distinction be made, then the whole argument of the author from the supposed dualism involved in the doctrine of eternal punishment falls to the ground, at least so far as we have any concern with it. 2. Quantity and quality. A fallacy which runs through the present treatise is the substitution of the quantitative argument, where sound logic absolutely demanded the qualitative. For example, in answer to the argument that "JUSTICE is certainly good and salutary; and if the justice of eternal suffering can be made out, it should not be accounted an evil," he says: "Is punished sin an evil? It is made up of three things — guilt, pain, and the justice which connects them. Now the guilt is certainly an evil in itself, and so is the pain; the justice is doubtless good, else it would not be just. But what is it good for? Punitive justice denotes simply this, -that guilt and pain are good for each other. The example of punishment may happen also to be good for other beings; but this is an added consideration, extrinsic, and can never create the justice itself. Rather the need of exemplary punishment, whether to restrain the vicious, or to encourage the virtuous, indicates just so much imperfection and evil.” p. 27. Now, waiving other errors (as they seem to us) in this statement, why say "exemplary punishment?" Is not the need of any punishment "just so much imperfection and evil," as really as the need of "exemplary punishment?" But this does not prevent some punishment from existing. How can he show that it will prevent "exemplary punishment?" He says again: "Can sin and pain be an eternal fact without an eternal necessity? If not necessary, then why actual? If it be said that man, absolutely immortal, shall sin forever, maugre God's efforts to change his sinful purpose, then he imposes an immortal necessity upon God; and this becomes an eternal necessity, in the eternal reason for such immortality." p. 28. Waiving, again, other objections which we might make to this statement, if it be intended to represent the received views of the orthodox, we simply ask: How come sin and pain to exist at all? "If not necessary why actual?" But they are actual. And if they can be actual without impos ing upon God any necessity in the author's dualistic sense, then who shall undertake to say in what measure they may be actual? We might fill pages with quotations of passages where the same fallacy of quantity for quality prevails. He quotes from Whately the following passage: "The main difficulty is not the amount of evil that exists, but the existence of any at all. Any, even the smallest portion of evil, is quite unaccountable, supposing the same amount of good can be obtained without that evil; and why it is not so attainable, is more than we are able to explain. And if there be some reason why we cannot understand, why a small amount of evil is unavoidable, there may be, for aught we know, the same reason for a greater amount. I will undertake to explain to any one the final condemnation of the wicked, if he will explain to me the existence of the wicked; if he will explain why God does not cause all those to die in the cradle, of whom He foresees that when they grow up they will lead a sinful life. The thing cannot be explained; and it is better to rest satisfied with knowing as much as God has thought fit to teach us, than to try our strength against mysteries which will but deride our weakness." p.147.1 As this is a point of vital importance, we looked with no little interest for the author's answer. This extends over about five pages. Omitting that part of it which is occupied with reciting the opinions of others, the following is his train of argument. He first lays down the true principle that "the distinction of evil as much or little, lasting or fleeting, will be almost worthless if it can be derived from no principle. Evil is essentially that which ought not to be. How, then, can its actual temporary existence be wrong, and its eternal existence forbidden? This brings us to the question whether God permits evil? If so, how, or why?" 2 He comes to the conclusion that sin exists" by a permission that does not compromise the divine integrity; a permission not moral, and denoting God's complacence or sanction, but physical. God freely grants the power to perform what he earnestly deprecates, and absolutely forbids."3 So far well. But after expanding at some length this idea of the divine permission of sin, he comes to the following extraordinary conclusion: 2 Quoted from Scripture Revelations on a Future State, Lecture VIII. pp. 149, 150. "The reader will at once perceive that our doctrine of the permission of sin looks to the denial of its eternity resulting from an event in time. If it could begin only at the hazard of an eternal continuance, its admission must involve the eternal counsels. It could not then exist merely by divine sufferance. It would then be established and permanent." p. 151. This is strange logic. How can sin exist temporarily any more than eternally, without involving the divine counsels? Why cannot sin exist eternally as well as temporarily by divine sufferance? If he means, as we suppose he does, that sin is not properly a part of God's plan, but simply incident to it through the wrong action which he permits but does not sanction, this may be as true of eternal as of temporary evil. He says afterwards that if moral evil be "limited and temporary," "We may then truly say of it that it inheres in no principle, and finds no sanction. It is neither God's choice nor his necessity. It is only an incident of his majestic forbearance. It lingers between life and death, being and not-being. It is transient because transitional, and pertaining to no