Part II.

No doubt ingenuity will devise other objections. Let them all be produced. No new idea can find secure lodgement until it has been sifted to the uttermost, and the creation ransacked for reasons for its rejection. It can not possibly be otherwise, nor, indeed, is it even desirable. At the same time it is not likely that any difficulties will be urged which are more serious than such as we have enumerated, nor any which have so great an inherent claim to consideration. While not all disposed to under rate the equipment of our opponents, we advance without any trepidation, well persuaded not only that we have a sufficient answer, but also that we can, in some cases, so answer as to convert an objection into an additional argument in our defence.

§ 2. Has not the Church in all ages held and proclaimed the doctrine that the opportunity of salvation is limited to this life? It would lead us beyond all due limits to enter upon a history of this doctrine; and, indeed, it is® necessary. We admit that the majority of testimonies are against us. We give due deference to the fact; accept it as a summons to wariness and a sevenfold renew of our position; and freely surrender whatever argumentative force it may possess. However, it is not the case that the doctrine has been either so rigorously or consentient held as is commonly supposed. The stern and rigorous formulating of it in the 16th and 17th century was a novelty; and the unanimity of two centuries of Protestantism has no parallel in all previous Church history Everyone surely knows by this time that a volume of quotations might be adduced from divines of highest repute in all the centuries in mitigation of the severe page 39 doctrine of the modern evangelical school, or in direct affirmation of that which we advocate. It admits even of fair question whether we are not putting an unduly severe contraction on the language of such documents as the Westminster Confession. Their words are to be interpreted in the light of the controversies of the time: and we sometimes better know the real meaning, not by asking, "What do the words affirm? but by asking, What controverted doctrine were they meant to exclude? It cannot be questioned that the compilers had in their Ends the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, and were not directly saying Nay to the belief that Divine Grace may follow into the invisible world such at least as here knew nothing of Christ, and who lived in such conditions as hindered even their emergence into the proper life of reason: and we might well claim such mild and genial interpretation here as is very freely accorded to other deliverances. However, let it be even as our opponents say. Let it be that we advocate a novelty. Is it therefore false? No one can have his eyes open to the signs of the times, can note the significant silence which has fallen on the pulpit and the feebleness and hesitation fit its inculcation of the old belief, or can have any acquaintance with modern theological works or popular religious literature, without perceiving that ideas such as we advocate are coming in upon the mind of the Churches through every pore. The belief has full possession of the Protestant Church of Germany, and has won the acceptance of nearly every German divine of note—of all who are best known in this country, and whose works are on the shelves of every minister—of Neander, Tholuck, Müller, Nitzsch, Stier, Dorner, Schmid, Rothe, Martensen, Beck, Olsh ausen, and others too numerous to name. It is current over three-fourths or even a greater proportion of the Episcopalian and Nonconformist Churches in England It is with rapid strides possessing the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches of America. From the nature of the case,—from the fact that we have laid the dogmatic creed of the 17th century in our foundation stones and incorporated it with questions of property, from page 40 the rigorous interpretation of subscription which obtained till quite recently, from the very compactness of our discipline and organisation, from the traditional impatience of doctrinal dissonance and divergence which characterises us—new ideas will certainly find most difficult entrance into the Presbyterian Church, and there last of all find articulate utterance; and if the Presbyterian Church is thus shielded from some ills, it is also exposed to the deadly peril of becoming an anachronism and a petrifaction. Nevertheless, everyone Knows that the ideas to which we are giving utterance have a place in the Established Church of Scotland, whose ministers are blessed with a larger freedom and shielded by a broader tolerance than others; and have also a large unspoken acceptance in the other Presbyterian Churches of Scotland and in the Colonies. Let it be then that the doctrine which we maintain is novel, shall we therefore with impatient haste visit to with our poor anathema, and not fear lest we tab up arms against a larger truth which God is teaching us and do what in us lies to quench the Spirit of God? Without overmuch heed to tradition, let us weigh the matter on its own merits, and that with quietness and long-suffering patience, as those who much dread missing the truth or being blind to the day of their visitation While we know, if we but deal honestly, that the dogmatic structure which our fathers reared is becoming dilapidated and crumbling at the touch of our hands. It is vain to think that the dogmatic creed of Christendom is finished, and that God has nothing more to teach us.

