The Bible regained...

Front matter

J LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.*

II hag.

,oprigfei J

Dedication

THAT SYMPATHY AND INTELLIGENT AID OF

A BELOVED AND ONLY DAUGHTER,

UPON WHICH WAS CONDITIONED THE PREPARATION OF THE

Preface

The world is full of books, and thinking men are weary of ponderous volumes. They want books that are suggestive, and are willing themselves to do the thinking in detail. The writer of the following pages has kept this fact in mind. His object has been to present a system of religious truth in outline. He wishes to make the word " system " emphatic. He believes that all truth — truth relating to God, and the world he has made, and man his creature, and the divine government, providential and moral — all is a great whole, every part of which is in true and philosophical correlation to each and every other part. Also, that in the historic process in these materials for the attainment of their object, there are evinced, for the cognizance of man, certain great principles from which may be inferred the character of God — principles whose import is, " God is love," and every other element of his character is but a modification of this generic element.

4 PREFACE.

Such parts of this system as are accepted by all evangelical Christians, are merely named as links of connection ; while to those points not seen, or dimly seen, and some of which are completely incrusted with the fossiliferous remains of the paleotherian period in theology, more attention is devoted. Yet even here the suggestive principle is observed.

The doctrines of this volume are those essentially of our venerable fathers, save that in one particular there is a deeper shading of the same color, or rather a more intense glow of the same light. The grace that shows Christ to the infant in the land beyond the river, — w r e all believe this, — I suppose makes a similar revelation to all who in this world have never heard the gospel. If infants are saved by becoming holy, all the conditions for the development of moral character are to be found in that other world as in this. This is not heresy, but only " more of the same thing."

The religious mind of the present day — and almost everybody is religious in his way, pro or con in relation to " orthodoxy" — is like the troubled sea when it cannot rest. We cast this little volume upon the stormy waves, to meet the fate that God shall assign to it. Go, offspring of my heart's deepest experiences, go, and win men to Christ. And may the Angel of the Covenant go with thee.

PREFACE. 5

Just as I was laying down my pen, after writing the above, a newspaper came to my table containing the following : —

" The late meeting at Ipswich [England], of the English Congregational Union, appears to have been one of great interest. The opening address of the chairman, the Rev. Eustace Conder, upon the c Decay of Theology/ was a thoughtful production. Mr. Conder clearly recognized the fact that the old Calvinism has ceased to be the doctrine of the Congregational churches, and feared that in letting it go there had been too little care to supply its place with a consistent substitute. To the work of forming new and more satisfactory statements of the truths which are included in Christianity, he earnestly urged his brethren.

This represents the feeling prevalent in our own country, and in every part of Protestant Christendom. To furnish this " consistent substitute," and this " more satisfactory statement," is the object of this volume.

Contents

PAGE

CHAPTER I. The Creation 29

The world Christ's. — Its early history written on the rocks. — The Garden of Eden prepared, by a local upheaval, in six literal days. — Its history revealed to a seer in a vision.

CHAPTER II. The Fall 37

The history of the Primal Pair given in allegory. — Josephus and the early Christian Fathers so understood it. — Understood as literal, it involves absurdities and contradictions. — Adam and Eve lived for a time unmarried. — When, by and by, Adam became the subject of the passion of sexual love, it was the condition precedent of marriage by divine direction. — The Fall presupposes amoral law, the knowledge of which must have been acquired by external experiment. — Sin is the gratification of natural susceptibilities, inopportune or in excess. — The law of temperance to be learned by experiment. — The excess presupposed in a knowledge of the right law, would induce an abnormal and diseased condition of the susceptibilities. — This is constitutional depravity (auaQrla), and leads to sin. — The sin was subsequent to their marriage. — They must have been under moral obligations from the first — to themselves, each other, God, with a moral character as a necessity. — They were, then, first holy, then sinners. — Sin brought in train accusation of conscience, shame in the presence of each other, and more in the presence of God,

8 CONTENTS.

and they resorted to " fig-leaf" apologies to hide from each other and from God their conscious guilt. — God made them better garments, in which they did not shrink from his presence — the robe of <k the righteousness which is by faith," i. e., he told them of forgiveness and reconciliation if penitent. — The verdict upon the woman and the serpent had no reference to Christ, but implied a perpetual conflict with temptation. — Wrong estimates of the Fall. — They did not fall from a state of security against sin — to themselves, for they sinned — to their children. — Into what " state" did they fall? Into the same arms of love that sustained them before they fell. — They were under the same government parental as before, but, of course, with the gracious element now, and not before, in exercise. — Paul (Rom. v. 12-21) makes less of the Fall than modern theologues. — The theory that the original government was set aside, and a next best substituted, dishonors God. — It has led to the notion of Trinity, and penalty, and commercial atonement. — And this is Orthodox.

