Justice and mercy, sermons on penalty and forgiveness

Preface To The Second Edition

SINCE the eight sermons forming the original series were first published, there have been many calls for them, especially in the West and South, in places where new liberal movements were being started. They are now re-issued with as many more upon similar topics, in the hope that they may be useful in an educational way, in places where the doctrines they contain are not familiar.

MARION D. SHUTTER, (Church of Redeemer, First Universalist.) Minneapolis, May 9, 1894.

Dedication:

TO

REV. JAMES H. TUTTLE, D. D.

THIS VOLUME IS

AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED,

BY THE AUTHOR.

Contents

I. The Discrowned King of Darkness, - 7

II. Joseph Cook's Theory of Probation, - 23

III. Endless Punishment from the Stand-

II. Joseph Cook's Theory Of Probation

[Sunday Evening, Oct. 19th, 1890.]

I hold in my hand a lecture by Joseph Cook, interspersed with marks of "applause" and "laughter." In that lecture Mr. Cook proved to the satisfaction of a large congregation in the city of Boston, that under the government of a just and loving and all-powerful God, sin and suffering would exist forever ; that multitudes of our fellow-beings would continue in rebellion and torment endless ; that even were God so disposed, he could do nothing to help them. Their condition must remain immitigable and rayless. In that congregation there were undoubtedly many whose dearest friends or relatives had passed to the other world with what Mr. Cook would call "permanent evil character;" and who consequently will sin and suffer through interminable ages. And yet that congregation greeted those statements with applause!

That was a marvellous spectacle, — that clapping and stamping audience, — a marvellous spectacle for modern civilization! It is one of those things that make us doubt sometimes the superior humanity of our generation. It is true, we have our societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals ; but in the latter part of the nineteenth century, hundreds of professedly Christian people in Boston shout over the prospect of myriads of human beings writhing in torment without remedy and without hope ! Let Christian America no longer censure Pagan Rome. The assembly that clap their hands over the hell of Mr. Joseph Cook have forfeited their right to condemn the Roman populace who witnessed with pleasure gladiators hew each other to pieces in the amphitheater! Indeed, the Pagan has the advantage. The sufferings over which he gloated were but momentary. Those over which the Christian rejoices outlast the sun, endure while the throne of the Eternal stands. And still we send out missionaries to convert heathen tribes from their barbarities ! Let us trust that the news of this demonstration may never penetrate to the jungles of those savage objects of missionary solicitude.

Last Sunday evening, Mr. Cook repeated some portions of that lecture in this city and was greeted with enthusiasm. The newspaper reports say: "The speaker here arrayed a host of Biblical quotations to prove his case. The Good Book taught from cover to cover that final permanence of character was reached in this world, and all life and nature corroborated it. Reason, conscience and common sense all taught it, and he could have little respect for the intellect of the man who held otherwise."

Nevertheless we venture to hold otherwise !

" It is not the best way," says Mr. Cook, " to teach the truth of future punishment, to say that a man is punished forever and ever for the sins of that hand's-breadth of duration we call time, If the soul does not repent of these with contrition, and not merely with attrition, the nature of things forbids its peace. But the Biblical and natural truth is, that prolonged dissimilarity of feeling with God may end in eternal sin. If there is eternal sin, there will be eternal punishment. Final permanence of character under the laws of judicial blindness, and the self-propagating power of sin, is the truth emphasized by both God's word and his works."

This, then, is the gist of that phase of the doctrine of which Mr. Cook is high priest: that character tends to permanence, good or evil; that it becomes so fixed and unchangeable in this world, that after death it cannot be affected in one way or another. The good cannot be modified by evil; the evil character cannot be modified by good, however strong and persistent its appeals. The statue of Memnon, in the classic fable, when touched by the rising sun, gave forth sweet music. But harder than the black marble of that ancient statue, is the heart that the sins of a few brief earthly years have petrified. The light even from Him who is said to be our sun, as well as our shield, can evoke from that flinty substance no heavenly melody ! So teaches Mr. Cook. Immutable and unyielding sin is accompanied by perpetual suffering.