§ 3. But, throughout the whole previous discussion have we not forgotten to take with us the Word of God? There the appeal must lie: and under its authority we must bow reason, imagination, and emotion. We are willing to accept this position: only, entering a not unnecessary caveat. we have found men, under this shelter endeavouring to impose a deception on their minds. If a man say, "Against such and such a doctrine my moral nature revolts, my conscience is outraged and stupefied by it, against it my reason loudly protests; nevertheless I page 41 find it in the Bible, and before this altar I east down my heart,' my conscience, and my intellect"; we may admire his heroism, but we must none the less declare that he Endeavouring to do what is a sheer impossibility, and entering on a course in which no man can persist without deadly peril to his soul. What he supposes himself thus to believe and accept, he does not believe and accept: it remains all external to his spirit, and weights it like a nightmare: and he might know that his fatuous efforts to attach it to his inner life is a perpetual drugging of himself with a lie, and a poisoning of the springs of his moral feeling. A man truly believes no doctrine except such as he loves, as his reason embraces with enthusiasm, and the conscience of his intellect assents to with a firm Amen. No man can possibly live divided against him—self saying Yea and Nay—affirming, under any external authority whatever, a doctrine against which all that is in him otherwise protests. However, to the Scripture let the appeal be made; and let it be allowed that any disharmony of the mind with it is to be ascribed to obliquity and perversity.

It is confessedly an arduous undertaking to establish doctrines by an inductive process of generalisation applied to texts: and the system-makers of former times were only half alive to the magnitude of this difficulty. There are outstanding texts which with great stubbornness resist harmonising with the central doctrines which divines have formulated. There are texts which, viewed apart, more naturally lend themselves to Arius than to Athanasius. Zealous defenders of the Protestant doctrine of Justification have allowed that there are passages which best conform to the Romanist view. It requires a stout Calvanist to crush into obedience the words, "Who gave himself a propitiation, not for our sins only, but also for the sains of the whole world." This is just what we might expect. The Bible is a collection of miscellaneous writings;. written by men of various mental habitudes and modes of Eight and speech; composed under practical exigencies to meet current situations; and the writers were thinking of serving any use rather than that of supplying a codex page 42 of proof passages. We believe in the real unity of the Bible, and that One Spirit dwells in it: but none the less is it an arduous task to reduce it to system and doctrinal unity. It were nothing astonishing could we hardly square every isolated passage to our view; and if this be found to be the case, can our opponents do any better? Can they, indeed, easily bring all Scripture into agreement with their view?

I have searched through all the Apostolic Epistles for a single passage which, either explicitly or implicitly, affirms that the eternal destiny of every man is decided at his death, and have been unsuccessful in the quest. There are many texts which without ambiguity affirm that there is no Saviour but Jesus Christ, and announce the inevitable ultimate judgment of God on the impenitent and unbelieving; but I find, at the same time, that the critical hour of decision is invariably associated, not with the death of the individual, but with the second coming of Christ. On the other hand there are passages which negative the traditional view, and teach the larger brighter hope; notably, two passages in the 1st Epistle of Peter. The text which speaks of Christ, who was put to death in the flesh, in the Spirit preaching to the spirits in prison, is no doubt obscure, and has been variously understood; but it as naturally bears the meaning which its language immediately suggests as any other meaning and it may well be questioned whether it would ever have been found so hard of interpretation but for the dogmatic predetermination on no account to welcome a doctrine which leaves a door of hope beyond the grave. The second passage, however, (IV., 6) is altogether unambiguous, and will for ever resist all attempts at glossing. The reference is to the heathen who had spent their earthly life in sensual rioting, and who had died as they had lived. Even to the dead also, (says the Apostle) well as to the living heathen, has the Gospel been preached, that they might in their disembodied conditions be quickened to spiritual life in Christ. All the weapons of exegetical sophistry will not empty this Apostolic word page 43 of its explicit declaration; and, fortunately, the Revised Version has restored it to English readers, without a gloss.