Chapter III

Government of God personal and parental. — The religion of the period over-estimated. — No evidence of the piety of Adam. — Eve penitent and trustful. — Abel had faith, presumptively his brother Seth. — Public religious worship terminates with Enos. — Enoch and Noah solitary cases. — No civil government, no ecclesiastical organization, no law of the Sabbath or of marriage. — Chronology of the period; years were moons. — Did the flood destroy the race? — Design of the period?

CHAPTER IV. The Patriarchal Period. . . 76

An advance from the past; distinguished by, —

1. Covenant security for the future.

2. A great and blessed future was promised : in general to

Noah ; more and more specific to Abraham and his sons.

CONTENTS. 9

3. Special divine interpositions.

4. Formal religious worship.

5. A church organization.

6. The Theocratic civil element.

7. The moral law was but partially revealed.

8. Religion out of the line of the covenant.

Chapter V

No improvement in the descendants of Abraham, previous to or during their residence in Egypt. — National civil government, and religious ceremonial. — The former revealed the justice of God, the latter the mercy. — The sacrifices were external acts, in aid of the internal and spiritual. — Atonement made by penitence, and was signified by the blood of the offering. — Influence of Moses, Joshua. — The degradation that succeeded. — The birth of Samuel ; his influence. — The regal office beneficial. — David, Solomon. — Idolatry. — The captivity; its benefits. — Growing spirituality, as indicated by the prophets. — The Psalms of David. — Culture of the later centuries. — Review. — The Jews prepared intellectually for the Messiah.

CHAPTER VI. The Messiah 100

Appeared in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. — Was first educated for, and then inducted into, the Messiahship. — The connection of the Man and the Deity moral. — Growth in the religious character of Jesus even to the last. — The Logos God as revealed. — Apollinarianism takes away our Lord: he cannot, of course, be our Example ; no medium of the sympathy of the heart of God, unless the heart of God comes to us through a human heart. — To deny the humanity of the Messiah scarcely less pernicious than to deny his divinity. — Origen's theory of our common union with God through Christ. — The moral union can be perpetuated in heaven.

IO CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VII. The Kingdom of Heaven — What it Presupposes 1 20

I. With few exceptions, the human race were not under divine

moral government.

II. So far as such government existed, all its motives of good

and evil were derived from this world, and from God as related to us here.

III. The dead, good and bad, passed at death to Hades, and

were there together.

1. Much as are the good and bad in this world.

2. With civil organizations.

3. With ecclesiastical organizations.

4. Under a restraint, and amenable to a tribunal to be es-

tablished by the Messiah.

CHAPTER VIII. The Kingdom of Heaven — What it Implies. 131

The Kingdom of Heaven was inaugurated by the Messiah, and embraces,—

I. The Life of Christ.

1. As a man.

2. And as such perfect.

II. God in Christ — God as revealable.

III. The revelation of a future life.

IV. The sole administration, by the Messiah, of the divine

government. 1. Over both worlds. • 2. The living.

3. The dead.

V. The government of the Messiah, as alike gracious and re-

formatory in both worlds. — This the prevailing opinion of the Christian church in all ages.

1. The Work of the Messiah as essentially gracious.

2. Christ was adapted to his work in both worlds by his

humanity.

CONTENTS. 1 1

3. Christ is the Judge of the living and the dead.

4. Infants are " of the Kingdom of Heaven." — Their pro-

bation must be in Hades.

5. The Messiah's commission embraced both worlds.

6. His work among the angels was Messianic.

7. Paul hoped for the future life of not only the just but

the unjust. — He could not hope to God that men around him would spend an eternity in woe.

8. The biblical representations of the greatness and glory

of the kingdom of Christ imply that something more than a small fraction of the race is to be saved.

9. There are texts that state directly that the gospel is

preached to the dead. 10. Reason demands the fact of future probation — those innermost intuitions that are the voice of God. — Life is brief. — Life is inceptive. — Character is developing towards stability in its kind, and this, rather than time, should be decisive of destiny. — Men are hurried indiscriminately from life. — If an infinite interest is involved in the life of man here, he should know it. — The infant and the heathen know it not. — The Jews even knew it not. — This was the opinion of the early fathers and martyrs.

VI. The moral power in this gracious administration furnished, —

1. By the heart of God as revealed by the Messiah.

2. By the perfect life of Christ as a man — in the flesh —

spirit.

