V 
 
 Class 
 
 * 3sts 
 
 PRESENTED by 
 
..,4 
 
THE VICTORY 
 
 DIVINE GOODNESS; 
 
 INCLUDING 
 
 I. LETTERS TO AN INQUIRER ON VARIOUS 
 DOCTRINES OF SCRIPTURE; 
 
 II. NOTES ON COLERIDGE'S CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 INQUIRING SPIRIT; 
 
 III. THOUGHTS ON THE NATURE OF 
 
 THE ATONEMENT 
 
 AND OF ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 T. It. BIRKS, M.A. 
 
 INCUMBENT OP HOLY TRINITY, CAMBRIDGE: 
 AUTHOR OF "THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF," &C. &C 
 
 RIVINGTONS, 
 
 Hontton, (ByiovXf, attfc Cambridge. 
 
 1867. 
 
^ ■ 
 
 Gift 
 m Smith 
 March 15, 1934 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 INTEODTTCTOEY 1 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 LIFE AND DEATH — CEEDTTLITY AND SCEPTICISM 10 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 THE HISTOEY OF THE FLOOD 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 THE CANAANITES 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 ON FTJTUEE PUNISHMENT 41 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 THE STATE OF THE DEPAETED 50 
 
 ^ ~~ A 2 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MUTUAL RECOGNITION 58 
 
 NOTES ON COLERIDGE'S "CONFESSIONS OE AN INQUIRING SPIRIT" 65 
 
 THE NATURE AND EFFECTS OF THE ATONEMENT 147 
 
 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT 167 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This little Volume,, in its object, though, not in structure, 
 is a sequel to the "Difficulties of Belief/'' and the " Ways 
 of God/' published some years ago. It consists of three 
 parts, distinct from each other, and written at long in- 
 tervals ; but their common aim, like that of the two 
 previous works, is to throw light on those difficulties by 
 which some of the main doctrines of Christian revela- 
 tion are often clouded and obscured in thoughtful minds. 
 The First Part consists of Letters to an Inquirer, 
 written more than seven years ago. A gentleman of rank, 
 to whom I am still personally unknown, but who had 
 found help from some of my works, addressed to me a 
 paper of inquiries on several topics which had caused him 
 either perplexity or distress. Its cautious and reverent 
 tone claimed from me a deliberate reply in several letters, 
 which now appear, slightly revised for the press, in their 
 
original form. They were written under the impression 
 that their publication might be desirable for the sake of 
 others, while passing through a similar stage of mental 
 conflict. Some remarks in the fifth letter will explain 
 my chief reason for the long delay of seven years. It 
 seemed to me that thoughts there condensed into a 
 few pages, the fruit of long and painful meditation, 
 needed some special call of Providence to justify me in 
 giving them to the public. On that sclemn topic it is 
 dangerous to speak, when Scripture, on the surface at 
 least, appears to keep silence. The fallen heart is only 
 too prone to find excuses for deadening and abating 
 the force of the solemn warnings of God. 
 
 This scruple, after seven years of waiting, when 
 almost thirty years have elapsed since the vista of 
 thought itself was opened to me, has now been overcome 
 by still weightier motives. The subject has of late been 
 revived, and has acquired new prominence among the 
 theological and ecclesiastical controversies of the present 
 day. Any contribution, in a reverent and cautious spirit, 
 to the guidance and relief of perplexed minds, is now 
 more seasonable than ever. The thoughts in the letter, 
 and partly those in the supplement, by transmission or by 
 conversation, have been given privately to various friends 
 
or perplexed inquirers, and they contain fertile seeds of 
 truth, not likely to remain dormant when once received. 
 Thus the only probable result of further delay would be 
 their first presentation to the Christian public under forms 
 or with associations which I might esteem undesirable. I 
 believe that the obligation of caution and reverence has 
 been fulfilled by seven years' and even thirty years' delay. 
 It remains for me now to fulfil the duty of a " steward 
 of the mysteries of God/' by imparting to the Church, 
 in their simplest form, those meditations, deeply rooted 
 in Scripture, yet found only beneath its surface, which 
 tend to throw light on the darkest and most solemn 
 portion of Divine revelation. 
 
 The Second Part consists of marginal comments on 
 Coleridge's well-known little work, " The Confessions of 
 an Inquiring Spirit." These were written soon after 
 the first edition of the book appeared, more than twenty- 
 five years ago. They were shown to his daughter, Mrs. 
 S. Coleridge, when she was preparing the second edition, 
 by a common friend. Several pages of her long supple- 
 mentary note, in 1849, are an attempted reply to some 
 of these criticisms, to which she alludes very courteously 
 in these words : — 
 
 "I have lately perused an interesting manuscript, 
 
commenting on the Confessions, written by a decided 
 dissentient from the views of the author, but a fair and 
 straightforward one, who sometimes, / tliinlc, mistakes 
 the true import of those views, but never wilfully mis- 
 represents them. This critique is written in so good a 
 spirit, shows so much acuteness and knowledge of Scrip- 
 ture, and enters on the examination of my father's little 
 work in so elaborate and legitimate a manner, that I 
 cannot help wishing the author would revise and publish 
 it. I have no stronger desire with regard to the letters 
 than that they should be subjected to close and searching 
 honest criticism/'' 
 
 The wish so courteously expressed by Mrs. Coleridge 
 seventeen years ago, even while battling eagerly in her 
 text for the view I have opposed, is now fulfilled 
 long after her own decease. * Very few and slight 
 corrections have been made in these Notes, and so much 
 of the Confessions is quoted as seems needful to explain 
 their application and reference. The controversy has 
 grown in importance since Coleridge's little work ap- 
 peared. The cloud, like a man's hand, has almost over- 
 spread the firmament. The question of the true autho- 
 rity of Scripture claims more and more the careful study 
 of every Christian, who would not drift away, in utter 
 
PREFAQE. IX 
 
 uncertainty, from the old landmarks of the Christian 
 faith. Some of the thoughts in these Notes have been 
 introduced, either in my Lectures on Rationalism, or in 
 "The Bible and Modern Thought." Still there may 
 be not a few who will read them with more interest in 
 their original form of a hand-to-hand controversy with 
 the most celebrated, eloquent, and fascinating patron, in 
 modern times, of the eclectic and intermittent theory of 
 Bible inspiration. I had prepared some remarks on 
 Mrs. Coleridge's attempted answer to some of my state- 
 ments. But, on further thought, it seemed to me 
 that her criticisms scarcely need a reply, and that the 
 space might be more profitably employed in another 
 way. 
 
 The Third Part consists of a double supplement, on the 
 Nature and Efficacy of the Atonement, and on Eternal 
 Judgment. The former topic has been treated before 
 in chap. vii. of the "Ways of God," but briefly and 
 imperfectly, so that the real nature of my view has been 
 liable to be misunderstood, alike by those who have 
 blamed and those who have approved. I trust that I 
 have now made it much plainer than before. I believe 
 firmly that the view here proposed is the full and 
 faithful result of an inductive and careful studv of 
 
the word of God, and tends to remove much of 
 the ambiguity and confusion, which still rests, in many 
 devout minds, on this central and vital doctrine of the 
 Christian faith. 
 
 The other Supplement, in this Third Part, unfolds 
 more fully the view propounded in the fifth and seventh 
 letters. The subject is the most solemn, the most 
 humbling, and the most awakening in the whole compass 
 of the word of God. It is one on which my own 
 thoughts were sorely, deeply, and continuously exercised 
 more than thirty years ago. Every attempt to throw 
 further light on its solemn mysteries appears to me to 
 demand, not only reverence and humility, but a caution 
 and rigour of thought, an exclusion of all mere conjecture 
 and fancy, like that which is required in the most exact 
 researches of physical science. This cautious mind 
 seems to me doubly essential in dealing with aspects of 
 Divine truth which lie beneath the surface of Holy 
 Scripture, and of which it cannot be affirmed that they 
 are distinctly " read therein," but only that they " may 
 be proved thereby." I trust that the remarks I now 
 offer, a partial expansion of the statements in the letter, 
 from which my own spirit has found relief and comfort 
 for the last thirty years, will be found to satisfy these 
 
conditions of reverent inquiry into the deep things of 
 God. Other lines of thought, converging on the same 
 result, might have been also unfolded, but appear to me 
 still unsuited for general publication. But if the Church 
 is now approaching, or has almost reached, the time when 
 " the mystery of God shall be finished," we may expect 
 that new unfoldings of revealed truth, and of the deep 
 treasures in the mind of Scripture, will be given to 
 humble and waiting hearts in these last days. 
 
 Cambeidq-e, Jan. 12, 1867. 
 
LETTEE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 Your letter of inquiry opens a wide range of 
 subjects, on which you ask for help to relieve your secret 
 perplexity. Each of them is of high importance, and 
 may well repay a careful examination. Those which 
 come first in order are not difficulties in Scripture itself, 
 but only doubts with regard to statements or phrases 
 current among religious teachers, of which you are not 
 satisfied that they have any Scriptural warrant. It 
 ought, however, to cause us no surprise, should partial 
 error be found to mingle with popular expositions of 
 Divine truth, even by good and holy men. We all, 
 in our present state, see " through a glass, darkly," and 
 the wisest and the best have much to learn in the deep 
 things of God. With regard to all such human expositions 
 our double maxim should ever be — " To the law and to 
 the testimony" — " Prove all things, hold fast that which 
 is good/'' Still, the topics themselves are of great 
 importance, and our view of them must influence the 
 
 B 
 
8 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 whole tone of our thoughts in our review of Scripture 
 difficulties. I will offer a few remarks on each of them, 
 as they appear in your letter. May the Spirit of truth 
 and wisdom preserve me from error, and make my words 
 a help to the full establishment of your heart in the 
 knowledge of God, and of Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 I. Salvation, you remark first of all, is in your view 
 too noble a boon to man to be limited within the pale 
 of one Church, or section of a Church. You hold the 
 Romish faith in abhorrence, for its temporal aggressive- 
 ness and its persecuting spirit. But still, to your mind, 
 a Roman Catholic, or Nonconformist, or any person 
 sincerely believing in Revelation, is equally likely to 
 gain eternal life as the most orthodox member of the 
 Anglican Church. And you seem to fear that this 
 judgment may be censured for latitudinarian laxity by 
 many good men whose general sentiments you would 
 approve. 
 
 Here, in avoiding the worse and more dangerous 
 extreme, you incur some danger of falling into the other. 
 The key to a right judgment on this vital question will 
 be found in three passages of the word of God, Acts x. 
 34, 35. Rom. ii. 11 — 16 ; iii. 1 — 3. It is easy to err on 
 either side. All that is essential to salvation is practical 
 godliness, or repentance towards God and faith in the 
 Lord Jesus Christ : that is, a heart that relies on the 
 mercy of God in Christ, and desires earnestly to learn 
 and to do His will. However imperfect the light, where 
 those marks are found, the soul must enjoy the favour 
 and blessing of God. And yet a pure communion and a 
 
INTRODUCTORY. O 
 
 full creed, free from serious error, must be great and 
 important helps to the attainment of living 1 piety. To 
 be " saved/'' and to " come to the knowledge of the truth/-' 
 are in the Scripture two phrases almost convertible. 
 But it must be much harder to lay hold upon saving truth, 
 whenever the soul is shut in with an atmosphere of false- 
 hood and superstition. On this point Baxter has well 
 observed — " We may say of every error and sin, he that 
 is saved must be saved from it, at least from the power 
 of it on the heart, and from the guilt by forgiveness. . . . 
 Many do hold things which by consequence subvert 
 Christianity, and yet do hold Christianity first and faster, 
 in heart and sincere practice, and would renounce their 
 error if they saw the inconsistency. That which they 
 hold first and fast and practically, doth save them from 
 the power of their own opinions, as an antidote or 
 strength of nature may save a man from a small quantity 
 of poison. . . . No man will be saved for being no Papist, 
 much less for being a Papist. And all that are truly 
 holy, heavenly, humble lovers of God, and of those that are 
 His servants, will be saved. How many such are among 
 the Papists God only knoweth, who is their Judge/" 
 
 A Divine antidote to all religious bigotry meets us at 
 the opening of the Gospel, when it was first preached 
 to the Gentiles ; and proceeds, under the teaching of the 
 Holy Spirit, from the lips of that Apostle, whose name 
 has been perverted into a plea for the worst excesses 
 of bigotry in the Church of Borne. " Of a truth, I 
 perceive/" said St. Peter to Cornelius, "that God is no 
 respecter of persons ; but in every nation he that feareth 
 b 2 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him." 
 The degrees of light, we are thus taught, may vary 
 widely ; but for acceptance with God two things alone 
 are required, a genuine fear or reverence of God in the 
 heart, and its natural fruit, the working of righteousness, 
 or a spirit of practical obedience to the Divine will. 
 Thus Cornelius was accepted with God, even when his 
 religious knowledge was small, at the time when he 
 received the angelic vision. And still the description 
 given him of the message the Apostle was to bring is 
 this — " Who shall tell thee words whereby thou and thy 
 house shall be saved." When he sought God earnestly, 
 though in mist and twilight, with fastings, alms, and 
 prayer, his acceptance and salvation were begun. But 
 when the person and the work of our Lord were distinctly 
 made known to him, and received with explicit faith, the 
 germ, became a plant, the embryo a visible birth, and 
 salvation came to his house with a clearness and fulness 
 of blessing unknown before. Thus the morning twilight 
 suffices for vision, but not for clear vision, and derives 
 all its power to dispel the darkness from the still unrisen 
 sun. 
 
 On the other hand, when the possibility of salvation 
 under imperfect forms of faith or profession is made a 
 warrant for religious indifference, an opposite statement 
 is given us in the word of God, to expose the dangerous 
 error. When the Apostle St. Paul had laid down the 
 same truth anew, that God is no respecter of persons, 
 that the unrighteous Jew would be condemned, and the 
 upright and pious Gentile be accepted and justified, he 
 
INTKODUCTOUY. 5 
 
 pauses in his argument to meet an objection that might 
 arise, as if the external profession were a matter of entire 
 indifference. " What advantage, then, hath the Jew ? 
 or what profit is there of circumcision?'''' And he gives 
 a brief and decisive answer — " Much, every way : chiefly 
 because unto them were committed the oracles of God." 
 It must be hard to lay hold on saving truth, when men 
 are shut in by an atmosphere of falsehood and super- 
 stition. A pure communion, and a creed free from 
 serious error, must be great helps to the attainment of 
 real and living piety ; but, above all, the gain is immense 
 whenever men have free access, in their own tongue, 
 to the written word of God. 
 
 II. Again, you think that Evangelical teachers, from 
 their very earnestness, are prone to overstate and prove 
 too much. Salvation is represented as almost impossible 
 of attainment, and Almighty God as an implacable 
 Judge. Men are repelled by a picture so appalling, and 
 drive the subject from their minds, in the vain hope of 
 quenching the anxiety all rational beings must feel to 
 penetrate into the mysteries of the world beyond the 
 grave. 
 
 There may be some Evangelical teachers, at least some 
 who pass under the name, to whom this censure justly 
 applies. There is a form of high Calvinism, indeed, which 
 robs those who hold it of any Gospel or glad tidings to 
 preach directly to every sinner. But this is the exception, 
 perhaps the rare exception, and not the rule. In these 
 days it is possible that an opposite charge may be more 
 widely true, of dwelling on the freeness of Divine grace, 
 
b INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 without any full statement, like those in the Scriptures, 
 of the difficulties and hindrances in the way to heaven. 
 The usual tone of the best modern teaching is hardly so 
 startling, or so adapted to awaken caution and holy fear, 
 as the words of the Apostle, " If the righteous scarcely 
 be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner ap- 
 pear ?" These words of our Lord himself, far more 
 than the imperfect comments of men, are likely to repel 
 by their seeming severity : — " Wide is the gate, and broad 
 is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there 
 be which go in thereat; because strait is the gate, 
 and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few 
 there be that find it." The usual defect of Evangelical 
 preaching is not that the way of ruin is described as 
 broader, or the way of life more narrow, than these 
 words imply. It is rather that the excellency of the 
 promised salvation, the love of the Father, the grace 
 of the Redeemer, the power and help of the Comforter, 
 are not set forth in all their mighty attractiveness of 
 Divine love ; so as to persuade and compel the hesitating 
 soul to yield itself up to the gracious invitation, and 
 to press onward, with earnest desire, towards a prize so 
 glorious. 
 
