ " all shall be made alive,"
and still it is to those who by patient continuance in well
doing seek for glory, honour, and immortality, that God
will render eternal life. The charge to the Galatians,
"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the laAV
of Christ," is followed at once by an opposite statement,
as the attendant moral caution, " For every one shall bear
his own burden." St Paul says to the Corinthians, " He
that planteth and he that watereth are one," and then
adds at once, — "Every man shall receive his reward accord
ing to his own labour."

230 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
The same contrast, wherever selfishness is not com
plete, is found by experience in the elements which con
stitute human happiness and misery, joy and sorrow. In
part they are purely and simply personal, but in part they
arise from sympathy with the joys or sorrows of others, or
from the contemplation of truths not personal, but objec
tive and universal. Thus the wounded soldier or sailor
may often almostfbrget his wounds in his deep delight in
his commander's triumph, or the overthrow of his country's
enemy. There are many cases in which the sense of pain
is almost lost, from the presence of some absorbing object
of thought, or tidings of the happiness and honour of
those who are deeply beloved. The Christian, whatever
his personal peace or comfort, may have deep sorrow from
the sight of abounding sin, and the thought of a Saviour
dishonoured, or of perishing souls ; and times of bereave
ment have their anguish lightened by faith in the in
creased happiness of the friends or kindred whom death
has removed.
Thus all happiness is of two kinds, personal or federal.
The first results from experiences which are strictly and
properly our own. The other has a wider range, and de
pends on our power to pass in thought out of ourselves,
to sympathize with the feelings and joys of others, to
dwell on the interests of our family, our church, or our
nation, and grieve or rejoice in all that affects their
welfare ; or to rise above merely personal sensations, and
contemplate external, objective, and eternal truth.
Now all the statements of Scripture with respect to
the future doom, in judgment, of the righteous and the
wicked, have direct reference to personal conduct and
personal retribution. The federal aspect, in these pas
sages, does not appear. The statements are of this kind :

CONCLUSION.

"Every man shall bear his own burden" ; " Whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he reap"; "Every one shall receive
his reAvard according to his own labour" ; " My reward is
Avith me, to give every man according as his work shall
be"; '' He that soweth sparingly shall reap sparingly, and
he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully" ;
" The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father,
and then shall he render to every man according to his
Avorks"; "He called his servants, that he might know
how much every man had gained by trading".
The result of this personal judgment, by the repeated
testimony of many Scriptures, is a final contrast, an eter
nal separation, depending on the use or abuse of the
probation in this mortal life. The earnest appeals to
men to repent and turn to God derive the main part of
their force from this all-pervading truth, often expressed.
and everywhere implied, in their large variety of warnings,
threatenings, promises, and earnest and affectionate ap
peals to the hearts of men.
But this truth, however solemn, and however inwrought
into the doctrine of man's personal responsibility, cannot
exclude a further truth, namely, the federal relation
of all mankind to the Creator of the universe, and to
Christ, the Head of every man, the Saviour of the
world, who gave himself a ransom for all men. One of
these truths is no less deeply inwrought into the texture
of God's word than the other. It must reveal its reality
and its power, in some way or other, amidst all the solemn
and tremendous realities of the coming judgment.
II. Secondly, the Second Death is a work of the God
of truth, by which pride and falsehood are to be abolished
out of the moral universe.
The New Testament opens with the history of the

THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.

conflict of the tempter, the king of pride, with the meek
and lowly Redeemer. And the result of this conflict is
embodied in that maxim, so often repeated, " Whosoever
exalteth himself shall be abased ; but he that humbleth
himself shall be exalted."
This great maxim will receive an endless variety of illus
trations. But the first and chief is the contrasted doom of
the proud tempter and of the lowly Man of sorrows. The
Son of God, because He stooped so low, is crowned with
eternal and infinite glory. The Adversary, the proud Son
of the morning, because he said in his heart, I will be like
the Most High, will suffer perpetual shame, and the ven
geance of eternal fire. That fire, prepared for the devil
and his angels, must be the destruction of guilty pride,
when it has become in a manner consubstantiate with the
spirit, and can be overcome in no gentler way than by
these ever-during strokes of Divine judgment. "Them that
walk in pride he is able to abase." The created being itself
will not fail. It is a gift of God without repentance, and
is secretly upheld by his mighty hand. But that stubborn
ness of pride, which may be no longer separable along
with the sinful flesh, as it was with sinful men in their
day of grace, will encounter something firmer than itself,
the inflexible holiness of the God of judgment. Proud
-imaginations, the high things that exalt themselves against
the knowledge of Christ, which stumble at his warnings,
and refuse to see the depth of grace in his sufferings, are
idols of the heart. And these idols God will utterly
abolish. The last great day will be " against everything
that is high and lifted up, and it shall be brought low."
The rebellious creature must be taught, in spite of itself,
to take its true and right place at the footstool of trium
phant holiness. " Lord, when thy hand is lifted up, they

CONCLUSION. 233

will not see ; but they shall see, and be ashamed." The
twin reign of falsehood and of pride must cease, under the
•searching, humbling presence of the God of truth and
holiness, which is and must be a consuming fire, to abolish
every form of delusion and rebellious pride.
III. Thirdly, the Second Death is a work of the God
of love, wherein He displays his holy anger against every
sinner, whose heart and life have been marked by utter
selfishness, and the entire absence of genuine love to God
and men.
The revealed ground of the condemning sentence is
given by our Lord in these words : "Inasmuch as ye
did it not to one of tbe least of these, ye did it not unto
me." The absence of the works and fruits of love is here
made the ground and cause of their fearful doom. The
excellency of true and genuine love is taught by the
severity of the sentence, for which the want of love is the
sole cause assigned by the Supreme Judge.
The Judge, then, who pronounces the sentence, must
be perfect in love, and in love even to those on whom the
sentence falls. The Holy One cannot be a sharer in the
sin which He visits on these his creatures with such severe
and righteous condemnation. The Second Death, then,
implies the highest honour given to love as the crowning
grace, the very image of the Divine perfection ; and also
the exercise of such love by the Judge himself, even to
wards those on whom He denounces a doom so terrible for
the guilt and crime of a selfish and unloving heart.
It may be a deep mystery how Divine love can pos
sibly reveal itself at all, where Divine righteousness will be
displayed in a sentence of everlasting punishment and
shame. But the things which are hard or impossible
with men are possible with God. If righteousness and

¦234 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
grace coexist for ever in the infinite perfection of the Most
High, their exercise may coexist for ever, even in his
dealings with those whose rejection of offered grace in
volves the solemn necessity that this righteousness should
assume the form of irreversible and ever-during punish
ment. Every stroke of the Avenger will be a testimony
to God's anger against hatred and selfishness, and his de
light in pure, genuine, and perfect love.
IV. Fourthly, the Resurrection to Judgment, like the
Resurrection of Life, is one part of the redeeming work of
Christ. The two main issues of judgment, however great their
contrast, have one feature common to both. They follow
a resurrection. Hence the Apostle unites them in one
common statement, before he marks the contrast between
" them that are Christ's," and all others. " For since by
man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the
dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all
be made alive."
The first death in every case has come through the sin
of Adam. The life-restoring resurrection is to come in
every case through the power and work of the Second
Adam, the Lord from heaven. The judgment on the lost
is based on a present work of the Redeemer, in which
they share with the saved, and on a victory over death,
wrought by Christ, and depending on the power of his
atoning sacrifice and resurrection from the dead, ^heir
bodies are restored from the earlier dominion of ' .a grave,
and the dominion of death, so far, is wholly abolished.
Now what is implied in this truth, so plainly and fully
revealed ? The contrast of state, due to the contrast of
faith and unbelief, of personal repentance or perseverance
in rebellion, during the time of probation, is to abide and

CONCLUSION. 235

endure. The resurrection of the unjust seems to me a
plain and insurmountable argument against the doctrine
of annihilation, as the doom of the disobedient. The result
Avhich follows directly from the sin of the first Adam, is to be
reversed and repealed through the grace and power of the
second Adam, the Lord from heaven. For all mankind there
has been a federal ruin, and thus " in Adam all die." For
all mankind, so far as the death of the body is concerned,
there is a federal recovery from that ruin, and thus " in
Christ shall all be made alive." The opposite results of
personal character are to remain and endure. But com
mon results of the Redeemer's work, who is the Head of
every man, are to abide and endure also. The lesson of
the Divine law will thus be renewed on a magnified scale
and in a deeply mysterious form. The wicked man, who
is worthy of stripes, few or many, will be beaten by the
sentence of the righteous Judge. But at the same time
his brotherhood with that Judge will be revealed for ever
by the resurrection which precedes the work of judgment.
In the first death the dissolution of the body, and its
corruption, was only the type, sign, and parable of the
deeper curse resting on the spirit, when it had wandered
or was driven away from the presence of Him who is
Light and Love. And when the dead are raised by the
power of Christ, this correspondence cannot wholly cease.
When death and hell are cast into the lake of fire, the souls,
even of the lost, can remain no longer under the curse of
utter vanity. They will glorify their Maker, even amidst
the fires of penal judgment. To glorify God is the great
end, for which every creature was made. If the dealings
of God with any creature were such as to justify a charge
of unnatural cruelty or excessive and needless severity, God
could not possibly be glorified thereby, but rather the

236 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
Divine glory would be obscured, deeply clouded, or blotted
out and wholly destroyed. To glorify God, through shame
and punishment, compared with the bliss of the redeemed
and holy, must be an infinite and irreparable loss. But
to glorify Him in any way, however solemn and mourn
ful, when contrasted with the reign of that death which
is God's enemy, and the curse of eternal vanity, darkness,
and corruption, may be, even to the souls of the lost, a
real, and perhaps even in some respects, an infinite gain.
V. The love of Christ, we are told by the Apostle, has
a breadth and length and depth and height, that passeth
knowledge. Its breadth may be seen in the multitude of
its objects, extending to angels and men, and countless
multitudes in successive generations. Its length is shewn
in its endurance through eternal ages. Its height is
revealed in the glory of the Church of the firstborn, and
of the risen saints, who are exalted to share in the Re
deemer's kingdom and throne. Its depth has been re
vealed, once for all, in his own agony and death, when
He endured the curse, and went down to darkness and the
lowest deep for man's redemption. But is the mani
festation of this dimension of that Divine attribute wholly
to cease ? Must not rather the infinite depth, as well as
height of His love, be manifested for ever ? This is surely
the view most consistent with the revealed statement of
the fourfold vastness of that Divine and all-perfect love.
And in whom can this depth of the love of Christ be
displayed for ever ? Must it not be in the guilty and con
demned, who are said to be raised only to shame and
everlasting contempt ? Towards these the love of God, if
displayed at all, must assume its most strange, perplexing,
and mysterious form. But since it has a depth that
passeth knowledge, our small ability, in the present life,

CONCLUSION. 237

to understand or imagine the mode of its exercise cannot
exclude either its possibility or its actual reality. May it
not be shown in the perpetual yearnings of a deep and
true compassion ? When spirits, once stubborn and rebel
lious, have been crushed under the fire of Divine wrath,
and they are conscious that their persevering rebellion
has lost them a glory once within their «reach, which they
were lovingly intreated to embrace, but never to be regained,
and brought them under a sentence never to be repealed,
the depth of a love which can stoop infinitely low, and
encompass them even there with Divine compassion, may
pierce through their conscience, and pervade their whole
being, even amidst their still abiding consciousness of
deepest loss and eternal shame. Like Israel, self-destroyed,
their only hope of any form or share of relief and consola
tion must be in a love that passeth human knowledge,
and can visit them even in the lowest gulf of a misery
otherwise without hope of cure or mitigation. The tmth
of God seems to give a most solemn assurance that the
penal sentence shall never be reversed. The depth of a
love that passeth knowledge gives an equal assurance, that
their doom shall not be, however terrible and mournful,
one of unmitigated misery, but such that, even here, the
glory of the Divine goodness, and those tender mercies of
God which are over all his works, shall be revealed for
evermore. The Apostle tells us further of the living God, that
He is "the Saviour of all men, specially of them that
believe." That holy and blessed name of Saviour is sig
nally and specially revealed in the future glory and bliss
of believers alone. But still He is also the Saviour of all
men. Can this refer to temporal blessings merely, that will
soon cease, and be followed by total, absolute destruction

238 THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
and ruin ? Can it be fulfilled in conditional benefits made
wholly fruitless, and turned into an abiding curse through
the perverseness of sinners ? How can this agree with
our Lord's reasoning on the title, the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob ? Such a name, He distinctly tells us,
requires no transient, but an enduring character and rela
tion. And it would seem that in this other Divine title
the same rule of sacred reason must apply.
Unbelievers are not saved from judgment, from the
condemning sentence of their Judge, from righteous pun
ishment, and the second death, from shame and everlasting
contempt, from the fire that is not quenched. These
warnings are sealed by the lips of Him whose name is the
Truth ; and I see not how either universalism or annihila
tion can be held without making void, wholly or partly,
his threatenings, and contradicting the true sayings of
God. But these threatenings, however deeply true, are not
necessarily the whole truth. This title of God must surely
imply some further truth, not only consistent with, but
needful to complete, the Divine veracity. Unbelievers
are included among all men, of whom it is expressly de
clared that in some sense or other, God, the living God is
the Saviour. They will be saved from temporal death and
bodily corruption, "for as in Adam all die, even so in
Christ shall all be made alive." They will be saved from
that first death, in which the creature is self-ruined, and
God is not glorified at all, but for ever blasphemed. They
will be saved from the curse of hopeless vanity, in which
the great end of their creation remains wholly unfulfilled.
They will be saved from that abyss, unsearchable in its
depth and unfathomable in its darkness, when death and
the abyss are cast into the lake of fire. Will they not be
saA^ed from that utter unmingled, hopeless misery, in

CONCLUSION. 239

which no ray of comfort or relief of any kind breaks in
upon a dreary solitude of everlasting despair? Will they
not 'be saved, in some strange and mysterious, but real
sense, when their irremovable sorrow finds beneath it a
still lower depth of Divine compassion, and the sinful
creature, in its most forlorn estate, and in its utter shame,
encounters the amazing vision of tender, condescending
and infinite love ?
VI. This great and solemn truth may be viewed,
further, in its relation to the clearly revealed moral attri
butes and perfections of the Most High.
Every child of man is related to God under three
distinct characters of the Divine goodness. The first is
the simple bounty of the Creator. The second is the
equity ofthe Moral Governor of the world. The -third is
the mercy and compassion of God the Redeemer.
The Lord is good to every man, and his tender mercies
are over all his works. He giveth to all men life and
breath and all things. He giveth food to all flesh. He
sendeth rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling the
hearts of men with food and gladness. He is also the God
who loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity, who re-
sisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. He is
of purer eyes than to behold evil. He is also a God of
compassion and grace. He reclaims the lost, restores the
wanderer, welcomes the returning prodigal, and visits
with tenderest compassion those who have erred and gone
astray^ The second character of God is that on which the
issues of judgment depend. All men are parted thus into
two classes, according to their moral character as known
to God, and their use or abuse of proffered grace in the
day of -their .probation. Personal righteousness, or un-

24a THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.
righteousness is the revealed ground of that predicted
eternal contrast and separation.
But the contrast between the obedient and the diso
bedient, the faithful and unbelieving, in their relation to
God as the righteous Judge, cannot set aside their
common relation to Him, as the bountiful Creator of all
men, and the God of grace towards all who are sunk in
guilt or misery. The threefold cord of Divine truth and
holiness cannot be broken. The gifts and. calling of God
are without repentance. The love of the all-wise Creator
to all his creatures was brightly displayed in the very fact
of their creation. It may be veiled for a time through the
dark unfoldings of moral evil and iniquity; but it surely
cannot be annihilated, and wholly reversed and blotted out
for ever. His .judgments, when most awful, must still
remain in harmony with his own declaration by the pro
phet — " I will not contend for ever, neither will I be
always wroth ; for the spirit should fail before me, and the
souls which I have made." There is a sense in which God
will contend for ever, and be always wroth. There is a
sense, also, in which He will not so do, lest the effect
should be mere annihilation of the noblest works of
his own hands. And again, the link between sorrow and
misery, however caused and wherever found, and the
Divine compassion, must abide and endure. " God so
loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son," to
be the propitiation for their sins. The Lamb of God
taketh away the sin of the world. When He stooped from
his throne, and took on Him our flesh, He became the
brother and the head of every man. The law, " Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself," was written and engraven
in his' heart. No depth in the perverseness of evil, no
certainty of inexerable righteeusness, when the King ef

CONCLUSION. 241

heaven sits on the throne of judgment, can ever contract
this revealed mercy of the Father aud the Son within
narrower bounds. Sinners, to whom the Son of God was
given, for whom He bore the cross, and died accursed, over
whom He wept tears of pity, and towards whom there
have been patient yearnings of God's infinite compassion,
and of his Divine long-suffering, not willing that any should
perish, but that all should come to repentance, can surely
never cease, even under the strokes of judgment, and in
their depth" of utter shame, to be encircled evermore by
the infinite compassions of that holy and perfect Being
Avhose very name and nature is Love.
Here, then, let us pause with reverence, and adore.
May the All-wise and the All-holy teach us the spirit
of the poor and the contrite, who tremble at his word,
and who fear Him of whom it .is solemnly proclaimed,
by the Lord of glory, that He is able to destroy both body
and soul in hell. But may He give us further the spirit
of undoubting and unwavering faith in his perfect good
ness. May we believe firmly, though clouds and darkness
are round about Him, and chiefly in the exercise of his
revealed judgments on the unholy, the disobedient, and
the profane, that those grand and glorious words of his
Divine law shall be confirmed and ratified for ever —
"He is the Rock, his work is perfect, all his ways are
judgment ; a God of truth and without iniquity, just and
right is He ! "

B.