This is the doctrine. What shall we say of it? Let us not say that " we can have little respect for the intellect of those who hold it;" because the fact is there are some elements of truth in this theory ; there is truth enough in it to mislead even a great intellect into the belief that it is the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The truths in that doctrine, however, are preached from this pulpit. We have never faltered, —

In laying emphasis upon the value of the present. " It is with a chill in my inmost spiritual self," said Mr. Cook last Sunday night, "that I hear of a doctrine being preached which encourages men in the delay of repentance." When has any such encouragement ever been held out from this pulpit ? When have we ever flung to the breeze a banner inscribed with the legend "Indifference"? When have we ever taught that it mattered not how we treated our privileges or improved our opportunities ? Every sin robs us of some comfort, impairs our usefulness, prolongs our misery, postpones our bliss. " To-day," and not "to-morrow," is our watchword.

This pulpit has never- failed to make prominent the power of habit. Who does not know from obervation the might of sin ? Who has not, in hisown experience, felt the chains himself ? With what anguish and struggle are the fetters of evil habit finally broken !

This pulpit has never faltered in teaching the sinfulness of sin and the certainty of penalty, — a penalty that cannot be evaded by any form of vicarious sacrifice.

Mr. Cook complained of a " chill in his spiritual being," when he heard of a doctrine that " encourages men in the delay of repentance." Where may he hear such doctrine ? Not in this church. I will tell him. He will hear by the death-bed of every hardened sinner to whom an evangelical clergyman is called, a doctrine that encourages every other hardened sinner to wait till he lies upon his own death-bed. He will hear upon every gallows a doctrine that will encourage other criminals to wait till they stand beneath the fatal noose. He preaches such a doctrine himself in the prelude to his published lecture on the per manence of character, — a doctrine which practically nullifies the lecture that follows : " Look on the cross and you will lose the desire to sin. * * * This is a direction which a man cannot die following, and die without deliverance from the love of sin and the fear of its penalties." The doctrine that there is some other being in this universe who has done your work, obeyed the law of God in your stead, suffered the endless penalty that should have fallen upon you, — a being in whom you may say at the very last moment " I believe," — this is a doctrine which, in causing men to delay repentance, may well "strike a chill to Mr. Cook's inner spiritual self."

The truths in that doctrine of final permanence, are not new or startling to those who are accustomed to worship in this house. But these principles do not comprise the whole truth — they are not the complete gospel. We add what Mr. Cook leaves out.

If in our contemplation of man and our outlook upon the universe, we saw nothing but the power of habit and the tendency of sin, — if we saw nothing but the fetters which bind, the evils that blight, the iniquities that harden, — if we saw nothing but the broad road down which multitudes madly plunge, — if along this dark way we saw no rising light, no redemptive agencies, no counteracting forces, — then we might believe that sin once started would, by the power of habit, go on, until it hurled us helpless and changeless at last into the abyss.

But right here is the fatal defect in this theory. It starts this tendency, and takes no account of anything else in the man himself or in his conditions. It isolates him. It makes nothing of forces that work in the opposite direction. It leaves out many things that must enter into the account. If you take a ball and give it an impulse, it will roll continuously along the way in which it is started, if you can roll it in a vacuum; but you must know that when your ball begins rolling, the invisible hands of gravitation grasp it, the powers of the air oppose it, the friction of the earth retards, until at last the original impulse which set it in motion dies out.

If you can start the soul in sin, and leave it in a moral vacuum, or surround it with nothing but sin, and place it in a universe where only sin can operate upon it, you may make it permanent in iniquity. But this is precisely what cannot be done. The real question that confronts us is this: What will be the outcome of the soul with this tendency to sin, in its actual environment ? The answer to this question that affirms permanence of evil, leaves out most essential considerations.

I. It omits the facts of human life.

When it makes death the limit beyond which character cannot be formed, it makes a limit that is purely arbitrary ; that is not warranted by the facts of life, so far as we can observe them and judge from them.

What are the facts ? so far as we can observe, character is a thing of gradual formation. We know of no such thing in this world as a man becoming in an instant righteous or wicked. Perfection is not reached by a sudden leap ; nor hopeless wickedness by a sudden fall. To say that all this is accomplished at the moment of death, is to affirm something out of harmony with all that goes before it. It is to exalt an incident into a revolution.

Those who hold this theory exhort men to repent, so long as a single thread is uncut by the fatal shears. If there is hope one minute before death, why not one minute after ? What makes the mighty difference ?

Again, stand by the death-beds of the worst and best men that you have ever known. The best man is imperfect ; the worst has some lingering trace of good, — at least some possibility of good. Does death remove all the imperfections of the one, and blot out all the possibilities of the other?

