Cf. Ez. 14:23—“ye shall know that I have not done without cause all that I have done in it, saith the Lord Jehovah.” Valuable as the vine is for its fruit, it is fit only for fuel when it is barren. Every single sin, apart from the action of divine grace, is the sign of pervading and permanent apostasy. But there is no single sin. Sin is a germ of infinite expansion. The single sin, left to itself, would never cease in its effects of evil,—it would dethrone God. “The idea of disproportion between sin and its punishment grows out of a belittling of sin and its guilt. One who regards murder as a slight offence will think hanging an outrageous injustice. Theodore Parker hated the doctrine of eternal punishment, [pg 1051]because he considered sin as only a provocation to virtue, a step toward triumph, a fall upwards, good in the making.” But it is only when we regard its relation to God that we can estimate sin's ill desert. See Edwards the younger, Works, 1:1-294.
Dr. Shedd maintains that the guilt of sin is infinite, because it is measured, not by the powers of the offender, but by the majesty of the God against whom it is committed; see his Dogm. Theology, 2:740, 749—“Crime depends upon the object against whom it is committed, as well as upon the subject who commits it.... To strike is a voluntary act, but to strike a post or a stone is not a culpable act.... Killing a dog is as bad as killing a man, if merely the subject who kills and not the object killed is considered.... As God is infinite, offence against him is infinite in its culpability.... Any man who, in penitent faith, avails himself of the vicarious method of setting himself right with the eternal Nemesis, will find that it succeeds; but he who rejects it must through endless cycles grapple with the dread problem of human guilt in his own person, and alone.”
Quite another view is taken by others, as for example E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 292—“The notion that the qualities of a finite act can be infinite—that its qualities can be derived from the person to whom the act is directed rather than from the motives that prompt it, needs no refutation. The notion itself, one of the bastard thoughts of mediæval metaphysical theology, has maintained its position in respectable society solely by the services it has been regarded as capable of rendering.” Simon, Reconciliation, 123—“To represent sins as infinite, because God against whom they are committed is infinite, logically requires us to say that trust or reverence or love towards God are infinite, because God is infinite.” We therefore regard it as more correct to say, that sin as a finite act demands finite punishment, but as endlessly persisted in demands an endless, and in that sense an infinite, punishment.
E. This everlasting punishment of the wicked is not inconsistent with God's benevolence.
It is maintained, however, by many who object to eternal retribution, that benevolence requires God not to inflict punishment upon his creatures except as a means of attaining some higher good. We reply:
(a) God is not only benevolent but holy, and holiness is his ruling attribute. The vindication of God's holiness is the primary and sufficient object of punishment. This constitutes a good which fully justifies the infliction.
Even love has dignity, and rejected love may turn blessing into cursing. Love for holiness involves hatred of unholiness. The love of God is not a love without character. Dorner: “Love may not throw itself away.... We have no right to say that punishment is just only when it is the means of amendment.” We must remember that holiness conditions love (see pages 296-298). Robert Buchanan forgot God's holiness when he wrote: “If there is doom for one, Thou, Maker, art undone!” Shakespeare, King John, 4:3—“Beyond the infinite and boundless reach Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death, Art thou damned, Hubert!” Tennyson: “He that shuts Love out, in turn shall be Shut out from Love, and on the threshold lie Howling in utter darkness.” Theodore Parker once tried to make peace between Wendell Phillips and Horace Mann, whom Phillips had criticized with his accustomed severity. Mann wrote to Parker: “What a good man you are! I am sure nobody would be damned if you were at the head of the universe. But,” he continued, “I will never treat a man with respect whom I do not respect, be the consequences what they may—so help me—Horace Mann!” (Chadwick, Theodore Parker, 330). The spirit which animated Horace Mann may not have been the spirit of love, but we can imagine a case in which his words might be the utterance of love as well as of righteousness. For love is under law to righteousness, and only righteous love is true love.
(b) In this life, God's justice does involve certain of his creatures in sufferings which are of no advantage to the individuals who suffer; as in the case of penalties which do not reform, and of afflictions which only harden and embitter. If this be a fact here, it may be a fact hereafter.
There are many sufferers on earth, in prisons and on sick-beds, whose suffering results in hardness of heart and enmity to God. The question is not a question of quantity, but of quality. It is a question whether any punishment at all is consistent with God's benevolence,—any punishment, that is to say, which does not result in good to the punished. This we maintain; and claim that God is bound to punish moral impurity, whether any good comes therefrom to the impure or not. Archbishop Whately says it is as difficult to change one atom of lead to silver as it is to change a whole mountain. If the punishment of many incorrigibly impenitent persons is consistent with God's benevolence, so is the punishment of one incorrigibly impenitent person; if the punishment of incorrigibly impenitent persons for eternity is inconsistent with God's benevolence, so is the punishment of such persons for a limited time, or for any time at all.