GTamfirtogc:
PRINTED BY 0. J. CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

May 1875.
A Catalogue of Theological Books,
with a Short Account of their
Character and Aim,
Published by
MACMILLAN A^D CO.
Bedford Street, Strand, London, W.C.

Abbott (Rev. E. A.)— Works by the Rev. E. A. Abbott,
D.D., Head Master of the City of London School.
BIBLE LESSONS. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 4s.6d.
" Wise, suggestive, and really profound initiation into religious thought."
•s— Guardian. T/ie Bishop of St. David's, in his speech at the Education
Conference at Abergwilly, says he thinks ' ' nobody could read them without
being the better for them himself, and being also able to see how this difficult
duty of imparting a sound religious education may be effected."
THE GOOD VOICES.: A Child's, Guide to the Bible.
With upwards of 50 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. cloth gilt. 5^-.
"It would not be easy to combine simplicity with fulness and depth of
meaning more successfully than Mr. Abbott has done. "—Spectator. The
Times says— "Mr. Abbott writes with clearness, simplicity, and the deepest
religious feeling."
PARABLES FOR CHILDREN. Crown 8vo. cloth gilt.
y. 6d.
" They are simple and direct in meaning and told in plain language,
and are therefore well adapted to their purpose."— Guardian, I
10000.5.75.

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.

Abbott (Rev. E. A.)— continued.
CAMBRIDGE SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE
UNIVERSITY. 8vo. 6s.
Ainger (Rev. Alfred).— SERMONS PREACHED IN
THE TEMPLE CHURCH. By the Rev. Alfred Ainger,.
M.A. of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Reader at the Temple Church.
Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s.
This volume contains twenty-four Sermons preached at various times
during the last few years in the Temple Cliurch. "It is," the British
Quarterly says, " the fresh unconventional talk of a clear independent
thinker, addressed to a congregation of thinkers . . . . Thoughtful men will
be greatly charmed by this little volume."
Alexander.— THE LEADING IDEAS of the GOSPELS.
Five Sermons preached before the University of Oxford in 1870 — •
71. By William Alexander, D.D. , Brasenose College ; Lord
Bishop of Derry and Raphao ; Select Preacher. Cr, 8vo. 4J. 6d.
"Eloquence and force of language, clearness of statement, and a hearty
appreciation of the grandeur and importance ofthe topics upon zohich he
writes characterize his sermons. " — Record.
Arnold.— A BIBLE READING BOOK FOR SCHOOLS.
The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration (Isaiah,
Chapters 40 — 66). Arranged and Edited for A/oung Learners. By
Matthew Arnold, D.C.L., formerly Professor of Poetry in the
University of Oxford, and Fellow of Oriel. Third Edition. i8mo.
cloth, is.
The Times says — " Whatever may be the fate of this little book in
Government Schools, there can be no doubt that it will be found excellently
calculated to further instruction in Biblical literature in any school into
which it may be introduced. . . . We can safely say that whatever school uses
this book, it will enable its pupils to understand Isaiah, a great advantage
compared with other establishments which do not avail themselves of it."
Baring-Gould.— LEGENDS OF OLD TESTAMENT
CHARACTERS, from the Talmud and other sources. By the
Rev. S. Baring-Gould, M.A., Author of "Curious Myths of
the Middle Ages," "The Origin and Development of Religious
Belief," "In Exitu Israel," etc. In two vols, crown 8vo. 16s.
Vol. I. Adam to Abraham. Vol. II. Melchizidek to Zechariah.
"These volumes contain muck that is strange, and to the ordinary
English reader, very novel." — Daily News.
Barry, Alfred, D.D.— The ATONEMENT of CHRIST.
Six Lectures delivered in Hereford Cathedral during Holy Week
1871. By Alfred Barry, D.D., D.C.L., Canon of Worcester'
Principal of King's College, London. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.

.In writing these Sermons, it has been the object of Canon Barry to set
forth the deep practical importance of the doctrinal truths of the Atone
ment. The Guardian calls them " striking and eloquent lectures. "
Benham.— A COMPANION TO THE LECTIONARY,
being a Commentary on the Proper Lessons for Sundays and
Holydays. By the Rev. W. Benham, B.D., Vicar of Margate.
Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
The Author's object is to give the reader a clear understanding of the
Lessons of the Church, which he does by means of general and special in
troductions, and critical and explanatory notes on all words and passages
- presenting the least difficulty. "A very useful book. Mr. Benham has
produced a good and welcome companion to our revised Lectionary. Its
contents will, if not very original or profound, prove to be sensible and
practical, and often suggestive to the preacher and the Sunday School
teacher. They will also furnish some excellent Sunday reading for private
hours." — Guardian.
Benson. — BOY-LIFE ; Its Trial, Its Strength, Its
Fulness. Sundays in Wellington College 1859 — 73. By E. W.
Benson, Master. Crown 8vo. 7*. 6d.
Bernard.— THE PROGRESS OF DOCTRINE IN THE
NEW TESTAMENT, considered in Eight Lectures before the
University of Oxford in 1864. By Thomas D. Bernard, M.A.,
Rector of Walcot and Canon of Wells. Third and Cheaper Edit
ion. Crown 8vo. $s. (Bampton Lectures for 1864.)
"We lay down these lectures with u sense not only of being edified by
sound teaching and careful thought, but also of being gratified by con
ciseness and clearness of expression and elegance of style. " — Churchman.
Binney.— SERMONS PREACHED IN THE KING'S
WEIGH HOUSE CHAPEL, 1829—69. By Thomas Binney,
D.D. New and Cheaper Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4J. 6d.
"Full of robust intelligence, of reverent but independent thinking on the
most profound and holy themes, and of earnest p-actical purpose." —
London Quarterly Review.
A SECOND SERIES OF SERMONS. Edited by the Rev.
Henry Allon, D.D. With Portrait of Dr. Binney engraved by
JEENS. 8vo. [Shortly.
Bradby.— SERMONS PREACHED AT HAILEYBURY.
By E. H. Bradby, M.A., Master. 8vo. iar. 6d.
" Hewho claims a public hearing now, speaksto an audience accustomed
to Cotton, Temple, Vaughan, Bradley, Butler, Farrar, and others 
Each has given us good work, several work of rare beauty, force, or
originality ¦ but we doubt whether any one of them has touched deeper
chords or brought more freshness and strength into his sermons, than the
last of their number, the present Head Master of Haileybury."— Spectator.

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.

Burgon.— A TREATISE on the PASTORAL OFFICE.
Addressed chiefly to Candidates for Holy Orders, or to those who
have recently undertaken the cure of souls. By the Rev. JOHN
W. Burgon, M.A., Oxford. 8vo. I2j.
Tlie object of this work is to expound the great ends to he accomplished by
the Pastoral office, and to investigate the various means by which these ends
may best be gained. Full directions are given as to preaching and sermon-
writing, pastoral visitation, village education and catechising, and con
firmation. — Spectator.
Butler (G.) — Works by the Rev. George Butler, M.A.,
Principal of Liverpool College :
FAMILY PRAYERS. Crown 8vo. 5s.
The prayers in this volume are all based on passages of Scripture — the
morning prayers on Select Psalms, those for the evening on portions ofthe
New Testament.
SERMONS PREACHED in'CHELTENHAM COLLEGE
CHAPEL. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d.
Butler (Rev. H. M.)— SERMONS PREACHED in the
CHAPEL OF HARROW SCHOOL. By H. Montagu
Butler, Head Master. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d.
" These sermons are adapted for every household. There is nothing
more striking than the excellent good sense with which they are imbued. "
— Spectator. A SECOND SERIES. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.
"Excellent specimens of what sermons should be, — plain, direct, prac
tical, pervaded by the true spirit of the Gospel, and holding up lofty aims
before the minds of the young. " — Athenasum.
Butler (Rev. W. Archer).— Works by the Rev. William
Archer Butler, M.A., late Professor of Moral Philosophy in
the University of Dublin : —
SERMONS, DOCTRINAL AND PRACTICAL. Edited,
with a Memoir of the Author's Life, by Thomas Woodward,
Dean of Down. With Portrait. Ninth Edition. 8vo. 8s.
The Introductory Memoir narrates in considerable detail and with muck
interest, the events of Butler' s brief life ; and contains a few specimens of
his poetry, and a few extracts from his addresses and essays, including a
long and eloquent passage on the Province and Duty ofthe Preacher.
A SECOND SERIES OF SERMONS. Edited by J. A.
Jeremie, D.D., Dean of Lincoln. Seventh Edition. 8vo. Js.
The North British Review says, ' ' Few sermons in our language exhibit
the same rare combination of excellencies; imagery almost as rich as
Taylor's; oratory as vigorous often as South's; judgment as sound as

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 5
Butler (Rev. W. Archer.) — continued.
Barrcmfs; u style as attractive but more copious, original, and forcible
than Atterbury's; piety as elevated as Howe's, and a fervour as intense at
times as Baxter's. Mr. Butler's are the sermons of a true poet. "
LETTERS ON ROMANISM, in reply to Dr. Newman's
Essay on Development. Edited by the Dean of Down. Second
Edition, revised by Archdeacon Hardwick. 8vo. 10s. 6d.
These Letters contain an exhaustive criticism of Dr. Newman' s famous
"Essay on the Development qf Christian Doctrine." "A work which
ought to be in the Library of every student of Divinity. " — Bp. St. David's.
Cambridge Lent Sermons. — SERMONS preached
during Lent, 1864, in Great St. Mary's Church, Cambridge. By
the Bishop of Oxford, Revs. H. P. Liddon, T. L. Claughton,
J. R. Woodford, Dr. Goulburn, J. W. Burgon, T. T.
Carter, Dr. Pusey, Dean Hook, W. J. Butler, Dean Good
win. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d.
Campbell.- — Works by John M'Leod Campbell : —
THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT AND ITS
RELATION TO REMISSION OF SINS AND ETERNAL
LIFE. Fourth and Cheaper Edition, crown 8vo. 6s.
"Among the first theological treatises of this generation." — Guardian.
" One ofthe most remarkable theological books ever written." — Times.
CHRIST THE BREAD OF LIFE. An Attempt to give
a profitable direction to the present occupation of Thought with
Romanism. Second Edition, greatly enlarged. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d.
"Deserves the most attentive study by all who interest themselves in the
predominant religious controversy ofthe day." — Spectator.
RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE GIFT OF ETERNAL
LIFE. Compiled by permission ofthe late J. M'Leod Campbell,
D.D., from Sermons preached chiefly at Row in 1829 — 31.
Crown 8vo. 5J-
" There is a healthy tone as well as a deep pathos not often seen in
sermons. His words are weighty and the ideas they express tend to per
fection of life." — Westminster Review.
REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS, referring to
his Early Ministry in the Parish of Row, 1825—31. Edited with
an Introductory Narrative by his Son, Donald Campbell, M. A.,
Chaplain of King's College, London. Crown 8vo. 7-y. 6d.
These 'Reminiscences and Reflections,' written during the last year of
his life, were mainly intended to place on record thoughts which might
prove helpful to others. " We recommend this book cordially to all who
are interested in the great cause of religious reformation."— Times.

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.

Campbell (J. M'Leod)— fl7;zft'«z^.
" Tliere is a thoroughness and depth, as well, as a practical earnestness,
in his grasp of each truth on which he dilates, which make his reflections
very valuable." — Literary Churchman.
THOUGHTS ON REVELATION, with Special Reference
to the Present Time. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. $s.
Canterbury.— THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. Seven Addresses delivered to the
Clergy and Churchwardens of his Diocese, as his Charge, at his
Primary Visitation, 1872. By Archibald Campbell, Archbishop
of Canterbury. Third Edition. 8vo. cloth. 3.?. 6d.
The subjects of these Addresses are, I. Lay Co-operdtion. II. Cathedral
Reform. III. and IV. Ecclesiastical Judicature. V. Ecclesiastical
Legislation. VI. Missionary Work ofthe Church. VII. The' Church
of England in its relation to the Rest of Christendom. There are besides,
a number of statistical and illustrative appendices.
Cheyne. — Works by T. K. Cheyne, M.A., Fellow of Balliol
College, Oxford : —
THE BOOK OF ISAIAH CHRONOLOGICALLY AR
RANGED. An Amended Version, with Historical and Critical
Introductions and Explanatory Notes. Crown Svo. Js. 6d.
The object of this edition is to restore the probable meaning of Isaiah, so
far as can be expressed in appropriate' English. The basis ofthe version
is the revised translation of 161 1,- but alterations have been introduced
wherever the true sense of the prophecies appeared lo require it. The West
minster Review speaks of it as "a piece of scholarly work, very carefully
and considerately done." The Academy calls it "a successful attempt to
extend a right understanding of this important Old Testament writing."
NOTES AND CRITICISMS on the HEBREW TEXT
OF ISAIAH. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d.
This work is offered as a slight contribution to a more scientific study of
the Old Testament Scriptures. The author aims at completeness, inde
pendence, and originality, and constantly endeavours to keep philology
distinct from exegesis, to explain the form zvithout pronouncing on the
matter.Choice Notes on the Four Gospels, drawn from
Old and New Sources. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. each Vol. (St.
Matthew and St. Mark in one Vol. price gs.).
These Notes are selected from the Rev. Prebendary Ford's Illustrations
of tlie Four Gospels, the choice being chiefly confined to those of a more
simple and practical character.

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.

Church. — Works by the Very Rev. R. W. Church, M.A.,
Dean of St. Paul's.
SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE the UNIVERSITY
OF OXFORD. By the Very Rev. R. W. Church, M.A., Dean
of St. Paul's. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 4-f. 6d.
Sermons on the relations between Christianity and the ideas and facts of
modern civilized society. The subjects of the various discourses are: —
"The Gifts of Civilization," " Christ's Words and Christian Society,"
"Christ's Example," and " Civilization and Religion." ''Thoughtful
and masterly . . . We regard these sermons as a landmark in religious
tlwught. They help us to understand the latent strength of a Christianity
that is assailed on all sides." — Spectator.
ON SOME INFLUENCES OF CHRISTIANITY UPON
NATIONAL CHARACTER. Three Lectures delivered in St
Paul's Cathedral, Feb. 1873. Crown 8vo. 43-. 6d.
"Few books that we have met with have given us keener pleasure than
this  // would be a real pleasure to quote extensively, so wise and so
true, so tender and so discriminating are Dean Church's judgments, but
the limits of our space are inexorable. We hope the book will be bought. "
— Literary Churchman.
THE SACRED POETRY OF EARLY RELIGIONS.
Two Lectures in St. Paul's Cathedral. l8mo. Is. I. The Vedas,
II. The Psalms.
Clay.— THE POWER OF THE KEYS. Sermons preached
in Coventry. By the Rev. W. L. Clay, M.A. Fcap. 8vo. 3*. 6d.
Clergyman's Self- Examination concerning the
APOSTLES' CREED. Extra fcap. 8vo. is. 6d.
Colenso.— THE COMMUNION SERVICE FROM THE
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER; with Select Readings from
the Writings of the Rev. F. D. Maurice, M.A. Edited by the
Right Rev. J. W. COBENSO, D.D., Lord Bishop of Natal. New
Edition. i6mo. 2s. 6d.
Collects of the Church of England. With a beauti
fully Coloured Floral Design to each Collect, and Illuminated
Cover. Crown 8vo. I2.f. Also kept in various styles of morocco.
The distinctive cliaracteristic of this edition is the coloured floral design
which accompanies each Collect, and which is generally emblematical of
tlie character of the day or saint to which it is assigned; the flowers
which have been selected are such as are likely to be in bloom on the day to
which tlie Collect belongs. The Guardian thinks it " a successful attempt
to associate in a natural and unforced manner the flowers of our fields
and gardens with the course ofthe Christian year."