It is when we turn to the words of the Lord Jesus Christ that our view encounters the greatest amount of difficulty. The Parable of Dives and Lazarus seems very naturally to lend itself to the common view; and it is also suggested by the tone of haste and urgency with which the Saviour summons men to flee from coming evil, to embrace a fleeting opportunity, and to enter by an open door while yet it is open. If our view once generally enters into the hearts of preachers, are there not many words of Christ which their tongues will no longer be able to frame themselves to utter? we have to bear in mind that the forms of speech which belong to the popular preacher, bent on an immediate result, fired with a sense of the urgent importance of rousing men to action, are necessarily very different from those of the closet, of speculation, and theology, and which as naturally come to us when we are bent on grasping objective truth in general form, and simply for purposes of thinking; and Christ habitually occupied the former position. There is one passage (Luke xiii, 23-4) in which the Saviour expresses a kind of impatience of the eager handling of such questions as we are now discussing, and turns inquisitive minds away from them to moral activity and religious life—an ever needed warning! For all such enquiries are simply mischievous when prompted by intellectual curiosity, and unless prosecuted with the earnest moral aim to retain intact, faith in God, love to man, and joy in existence. True it remains always that the more earnestly we realise the sin and guilt of men and the misery of their conation as lying under the wrath of God, the more vividly we are in sympathy with the earnestness of God's love, the more keenly we feel the urgency of the moment in which the Word of God is flashing its light upon their minds and the Spirit of God knocking at the door of their hearts, and bethink us that this, even this, may be the highest moment in their moral history—the more naturally shall we speak as Christ spoke; and, as in the case of Christ, all these thoughts and emotions burned page 44 with an intensity of flame beyond our conception, we can understand the tone of His popular preaching. But theological speculation also claims its hour. It is the very love of humanity which Christ enkindled in our hearts that raises into quenchless eagerness the speculative question concerning the eternal destinies of men; but it is one which Christ never set himself to answer as a mere question of theology, and for which we must seek an answer, not in isolated words falling from his lips in the urgency of practical zeal, but from the relations in which it stands to the fundamental significance of the Gospel, especially as it is given us in the Apostolic exhibition of the meaning of His finished life and work. It is no doubt a difficult task to retain in equilibrium the urgent fervour of the practical preacher and the calm of the religious philosopher who has lifted himself up out of moral fever. On the wings of large thoughts rising into the sweet peace and patience of the Eternal; but it is an ideal attainment towards which we must aspire.

On this, then, we must fundamentally base our position that the doctrine of the eternal decision of the destiny of all men at death will in no wise fit itself into the view of the moral universe taught us in the Gospel; nor agree with the great purposes of God towards humanity, with the significance of the mission of the Saviour, and facts of God's Providence. It violently clashes with the doctrine of the universal Fatherhood of God; with that of the infinite value of every separate soul, and the love which God bears to each spirit which he summoned into eternal being; with that of the death of Christ for all men, and the destination of the Gospel for all men in all space and time. It is discordant with the Biblical conception of the magnificence of God's gracious purpose, so large and so vast as fitly to summon the whole creation to jubilant gladness, and make our being an ever-during hymn of praise to Him who gave us the glorious gift of conscious life. That doctrine cannot be Gospel which has no glad tidings for wide humanity and for every son of Adam in all page 45 the wide bounds of the creation—which could only be a summons to perpetual tears and wringing of hands over existence as a woeful curse—which seems to enwrap all things in deepest gloom—which makes the very words "God is love" die upon our lips or choke us while we speak—and which turns into satire the words "God so loved the world," and "Who wills that all men should be saved." As in the confusion of nature and society we are wont to grasp large central principles, with patience waiting till all things group themselves around them and exceptions and anomalies adjust themselves; so must we do here; not struggling over words and letters and isolated texts, but taking our stand at the heart of the Gospel message and waiting till all things fall into order beneath its light. It will now be understood why we have declined all minute exegetical handling of separate texts; who does not know by this time how little such procedure ever effects?

§ 4. It will sometimes happen that a doctrine which, viewed apart, is comparatively innocent and entitled at last to respect and toleration, will be found serious as symptomatic of radical doctrinal divergences and necessarily implicating them: and so, when searched out, is found only a snare for the simple and ignorant. May it not be so here? May not this doctrine of future probation involve a radical change of view in regard to the nature of God, of sin, of justification, and atonement? And just as the skilled eye of the physician will discern in a twitch of a muscle, or a cast of the eye, or the colour of the nails, signs which reveal a serious malady of the system and presage deadly disease, so it may be that in this modern doctrine we may have to read signs of serious relaxation of moral health or of incipient Apostacy from living Christianity. Such a line of argument might be skillfully led; and like the insinuations of slander, not the less effective that it is equally difficult to establish refute.