3. By the doctrines he taught.

(«.) The vitiated state of the race constitutionally and

morally. (J?.) Christ had come into the world to save it. (c.) God as a Spirit was to dwell on the earth, and by

special or miraculous agency to bless and save

the world, and guide them in their work. Miracles. — Infidelity. — An especial work of the Spirit is

to change the heart of man. — Infant conversion.

4. By the institution of heaven.

12 CONTENTS.

5. By a perfect system of religious culture in both worlds. (1.) The present world. (2.) The future world. VII. Christ's work of grace to continue in both worlds, till religion has become universal and perfectly controlling in this world. "Behold, I make all things new."

CHAPTER IX. Eternal Punishment — False Advocacy Corrected. 194

The belief in this doctrine less practical than with our fathers. — Statement of the doctrine. — Has the church outgrown it? or is it the unfortunate statement and advocacy of the doctrine that is at fault? — This we think true.

The following are among the false arguments employed : —

1. The necessities of penalty.

2. The claims of justice.*

3. The import of atoiviov.

4. The fact of future suffering.

5. The fact that men die unholy.

6. The fact that there has been a judgment of men, and

their condemnation in this world.

7. The assumption that disbelief of it would demoralize

the world.

8. The teachings of the Old Testament.

9. The voice of antiquity.

10. The fact that in modern times Universalists, to such

an extent, have been irreligious men.

11. Certain phrases in the Gospels?

12. Certain phrases by the Apostles.

13. The symbolic language in the Apocalypse.

Appendix

A. Right and Conscience 231

B. Penalty not an Element in the Moral

Government of God 250

D. The Church and its Functions. . . . 268

PREVIOUS to the astronomic illumination given the world by Copernicus, there were theories explanatory of the phenomena of the heavens. Each theory had its advocates, and they were all alike in error. Of the all-comprehensive principle applicable to the case, and the recognition of which would solve all their difficulties, they were ignorant. We think the endless disputes in the department of religious truth are to be accounted for on a similar principle. The Bible contains a system of religious truth, but, like the facts in nature, the truths of the Bible are not presented in scientific arrangement ; yet the latter as certainly as the former are in harmony with great and all-pervading principles. These principles must be understood, or the isolated facts will not be. The Bible, as a divinely-inspired volume of religious truth, is, in all its parts, in harmony with a perfect Ethics. And these parts can be understood only as they are seen in their relations to the fundamental principles of this science. These principles the church has yet to learn. What is Right, and what Wrong, what is Conscience, what the primal and generic element of the character of God as holy, are questions yet to be answered scientifically, and accepted by most of even the religious teachers of the Church. Yet they are fundamental. And we can no more hope for a consistent theological system, till these questions are correctly answered, than for a science of astronomy without the great Copernican fact.

. It is with these convictions that the author has been for many years in the habit of reading his Bible. He has felt under no obligation to run in the old theological ruts. He has felt at liberty to search and pray for the Truth, even the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself the chief corner-stone. And he has written the following pages, not unwilling, if he must err, to err in new forms. There will be at least the relief of novelty. And he hopes there may be some truth unearthed from the rubbish of past theological ages. The man who has devoted most attention to the history of doctrines will be least likely to take exception to what I am now saying.

Christendom is in a state of transition. The past cannot go into the future. Authority in religious belief and practice is coming to an end. The reign of common sense and of intuitional convictions is at hand.

Man is religious by nature, just as he is social by nature. Hence he is to study himself, and to learn from himself his first lessons in religion. In this way he learns the fact of a Deity, and also the character of that God. The correlates of the being and of the primal elements of the character of God are in the constitution of man. Food is not more certainly a demand of the physical nature of man, than is a God, and certain elements of character in that God, a demand of his moral nature. That God is his Creator, and he has made him for such correlation. And to man normal, there is and can be no authority so high as the testimony of his own consciousness, none so certainly and so directly from God himself.

But the state of man is abnormal. Abnormal functions are implied in and follow in the train of sin. Subjectively, or as constitutional elements of the being, the functions become thus diseased, and their action, of course, in still greater degree, deranged. As an effect of the Fall, moral darkness has come over the mind. The report of our intuitions is, therefore, to be taken with allowance. Still the pri rial elements are there. And with allowance for the influence of depravity, their utterances are not to be disregarded. We see this illustrated in the earnest, and to some extent successful efforts of the more cultivated of the heathen. They " felt after, if haply they might find God," and obtain correct views of his character and government, and of the obligations and privileges of man as his creature. During the four or five centuries that immediately preceded the advent of the Messiah, — the period in which the human mind, unaided by revelation, made its highest attainments, — the philosophers of Greece and Rome occupied positions of sublimity, and expressed opinions of the character of the Deity that should shame some of our modern theologians. I would sooner choose the Deity of some of those great men for my heart's trust and love, than the God of Drs. Shedd, or Hovey, or Hickok. Plato and his disciples " found " a Deity that delighted in the happiness of his creatures ; and their ethics required of men that they too should be benevolent. But these philosophers were not perfectly assured and at rest in their conclusions, and became convinced that the Deity must make a special revelation to the world to meet its wants.