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.

Cotton. — Works by the late George Edward Lynch
Cotton, D.D., Bishop of Calcutta: —
SERMONS PREACHED TO ENGLISH CONGREGA
TIONS IN INDIA. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d.
" The sermons are models of what sermons should be, not only on ac
count of their practical teachings, but also zuith regard to the singular
felicity zvith which they are adapted to times, places, and circumstances. "
— Spectator.
EXPOSITORY SERMONS ON THE EPISTLES FOR
THE SUNDAYS OF THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. Two
Vols. Crown 8vo. i$s.
These two volumes contain in all fifty-seven Sermons. They were all
preached at various stations throughout India.
Cure.— THE SEVEN WORDS OF CHRIST ON THE
CROSS. Sermons preached at St. George's, Bloomsbury. By
the Rev. E. Capel Cure, M.A. Fcap. 8vo. j,s. 6d.
Of these Sermons the John Bull says, " They are earnest and practical ;"
the Nonconformist, " The Sermons are beautiful, tender, and instruc
tive;" and the Spectator calls them "A set of really good Sermons."
Curteis.— DISSENT in its RELATION to the CHURCH
OF ENGLAND. Eight Lectures preached before the University
of Oxford, in the year 1871, on the foundation of the late Rev.
John Bampton, M. A. , Canon of Salisbury. By George Herbert
Curteis, M.A., late Fellow and Sub-Rector of Exeter College ;
Principal of the Lichfield Theological, College, and Prebendary of
Lichfield Cathedral ; Rector of Turweston, Bucks. Third and
Cheaper Edition, crown 8vo. Js. 6d.
"Mr. Curteis has done good sei~vice by maintaining in an eloquent,
temperate, and practical manner, that discussion among Christians is
really an evil, and that an intelligent basis can be found for at least a
proximate union." — Saturday Review "A well timed, learned, and
thoughtful book. "
Davies. —-Works by the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies, M.A.,
Rector of Christ Church, St. Marylebone, etc. : —
THE WORK OF CHRIST ; or, the World Reconciled to
God. ¦ With a Preface on the Atonement Controversy. Fcap.
8vo. 6s.
SERMONS on the MANIFESTATION OF THE SON
OF GOD. With a Preface addressed to Laymen on the present
Position of the Clergy of the Church of England ; and an Ap-

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.

Davies (Rev. J. Llewelyn) — continued.
pendix on the Testimony of Scripture and the Church as to the
possibility of Pardon in the Future State. Fcap. 8vo. 6s. 6d.
" This volume, both in its substance, prefix, and suffix, represents the
noblest type of theology now p-eached in the English Church."— Spectator.
BAPTISM, CONFIRMATION, AND THE LORD'S
SUPPER, as Interpreted by their Outward Signs. Three Ex
pository Addresses for Parochial use. Fcap. 8vo., limp cloth.
is. 6d.
The method adopted in these addresses is to set forth the natural and
historical meaning of the signs of the two Sacraments and of Confirma
tion, and thus to arrive at the spiritual realities which they symbolize.
The work touches on all the principal elements cfa Christian man's faith.
THE EPISTLES of ST. PAUL TO THE EPHESIANS,
THE COLOSSIANS, and PHILEMON. With Introductions
and Notes, and an Essay on the Traces of Foreign Elements in
the Theology of these Epistles. 8vo. 7.1. 6d.
THE GOSPEL AND MODERN LIFE ; with a Preface
on a Recent Phase of Deism. Second Edition. To which is
added Morality according to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper,
or Three Discourses on the Names Eucharist, Sacrifice, and Com
munion. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s.
WARNINGS AGAINST SUPERSTITION IN FOUR
SERMONS FOR THE DAY. Extra fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d
" We have seldom read a wiser little book. The Sermons are short,
terse, and full of true spiritual wisdom, expressed with a lucidity and a
moderation that must give them weight even with those who agree least
with their author.  Ofthe volume as a whole it is hardly possible to
speak with too cordial an appreciation. "—Spectator.
THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. Sermons. Extra fcap.
8vo. 6s.
De Teissier. — Works by G. F. De Teissier; B.D.:—
VILLAGE SERMONS, First Series. Crown 8vo. gs.
This volume contains fifty-four short Sermons, embracing many subjects
of practical importance to all Christians. The Guardian says they are
"a little too scholarlike in style for a country village, but sound and
practical." VILLAGE SERMONS, Second Series. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d.
" This second volume of Parochial Sermons is given to the public in
the humble hope that it may afford many seasonable thoughts for such as
are Mourners in Zion." There are in all fifty-two Sermons embracing a
wide variety of subjects connected with Christian faith and practice.

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.

Donaldson — THE APOSTOLICAL FATHERS: a Critical
Account of their Genuine Writings and of their Doctrines. By
James Donaldson, LL.D. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d.
This book was published in 1864 as the first volume of a ' Critical
History . of Christian Literature and Doctrine from the death of the
Apostles to the Nicene Council.' T/ie intention was to carry down the
history continuously to the time of Eusebius, and this intention has not
been abandoned. But as the writers can be sometimes grouped more easily
according to subject or locality than according to time, it is deemed ad
visable to publish tlu history of each group separately. The Introduction
to the present volume serves as an introduction to the whole period.
Drake.— THE TEACHING OF the CHURCH DURING
THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES ON THE DOCTRINES
OF .THE CHRISTIAN PRIESTHOOD AND SACRIFICE.
By the Rev. C. B. Drake, M.A., Warden ofthe Church of Eng
land Hall, Manchester. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d.
Ecce Homo. A Survey of the Life and Work of
Jesus Christ. Eleventh Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
"A very original and remarkable book, full of striking thought and
delicate pei'ception; a book which has realised with wonderful vigour and
freshness the historical magnitude of Christ's work, and which here and
there gives us readings of the finest kind of the probable motive of His indi
vidual words and actions." — Spectator. " The best and most established
believer will find it adding some fresh buttresses to his faith." — Literary
Churchman. " If ' zve have not misunderstood him, we have before us a
writer zoho has a right to claim deference from those who think deepest
and know most. " — Guardian.
Faber.— SERMONS AT A NEW SCHOOL. By the Rev.
Arthur Faber, M.A., Head Master of Malvern College. Cr.
8vo. 6s.
" These are high-toned, earnest Sermons, orthodox and scholarlike, and
laden with encouragement and warning, wisely adapted to the needs of
school-life." — Literary Churchman. "Admirably realizing that com
bination of fresh vigorous thought and simple expression of wise parental
counsel, with brotherly sympathy and respect, which are essential to the
success of such sermons, and to which so few attain." — British Quarterly
Review. Farrar. — Works by the Rev. F. W. Farrar, M.A., F.R.S.,
Head Master of Marlborough College, and Hon. Chaplain to the
Queen : —
THE FALL OF MAN, AND OTHER SERMONS.
Third Edition. Extra fcap; 8vo. 4s. 6d.
This volume contains twenty Sermons. No attempt is made in these

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.

Farrar (Rev. F. W.) — continued.
Sermons to develope a system of docti'ine. In each discourse some one
aspect of truth is taken up, the chief object being to point out its bearings on
practical religious life. Tlie Nonconformist 'says of these Sermons, —
"Mr. Farrar 's Sermons are almost perfect specimens of one type of Ser
mons, "which we may concisely call beautiful. The style of expression is
beautiful — there is beauty in the thoughts, the illustrations, the allusions —
they are expressive of genuinely beautiful perceptions and feelings." The
British Quarterly says, — "Ability, eloquence, scholarship, and practical
usefulness, are in these Sermons combined in a very unusual degree. "
THE WITNESS OF HISTORY TO CHRIST. Being
the Hulsean Lectures for 1870. New Edition. Crown 8vo. 5-r.
The following are the subjects ofthe Five Lectures : — I. " The Ante
cedent Credibility ofthe Miraculous." II. " The Adequacy ofthe Gospel
Records." III. " The Victories of Christianity." IV. " Christianity and
the Individual." V. " Christianity and tke Race." The subjects of the
four Appendices are: — A. "The Diversity of Christian Evidences."
B. "Confucius." C. "Buddha." D. "Comte."
SEEKERS AFTER GOD. The Lives of Seneca, Epictetus,
and Marcus Aurelius. See Sunday Library at end of Catalogue.
THE SILENCE AND VOICES OF GOD: University
and other Sermons. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
"We can most cordially recommend Dr. Farrar 's singularly beautiful
volume of Sermons  For beauty of diction, felicity of style, aptness of
illustration and earnest loving exhortation, the volume is without its
parallel." — John Bull. " They are marked by great ability, by an honesty
which does not hesitate to acknowledge difficulties and by an earnestness
which commands respect." — Pall Mall Gazette.
Fellowship : Letters' Addressed to my Sister
Mourners. Fcap. 8vo. cloth gilt. 3*. 6d.
"A beautiful little volume, written with genuine feeling, good taste, and
a right appreciation of the teaching of Scripture relative to sorrow and
suffering." — Nonconformist. "A very touching, and at the same time a
very sensible book. It breathes throughout the truest Christian sprit. " —
Contemporary Review.
Forbes.— THE VOICE OF GOD IN THE PSALMS.
By Granville Forbes, Rector of Broughton. Cr. 8vo. 6s. 6d.
Gifford.— THE GLORY OF GOD IN MAN. By E. H.
Gifford, D.D. Fcap. 8vo., cloth. 3s. 6d.
Golden Treasury Psalter. See p. 27.

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.

Hardwick. — Works by the Ven. Archdeacon Hardwick :
CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS. A Historical Inquiry
into some of the Chief Parallelisms and Contrasts between Christ
ianity and the Religious Systems of the Ancient World. New
Edition, revised, and a Prefatory Memoir by the Rev. Francis
Procter, M.A. Third and Cheaper Edition. Cr. 8vo. ids.6d.
The plan ofthe work is boldly and almost nobly conceived. . . . We com
mend it to the perusal of all those who take' interest in the study of ancient
mythology, without losing their reverence for the supreme authority of the
oracles ofthe living God. " — Christian Observer.
A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Middle
Age.. From Gregory the Great to the Excommunication of Luther,
Edited by William Stubbs, M.A., Regius Professor of Modern
History in the University of Oxford. With Four Maps constructed
for this work by A. Keith Johnston. New Edition. Crown
8vo. ios. 6d.
For this edition Professor Stubbs has carefully revised both text and
notes, making such corrections of facts, dates, and the like as the results of
recent research warrant. The doctrinal, historical, and generally specula
tive views ofthe late author have been presei-ved intact. "As o Manual
for the student of ecclesiastical history in the Middle Ages, we know no Eng
lish work which can be compared to Mr. Hardwick 's book. " — Guardian.
A HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH DURING
THE REFORMATION. "New Edition, revised by Professor
Stubbs. Crown 8vo. ios. 6d.
This volume is intended as a sequel and companion to the "History
of the Christian Church during the Middle Age. "
Hare.— THE VICTORY OF FAITH. By Julius Charles
Hare, M. A. , Archdeacon of "Lewes. Edited by Prof. Plumptre.
With Introductory Notices by the late Prof. Maurice and Dean
Stanley. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d.
Harris.— SERMONS. By the late George Collyer
Harris, Prebendary of Exeter, and Vicar of St. Luke's, Torquay.
With Memoir by Charlotte M. Yonge, and Portrait. Extra
fcap. 8vo. 6s.
Hervey.— THE GENEALOGIES OF OUR LORD AND
SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, as contained in the Gospels of
St. Matthew and St. Luke, reconciled with each other, and shown
to be in harmony with the true Chronology ofthe Times. By Lord
Arthur Hervey,' Bishop of Bath and Wells. - 8vo. ioj. 6d.

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 13
Hymni Ecclesiae. — Fcap. 8vo. 7s. 6d.
This collection was edited by Dr. Newman while he lived at Oxford.
Hyacinthe.— CATHOLIC REFORM. By Father
Hyacinthe. Letters, Fragments, Discourses. Translated by
Madame Hyacinthe-Loyson. With a Preface by the Very Rev.
A. P. Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster. Cr. 8vo. Js. 6d.
"A valuable contribution to the religious literature of the day, and is
especially opportune at a time when a controversy of no ordinary import
ance upon the very subject it deals with is engaged in all over Europe. " —
Daily Telegraph.
Imitation of Christ. — Four Books. Translated from the
Latin. With Preface by the Rev. W. Benham' B.D., Vicar of
Margate. Printed with Borders in the Ancient Style after Holbein,
Diirer, and other Old Masters. Containing Dances of Death, Acts
of Mercy, Emblems, and a variety of curious ornamentation. Cr.
8vo. gilt edges. Js. 6d.
Jennings and Lowe. — THE PSALMS, with Introduc
tions and Critical Notes. By A. C. Jennings, B. A., Jesus Col
lege, Cambridge, Tyrwhitt Scholar, Crosse Scholar, Hebrew
University Scholar, and Fry Scholar of St. John's College ; and
W. H. Lowe, M. A. , Hebrew Lecturer and late Scholar of Christ's
College, Cambridge, and Tyrwhitt Scholar. Books III. and IV.
(Psalm lxxiii. to cvi. ) Crown 8vo. 6s.
Kempis, Thos, A. — DE IMITATIONE CHRISTI.
Libri IV. Borders in the Ancient Style, after Holbein, Durer,
and other Old Masters, containing Dances of Death, Acts of
Mercy, Emblems, and a variety of curious ornamentation. In
white cloth, extra gilt. Js. 6d.
Kingsley. — Works by the late Rev. Charles Kingsley,
M.A., Rector of Eversley, and Canon of Westminster.
THE WATER OF LIFE, AND OTHER SERMONS.
Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. y. 6d.
VILLAGE SERMONS. Seventh Edition. Fcap. 8vo. y.6d.
THE GOSPEL OF THE PENTATEUCH. Second
Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d.
GOOD NEWS OF GOD. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo.
y. 6d.
This volume contains thirty-nine short Sermons, preached in the
ordinary course ofthe author 's parochial ministrations.

14 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Kingsley (Rev. C.) — continued.
SERMONS FOR THE TIMES. Third Edition. Fcap.
8vo. 3-r. 6d.
Here are twenty-tzuo Sermons, all bearing more or less on the every-day
life of the present day, including such subjects as these: — "Fathers and
Children;" "A Good Conscience;" "Names ;" "Sponsorship ;" "Duty
and Superstition;" "England's Strength;" "The Lord's Prayer;"
"Shame;" "Forgiveness;" "The True Gentleman;" "Public Spirit."
TOWN AND COUNTRY SERMONS. Second Edition.
Extra fcap. 8vo. y. 6d.
Some of these Sermons were preached before the Queen, and some in the
performance ofthe writer's ordinary parochial duty. Of these Sermons
the Nonconformist says, ' ' They are warm with the fervour of the preacher's
ozvn heart, and strong from the force of his own convictions. There is
nowhere an attempt at display, and the clearness and simplicity of the
style make them suitable for the youngest or most unintelligent of his
hearers." SERMONS on NATIONAL SUBJECTS. Second Edition.
Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d.
THE KING OF THE EARTH, and other Sermons,
a Second Series of Sermons on National Subjects. Second
Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3.?. 6d.
The following extract from the Preface to the 2nd Series will explain
the preacher 's aim in these Sermons : — "/ have tried.  to proclaim the
Lord Jesus Christ, as the Scriptures, both in their strictest letter and in
their general method, from Genesis to Revelation, seem to me to proclaim
Him; not merely as the Saviour of a few elect souls, but as the light and
life of every human being who enters into the world; as the source of
all reason, strength, and virtue in heathen or in Christian ; as the King
and Ruler ofthe zuhole universe, and of every nation, family, and man on
earth; as the Redeemer of the whole earth and the whole human race...
His death, as a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satis
faction for the sins ofthe zuhole world, by which God is reconciled to the
whole human race."
DISCIPLINE, AND OTHER SERMONS. Fcp. 8vo. is.bd.
The Guardian says, — "There is much thought, tenderness, and devoul-
ness of spirit in these Sermons, and some Of them are models both in
matter and expression."
DAVID. Five Sermons. Second Edition, enlarged. Fcap.
8vo. 2s. 6d.
These Sermons were preached before the University of Cambridge,
and are specially addressed to young men. Their titles are, — "David's
Weakness;" "David's Strength;" " 'David 's Anger ;" "David's Deserts."

