THE THIRD AND LAST PLAN OF SALVATION.
The atonement was the third and last resort. The third experiment in any case generally ends the siege whether successful or unsuccessful. After a few thousand years more had elapsed of grief, anger, and disappointment in the practical history of Moses' God, he ventured to try one more experiment in the effort to get his people in the right track,—not so much, however, to get them in the right way, as to have his own wrath appeased. In this way he sanctions the greatest crime ever perpetrated by the hand of man,—that of murder. God the "Father," in order to cancel the sins of his disobedient and rebellious children, and mitigate his own wrath, is represented as proposing to have his "only-begotten son" killed,—at least, as consenting to the act. This looks like "doing evil that good may come of it;" which is a very objectionable principle of moral ethics, according to Paul. How the commission of the greatest of all sins can do any thing towards reforming other sins, or how the punishment of an innocent being can do any thing towards atoning for the sins of the guilty, presents us with a moral problem, shocking both to our common sense and common reason. If the Father's anger could not be appeased or his vengeance satisfied without the perpetration of a horrible murder, and the knowledge that some victim had died a slow and agonizing death, we are forced to the conclusion that he is a cruel and revengeful God, and that his passions overrule his love of justice and his paternal regard for his son. But it appears that this last experiment, whether right or wrong, was attended with as complete a failure as the two preceding ones; and yet it assumes to be the best that "Infinite Wisdom" could devise. And the resources of divine knowledge and skill were apparently exhausted when this scheme culminated. And yet it also failed, according to the admission of its own friends and ardent supporters (the clergy); for they tell us, that, notwithstanding all the schemes and systems that Omniscience and Infinite Prescience could devise to save man, he does not get saved: at least but few are saved, and they have to "work out, their own salvation with fear and trembling." Nineteen-twentieths of the human family, the clergy tell us, are still traveling "the broad road," and are finally lost, notwithstanding all the labored experiments and expedients of omniscient or Jehovahistic wisdom to save them. With this view of the case, the thought is suggested that it was hardly worth while to have gone to the trouble and expense of fitting up a heaven for the few that are saved. It certainly "doesn't pay." And this conclusion is the more forcible in view of the fact that it must be rather a lonesome place, and consequently not a very desirable home or situation to live in; for we are told it is "a house of many mansions," "and yet few there be that find the strait and narrow road" leading to it. Hence we may conclude that many of the rooms or mansions are empty. Such a lonesome heaven could not be congenial or adapted to any class of saints but monks and hermits.
We have now briefly examined the three plans of salvation which lie at the foundation of the Christian religion, and shown that they are all failures according to their own witnesses. In view of this fact, we can not wonder that Moses' God is represented as saying that he repented for having made man, and that it grieved him to the heart (Gen. vi. 6). Such a series of signal failures is enough to discourage even a saint or a God.
True religion sees God in every thing, reads his scriptures on every page of Nature's open Bible, and feels him in the inspiration of the soul. It calls God father, not king; Christ a brother, not a redeemer. It loves all men, but fears no God. Its God is not a tyrant, but a loving father. It looks upon Jesus Christ as a truly good man, but not a God; as a noble, loving, benevolent being, but endowed with human frailties. It considers him a martyr to truth and right, but not a just victim to his father's wrath, or the just object of a bloody sacrifice. It regards the laws of nature as sufficient, if diligently studied and strictly observed, to serve as a guide for man's earthly life without any special revelation. It holds that man's natural love of goodness, justice, mercy, and honesty is capable of endless expansion and augmentation. It walks by the light of science. The many grand truths of the age, developed by the onward march of mind, form its infallible laws, and constitute its living virtues. It uses reason for a lamp, and an enlightened intellect for a guide. It ties no martyr to the stake, piles the faggots around no heretics. It issues no dogmas, no bulls, no canons, and hangs man's salvation upon no infallible revelation. Christians say, Give us a better revelation; Christ said, "Cease to do evil, and [then] learn to do well." All wrong and hurtful institutions should be pulled down or abandoned, and trust to finding better ones. Remove the weeds from the soil, and a healthy and useful vegetation will spring up in their place. The true religion grants perfect freedom to all human beings; leaves human thought as free and unfettered as the wind, as free as the rays of sunlight which fall upon every hill and every valley, and rest upon the bosom of the deep.