Certainly it does not at once appear that our doctrine page 46 justifies such suspicions. We advocate nothing more than an extension of the time during which the mercy of God endures for repentant sinners. Did we maintain that all men are necessarily and certainly redeemed as by a mechanical process, or that anyone either in this world or the world to come is saved apart from Christ and without repentance and faith, it were indeed a complete subversion of the Gospel. But every single truth hitherto believed may remain intact: how can they be affected by the consideration that the Day of Grace endures for a longer period of time than it has been usual to suppose?

As matter of truth and fact, however, the modern doctrine does not stand in such isolation, but for the most part, although by no means universally, is found as a part of a method of theological thinking possessed of a new physiognomy: of which, the outstanding features are that it substitutes for the idea of God as King, that of God as Father as the all-determining conception of Deity, prefers the ethical to the juridical conception of the Atonement and inclines to the Romanist rather than the Protestant view of Justification.' Further, it is not to be denied that "the whole Unitarian, semi-Unitarian, and Humanitarian views of the Gospel exhibit instinctive affinities with our doctrine and move towards it with avidity; while infidelity simply wonders how any human being for a single moment ever could think otherwise. We are surely ample enough in our acknowledgments.

In the intricacies and complications of thought, and its stragglings and crossings we are often forced into forms of Syncretism which we would fain avoid. The effects of hostile criticism in course of time tell on the thought of the Church, and there emerges a crisis which the party of movement seem to make common cause with the enemy against the truth: nor will it ever be possible to avoid thus furnishing an argument for the disingenuous A gloomy error had spread itself over the fair face of the Gospel, which has had the effect of heaping up diffi- page 47 culties for earnest minds, obstructing the way to Christ, alienating sympathy, and nourishing the roots of unbelief; and it can scarcely be considered a strange thing if those within, who point the finger to the error and raise a protesting voice against it, find themselves in league with not a few who are without, or in sympathy with such as the rigour of an impossible orthodoxy had driven into the ways of heresy.

I am prepared to make a further admission, and allow whatever weight it may possess to fall into the opposite scale. Within the circles in which the doctrine of future probation is grasped with keenest avidity, and in their religious literature, I do not find evidences of a Christian piety which has the pathos, the depth of root, the holy fire and glow, the divine stamp, which meet me among the Puritans, among whom the repudiated doctrine was very firmly established; nay, not seldom, I find among the former a form of piety which hardly rises above such as may very well be nourished from the soil of Unitarianism, and might as well have been learned at the feet of Plato.—whose pages indeed are far more Christian than many modern sermons are; and I say within my heart, as I read or hear This is well and good, but it is not Christianity. The fact, of which I make this candid admission, is embarrassing, and yet it may be met. It is characteristic of our times that intensive religion is rare, while the leaven of Christian feeling is more widely diffused than at any previous period; and we seek almost in vain, in any quarter for that form of experimental religion which glows like a divine fire in the pages of an Owen—equally in vain among those who hold or reject the doctrine of final decision of destiny at death, if a contrast is to be drawn, it is between such as hold or refuse one and the same doctrine at the same time, and under the same conditions of life and thought. And will anyone indeed, maintain that an admirable form of Christian piety emerges in those churches which are nourished by those constant appeals to selfish and sensuous terror which the traditional doctrine logically makes im- page 48 perative? For the most part, there emerges the poorest and thinnest form of ethical and religious life, so miserable, that with sickened souls men turn from it to the types of manly virtue furnished by Greece and Rome. If it come to a decision on such considerations, it may be safely maintained that the ethical and religious spirit of Maurice and Robertson will bear comparison with that of Spurgeon; that Farrar and Plumptre represent a higher form of human reason than Talmage; and that Norman MacLeod, T. Erskine, and McLeod Campbell will not loss when contrasted with Moodie and Sankey. But all reasoning which turns on such considerations is more or less fallacious, and on such lines we can reach no results. Human nature is very intricate; the cross currents of influence determining the spirit and life of each generation defy calculation; and we must therefore be content to seek truth, and having found it, suffer it to look after its own works. We must also remember that every new idea has a certain dislocating power, and is thus ever. Exposed to suspicion on moral or religious grounds.