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 15
Kingsley (Rev.^C.) — continued.
WESTMINSTER SERMONS. Svo. ios.6d.
These Sermons zuere preached at Westminster Abbey or at one of the
Chapels Royal. Their subjects are : — The Mystery ofthe Cross : The Per
fect Love : -The Spirit of Whitsuntide : Prayer : The Deaf and Dmnb :
The Fruits ofthe Sprit : Confusion : The Shaking ofthe Heavens and
the Earth: The Kingdom of God: 77ie Lazu of the Lord: God the
Teacher: The Reasonable Prayer : The One Escape : The Word of God:
I: The Cedars of Lebanon : Life: Death: Signs and Wonders : 7he
Judgments of God: The War in Heaven: Noble Company: De Pro-
fundis : The Blessing and the Curse : The Silence of Faith : God and
Mammon : The Beatific Vision.
Lightfoot. — Works by J. B. Lightfoot, D.D., Hulsean
Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge ; Canon of
St. Paul's.
ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. A Re
vised Text, with Introduction, Notes, and Dissertations. Fourth
Edition, revised. 8vo. cloth. I2J.
While the Author's object has been to make this commentary generally
complete, he has paid special attention to everything relating to St. Paul's
personal history and his intercourse zuith the Apostles and Church of the
Circumcision, as it is this feature in the Epistle to the Galatians which
has given it an overwhelming interest in recent theological controversy.
The Spectator says "there is no commentator at once of sounder judg
ment and more liberal than Dr. Lightfoot. " %
ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS. A
Revised Text, with Introduction, Notes, and Dissertations. Third
Edition. 8vo. I2J-.
' 'No commentary in the English language can be compared zuith it in
regard to fulness of information, exact scholarship, and laboured attempts
to settle everything about the epistle on a solid foundation. " — Athenaeum.
ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND
PHILEMON. A Revised Text with Introduction, Notes, etc.
"8vo. 1 2 s.
ST. CLEMENT OF ROME, THE TWO EPISTLES TO
THE CORINTHIANS. A Revised Text, with Introduction
and Notes. 8vo. Ss. 6d.
This volume is the first part of a complete edition of the Apostolic
Fathers The Introductions deal with the questions of the genuineness and
authenticity ofthe Epistles, discuss their date and character, and analyse
their contents An account is also given of all th'e different epistles which
bear the name of Clement of Rome. "By far the most copiously annotated

16 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Lightfoot (Dr. J. B.) — continued.
edition of St. Clement which we yet possess, and the most convenient in
every way for the English reader. " — Guardian.
ON A FRESH REVISION OF THE ENGLISH NEW
TESTAMENT. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
The Author shews in detail the necessity for u fresh revision of the
authorized version on the following grounds: — I. False Readings. 2.
Artificial distinctions created. 3. Real distinctions obliterated. 4. Faults
of Grammar. 5. Faults of Lexicography. 6. Treatment of Proper
Names, official titles, etc. J. Archaisms, defects in the English, errors
of the press, etc. " The book is marked by careful scholarship, familiarity
with the subject, sobriety, and circumspection." — Athenaeum.
Luckock.— THE TABLES OF STONE. A Course of
Sermons preached in All Saints' Church, Cambridge, by H. M.
Luckock, M.A., Vicar, Canon of Ely. Fcap. 8vo. y. 6d.
Maclaren — SERMONS PREACHED at MANCHESTER.
By Alexander Maclaren. Fifth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d.
These Sermons represent no special school, but deal with the broad prin
ciples of Christian truth, especially in their bearing on practical, every day
life. A few ofthe titles are: — "The Stone of Stumbling," "Love and
Forgiveness," "The Living Dead," "Memory in Another World,"
Faith in Christ," " Love and Fear," "The Choice of Wisdom," "The
Food of the World."
A SECOND SERIES .OF SERMONS. Third Edition.
Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d.
The Spectator characterises them as "vigorous in style, full of thought,
rich in illustration, and in an unusual degree interesting. "
A THIRD SERIES OF SERMONS. Second Edition.
Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d.
Sermons more sober and yet more forcible, and with a certain wise and
practical sprituality about them it would not be easy to find." — Spectator.
Maclear. — Works by the Rev. G. F. Maclear, D.D., Head
Master of King's College School : —
A CLASS-BOOK OF OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY.
With Four Maps. Eighth Edition. i8mo. 4s. 6d.
" 'The present volume," says the Preface, "forms a Class- Book of Old
Testament History from the Earliest Times to those of Ezra and Nehe-
miah. In its preparation the -most recent authorities have been consulted,
aud wherever it has appeared useful, Notes have been subjoined illustra
tive ofthe Text, and, for the sake of more advanced students, references
added to larger works. The Index has been so arranged as to form a
concise Dictionary ofthe Persons and Places mentioned vn the course ofthe

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 17
Maclear (G. F.)— continued.
Narrative." The Maps, prepared by Stanford, materially add to the
value and usefulness ofthe book. The British Quarterly Review calls it
"A careful and elaborate, though brief compendium of all that modern
research has done for the illustration of tlie Old Testament. We know of
no work which contains so much important information in so small a
compass."
A CLASS-BOOK OF NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY.
Including the Connexion of the Old and New Testament. Fifth
¦ Edition. i8mo. 5J. 6d.
The present volume forms a sequel to the Author's Class-Book of Old
Testament History, and continues the narrative to the close of St. Paul's
second imprisonment at Rome. The work is divided into three Books —
/. The Connection between the Old and New Testaments. II. The
Gospel History. III. The Apostolic History. In the Appendix are given
Chronological Tables The Clerical Journal says, "It is not often that
such an amount of useful and interesting matter on biblical subjects, is
fouhd in so convenient and small a compass, as in this well-arranged
volume. "
A CLASS-BOOK OF THE CATECHISM OF THE
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. New and Cheaper Edition.
l8mo. Is. 6d.
The present work is intended as u sequel to the two preceding books.
"Like them, it is furnished with notes and references to larger works,
and it is hoped that it may be found, especially in the higher forms of our
Public Schools, to supply a suitable manual of instruction in the chief
doctrines of our Church, and a useful help in the preparation of Can
didates for Confirmation." The Literary Churchman says, "It is indeed
the work of a scholar and divine, and as such, though extremely simple, it
is also extreniely instructive. There are few clergy who would not find
it useful in preparing candidates for Confirmation; and there are not a
few who would find it useful to themselves as well. "
A FIRST CLASS-BOOK OF THE CATECHISM OF
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, with Scripture Proofs for
Junior Classes and Schools. New Edition. l8mo. 6d.
This is an epitome of the larger Class-book, meant for junior students
and elementary classes. The book has been carefully condensed, so as to
contain clearly and fully, the most important part of the contents ofthe
larger book.
A SHILLING-BOOK of OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY.
New Edition. i8mo. cloth limp. is.
This Manual bears the same relation to the larger Old Testament Hist
ory, that the book just mentioned doe's to the larger work on the Catechism.
It consists of Ten Books, divided into short chapters, and subdivided into
2

1 8 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Maclear (G. F.) — continued.
sections, each section treating of a single episode in the history, the title of
which is given in bold type.
A SHILLING-BOOK of NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY.
New Edition. i8mo. cloth limp. is.
A MANUAL OF INSTRUCTION FOR CONFIRMA
TION AND FIRST COMMUNION, with Prayers and Devo
tions. 32mo. cloth extra, red edges. 2s.
This is an enlarged and improved edition of ' The Order of Confirma
tion.' To it have been added the Communion Office, with Notes and
Explanations, together with a brief form of Self Examination and De
votions selected from the works of Cosin, Ken, Wilson, and others.
THE ORDER OF CONFIRMATION, with Prayers and
Devotions. 32mo. cloth. 6d.
THE FIRST COMMUNION, with Prayers and Devotions
for the Newly Confirmed. 32roo. 6d.
THE HOUR OF SORROW ; or, The Order for the Burial
of the Dead. With Prayers and Hymns. 321110. cloth extra. 2s.
Macmillan. — Works by the Rev. Hugh Macmillan, LL.D.,
F. R. S. E. (For other Works by the same Author, see Catalogue
of Travels and Scientific Catalogue).
THE TRUE VINE; or, the Analogies of our Lord's
Allegory. Third Edition. Globe 8vo. 6s.
This work is not merely an exposition of the fifteenth chapter of St.
John's Gospel, but also a general parable of spiritual truth from the world
of plants. It describes a few of the points in which the varied realm of
vegetable life comes into contact with the higher spiritual realm, and shews
how rich afield of promise lies before the analogical mind in this_ direction.
The Nonconformist says, "It abounds in exquisite bits of description, and
in striking facts clearly stated." The British Quarterly says, "Readers
and preachers who are unscientific will find many of his illustrations as
valuable as they are beautiful. "
BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE. Ninth Edition.
Globe 8vo. 6s.
In this volume the author has endeavoured to shew that the teaching of
nature and the teaching of the Bible are directed to the same great end;
that the Bible contains the spiritual truths which are necessary to make us
wise unto salvation, and the objects and scenes of nature are the pictures
by which these truths are illustrated. "He has made the world more
beautiful to us, and unsealed our ears to voices of praise and messages of

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 19
Macmillan (H.) — continued.
love that might otherwise have been unheard." — British Quarterly Review.
"Mr. Macmillan has produced a book which may be fitly described as one
of the happiest efforts for enlisting physical science in the direct service of
religion. " — Guardian.
THE MINISTRY OF NATURE. Third Edition. Globe
8vo. 6j-.
In this volume the Author attempts to interpret Nature on her religious
side in accordance with the most recent discoveries of physical science, and
to shew Jiow much greater significance is imparted to many passages oj
Scripture and many doctrines of Christianity when looked at in the light
of these discoveries. Instead of regarding Physical Science as antagonistic
to Christianity, the Author believes and seeks to shew that every new dis
covery tends more strongly to prove that Nature and the Bible have One
Author. " Whether the reader agree or not with his conclusions, he will
acknowledge he is in the presence of an original and thoughtful wiiter." —
Pall Mall Gazette. " There is no class of educated men and women that
will not profit by these essays." — Standard.
M'Clellan.— THE NEW TESTAMENT OF OUR LORD
AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, a New Translation on the
Basis ofthe Authorised Version, from a Critically revised Greek Text.
Newly arranged in Paragraphs with Analyses, copious References
and Illustrations from original authorities, New Chronological and
Analytical Harmony of the Four Gospels, Notes and Dissertations.
A contribution to Christian Evidence. By John Brown M'Clel
lan, M.A., Vicar of Bottisham, Rural Dean of North Camps, and
late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In Two Vols.
Vol. I. The Four Gospels with the Chronological and Analytical
Harmony. 8vo. 30J.
Maurice. — Works by the late Rev. F. Denison Maurice,
M.A., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cam
bridge.
The Spectator says — "Few of those of our own generation whose names
will live in English history or liierature have exerted so profound and so
pei-manent an influence as Mr. Maurice. "
THE PATRIARCHS AND LAWGIVERS OF THE
OLD TESTAMENT. Third and Cheaper Edition. Crown
8vo. 5-r.
The Nineteen Discourses contained in this volume were preached in the
chapel of Lincoln's Inn during the year 185 1 . The texts are taken from
the books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges,
and Samuel, and involve some ofthe most interesting biblical topes dis
cussed in recent times.

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.

Maurice (F. D.) — continued.
THE PROPHETS AND KINGS OF THE OLD TES
TAMENT. Third Edition, with new Preface. Crown 8vo.
ios. 6d.
Mr. Maurice, in the sprit which animated the compilers ofthe Church
Lessons, has in these Sermons regarded the Prophets more as preachers of
righteousness than as mere predictors — an aspect of their lives which, he
thinks, has been greatly overlooked in our day, and than which, _ there is
none we have more need to contemplate. He has found that the Old
Testament Prophets, taken in their simple natural sense, clear up many
ofthe difficulties which beset us in the daily work of life ; make the past
intelligible, the present endurable, and the future real and hopeful.
the Gospel of the kingdom of heaven.
A Series of Lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke. Crown 8vo. 9-r.
Mr. Maurice, in his Preface to these Twenty-eight Lectures, says, —
"In these Lectures I have endeavoured to ascertain zvhat is told us respect
ing the life of Jesus by one of those Evangelists who proclaim Him to be
the Christ, who says that He did come from a Father, that He did baptize
with the Holy Spirit, that He did rise from the dead. I have chosen the
one who is most directly connected with the later history of the Church,
who was not an Apostle, who professedly wrote for the use of a man
already instructed in the faith ofthe Apostles. I have followed the course
of the writer's narrative, not changing it under any pretext. I have
adhered to his phraseology, striving to avoid the substitution of any other
for his."
THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. A Series of Discourses.
Third and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
These Discourses, twenty-eight in number, are of a nature similar to
those on the Gospel of St. Luke, and will be found to render valuable
assistance to any one anxious to understand the Gospel ofthe beloved dis
ciple, so different in many respects from those ofthe other three Evangelists,
Appended are eleven notes illustrating various points which occur through
out the discourses. The Literary Churchman thus speaks of this volume:
— "Thorough honesty, reverence, arid deep thought pervade the work,
which is every way solid and philosophical, as well as theological, and
abounding with suggestions which the patient student may draw out more
at length for himself."
THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. A Series of Lectures
on Christian Ethics. Second and Cheaper Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
These Lectures on Christian Ethics were delivered to the students ofthe
Working Men's College, Great Ormond Street, London, on a series of
Sunday mornings. Mr. Maurice believes that, the question in which we
are most interested, the question which most affects our studies and our daily
lives, is the question, whether there is a foundation for human morality,

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.

Maurice (F. D.) — continued.
or whether it is dependent upon the opinions and fashions of different ages
and countries. This important question, will be found amply and fairly
discussed in this volume, which the National Review calls "Mr.
Maurice's most effective and instructive work. He is peculiarly fitted
by the constitution of his mind, to throw light on St. John's writings. "
Appended is a note on " Positivism and its Teacher."
EXPOSITORY SERMONS ON THE PRAYER-BOOK.
The Prayer-book considered especially in reference to the Romish
System. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 5-r. 6d.
After an Introductory Sermon, Mr. Maurice goes over the various parts
of the Church Service, expounds in eighteen Sermons, their intention and
significance, and shews how appropriate they are as expressions of the
deepest longings and wants of all classes of men.
LECTURES ON THE APOCALYPSE, or Book of the
Revelation of St. John the Divine. Crown 8vo. ios. 6d.
Mr. Maurice, instead of trying to find far-fetched allusions to great
historical events in the distant future, endeavours to discover the plain,
literal, obvious meaning of the words of the writer, and shews that as
a rule these refer to events contemporaneous with or immediately succeeding
the time when the book was written. At the same time he shews the
applicability ofthe contents ofthe book to tlie circumstances of the present
day and of all times. "Never," says the Nonconformist, " has Mr.
Maurice been more reverent, more careful for the letter of the Scripture,
more discerning of the purpose of the Spirit, or more sober and practical
in his leaching, than in this volume on the Apocalypse."
WHAT IS REVELATION? A Series of Sermons on the
Epiphany; to which are added, Letters to a Theological Student
on the Bampton Lectures of Mr. Mansel. Crown 8vo. ioj. 6d.
Both Sermons and Lettei-s were called forth by the doctrine maintained
by Mr. Mansel in his Bampton Lectures, that Revelation cannot be a direct
Manifestation of the Infinite Nature of God. Mr. Mam-ice maintains
the opposite doctrine, and in his Sermons explains why, in spite of the high
authorities on the other side, he must still assert the principle which he
discovers in the Services of the Church and throughout the Bible.
SEQUEL TO THE INQUIRY, "WHAT IS REVELA
TION?" Letters in Reply to Mr. Mansel's Examination of
" Strictures on the Bampton Lectures." Crown 8vo. 6s.
This, as- the title indicates, was called forth by Mr. Mansel's Examina
tion of Mr. Maurice's Strictures on his doctrine ofthe Infinite.
THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. Third Edition. Crown 8vo.
ios. 6d.
" The book," says Mr. Maurice, "expresses thoughts which have been

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.