 III. Again, you have heard preachers, in their excess 
 of zeal, assert that we are now more favourably circum- 
 stanced than Christ's own contemporaries and disciples. 
 How, you ask with some perplexity, can tradition be 
 more convincing than ocular evidence ? 
 
 Occasional overstatements from the lips of preachers 
 ought never to occasion serious perplexity in a thoughtful 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 7 
 
 mind. Those who protest against the infallibility of 
 the Bishop and the Church of Rome can never dream 
 that every zealous clergyman or minister is infallible 
 in his public ministrations. But in this case I believe 
 that the statement which has startled you is strictly 
 true, when a little reasonable explanation is given. 
 
 Tradition, it is true, is weaker in its own nature than 
 ocular evidence. But the difference in some forms of 
 tradition may "be so slight as to be almost imperceptible, 
 and be far outweighed by the increase of other evidence 
 in the lapse of time. Most persons of intelligence are 
 just as firmly convinced of the past existence of Julius 
 Caesar, his invasion of Britain, his victory at Pharsalia, 
 and his death in the senate -house, as of the existence of 
 Napoleon, his victory at Austerlitz, his defeat at Water- 
 loo, and his death at St. Helena. Yet one series of 
 events is almost within our own lifetime, and the other 
 full nineteen centuries ago. Where events have a cer- 
 tain degree of publicity, and involve momentous con- 
 sequences, the influence of time in weakening the evidence 
 of their reality may be practically insensible. The 
 impression will be more vivid when miracles are actually 
 witnessed, but the conviction of their reality may be 
 no less deep and firm when they are reported by witnesses, 
 and confirmed by collateral proofs, which cannot de- 
 ceive. 
 
 Consider, now, the immense gain on the other side. 
 The Gospel has been confirmed by all the further evidence, 
 derived from the predicted unbelief of the Jews, the fall 
 of Jerusalem, the ruin of the Temple, their exile and 
 
O INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 wide dispersion, and their long desolation of eighteen 
 hundred years. Predictions have been since fulfilled 
 in the wide diffusion and triumphs of the Gospel, and 
 the extensive corruptions of the Christian faith. The 
 secret stores of truth and wisdom in the Holy Scriptures 
 have been unfolded, through sixty generations, by the 
 writings of thousands of pious and holy men. Ten 
 thousand hearts have given their testimony to the power 
 of the Gospel, and have proved, by their own experience, 
 its transforming and quickening energy. The whole 
 history of almost two thousand years has confirmed the 
 truth of the Divine record, and points onward to a time, 
 drawing nearer and nearer daily, when the Lord Jesus, the 
 true Messiah, owned already by the mightiest nations 
 and empires of the earth, shall receive the heathen for 
 His inheritance, and the utmost ends of the earth for His 
 possession. The slight loss, in the substitution of tra- 
 ditional proof for present miracles, is far outweighed 
 by the gain which the mass of new evidence supplies, 
 and makes the obligation still more binding on ourselves 
 than on the Jews and heathens of the first century, to 
 own in Jesus of Nazareth the true Messiah, the Son 
 of God, and the Saviour of the world. "Blessed are 
 our eyes, for they see, and our ears, for they hear/'' Our 
 age, it is true, has its own temptations, and the down- 
 ward path of unbelief remains broad and easy, as in 
 the days of old. But still the evidence of the Gospel is 
 cumulative, and grows in fulness from age to age. 
 The means of grace are dispensed in unequal measure to 
 different lands, and the Church may have winter and 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 9 
 
 summer alternately in its moral history. But the helps 
 which God has given us in these days, at least in our 
 favoured country, for learning to grasp the truth of His 
 word and the glory of the Gospel, are greater than those 
 of the first disciples, or of any previous age. They will 
 leave us doubly without excuse, if we turn our backs 
 upon its light, and exchange it for the bondage of 
 mediaeval superstition, or for the cheerless speculations 
 of men who live " without God in the world." 
 I remain, yours faithfully, 
 
 T. R. Birks. 
 
LETTER II. 
 
 life and death credulity and scepticism. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 Original sin is the next subject to which your 
 letter refers, or the question, What are the effects of 
 Adam's sin on his posterity? I have written on this 
 subject at some length in the "Difficulties of Belief/' 
 and am glad to learn that your perplexities have been 
 much lessened by my remarks, if not wholly removed. 
 If the line of thought there unfolded is Scriptural and 
 solid, as I fully believe, the chief perplexity to the con- 
 science will disappear, however deep and various the 
 mysteries which still cluster around the ways of God in 
 the primitive constitution of the human race. But there 
 are two other subjects which call for remark, before I turn 
 to those of still higher importance, where the statements 
 of Scripture, rather than the sayings of uninspired 
 teachers, occasion difficulty in your mind. 
 
 IV. You ask, first, if it is right and wise to represent 
 this world as wretched and illusive, and one from which 
 our hearts ought to be longing hourly to be released. 
 
LIFE AND DEATH. 11 
 
 In this case, where is the benefit of existence ? Can a 
 benevolent Creator have designed His creatures to be so 
 miserable on earth, that they should be unceasingly 
 desirous of ending their lives ? Would not such a view 
 either produce a cold scepticism, or drive us into a cloister? 
 You think that there is a partial truth in such represen- 
 tations ; but still you cannot reconcile what you some- 
 times hear from Evangelical preachers with just views of 
 the Divine benevolence. 
 
 The tone of thought which you condemn is no charac- 
 teristic of Evangelical teaching, but belongs rather to a 
 monastic and mediaeval theology. Yet, even in these 
 days, statements may often be made by religious persons 
 on the duty and excellence of a longing desire to die, for 
 which the general tenour of Scripture gives no warrant. 
 It is a serious defect in our popular theology that death 
 has been made to occupy the place which the Bible 
 every where assigns to the great contrast of death, the 
 resurrection. Our hymns and popular treatises abound in 
 this substitution, which distorts and obscures, even when 
 it does not subvert and destroy, the whole outline of the 
 Christian revelation. The word of God every where repre- 
 sents death as a great enemy to be overcome, and life as a 
 rich boon from God, but resurrection as a boon far nobler 
 and higher. In the histories of the Bible, there are many 
 cases where good and holy men — Moses, David, and 
 Hezekiah — express a strong desire to live ; and one only, 
 that of St. Paul, where a like desire to die is commended 
 or approved. The impatience of Job and Jonah, and 
 even of Elijah, is rather a beacon for our avoidance than 
 
12 LIFE AND DEATH. 
 
 a pattern for our imitation. And what were the circum- 
 stances under which the Apostle's desire was expressed ? 
 It was at the close of a long course of zealous, active, 
 and exhausting labours in the cause of Christ. He was 
 now " Paul the aged/' a prisoner in bonds for the Gospel, 
 wearied deeply in spirit by the spectacle of idolatry and 
 vice in Rome, the great sewer of heathen immorality, 
 the stronghold of Satan's kingdom, and by the heartless 
 selfishness of false brethren, who sought to add affliction 
 to his bonds, and preached even Christ of envy and ill- 
 will. It is when he is more than sixty years of age, and 
 more than twenty-five years from his conversion, after he 
 has fully preached the Gospel from Jerusalem round about 
 to Illyricum, that the expression of such a desire is first 
 heard from his lips. It is the only instance of the kind 
 in the whole compass of the word of God. But there 
 are hundreds of passages where the continuance of life, 
 or recovery from the brink of the grave, is declared 
 to be a token of the Divine favour and blessing. All the 
 works of healing wrought by our Lord himself, the 
 raising of the widow's son and the son of the Shunamite 
 in the Old Testament; of the daughter of Jairus, the 
 young man of Nain, and of Lazarus, in the Gospels ; and 
 of iEneas, Tabitha, and Eutychus, in the early church, 
 are clear proofs that a desire to " live and declare the 
 works of the Lord " is the rule, and a longing for death 
 is only the rare exception, in the healthy course of Chris- 
 tian experience. Even in the chapter which follows the 
 mention of his own desire to depart, St. Paul himself 
 alludes to the recovery of Epaphroditus from a dangerous 
 
LIFE AND DEATH. 13 
 
 illness as a just cause for his own joy and deep thanks- 
 giving before God. 
 
 The neglect of pious Christians, in modern times, to 
 draw their views direct from the word of God, and their 
 readiness, on this subject, to content themselves with Pro- 
 testant traditions, received at second hand from hymns 
 and religious manuals, has overlaid the Church with a 
 large amount of sickly, unreal, sentimental feeling, for 
 which the Scriptures themselves give no warrant. The 
 habitual confusion of the comfort vouchsafed to the dying 
 believer with the glorious hope of the resurrection, has a 
 powerful tendency, among religious persons of a sensitive 
 and morbid temperament, to multiply cases of indirect 
 and virtual suicide. A style of thought, borrowed from 
 the early Gnostics, as if only the presence of the body 
 hindered the spirit from soaring straightway into the 
 highest heaven, has widely replaced and almost reversed 
 the tone of deep humility, of silent reserve, and of patient 
 waiting for a coming resurrection, which marks all the 
 utterances of the Holy Spirit respecting those who are 
 gathered to their fathers in peace ; or who, in the still 
 more cheering language of the New Testament, " die in 
 the Lord/'' and " sleep in Jesus/'' 
 
 At the same time, it is doubtless true that ripening 
 Christian experience, a clear view of the excellence of the 
 perfect life to come, and yearning of the soul for nearer 
 communion with the Lord himself, will awaken such a 
 feeling of unrest in the mortal body of sin and death, as 
 to produce, first of all, a willingness (2* Cor. v. 4. 8), and 
 perhaps still later, a desire and longing (Phil. i. 23), even 
 
14 LIFE AND DEATH. 
 
 before the resurrection, to be " absent from the body" and 
 thus, in a fuller sense than on earth, " at home with the 
 Lord/'' Life in itself is a precious gift, and death in itself 
 a sore and hateful enemy. And yet, as the Red Sea and 
 Jordan were driven backward, against their natural course, 
 to make a pathway for the ransomed to pass over ; so, in 
 the progress of the work of redemption, the natural 
 course of human instinct may for a time be reversed, 
 until there is a pleasure in laying down, for Christ's sake, 
 that outward life which has been marred and corrupted 
 by the entrance of sin. The adversary, Death, may then 
 be hailed as a reluctant slave, employed by the Lord 
 himself to open a door, which admits the soul nearer to 
 His own gracious presence. 
 
 V. You inquire next, whether it is not unwise to say 
 that " death has no terrors to the real Christian believer."" 
 Here you refer to the frequent instances of wicked men 
 who have no bands in their death, but meet it with un- 
 flinching hardihood ; and contrast this with the admissions 
 of some good men, that " it is an awful thing, full of 
 perturbation." 
 
 You have good reason, I think, for your dislike and 
 distrust of the broad and strong statements on this 
 subject which have been too often made. The Gospel, 
 it is true, provides the Christian with a firm hope beyond 
 the grave, and with sure promises of help and comfort in 
 a dying hour. The very purpose of our Lord's coming was 
 " to deliver those who, through fear of death, were all 
 their lifetime subject to bondage." We are taught to 
 look forward to a time when the enemy shall be destroyed, 
 
LIFE AND DEATH. 15 
 
 and swallowed up in an eternal victory. But still the 
 dissolution and corruption of the body, and the unclothing 
 of the spirit, are one main part of God's original curse 
 and sentence upon sin. They are meant to convey a 
 needful lesson of deep and intense humiliation. How 
 can Christians, in the words of the Apostle, be " con- 
 formed to the death of Christ/'' when they speak of their 
 dissolution in language of unmingled desire and gratula- 
 tion ? while their Lord (< offered up prayers and supplica- 
 tion, with strong crying and tears, unto Him that was 
 able to save Him from death/'' and was heard for His deep 
 reverence. The character of our Lord's death, as the 
 great propitiation for the sin of the world, makes it 
 doubtless a contrast in some respects to that " falling 
 asleep " which is one usual phrase, in Scripture, for the 
 death of believers. But still the conformity to His 
 death, of which the Apostle speaks, must surely require 
 in the people of Christ a measure of humiliation in their 
 experience and anticipations of death which may bear the 
 like proportion to their promised bliss, as the agonies of 
 our Lord to His infinite and eternal glory. 
 
 There is a phase of religious thought, too prevalent in 
 these days even among pious men, which overlooks and 
 slurs over the deeper lessons of the word of God. The 
 work of salvation is described as finished and complete 
 when hardly begun, and the duty of rejoicing in the 
 Gospel is urged in such a way as almost to expunge the 
 graces of godly fear and Christian reverence. Death 
 may have ceased to be terrible to the Christian believer, 
 but it is still most solemn. Its sting may have been 
 
16 CREDULITY AND SCEPTICISM. 
 
 wholly taken away ; but its shadow remains, and he has 
 still to walk through the valley on which its shadow 
 rests. The Bible has nowhere told us that sudden death 
 is sudden glory. Such phrases have no harmony, either 
 with the unforced instincts of humble and reverent 
 hearts, or with the solemn record of the dying agonies of 
 the Son of God. 
 
 VI. In the Preface to the " Difficulties of Belief the 
 remark occurs, that "there are some whose childlike 
 faith is content to follow the plainer lessons of natural 
 conscience and of Christian revelation, without being 
 ever troubled by the deep shadows that lie around them." 
 Is not this, you ask, credulity rather than faith ? Would 
 not such persons, if born Buddhists or Mahometans, 
 place equal reliance on those false creeds, because they 
 were those of their own parents and countrymen ? The 
 honest Christian seeks for proofs in support of his faith, 
 or how hope to make converts of subtle though false 
 reasoners ? 
 
 The contrast to which I allude is not between faith 
 and scepticism, or credulity and the love of truth, but 
 between two opposite habits of mind, which have credulity 
 and scepticism for their vicious extremes. I assume that, 
 in the present creed of both classes, some things are 
 comparatively plain and certain, and others doubtful or 
 obscure. There is daylight, if not sunlight, in the centre 
 of the landscape, while the horizon is shut in with clouds 
 and darkness. And there may be found two opposite 
 tendencies in Christians equally pious and sincere. Some 
 instinctively confine themselves to the practical applica- 
 
CREDULITY AND SCEPTICISM. 17 
 
 tion of the plainest truths, and are even ready to condemn, 
 as rash presumption, any attempt to pierce through 
 the clouds that lie in the further distance. . Others, on 
 the contrary, have a deep longing for increase of light. 
 Every cloud in the horizon seems to them like a thick 
 veil, obscuring the light of God's love, and hinders 
 them from reposing, with the full assurance of peace and 
 hope they desire to attain, on the perfect wisdom and 
 goodness of the Almighty. One instinct is more safe, 
 but the other is more honourable. One is content to 
 till the soil immediately before him ; the other, with peril 
 and hazard, seeks to bring in rich pearls and treasures by 
 crossing seas of dangerous navigation. The same con- 
 trast is found in the business of outward life. Our 
 country might be ruined, if all, in their love of adventure, 
 were to leave the farm and quiet homestead, and become 
 Arctic voyagers. But it could never have attained its 
 wealth and greatness, if the spirit of enterprise had not 
 always led many of its sons to prefer a sea life, with all 
 its hazards, to the quiet round of home occupations, to 
 the work of the ploughman and the shepherd. Neither 
 tendency is sinful in itself, but only in the excess. When 
 the Christian is so content with the first elements of 
 truth he has received, as to accept passively the opinions 
 that float around him, and never to exercise his own 
 thoughts on the deeper mysteries of creation, providence, 
 and redemption, his religion will soon degenerate into 
 mere formalism, his seeming faith into blind credulity. 
 On the other hand, when young and ardent minds, with 
 little reverence or humility, rush into the pathways of 
 
 c 
 
18 CREDULITY AND SCEPTICISM. 
 
 metaphysical speculation, unconscious of the danger 
 which besets them, alike from the narrow limit of their 
 understanding, and the secret moral obliquity of the 
 sinful heart, they are only too likely to lose their way, and 
 to make shipwreck of their faith on the dark mountains 
 of pride and unbelief. 
 
