"Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works which have been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee."[559]
This aspect of the Divine government, which Dr. Whedon has felicitously styled "the equation of probational advantages," relieves our sadness in view of the moral condition of the world. "The Judge of all the earth will do right" in the case of every human soul that has passed through this probationary scene. His omniscient eye can take in at one view all the influences and circumstances, favorable or unfavorable, which have surrounded each individual, and fix the precise amount of responsibility. He will "overlook" the "defect of doubt and taints of blood," the faults of education and sins of ignorance, and He will make a due allowance for the power of temptation, the trammels of evil associations, and an enfeebled and perverted nature. "He is full of compassion, and his tender mercies are over all his works." "He knows our frame, and He remembers that we are dust." We may safely conjecture that a negro hamlet in Central Africa, however inferior in its temporal moral aspects, may, in its prospect for an eternal destiny, be superior to many an American village. And in the dregs of our large cities there are numbers who are excluded as effectually from the knowledge of the truth as the heathen, and are scarcely developed to the level of responsibility. These may be the least in the kingdom of heaven, but by the law of moral equation they can not be excluded.[560] In every nation under heaven, he that has feared God and wrought righteousness, according to his knowledge and ability, will be "accepted of God."
The moral government of God secures an infallible and equitable retribution by binding character and consequence in indissoluble bonds, and evolving a reward or a punishment out of that permanent moral state of the soul which has been induced by the free self-determination of man.
"Character," says Novalis, "is a completely fashioned will (vollkommen gebildeter Wille). It is that ultimate stress and determination of the soul which results from the coherence and complexure of habits, and habit is the result of repeated acts of voluntary choice. From the persistence of habit a fixed disposition and cast of the inner man is evolved which constitutes his moral individuality."
Even in this formative process we can discern the workings of the law of retribution. One good deed handsels a second, and renders its performance more easy and pleasurable. The man who obeys his conscience feels that he can respect himself. He has a consciousness of growing power; a sense of dignity and moral worth. The moral law is for him "a law of liberty." On the other hand, one sinful deed involves a second, and drags it after it. One lie demands another to maintain its consistency. One act of injustice emboldens to the next. Self-respect is broken down by license, and the path is prepared and cleared for further iniquity. Thus, by the repetition of sinful deeds, restraints are overborne, depraved habits are engendered, vice acquires a mastery over the man, and he becomes a slave. There is a deep humiliation in this sense of degradation and unworthiness. The sinner despises himself because of his weakness, and blushes in secret places at the remembrance of his own debasement.
The principal happiness or misery of man consists in the settled state of his own heart, and not in the outward conditions of his daily life. All human plaudits are as naught compared with the approval of one's own conscience; and no penal inflictions can compare with the anguish of remorse. The inward peace of the righteous soul, the disquietude and misery of the sinful soul, are the blossom and the fruitage of the seed which has been sown, and the stem and branches which have been nurtured by the voluntary choices and acts of man. "He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting." The connection between sin and punishment is no arbitrary or accidental connection. It is just as much a relation between cause and effect as the relation between sowing and reaping in the physical world. "To cause the mind to punish itself, to work a retribution out of ourselves, to secure it by fixed nature, to inflict it by inflexible necessity, to convert the capacity of sin into the instrument of suffering, is the prerogative of Divine rule."[561]
IV. The end of moral government.—We have said that the end of government, in general, is the maintenance of order. The end of moral government is the maintenance of moral order in the realm of free self-determined powers. The moral order must consist in conformity to the idea of the absolute good. The personality of God (the essential momenta of which are reason and freedom, holiness and love) is per se, in its totality, the absolute good. Infinite Personality is but another name for Absolute Perfection.
The highest good for a created dependent personality is "to resemble God" in all those attributes or perfections which constitute personality. It is to be fully established in harmony with God's moral character, unified with Him in will, glorified with Him in holiness, and perfected with Him in the blessedness of love. The highest perfection of personal being is moral order, and therefore human personality, conceived in its purity and perfection, is the end of the Divine government.[562]
This we have called "the ideal order of moral life," because it is not yet realized in the world. We must believe, however, that the final triumph of goodness is a part of the great world-plan. We must not only believe, but know, that the great design of creation, the reason for which the world exists at all, is that in it goodness may come to its final realization. And this conviction is grounded on the fact that the moral life of humanity has its source in the same Being who called the world into existence, and who is conducting this present dispensation to a glorious consummation, in which He shall "reconcile all things unto Himself,... whether they be things in earth or things in heaven," and "gather together in one all things in Christ," that "God may be all in all."
Christianity bases all the obligations and sanctions of morality on the great truths that God is near to man, that He sustains him every moment in life, that He is the Father of the human spirit, and that He governs man in order to perfect his nature and bring him into an everlasting fellowship with Himself. Christianity knows nothing of "a science of morals" which is not based upon the correlations between man and God, nor of a morality which forgets God and disregards the most sacred and fundamental of all duties, namely, the duties we owe to God. A morality based solely upon the relations in which we stand to our fellow-men is at best but secular and utilitarian. A morality which is grounded upon the relation of volition to the state of the sensibility, and regards "happiness as our being's end and aim," is egoistic and selfish. A morality which rests upon our relation to God, the absolute good, and which looks backward rather than forward for its motive, is unselfish and Christian.