Maurice (F. D.) — continued.
working in my mind for years; the method of it has not been adopted
carelessly; even the composition has undergone frequent revision." There
are seventeen Essays in all, and although meant primarily for Unitarians,
to quote the words of the Clerical Journal, "it leaves untouched scarcely
any topic which is in agitation in the religious world ; scarcely a moot
point between our various sects; scarcely a plot of debateable ground be
tween Christians and Infidels, between Romanists and Protestants, between
Socinians and other Christians, between English Churchmen and Dis
senters on both sides. Scarce is there a misgiving, a difficulty, an aspira
tion stirring amongst us now; — now, when men seem in earnest as hardly
ever before about religion, and ask and demand satisfaction with a fear
lessness which seems almost awful when one thinks what is al stake — which
is not recognised and grappled with by Mr. Maurice."
THE DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE DEDUCED FROM
THE SCRIPTURES. Crown 8vo. Js.6d.
Throughout the Nineteen Sermons contained in this volume, Mr.
Maurice expounds the ideas which he has formed of the Doctrine of
Sacrifice, as it is set forth in various parts ofthe Bible.
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD, AND THEIR
RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. Fourth Edition. Fcap.
8vo. y.
These Eight Boyle Lectures are divided into two parts, of four Lectures
each. In the first part Mr. Maurice examines the great Religious systems
which p-esent themselves in the history ofthe world, with the purpose oft
inquiring what is their main characteristic principle. The second four
Lectures are occupied with a discussion ofthe questions, "In what relation
does Christianity stand to these different faiths ? If there be a faith which
is meant for mankind, is this the one, or must we look for another ?"
ON THE LORD'S PRAYER. Fourth Edition. Fcap.
8vo. 2s. 6d.
In these Nine Sermons the successive petitions ofthe Lord's Prayer are
taken up by Mr. Maurice, their significance expounded, and, as was usual
with him, connected with the every-day lives, feeliiigs, and aspirations of
the men of the present time.
ON THE SABBATH DAY ; the Character of the Warrior,
and on the Interpretation of History. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
THE GROUND AND OBJECT OF HOPE FOR
MANKIND. Four Sermons preached before the University of
Cambridge. Crown 8vo. y. 6d.
In these Four Sermons Mr. Maurice views the subject in four aspects :
— /. The Hope of the Missionary. II. The Hope of the Patriot. III.
The Hope of the Churchman. IV. The Hope of Man. The Spectator

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 23
Maurice (F. D.) — continued.
says, " It is impossible to find anywhere deeper teaching than this ;" and
the Nonconformist, " We thank him for the manly, noble, stirring words
in these Sermons — words fitted to quicken thoughts, to awaken high aspira
tion, to stimulate to lives ef goodness."
THE LORD'S PRAYER, THE CREED, AND THE
COMMANDMENTS. A Manual for Parents and Schoolmasters.
To which is added the Order of the Scriptures. l8mo. cloth
limp. is.
This book is not written for clergymen, as such, but for parents and
teachers, who are often either prejudiced against the contents of the Cate
chism, or regard it peculiarly as the clergyman's book, but, at the same
time, have a general notion that a habit of prayer ought to be cultivated,
that there are some things which ought to be believed, and some things
which ought to be done. It will be found to be peculiarly valuable at the
present time, when the question of religious education is occupying so much
attention.
THE CLAIMS OF THE BIBLE AND OF SCIENCE.
A Correspondence on some Questions respecting the Pentateuch.
. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d.
This volume consists of a series of Fifteen Letters, the first and last
addressed by a ' Layman ' to Mr. Maurice, the intervening thirteen written
by Mr. Maurice himself.
DIALOGUES ON FAMILY WORSHIP. Crown 8vo. 6s.
" The parties in these Dialogues," says the Preface, " are a Clergyman
who accepts the doctrines of the Church, and a Layman zuliose faith in
them is nearly gone. Tlie object of the Dialogues is not confutation, but
the discovery of a ground on which two Englishmen and two fathers may
stand, and on which their country and their children may stand when
their places know them no more."
THE COMMANDMENTS CONSIDERED AS IN
STRUMENTS OF NATIONAL REFORMATION. Crown
8vo. 4s. 6d.
The author endeavours to shew that the Commandments are now, and
ever have been, the great potesters against Presbyteral and Prelatical
assumptions, and that if we do not receive them as Commandments of the
Lord God spoken to Israel, and spoken to every people under heaven now,
we lose the greatest witnesses we possess for national morality and civil
freedom.
MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY. Vol.
I. Ancient Philosophy from the First to the Thirteenth Centuries.
Vol. IL Fourteenth Century and the French Revolution, with a
Glimpse into the Nineteenth Century. Two Vols. 8vo. 2y.
This is an edition in two volumes of Professor Maurice's History of

24 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Maurice (F. D.) — continued.
Philosophy from the earliest period to the present time. It was formerly
issued in a number of separate volumes, .and it is believed that, all admirers
of the author and all students of philosophy will welcome this compact
edition. In a long introduction to this edition, in the form of a dialogue,
Professor Maurice justifies his own views, and touches upon some ofthe
most important topics ofthe time.
SOCIAL MORALITY. Twenty-one Lectures delivered in
the University of Cambridge. New and Cheaper Edition. Cr.
8vo. ios. 6d.
" Whilst reading it zue are charmed by the freedom from exclusiveness
and prejudice, the large charity, the loftiness of thought, the eagerness to
recognise and appreciate zuhatever there is of real worth extant in the
world, which animates it from one end to the other. We gain new
thoughts and new ways of viewing things, even more, perhaps, from being
brought for a time under the influence of so noble and spiritual a mind.
— Athenaeum. THE CONSCIENCE: Lectures on Casuistry, delivered in
the University of Cambridge. Second and Cheaper Edition.
Crown 8vo. y.
In this series of nine Lectures, Professor Maurice, endeavours to settle
zuhat is meant by the word " Conscience," and discusses the most important
questions immediately connected with the subject. Taking "Casuistry"
in its old sense as being the ' ' study of cases of Conscience, " he endeavours
to show in what way it may be brought to bear at the present day upon
the acts and thoughts of our ordinary existence. He shows that Con
science asks for laws, not rules ; for freedom, not chains ; for education,
not suppression. He has abstained from the use of philosophical terms,
and has touched on philosophical systems only when ke fancied "they
were interfering with the rights and duties of wayfarers." The Saturday
Review says: " We rise from the perusal of these lectures with a detesta
tion of all that is selfish and mean, and with a living impression that there
is such a thing as goodness after all. "
LECTURES ON THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
OF THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES. 8vo. 10*. 6d.
In the first chapter on "The Jewish Calling," besides expounding his
idea ofthe true nature of a " Church," the author gives a brief sketch of
the position and economy of the Jews ; while in the second he points out
their relation to "the other Nations." Chapter Third contains a succint
account ofthe various Jewish Sects, while in Chapter Fourth are briefly
set forth Mr. Maurice's ideas ofthe character qf Christ and the nature of
His mission, and a sketch of events is given up to the Day of Pentecost.
The remaining Chapters, extending from the Apostles' personal Ministry
to the end of the Second Century, contain sketches of the character and

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 25
Maurice (F. D.) — continued.
work of all the prominent men in any way connected with the Early
Church, accounts ofthe origin and nature ofthe various doctrines ortho
dox and heretical which had their birth during the period, as well as of
the planting and early history" of tke Chief Churches in Asia, Africa and
Europe. LEARNING AND WORKING. Six Lectures delivered
in Willis's Rooms, London, in June and July, 1854. — THE
RELIGION OF ROME, and its Influence on Modern Civilisa
tion. Four Lectures delivered in the Philosophical Institution of
Edinburgh, in December, 1854. Crown 8vo. y.
SERMONS PREACHED IN COUNTRY CHURCHES.
Crown 8vo. ios. 6d.
"Earnest, practical, and extremely simple." — Literary Churchman.
" Good specimens ofhis simple and earnest eloquence. The Gospel inci
dents are realized zuith a vividness which we can well believe made the
common people hear him gladly. Moreover they are sermons which must
have done the hearers good. " — John Bull.
Moorhouse. — Works by James Moorhouse, M.A., Vicar
of Paddington : —
SOME MODERN DIFFICULTIES RESPECTING the
FACTS OF NATURE AND REVELATION. Fcap. 8vo.
2s. 6d.
The first of these Four Discourses is a systematic reply to the Essay of
the Rev. Baden Powell on Christian Evidences in "Essays and Reviews. "
The fourth Sermon, on " The Resurrection," is in some measure com
plementary to this, and the two together are intended to furnish a tolerably
complete view of modern objections to Revelation. In the second and third
Sermons, on the "Temptation" and "Passion," the author has en
deavoured "to exhibit the power and wonder of those great facts 'within
the spiritual sphere, which modern theorists have especially sought to dis
credit." JACOB. Three Sermons preached before the University of
Cambridge in Lent 1870. Extra fcap. 8vo. y. 6d.
THE HULSEAN LECTURES FOR 1865. Cr. 8vo. 5.!-.
"Few more valuable works have come into our hands for many years. . .
a most fruitful and welcome volume." — Church Review.
O'Brien.— AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN and ESTAB
LISH THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION by FAITH
ONLY. By James Thomas O'Brien, D.D., Bishop of Ossory.
Third Edition. 8vo. 12*.
This work consists of Ten Sermons. The first four treat ofthe nature

26 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
and mutual relations of Faith and Justification ; tlie fifth and sixth
examine the corruptions ofthe doctrine of Justification by Faith only, and
the objections which have been urged against it. The four concluding ser
mons deal with the moral effects of Faith. Various Notes are added
explanatory ofthe Author's reasoning.
Palgrave.— HYMNS. By Francis Turner Palgrave.
Third Edition, enlarged. l8mo. is. 6d.
This is a collection of twenty original Hymns, which the Literary
Churchman speaks of as "so choice, so perfect, and so refined,— so tender
in feeling, and so scholarly in expression."
Paul of Tarsus. An Inquiry into the Times and the
Gospel of the Apostle of the Gentiles. By a Graduate. 8vo.
ioj. 6d.
The Author of this work has attempted, out of the materials which
were at his disposal, to construct for himself a sketch ofthe time in which
St. Paul lived, of the religious systems with which he was brought in
contact, of the doctrine which he taught, and of the work which he ulti
mately achieved. " Turn where we will throughout the volume, we find
the best fruit of patient inquiry, sound scholarship, logical argument, and
fairness of conclusion. No thoughtful reader will rise from its perusal
without a real and lasting profit to himself, and a sense of permanent
addition to the cause of truth. " — Standard.
Picton.— THE MYSTERY OF MATTER; and other
Essays. By J. Allanson Picton, Author of "New Theories
and the Old Faith. " Crown 8vo. ios. 6d.
Contents — The Mystery of Matter : The Philosophy of Ignorance : The
Antithesis of Faith and Sight: Tlie Essential Nature of Religion:
Christian Pantheism.
Prescott — THE THREEFOLD CORD. Sermons preached
before the University of Cambridge. By J. E. Prescott, B.D.
Fcap. 8vo. y. 6d.
Procter.— A HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON
PRAYER: With a Rationale of its Offices. By Francis
Procter, M. A. Twelfth Edition, revised and enlarged. Crown
8vo. ios. 6d.
The Athenaeum says: — "The origin of every part ofthe Prayer-book
has been diligently investigated, — and there are few questions or facts con
nected with it which are not either sufficiently explained, or so referred to,
that persons interested may work out the truth for themselves."
Procter and Maclear.— AN ELEMENTARY INTRO
DUCTION TO THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.
Re-arranged and Supplemented by an Explanation of the Morning

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 27
and Evening Prayer and the Litany. By F. Procter, M.A. and
G. F. Maclear, D.D. New Edition. i8mo. 2s. 6d.
This book has the same object and follows the same plan as the Manuals
already noticed under Mr. Maclear's name. Each book is subdivided
into chapters and sections. In Book I. is given a detailed History of the
Book of Common Prayer down to the Attempted Revision in the Reign of
William III. Book II., consisting of four Parts, treats in order the
various parts of the Prayer Book. Notes, etymological, historical, and
critical, are given throughout the book, while the Appendix contains several
articles of much interest and importance. Appended is a General Index
and an Index of Word's explained in the Notes. The Literary Church
man characterizes it as " by far the completest and most satisfactory book
of its kind we know. We wish it were in the hands of every schoolboy
and every schoolmaster in the kingdom. "
Psalms of David CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED.
An Amended Version, with Historical Introductions and Ex
planatory Notes. By Four Friends. Second and Cheaper
Edition, much enlarged. Crown 8vo. Ss. 6d.
One of the chief designs of the Editors, in preparing this volume, was
to restore the Psalter as far as possible to tlie order in which the Psalms
were written. They give the division of each Psalm into strophes, and
of each strophe into the lines which composed it, and amend the errors of
translation. The Spectator calls it "One of the most instructive and
valuable books that have been published for many years."
Golden Treasury Psalter. — The Student's Edition-
Being an Edition with briefer Notes of the above. i8mo. y.6d.
This volume will be found to meet the requirements of those who wish
for a smaller edition ofthe larger work, at a lower price for family use,
and for the use of younger pupils in Public Schools. The short notes
which are appended to the volume will, it is hoped, suffice to make the
meaning intelligible throughout. The aim of this edition is simply to put
the reader as far as possible in possession of the plain' meaning of the
writer. ' ' It is a gem, " the Nonconformist says.
Ramsay.— THE CATECHISER'S MANUAL; or, the
Church Catechism Illustrated and Explained, for the Use of
Clergymen, Schoolmasters, and Teachers. By Arthur Ramsay,
M.A. Second Edition. l8mo. is. 6d.
Rays of Sunlight for Dark Days. A Book of Selec
tions for the Suffering. With a Preface by C. J. Vaughan, D.D.
i8mo. New Edition. 3-r. 6d. Also in morocco, old style.
Dr. Vaughan says in the Preface, after speaking of the gentral run of
Books of Comfort for Mourners, "It is because I think that the little
volume now offered to the Christian sufferer is one of greater wisdom and
of deeper experience, that I have readily consented to the request that I

28 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
zuould introduce it by a few words of Preface.'' The book consists of a
series of very brief extracts from a great variety of authors, in prose and
poetry, suited to the many moods of a mourning or suffering mind.
"Mostly gems of the first water." — Clerical Journal.
Reynolds.— NOTES OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. A
Selection of Sermons by Henry Robert Reynolds, B.A.,
President of Cheshunt College, and Fellow of University College,
London. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d.
This work may be taken as representative of the mode of thought and
feeling which is most popular amongst the freer and more cultivated Non
conformists. "It is long," says the Nonconformist, "since zue have
met zuith any published sermons better calculated than these to stimulate
devout thought, and to bring home to the soul the reality of a spiritual life. "
Roberts.— DISCUSSIONS ON THE GOSPELS. By the
Rev. Alexander Roberts, D.D. Second Edition, revised and
enlarged. 8vo. 16s.
" The author brings the valuable qualifications of learning, temper, and
an independent judgment." — Daily News.
Robertson.— PASTORAL COUNSELS. Being Chapters
on Practical and Devotional Subjects.. By the late John Robert
son, D.D. Third Edition, with a Preface by the Author of
' ' The Recreations of a Country Parson. " Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s.
These Sermons are the free utterances of a strong and independent
thinlcer. He does not depart from the essential doctrines ofhis Church,
but he expounds them in a spirit ofthe widest charity, and always having
most prominently in view the requirements of practical life. " Thesermons
are admirable specimens of a practical, earnest, and instructive style of
pulpit teaching. " — Nonconformist.
Romanes.— CHRISTIAN PRAYER AND GENERAL
LAWS, being the Burney Prize Essay for 1873. With an Ap
pendix, examining the views of Messrs. Knight, Robertson, Brooke,
Tyndall, and Galton. By George J. Romanes, M.A. Crown
8vo. $s.
Rowsell.— MAN'S LABOUR AND GOD'S HARVEST.
Sermons preached before "the University of Cambridge in Lent,
1 86 1. Fcap. 8vo. 3-f.
" We strongly recommend this little volume to young men, and especially
to those who are contemplating working for Christ in Holy Orders." —
Literary Churchman.
Salmon.— THE REIGN OF LAW, and other Sermons,
preached in the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin. By the Rev.
George Salmon, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity in the
University of Dublin. Crown 8vo. 6s.
" Well considered, learned, and powerful discourses." — Spectator.