We must, however, press a little closer before we leave this point. If it can be shown that the doctrine of future probation stands in organic relation with radically unsound theology, the objection would be a serious one. We are prepared to hear this alleged, and possibly in some such form as this, "It is clear to us that you have started from an erroneous point of view. We have to fix our minds on the truth that men as sinful and guilty are deserving of God's wrath and curse, whereas your mind is ruled by the view of men as unhappy victims of misfortune deserving only Heaven's pity. According to the Scriptures the world is condemned, and men are arraigned criminals, whereas to your mind the world has been visited with calamity, and men are unhappy. Pietism may be nourished from such a root, but piety nevermore nor any religion having the holy stern glow of the New Testament. It comes, therefore, natural to you, and we can trace it throughout your reasoning, to think of God, not as a holy and righteous judge, but as infinite good page 49 nature: to be averted from the conception of retributive and vindictive righteousness: to view salvation only as a process of moral education: and to consider Christ as a great moral force bettering men by a kind of attraction and assimilation. But we shall not be deceived. This is corruption of Christianity in its very marrow, and the Church which permits this leaven will find itself a caput mortuum in one generation." We admit that this would amount to a formidable impeachment, did it only recount what is true, and were there foundation for the assumed contradiction of viewing God as King, Judge, and Father, and man as at once a criminal and an object of pity; but why put these thoughts in mutual exclusion? We admit that there are forms of theological thought and argument against which the above were spoken with justice and force; but we fail to see how it bears against one who holds that the door of mercy lies open for a thousand wears or any number of years more than against one who holds that it lies open for three score years and ten. Is a principle altered simply by lapse of time?

We wish, however, to have no misunderstanding. Although the doctrine we maintain has its own proper footing, we believe at the same time that it does stand organically connected with a restoration of the conception of the Fatherhood of God to its rightful place, and is nourished from that root. Therein we glory. We are Suite prepared for the controversy resolving itself at last into one of Theology Proper—that is, the proper view of the Divine Nature and Attributes. Strange that it should still be a question whether we have been thinking rightly about God! It is clearly a probable issue that any change in the conception of God may carry with it a change through the whole theological seam. If any opponent finds comfort or arguments in our admissions, we do not grudge it; but surely no one thinks that the Christian doctrines have received their final formulating.

§ 5. It will next be said that we have permitted our-selves to become the victims of imagination and feeling, page 50 and have been seeking relief from dark and painful thoughts, on which we have dwelt so long as to produce morbidness and paralysis of the intellect: that finding a certain belief insupportable, we have made haste to put wool in our ears and close our eyes: that we are deluding ourselves, and have even yet to meet the dreadful truth in all its sternness. We expect to be addressed in words to this effect: "The overwhelming fact is,—dark and enigmatic we admit—that we all are arraigned criminals before the Righteous God, and justly exposed to the Divine wrath. This mere fact presents to human view the sharpest possible contradiction to the ideas of God as Love and as Father; for we say ire would never have permitted such a moral world to exist, or we, if armed with the resources of Godhead, would find a universal remedy. The great difficulty stands unrelieved on any and every theory alike. You object to the idea that the eternal destiny of men should be decided at death, and would postpone the decision into the remote future: but how know you but that even then the mass of men may reject the grace of God? aye, but that every single soul which lived and died in sin will do so? Your oppressive difficulty will meet you again after the lapse of any number of years you may fix, as stern and awful as now when you say it wraps the universe in gloom. Do not imagine that you have a specially pitiful heart, or that we do not feel as much if you the illapse of waves of darkness as we march through this awful world of moral evil: what can any of us do but bow his head, each man confessing for himself that God were just did he cast him from his presence, each man sheltering himself under the mercy of Christ, Content to leave the mystery of each man's destiny with God, who can do no wrong, and will yet vindicate all his ways, we know not how."