But, that revelation made, it was perverted. Divinely authoritative, it was assumed that man had no longer a necessity to study himself. Moral, and addressed to the moral elements of our nature, and everywhere proceeding on the assumption of the facts of moral science, it was read by men who devoted no successful attention to that science. They had a communication direct from Heaven, and, as they supposed, need no longer study the nature of things. But the Bible assumed this very knowledge of nature. Hence the ethical statements of Paul were as erroneously interpreted as were the historic statements of the first chapter of Genesis — the science of ethics and geology alike unknown. Among the more learned of the first centuries, the Christian fathers, there was the attempt to use what they regarded as philosophy, in the construction of a theology, but with results that were, many of them, monstrous, and that especially were without significance to the common people, who rested satisfied in the fact that they had an inspired volume, and wished only to follow that. And for its meaning they depended on their religious teachers, and ignored the fact that they had a standard in the reports of their own intuitions, by which to try the correctness or otherwise of these teachings. Hence dogmas and creeds became authoritative. This, at first, silent admission was soon crystallized into ecclesiastical law, and to depart from the creed was heresy. After the enthronement of Christianity in the chair of state, and the consequent corruption of the clergy, this principle was carried to the greatest extreme. The people were made the veriest slaves and sycophants of a corrupt and selfish priesthood. It soon became a sin to doubt the word of a priest, still more of his superior. The church was infallible. And the laity were forbidden the private use of the Bible. This was the state of Christendom for several centuries before the Reformation.

The Reformers rebelled against this theory professedly, but it was rather against the abuse of it. And Luther and Calvin had each, with his disciples, essentially the same authority as the priest with the Catholic. The rigor of this principle has indeed somewhat abated, yet it has too much power at the present day.

The infidelity of the past century consisted essentially in a disbelief in the creeds and the teachings of the church, and then, as if fairly represented in these creeds, in the Bible. French infidelity was and is the offspring of Catholicism. The present infidelity in Germany, England, and our own country grows from the soil of Protestant dogmas. I know indeed that such men as Strauss and Renan dabble in historic evidence. But this is not the stronghold of faith in the good. It is the internal evidence, the conscious correlation of Christianity to the nature and wants of the soul.

I have said that, as in the astronomy of the ancients, so in the theology of the past and much of the present, 2 there are errors in fundamental principles. Next to God himself, the moral government of God is the fact of greatest importance to men. Yet in the very fundamental principles of both the moral character of God, and of the nature of his moral government, the theology taught in some of our theological seminaries of the present day is grossly in error. The inferences deduced from such premises must, of course, be supremely wrong. And, in fact, not a few, and some of the fundamental, elements in our theology are monstrous.

An error more fundamental than perhaps any other is in the assumption that fenalty is an element in moral government. As penalty has a prominent place and function in a civil administration, and to dispense with it in case of the penitence of the transgressor would emasculate the government, and virtually divest law of its force, so it is inferred that the divine moral government would, under a forgiving dispensation, be divested of its power, unless some equivalent were furnished for the support of authority. But such an equivalent could be furnished only by one above all personal obligations to the government as a subject. God, and not a creature, must then be the mediator. But this would involve absurdity, except on the hypothesis of different " persons " in the Deity. Hence the doctrine itself, supi'emely absurd, of" three persons in one God." And then those "persons" must be unlike — the Father must be sternly holy, and hate sin and sinners, and take holy delight in punishing them. But the Son must be loving and kind, and ready to suffer for men to save them. And he intercedes (so they render tvTvy/dieiv) with the stern Father. Here then we have two Gods, one of whom we cannot love.