Again, consider how many of our race die before character has had an opportunity to develop. They have reached years of responsibility, it is true ; but who can say in the case of your boy or girl of ten or fifteen or even twenty, that the character has already acquired an unchanging bent for good or evil ? But this theory obliges you to say when death comes to the unformed youth, " There is no change beyond ! " If that crude, raw, unfinished child has not, to use the somewhat ponderous language of Mr. Cook, "surrendered himself completely, affectionately, irreversibly to God," his character is fixed for eternity in sin, he will always be a rebel against God, and will always suffer the penalty of a traitor. I affirm that neither scripture nor reason supports such a preposterous notion. Mr. Cook diverts attention from these cases, by choosing as his examples, such characters as Caligula, Nero, Charles IX, and Milton's Satan ; but if death is the limit, he must not ignore the ones I have mentioned. A theory that deals with extreme cases alone must not be generalized into a doctrine for all.

Nor will I, upon the other hand, ignore the extreme examples he has mentioned. Let us take an instance belonging to this class, — an instance that is furnished by Mr. Crowe. " The case of two men, brothers, twins who have grown up in crime, who have been steeped in vice, until there is not an evil thing they have left undone ; year by year their names have been the synonym of whatsoever is bad. While they were still young, they seemed altogether possessed of the devil, but they sank still lower through years of debauchery, till in middle life one of them was killed in a drunken brawl. ' Surely,' you say, * he had sinned to the uttermost, his evil heart had reached the stage of permanence.' But his brother, in all wickedness his twin, lived on the same evil way, growing daily worse, if possible, for ten years more ; then, God knows how, there came a change, and the seemingly dead heart awoke to life. The horrible sinner of sixty years faced about, began to live righteously, became a minister, and for twenty years more preached and lived the gospel of Jesus. His character was not fixed when his brother died ; and his brother's character, like his, was not fixed. The death line is not the limit." Such conversions are common. Saul, when stricken down on his way to Damascus, was older in years and in sin than Nero. Who will say that when Saul, the blood-stained persecutor of the Church, could be changed into an apostle, Nero himself was beyond hope ?

II. This theory ignores the human will

ITSELF.

Mr. Cook appreciates the difficulty and tries to meet it. He says, "that self-propagating power of sin, may produce a state of soul in which evil is chosen as good, and in which it is forever too late to mend, and yet not destroy free will." The illustration he uses is Milton's Satan. " Is John Milton putting together a self-contradiction, when he pictures Satan as making his evil good and as yet retaining a free will ? I affirm that you know John Milton's Satan is not an impossible character." Milton's Satan is possible only in the realm of the imagination. His counterpart is not to be found in actual life. A being in whom there is evil and only evil, unmixed evil, unadulterated malignity, evil unredeemed by a touch of good, never did exist in the history of the world, and does not exist to-day. And only of such a man could we say that he would always choose evil. Mr. Cook starts with a speculation and proves it by a fiction. A puff of air is his hypothesis, and clouds are his arguments. He starts with a figment of the metaphysical imagination and demonstrates it by a figment of the poetical imagination. The man in the parable who built his house upon sand, had a firmer foundation.

Let us look into this matter a little further.

You say the soul will always continue to sin. What is necessary to a sinful choice ? Two courses, one right, the other wrong, must be presented ; the being to whom they are presented must see that one is right and the other wrong, and have the power to choose between them. Without these conditions, the human being is a machine, without responsibility and incapable of sin. If two ways are open, and the will remains free, how can you say with confidence that the evil will inevitably be chosen ?

Freedom of the will is often surprisingly illustrated in this world, in cases where to all appearo ance habits were fixed. Smoking and drinking, etc., have been given up in advanced age. Why may there not be an extension of similar facts into the next world ? Is it so surprising a thing to see new traits of character appear in advancing life ; to see character entirely revolutionized ? Milton's Satan is an impossibility ; but George Eliot's Silas Marner is not. The little child he picked up on his door-step created for him a new heaven and a new earth !

The most desperate and hardened lives have been changed here, by a loving word, a tear, a hand-clasp. I will not, however, depend upon the novel. I will take an instance from real life that is vouched for by a person now present in this audience :

In a prison at New Bedford, Mass., there was a man whom we will call Jim, who was a prisoner on a life sentence. He was regarded as a desperate, dangerous man, ready for rebellion at any hour. He planned a general outbreak, but was betrayed by one of the conspirators. He plotted a general mutiny or rebellion, and was again betrayed. He then kept his own counsel ; and, while never refusing to obey orders, he obeyed like a man who only needed backing to make him refuse. One day in June a party of strangers came to the institution. One was an old gentleman, the others ladies, and two of the ladies had small children. The guide took one of the children on his arm, and the other walked until the party came to climbing the stairs. Jim was working near by, sulky and morose as ever, when the guide said to him :

" Jim, won't you help this little girl up stairs ?"

