To your question whether Mr. —— can be answered, I say deliberately he has been answered a hundred times. I do not think that in all his assaults on the Bible he has advanced a respectable argument or objection that has not been urged and answered again and again long before he was born. The Christian Church has not the least fear for herself from his attacks; indeed, she understands them so well, and has repelled them so often, that she is perhaps too indifferent to anything he may say. The danger is not to the Church, but to those who want to be convinced that the Bible is not true, and who want to be assured that, however they may live in this life, they have nothing to fear in a life to come.
Indulge me in another letter, and believe me
Yours, truly,
C——.
[LETTER II.]
My Dear A——: The two questions that press upon every mind, and that Mr. —— has shown again and again, with wonderful pathos, by dying beds and at open graves, are pressing upon his, are these: Is there a God? Is there a future state of existence? To these questions the best answer Mr. —— has to give is, "We do not know." He seems confident that there is no personal God, and "we cannot say whether death is a wall or a door, the beginning or the end of a day, the spreading of pinions to soar or the folding for ever of wings, the rise or the set of a sun." With all this uncertainty, he is absolutely sure that there is no future state of suffering for evil-doers. He does not know whether there is any future at all, but he does know that there is no future of sorrow. He is profoundly ignorant as to the fact of a future, but has decisive knowledge as to the nature of the future, if there is one. "Rather than that this doctrine of endless punishment should be true," he says, "I would gladly see the fabric of our civilization, crumbling, fall to unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion broods and even memory forgets."
Now, it may be quite true that Mr. —— has this preference, yet this does not settle the case. We can fully understand how any man should shrink from the terrible possibility of future suffering. Orthodoxy has no more delight in it than has infidelity. But it is not a question of preference: it is a question of fact; and the point I submit for your reflection is this—whether Mr. ——, on his own ground, is authorized to affirm that there is no future state of suffering for any. He says we do not know whether there is any future state. Very well. Then, certainly, we do not know what kind of a future state there may be, if there is one. If Mr. —— is not able to assure us that there is no future for us at all, he surely has not the ground to assure us of any kind of a future, good or bad. There may be a future of joy, there may be a future of suffering; there may be both. Mr. —— is too good a lawyer to undertake to prove anything by mere negative evidence. He "leaves the dead with Nature, the mother of all," and "Nature," as to any sure utterance upon the future, is as silent as are the lips of the dead themselves.
Mr. —— does not believe in a personal God. You are not sure whether there is one or not. There may be; there may be none. If there is, we cannot know it. Let us see what we gain on either supposition.
Suppose there is a God, though I cannot know it or I cannot know him. Then, clearly, I cannot know what he is; I cannot know what he may do. It is quite possible that this unknown God may be a God who hates what we call sin, and who will punish it, and who will punish it just as long as it stands an offence in the moral universe, whether it be in this world or in the world to come. No agnosticism can deny this conclusion. The darkest as well as the most radiant scenes that Christian faith brings within our view may be eternally true. I may be immortal, and it may be an immortality of joy or of sighing for me as I use this life and the truth that God has made known to me in this life.