1st. The premises are monstrous. Here we must add the qualification, they are monstrous to us. The God of these writers is not the God we recognize; the views they have of human nature are antipodal to ours. We believe in a Creative Spirit, the essense of whose being is Love. He has created men in the spirit of love, intending to develop them to perfect harmony with himself. He has permitted the temporary existence of evil as a condition necessary to bring out in them free agency and individuality of character. Punishment is the necessary result of a bad choice in them; it is not meant by him as vengeance, but as an admonition to choose better. Man is not born totally evil; he is born capable both of good and evil, and the Holy Spirit in working on him only quickens the soul already there to know its Father. To one who takes such views the address of Jesus becomes intelligible—"Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful." "For with the same measure that ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you again."
Those who take these views of the relation between God and man must naturally tend to have punishment consist as much as possible in the inward spiritual results of faults, rather than a violent outward enforcement of penalty. They must, so far as possible, seek to revere God by showing themselves brotherly to man; and if they wish to obey Christ, will not forget that he came especially to call sinners to repentance.
The views of these writers are the opposite of all this. We need not state them; they are sufficiently indicated in each page of their own. Their conclusions are the natural result of such premises. We could say nothing about either, except to express dissent from beginning to end. Yet would it be sweet and noble, and worthy of this late period of human progress, if their position had been stated in a spirit of religious, of manly courtesy; if they had had the soul to say, "We differ from you, but we know that so wide and full a stream of thought and emotion as you are moved by could not, under the providential rule in which we believe, have arisen in vain. The object of every such manifestation of life must be to bring out truth; come, let us seek it together. Let us show you our view, compare it with yours, and let us see which is the better. If, as we think, the truth lie with us, what joy will it be for us to cast the clear light on the object of your aspirations!"
Of this degree of liberality we have known some, even, who served the same creed as these writers to be capable. There is, indeed, a higher spirit, which, believing all forms of opinion which we hold in the present stage of our growth can be but approximations to truth, and that God has permitted to the multitude of men a multitude of ways by which they may approach one common goal, looks with reverence on all modes of faith sincerely held and acted upon, and while it rejoices in those souls which have reached the higher stages of spiritual growth, has no despair as to those which still grope in a narrow path and by a glimmering light. Such liberality is, of course, out of the question with such writers as the present. Their faith binds them to believe that they have absolute truth, and that all who do not believe as they do are wretched heretics. Those whose creed is of narrower scope are to them hateful bigots; but also those with whom it is of wider are latitudinarians or infidels. The spot of earth on which they stand is the only one safe from the conflagration, and only through spectacles and spyglasses such as are used by them can the sun and stars be seen. Yet, as we said before, some such, though incapacitated for an intellectual, are not so for a spiritual tolerance. With them the heart, more Christ-like than the creed, urges to a spirit of love and reverence even towards convictions opposed to their own. The sincere man is always respectable in their eyes, and they cannot help feeling that, wherever there is a desire for truth, there is the spirit of God, and his true priests will approach with gentleness, and do their ministry with holy care. Unhappily, it is very different with the persons before us.
We let go the first two counts of the indictment. Their premises are, as we have said, such as we totally dissent from, and their conclusions such as naturally flow from those premises. Yet they are those of a large body of men, and there must, no doubt, be temporary good in this state of things, or it would not be permitted. When these writers say, that to them moral and penal are coincident terms, they display a state of mind which prefers basing virtue on the fear of punishment, rather than the love of right. If this be sincerely their state, if the idea of morality is with them entirely dependent on the retributions upon vice, rather than the loveliness and joys of goodness, it is impossible for those who are in a different state of mind to say what they do need. It may seem to us, indeed, that, if the strait jacket was taken off, they might recover the natural energy of their frames, and do far better without it; or that, if no longer hurried along the road by the impending lash behind, they might uplift their eyes, and find sufficient cause for speed in the glory visible before, though at a distance; however, it is not for us to say what their wants are. Let them choose their own principles of action, and if they lead to purity of life, and benevolence, and humanity of heart, we will not say a word against them.
But in the instance before us, they do not produce these good fruits, but the contrary; and therefore we have something to say on the other part of the criticism, to wit: that "the reasoning is sophistical, and the spirit diabolic;" for, indeed, in the sense of pride by which the angels fell, arrogance of judgment, malice, and all uncharitableness, we have never looked on printed pages more deeply sinful. We love an honest lover; but next best, we, with Dr. Johnson, know how to respect an honest hater. But even he would scarce endure so bitter and ardent haters as these, and with so many and inconsistent objects of hatred—who hate Catholics and thorough Protestants, hate materialists, and hate spiritualists. Their list is really too large for human sympathy.
We wish, however, to make all due allowance for incapacity in these writers to do better; and their disqualifications for their task, apart from a form of belief which inclines them rather to cling to the past, than to seek progress for the future, seem to be many.
The "reasoning is sophistical," and it would need the patience of a Socrates to unravel the weary web, and convince these sophists, against their will, that they are exactly in the opposite region to what they suppose. For the task we have not space, skill, or patience; but we can give some hints by which readers may be led to examine whether it is so or not.
These writers profess to occupy the position of defence; surely never was one sustained so in the spirit of offence.
1st. They appeal either to the natural or regenerate man, as suits their purpose. Sometimes all traditions and their literal interpretations are right; sometimes it is impossible to interpret them aright, unless according to some peculiar doctrine, and the natural inference of the common mind would be an error.