 We admire the heroism of the navigator, when, after 
 proposing to himself some noble and worthy object, he 
 uses all prudent foresight, provisions his vessel for the 
 voyage, provides himself with best instruments, chart 
 and compass, sextant, telescope, and chronometer, and 
 faces with calmness the dangers that are unavoidable, 
 because he is conscious that no needless risk has been 
 incurred. But we justly condemn the rashness of him 
 who throws away his own life and the lives of his crew, 
 with a total neglect of due precaution, and in proud 
 contempt of real danger, in order to gain a reputation 
 for bold and hardy enterprise. The same contrast applies 
 to the case before us. It is a noble enterprise to extend 
 the boundaries of religious truth, as apprehended by 
 ordinary Christians, and to clear away some of those 
 clouds which obscure from their minds the full vision of 
 the wisdom and goodness of the Most High. But the 
 price which must be paid in such an effort is a closer 
 conflict than other Christians may have to undergo, with 
 questionings and difficulties, and dark and gloomy 
 * thoughts, which, like the sons of Anak, resist the entrance 
 of the soul into the good land of promise. To embark 
 on such a voyage, or engage in such a warfare, in a spirit 
 of vain self-confidence, is rash and sinful, and may often 
 
CREDULITY AND SCEPTICISM. 19 
 
 have a ruinous and fatal issue. Our minds may easily 
 be dazzled and confounded, and our steps may slide in 
 slippery places, when we gaze, without deepest reverence 
 and prayer for light, on the mysteries of life and death, 
 the fall, redemption, and eternal judgment. Those 
 Christians may seem almost to be envied, who till their 
 own little homestead, and never launch their bark on the 
 wide and trackless ocean that leads to undiscovered 
 truths. This childlike faith has a beauty of its own, but 
 a manly faith is still more excellent and beautiful. The 
 little children, soon or late, must rise unto the experience 
 of the young men in Christ, who are strong and over- 
 come the wicked one through a larger indwelling of the 
 word of God, before they can attain the last and highest 
 stage of the " fathers," whose hearts and minds are fully 
 " established with grace," because they have learned to 
 " know Him that is from the beginning. " 
 
 I remain, yours faithfully, 
 
 T. R. Bieks. 
 
 c 2 
 
LETTER III. 
 
 the history of the flood. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 The difficulties you have first mentioned arise 
 from the sayings of good men, with which you find it 
 hard to agree. This, however, may be due in part to 
 their mistakes, and not wholly to any defect in your own 
 clearness of vision. Those which remain are still more 
 serious, because they result directly from the express 
 statements of the word of God. I have reflected on 
 most of them for many years, and trust that some light 
 has been given me which may help to remove your per- 
 plexities. May the Spirit of God give us a right judg- 
 ment in all things, and fulfil the promise of our Lord, by 
 guiding us into all the truth of God. 
 
 I. The history of the Flood is your first difficulty ; not, 
 however, in its physical, but in its moral aspect. You 
 allude especially to *Gen. vi. 6 : " It repented the Lord 
 that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him 
 at his heart/'' How are we to reconcile this with God's 
 foreknowledge, who must have foreseen this very depra- 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE FLOOD. 21 
 
 tf . 
 
 vity? You suggest that perhaps He cut off those 
 delinquents in mercy, to save them from further sin, and 
 will hereafter allow them to partake in the forgiveness 
 purchased by the blood of his Son. But you add that 
 we have no certain ground for this hope. And even if 
 we seek thus to reconcile the Flood with the Divine 
 benevolence, the difficulty from the Divine omniscience 
 is still unsolved. 
 
 Here three distinct questions arise. The first relates 
 to the Divine immutability, the second to God's benevo- 
 lence, and the third to the final state of those who 
 perished in the Deluge. 
 
 1. Now, first, it is plain, when we compare other 
 passages, that the statement which has caused perplexity 
 is no mistake or careless oversight. A similar statement 
 appears elsewhere, in close connexion with the fullest as- 
 sertion of God's immutability. In 1 Sam. xv. ] 1. 29. 35, 
 we read, within a few verses, that " it repented the Lord 
 that he had made Saul king;" and still that " the Strength 
 of Israel will not lie nor repent ; for he is not a man, that 
 he should repent." The same pointed contrast appears 
 between Exod. xxxiv. 14; Num. xiv. 34; and Num. 
 xxiii. 19. It is written in Genesis that " God did tempt 
 Abraham." Yet the same Apostle, who appeals to this 
 chapter in proof of a great doctrine of the faith, assures 
 us just before that " God cannot be tempted with evil, 
 neither tempteth he any man." These verbal contradic- 
 tions are thus introduced, of set purpose, by the Spirit of 
 God, in order to compel a closer study and fuller appre- 
 hension of the Divine messages. Thus, in the stereoscope, 
 
22 THE HISTORY OF THE FLOOD. 
 
 the twin pictures are purposely made discordant when 
 viewed separately; that by their combination, when 
 viewed together in the true light, the object they repre- 
 sent may stand out in clear and bold relief. 
 
 Again, if we examine the context, it is plain that an 
 absolute repentance of the work of creation cannot be 
 the true meaning. The promise has been already given, 
 and solemnly recorded, that the Seed of the Woman was 
 to bruise the head of the Serpent. Enoch has already 
 been translated, because he walked with God. A waiting- 
 time of 120 years has just been announced, which implies, 
 like all other chronological prophecies, a fixed and settled 
 scheme of Divine government. Almost in the next verse 
 an exception to the sentence of judgment is revealed, a 
 channel through which the work of redeeming mercy 
 may flow on even to perpetual generations : " Noah found 
 grace in the ej^es of the Lord/'' The whole context, then, 
 demands that the words be read with some implied 
 limitation. 
 
 The harmony between the opposite statements, in this 
 and similar passages, is not hard to discover. When we 
 are told that " the Strength of Israel will not lie nor 
 repent ; for he is not a man, that he should repent/'' the 
 reference is either to the whole counsel of God in its 
 completeness, from eternity to eternity, or to an un- 
 conditional declaration of some part of that eternal 
 counsel. When He is said to repent, the words refer to 
 some special plan or course of action, having some defi- 
 nite object, which the sin of man may frustrate, even 
 although this relative and partial frustration is one fore- 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE FLOOD. 23 
 
 seen part of the scheme of Providence. In the gift of a 
 king to the Israelites, the proper and direct object was 
 twofold, that he might snbdue their enemies, and gnide 
 them in obedience to the laws of God. The first object 
 Sanl had fulfilled for a time, but the second and higher 
 was set aside and reversed by his self-will and dis- 
 obedience. Hence it was that the reign, which began so 
 brightly, set in clouds and storm. He who had given 
 them "a king in his anger," after their own heart, 
 "took him away in his wrath" (Hos. xiii. 11). The 
 kingdom was then transferred to David, the man after 
 God's own heart, who would fulfil all His will. 
 
 The passage before us admits of the same explanation. 
 The direct purpose to be fulfilled in man's creation was 
 twofold — his own happiness and his Creator's glory. 
 Both of these objects were now frustrate for a time 
 through the fearful abounding of wickedness. Man was 
 made wretched, while the earth was filled with violence ; 
 and God was dishonoured by foulest blasphemies, when 
 every imagination of man's heart was only evil, and that 
 continually. If the world were viewed with reference to 
 its actual state alone, apart from the issues in the far 
 distance, the very same motives which had prompted the 
 great work of creation must now have caused the Holy 
 Creator to wish the work undone. We can only rise to a 
 just and true conception of the Divine character by sum- 
 ming up all the various revelations of His mind and will, 
 occasioned by the diverse characters and moral states of 
 men, and the successive stages of the world's history. The 
 word of God announces each of these in its turn. By 
 
24 THE HISTORY OE THE FLOOD. 
 
 comparing Scripture with Scripture, we must learn to 
 combine them in one stereoscopic view, which may 
 embrace the whole landscape, and reveal to us, in clear 
 and full outline, the harmonious perfections of the Thrice 
 Holy, the Almighty, and the All- wise. 
 
 These words, which have occasioned your perplexity, 
 have long been, to my own mind, a peculiar source of 
 comfort and mental repose. Abstract statements of the 
 Divine immutability, through the dimness of our facul- 
 ties, now impaired by sin, tend rapidly to produce an 
 immoral fatalism, deadening to the conscience, and de- 
 structive of all spiritual, life. Of all temptations to 
 which men are exposed, this is perhaps the most universal 
 and the most dangerous. It is common to all classes, 
 the Christian divine, the sceptic philosopher, and the 
 unlettered peasant. What will be, will be, and cannot 
 be altered ; so that we may fold our arms, and float icily 
 down the stream of time. The positive philosophy of 
 our own days is based, almost throughout, on this main 
 fallacy. The laws of progress, it affirms, are fixed and 
 immutable. The will of the individual is itself a mere 
 product of outward circumstances, and is powerless 
 amidst the tide of antecedents and consequents, which 
 moves on with perpetual flow. And thus men are always 
 blameless, whatever the amount of their seeming crime. 
 
 The same evil was rife, in the times of the Captivity, 
 among the ancient Jews. "If our transgressions and 
 sins be upon us," they cried, P and we pine away in them, 
 how should we then live ? 33 Similar statements may often 
 be heard on the lips of the poorest and most ignorant, to 
 
THE HISTOEY OF THE FLOOD. 25 
 
 excuse their neglect of the laws of Christian morality, and 
 of the welfare of the immortal soul. In " Queen Mao/' 
 Shelley's beautiful but hateful poem, the same thought 
 underlies and sustains a large superstructure of blas- 
 phemy : 
 
 " Spirit of Nature, all-sufficing Power, 
 Necessity, thou Mother of the world, 
 Unlike the God of human error, thou 
 Requir'st no prayers or praises . . . the slave 
 Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world, 
 And the good man . . . are equal in Thy sight." 
 
 A cold and heartless philosophy is ever attempting to 
 seat this gaunt and lifeless spectre, this blind Fate, under 
 such titles as the Deity, the Absolute, the Soul of the 
 world, in the temple of the true and living God. And 
 the text in question is a flaming sword, placed at the 
 very entrance of Scripture, like the cherubim at the 
 eastern gate of Paradise, to guard it from the inroad of 
 so fatal a delusion, and thus to "keep the way of the 
 tree of life." The conception of sin really perishes when 
 we cease to look upon it as grievous in the sight of God, 
 and conceive that all events and all passions, because 
 they exist, are alike acceptable and pleasing in His sight. 
 It is one mark of the deep wisdom which pervades all 
 Scripture, that so near its opening there should be found 
 that firm and full protest against every form of immoral 
 fatalism which this verse supplies to every thoughtful 
 reader. Here we leave behind us all those dreary counter- 
 feits of a cold-hearted philosophy, which usurp and profane 
 the titles of the Most High. We learn that we have to do 
 
26 THE HISTORY OF THE FLOOD. 
 
 henceforth with a living" God, a righteous Governor of 
 the world, who loves righteousness and hates iniquity, 
 and whose holy eyes sift and search, with intense dis- 
 crimination, all the works and ways of sinful men. 
 
 2. But a second difficulty may arise from the same 
 narrative. How are we to reconcile a destruction so 
 extensive and universal with just views of the Divine 
 benevolence ? 
 
 The difficulty here seems to lie in our slowness to admit 
 the truth, that evil can be so intensely evil as to require 
 that God himself should deal with it in this way. For if 
 we only assume that warnings and long-suffering patience 
 have been used to the uttermost, then even benevolence 
 must prescribe that incorrigible transgression should be 
 punished, rather than the Divine glory should be wholly 
 blotted out, and mankind be given up to the triumph of 
 evil, and total ruin. The moral of the history, if we 
 accept its natural construction, is clear and plain. For- 
 bearance had now been carried to its furthest limit. Only 
 one righteous household was left. The same forbearance, 
 if continued further, would have issued in a state of 
 wickedness strictly universal. The seed of the righteous 
 would have perished, the great end of creation been re- 
 versed, and the scheme of redemption have come abruptly 
 to a dark and fatal close. It is because the judgment had 
 been delayed so long under sorest provocation, that, when 
 once it began, it needed to be so complete. Once for all, 
 this Divine perfection, the long-suffering of God, needed 
 to be carried to its furthest extent, and on the largest scale. 
 But the costly and solemn experiment was never more 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE ELOOD. 27 
 
 to be repeated. An earlier interference, by local and 
 partial judgments, would hereafter prevent the growth 
 of an apostasy so wide-spread and entire. It must be 
 hard for creatures, sinful themselves, to attain a due 
 sense of the stubbornness and malignity of moral evil in 
 its more extreme and aggravated forms. But the facts 
 which a mournful experience has revealed in later ages, 
 and their long and dark succession of crime, should 
 prepare us to admit the truth which is implied in 
 these earliest pages of the word of God. There may 
 be places and times when the infliction of severe and 
 righteous judgment on hardened transgressors fulfils, 
 instead of reversing, the laws of a true benevolence. A 
 world of rebels can never be governed by sprinkling it 
 with rose-water. There is a feeble, sickly sentimentalism, 
 which shuts its eyes to the depth and inveteracy of 
 moral disease in sinful hearts, and only aggravates the 
 evils it pretends to cure. But perfect goodness must 
 include the widest extremes of moral excellence, the un- 
 bending sternness of just severity against obdurate evil, 
 and the tender compassion which revealed itself in the 
 tears of our Lord at the grave of Lazarus, and over guilty 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 3. The third question involved in your inquiry relates 
 to the final state of those who perished in the Deluge. 
 Were they cut off, you ask, to keep them from further 
 sin, and will they be allowed hereafter to partake in the 
 forgiveness purchased by the blood of Christ ? 
 
 Here two questions very different need to be distin- 
 guished from each other. The first refers to the likeli- 
 
SO THE HISTORY OP THE FLOOD. 
 
 hood of repentance when the Flood was coming on the 
 earth; and the other, to the possibility of those who 
 have died impenitent obtaining a second probation. 
 
 For this latter view I can see no warrant in the word 
 of God. On the contrary, it seems to contradict and 
 annnl the natural force of its solemn and repeated warn- 
 ings, like those words of the Apostle : " Behold, now is 
 the accepted time ; behold, now is the day of salvation ! " 
 The whole drift of its teaching is summed up in the 
 statement, — "It is appointed unto men once to die, 
 and after this the judgment." The account by which 
 the state is fixed, is of the " things done in the body, 
 whether they be good or evil." 
 
 On the other question, however, Scripture seems to 
 give some little light. St. Peter, in a well-known pas- 
 sage (1 Pet. iii. 18 — 20), tells us that our Lord, in His 
 spirit, " went and preached unto the spirits in prison ; 
 which sometime were disobedient, when once the long- 
 suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the 
 ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, 
 were saved by water." 
 
 The application of these words to the preaching in 
 spirit in the person of Noah does plain violence to the 
 context and the grammatical force of the terms. Two 
 journeys of our Lord are mentioned in succession, one 
 after His death, the other after His resurrection ; one to 
 the spirits in prison, the other to the right hand of God 
 and the spirits of Light in God's presence, " angels, and 
 authorities, and powers being made subject unto Him." 
 The spirits visited are those who " sometime were dis- 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE FLOOD. 29 
 
 obedient/'' — that is, not at the time of the visit itself, but 
 at a period implied to be much earlier, the days of 
 Noah. The contrast in the double statement of St. 
 Peter respecting this double journey answers to the 
 words of St. Paul on the same subject : " Now that he 
 ascended, what is it but that he descended first into the 
 lower parts of the earth ?" In a first journey of descent, 
 our Lord preached to the spirits in prison ; and then, by 
 a second journey, He ascended on high, is gone into 
 heaven, and seated at the right hand of God. 
 
