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Let us take another case. According to a system of popular theology which has attained a wide acceptance, a man who has been converted a short time before death, however degraded may have been his past life, at once takes rank among the righteous, and becomes fit to enter on the enjoyments and the employments of the holy. But what about his character? Has it at once become a holy character? Is it suddenly changed, so as to render him fit for the society of the saints? Has his sudden awakening to the evil of his past life generated in him a number of holy affections, or in a moment destroyed the evil ones? We know that in those cases of sudden conversion which are capable of being tested by the results which follow it, sanctification is a gradual process, only imperfectly wrought out after many a painful struggle; and such is the apostolic testimony, as is witnessed by the Epistles. What reason have we therefore for believing that it will be otherwise with a sinner deeply sunk in moral and spiritual corruption, who turns to God an hour before his death? Unless a miracle is wrought in his special case, of which Scripture affords no hint, he will carry with him into the unseen world the character which he has formed here, minus that change in it which takes place at conversion. Can such a character, until it is thoroughly renovated, be fit for the society of the holy or to enter into their enjoyments or employments? Far be from me the idea that God will not receive all such to His mercy, and that He will not provide for them the means of sanctification in the unseen world. All that I am attempting to show is, that the rough-and-ready method which is adopted by popular theology of dividing mankind into the two great divisions above referred to, one of which will at once enter on the enjoyments and the employments of the perfected kingdom of Christ, and the other into a state of torment which will never end, has no standpoint in the character of God as it is

affirmed by reason and as it is disclosed by revelation.* Vast must be the numbers of the human race who, while they have not died in a state of holiness, or in that state designated conversion, yet have not died in a state irrecoverably evil, or who have died in one not self-caused, which appeals loudly to the Divine compassion. One thing and one only can we affirm with certainty; that God will judge all such in conformity with His attributes of justice, holiness, mercy and love, and that His omniscience will enable Him to estimate rightly the effects that things for which a man is irresponsible have exerted upon the formation of his character, and on his actions which are the result of that character.

One further illustration of the point under consideration. One man is born with a temper overwhelmingly passionate, another with one so calm that it is not easy to ruffle it. We see this distinction even in infants; as matter of fact, we are all deeply sensible that the state of our tempers is greatly dependent on the state of our nervous systems. I select violence of temper as an illustration because it is the fruitful

* It will be objected that several of the parables affirm that mankind will be divided by Christ into the two divisions of the good and the bad; and consequently that there is no place left for a tertium quid, which in the eyes of the all-seeing Judge will not be viewed as irremediably evil, or for a probation after death. To this I answer, that what I am speaking of is the rough-and-ready mode of dividing the whole human race into those two great divisions which is adopted by popular theology. But the language of the parables is far from sustaining the objection in question. Our Lord thus explains the parable of the tares: "The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and shall gather out of his kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity, and cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be the weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." This simply affirms that those that are irreclaimably evil will be gathered out of Christ's kingdom and cast into a furnace of fire, i.e. will be destroyed by some terrible form of destruction; and that those who are designated "the righteous" will be immediately received into our Lord's perfected kingdom. These constitute the two extremes of mankind in point of character; but the parable, like all the other parables, is silent as to what will be the lot of that vast multitude of mankind who lie between them, and who die in a state of mind which unfits them for the enjoyments and the employments of the heavenly world, but yet in whom all goodness is far from being utterly extinct.

source of a variety of crimes. Yet a man who commits a crime under the influence of constitutional violence of temper may, in a moral point of view, be a better man than one on whom temptations to anger exert little or no force. Yet it is impossible to include such characters under either of the two great divisions of the righteous or the irrecoverably wicked, according to the popular conception of them. The passionate man cannot be a holy man, because the inability to conquer the violence of his temper is a proof of either moral or spiritual weakness. Nor can he be ranked among

those who are irrecoverably wicked, for I assume that it is only on such that the merciful God will pass a sentence of final condemnation. From this case, therefore (and I have selected it out of a large number of similar ones which will include a vast proportion of mankind), I draw the general conclusion that in the eyes of perfect justice, guided by omniscience, no small number of the human race who have been born under unfavourable conditions of probation may belong to a class which, while it is not holy, is not beyond the power of recovery; and that such, though unfit to enter on the employments and the enjoyments of the perfected kingdom of Christ, may justly make a strong appeal both to the Divine justice and the Divine compassion.