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 29
Sanday.— THE AUTHORSHIP AND HISTORICAL
CHARACTER OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL, considered in
reference to the Contents of the Gospel itself. A Critical Essay.
By William Sanday, M.A. , Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.
Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d.
" The Essay is not only most valuable in itself, but full of promise for
the future." — Canon Westcott in the Academy.
Selborne. — THE BOOK OF PRAISE : From the Best
English Hymn Writers. Selected and arranged by Lord Selborne.
With Vignette by Woolner. i8mo. 4s. 6d.
It has been the Editor's desire and aim to adhere strictly, in all cases in
zvhick it could be ascertained, to the genuine uncorrupted text of the authors
themselves. The names of the authors and date of composition of the
hymns, when known, are affixed, while notes are added to the volume,
giving further details. The Hymns are arranged according to subjects.
' ' There is not room for two opnions as to the value ofthe 'Book of Praise. ' "
— Guardian. "Approaches as nearly as one can conceive to perfection."
— Nonconformist. BOOK OF PRAISE HYMNAL. See end of this Catalogue.
Sergeant.— SERMONS. By the Rev. E. W. Sergeant,
M.A., Balliol College, Oxford; Assistant Master at Westminster
College. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
Shipley. — A THEORY ABOUT SIN, in relation to some
Facts of Daily Life. Lent Lectures on the Seven Deadly Sins.
By the Rev. Orby Shipley, M.A. Crown 8vo. js. 6d.
"Two things Mr. Shipley has done, and each of them is of considerable
zvorth. He has grouped these sins afresh on a philosophic principle 
and he has applied the touchstone to the facts of our moral life. . . so wisely
and so searchingly as to constitute his treatise a powerful antidote to self-
deception. " — Literary Churchman.
Smith.— PROPHECY A PREPARATION FOR CHRIST.
Eight Lectures preached before the University of Oxford, being the
Bampton Lectures for 1869. By R. Payne Smith, D.D., Dean
of Canterbury. Second and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
The author's object in these Lectures is to shew that there exists in the
Old Testament an element, zuhich no criticism on naturalistic principles
can either account for or explain away: that element is Prophecy. The
author endeavours to prove that its force does not consist merely in its
predictions. ' ' These Lectures overflow with solid learning. " — Record.

30 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Smith.— CHRISTIAN FAITH. Sermons preached before
the University of Cambridge. By W. Saumarez Smith, M.A.,
Principal of St. Aidan's College, Birkenhead. Fcap. 8vo. 3-r. 6d.
' 'Appropriate and earnest sermons, suited to the practical exhortation of
an educated congregation. " — Guardian.
Stanley. — Works by the Very Rev. A. P. Stanley, D.D.,
Dean of Westminster.
THE ATHANASIAN CREED, with a Preface on the
General Recommendations of the Ritual Commission. Cr.
8vo. 2J.
The object ofthe work is not so much to urge the omission or change of
the Athanasian Creed, as to shew that such a relaxation ought to give
offence to no reasonable or religious mind. With this view, the Dean of
Westminster discusses in succession — (i) the Authorship of tlie Creed,
(2) its Internal Characteristics, (3) the Peculiarities of its Use in the
Church of England, (4) its Advantages and Disadvantages, (5) its
various Interpretations, and (6) the Judgment passed upon it by the Ritual
Commission. In conclusion, Dr. Stanley maintains that the use of the
Athanasian Creed should no longer be made compulsory. "Dr. Stanley
puts with admirable force the objections which may be made to the Creed ;
equally admirable, we think, in his statement of its advantages. " — Spectator.
THE NATIONAL THANKSGIVING. Sermons preached
in Westminster Abbey. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d.
These Sermons are (1) "Death and Life," preached December 10,
1871 ; (2) " The Ti~umpet of Patmos," December IJ, 1871 ; (3) " The
Day of Thanksgiving," March 3, 1872. "In point of fervour and
polish by far the best specimens in print of Dean Stanley's eloquent style." —
Standard. Sunday Library. See end of this Catalogue.
Swainson. — Works by C. A. Swainson, D.D., Canon of
Chichester : —
THE CREEDS OF THE CHURCH IN THEIR RE
LATIONS TO HOLY SCRIPTURE and the CONSCIENCE
OF THE CHRISTIAN. 8vo. cloth. 9s.
The Lectures which compose this volume discuss, amongst others, the
following subjects : " Faith in God," " Exercise of our Reason," "Origin
and Authority of Creeds," and "Private Judgment, Us use and exercise."
" Treating of abstruse points of Scripture, he applies them so forcibly to
Christian duty and practice as to prove eminently serviceable to the
Church."— John Bull.

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 31

Swainson (C. A.)— continued.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
and other LECTURES, delivered before the University of Cam
bridge. 8vo. cloth. 12s.
The first series of Lectures in this work is on " The Words spoken by
the Apostles of Jesus," " The Inspiration of God's Servants," " The
Human Character of the Inspred Writers," and " The Divine Character
^of the Word written." The second embraces Lectures on "Sin as Im-
' perfection," "Sin as Self-will," "Whatsoever is not of Faith is Sin,"
" Christ the Saviour," and " The Blood ofthe New Covenant." The
third is on ' ' Christians One Body in Christ, " " The One Body the Spouse
of Christ," "Christ's Prayer for Unity," " Our Reconciliation should be
manifested in common Worship," and " Ambassadors for Christ."
Taylor.— THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF, New and
Revised Edition. By Isaac Taylor, Esq. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d.
The earlier chapters are occuped with an examination of the primitive
history of the Christian Religion, and its relation to the Roman govern
ment; and here, as well as in the remainder ofthe work, the author shews
the bearing of that history on some ofthe difficult and interesting questions
zuhich have recently beenf claiming the attention of all earnest men. The
last chapter of this Nezu Edition treats of " The Present Position of the
Argument concerning Christianity," with special reference to M. Renan's
Vie de Jesus.
Temple.— SERMONS PREACHED IN THE CHAPEL
of RUGBY SCHOOL. ByF. Temple, D.D., Bishop of Exeter.
New and Cheaper Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d.
This volume contains Thirty-five Sermons on topics more or less inti
mately connected with every-day life. The following are a few of the
subjects discoursed upon: — "Love and Duty:" "Coming to Christ;"
"Great Men;" "Faith;" "Doubts;" "Scruples;" "Original Sin;"
"Friendship;" "Helpng Others;" "The Discipline of Temptation;"
"Strength a Duty;" "Worldliness;" "III Temper;" "The Burial of
tlie Past."
A SECOND SERIES OF SERMONS PREACHED IN
THE CHAPEL OF RUGBY SCHOOL. Second Edition.
Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s.
This Second Series of Forty-two brief, pointed, practical Sermons, on
topics intimately connected with the every-day life of young and old, will be
acceptable to all who are acquainted with the First Series. The following
are a few of the subjects treated of: — "Disobedience," "Almsgiving,"
"The Unknown Guidance of God," "Apathy one of our Trials," "High
Aims in Leaders," "Doing our Best," " The Use of Knowledge," "Use
of Observances," "Martha and Mary," "John the Baptist," "Severity

32 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Temple (F., D.D.)— continued.
before Mercy," "Even Mistakes Punished," "Morality and Religion,"
"Children,". "Action the Test of Spiritual Life," "Self-Respect," "Too
Late," " The Tercentenary."
A THIRD SERIES OF SERMONS PREACHED IN
RUGBY SCHOOL CHAPEL IN 1867—1869. Extra fcap.
8vo. 6s.
This third series of Bishop Temple's Rugby Sermons,. contains thirty-six'
brief discourses, including the " Good-bye" sermon preached on his leaving
Rugby to enter on the office he now holds.
Thring. — Works by Rev. Edward Turing, M.A.
SERMONS DELIVERED AT UPPINGHAM SCHOOL.
Crown 8vo. y.
In this volume are contained Forty-seven brief Sermons, all on subjects
more or less intimately connected with Public-school life. ' ' We desire very
highly to commend these capital Sermons which treat of a boy's life, and
trials in a thoroughly practical way and with great simplicity and im-
pressiveness. They deserve to be classed with the best of their kind. " —
Literary Churchman.
THOUGHTS ON LIFE-SCIENCE. New Edition, en
larged and revised. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d.
In this volume are discussed in u. familiar manner some ofthe most
interesting p-oblems between Science and Religion, Reason and Feeling.
Tracts for Priests and People. By Various
Writers. The First Series. Crown 8vo. 8s.
The Second Series. Crown 8vo. 8s.
The whole Series of Fifteen Tracts may be had separately, price
One Shilling each.
Trench  Works by R. CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D., Arch
bishop of Dublin. (For other Works by the same author, see
Biographical, Belles Le'ttres, and Linguistic Cata
logues).
NOTES ON THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD.
Twelfth Edition. 8vo. 12s.
This work has taken its place as a standard exposition and interpreta
tion of Christ's Parables. The book is prefaced by an Introductory Essay
in four chapters : — I. On the definition" of the Parable. II. On Teach
ing by Parables. III. On the Interpretation ofthe Parables. IV. On
other Parables besides those in the Scriptures. The author then proceeds
to take up the Parables one by one, and by the aid of philology, history,

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 33

Trench — continued.
antiquities, and tlie researches of travellers, shews forth the significance,
beauty, and applicability of each, concluding with what he dcetns its true
moral interpretation. In the numerous Notes are many valuable references,
illustrative quotations, critical and philological annotations, etc., and ap
pended to the volume is a classified list of fifty-six works on the Parables.
NOTES ON THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD.
Tenth Edition. 8vo. 12s.
In the 'Preliminary Essay' to this work, all the momentous and in
teresting questions that have been raised in connection with Miracles, are
discussedwith considerable fulness. The Essay consists of six chapters : —
/. On the Names of Miracles, i. e. the Greek words by which they are
designated in the Nezu Testament. II. The Miracles and Nature — What
is the difference between a Miracle and any event in the ordinary course
of Nature? III. The Authority of Miracles — Is the Miracle to command
absolute obedience ? IV. The Evangelical, compared with the other cycles
of Miracles. V. The Assaults on the Miracles — 1. The Jewish. 2. The
Heathen (Celsus etc.). 3. The Pantheistic (Spnosa etc.). 4. The
Sceptical (Hume). 5. The Miracles only relatively miraculous (Schleier
macher). 6. Tlie Rationalistic (Paulus). J. The Historico- Critical
( Woolston, Strauss). VI. The Apologetic Worth of the Miracles. The
author then treats the separate Miracles as he does the Parables.
SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. New
Edition, enlarged. 8vo. cloth. 12s.
The study of synonyms in any language is valuable as a discipline for
training the mind to close and accurate habits of thought ; more especially
is this the case in Greek — " a language spoken by a people of the finest and
subtlest intellect ; who saw distinctions where others saw none; who di
vided out to different words what others' often were content to huddle con
fusedly under a common term. . . . Where is it so desirable that we should
miss nothing, that we should lose no finer intention of the writer, as in
those words which are the vehicles of the very mind of God Himself?"
This Edition has been carefully revised, and a considerable number of. new
synonyms added. Appended is an Index to the Synonyms, and an
Index to many other words alluded to or explained throughout the work.
"Heis," the Athenaeum says, "dguidein this department of knowledge
to whom his readers may intrust themselves with confidence. _ His sober
judgment and sound sense are barriers against the misleading influence of
arbitrary hypotheses."
ON THE AUTHORIZED VERSION OF THE NEW
TESTAMENT. Second Edition. 8vo. Js.
After some Introductory Remarks, in which the propriety of a revision
is briefly discussed, the whole question ofthe merits of the present version
is gone into in detail, in eleven chapters. Appended is a chronological list
3

34 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Trench — continued.
of works bearing on the subject, an Index of the principal Texts con
sidered, an Index of Greek Words, and an Index of other Words re
ferred to throughout the book.
STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS. Third Edition. 8vo.
ioj-. 6d.
TMs book is published under the conviction that the assertion often
made is untrue, — viz. that the Gospels are in the' main plain and easy,
and that all the chief difficulties of the New Testament are to be found
in the Epistles. These "Studies," sixteen in number, are the fruit of a
much larger scheme, and each Study deals with some important episode
mentioned in the Gospels, in a critical, philosophical, and practical man
ner. Many references and quotations are added to the Notes. Among
the subjects treated are: — The Temptation; Christ and the Samaritan
Woman; The Three Aspirants; The Transfiguration; Zacchaus; The
True Vine; The Penitent Malefactor; Christ and the Two Disciples on
the way to Emmaus.
COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLES to the SEVEN
CHURCHES IN ASIA. Third Edition, revised. 8vo. 8s. 6d.
The present work consists of an Introduction, being a commentary on
Rev. i. 4 — 20, a detailed examination of each ofthe Seven Epistles, in all
its bearings, and an Excursus on the Historico-Prqphetical Interpreta
tion ofthe Epistles.
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. An Exposition
drawn from the writings of St. Augustine, with an Essay on his
merits as an Interpreter of Holy Scripture. Third Edition, en
larged. 8vo. ioj. 6d.
The first half of the present work consists of a dissertation in eight
chapters on "Augustine as an Interpreter of Scripture," the titles of the
several chapters being as follow : — I. Augustine's General Views of Scrip
ture and its Interpretation. II. The External Helps for the Interpreta
tion of Scripture possessed by Augustine. III. Augustine's Principles
and Canons of Interpretation. IV. Augustine 's Allegorical Interpretation
of Scripture. V. Illustrations of Augustine 's Skill as an Interpreter of
Scripture. VI. Augustine on John the Baptist and on St'. Stephen.
VII. Augustine on the Epistle to the Romans. VIII. Miscellaneous
Examples of 'Augustine 's Interpretation of Scripture. The latter half of
the work consists of Augustine's Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount,
not however a mere series of quotations from Augustine, but a connected
account ofhis sentiments on the various passages of that Sermon, inter-
spersed with criticisms by Archbishop Trench.
SERMONS PREACHED in WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
Second Edition. 8vo. ios. 6d.
These Sermons epibrace a wide variety of topics, and are thoroughly

THEOLOGfCAL BOOKS. 35
Trench — continued.
practical, earnest, and evangelical, and simple in style. The following
are u few of the subjects: — "Tercentenary Celebration of Queen Eliza
beth's Accession;" "Conviction and Conversion;" "The Incredulity of
Thomas;" " The Angels' Hymn;" "Counting the Cost;" "The Holy
Trinity in Relation to our Prayers;" "On the Death of General Have-
lock;" "Christ Weeping over Jerusalem;" "Walking with Christ in
White." SHIPWRECKS OF FAITH. Three Sermons preached
before the University of Cambridge in May, 1867. Fcap. 8vo.
2s. 6d.
These Sermons are especially addressed to young men. The subjects
are "Balaam," "Saul," and "Judas Iscariot," These lives are set
forth as beacon-lights, ' ' to warn us off from perilous reefs and quick
sands, which have been the destruction of many, and which might only too
easily be ours." The John Bull says, "they are, like all he writes, af
fectionate and earnest discourses. "
SERMONS Preached for the most part in Ireland. 8vo.
10s. 6d.
This volume consists of Tliirty-two Sermons, the greater part of which
were peached in Ireland ; the subjects are as follozus : — Jacob, a Prince
with God and with Men — Agrippa — The Woman that was a Sinner —
Secret Faults — The Seven Worse Spirits — Freedom in the Truth — Joseph
and his Brethren — Bearing one another's Burdens — Christ's Challenge to
the World — The Love of Money — The Salt ofthe Earth — The A rmour of
God — Light in the Lord — The Jailer ofPhilipp— The Thorn in the Flesh
— Isaiah's Vision — Selfishness — Abraham interceding for Sodom— Vain
Thoughts — Pontius Pilate — The Brazen Serpent — The Death and Burial
0f Moses  A Word from the Cross — The Church's Worship in the
Beauty of Holiness— Every Good Gift from Above— On the Hearing of
Prayer  The Kingdom which cometh not with Observation — Pressing
towards the Mark— Saul— The Good Shepherd— The Valley of Dry Bones
— All Saints.
Tudor.— The DECALOGUE VIEWED as the CHRIST
IAN'S LAW. With Special Reference to the Questions and
Wants of the Times. By the Rev. Rich. Tudor, B.A. Crown
8vo. ios. 6d.
The author's aim is to bring out the Christian sense of the Decalogue
in its application to existing needs and questions. The work will be found
to occupy ground which no other single work has hitherto filled. It is di
vided into Two Parts, the First Part consisting oft three lectures on
"Dutv " and the Second Part of twelve lectures on the Ten Command
ments The Guardian says of it, "His volume throughout is an outspoken
and sound exposition of Christian morality, based deeply upon true founda
tions set forth systematically, and forcibly and plainly expressed- as good
u specimen of what pulpit lectures ought to be as is often to be found.