 The true meaning, then, seems to be that, of those 
 who perished in the Flood, some, and perhaps many, 
 repented when the judgment came suddenly upon them, 
 and all hope of outward deliverance had passed away. The 
 ark of Noah did not and could not receive them. Its 
 door had been shut by the hand of God. To these, we 
 are taught, in the region of departed spirits, our Lord, 
 after His death, announced His own finished sacrifice ; 
 that those who had repented at the last, but for whom 
 the ark could supply no escape from the waters, might 
 obtain a better ark of refuge in the Saviour's covenant 
 of redeeming love. 
 
 The same view will explain the obscure verse in the next 
 chapter : "For this cause was the Gospel preached also to 
 them that are dead, that they might be judged according to 
 men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit." 
 The dead here, contrasted with the living, must naturally 
 mean those who were in the state of the dead when this 
 message came to them. It sounds like an unexpected 
 and mysterious extension of the Gospel message, so that 
 
30 THE HISTORY OP THE FLOOD. 
 
 not living men alone, but the departed also, came directly 
 within the range of its proclamation. The change was 
 to affect their state, not in the sight of men, but of God 
 alone. The men in the days of Noah, the dwellers in 
 the cities of the plain, the Egyptian host, the Canaanite 
 armies, to the eye of men were all swept away in one 
 indiscriminate judgment. Yet in each case there may 
 have been a secret and powerful work of repentance, by 
 which a remnant turned to God in the hour of calamity 
 and desolation. To all such the message of mercy might 
 come, when our Lord, in His separate spirit, preached to 
 the dead, to the spirits in prison ; and the destined result 
 was attained, " that they might live according to God in 
 the spirit,"" or gain a firm hold on that Saviour and His 
 finished sacrifice ; on whom, as the promised Seed of the 
 Woman, with a dim and starlight faith, they had learned 
 to put their trust in the hour of judgment, when all 
 their refuges of lies were swept away. 
 
 Such I believe to be the true and natural sense of 
 this controverted passage. And if it be asked why, in 
 this case, the antediluvians alone should be named, since 
 the message could scarcely be limited to them alone, the 
 answer is clear. The Spirit of God, by the Apostle, 
 would reveal the comprehensive character of the work of 
 Christ, by teaching us that it extends backward even to 
 the earliest generations of mankind. He is not called 
 the second Noah, but the Second Man, the last Adam. 
 His work of redeeming mercy is not arrested in its back- 
 ward course by the waters of the Flood, but extends to 
 righteous Abel, to the sainted Enoch, and to all those 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE FLOOD. 31 
 
 who were outwardly involved in the universal Deluge, 
 but whose secret repentance was known to the eye of 
 God alone. That great work includes all states of men, 
 living or dead, and all ages of mankind. How grand, 
 how solemn, this brief announcement of so wonderful a 
 truth ! 
 
 I remain, yours respectfully, 
 
 T. R. Birks. 
 
LETTER IV. 
 
 THE CANAANITES. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 II. The destruction of the Canaanites is a second 
 subject which has caused you perplexity in the state- 
 ments of Scripture, along* with the kindred history of 
 Agag and Samuel. These acts, you say, were "so 
 totally at variance with our Blessed Saviour's injunctions 
 in every page of the New Testament, that it does not 
 seem enough to say a new dispensation took effect after 
 He came on earth, and that fresh laws were then framed 
 for mankind/'' This would be to liken the Omniscient 
 and All-merciful to a fallible mortal, who, finding that 
 one system fails, has recourse to another. This difficulty 
 has been constantly urged by unbelievers, and has 
 perplexed multitudes of devout and pious Christians. 
 It has thus a powerful claim on thoughtful minds for 
 patient and careful examination. 
 
 Your remark suggests two distinct but closely related 
 inquiries. Do the commands in Deuteronomy and the 
 facts in the Book of Joshua contradict the uniform 
 
THE CANAANITES. 33 
 
 teaching of the New Testament ? And next, are they a 
 fatal objection to the Divine mission of Moses, or else 
 to the truth of the record, because they oppose the firm, 
 unalterable laws of true morality ? 
 
 1. You seem to assume that these commands are in 
 direct contradiction to the whole tenour of the New 
 Testament. The same opinion is often held by those 
 who take up with loose and hasty impressions. A closer 
 examination will prove the reverse. The New Testa- 
 ment, from first to last, recognizes and confirms the 
 Divine authority of this portion of God's word, and 
 implies or affirms that these were commands really 
 addressed to the Israelites by the living and almighty 
 God, which it would have been sinful rebellion in them 
 to disobey. 
 
 And, first, let us turn to the narrative of our Lord's 
 temptation in the first and third Gospels. The tempter 
 is thrice repelled by the simple words, "It is written." 
 The written word is thus made a decisive authority in 
 all questions of moral right and wrong. And what are 
 the passages to which this solemn appeal is made ? They 
 are Deut. viii. 3; vi. 13; and vi. 16. In other words, 
 they are sentences from two chapters, which include 
 between them a most distinct and earnest command to 
 root out and destroy the tribes of Canaan. How could 
 our Lord more solemnly endorse the obligation of these 
 intermediate commands, than by His threefold ajypeal to 
 that very portion of God's law where these commands 
 are given, in order to repel and defeat the most subtle 
 onset of temptation from the great enemy of mankind ? 
 
34 THE CANAAOTTES. 
 
 Again, in the Sermon on the Mount our Lord appears 
 as the Great Lawgiver, and meets the doubts that might 
 arise in the minds of his disciples from the seeming 
 divergence between His own teaching and the voice of 
 the Old Testament. « Think not/' He says, " that I 
 am come to destroy the law, or the prophets : I am 
 not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say 
 unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one 
 tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be 
 fulfilled."" And thus, by the voice of our Lord himself, 
 a rejection of the Divine authority of these very com- 
 mands would consign those who practise it to an inferior 
 place in the kingdom of God. 
 
 Again, if we consider the verses vii. 19. 23. 27 in the 
 same discourse, or Matt. x. 15. 28; xi. 21 — 24; xii. 32; 
 xiii. 40 — 42. 50; xviii. 7—9. 34; xxi. 44; xxii. 7; 
 xxiii. 27 — 36, in the same Gospel, their severity is an 
 exact counterpart to these commands in Deuteronomy. 
 In the discourse of St. Stephen, and in that of St. Paul 
 at Antioch, the destruction of the Canaanites is plainly 
 ascribed to the command of God. The same lesson is 
 taught by the references to the Flood, to the destruction of 
 Sodom, and to the judgments on Pharaoh, which occur so 
 repeatedly throughout the New Testament — Heb. xi. 7. 
 1 Pet. iii. 20. 2 Pet. ii. 5. Luke xvii. 27. 2 Pet. ii. 6, 7. 
 Jude 7. 
 
 There is a partial contrast, no doubt, between the tone 
 of the Old and the New Testament. " The law was given 
 by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." 
 But this partial contrast, when we look below the surface, 
 
THE CANAANTTES. 35 
 
 is based upon a deep and real harmony. The grace of 
 the Gospel is implied and even expressed (Exod. xxxiv. 
 4—7. Deut. iv. 81; v. 29; viii. 5; x. 18) amidst the 
 sterner messages of the Law, and the severity of the 
 Law mingles repeatedly with the gentle accents of the 
 Gospel— Mark xvi. 16. John iii. 36; xii. 39, 40. Rom. 
 ix. 22; xi. 8. 21. 2 Cor. ii. 15; v. 11. Rom. ii. 8, 9. 
 Heb. xii. 29; x.-26, 27. The judgments which fell on 
 the Jews for their rejection of the Saviour were scarcely 
 less severe than those which their fathers had been 
 charged to execute on the Amorites. The moral diffi- 
 culty lies impartially against the whole course of God's 
 moral government, as revealed in Scripture, and is by 
 no means confined to the history in the Book of Joshua 
 alone. 
 
 2. But it may be urged that these judgments, how- 
 ever consistent with each other, contradict every true 
 conception of the Divine mercy. This objection has 
 been often made, and often answered. A little calm 
 reflection will show that it derives its force from a 
 neglect of some of the clearest lessons of experience, 
 and of the contrast between primary and secondary or 
 dependent laws of moral obligation. 
 
 A sentence of death, duly executed upon sin, is the 
 constant law of God's moral government of mankind. 
 To deny it is to contradict all experience, or else involves 
 a creed of blind fatality which is virtual atheism. The 
 suddenness of the judgment, and the use of human 
 agents, are here the only peculiarities. In the course 
 of a century the very same persons would have been 
 d 2 
 
•36 THE CANAANITES. 
 
 cut off by a gradual work of God's judicial visitation, 
 common to all races and ages of mankind. 
 
 Next, when the object is to make a deep moral 
 impression, a simultaneous judgment is far more effective 
 and awakening than one which is gradual and successive. 
 Common observers, in one case, fail to learn any lesson 
 whatever; while, in the other, the most careless are 
 aroused, and see the hand of God. How different is 
 the effect of a sudden shipwreck, where hundreds perish 
 in a moment, or of a pestilence that sweeps off thousands 
 in a few days, from the silent and gradual ravages of 
 disease and death ! When the object is to awaken a 
 sense of God's anger against sin, and of certain judgment 
 on the obstinate sinner, the suddenness of the infliction 
 is almost essential, that the moral object may be fulfilled. 
 
 All judgments, again, which are righteous on the 
 part of God, must claim a righteous sympathy from 
 every creature whose vision is not blinded by sin. It 
 is those acts only which are unjust, capricious, devoid 
 of love and wisdom, which it is wrong to approve. 
 Growing holiness must imply increasing sympathy with 
 all the ways and counsels of the Holy One, and growth 
 in goodness, a fuller and ever-growing perception of His 
 perfect goodness. This full sympathy must imply 
 further, whenever a Divine call is given, a willing and 
 active co-operation. Where this offends us, the alterna- 
 tive is plain, that we charge God himself with cruelty 
 or folly, or else that we are aliens in heart from that 
 perfect Goodness which we profess to venerate 'and adore. 
 
 Now if once we admit the justice of the sentence on 
 
THE CANAANITES. 37 
 
 the Canaanites, there is a weighty reason why its execu- 
 tion should be committed to the chosen people of God. 
 By this means alone could the solemn lesson of God's 
 hatred of moral evil, and of its awful consequences, be 
 . most effectually proclaimed. No method could be de- 
 vised more likely to deter the Israelites from those sins, 
 against which they were themselves commanded to 
 execute the just vengeance of God, or to alarm and 
 arouse the consciences of the heathen, so far as the 
 tidings of this solemn visitation might extend. 
 
 Two objections, however, may still be urged; that the 
 judgment, with reference to the Canaanites themselves, 
 was too severe ; and that its natural effect on the Israelites 
 must have been to stir up every fierce, cruel, and selfish 
 passion. But the facts, when examined, are a full answer. 
 
 And first, the Divine forbearance to these Canaanites 
 had now lasted four hundred years, or more than ten 
 generations. Even before the birth of Isaac the truth 
 was proclaimed, that no judgment could be executed 
 on the guilty race till forbearance had run its full course : 
 "In the fourth generation they shall return hither again ; 
 for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full" (Gen. 
 xv. 16). And when the predicted time was arrived, and 
 Israel had been rescued from Egypt with mighty 
 wonders, in order to enter on the land of promise, the same 
 act of righteousness which condemned them, for their 
 unbelief, to sojourn in the wilderness forty years, was 
 one of grace and forbearance to these Canaanites. A 
 fresh space was given them for amendment and repent- 
 ance, even when their pollutions and cruelties had reached 
 
38 THE CANAANITES. 
 
 a revolting stage (Lev. xviii. 22—28. Deut. xii. 31). 
 They could not conceive themselves to be exposed merely 
 to the lawless passions of a cruel and hostile race. The 
 report of the wonders in Egypt had soon reached them, 
 and produced deep consternation, though not a true 
 repentance (Josh. ii. 10, 11). And when, in one single 
 instance, there was submission to the hand of God, and 
 fear of His judgments, leading to an eager effort to avert 
 them, that effort was crowned with success. The pro- 
 mise to the Gibeonites, though procured by deceit, was 
 still to be kept inviolably ; and its violation by Saul, 
 even four hundred years later, brought on Israel a heavy 
 judgment (2 Sam. xxi. 1 — 4). 
 
 Again, the whole history shows how carefully the 
 children of Israel were shut up on every side from the 
 indulgence of wicked passions and mere self-will, and 
 taught to view themselves as the instruments of a Divine 
 judgment alone. Their own convenience, or gain, or 
 national antipathy, was allowed no weight in guiding 
 their conduct. When the Edomites refused them a 
 passage, they were to make a long circuit, rather than 
 use any force to their own brethren. The charge was 
 given them still later, ' ' I will not give you of their land, 
 no, not a foot breadth. Ye shall buy meat of them 
 for money, that ye may eat ; and water for money, that 
 ye may drink." The same charge was repeated towards 
 Moab and Ammon, whom there was still greater reason 
 to regard as bitter enemies : " Distress not the Moabites.-" 
 " Distress not the children of Ammon, nor meddle with 
 them." And even on the first excitement of conquest 
 
THE CANAANITES. 39 
 
 over Og and Sihon, they were to observe rigidly this 
 Divine prohibition : " Only unto the land of the children 
 of Ammon thou earnest not, nor unto the cities in the 
 mountains, nor unto whatsoever the Lord our God 
 forbad us."" The entire destruction of the spoil was a 
 further provision of the same kind; and placed this 
 solemn execution of God's judgment on iniquity in 
 open contrast to all the selfish instincts of a merely 
 human warfare. 
 
 There is a still deeper line of thought which might 
 be pursued in vindication of the wisdom of these 
 messages to Israel, however severe. A refusal to own 
 the exceeding sinfulness of sin, its fatal obstinacy, and 
 just demerit, is the most dangerous obstacle to all 
 moral progress, and to that work of redemption, whereby 
 alone the instincts of a true benevolence can be ful- 
 filled. The salvation of a lost and fallen world rests 
 on one foundation, the death and resurrection of the 
 Son of God. And what is the revealed ground of this 
 exaltation of our Lord, the one source of every blessing 
 the sinner can hope to enjoy? The Psalmist and the 
 Apostle give here their consenting testimony : " Thou 
 hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity ; wherefore 
 God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of 
 gladness above thy fellows. - " "I delight to do thy 
 will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart." 
 One main part of that law, hid in the Saviour's heart, 
 which strengthened Him for victory over all the powers 
 of evil, consisted of these severe denunciations of God's 
 anger against stubborn and malicious wickedness. Our 
 
40 THE CANAANITES. 
 
 only true security against moral evil is not indifference, 
 but deep abhorrence. Until we have learned how evil it 
 is in its own nature, we shall never be earnest in seeking 
 deliverance from its power, nor attain that moral firm- 
 ness which transforms a weak, sickly, puerile benevolence 
 into the mighty and victorious energy of redeeming love. 
 
 I remain, yours faithfully, 
 
 T. R. Bieks. 
 
LETTEE V. 
 
 ON FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 III. I have now to answer your questions with 
 regard to the most solemn of all the truths revealed in 
 the word of God, the doctrine of Eternal Punishment. 
 
 " Nothing/' you remark, and I agree with the state- 
 ment, " can be more positively laid down by our Lord, 
 than that the reward of heaven and the punishment 
 of hell are eternal, and strange warnings of judgment 
 to come pervade almost every page/'' On the other 
 hand, a perfect love seems to imply a sincere desire for 
 the happiness of every conscious and intelligent creature, 
 and a perfect victory of Almighty love that this desire 
 should not fail through the strength of evil, but be 
 at length fulfilled. Here, then, we seem involved in 
 a hopeless contradiction between direct and repeated 
 statements of Scripture on the one side, and inferences, 
 on the other, natural and almost inevitable, from one 
 of the most fundamental truths of revealed religion. 
 The subject is deeply solemn in its own nature, and 
 
42 ON EUTTJEE PUNISHMENT. 
 
 has caused more perplexity than any other, in every 
 age of the Church, to thoughtful Christians. My own 
 mind has been more than usually exercised upon it 
 many years ago. I cannot hope to give your perplexity 
 full and entire relief. Yet some light has arisen to 
 me out of the darkness and sorrow of years of early 
 meditation ; and though I have shrunk so long, for 
 a special reason, from publishing my thoughts, yours 
 is precisely such a case as seems to make it my duty 
 to explain the conclusion to which I have long ago 
 been led, and the direction in which my spirit has 
 found relief, without daring, by unauthorized guess- 
 work, to tamper with the entire truthfulness of the 
 solemn messages of God. 
 