To such well-meant remonstrances we can but reply that they in no way meet the position. I have so addressed myself many times, earnestly beseeching my mind to rest and be at peace; but all to no purpose. The page 51 matter will not thus wrap up, and go to sleep. We admit, of course, that notwithstanding all theories we can frame, there remains the dark riddle of the existence of evil in the universe: the one great moral enigma into which all others at last may he resolved. We have also no kind of answer to the question which might be propounded if only one soul were lost, 'Why did God, who foreknew the issue, summon that soul into' existence?' We allow that when all has been said, our wisdom is "to trust in the Lord and not be afraid," and go forth to duty leaving the burden of the universe to Him whose it is: and there is indeed a look in the blue sky, a voice in the sighing of the summer wind, a beam from the Cross of Christ (above all translation into dogmatic speech) that stills the stormy heart into peace sooner than all philosophy and theology and happy are they who are so framed as to be thus content! Some of the most excellent of the earth are to be found among them. But our protest has been all against the super-added difficulties: our effort, to banish the clouds, earth-made, which darken the regions which the Gospel Sun was meant to brighten: our contention, that notwithstanding the fact of evil, there is yet in very deed a Father, a Gospel, a Salvation for all men: and our aim, to hold this conviction fast, wrenching it from the grasp of a doctrine which is strangling it. The considerations which we have advanced in the previous part come back upon us with the rush of an armed host. It is sheer impossibility that the ways of God with all men are finished here, in this short miserable life which God in his providence makes so light of,—if, indeed, He is Universal Father, bearing an infinite love to every soul, and gave His Son a propitiation for the sins of every child of Adam. The soul can bear a moral mystery; but it is suffocated by moral and intellectual contradictions. It can bear the burden of its ignorance; but it is crushed to the dust by a positive faith which has to grapple with a glaring contradiction in facts of human existence—a faith which tells us that a divine love girds all human life as the light girds the earth, and facts which declare that God regards immortal page 52 souls as dross and off-scourings; and facts do declare this, if this pitiful life determines eternity for all men.

It behoves such as venture on the sort of remonstrance we are considering, to take heed lest they be not practising a deception on themselves. It is an enviable position so to immerse heart and mind in practical life as to leave no time for painful speculation, and ever and anon as dark questions cross the mind to waive them away, saying, "How unsearchable are His counsels!" But let not any one affect this attitude to whom thinking is a necessity of life, and in whom once the demand has been felt for reconciliation of his reason to the Gospel, as well as his emotion and his will. There are various ways of purchasing a delusive peace at the peril of our souls.

§ 6. We come now to consider an objection which although as mere argument of little moment, may yet really prove the most stubborn we have had to encounter. The importance of preaching the Gospel, of planting Churches, of supporting Missions, has been largely based on the doctrine that men are perishing in their sins, and that death being so near, our only opportunity of saving them will soon be gone. But if our doctrine be true, may we not cease from this hot haste and take things more easily? Ought we not, however, to be very suspicious of a doctrine which tends to make us less earnest and much more easy in regard to the conversion of sinners? And may we not surely predict that the modern doctrine will be used by tens of thousands as a spiritual narcotic?

We can well suppose that the doctrine for which we contend may be so handled as to be injurious. If a preacher were found taking pains habitually to inform his audience, that although they sent no missionaries, the heathen were in no danger, and although our friends died, in impenitence they would not be eternally lost, and we need entertain no such alarming thought, he would certainly work evil: and such blockheads will be found—mere theological speculators, wanting in direct and simple practical earnestness, so empty in head and heart that page 53 they can only propound negations. But it does not follow that there is not a wisdom which can use our doctrine for the nourishment of zeal, as well as for comfort and edification. We cannot for a moment hide from ourselves the fact that many will use the doctrine of future probation as a soporific and will so drug their own hearts and those of others with it that they will more lightly lead worldly lives. "Let us go on to sin, inasmuch as grace is so abundant and God's long-suffering so vast!" But this inference was long ago drawn from the mercy of God: and is proof only of the madness and perversity of the human heart. But for many reasons we must open up this matter at some length.