The convict hesitated, a scowl on his face ; and the little girl held her arms out to him and said, " If you will, I guess I'll kiss you." The scowl vanished in an instant, and he lifted the child as tenderly as a father. Half way up the stairs she kissed him. At the head of the stairs she said, " Now you've got to kiss me, too."

He blushed like a woman, looked into her innocent face, and then kissed her cheek, and before he reached the foot of the stairs again the man had tears in his eyes. From that day he was a changed man, and no one in the place gave less trouble.

If such changes take place here, in those whose characters are regarded as permanent in evil, why not hereafter ?

III. This theory ignores the very constitution OF THE UNIVERSE.

This universe was conceived in goodness, so ordered as to produce goodness, and destined to end in goodness.

Why does good character tend to permanence ?

Because it is in harmony with all the great forces in the universe. Why does not bad character tend to permanence ? Because everything is opposed to it.

Dr. S. Crane in a remarkable article upon this subject, has made the following supposition :

11 Now, put a human soul into this universe and start him in the direction of evil, and what possibility, not to say probability, is there of that soul continuing on in that direction forever ? His sin has thrown him out of harmony with everything around him. Everything works against him. All the great forces of creation beat upon him. All the righteous laws of the universe smite him with their penalties. The nature of things is armed at every point for his defeat. The whole universe, with God behind it, is set in the most determined opposition to him. How absurd, then, to hold that that soul, that poor human soul, can hold out to all eternity in opposition to that universe ; that he can stand up forever and defy all the powers of creation working under the eye of God for his subjection. The doctrine which teaches this, is not only atheistic, but it turns the universe into a farce. Created to be the great promoter of righteousness, and armed with the powers of the Infinite to this end, it utterly fails to bring this rebellious soul into obedience. He who would mock the Ah mighty and burlesque his universe, cannot do it more effectually than by teaching such a doctrine as this.

That the absurdity of this position may be seen more effectually, let the factors of this problem, the characters in this picture, change places. Suppose all its great laws and forces tended to produce iniquity. Suppose all its powers and the whole drift of its movement were in the direction of unrighteousness. Suppose it was conceived in sin, brought forth in iniquity, and is now governed and ordered unto wickedness by the devil himself.

Into this universe put a human soul started in the way of righteousness. Would any one believe that it could continue on in that way forever ? Would not every one regard it as the greatest absurdity to teach that this soul with no hand to help, and nothing but his own finite will with which to resist, could hold out to all eternity against all the malignant forces of this malignant universe, directed and impelled by the very spirit of evil, and all working to compass his ruin ? In such a universe could any man believe for a moment that a righteous tendency — admitting that such a tendency could exist — would be allowed to go on until it became permanent ?

Why, then, believe that a tendency in sin can be permanent in this universe, a universe of

38 JUSTICE AND MERC\.

righteousness in which human souls are placed ? Why believe that a sinful soul can hold out forever against God and his universe, and yet refuse to believe that a righteous soul could hold out forever against the devil and his universe ?"

It is the teaching of history and experience that evil must die. Only that which is good lives and flourishes. Moral force alone persists.

"This is he, who, felled by foee, Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows; He to captivity was sold, But him no prison-bars would hold: Though they sealed him in a rock, Mountain chains he can unlock ; Thrown to lions for their meat, The crouching lions kissed his feet ; Bound to the stake, no flames appalled, But arched o'er him an honoring vault. This is he men mis-call Fate, Threading dark ways, arriving- late, But ever coming in time to crown The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down."

The great law of the universe, therefore, as we read it, is not that character, good and bad, equally tend to permanence, but that goodness tends to permanence; and that evil in the long run must perish.

This is the verdict of all profound philosophy.