 1. First of all, every created being may be viewed 
 in two different aspects, internal and external; what 
 it is in itself, and also as part of a greater whole. It 
 has a personal and individual, but also a relative or 
 federal character. This double warp and woof runs 
 through the whole of Scripture, and occasions a fre- 
 quent antithesis in its statements of Divine truth. Thus 
 we are told that "in Adam all die," and still "the 
 soul that sinneth, it shall die;" that "in Christ shall all 
 be made alive," and also that eternal life shall be 
 the result of personal work, "patient continuance in 
 well doing " (Rom. ii. 7) . The charge to the Galatians, 
 "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law 
 of Christ," is followed at once by the contrasted caution, 
 " For every man shall bear his own burden." Again, 
 the Apostle teaches the Corinthians in the same verse, 
 
ON FUTUEE PUNISHMENT. 43 
 
 " He that planteth and lie that watereth are one : 
 yet every man shall receive his reward according* to 
 his own labour/'' Other passages, in which a similar 
 contrast appears, will suggest themselves on a careful 
 perusal and study of the word of God. 
 
 2. Secondly, wherever selfishness is not complete, 
 the same contrast is found in the elements which 
 constitute human joy and sorrow, happiness and misery. 
 In part, they are personal and subjective; while in 
 part they arise from sympathy with the happiness of 
 those whom we love, or from the contemplation of 
 objective truth. How often has the wounded soldier 
 or sailor almost forgotten his wounds in his deep joy 
 for his commander's or his country's victory ! The 
 cases are frequent in which the sense of severe suffering 
 is almost lost in some absorbing object of thought, 
 or joyful tidings of the happiness of others who are 
 deeply beloved. The Christian, whatever his personal 
 peace and comfort, is often recalled to deep sorrow 
 by the thought of abounding sin, of a dishonoured 
 Saviour, and of perishing souls ; and hours of bereave- 
 ment have their anguish lightened by stedfast faith 
 in the increased happiness of the friends whom death 
 has removed. So that all happiness is of two kinds, 
 personal or federal, one resulting directly from blessings 
 strictly our own, and the other from sympathy with 
 the joys of others, or from the contemplation of external 
 and objective truth. 
 
 3. Thirdly, all the statements of Scripture with 
 respect to eternal judgment and the opposite issues 
 
44 ON FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 
 
 of blessing and punishment, refer to the personal and 
 individual characters of men, — " Every man shall bear 
 his own burden/'' "Every one shall receive his reward 
 according to his own labour/'' " My reward is with me, 
 to render to every man as his work shall be." " He 
 called his servants, that he might know how much 
 each man had gained by trading/'' " We must all appear 
 before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may 
 receive the things done in his body, according to that 
 he hath done, whether it be good or bad." The personal 
 conduct is not only the ground of a personal sentence, 
 but of unequal degrees of punishment and bliss, — "It 
 shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in 
 the day of judgment than for you." "The servant 
 which knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, 
 shall be beaten with many stripes." " Of how much 
 sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy, who . . . 
 hath done despite to the Spirit of grace ! " " He that 
 soweth sparingly shall reap sparingly, and he that 
 soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully." " One 
 star differeth from another star in glory." The result 
 of this personal judgment, by the constant and repeated 
 testimony of the Scriptures, is a final contrast, an 
 eternal separation, depending on the use or abuse of 
 the probation in this mortal life. Their earnest appeals 
 to men to repent and turn to God derive their energy 
 from this all-pervading truth, often expressed, and 
 every where implied, in their large variety of warnings, 
 threatenings, promises, and urgent and affectionate ex- 
 hortations. 
 
ON FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 45 
 
 4. Let us now suppose that these statements of 
 Scripture on the eternal contrast between the righteous 
 and the wicked, the saved and the lost, however true, 
 and however solemn, are not the whole truth, but 
 that there is a further objective or federal element, 
 common alike to both, which is nowhere in the Bible, 
 in set terms, explicitly revealed. Let us suppose that 
 the future condition of the lost will combine, with the 
 utmost personal humiliation, shame, and anguish, the 
 passive contemplation of a ransomed universe, and of 
 all the innumerable varieties of blessedness enjoyed 
 by unfallen spirits, and the ransomed people of God ; 
 such a contemplation as would be fitted, in its own 
 nature, to raise the soul into a trance of holy adoration 
 in the presence of infinite and unsearchable Goodness. 
 If this were true, still there are weighty reasons why 
 this aspect of God's purpose should not be early re- 
 vealed. That love, which is the source of all the Divine 
 messages, may be the reason why the All- wise refuses 
 to unveil a part of truth, which, even in clearing His 
 character from the blasphemies by which it is now 
 assailed, might, through the perverseness of sinful 
 hearts, deaden the conscience, paralyze the will, and 
 obscure the momentous contrast between the results 
 of present obedience and disobedience, so as to defeat 
 one main object of all Divine revelation. 
 
 Assuming, then, the truth of the suggestion I have 
 made, there is a weighty and sufficient cause why the 
 Scriptures should have passed by this secret purpose 
 of God in total silence, and leave it to be deduced by 
 
46 ON FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 
 
 patient thought and moral inference alone. The solemn 
 contrast of reward and punishment can thus work its 
 full effect,, unmingled and unmitigated, upon the hearts 
 of men. 
 
 The sternness of the Divine threatenings, and the 
 refusal to weaken their terrors by revealing distinctly 
 the contrasted truth, may, on this view, be seen here- 
 after to be the most wonderful illustration of God's 
 perfect love. In the affairs of life it implies great 
 nobility of character, to rest willingly for years under 
 reproach and obloquy wholly undeserved, when these 
 censures and calumnies would have been scattered in 
 a moment to the winds by the publication of a secret, 
 which some point of honour, some sense of public duty, 
 or some promise, forbids the party so unjustly censured 
 to reveal. This high excellence, rarely and dimly seen 
 even in good and upright men, will perhaps hereafter 
 be seen to belong in its full perfection to the Only Good. 
 The willingness of the Most High to remain exposed for 
 ages to all the blasphemies hurled against Him because 
 of these solemn threatenings, may then be found to add 
 a crowning excellence and beauty to the perfect mani- 
 festation of His redeeming love. 
 
 5. The silence of Scripture, then, or the want of 
 direct and explicit statements of the view now suggested, 
 is no disproof of its reality and truth. It is only a 
 weighty reason why those who have found in it relief 
 for their own perplexity should beware of a rash and 
 hasty publication of their thoughts, lest they should 
 run counter to the wisdom and love by which alone 
 
ON FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 47 
 
 that silence can be fully explained. Let us now 
 inquire whether direct evidence cannot be found to 
 confirm its truth, not on the surface of Scripture, or 
 in distinct and specific statements, but drawn by simple 
 inference from the main truths of the Bible, and confirmed 
 by its agreement with all the secondary allusions, de- 
 scriptions, warnings, and promises of the word of God. 
 
 And first, there is one frequent and serious error in 
 popular views of future punishment, which, in the words 
 of the Article, has no warranty of Scripture, but is plainly 
 repugnant to the word of God. It is not uncommon 
 to speak of lost souls as their own mutual tormentors, 
 and given up to Satan to be tormented by him for ever. 
 But this reverses the actual revelation. The judgment 
 is not the time of Satan's power, but of his overthrow 
 and punishment. Lost souls are never represented as at 
 liberty to torment each other, but each as enduring, in 
 passive subjection, a solemn sentence from the hand 
 of God. To assume the perpetual continuance of active 
 malice and permitted blasphemies, is to ascribe to God a 
 dominion shared for ever with the powers of evil. It 
 makes hell the scene of Satan's triumphant malice, just 
 as heaven is that of the Creator's triumphant love. Yet 
 the descriptions of that final doom imply the utter 
 prostration and entire repression of all actings of the 
 rebellious will under the immediate display of Infinite 
 Holiness. Satan, in the last judgment, is no tormentor 
 of lost souls, but only the foremost criminal, doomed 
 to the deepest fall and heaviest punishment. 
 
 Now if the doom of lost souls involves an unwilling 
 
48 ON FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 
 
 acknowledgment of God^s justice in their own sentence, 
 must it not also imply a compulsory but real perception 
 of all the other attributes of the Almighty? Must 
 not the contemplation of infinite wisdom and love, how- 
 ever solemn the punishment and the compulsion by 
 which alone it is made possible for those who have 
 despised their day of grace, be still, in its own nature, 
 unutterably blessed ? The personal loss and ruin may 
 be complete and irreparable, the anguish intense, the 
 shame and sorrow dreadful, the humiliation infinite and 
 irreversible. Yet out of its depth there may arise such 
 a passive but real view of the joys of a ransomed uni- 
 verse, and of the unveiled perfections of the Godhead, as 
 to fulfil, even here, in a strange, mysterious way, the 
 predicted office of the Redeemer of souls, and to swallow 
 up death in victory. 
 
 Such is the general nature of the conclusion in which 
 my own thoughts have found repose, by which alone, I 
 believe, the perfect truth of the solemn threatenings 
 of our Lord and his Apostles can be seen to harmonize 
 with the perfect and unchanging love of the Creator 
 to all the creatures of his hand ; while various hints of 
 inspired Scripture receive their most expressive inter- 
 pretation, and deep analogies, which lie below the surface, 
 and only calm and patient and reverent thought can 
 trace out and discern, are satisfied and fulfilled. But 
 I reverence the silence of the word of God. And while 
 these reflections may clear away, as they have cleared 
 to my own spirit, some of the dark clouds which rest on 
 the hope of the life to come, I count it true wisdom for 
 
ON FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 49 
 
 the Church and all its members to dwell most constantly 
 on those aspects of God's purpose which are most 
 explicitly and clearly revealed. We need to beware 
 lest, in seeking to pierce the veil which shrouds the 
 Divine glory, we should perish in breaking through to 
 gaze, and lose the awakening power of those solemn 
 messages which have come to us directly and plainly 
 from the lips of the All-merciful and All- wise. I shall 
 rejoice if the thoughts I have now offered, and the 
 key-note they supply, are any relief to your perplexity, 
 and help you to perceive how, in God's time, the dark- 
 ness may be wholly rolled away. But I would counsel 
 you affectionately to practise the same caution I have 
 felt binding on my own conscience, and to suffer no 
 reasonings, inferences, or conjectures on the deep things 
 of God to weaken the power of that solemn contrast 
 between the broad way and the narrow, eternal life 
 and eternal death, which the Son of God himself has 
 explicitly and solemnly revealed. 
 
 I remain, yours faithfully, 
 
 T. R. Bieks. 
 
LETTER VI. 
 
 the state of the departed. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 IV. Another subject on which your mind has 
 been perplexed, is the occurrence of doubts about futurity, 
 even in the minds of good and pious men. You quote 
 from Mr. Robertson's sermons admissions of this kind, 
 and ask whether this terrible ordeal of doubt is to be 
 viewed as a trial through which every Christian has to 
 pass. 
 
 A partial answer to this inquiry may be found in the 
 broad statements of Scripture with regard to the nature 
 of the souFs redemption. The state out of which every 
 Christian has to be raised and rescued by Divine grace is 
 one of spiritual blindness and almost total unbelief. A 
 faint glimmer of eternal truth may remain, not wholly 
 erased from the tables of the heart ; but the Spirit of God 
 uses the strong phrases, deaf, blind, gross, dead in sin, 
 to describe the first condition of the soul, from which it 
 has to be raised by the Gospel into newness of life. 
 There are some cases, like that of St. Paul, where the 
 
THE STATE OE THE DEPARTED. 51 
 
 work of years seems to be compressed into a few days, 
 and the soul, lately dead in sin, rises suddenly into a 
 maturity of faith and spiritual understanding. In these 
 cases the anguish of the first awakening may be very 
 l deep, but the later experience, comparatively, an un- 
 clouded sunshine of hope and joy. But in most cases the 
 first transition is from practical neglect of eternal things 
 to a weak and infant faith ; which grows only through a 
 gradual discipline, and successive stages of experience, 
 mixed with temptation, to the full assurance of a ripened 
 understanding, and a manly stature in Christ. In such 
 cases there may be a frequent recurrence of doubts and 
 questionings, even affecting the foundations of religious 
 faith. 
 
 The testimony of Baxter on this point, in his auto- 
 biography, is very instructive and remarkable. He speaks 
 as follows : — 
 
 " Whereas, in my younger days, I never was tempted 
 to doubt the truth of Scripture or of Christianity, but all 
 my doubts and fears were exercised at home, about my 
 own sincerity, and this was what I called unbelief; since 
 then, my sorest assaults have been on the other side ; and 
 such they were, that had I been void of internal experi- 
 ence, the adhesion of love, and the special help of God, 
 and had not discerned more reason for my religion than 
 I did when younger, I had certainly apostatized to infi- 
 delity, though for atheism or ungodliness my reason seeth 
 no stronger arguments than may be brought to prove 
 that there is no earth, or air, or sun. I am now, there- 
 fore, much more apprehensive than before of the necessity 
 e 2 
 
52 THE STATE OF THE DEPARTED. 
 
 of well grounding men in their religion, and especially of 
 the witness of the indwelling Spirit, for I more sensibly 
 perceive that the Spirit is the great witness of Christ and 
 Christianity to the world. And though the folly of 
 fanatics tempted me long to overlook the strength of the # 
 testimony of the Spirit, while they placed it in a certain 
 internal assertion or enthusiastic inspiration, I now see 
 that the Holy Ghost, in another manner, is the witness 
 of Christ and His agent in the world. . . . There is many 
 a one that hideth his temptations to infidelity, because he 
 thinketh it a shame to open them, and because it may 
 generate doubts in others. But I fear the imperfection 
 of most men's care of their salvation, and of their dili- 
 gence and resolution in a holy life, doth come from the 
 imperfection of their belief in Christianity and the life to 
 come. No petition seemeth to me more necessary than 
 this, ' Lord, increase our faith; ' ' Lord, I believe, help 
 thou my unbelief ! ' " 
 
 These words of one of the most cautious and profound 
 of English divines are a direct answer to your inquiry. 
 They show that temptations of this kind are very common, 
 even among advanced Christians, though perhaps not 
 strictly universal. But the Baptist's message does not 
 warrant the superstructure the author you quote builds 
 upon it, as if it implied an almost total failure of faith, 
 in his last hours, of that " greatest among the woman- 
 born." It implied much perplexity of heart, but a per- 
 plexity quite consistent with strong and real faith, else 
 why send to our Lord for an explanation of the conduct 
 he could not understand ? The course of the Saviour 
 
THE STATE OF THE DEPARTED. 53 
 
 was widely different from what the stern Reformer of 
 Israel had expected in that great Successor, whose fan 
 was to be in His hand, to purge His floor, and who was 
 to burn up the chaff with the fire of judgment. Now, on 
 the contrary, He left his own forerunner neglected in the 
 prison, and suffered the ungodly to oppress the righteous 
 without let or hindrance. There was human infirmity, 
 like that of Peter, when he cried, " Be it far from thee, 
 Lord, this shall not be unto thee."" But this infirmity, in 
 either case, was quite consistent with the reality, and even 
 the vigorous activity, of a genuine faith. 
 