system. It is not of the Creator, but of the creature; not of the Infinite, but of the finite; not of the Eternal,- how then can it attain to eternity?" p. 152. How "inheres in no principle," and is "pertaining to no system," if it is limited and temporary? According to the author's own showing the elements of sin, as an actual phenomenon in God's moral government, are, first, the free moral nature of finite beings; secondly, God's sufferance, but not sanction, of the abuse of this free nature in wrong doing. Does not this gift of such a nature inhere in a general principle, and pertain to a general system? And does not God's sufferance of its self-perversion inhere alike also in a general principle, and pertain alike to a general system of moral government, whether the evil suffered be temporary or eternal? As to sin's lingering "between life and death, being and not-being," that is assuming the very point at issue. But sin, he says, "is not of the eternal, how can it attain to eternity?" We ask in turn: if sin is not of the eternal, how can it attain to any being at all? But it has a being, and if he choose that its authors should live forever, why may not sin also endure forever? The above is the substance of all that he has to urge against Whately's reasoning, and it is wholly inconclusive. The fallacy of a quantitative argument, where sound logic demanded a qualitative, remains. 3. Infinite guilt. We have never been willing to rest the doctrine of eternal punishment on any other foundation than the declarations of God's word. We think, nevertheless, that they who seek a philosophical explanation of it in the infinite demerit of sin, have the best of the argument, and have never yet been refuted. Our author's objection to the doctrine of infinite guilt is for substance this: that since man is a finite being, everything that pertains to his character must be finite also; that he can have neither infinite merit nor demerit, because he can neither love nor hate God infinitely. Here it is essential to the argument that we distinguish between the absolutely infinite, which admits neither increase nor decrease, and the relatively infinite, namely, what surpasses every finite limit. The absolutely infinite belongs to God alone, and admits of no comparison. Not so the relatively infinite. As in mathematics two quantities may be each infinite, in the sense of being unlimited, and yet the one may be twice as great as the other, so also may the demerit of all sin be infinite in the same sense, and yet the guilt of one man be twice as great as that of another, or as his own guilt at some past time. That the demerit of a finite being can be absolutely infinite, admitting of neither increase nor comparison, is of course absurd. But it may exceed every finite measure. This, which is all for which we contend, we understand the author himself to admit. He says: "Duty is imperative. Its language is not that of mere counsel and advice, but of command. Man is not told simply that it is for his interest to do right, but he ought to do right. His obligation is not to himself alone; if he has any right to forego his own pleasure or interest, he has no right to omit a single duty; and no amount of enjoyment to be secured, or of pain to be avoided, can give him such right. No possible consideration of expediency can make wrong right. No compromise is possible between duty and the neglect of it. Moral law holds no parley, makes no bargain, forms no treaty stipulations, with him who refuses to obey. It sets no price on transgression. Obedience is better than sacrifice, however great. Though one should offer thousands of rams, or ten thousands of rivers of oil, or ten thousand worlds, — of wealth or suffering, the claim of duty would not be done away. No finite measure of penance can abrogate it. Above all bartering calculation of reward and penalty, conscience sits infinitely supreme, as the voice of God himself, telling us we have no right to lose the one, or to incur the other. Still less have we right to complain, if an undutiful curiosity respecting the measure of penalty has not been gratified, and we find it, at the last, greater than we can bear? What if it should be infinite?" p. 91. Very well said! This, he tells us, was for a time his "own theodocy." We wish he might return to it. But he has abandoned it, and that on the ground that "penalty is not satisfaction in kind; and it cannot be made so by being increased in degree, even infinitely. Penalty is sanction. Measured suffering is the mulct or fine which law imposes, which may also be warning and admonition; but it is not of the nature of payment, so that it should be any better infinite than finite." 991 And on the same page he says : "If man could be made into an infinite being, so that he could endure an infinite penalty in a moment of time, that would not restore him to innocence, or meet the demand of law. Infinite penalty is no more a satisfaction than finite penalty." Now that penalty is a satisfaction in kind, no sane man holds. The law demands obedience; and nothing but obedience is obedience. But what does this truism prove? If the author held, with some, that all penalty is of the nature of discipline, having for its sole end the reformation of the offender, he might avail himself of this argument. But admitting, as he does, the doctrine of proper penalty, which does not reform but destroys, he can make no legitimate use of it. It is conceded on all hands that penalty does not satisfy the requirement of the divine law, which is obedience; then, according to his reasoning, why inflict any penalty, aside from reformatory discipline? The answer is obvious. Penalty does and must satisfy the divine justice. By it God |