Most of the theories which we have been considering represent the moral character of God not as that of which Jesus Christ is the image, but as one which in almost every respect stands contrasted with it. According to them, the Creator has so planned and conditioned His creative work that the overwhelming majority of the human race, after a brief space of very uncertain temporary enjoyment, will enter on an existence in misery which will never terminate. It has been urged that this is the inevitable result of creating man a free agent, and that the creation of a being who is capable of exercising choice was in itself so desirable as to have justi

fied the conditioning of things as they are, notwithstanding the unutterable mass of misery which has resulted from so doing, which the Creator must have clearly foreseen. We can only say, that if this is the necessary result of creating men free agents, it is one terrible to contemplate and one which is irreconcilable with any possible conception of one the essence of whose moral being is love. But the true answer to this solution is that of all such necessary results, when affirmed of God, we know nothing.

Still further, while we admit that the predestinarian and other similar theories do not invest the Creator with the attributes of an almighty principle of evil, they make a near approach to it; for when they are divested of all subterfuges, and hair-splittings, they affirm that God has so conditioned his creative work, as respects mankind, that the final result will be the everlasting felicity of a very small number out of a multitude so vast as to be impossible to realise in thought, and the everlasting misery, or (if we adopt the theory called "conditional immortality") the annihilation of the remainder through a course of painful, and in cases of extreme wickedness, terrible suffering. We admit that this constitution of things cannot be said to be the work of an evil being who is almighty, for such a being would have created man under such conditions that nothing but the greatest amount of misery which is consistent with never-ending existence would have been the fate of all, not only in the unseen world, but in the present. This, however, is obviously not the present constitution of things; but if that beyond the grave is such as these theories presuppose, it bears a far greater resemblance to the work of a creator who is imperfectly evil than to that of one of whose moral character Jesus Christ is the image and likeness, and of whom He has affirmed that He is kind even to the unthankful and the evil, and has taught that it is our duty to be merciful as our Father also is merciful.

In making these observations, let it not be for one moment supposed that I am insensible to the terrible results which flow from moral evil, whether it be self-caused or transmitted from ancestors. That much of the evil which exists is selfcaused I firmly believe, and as such it is justly obnoxious to God's righteous judgment; but the evil in the individual which is not self-caused appeals loudly to His mercy. Nay more strict justice is not mercy; when, therefore, justice has pronounced its sentence mercy pleads, and both the Old and the New Testament affirm, with what we may almost call reiteration, that God is merciful, and that His mercy endures for ever, and extends over all His works. My object has been to point out that the various theories above referred to are entirely inadequate representations of the principles on which God will judge the world in righteousness, i.e. in accordance with His attributes of justice, holiness, mercy, and love, by that man whom He hath ordained, and whom He has also sent to be the Saviour of the world.

The alternative theories which I have mentioned above will be considered in subsequent portions of this work.

My general conclusion, therefore, is that every theory which has been propounded by the finite intellect of man respecting a future state of retribution which is not based on the principles of eternal justice, and which is also not in conformity with any conception we can form of God's holiness, mercy, and love as they are revealed in the person, work, and teaching of Jesus Christ is a misrepresentation of the principles on which He will execute judgment hereafter. All that we can venture to affirm is that God, who is possessed of perfect knowledge, will judge each man, not as a mere member of a nation, of a family, or of a race, but as an individual, according to his actions as they have resulted from his character; and that He will attribute to him responsibility only for that portion of his character which has been self-caused, and has not been

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