36 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Tulloch.— THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS AND
THE CHRIST OF MODERN CRITICISM. Lectures on
M. Renan's "Vie de Jesus." By John Tulloch, D.D.,
Principal of the College of St. Maiy, in the University of St.
Andrew's. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d.
Unseen Universe (The) : or, Physical Speculations
on Immortality. 8vo. lor. 6d.
Vaughan. — Works by Charles J. Vaughan, D.D., Master
of the Temple : —
CHRIST SATISFYING THE INSTINCTS OF HU
MANITY. Eight Lectures delivered in the Temple Church.
New Edition. Extra fcp. 8vo. y. 6d.
' ' We are convinced that there are congregations, in number unmistakeably
increasing, to whom such Essays as these, full of thought and learning,
are infinitely more beneficial, for they are more acceptable, than the recog
nised type of sermons." — John Bull.
MEMORIALS OF HARROW SUNDAYS. A Selection
of Sermons preached in Harrow School Chapel. With a View
ofthe Chapel. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. ios. 6d.
' 'Discussing, " says the John Bull, ' ' those forms of evil and impediments
to duty which peculiarly beset the young, Dr. Vaughan has, with singular
tact, blended deep thought and analytical investigation of principles with
interesting earnestness and eloquent simplicity." The Nonconformist
says " the volume is a precious one for family reading, and for the hand
ofthe thoughtful boy or young man entering life. "
THE BOOK AND THE LIFE, and other Sermons,
preached before the University of Cambridge. New Edition.
Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d.
These Sermons are all of a thoroughly practical nature, and some of
them are especially adapted to those who are in a state of anxious .doubt.
TWELVE DISCOURSES on SUBJECTS CONNECTED
WITH THE LITURGY and WORSHIP of the CHURCH
OF ENGLAND. Fcap. 8vo. 6s.
Four of these discourses were published in i860, in a work entitled
Revision of the Liturgy ; four others have appeared in the form of separate
sermons, delivered on various occasions, and published at the time by re
quest ; and four are new. The Appendix contains two articles, — one on
"Subscription and Scruples," the other on the "Rubric and the Burial
Service." The Press characterises the volume as "eminently wise and
temperate. "

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 37
Vaughan (Df. C. J.) — continued.
LESSONS OF LIFE AND GODLINESS. A Selection
of Sermons preached in the Parish Church of Doncaster. Fourth
and Cheaper Edition. Fcap. 8vo. y. 6d.
This volume consists of Nineteen Sermons, mostly on subjects connected
with the every-day walk and conversation of Christians. They bear such
titles as " The Talebearer," "Features of Charity," " The Danger of Re
lapse," " The Secret Life and the Outward," "Family Prayer," "Zeal
without Consistency" " The Gospel an Incentive to Industry in Business,"
"Use and Abuse of the World." The Spectator styles them "earnest
and human. They are adapted to every class and order in the social
system, and will be read with wakeful interest by all who seek to amend
whatever may be amiss in their natural disposition or in their acquired
habits. "
WORDS FROM THE GOSPELS. A Second Selection
of Sermons preached in the Parish Church of Doncaster. Second
Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d.
The Nonconformist characterises these Sermons as ' ' of practical earnest
ness, of a tkoughtfulness that penetrates the common conditions and ex
periences of life, and brings the truths and examples of Scripture to bear
on them with singular force, and of a style that owes its real elegance to
the simplicity and directness which have fine culture for their roots. "
LESSONS OF THE CROSS AND PASSION. Six
Lectures delivered in Hereford Cathedral during the Week before
Easter, 1869. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
The titles ofthe Sermons are: — I. " Too Late" (Matt. xxvi. 45J. 77.
' ' The Divine Sacrifice and the Human Priesthood. " III. ' 'Love not the
World." IV. " The Moral Glory of Christ." V. " Christ made perfect
through Suffering." VI. "Death the Remedy of Christ's Loneliness." ,
" This little volume," the Nonconformist says, " exhibits all his best cha
racteristics. Elevated, calm, and clear, the Sermons owe much to their
force, and yet they seem literally to owe nothing to it. They are studied,
but their grace is the grace of perfect simplicity."
LIFE'S WORK AND GOD'S DISCIPLINE. Three
Sermons. New Edition.- Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
The Three Sermons are on the following subjects:— I. "The Work
burned and the Workmen saved." II. " The Individual Hiring." III.
" The Remedial Discipline of Disease and Death."
THE WHOLESOME WORDS OF JESUS CHRIST.
Four Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge in
November 1866. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. cloth. 3-r. 6d.
Dr Vaughan uses tlie word "Wholesome" here in its literal and
oririnal sense, the sense in which St. Paul uses it, as meaning healthy,

38 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Vaughan (Dr. C. J.) — continued.
sound, conducing to right living ; . and in these Sermons he points out
and illustrates several of the "wholesome" characteristics ofthe Gospel,
— the Words of Christ. The John Bull says this volume is "replete with
all the author's well-known vigour of thought and richness of expression. "
FOES OF FAITH. Sermons preached before the Uni
versity of Cambridge in November 1868. Fcap. 8vo. y. 6d.
The "Foes of Faith" preached against in these Four Sermons are: —
I. "Unreality." II. "Indolence." III. "Irreverence." IV. "Incon
sistency." "They are written," the London Review says, "zuith culture
and elegance, and exhibit the thoughtful earnestness, pety, and good sense
of their author."
LECTURES ON THE EPISTLE to the PHILIPPIANS.
Third and Cheaper Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 5.5.
Each Lecture is prefaced by a literal translation from the Greek of
the paragraph which forms its subject, contains first a minute explanation
of the passage on which it is based, and then a poetical application of
the verse or clause selected as its text.
LECTURES ON THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN.
Fourth Edition. Two Vols. Extra fcap. 8vo. gs.
In this Edition of these Lectures, the literal translations of the passages
expounded will be found interwoven in the body ofthe Lectures themselves.
In attempting to expound this most-hard-to-understand Book, Dr. Vaughan,
while tailing from others what assistance he required, has not adhered to
any particular school of interpretation, but has endeavoured to shew forth
the significance of this Revelation by the help of his strong common sense,
critical acumen, scholarship, and reverent sprit. . ' ' Dr. Vaughan' s Ser
mons," the Spectator says, "are the most practical discourses on the
Apocalypse with which we are acquainted. " Prefixed is a Synopsis ofthe
Book of Revelation, and appended is an Index of passages illustrating
the language ofthe Book.
EPIPHANY, LENT, AND EASTER. A Selection of
Expository Sermons. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. ios. 6d.
The first eighteen of these Sermons were preached during the seasons of
i860, indicated in the title, and are poetical expositions of passages taken
from the lessons ofthe days on which they were delivered. Each Lecture is
prefaced zuith a careful and literal rendering ofthe original of the passage
of which the Lecture is an exposition. The Nonconformist says that
"in simplicity, dignity, close adherence to the words of Scripture, insight
into ' the mind ofthe Sprit,' and practical thoughtfulness, they are models
of that species of pulpit instruction to which they belong."
THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. For English Readers.
Part I., containing the First Epistle to the Thessalonians.
Second Edition. 8vo. is. 6d.

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 39
Vaughan (Dr. C. J.) — continued.
It is the object of this work to enable English readers, unacquainted
with Greek, to enter zuith intelligence into the meaning, connection, and
phraseology ofthe writings of the great Apostle.
ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. The Greek
Text, with English Notes. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d.
This volume contains the Greek Text of the Epstle to the Romans as
settled by the Rev. B. F. Westcott, D.D., for his complete recension of the
Text of the New Testament. Appended to the text are copous critical and
exegetical Notes, the result of almost eighteen years' study on the part of
the author. The "Index of Words illustrated or expained in tlie Notes"
will be found, in some considerable degree, an Index to the Epistles as a
whole. Prefixed to the volume is a discourse on "St. Paul's Conversion
and Doctrine," suggested by some recent publications on St. Paul's theo
logical standing. The Guardian says ofthe work, — "For educated young
men his commentary seems to fill a gap hitlierto unfilled. . . . As a whole,
Dr. Vaughan appears to us to have given to the world a valuable book of
original and careful and earnest thought bestowed on the accomplishment
of a work which will be of much service and which is much needed."
THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST DAYS.
Series I. The Church of Jerusalem. Third Edition.
" IL The Church ofthe Gentiles. Third Edition.
"III. The Church of the World. Second Edition.
Fcap. 8vo. cloth. 4s. 6d. each.
Wltere necessary, the Authorized Version has been departed from, and
a new literal translation taken as tlie basis of exposition. All possible
topographical and historical light has been brought to bear on the subject ;
and while thoroughly practical in their aim, these Lectures will be found
to afford a fair notion of the history and condition of the Primitive
Church. The British Quarterly says, — "These Sermons are worthy of
all praise, and are models of pulpit teaching."
COUNSELS for YOUNG STUDENTS. Three Sermons
preached before the University of Cambridge at the Opening of
the Academical Year 1870-71. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
The titles of the Three Sermons contained in this volume are : — 7.
"The Great Decision." LL " The House and the Builder." III. "The
Prayer and the Counter-Prayer." They all bear pointedly, earnestly, and
sympathisingly upon the conduct and pursuits of young students and
young men generally.
NOTES FOR LECTURES ON CONFIRMATION,
with suitable Prayers. Eighth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. is. 6d.
In preparation for the Confirmation held in Harrow School Chapel,
Dr. Vaughan was in the habit of printing week by week, and distributing
among the Candidates, somewhat full notes of the Lecture he purposed to

4° THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Vaughan (Dr. C.J.)— continued.
deliver to them, together with a form of Prayer adapted to the particular
subject. He has collected these weekly Notes and Prayers into this little
volume, in the hope that it may assist the labours of those who are engaged
in preparing Candidates for Confirmation, and who find it difficult to lay
their hand upon any one book of suitable instruction.
THE TWO GREAT TEMPTATIONS. The Tempta
tion of Man, and the Temptation of Christ. Lectures delivered in
the Temple Church, Lent 1872. Extra fcap. 8vo. y. 6d.
Vaughan. — Works by David J. Vaughan, M.A., Vicar of
St. Martin's, Leicester : —
SERMONS PREACHED IN ST. JOHN'S CHURCH,
LEICESTER, during the Years 1855 and 1856. Cr. 8vo. y. 6d.
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES AND THE BIBLE. New
Edition, revised and enlarged. Fcap. 8vo. cloth. 5.?. 6d.
"This little volume," the Spectator says,, "is a model of that honest
and reverent criticism ofthe Bible which is not only right, but the duty of
English clergymen in such times as these to put forth from the pulpt."
Venn.— ON SOME OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF
BELIEF, Scientific and Religious. Being the Hulsean Lectures
for 1869. By the Rev. J. Venn, M.A. 8vo. 6s. 6d.
These discourses are intended to illustrate, explain, and work out into
some of their consequences, certain characteristics by which the attainment of
religious belief is prominently distinguished from the attainment of belief
upon most other subjects.
Warington.— THE WEEK OF CREATION ; or, THE
COSMOGONY OF GENESIS CONSIDERED IN ITS
RELATION TO MODERN SCIENCE. By George War
ington, Author of "The Historic Character of the Pentateuch
Vindicated. " Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d.
The greater part of this work is taken up with the teaching of the
Cosmogony. Its purpose is also investigated, and a chapter is devoted to
the consideration ofthe passage in which the difficulties occur. "A very
able vindication of the Mosaic Cosmogony by a writer who unites the ad
vantages of a critical knowledge of the Hebrew text and qf distinguished
scientific attainments." — Spectator.
Westcott. — Works by Brooke Foss Westcott, D.D.,
Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge ;
Canon of Peterborough : —
The London Quarterly, speaking of Mr. Westcott, says, — " To a learn
ing and accuracy zuhich command respect and confidence, he unites what
are not always to be found in union with these qualities, the no less valuable
faculties of lucid arrangement and graceful and facile expression."

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 41
Westcott (Dr. B. F.) — continued.
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY -OF THE
GOSPELS. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. ioj. 6d.
The author's chief object in this work has been to shew that there is
a true mean between the idea of a formal harmonization of the Gospels
and the abandonment of their absolute truth. After an Introduction on
the General Effects of the course of Modern Philosophy on the popular
views of Christianity, he proceeds to determine in what way the principles
therein indicated may be applied to the study of the Gospels. The treatise
is divided into eight Chapters : — I. The Preparation for the Gospel. II.
The Jewish Doctrine of the Messiah.- III. The Origin of the Gospels.
IV. The Characteristics of the Gospels. V. The Gospel of St. John.
VI. and VII. The Differences in detail and of arrangement in the
Synoptic Evangelists. VIII. The Difficulties of the Gospels. The Ap
pendices contain much valuable subsidiary matter.
A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE HISTORY OF THE
CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT DURING THE
FIRST FOUR CENTURIES. Fourth Edition, revised, with
a Preface on' " Supernatural Religion. " Crown 8vo. I0s.6d.
The object of this treatise is to deal with the New Testament as a whole,
and that on purely historical grounds. The separate books of which it is
composed are considered not individually, but as claiming to be parts ofthe
apostolic heritage of Christians. The Author has thus endeavoured to con
nect the history of the New Testament Canon with the growth and con
solidation of the Catholic Church, and to point out the relation existing
between the amount of evidence for the authenticity of its component parts
and the whole mass of Christian literature. "The treatise," says the
British Quarterly, "is a scholarly performance, learned, dispassionate,
discriminating, worthy of his subject and of the present state of Christian
literature in relation to it."
THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. A Popular Account
of The Collection and Reception of the Holy Scriptures in the
Christian Churches. New Edition. iSmo. 4s. 6d.
Tke present volume has been written under the impression that a
History of tke whole Bible, and not of the New Testament only, would
be required, if those unfamiliar with the subject were to be enabled to learn
in what manner and with what consent the collection of Holy Scriptures
was first made and then enlarged and finally closed by the Church.
Though the work is intended to be simple and popular in its method, tke
author, for this very reason, has aimed at the strictest accuracy.
A GENERAL VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE
ENGLISH BIBLE, Second Edition. Crown 8vo. ios. 6d.
In tke Introduction the author notices briefly tke earliest vernacular
versions ofthe Bible, especially those in Anglo-Saxon. Chapter I. is oc-

42 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Westcott (Dr. B. F.) — continued.
cupied with an account of the Manuscript English Bible from the 14th
century downwards ; andin Chapter II. is narrated, zuith many interest
ing personal and other details, the External History ofthe Printed Bible.
In Chapter III. is set forth the Internal History of the English Bible,
shewing to what extent the various English Translations were independent,
and to what extent the translators were indebted to earlier English and
foreign versions. In the Appendices, among other interesting and valuable
matter, will be found "Specimens of the Earlier and Later Wycliffite
Versions;" "Chronological List of Bibles;" "An Examination of Mr.
Froude's History of the English Bible." The Pall Mall Gazette calls
the work "A brief, scholarly, and, to a great extent, an original contribu
tion to theological literature. "
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, MANIFOLD AND ONE.
Six Sermons preached in Peterborough Cathedral. Crown 8vo.
2s. 6d.
The Six Sermons contained in this volume are the first preached by
the author as a Canon of Peterborough, Cathedral. The subjects are: —
I. " Life consecrated by the Ascension." II. "Many Gifts, One Spirit."
III. "The Gospel of the Resurrection." IV. "Sufficiency of God" V.
"Action the Test of Faith." VI. " Progress from the Confession of God."
The Nonconformist calls them "Beautiful, discourses, singularly devout
and tender. "
THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. Thoughts
on its Relation to Reason and History. Fourth Edition. Crown
8vo. 6s.
The present Essay is an endeavour to consider some of the elementary
truths of Christianity, as a miraculous Revelation, from the side of History
and Reason. The author endeavours to shew that a devout belief in the
Life of Christ is quite compatible zuith a broad view ofthe course of human
pogress and a frank trust in the laws of our own minds. In the third
edition the author has carefully reconsidered the whole argument,' and by
the help of several kind critics has been enabled to correct some faults and
to remove some ambiguities, which had been overlooked before. He has
not however made any attempt to alter thegenei'al character ofthe book.
ON THE RELIGIOUS OFFICE OF THE UNIVER
SITIES. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d.
" There is certainly, no man of our time — no man at least who has ob
tained the command of the public ear — whose utterances can compare with
those of Professor Westcott for largeness of views and comprehensiveness of
grasp  There is wisdom, and truth, and thought enough, and a
harmony and mutual connection running through them all, which makes
the collection of more real value than many an ambitious treatise." —
Literary Churchman.