And then, again, as penalty is evil inflicted upon the violators of law as a dissuasive to others from perpetrating the same offence, and has no reference to the good — the reformation or otherwise — of the sufferer ; and as it is for the violation of law, and presupposes therefore a trial and conviction ; and as during the present ltfe it is admitted there are to all, the offers of forgiveness if penitent, there cannot be here such final trial and penal infliction. Therefore, the "judgment " (xglaig) of the New Testament must be, though in the face of the most imperative grammatical demands, pushed forward to the future world. And all men are to be tried there with reference to acceptance or the infliction of penalty. And as such infliction is, of course, incompatible with the means of grace and the fact of reformation, there can be no such grace beyond the grave. Hence the great theatre on which the Savior is to employ his grace for the redemption of our race, is lost to the Christian's creed ; and the day of death is the day of doom alike to the man of gray hairs and to the infant of days ; and the selfish appeal, " Prepare for death," is urged in its adaptation to lead men to a religion of selfishness. And as the adverse judgment with reference to membership in the Kingdom of Heaven, left men upon that ever-flowing tide of sin and woe, from which alone the grace of Christ can rescue them, and as, after the final verdict at death, grace is no more, that tide must bear them on and on eternally ; and the child of but a solitary sin could have no other assignment, and an eternity and an infinitude of woe and despair be his portion.

Hence, too, the necessary assumption that sin is an infinite evil, — the least sin, as of the child, and that such sinner, as the perpetrator of such an evil act, must deserve an infinite punishment, and on the ground of personal ill-desert. He is infinitely guilty, infinitely to blame. He was acting under infinite responsibility, and with infinite obligations. We are speaking of the child who has committed but one sin, and that, of course in the comparative ignorance of childhood. Now, all this may be accepted by men whose creeds consist in words, not ideas. But to men who attend to the voice of God, that comes to them from their inmost intuitions, it is all — infinitude seems to be on hand just now, and we will say — " infinitely " absurd. If the human mind can know anything, it knows that infinite ill-desert cannot attach to such a sin ; and that eternal and infinite suffering would be an infinitely unjust penalty for the same.

But as these theoretic facts enter into the theoretic divine administration, a theoretic character of God and theoretic principles of his government must be made to correspond. The skill of metaphysicians has invented the following method : Justice in God is an " ultimate," and right in ethics is an " ultimate." And this justice is made the primal element in the divine character. Justice is displeased with sin and pleased with its punishment; and as sin is an infinite evil, a just and adequate punishment would be infinite. And it would be right to inflict it. Not only so, God, as infinitely just, and as doing right in this infliction, must be infinitely happy in thus doing right. His justice must be infinitely gratified, and he must, from his nature as infinitely just, look down from " the throne of his glory" with infinite complacency upon the lake of fire and brimstone in which his helpless, but depraved and sinning creatures, — some of them sinning only in Adam as some say, — are writhing in agony. And he will do this forever and ever, and be thus infinitely blessed.* That God is "love," is a fact that must be ignored in its supremacy, and be understood to be a compassionate pity, that needs to be restrained and regulated by justice. And this is called the Gospel of Christ ! This assumes to call itself 14 Orthodoxy." " O, my soul, come not thou into their secret ; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united.*' This whole system is an infinite perversion of the " glorious gospel of the blessed God."

The writer is aware of the penalty attached to the law of regular succession in theology, and is ready to meet it. When John Brown was going to the gallows, he expressed the opinion that to hang him would probably be, to the cause he loved, the best use that could be made of him. However, I am not ambitious of the honor of martyrdom.

Let, then, the principles whose guidance has led us through the system of religious truth be distinctly stated.

First, an ethics whose principles are simple and defined. God is love. Love's correlate is the happiness of others, and this — the happiness of others, and all others — is the object of the divine administration. Right as predicated of the means to that end, signifies adapted.

* Prof. Shedd, in Bib. Rep., 1859, p. 738.

Man, as made in the image of God, finds his normal condition in being, in the particular above named, like God, benevolent, and this as the fundamental element in his character. The law of God requires love. " Love is the fulfilling of the law." " He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him." The rectitude of his acts consists in their adaptedness to the great end. Wrong is the opposite of right. Conscience is a susceptibility to a peculiar kind of pleasure or pain in view of one's right or wrong acts ; and, modified somewhat, in view of the right or wrong of the acts of others.

Secondly, that the moral government of God is simply and purely moral, and that, consequently, its sole appeal is to the moral functions ; i. e., penalty, as appealing simply to fear, is not and cannot be an element in the moral administration of God. During the Theocracy, the moral and the civil were united in the same government — the civil law, with its penalties, to be inflicted in time only, and the moral, with its moral influences, addressing the moral in the human constitution. In the Kingdom of Heaven*, the administration of the Messiah is purely moral.

We think these simple principles have carried us through the entire system of revealed truth, and enabled ns to see, and we will indulge the hope, make plain to others, the great system of religious truth in the Bible. "We have found the book of the law'' that has been so far lost sight of in the rubbish of the dark ages. We have the " Bible regained," and, as a consequence, " the God of the Bible is ours."