(1.) It is a dangerous thing to determine truth and error by hypothetical inferences as to what the doctrine propounded "will lead to," either in the way of belief or of conduct. This is the favourite logic of a timid conservatism, theoretically vicious, and a thousand times put to shame by results. There is a faith which is full of unbelief in truth and in the power of the truth. We may rest assured that if any doctrine is true, its effects can never be prejudicial; and that if any belief be false, it can work only evil, and that continually, although the temple of God may seem to have rested upon it God's universe is so constructed that the Good and the True are interwoven, as also misery and lies. "We have simply to concern ourselves to find what is true, to hold it and speak it: God will provide the rest: and we may be certain that every true thought is a tree of life. When we are dealing with an idea which (being not all false) has in the past nourished much good, and are bid part with it, it is natural to fear that the good will also perish. But we need not fear: we shall not lose by paring with the right hand or the right eye, at the bidding of Truth. Enthusiasm for truth, and unlimited faith in it will prove a safer guide than our blind and narrow utilities.

(2.) From the way in which some permit themselves to speak of the dangerous consequences of the modern page 54 doctrine, we may infer their conviction that the traditional doctrine has been extremely useful, has exercised a wholesome inspiring influence, and has powerfully aided in the spread of the Gospel. Now, we do not deny that the earnest belief in the shortness and uncertainty of the Day of Grace has exercised a solemnising effect and has quickened zealous activity. Were it not so, men well surely monsters of insincerity. Nor do we deny that its repeated enunciation may have awakened alarm in some careless minds and aided in their conversion. At the same time, we think that the practical value and efficacy of the idea are much exaggerated. It cannot be the proper nerve of religious earnestness, but at best a subordinate support of it: nor can a mere cry of alarm do much in converting souls. A zeal for souls which withers away at the thought of future probation never really existed; and an anxiety to be saved which disappears at the suggestion of mercy beyond the grave, never really had any place in the mind. But have those who are so concerned about the effects of our doctrine seriously considered the effects which are being wrought on the minds of men by their doctrine? Are they aware of the extent to which it has stifled all faith in the God of Love and Mercy? Do they not know that it is creating utter weariness of the Gospel as most veritable bad tidings, and no better than a mockery of the sorrows of humanity? Let them go down among the wretched and elicit the thought of their hearts, and they will hear themselves thus addressed: "Here are we, by the millions, born into this harassed, miserable life, for saken of God and Man, left to live and die like beasts or worse and you come with a message which announces that God is the Father of an Infinite Mercy, and will after a few days of such existence gather men by the myriads into the lake of fire—and you call it Gospel!" Have we, indeed, no eyes to discern how many many sculs the old doctrine is making miserable, despairing, embittered, haters of life, and disbelievers in God and Man? Have we the audacity to speak of its efficacy when we know that it has practically ceased already from pulpits as effete and a mere stupefying of the minds and hearts page 55 of pen? What preacher uses it spontaneously, and not rather under a sense of external compulsion?

Let us bring the matter before us as vividly as possible in concrete form. Let us suppose a missionary landing in Madras, or Calcutta, or Canton. There he is, Bible in hand, in a population of half-a-million of souls wholly given to heathendom. Let us suppose the thought now to arise in his heart (and how can it not arise?): "These great crowds of men and women will in a few years be all swept into hell, although they could not have lived otherwise and no light ever reached them." Will that thought nerve his spirit? It ought to paralyse his spirit and wrap his soul in black despair. And let us suppose he announces himself to be the herald of the Father if Spirits and the God of Love, bringing the glad tidings of great joy which shall be to all people, and at the same moment let him give faithful orthodox answer to the inevitable question, "But what of all our ancestors who Save lived without ever hearing your message, and where are they, and had God no mercy for them?" Will he not feel like one caught red-handed in self-contradiction, and that he has himself made the acceptance of his message impossible? It is well when one can speak on a matter of this kind from some personal experience of human life, and not simply, as it were, out of books. Let us enter this garret. It is clean and tidy, although very poor and bare. An aged woman, whose make indicates that she was once powerful, sits cowering over a few embers in the grate, stretching out her bony fingers to catch the heat. There is a hard look on her face, partly also one of hopeless resignation, as of one who had shed all her tears. Talk with her and elicit her story—tragic, but such as life is made of. "Have you been long a widow?" "It is thirty years or more since my husband perished at sea?" "Was he a good man?" "Oh, yes—he was End enough to me—but like other sailors." "Were you left alone?" "No, I was left with three little boys." "And where are they?" "Perished, too, at sea, sir. Oh, sir! I toiled and toiled to bring them up. I washed, page 56 and scrubbed, and mangled, and wore my fingers hard and my back bent. They grew up like other wild lads about the place; nothing could keep them but they, too, must go to sea, and they are all drowned—drowned; and I shiver in the wild nights when the wind makes the window rattle!" and she stretched out the bony fingers to catch the heat from the grate, as if it were the last spark of gladness left on earth. "And do you think they were prepared to die?" "They were not bad lads, but just like the rest—brave sailor lads that feared nothing and never thought about dying." As she looked hard at me, felt a fierce choking in my throat, as the orthodox creed suffocated me and made me speechless. What possible consolation for such an aged stricken heart, unless I could tell her that the mercy of the Lord endureth for ever, and that God makes so little of this present life because it but an hour in the eternity of his love? The efficacy of the old belief! the danger of the new! Oh, men and brethren!. by the mercy of God, by the love of truth and by the sorrows of Christ, let us tell no more lies. Oh hard, relentless Orthodoxy! Have pity! have pity the tens of thousands of souls around you sickening into speechless Atheism, and yet longing for power to believe that the world has a holy, righteous, and merciful Father.