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 43
Wilkins.— THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. An Essay,
by A, S. Wilkins, M.A., Professor of Latin in Owens College,
Manchester. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. y. 6d.
This is tlie Hulsean Prize Essay for 1869. The subject poposed by
the Trustees was, ' ' The Distinctive Features of Christian as compared
zuith Pagan Ethics." The author has tried to show that the Christian
ethics so far transcend the ethics of any or all of the Pagan systems in
method, in purity and in power, as to compel us to assume for them an
origin, differing in kind from the origin of any purely human system.
"It would be difficult to paise too highly the sprit, the burden, the con
clusions, or the scholarly finish oftkis beautiful Essay. " — British Quarterly
Review.Wilson. — RELIGIO CHEMICL With a Vignette beauti
fully engraved after a Design by Sir Noel Paton. By George
Wilson, M.D. Crown 8vo. 8.r. 6d.
"George Wilson," says the Preface to this volume, "had it in his heart
for many years to write a book corresponding to tke Religio Medici of Sir-
Thomas Browne, zuith the title Religio Chemici. Several ofthe Essays in
this volume were intended to form chapters of it, but the liealth and leisure
necessary to carry out his plans were-never attainable, and thus fragments
only ofthe designed work exist. These fragments, however, being in most
cases like finished gems zuaiting to be set, some of them are nozu given in
a collected form to his friends and the public" —" A more fascinating
volume" the Spectator says, "has seldom fallen into our hands."
Wilson.— THE BIBLE STUDENT'S GUIDE TO THE
MORE CORRECT UNDERSTANDING of the ENGLISH
TRANSLATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, BY RE
FERENCE TO THE ORIGINAL HEBREW. By William
Wilson, D.D., Canon of Winchester. Second Edition, carefully
revised. 4to. 25^.
" The author believes that the present work is the nearest approack to
a complete Concordance of every word in the original that has yet been
made: and as a Concordance, it may be found of great use to the Bible
student, while at the same time it serves the important object of furnishing
the means of comparing synonymous words, and of eliciting their precise
and distinctive meaning. The knowledge of the Hebrew language is not
absolutely necessary to the profitable use of the work. The plan of tlie
work is simple: every word occurring in the English Version is arranged
alphabetically, and under it is given the Hebrew word or. words, zmth a
Ml explanation of their meaning, of which it is meant to be a translation
and a complete list ofthe passages where it occurs. Following the&gral
zuork is a complete Hebrew and English Index, which is, m effect, »
Hebrew-English Dictionary.

44 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Worship (The) of God and Fellowship among
Men. Sermons on Public Worship. By Professor Maurice,
and others. Fcap. 8vo. y. 6d.
This volume consists of Six Sermons preached by various clergymen,
and although not addressed specially to any class, were suggested by recent
efforts to bring the members ofthe Working Class to our Churches. The
preachers were — Professor Maurice, Rev. T. J. Rowsell, Rev. J. LI.
Davies, Rev. D. J. Vaughan.
Yonge (Charlotte M.)— SCRIPTURE READINGS for
SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES. By Charlotte M. Yonge,
Author of "The Heir of Redclyffe.'; Globe 8vo. Is. 6d. With
Comments, y. 6d. "
Second Series. From Joshua to Solomon. . Extra fcap. 8vo.
is. 6d. With Comments. 3-r. 6d.
Third Series. The Kings and Prophets. Extra fcap. 8vo.,
is.6d., with Comments, y.6d.
Actual need has led the author to endeavour to p'epare a reading book
convenient for study with children, containing the very words of the
Bible, with only a few expedient omissions, and arranged in Lessons of
such length as by experience she has found to suit with children's ordinary
power of accurate attentive interest. The verse form has been retained be
cause of its convenience for children reading in class, and as more re
sembling their Bibles ; but the poetical portions have been given in their
lines.. Professor Huxley at a meeting of the London School-board, par
ticularly mentioned the Selection made by Miss Yonge, as an example of
how selections might be made for School reading. "Her Comments are
models of their kind. " — Literary Churchman.

In crown 8vo. cloth extra, Illustrated, price 4s. 6d. each Volume ; also
kept in morocco and calf bindings at moderate prices, and in
Ornamental Boxes containing Four Vols., 2U. each.
MACMILLAN'S SUNDAY LIBRARY.
A Series of Original Works by Eminent Authors.
The Guardian says — "All Christian households owe a debt of gratitude
to Mr. Macmillan for that useful ' Sunday Library. ' "
THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES ARE NOW READY:—
The Pupils of St. John the Divine. — By Charlotte
M. YONGE, Author of "The Heir of Redclyne."
The author first gives a full sketch ofthe life and work ofthe Apostle
himself, drawing the material from all the most trustworthy authorities,
sacred and profane; then follow the lives ofhis immediate disciples, Ignatius,

MACMILLAN'S SUNDAY LIBRARY. 45

Quadratus, Polycarp, andotliers; which are succeeded by the lives of many
of their pipls. She then proceeds to sketch from their foundation the
history ofthe many churches planted or superintended by St. John and
his pupils, both in the East and West. In the last chapter is given an
account of the present aspect of the Churclies of St. John,— the Seven
Churches of Asia mentioned in Revelations ; also those of Athens, of
Nlmes, of Lyons, and otliers in the West. " Young and old will be
equally refreshed and taught by these pages, in which nothing is dull, and
nothing is far-fetched." — Churchman.
The Hermits.---By Canon Kingsley.
T!ie_ volume contains the lives of some of the most remarkable early
Egyptian, Syrian, Persian, and Western hermits. The lives are mostly
translations from the original biographies. "It is from first to last a
p-oduction full of interest, written with a liberal appreciation of what is
memorable for good in the lives ofthe Hermits, and with a wise forbear
ance towards legends which may be due to the ignorance, and, no doubt,
also to the strong faith ofthe early chroniclers. " — London Review.
Seekers after God. — Lives of Seneca, Epictetus, and
Marcus Aurelius. By the Rev. F. W. Farrar, M.A., F.R.S.,
Head Master of Marlborough College.
In this volume the author seeks to record the lives, and gives copious
samples of the almost Christ-like utterances of, with perhaps the exception
of Socrates, "the best and holiest characters p-esented to us in the records
of antiquity." The volume contains portraits of Aurelius, Seneca, and
Antoninus Pius. "We can heartily recommend it as healthy in tone,
instructive, interesting, mentally and spritually stimulating and nu
tritious. " — Nonconformist.
England's Antiphon. — By George Macdonald.
This volume deals chiefly zuith the lyric or song-form of English re
ligious poetry, other kinds, however, being not infrequently introduced.
The author has sought to trace the course of our religious poetry from the
ijfh to the igth centuries, from before Chaucer to Tennyson. He en
deavours to accomplish his object by selecting the men who have produced
the finest religious poetry, setting forth the circumstances in which they
were placed, characterising the men themselves, critically estimating their
productions, and giving ample specimens of their best religious lyrics, and
quotations from larger poems, illustrating the religious feeling ofthe poets
or their times. "Dr. Macdonald has very successfully endeavoured to
bring together in his little book a whole series ofthe sweet singers of Eng
land, and makes them raise, one after the other, their voices in paise of
God. " — Guardian.
Great Christians of France : St. Louis and Calvin.
By M. Guizot.
From among French Catholics, M. Guizot has, in this volume, selected

46 MACMILLAN' S SUNDAY LIBRARY.
Louis, Kingof France in the iyk century, and among Protestants, Calvin
the Reformer in the 16th century, " as two earnest and illustrious repe-
sentatives ofthe Christian faith and life, as well as of tke loftiest thought
and purest morality oft their country and generation." In setting forth
with considerable fulness the lives of these prominent and representative
Christian men, M. Guizot necessarily introduces much of the political and
religious history of the periods during which they lived. ' 'A very interest
ing book, " says the Guardian.
Christian Singers of Germany. — By Catherine
Winkworth.
In this volume the authoress gives an account ofthe principal hymn-"
writers of Germany from the qth to the icjth century, introducing ample
specimens from their best productions. In the translations, while the
English is perfectly idiomatic and harmonious, the characteristic differ
ences of the poems have been carefully imitated, and the general style and
metre retained. "Miss Winkworth' s volume of this series is, according to
our view, the choicest production of her pen." — British Quarterly Review.
Apostles of Mediaeval Europe.— By the Rev. G. F.
Maclear, D.D., Head Master of King's College School, London.
In two Introductory Chapters the author notices some of the chief cha
racteristics ofthe mediaeval period itself; gives a graphic sketch of the de
vastated state of Europe at the beginning of that period, and an interesting
account of the religions of the three great groups of vigorous barbarians —
the Celts, the Teutons, and the Sclaves — zuho had, wave after wave, over
flowed its surface. He then proceeds to sketch the lives and zuork of the
chief of the courageous men who devoted themselves to the stupendous task
of their conversion and civilization, during a period extending from the
$th to the iyh century; such as St. Patrick, St. Columba, St. Colum-
banus, St. Augustine of Canterbury, St. Boniface, St. Olaf, St. Cyril,
Raymond Suit, and others. "Mr. Maclear will have done a great work
if his admirable little volume shall help to break up the dense ignorance
which is still prevailing among people at large." — Literary Churchman.
Alfred the Great. — By Thomas Hughes, Author of " Tom
Brown's School Days." Third Edition.
' ' The time is come when we English can no longer stand by as in
terested spectators only, but in which every one of our institutions will be
sifted zuith rigour, and will have to shew cause for its existence. ....
As a help in this search, this life of the typcal English King is here
offered." Besides other illustrations in the volume, u. Map of England is
pefixed, shewingits divisions about iooo A.D., as zuell as at the pesent
time. "Mr. Hughes has indeed written a good book, bright and readable
zue need hardly say, and of a very considerable historical value." — ¦
Spectator. Nations Around. — By Miss A. Keary.
This volume contains many details concerning the social and political

MACMILLAN'S SUNDAY LIBRARY. 47

life, the religion, the superstitions, the literature, the architecture, the com
merce, the industry, ofthe Nations around Palestine, an acquaintance with
which is necessary m order to a clear and full understanding ofthe history
of the Hebrezu people. The authoress has brought to her aid all the most
recent investigations into the early history of these nations, referring fre
quently to the fruitful excavations which have brought to light the ruins
and hieroglyphic writings of many of their buried cities. ' "Miss Keary
has skilfully availed herself qf the opportunity to write a pleasing and in
structive book."— Guardian. "A valuable and interesting- volume."—
Illustrated Times. ,
St. Anselm.— By the Very Rev. R. W. Church, M.A., Dean
of St. Paul's. Second Edition.
In this biography of St. Anselm, zuhile the story ofhis life as a man, a
Christian, a clergyman, and a politician, is told impartially and fully,
much light ¦ is shed on the ecclesiastical and political history of the time
during which he lived, and on the internal economy ofthe monastic estab
lishments of the period. The author has drawn his materials from con
temporary biographers and chroniclers, while at the same time he has
consulted the best recent authors who have treated of the man and his
time. " It is a sketch by the hand of a master, with every line marked
by taste, learning, and real apprehension of the subject." — Pall Mall
Gazette.Francis of Assisi. — By Mrs. Oliphant.
The life of this saint, the founder of the Franciscan order, and one of
the most remarkable men of his time, illustrates some of the chief cha
racteristics ofthe religious life of the Middle Ages. Much information is
given concerning tlie missionary labours ofthe saint and his companions,
as well as concerning the religious and monastic life of the time. Many
graphic details are introduced from the saint's contemporary biographers,
which shew forth the prevalent belief s of tke period ; and abundant samples
are given of St. Francis's own sayings, as zuell as afezu specimens of kis
simple tender hymns. "We are grateful to Mrs. Oliphant for a book of
much interest and pathetic beauty, a book wliich none can read without
being the better for it." — John Bull.
Pioneers and Founders ; or, Recent Workers in the
Mission Field. By Charlotte M. Yonge, Author of "The
Heir of Redclyffe." With Frontispiece, and Vignette Portrait of
Bishop Heber.
The missionaries whose biographies are here given, are — John Eliot,
tke Apostle ofthe Red Indians; David Brainerd, the Enthusiast ; Christ
ian F. Schwartz, the Councillor of Tanjore; Henry Martyn, the Scholar-
Missionary; William Carey and Joshua Marshman, the Serampore Mis
sionaries; the Judson Family; the Bishops of Calcutta, — Thomas
Middleton, Reginald Heber, Daniel Wilson; Samuel Marsden, the Aus
tralian Chaplain and Friend of the Maori ; John Williams, the Martyr

48 MACMILLAN'S SUNDAY LIBRARY.
of Erromango; Allen Gardener, the Sailor Martyr; Charles Frederick
Mackenzie, the Martyr of Zambesi. " Likely to be one of the most popular
ofthe 'Sunday Library' volumes." — Literary Churchman.
An'gelique Arnauld, Abbess of Port Royal. By
Frances Martin. . Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d.
This new volume ofthe 'Sunday Library' contains the life of a very
remarkable woman founded on the best authorities. She was a Roman
Catholic Abbess who lived more than 200 years ago, whose life contained
much struggle and suffering. But if we look beneath the surface, we find
that sublime virtues are associated with her errors, there is something
admirable in everything she does, and the study of her history leads to a
continual enlargement of our own range of thought and sympathy.
THE "BOOK OF PRAISE" HYMNAL,
COMPILED AND ARRANGED BY
LORD SELBORNE.
In the following four forms : —
A. Beautifully printed, in Royal 32mo., limp cloth, price 6d.
B. ,, ,, Small 18mo., larger type, cloth limp, Is.
C. Same edition on fine paper, cloth, Is. 6d.
Also an edition with Music, selected, harmonized, and composed
by JOHN HULLAH, in square 18mo., cloth, 3s. 6d.
The large acceptance which has been given to " The Book of Praise"
by all classes of Christian people encourages the Publishers in entertaining
the hope that this Hymnal, which is mainly selected from it, may be ex
tensively used in Congregations, and in some degree at least meet the
desires of those who seek uniformity in common worship as u, means
tozuards that unity zuhich pous souls yearn aftei', and which our Lord
prayed for in behalf of his Church. "The office of a hymn is not to
teach controversial Theology, but to give the voice of song to practical
religion. No doubt, to do this, it must embody sound doctrine ; but it
ought to do so, not after the manner oft the schools, but with the breadth,
freedom, and simplicity of the Fountain-head. " On this principle has
Sir R. Palmer proceeded in the preparation of this book.
The arrangement adopted is the following : —
Part I. consists of Hymns arranged according to the subjects of the
Creed — "God the Creator," "Christ Incarnate," "Christ Crucified,"
"Christ Risen," "Christ Ascended," "Christ's Kingdom and Judg
ment," etc.
PART II. comprises Hymns arranged according to the subjects of the
Lords Prayer.
Part III. Hymns for natural and sacred seasons.
There are 320 Hymns in all.

CAMBRIDGE : — PRINTED BY J. PALMER.

¦WLe university l

3 9002 08867 7340