 My own comparative freedom from the temptations to 
 which Baxter alludes, I ascribe, under the Divine bless- 
 ing, to an early habit of the inductive study of the word 
 of God. I think it the only wise and safe course for the 
 Christian inquirer, instead of seeking to determine the 
 nature and properties of the soul by abstract reasoning, 
 and to soar into regions where the air is almost too thin 
 to sustain life, by abstract discussions on immortality, to 
 remember that the great revealed hope of the Gospel is 
 not death, but resurrection ; and to dwell on that historical 
 plan of redemption, from Genesis onward, which centres 
 in the death and resurrection of Christ, and in His future 
 return, and the resurrection of His people. These two 
 great waymarks, in the past and the future, are both of 
 them linked inseparably with a vast number of kindred 
 truths. In this way the Christian, who studies the Bible 
 with humility and perseverance, may attain an assurance 
 of " the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world 
 to come," almost as deep and firm as the consciousness 
 
54 THE STATE OF THE DEPARTED. 
 
 of his own existence, and not weaker than that which 
 men of education usually feel with reference to the 
 Newtonian theory, the law of gravitation, and the struc- 
 ture of the solar system, the surest parts of natural 
 science. It is easy to perplex ourselves in abstract dis- 
 cussions on the soul's immortality. But death is a fact 
 so strange and solemn, and in a certain sense so irrational, 
 as in hours of temptation to obscure and confound all the 
 conclusions we can draw by the strength of reason alone. 
 Our conceptions, also, of a disembodied spirit are so dim, 
 so mixed and entangled with bodily associations, that 
 they will be apt to fail us when most we require their aid. 
 And this may be one reason why the Scriptures practise 
 here a marked reserve ; and all their discoveries of the 
 future centre in their testimony, that the Lord will return, 
 and that in our flesh we shall see God, when also " this cor- 
 ruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal put on 
 immortality " 
 
 V. The Intermediate State is one of the last subjects on 
 which you inquire. Is there, you ask, such a state between 
 death and the judgment ? Is it one of perfect conscious- 
 ness ? Will the righteous, at once, be perfectly happy, 
 and the unrighteous entirely wretched ? Does the idea 
 of a sleep of the soul involve a denial of the resurrection, 
 and do departed saints at once recognize and hold inter- 
 course with each other ? 
 
 Now first, that there is an intermediate state, to those 
 who believe in the resurrection of the dead, will admit no 
 doubt whatever. Unless there were no future existence, 
 or else the resurrection were a change too insignificant to 
 
THE STATE OF THE DEPARTED. 55 
 
 deserve notice, such a state, whatever its precise charac- 
 ter, there must clearly be. The real doubt must refer to 
 these two questions, how far it differs from total uncon- 
 sciousness on one side, and wherein, on the other, it 
 differs from and falls short of the life of the promised 
 resurrection. 
 
 On this subject small reliance, I think, ought to be 
 placed on abstract reasonings concerning the faculties of 
 the soul. It is equally unsafe to rely on popular im- 
 pressions, which Christians take up loosely from one 
 another, or from the prevalent religious literature, without 
 ever applying by direct and careful search to the word of 
 God, the sole fountain of inspired and certain truth. 
 Through ambiguous and imperfect translations of the 
 Hebrew Sheol, and the Greek Hades and Gehenna, con- 
 spiring with the love of a false simplicity, views of 
 the state of the dead, not warranted by any clear or dis- 
 tinct Scripture evidence, nay, rather opposed to it, have 
 prevailed widely, and still prevail, among many pious 
 Christians. No impressions are more frequent and usual, 
 in religious circles, and even beyond them, than that good 
 men, when they die, go at once to heaven, or pass into 
 glory. These statements occur perpetually in hymns and 
 religious works, as if they were the plainest and most 
 fundamental part of the Gospel. And yet, when we turn 
 to Scripture, not one solitary text to justify either im- 
 pression can be found. Neither in the Old Testament 
 nor in the New can one instance be found, where the soul 
 of the righteous, in dying, is said to rise to heaven, or 
 enter at once into glory. The state of the departed is 
 
56 THE STATE OF THE DEPARTED. 
 
 represented as one of undress,, of nakedness, of being un- 
 clothed, of waiting and expectation, though one of rest 
 and peace to those that die in the Lord. The popular 
 view, represented by the " Assembly's Catechism/'' seems 
 to have grown directly out of the mingled impatience and 
 unholiness of Christians in the latter days, and their wide- 
 spread neglect of the great hope of the Church, the return 
 of the Lord in glory. Tried by the images the Spirit of 
 God employs, it is as unnatural as to dream of subjects 
 being presented in their night-clothes at the levee and in 
 the palace of an earthly sovereign. Three ideas are asso- 
 ciated in the word of God with its brief descriptions of 
 the departed righteous — humiliation, peaceful rest, and 
 earnest expectation. One of these results from the nature 
 of death in itself; one from the earnest of redemption 
 already bestowed ; and one from the hope of the full and 
 perfect redemption still to come. 
 
 With regard to the consciousness or unconsciousness of 
 departed spirits, it seems likely that Christians have gene- 
 ralized too much, and in opposite ways. It is clearly 
 conceivable that, either in the sovereignty of God, or 
 from the state in which the spirit leaves the body, the 
 consciousness after death may sometimes be so dim, as to 
 seem on -the point of ceasing entirely : sometimes so full, 
 and bright, and clear, as to seem almost like the glory of 
 the resurrection begun. It will be hard to reconcile and 
 explain all the statements of Scripture, if we assume that 
 every statement must apply, in common, to every de- 
 parted believer. David pleads for life in the words, " In 
 death there is no remembrance of Thee ; in the grave who 
 
THE STATE OF THE DEPARTED. 57 
 
 shall give Thee thanks ? " while St. Paul has " a desire 
 to depart, and be with Christ, which is far better."" Yet 
 the same Apostle speaks of the death of some Corinthian 
 believers as a loss rather than a gain : " For this cause 
 some are weak and sickly among you, and some sleep. 
 For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged 
 of the Lord. But when we are judged, we are chastened 
 of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the 
 world/' The resurrection of Lazarus and of Tabitha 
 could scarcely be set before us as an act of Divine grace 
 and favour, as well as power, if it brought them back from 
 a far higher to a lower consciousness and measure of bliss. 
 It seems the course which agrees best with deep reve- 
 rence for the word of God, to let every passage retain its 
 own features, and produce its own impression. "Why may 
 we not believe that separated spirits, according to their 
 previous state, or the sovereign pleasure of God, may, 
 some of them, be in a state so exclusive of all activity, 
 as to be equivalent to "perishing" (1 Cor. xv. 18), if no 
 awakening were to follow; and others in such joyous con- 
 sciousness of the love* of Christ, as to be far better than 
 their ripest experience, while dwelling in the mortal 
 body ; so that the Paradise of the departed, in their case, 
 may have a near approach to the higher privileges and 
 fuller joy of the New Jerusalem ? 
 
 I remain, yours faithfully, 
 
 T. R. Birks. 
 
LETTER VII. 
 
 MUTUAL RECOGNITION. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 VI. The mutual recognition of departed friends is 
 the last subject on which you feel uncertainty, and ask for 
 my judgment. This can scarcely be ranked under the 
 head of Scripture difficulties. But since the topic is one 
 of deep interest, and closely connected with great doc- 
 trines of the faith, I will freely offer a few remarks. 
 
 Now, first, with regard to the mutual recognition of 
 redeemed saints after the resurrection, I do not see how 
 a moment's hesitation can arise. It«is either expressed or 
 implied in all the descriptions of future blessedness : "What 
 is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing ? Are not even 
 ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his 
 coming V " Then shall we know even as we are known." 
 It seems plain that the knowledge Christians will then 
 have of each other, of their whole character and history, 
 will be far greater than in this present life. For now 
 we live in a comparative solitude ; and those who know 
 each other best are still, to a great' extent, mutual 
 
MUTUAL RECOGNITION. 59 
 
 strangers. If the disciples recognized Moses and Elijah, 
 whom they had never seen, in the holy mount, how much 
 more will those who are already known recognize each 
 other in the kingdom of God ! 
 
 In the intermediate state, before the resurrection, the 
 case is widely different. Here there seems to me to be 
 no evidence of such a recognition, and I incline strongly 
 to an opposite view. The coming of Christ is described 
 with plain emphasis as the time of " our gathering 
 together unto Him.'''' In that day, and not before, the 
 Apostle expected his converts to be his joy and crown of 
 rejoicing. The phrases by which their state is described 
 — they that sleep, those that sleep in Jesus — though 
 they by no means imply unconsciousness, are wholly 
 adverse to the idea of direct intercommunion. Those who 
 sleep together, even in the same chamber, however vivid 
 their dreams in the night may be, have no communion 
 with each other till their waking hour. The statement 
 that all must give account of " the things done in the 
 body/'' seems to imply that there are no actions out of the 
 body, involving active choice and responsibility; which 
 would not be true, if voluntary intercourse with each 
 other were the law of their being. In that case, why 
 should not Adam or Abel be made responsible for the 
 five thousand years of accountable activity, since the 
 time when their death occurred ? The description of the 
 patriarchs, that they were " gathered to their fathers/'' 
 might seem, perhaps, to point to an opposite view. But 
 the idea really conveyed, on a comparison of the passages, 
 is only that of a separate resting-place, a sleeping- 
 
60 MUTUAL RECOGNITION. 
 
 chamber, in Sheol, or the grave, into which the souls of 
 the righteous alone enter. So the prophet speaks of 
 them : " He shall enter into peace, they shall rest in their 
 beds, each one walking in his uprightness." 
 
 Where the direct statements of Scripture are few and 
 obscure, Christians will be apt to be guided rather by 
 their own wishes than by the indirect evidence and con- 
 structive testimony of the word of God. When death 
 is viewed, not as God's just sentence on a defiled nature, 
 which must be broken down to be built anew, but only 
 as a compulsory separation from beloved friends, there 
 will be a strong bias on the mind to think the separation 
 as short as possible. But God's ways are not as our 
 ways. The discipline whereby He makes his children 
 partakers of his holiness, often departs widely from their 
 own ideas of what is most pleasant and desirable. My 
 own instinctive feelings, I confess, are wholly opposite to 
 those, from which many pious persons seem to derive 
 their chief satisfaction, when they think of their departed 
 friends. Must not the renewed intercourse of the de- 
 parted with each other be a distraction and humiliation, 
 rather than a joy and pleasure, while the work of redemp- 
 tion is still incomplete ? Would Lazarus begin con- 
 versing with his sisters while the grave-clothes were still 
 around him ? The Scriptures plainly yield us no direct 
 warrant for the classical or poetical fancy of " dialogues 
 of the dead." " To sleep " is the negative, and " to 
 depart and be with Christ," the positive aspect, of the 
 state of the disembodied spirits of believers. And until 
 that day, when this corruptible shall put on incor- 
 
MUTUAL RECOGNITION. 61 
 
 ruption, perhaps nothing may be so beneficial to the 
 spirits of the just, so favourable to the high purpose 
 which has marked all their life discipline, as their abiding 
 in one unbroken trance of communion with the Lord 
 himself. It may be well for them to remain undisturbed 
 by lower fellowship, till their spiritual faculties, often so 
 unripe when they leave the body, are strengthened and 
 made ripe to endure the brightness of the judgment day 
 and of the kingdom of God. All that is properly re- 
 ward, as distinct from the inseparable results of a pure 
 conscience and a regenerate heart, seems reserved by 
 the Divine wisdom, that it may be received together by 
 all His people. Thus patience has its perfect work, and 
 their joy at last is a pure and unselfish joy. 
 
 It may be urged, perhaps, that in our Lord's parable 
 a conversation is described between the rich man and 
 Abraham. But it must be remembered that Abraham, 
 the father of the faithful, into whose bosom Lazarus is 
 borne, does not answer here to any common believer, but 
 occupies the same place as our Lord himself in the New 
 Testament. Between Lazarus and the angels, or Lazarus 
 and the rich man, so far as the parable is a guide, there 
 is absolute silence. The analogy is best maintained, if 
 we suppose that, under the New Testament, departed 
 spirits have communion with the Lord, in whose bosom 
 the faithful rest, but with the Lord alone. 
 
 But the importance of the inquiry depends much on 
 the question, how far we are warranted to delay the 
 resurrection in our thoughts to a distant time ? If we 
 do, there must be a strong temptation to fill up the blank 
 
6£ MUTUAL RECOGNITION. 
 
 of Scripture teaching with fancies of our own. This 
 the Church of Rome and modern Protestant divines 
 seem to have done in opposite ways. Is it not rather 
 the voice of the Spirit, that the resurrection ought to 
 seem to us so real and so near, and eternity so vast, as to 
 make details on the mode of the spirit^ separate 
 existence of small moment, compared with direct revela- 
 tions of the resurrection, and the life of the world to 
 come ? Must there not be wise and weighty reasons 
 why the Spirit of God says so little on one subject, 
 and so much on the other ? Our wisdom, surely, is to 
 tread closely in the footprints of His divine revelations. 
 When we dwell on the separate state, a sense of dimness 
 and uncertainty creeps over our mind, unless we clothe it 
 with all the features of our present condition, and thus 
 assume, virtually, that the resurrection is past already to 
 the main part of the Church of Christ. But direct medita- 
 tion on the resurrection itself, and the glory and happi- 
 ness of the risen saints, must give precision, reality, and 
 power, to our hope of the good things to come. It will 
 enable us, through full confidence in the Saviour's love 
 and the Divine goodness, to look forward without fear, 
 sometimes even with desire, to that interval of separation 
 from the body, through which every generation of be- 
 lievers but the last must pass on their road to the New 
 Jerusalem of God. 
 
 You allude, in the close of your letter, to a hope you 
 sometimes cherish that ultimately all created beings will 
 be pardoned, though to act on that hope in this world 
 would be most dangerous. Some former remarks will 
 
MUTUAL RECOGNITION. 63 
 
 show you my own impressions with regard to this sur- 
 mise. But it may be well to add a few further observa- 
 tions. 
 
 Now if you mean by pardon, what I fear some persons 
 mean by it, the cessation of vindictive malice on the part 
 of God towards particular sinners, then such pardon is 
 never given to any, because such malice has no existence, 
 save in the chimeras of a conscience defiled and perverted 
 by sin. Or if it means an act of grace, which shall 
 admit the unholy, in their unholiness, to the vision of 
 God, such pardon is an essential and inherent impossi- 
 bility. Again, if we mean by it a miraculous act, after 
 this life, whereby an exercise of Divine sovereignty effects 
 the change in a moment in lost souls, which the Gospel 
 and the Spirit have failed to effect here, without any 
 further "sacrifice for sins" (Heb. x.), it is doubtful 
 whether such a work is possible in its own nature, and 
 the statements of Scripture give us the strongest reasons 
 to disbelieve its future occurrence. Still further, if by 
 this pardon be meant some act of mercy, which will blot 
 out the deep contrast between the saved and the lost, and 
 wholly undo and reverse the sentence solemnly denounced 
 on the present rejectors of the grace of Christ; then the 
 admission of such a hope would go far towards making 
 God a liar in his most emphatic warnings to the sinner, 
 and would destroy the consistency and moral truthfulness 
 of a large part of the word of God. 
 
 On the other hand, if it be meant that the infliction 
 of just punishment is not the whole of God's purpose 
 towards the unsaved; but that, while His holiness is for 
 
64 MUTUAL RECOGNITION. 
 
 ever manifested in the fulfilment of His warnings, and 
 in their own irreparable loss and shame, there will, even in 
 the depth of that ruin, be such a display of the unchange- 
 able love of the Holy Creator to all the creatures of His 
 hand, such depths of compassion to the self-ruined, as, 
 without reversing their doom, may send a thrill of won- 
 drous consolation through the abyss of what would 
 else be unmingled woe and despair,— I do believe, for- 
 many reasons, that such a display of God's all-perfect 
 love is truly kept in store for the ages to come. While 
 clear and explicit revelations of it have been strictly for- 
 borne for wise reasons, its truth may be deduced by 
 humble and reverent hearts from a patient study of the 
 Scripture, and from calm meditation on the sure victory of 
 good over evil, and the mingling of mercy with judgment 
 in the perfections of the Most High. 
 
 I have now replied briefly to most of the questions you 
 have proposed. From the tenour of your notes, I trust 
 that, with the blessing of God, you have gained some 
 help and comfort from the thoughts which, in my own 
 mind, have been the slow product of years of meditation. 
 In closing these letters, I would commend you respect- 
 fully and affectionately to the teaching of that Blessed 
 Comforter, whose appointed work it is to guide the people 
 of Christ into all truth. With deep interest in your 
 spiritual welfare, I remain, 
 
 Your friend and servant in Christ, 
 
 T. R. Birks. 
 
NOTES 
 
 COLERIDGE'S " CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 INQUIRING SPIRIT." 
 
