On the whole, one must feel, in reading these books and tracts, that such writers are more to be pitied than to be blamed. Confined in the strait-jacket of an austere theology; steeped to the lips in Calvinism; working painfully all his life in sectarian harness; with an angry heaven over his head, and a ruined earth about his feet; his friends and neighbors dropping into hell by thousands every year; never having had any real sight of the blessed face of Jesus; having for them no hope full of immortality, but, instead thereof, a tenor full of damnation,—even a kindly nature and an affectionate heart must suffer, be dwarfed and crippled.
It is not an agreeable task to refute such errors; but believing them equally destructive, in their tendency, to piety and morality,—corrupting the Christian life at its centre, and weakening its chief source of power,—we feel it a duty not to be avoided. Advancing age does not make us conservative in regard to such doctrines. The longer we live, the more we see of their evil tendency. When young, we shrank from attacking them, fearing lest they might contain some truth beyond the range of our limited experience. But, having come to see wherein the essence of Christian truth lies in all varieties of pious experience, we know that this doctrine is an excrescence, weakening always the vital power of the gospel. It rests on custom, on cowardice, on the fear of change, not on any positive insight or substantial knowledge. But, as Tertullian declared of another doctrine defended by precedent, [pg 479] “Christ did not say, ‘I am the Custom,’ but, ‘I am the Truth.’ ”
The time will come in which the Christian Church will look back upon its past belief in this doctrine as it looks back now on its former universal belief in the duty of persecution, the primacy of the pope, or the atonement made by Christ to Satan. It will regard it with the horror with which it now regards its former universal conviction, that God was pleased when his children burned each other alive for difference of opinion. We now shudder when we hear of “An Act of Faith,” consisting in burning at the stake ten or twenty Jews and Protestants. Our children will shudder with a still more inward grief that we could make it an act of faith to believe that God burns millions of his own children in unquenchable fire forever because they deny Calvin's view of the atonement, or the Church definition of the Trinity, or because of any possible amount of sin committed in this world.
We now proceed to add some remarks upon a recent work by Dr. Thompson of New York, a zealous and favorite disciple of the late Dr. Taylor of New Haven. This book, the title of which is, “Love and Penalty,” consists of nine lectures delivered in the Broadway Tabernacle.
With the contents of some of the chapters we have nothing to do. All the arguments for retribution, derived from the nature of God, the nature of man, the course of Providence, the demerit of sin, have for their object to prove what all Christians fully believe. Unitarians and Universalists, Theodore Parker and R. W. Emerson, teach retribution, present and future, with a force which leaves little need of additional arguments from Orthodoxy. They teach a perfect and inevitable retribution, proceeding both from the truth and goodness of God, by means of which every man reaps as he sows. Orthodoxy, they complain, teaches no such full and perfect retribution. All that part of this volume, therefore, which is intended to show the probability of retribution, is wasted, so far as any opposers are concerned. In this part of his book, Dr. Thompson fights as one who beats the air. He is very zealous to disprove that which no one asserts, to prove that which no one denies, and to show the folly of a position which no one assumes.
The confusion referred to runs through the whole book; and perhaps there is no better illustration than this volume presents of that logical fallacy which is called “the irrelevant conclusion.” [pg 480] This fallacy consists in proving one thing, and making men think you have proved another. Dr. Thompson's hearers saw that he proved future retribution, and thought that he proved eternal punishment. We do not suppose that he intended to sophisticate them: the difficulty seems rather to be, that he has sophisticated himself. The ignoratio elenchi is in his own mind. He thinks, because he sees penalty, that he has seen vengeance; that, because he has established retribution, he has demonstrated everlasting punishment.
A reasoner has, no doubt, a perfect right to try to prove two distinct and independent propositions; but he must keep them distinct and independent, and not pretend to be proving one when he is proving the other. He has also a perfect right, if he desires to establish one proposition, to prove another, as the first step towards it; but he has no right to assume or imply that he has made out one of his points, when he has only shown the probability of the other.
Now, our author (p. 19) declares that he has one object; viz., to show the truth of the doctrine of everlasting punishment. He says, “It will be the aim of this series of lectures to show that the doctrine of the eternal punishment of the wicked is in entire harmony with the paternal character of God.” He then proceeds to give the substance of his argument, under eight heads. Six of these only prove future retribution, and only two of them have any direct bearing upon the main question. Yet, through all of them, there runs a quiet assumption, that they are bearing directly on the main question. This is the radical sophism of the whole volume. We may see this more plainly by analyzing some of his chapters.
His first position is this, in Lecture I.: “Our own nature, which is appealed to as refusing to recognize the attribute of punitive justice in a God of love, in fact demands this attribute, as essential to the moral perfection of the Deity—an attribute without which he could not command the confidence and homage of his intelligent creatures.”