“The ‘Country Parson,’ in his late work, the ‘Autumn Holidays,’ contends that the fear of future punishment in another world has little influence in deterring from crime. He ought to have added, that the reason may be, that there is so little belief in any spiritual world whatever, among men of grosser sensuality; and that future punishment, as it is preached in the old theology, is so arbitrary as to seem unreal, and is losing its power over all thinking minds. The following case is cited from the experience of a Scotch minister. No ministers, let it be remembered, preach the literal flames of a local hell in tones more awful than they.
“His parishioners were sadly addicted to drinking to excess. Men and women were given alike to this degrading vice. He did all he could to repress it, but in vain. For many years he warned the drunkards, in the most solemn manner, of the doom they might expect in another world; but, so far as he knew, not a pot of ale or glass of spirits the less was drunk in the parish in consequence of his denunciations. Future woe melted into mist in the presence of a replenished jug or a market-day. A happy thought struck the clergyman. In the neighboring town, there was a clever medical man, a vehement teetotaler; him he summoned to his aid. The doctor came, and delivered a lecture on the physical consequences of drunkenness, illustrating his lecture with large diagrams, which gave shocking representations of the stomach, lungs, heart, and other vital organs as affected by alcohol. These things came home to the drunkards, who had not cared a rush for final perdition. The effect produced was tremendous. Almost all the men and women of the parish took the total abstinence pledge; and since that day drunkenness has nearly ceased in that parish. Nor was the improvement evanescent; it has lasted two or three years.”
Tholuck, in his charming work on the Sermon on the Mount, speaks thus (“Bergpredigt Christ. von A. Tholuck.”) “Two principal defects are found in the usual treatment of this doctrine: first, the different aspects and relations of the kingdom of God are by many considered as different meanings of the word, and are left standing side by side, without any attempt to ground their unity in some fundamental idea. Or, secondly, and still worse, a single aspect of the term is taken up, and the rest are wholly neglected. Examples of the first defect are to be found in Zwingle, in his note to John 3:3. (Here the kingdom of God is considered as divine doctrine and preaching of the gospel, as in Luke 18; sometimes it is taken for eternal life, Matt. 25; Luke 14; sometimes for the church and congregation of the faithful, as Matt. 13:24.) The later lexicographers, as Schleusner and Bretschneider, have not avoided these vague statements; and the last of them is particularly defective in his article on this phrase. Trahl more correctly sums up all these significations of the word thus: ‘Happiness, present and future, obtained through Christ.’ But in this definition the notion of ‘a kingdom’ is omitted. The opposite defect of taking only one of the meanings of the matter, to the neglect of the rest, is to be found, for example, in Koppe and Keil, according to whom the expression relates merely to the future reign of the Messiah one day to be established.
“Our own explanation of this expression starts from the phrase ‘kingdom of God,’ which explains the others, ‘kingdom of heaven’ and ‘kingdom of Christ.’ We think that the fundamental idea has been grasped by none more correctly than by Origen among the ancients, and by Calvin among the reformers. The phase of the idea principally dwelt upon by the Church Fathers may be seen in their explanation of the third petition of the Lord's Prayer, which Augustine especially examines profoundly. Most of them understand by it the realm of glory, the future revelation of Christ. Origen alone, in his book on Prayer, taken a more exact view of the subject. In like manner Calvin, in his Commentary on the Harmony. So Luther, in his fine Sermon on the Kingdom of God. Our own fundamental view we express thus: ‘A community in which God reigns, not by force, but by being obeyed freely from love, and which is therefore necessarily united in itself by mutual love.’ The Saviour came upon the earth to found such a community, and since it can only be completely established after he has conquered all his enemies, this kingdom of Christ belongs in its perfection to the other world.”
We have no room to enter into an examination of this question at this time, and can only give a general statement on this subject from one of the authorities which happens to be at hand:—
“All the Fathers” (before Augustine, fourth and fifth century) “differed from Augustine in attributing freedom of will to man in his present state. Thus Justin: ‘Every created being is so constituted as to be capable of vice or virtue.’ Cyril of Jerusalem: ‘Know that thou hast a soul possessed of free will; for thou dost not sin by birth (κατὰ γένεσιν), nor by fortune, but we sin by free choice.’ All the Latin Fathers also maintained that free will was not lost after the fall. The Fathers also denied in part, that man is born infected with Adam's sin. Thus Athenagoras says in his Apology, ‘Man is in a good state, not only in respect to his Creator, but also in respect to his natural generation.’ ”—Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism. Translated by Rev. Ralph Emerson, Professor in the Theological Seminary, Andover, Mass.
Dr. Horace Bushnell, a favorite authority with Dr. Huntington, whom Dr. Huntington quotes largely, and whose views he earnestly recommends, gives us his testimony to this point, thus (“God in Christ,” pp. 130, 131):—
“A very large portion of Christian teachers, together with the general mass of disciples, undoubtedly hold three real living persons in the interior nature of God; that is, three consciousnesses, wills, hearts, understandings.”
“A very large portion of Christian teachers” hold, then, to a belief in three Gods; and with them is joined “the general mass of the disciples.” The only Unity held by these teachers is, he goes on to say, “a social Unity.” Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are, in their view, socially united only, and preside in that way, as a kind of celestial Tritheocracy, over the world. This heresy, he says, “because of its clear opposition to Unitarianism, is counted safe, and never treated as a heresy.” That is, the Christian Church allows the belief in three Gods, and will not discipline those who hold that opinion; but, if you believe strictly and only in one God, you cannot be saved!
Thus speaks Dr. Bushnell on this head (“God in Christ,” p. 139):—