 Pp. 1, 38. " Seven Letters to a Friend, concerning the 
 bounds between the right and the superstitious use and 
 estimation of the sacred Canon, in which the writer sub- 
 missively discloses his own private judgment on the 
 following questions : — 
 
 " i. is it necessary or expedient to insist on the 
 Divine Origin and Authority of all and every part 
 op the Canonical Books, as the condition, or pirst 
 principle, op Christian Faith ? " 
 
 Certainly not. This could not have been the case with 
 the jailor at Philippi on the instant of his conversion, nor 
 with the Church before the Canon was settled, nor, by 
 parity of reasoning, since then. Yet still an implicit faith 
 in this truth, derived from education alone, may be a 
 great help towards explicit faith, when Christian expe- 
 rience has deepened, and spiritual knowledge been en- 
 larged. 
 
Ob NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 " II. Or may not the due appreciation of the Scrip- 
 tures collectively be more safely relied on as the result and 
 consequence of belief in Christ, and the gradual increase, 
 in respect of particular passages, of our spiritual discern- 
 ment of their truth and authority ; supplying a test and 
 measure of our own growth and progress as individual 
 believers, without the servile fear that prevents or over- 
 clouds the free honour which cometh from love?" 
 1 John iv. 18. 
 
 But see p. 84 (108). If every step of your own pro- 
 gress has brought you nearer to a full conviction of the 
 Divine wisdom of that Word in every part, why should 
 you doubt what is the real asymptote to which the curve 
 of your own varying judgment continually draws nearer 
 and nearer, as you advance towards the full maturity of 
 spiritual wisdom ? 
 
 Let. I. p. 4 (40). " Even with regard to Christianity 
 itself, like certain plants, I creep towards the light, even 
 though it draw me away from the more nourishing 
 warmth. Yea, I should do so, even if the light had 
 made its way through a rent in the wall of the temple." 
 
 Surely the true light is ever joined with warmth, no 
 less than the true warmth with light, for both proceed 
 from Him who is the Sun of Righteousness. It is well, 
 in religion, to avoid the charcoal fumes of mere animal 
 warmth and excitement, but is it therefore more safe to 
 follow a light without heat ? To chase an ignis fatuus 
 will lead us into danger, as really as the suffocating heat 
 of a stove might bring on delirium and death. It 
 is the sunlight of Divine truth which alone it is safe 
 
colebidge's confessions. 67 
 
 to follow, and this ever warms, while it enlightens the 
 soul. 
 
 Pp. 8— 10 (43—45). "I take up this work (the Bible), 
 with the purpose to read it for the first time, as I should 
 read any other book, as far, at least, as I can or dare. 
 For I neither can, nor dare, throw off a strong and awful 
 prepossession in its favour ; certain as I am that a large 
 part of the light and life, in and by which I see, love, 
 and embrace the truth, organized into a living body of 
 faith and knowledge, has been directly or indirectly 
 derived to me from this sacred volume, and unable to 
 determine what I do not owe to its influence. But even 
 on this account, because it has these inalienable claims on 
 my reverence and gratitude, I will not leave it in the 
 power of unbelievers to say that the Bible is for me only 
 what the Koran is to the deaf Turk, and the Vedas for 
 the feeble and acquiescent Hindoo. No, I will retire up 
 into the mountain, and hold secret commune with my 
 Bible above the contagious blastments of prejudice, and 
 the fog-blight of selfish superstition. . . . There is a 
 Light higher than all, the Word that was in the begin- 
 ning, the Light, of which light itself is but the Shechinah 
 and outward tabernacle, the Word that is light for every 
 man, and life for as many as give heed to it. If between 
 the Word and the written letter I still any where seem 
 to myself to find a discrepance, I will not conclude that 
 such there actually is ; nor, on the other hand, will I fall 
 under the condemnation of those that would lie for God, 
 but seek as I may, be thankful for what I have, and 
 wait." 
 
 f 2 
 
68 NOTES ON INSPIRATION". 
 
 There is nothing more miserable than the kind of faith 
 some have in the Bible, which practically amounts to 
 this — "1 profess to believe every jot and tittle of the 
 Scriptures to be true and divinely inspired ; but whatever 
 is asserted as true from those Scriptures is a mere human 
 interpretation, which I am at liberty to receive or reject 
 just as I please. All truth is in the Bible, but I cannot 
 be certain of any one truth from the Bible/'' This is both 
 the worst hypocrisy and a contemptible idolatry. Against 
 this evil, prevalent in more mitigated forms, Coleridge 
 can hardly be too severe. But it by no means follows, 
 because we ought to begin by prizing the Bible for the 
 great truths it contains, even before a deliberate and en- 
 lightened conviction of its plenary inspiration in every 
 part, that growing light would not land us finally in that 
 very truth, from which most of us, blessed be God, are 
 taught in our childhood to set out, as our chart and 
 compass in the research of saving doctrines. It is foolish 
 to profess unbounded veneration for the Scriptures, while 
 neglecting those great truths of redemption which arc the 
 groundwork and source of all their messages. It is like the 
 zeal of the Capernaites to make our Lord a king, when 
 blind to His secret and divine glory. But though He 
 withdrew Himself from these zealots, it is not less true 
 that He will yet be manifested as the King of Israel. 
 The real lesson is that none can behold his visible king- 
 dom who have not first received Him as the Author and 
 Source of spiritual grace. So a zeal for the verbal inspi- 
 ration of the Scriptures is worse than useless, when 
 severed from faith in the great mysteries of redemj^tion. 
 
coleridge's cobfbsslons. 
 
 But when those truths are devoutly received, the inspi- 
 ration of God's "Word will shine out clearly; as Christ,, 
 soon after He withdrew from the multitudes, appeared to 
 His faithful disciples in "kingly glory on the holy nioun- 
 
 The parallel may be traced further. It was n 
 the disciples, but three only, who had this earnest of His 
 glory before the resurrection. And so also, while many 
 Christians may have an external, unripe faith in the in- 
 spiration of the Scriptures, a full, deep, and ripe convic- 
 tion of its truth is a high privilege, and belongs to those 
 who receive heartily its central doctrines, and cleave t 
 it in meditation and prayer, as those three Apostles to 
 the footsteps : their Lord. The zeal of some nominal 
 Christians for the Bible may be little better than that of 
 M : slems for their Koran ; but how wide the differ- 
 ence between the, objects of that zeal! On one side, an 
 impostor and a strange rhapsody; on the other, God's 
 perfect word, and His own coequal and eternal Son. 
 
 Let. II. p. 13 47 . "In my last letter I said that 
 in the Bible is more that finds me than in all other be >ks 
 put together ; that the words of the Bible find me at 
 greater depths of my being ; and that whatever finds me 
 brings with it an irresistible evidence of its having pro- 
 .-i from the Holy Spirit." 
 
 In this letter Coleridge begins to tread on slippery 
 ground. And first, as to the opening principle. It is 
 plain that a Scripture truth must be held with a deeper 
 and truer faith, when it finds & response in the conscience 
 and will, than when no string of the heart vibrates in 
 unison with its heavenlv touch. Such faith alone fully 
 
70 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 deserves the name (John iv. 43) . But may I infer that 
 whatever does not yet find me is not Divine ? May such 
 a negative article be tacked upon my creed without 
 danger ? What would this imply, but that the present 
 attainments of every Christian are to be the standard of 
 God's Word, and not that Word the standard of his 
 attainments ? Would it not go far to provide the infidel 
 with an excuse for the total rejection of Scripture? 
 Might he not say, They do not find me, and therefore I 
 cannot receive them as Divine ? Our Lord's rebuke 
 would be the true answer, " But ye believe not, because 
 my words have no place in you/'' The words may be 
 perfect and Divine, and yet some of them may not find 
 us, just because our hearts are unclean, or at least too 
 contracted and narrow for truth so large and so various. 
 In all that follows, Coleridge seems to misconceive the 
 doctrine against which he argues. Plenary inspiration 
 needs to be distinguished from partial or imperfect inspi- 
 ration on one side, but not less from mechanical dictation 
 on the other. Now it is this last against which he argues 
 throughout, and this is as remote from the general view 
 as that which he himself mentions. The difference is 
 evident. The mechanical dictation of Scripture would 
 supersede altogether the will, conscience, and affections 
 of the inspired writers, and reduce them to useful auto- 
 mata, penholders, and nothing more, of the Divine Spirit. 
 What unnatural corollaries would result from such a view 
 is self-evident. Mixed and imperfect inspiration, again, 
 would reduce the Word of God to the same level with 
 the writings of any other good men, or the works of 
 
coleridge's confessions. 71 
 
 Chrysostom, Luther, or Leighton. Plenary inspiration 
 differs from both. It supposes and assumes the spiritual 
 will and enlightened understanding of the inspired pen- 
 men to be the channels of the truth ; but it recognizes in 
 their words, "good measure, pressed down, shaken to- 
 gether, and running over/'' with the still deeper wisdom 
 of the Holy Ghost. In short, that the Spirit of God so 
 guided, prompted, and overruled their thoughts and their 
 words, as to make them the means of transmitting a 
 complete and integral part of that Revelation, which His 
 omniscient wisdom, from the first, designed to convey to 
 the sons of men. Thus, while the sacred writers would 
 have, to a certain extent, a full and intelligent concurrence 
 with the messages they are used to deliver, there would 
 be a further meaning, which they might not themselves 
 apprehend, reserved for some distant age. And this 
 agrees fully with repeated declarations of Holy Writ, 
 1 Pet. i. 10—12. Dan. viii. 26; xii. 8—10. Surely 
 instead of " planting thorns and placing snares in God's 
 vineyard/"' this view tends to remove them, while it helps 
 us to see reflected, on the dewdrop in every thornbrake, 
 some beam of the glory of the Sun of Righteousness. 
 
 P. 16 (50). "Let us therefore remove all such pas- 
 sages, and take each book by itself, and I repeat that I 
 believe the writer in whatever he himself relates of his 
 own authority, and of its origin. But I cannot find any 
 such claim as the doctrine in question supposes, made by 
 these writers, explicitly or by implication. On the con- 
 trary, they refer to other documents, and in all points 
 express themselves as sober-minded and veracious 
 
72 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 writers under ordinary circumstances are known to 
 do." 
 
 There are here two objections. First, that the writers 
 do not affirm their own plenary inspiration. Now in the 
 books of Moses, Coleridge admits that there can be no 
 dispute. " I find it asserted," he says, " that not only 
 the words were given, but the recording of the same 
 enjoined by the special command of God, and doubtless 
 executed under the special guidance of the Divine Spirit." 
 In the Prophets, again, most of their messages have that 
 solemn preface, " Thus saith the Lord," &c. The objec- 
 tion, in the Old Testament, applies mainly to the later 
 historical books. But the honesty of the record, and the 
 general truth of the facts being admitted, it was of minor 
 importance, for a time, whether these were thought to be 
 properly inspired. Also the Spirit of God, in the pro- 
 phets, was a spirit of meekness, and not of self-exaltation. 
 As even Christ glorified not himself to be made an high 
 priest, it is less surprising that the prophets, in these 
 cases, should not declare explicitly the inspiration of their 
 own narratives. In the New Testament, however, the 
 evidence is abundant, and one sentence alone of our Lord 
 ought to decide it, Matt. v. 17, 18. It seems hard to 
 conceive how the doctrine could be more plainly and 
 strongly affirmed. 
 
 A second objection is the reference to other writers. 
 But this is fully consistent with the only just view of 
 inspiration. Our Saviour's own reference to the Baptist 
 in proof of his Divine authority is an exact parallel. In 
 itself it was needless, but for the weakness of others it 
 
Coleridge's confessions. 73 
 
 was desirable, a merciful condescension of love. " These 
 things I say that ye may be saved." God is too gracious 
 to deny us all secondary helps to our faith, even in His 
 inspired word. 
 
 Again, there is no petitio principii, because many of the 
 most conclusive passages are found in the words of our 
 Lord himself, whom no Christian can suppose liable to 
 mistakes and errors, even if lax enough to charge the 
 Apostles with erroneous statements. The indirect manner 
 in which the doctrine is affirmed is easily explained. An 
 astronomer, who wishes to show an occultation or transit 
 through a powerful telescope, does not distract his pupil 
 in the midst of the observation, by stopping him to 
 observe the skilful structure of the object-glass itself. 
 This would only confuse his vision, and he will learn it by 
 natural inference, when once the observation is complete. 
 So also with the telescope of the inspired Word. Its 
 Divine completeness is best learned, after we have expe- 
 rienced its sufficiency for its great objects, doctrine, 
 reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. 
 
 P. 17 (51) note. " With one seeming exception, the 
 texts in question refer to the Old Testament alone. That 
 exception is 2 Pet. iii. 16. The word \oiiras is perhaps 
 not necessarily so to be interpreted ; and this very text 
 formed one of the objections to the Apostolic antiquity 
 of the Epistle itself/'' 
 
 It is a groundless assertion that even 2 Tim. iii. 16, 
 17, refers to the Old Testament alone. For in the former 
 Epistle to Timothy St. Paul has already quoted St. 
 Luke's Gospel as Scripture, 1 Tim. v. 18. Luke x. 7. 
 
74 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 All his own Epistles, too, were now written. The first 
 had been commended to the Churches with the solemnity 
 of an oath, and as the Word of God, 1 Thess. v. 27; ii. 13; 
 iv. 15 ; and in another the Corinthians were charged to 
 receive his Epistle as " the commandment of the Lord." 
 There are also two other texts, James iv. 5, and Jude 17, 
 which refer, I believe, to Gal. v. 17 — 21, and 2 Pet. 
 iii. 5. The word \onra<$, again, must of course include 
 St. Paul's Epistles under the common name of Scrip- 
 tures ; and the text, far from being an objection to the 
 genuineness of St. Peter's Epistle, is one of the clearest 
 and strongest proofs of its authenticity. 
 
 P. 20 (53). "The Old and New Testament is but one 
 Word, even the Word of God; and the letters and arti- 
 culate sounds by which this Word is communicated to 
 our human apprehensions, are likewise Divinely commu- 
 nicated. . . . This is the doctrine which I reject as super- 
 stitious and unscriptural. And yet as long as the con- 
 ceptions of the revealing Word and the inspiring Spirit 
 are identified and confounded, I assert that whatever says 
 less than this says little more than nothing. For how 
 can absolute infallibility be blended with fallibility? 
 Where is the infallible criterion? How can infallible 
 truth be infallibly conveyed in defective and fallible ex- 
 pressions ? " 
 
 This is the real difficulty of the whole question. It is 
 one which every system, whether it err from the truth on 
 the right hand or the left, must somewhere encounter. 
 Nor is the divergence of Coleridge from the common view 
 so wide as it may at first appear. Both agree that the 
 
Coleridge's confessions. 75 
 
 Bible contains a rich, large, and most precious treasury 
 of saving and eternal truth. Both agree that, as it 
 comes to the hands of Christians in general, through 
 copyists or translators, it has contracted somewhat of 
 human imperfection. Copvists may have mistaken a few 
 letters or words. The true reading, in several passages, 
 may be uncertain. The best translators have sometimes 
 missed the exact sense of the original. What, then, is 
 the real difference ? Coleridge extends to the first auto- 
 graphs the same principle which is commonly limited to 
 secondary copies or mere translations. The distinction 
 is very important, but not all-important. The great evil 
 of his view is the latitude it gives to an elastic conscience 
 for evading the authority of any part of God's Word, 
 while still professing to pay it a general respect and 
 deference. This is indeed a most serious danger. But 
 the question still remains, how and where can fallibility 
 be blended with infallibility ? First, in the person of our 
 Lord we see infallible truth in a human personality, 
 employing the words of human language. That which 
 was, in our Lord, a constant and unfailing reality, is 
 quite conceivable in His chosen disciples on special and 
 temporary occasions, designed for the lasting instruction 
 and guidance of the Church. Only in our Lord the 
 Spirit, who rested on Him without measure, rested on 
 One completely able to receive and comprehend the 
 heavenly gift in all its fulness. In the sacred writers the 
 same Spirit not only fills but overflows the vessel by 
 which his truth is conveyed ; He not only occupies and 
 quickens to its fullest limit the fallible intelligence, but 
 
76 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 puts a meaning into the words beyond the reach of the 
 writer's own comprehension. See Eph. iii. 17. 20. This 
 may be mysterious, but is neither unnatural nor incon- 
 ceivable. 
 