Thus Emerson says : " Evil, according to the old philosophers, is good in the making. That pure malignity can exist is the extreme proposition of unbelief. It is not to be entertained by a rational agent, it is atheism, it is the last profanation. The divine effort is never relaxed, the carrion in the sun will convert itself to grass and flowers." Carlyle, too, expresses this law of the universe:, "The best philosophy teaches that the very consequences (not to speak of the penalties at all) of evil actions die away and become abolished long before eternity ends, that it is only the consequences of good actions that are eternal, for these are in harmony with the laws of this universe and add themselves to it, and co-operate with it forever ; while all that is not in harmony with it must necessarily be without continuance, and fall dead, as perhaps you have heard in the sound of a Scottish psalm amid the mountains ; the true notes alone support one another, all following the one true rule. The false notes, each following its different false rule, quickly destroy one another, and the psalm which was discordant enough near at hand, is perfect melody when heard from afar."

IV. Finally, this theory leaves out God.

It fails to base itself upon any adequate view of the Divine government.

One of several suppositions is possible. Permanence in evil may be affirmed. If God was not able to foresee the outcome, and has grown discouraged, leaving things to run on as they will to whatsoever destiny they may chance to find. If he is not able to influence his children ; if he has made souls which he cannot handle. If he has formed natures whose secret springs of action he does not understand. If he is ?iot good but fiendish and delights in sin and suffering. Upon any of these grounds, permanence in evil may be maintained.

The permanence of evil either in the individual or the universe may not be affirmed, if we admit that God is wise, able and willing to save — not by compulsion, but as he always saves, by the force of moral influence. Penalty there will be — justice, but not brutality or cruelty. "Our God is a consuming fire ; " but he burns -the dross and refines the gold. Mr. Cook admits, in closing his lecture, that the number of the saved may be greater than the number of the lost, — may bear to the lost the same proportion that the lawabiding community bears to the convicts in prisons. But what is a prison after all, but a testimony to the imperfection of human government ? It is a part of the rude machinery — the best we yet know — of holding in check certain vicious elements of society. But even human governments as they advance in wisdom, turn their prisons, so far as possible, into schools of education, discipline, and reformation, believing that society is protected and justice satisfied, in transforming these outlaws into useful citizens. In this increasing spirit of humanity have we not a divine revelation that gives us glimpses at least of heaven's procedure ? May we not believe that, in the perfect government of God, the prison house of souls, will itself be an agency of redemption ? Will the divine scepter have complete sway until the convicts in perdition's cells be turned into loyal citizens of heaven ?

" But," you ask, " will Nero and Paul then both be saved ?" That question does not trouble Paul as much as it does Mr. Cook. Who would rejoice more than Paul if sometime in the sweep of ages, his ancient enemy should come purified and penitent, up to the foot of the throne ? Would Paul who gave his life to save just such characters, step forward to cast him down ? What revenge does any noble soul desire, but that his most venemous foe should turn from his sin and live ? Paul himself had wrought much evil, had brought many a Christian to prison and to death. You might ask whether Paul ought to share the heaven of the saints he had murdered. Ought the murderer and his victims, in this case, both to be saved ? On one occasion, Paul held the garments of the ruffians who beat out Stephen's life, and urged them to their bloody work. Upon the face of the dying Stephen streamed a light from heaven that made his face like the face of an angel. But I think that even a brighter radiance than this beamed from the face of Stephen when, years after, the golden gates flew open, and the spirit of his ancient foe entered the kingdom ! In the agony of the cross Jesus prayed for his murderers. Did he believe that his prayer would be answered ? Did he want it answered ? If so, the day will yet come when the pierced hands of the Great Martyr will clasp in forgiveness the hands that nailed him to the tree. But those hands will be no longer polluted with blood, those hearts will be no longer filled with hatred. In the consuming fires of God's unending and tireless love, the stains and the evil will have been purged away forever !

III. Endless Punishment From The Stand- Point Of Reason

[Sunday evening, October 26th, 1890.]

"And why, even of yourselves, judge ye not what is right" — Luke 12: 57.

It is related that " when they dug for the dry dock, in the navy yard at New York, they struck a central spring, and the engineer said they had better have some cement put on it to stop it up. They opened a hole and put in some cement, but the next morning the cement was gone and the spring was bubbling up again. Then the engineer said there had better be some solid masonry to shut down the spring ; so they built it in carefully with masonry. The spring waited until they got home and then burst out again. Then they determined to drive piles down and fix it. They did drive piles, and fixed it, but the spring bubbled up again just as if it did not care anything about engineers or engineering. After they had spent some months in trying to stop the spring, they built a curb around it and let it run. Afterwards they found that it had most of the east end of Long Island pushing it out, and no piles, nor masonry, nor cement could match the secret underground force by which it was impelled."