(3.) There is surely much error abroad concerning the true nature and proper source of enthusiasm for saving souls. Let it not be degraded into a morbid nervous anxiety to prevent men suffering pain in a future life. It is admitted by all that the Gospel of Christ in an astonishing manner kindles in hearts the enthusiasm of humanity; and it does it somewhat thus:—When a man has been led down into the world within himself, when in true self knowledge he has seen and felt that he is a lost son of God, and in a true repentance has poured out floods a tears over himself as if a great river of sadness were coursing through his heart.—this humility becomes only the reverse of a boundless exaltation of his consciousness and he becomes henceforth of sacred value in his own eyes, and walks forth among men as a son of the Eternal page 57 King. When, in the uttermost abyss of sin and misery, he discovers that he is yet the object of the infinite concern of God, and finds near him a forgiving and healing mercy, with a strong pathos in it, and a wealth of pity and bestowal which astonish him as a revelation of a possibility in the universe above all that had entered into his heart to imagine,—then all human existence becomes sacred in his eyes. Such sort of experience is the birth of the Christian love of souls; and, indeed, it has no other. Are not all men sinners? Are they not all lost sons of God? Is not that Love also waiting for them? The love with which Christ loved the world and gave Himself for it is reproduced in our hearts; and we are prepared to go forth as the heralds of His message, as the channels of His grace, as labourers bringing to pass the eternal purpose of His heart towards men. As there is no source from which reason can derive moral laws but the conviction of the worth and dignity of Moral Personality as the pearl of the universe; and as there is no source of moral enthusiasm to revere these laws as sacred and do them except reverence for Humanity as an end-in-itself; so also is there no source of the Christian enthusiasm for the saving of souls but sympathy, learned in an experience, with the boundless love of Christ for men and His sacred devotion to rescue them and bring them home to God; nor will anything nerve men to endure sorrow and make sacrifices but the inspiration, thrilling through brain and heart, that comes from feeling ourselves servants executing an infinitely great purpose brooding over all the destinies of all men, and which is the expression of a love bright as the sun, high as the heavens, deep as the foundations of the earth, enduring and stable as the Eternity of God. Every other form of zeal is little else nervous excitement, wasting the spirit; flaming Eh it maybe in spurts of fire, but leaving behind a sense of exhaustion and desolation; in its blind eagerness, divorcing itself from reason and ignoring whole departments of human life; so much in haste, that the great message of God tends, in its hands, to become a cry of hysterical imbecility. The true zeal for souls doth not page 58 cry nor lift up its voice, but in holy quietness and the patience of hope, labours and prays and suffers: is calm rational, and perceptive, resting in the assurance of a divine purpose which we may all aid, but can never defeat.: in peace and the largeness of its thought, goes forth to form a league with whatsoever things are good and pure, and noble, and true, and beautiful, embracing all existence and all human life within its grasp. If it seems silent, slow, and over quiet, it is so even as God is so, whose silent but ever heedful, slow but never ceasing, quiet but everduring mercy broods over every life; it knows itself in league with Him who has eternal years wherein to work, and whom all creation serves.