 Let. III. p. 25 (57). "I freely confess that my whole 
 heart would turn away with angry impatience from the 
 cold and captious mortal who, the moment I had been 
 pouring out the love and gladness of my soul, while book 
 after book, law, and truth, and example, oracle, and lovely 
 hymn, and choral song of ten thousand thousands, and 
 accepted prayers of saints and prophets, sent back, as it 
 were, from heaven, like doves, to be let loose with a new 
 freight of spiritual joys and griefs, were passing across 
 my memory, at the first pause of my voice, and while my 
 countenance was still speaking, should ask me whether I 
 was thinking of the Book of Esther, or meant particu- 
 larly to include the first six chapters of Daniel, or verses 
 six to twenty of the 109th Psalm, or the last verse of the 
 137th Psalm?" 
 
 The sudden interruption might be unseasonable and 
 in bad taste. But the graver question is, would this 
 " captious mortal " have any ground for his captiousness ? 
 Would he not be wrong as well as troublesome ? The 
 previous description of the Word of God, in its general 
 character, is vivid and beautiful. Are the exceptions 
 sound? 
 
 To begin with the plainest, and yet perhaps, in Cole- 
 ridge's view, the hardest instance, Ps. cix. 6 — 20. Has 
 he forgotten the words of St. Peter, fresh from closest 
 intercourse with the risen Saviour, on this very passage ? 
 
coleridge's confessions. 77 
 
 c< This Scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the 
 Holy Spirit by the mouth of David spake before concerning 1 
 Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus . . . 
 And let another take his office/' Acts i. 16 — 22. That 
 very passage which Coleridge selects for doubt and 
 excision, as not agreeing with reason and the moral 
 sense, is one of those for which the direct inspiration 
 of the Holy Ghost is most fully and unequivocally 
 claimed by the first of the Apostles, just after the time 
 when the Lord had " opened his understanding to under- 
 stand the Scriptures/' and had doubtless expounded this 
 very text along with the others "in the Psalms concern- 
 ing Himself/' Luke xxiv. 44, 45. Surely it should teach 
 a lesson of humility and caution, when such a man as 
 Coleridge, intending to set others right, could be guilty 
 of so strange an oversight. The Holy Spirit seems to 
 provide a secret fence for the doctrine of entire inspira- 
 tion in the very parts where it is most assailable on a 
 careless view. This Scripture must needs have been ful- 
 filled. It is the same phrase our Lord employs in speak- 
 ing of His own pre-ordained sufferings, Acts i. 16. Luke 
 xxii. 37 ; xxiv. 46. It implies a necessity resulting 
 from the prophecy, and the truthfulness of God. 
 
 But next, the Book of Esther. Surely there is nothing 
 here repugnant to the reason or moral sense. Whence, 
 then, can the doubt arise? Is it from its purely his- 
 torical character ? But this would apply to one-half of 
 the Bible. Is it from the absence of all moral purpose ? 
 The moral stands out in the boldest relief. Is it from 
 want of connexion with the rest of the sacred history ? 
 
78 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 It is one main link in that preservation of the chosen 
 seed, on which depended the fulfilment of the promise of 
 Messiah, the seed of Abraham. Is it the want of testi- 
 mony to its historical trnth ? The feast of Purim, then 
 appointed to preserve the memory of the deliverance, has 
 been observed for more than two thousand years down to 
 this very day. Is it from the absence of the name of 
 God? Coleridge, surely, could not stoop to such an 
 objection, though it has been brought by others. Does 
 the Most High never conceal His name in the works of 
 Nature and of Providence ? How, then, should the pro- 
 phet exclaim, " Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, 
 O God of Israel, our Saviour ? " The words marvellously 
 correspond. Never was God more conspicuously " a God 
 that hideth himself," and still the God of Israel, and 
 their Saviour, than in the narrative of this book. The 
 objection, when examined, becomes only a fresh sign of 
 the Divine wisdom and beauty of the message. The 
 whole book is like a marvellous parable of the whole course 
 of God's secret Providence for two thousand three hun- 
 dred years. Perhaps there is no history in the Bible 
 which yields clearer signs, to a spiritual vision, of pro- 
 ceeding, as its true Author, from the omniscient Spirit of 
 God. 
 
 Again, the u captious mortal" is supposed to object to the 
 first six chapters of Daniel. Why to these alone, and not 
 to the rest of the book, which is a complete whole, and the 
 last part not less obnoxious to doubters than the first? 
 The objection must relate either to the history or the 
 prophecy. If to the history, St. Paul may answer, who 
 
coleeidge's confessions. 79 
 
 includes Daniel and the Three Children among the most 
 signal triumphs of faith, while they " stopped the mouths 
 of lions, and quenched the violence of fire . " Heb . xi . 3 3, 3 4 . 
 Would God, by his Apostle, borrow proofs of the energy 
 and excellence of faith from historical falsehoods? Or 
 else is it the prophetic part which awakens the misgiving ? 
 "Why, then, does our Lord, in his only prophecy, single 
 out "Daniel the prophet" for especial honour? The 
 questions of ten thousand " captious mortals " are as dust 
 in the balance, compared with the deliberate sanction of 
 Him who is to be their Judge. 
 
 The last passage objected is Ps. cxxxvii. 9. Let us 
 compare with it Ezek. ix. 5, 6, where there is a direct 
 message from God addressed to the prophet. By Cole- 
 ridge's own definition the Divine character of the latter 
 passage is not open to doubt. Yet what difficulty can lie 
 against the Psalm, which does not lie with equal force 
 against those words of the vision? Three things are 
 clear — that all great national judgments or calamities 
 have included the young; that God is righteous in those 
 judgments, and delights in the execution of righteousness; 
 and that the highest and best state of the creature is to 
 have full sympathy with the Creator, alike in righteous- 
 ness and mercy. Each of these is demonstrable both from 
 Scripture and reason. Combine them, and what diffi- 
 culty remains, but the constant difficulty of the natural 
 heart, which cannot easily be moulded into harmony 
 of thought and will, either with the severity of God's 
 holiness, or the tenderness of His compassion and 
 grace ? 
 
80 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 P. 26 (58). "In the course of my Lectures on 
 Dramatic Poetry, I, in half a score instances, referred 
 my auditors to the precious volume before me, Shak- 
 speare, and spoke enthusiastically both in general and 
 with detail of particular beauties of the plays of Shak- 
 speare, as in all their kinds and in relation to the purposes 
 of their writer. Would it have been fair to infer an 
 intention on my part to decide the question respecting' 
 Titus Andronicus, or the larger portion of the three 
 parts of Henry IV. ? Would not every genial mind 
 understand by Shakspeare the unity or total impression 
 comprising and resulting from the thousandfold emotions 
 of delight, admiration, and gratitude excited by his 
 works ?" 
 
 How deceptive an illustration ! Is it merely of the 
 unity or general scope of Scripture that our Lord speaks 
 when He says, " Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or 
 one tittle shall not pass from the law, till all be ful- 
 filled?" "It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, 
 than for one tittle of the law to fail." " This Scripture 
 must be fulfilled that is written ... for even the things 
 that concern Me have a fulfilment." " The Scripture 
 cannot be broken." It is unaccountable how Coleridge 
 could read these and many other texts in the Gospels, 
 and still conceive the case he has supposed to be analo- 
 gous. They are wide as the poles asunder. If I had said, 
 "Every jot and tittle of Shakspeare bears the full and 
 clear impress of his wonderful genius," I should plainly 
 express a strong opinion on the genuineness of all that 
 is usually ascribed to him, unless at the time, or else- 
 
coleridge's confessions. 81 
 
 where, I specified the plays or passages which I held 
 to be spurious additions to his works. But where, in 
 the Gospels or Epistles, are the specified exceptions 
 to be found ? The parallel, then, fails entirely. 
 
 P. 30 (62). "If the doctrine be less decisively Scrip- 
 tural in its application to the New Testament, the 
 temptation to doubt is likewise less. In point of fact 
 it is the apparent or imagined contrast, the diversity 
 of spirit, which sundry individuals have believed them- 
 selves to find in the Old Testament and in the Gospel, 
 that has given occasion to the doubt, and in the hearts 
 of thousands supplies fuel to a fearful wish, that it were 
 permitted to make a distinction." 
 
 Here is an admission which seems to let in a stream 
 of light on the whole argument. The objection, it 
 seems, springs mainly from a repugnance to the real 
 or fancied severity of certain passages in the Old Testa- 
 ment. But are there no severe and solemn statements 
 in the New Testament ? Let Matt. xxii. or Mark ix. or 
 Rev. xiv. xviii. supply the answer. No doubt it is 
 much harder for guilty creatures to rise into sympathy 
 with the Divine judgments, than to acquiesce in a vague 
 and general impression of God's mercy. But are we 
 therefore to cut and carve the words of Scripture, re- 
 jecting those which are distasteful to us ? or to pray for 
 fuller light, that every colour, whether bright or dark, 
 in the rainbow of the Divine perfections, may receive 
 a true reflection in the inmost depths of our soul ? 
 Surely this last is the safer and higher course, the only 
 one which it befits the humble Christian to pursue. 
 
 G 
 
82 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 P. 31 (62). "Why should I not believe the Scriptures 
 throughout to be dictated, in word and thought, by an 
 Infallible Intelligence? I admit the fairness of the 
 question, and eagerly and earnestly do I answer : — 
 For every reason that makes me prize and revere these 
 Scriptures, — prize them, love them, revere them beyond 
 all other books. Why should I not? Because the 
 doctrine in question petrifies at once the whole body 
 of Holy Writ, with all its harmonious and symmetrical 
 gradations, the flexible and the rigid, the supporting hard, 
 and the clothing soft, the blood which is the life, the 
 intelligencing nerves, and the rudely woven, but soft 
 and springy cellular substance, in which all are embedded 
 and lightly bound together, — this breathing organism, 
 which I have seen stand on its feet as a man, with a man's 
 voice given to it, the doctrine in question turns at once 
 into a colossal Memnou's head, a hollow passage for a 
 voice, a voice that, mocks the voices of many men, and 
 speaks in their names, and yet is but one voice and the 
 same, and no man uttered it, and never in a human 
 heart was it conceived."" 
 
 All this passage and its context fight with a shadow. 
 It is the doctrine of a bare mechanical dictation, running 
 through all Scripture, and not of plenary inspiration, 
 that is really refuted. The doctrine of Scripture is 
 that all is inspired, all true, but that some portions were 
 directly dictated, the greater part communicated in 
 another way. One doctrine may be so misstated or 
 strained as to be confounded with the other, but few 
 practical Christians or learned Divines really hold what 
 
Coleridge's confessions. _83 
 
 is here assailed. What Christian supposes that David 
 was a mere automaton in penning the Psalms which 
 bear his name ? Who ever formed such a concep- 
 tion of "the sweet Psalmist of Israel?" Who can 
 doubt that even in Ps. xvi. many of the expressions 
 were the utterance of his own feelings ? Yet his words 
 were so overruled that they applied to himself only in part, 
 while every syllable was fulfilled in his greater Son, the 
 main object of prophecy, the true Messiah of God. 
 
 Pp. 33 — 37 (65—68). " Curse ye Meroz, said the angel 
 of the Lord ; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, 
 sang Deborah. Was it that she called to mind any 
 personal wrongs, rapine, or insult that she or the house 
 of Lapidoth had received from Jabin or Sisera? No, 
 she had dwelt under her palm-tree in the depth of the 
 mountain. But she was a mother in Israel, with a 
 mother's heart, and with the vehemency of a mother's 
 and a patriot's love ; she had shot the light of love from 
 her eyes, and poured the blessings of love from her lips, 
 on the people that had jeoparded their lives unto death 
 against the oppressors ; and the bitterness awakened and 
 borne aloft by the same love, she precipitated in curses 
 on the selfish and coward recreants who came not to the 
 help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the 
 mighty. As long as I have the image of Deborah before 
 my eyes, and throw myself back into the age, country, 
 circumstances of this Hebrew Bonduca (Boadicea?), in 
 the not yet tamed chaos of the spiritual creation; as 
 long as I contemplate the impassioned, high-souled, 
 heroic woman, in all the prominence and individuality 
 g 2 
 
84 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 of will and character, I feel as if I were among the first 
 ferment of the great affections, the prophetic waves of 
 the microcosmic chaos, swelling up against, yet towards, 
 the outspread wings of the Dove that lies brooding on 
 the troubled waters. So long all is well, replete with 
 instruction and example. In the fierce and inordinate I am 
 made to know and be grateful for the clearer and purer 
 radiance which shines on the Christian's path, neither 
 blunted by the preparatory veil, nor crimsoned in its 
 struggle through the mist of the world's ignorance ; 
 while in the self-oblivion of these heroes of the Old 
 Testament, their elevation above all low and individual 
 interests ; above all, in the entire and vehement devotion 
 of their total being to the service of their Divine Master, 
 I find a lesson of humility, a ground of humiliation, 
 and a shining yet rousing example of faith and fealty. 
 But let me once be persuaded that all these heart- 
 awakening utterances of human hearts, of men of like 
 passions with myself, mourning, rejoicing, suffering, 
 triumphing, are but a Divine Comedia of a superhuman 
 Ventriloquist, that the royal harper to whom I have 
 so often submitted myself as a many-stringed instru- 
 ment for his firetipt fingers to traverse, while every 
 nerve of emotion, passion, thought, that thrids the flesh 
 and blood of our common humanity, responded to the 
 touch — that this sweet Psalmist of Israel was himself as 
 mere an instrument as his harp, an automaton mourner, 
 poet, suppliant ; all is gone, all sympathy at least, and 
 all example. I listen in awe and fear, but likewise in 
 perplexity and confusion of spirit/'' 
 
colekidge's confessions. 85 
 
 "Yet one other instance, and let this be the crucial 
 test of the doctrine. Say that the Book of Job through- 
 out was dictated by an Infallible Intelligence. Then re- 
 peruse the Book, and still, as you proceed, try to apply 
 the test ; try if you can even attach any meaning, or 
 semblance of meaning, to the speeches which you are 
 reading. What ! were the hollow truisms, the unsumcing 
 half-truths, the false assumptions and malignant insinua- 
 tions of the supercilious bigots, who corruptly defended 
 the truth ; were the impressive facts, the piercing out- 
 cries, the pathetic appeals, and the close and powerful 
 reasoning with which the poor sufferer, smarting at 
 once from his wounds, and from the oil of vitriol which 
 the orthodox liars for God were dropping into them, im- 
 patiently, but uprightly and holily, controverted this truth, 
 while in will and spirit he clung to it ; were both dictated 
 by an Infallible Intelligence? Alas, if I may judge 
 from the manner in which both indiscriminately are 
 read, quoted, appealed to, treated upon, by the routiniers 
 of desk and pulpit, I cannot doubt that they think so, or 
 rather without thinking take for granted that so they 
 are to think; the more readily, perhaps, because the so, 
 thinking supersedes the necessity of all after thought." 
 
 There must be some strange misconception which 
 entwines itself with the beautiful wreaths of poetry in 
 this passage. Its general meaning seems to be — De- 
 borah's zeal was noble and exalted, but fierce and in- 
 ordinate ; and the words she uttered, while they teach a 
 noble lesson of animating devotedness and self-oblivion, 
 bear also the traces of human infirmity and bitterness, 
 
50 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 and may not without danger be ascribed to the Spirit 
 of God in so full a sense as the orthodox doctrine re- 
 quires. 
 
 Now in this there is a double error. First, Coleridge 
 overlooks one important clause — " Curse ye Meroz, said 
 the angel of the Lord! 3 It is the Covenant Angel, the 
 Divine Logos, to whom the words in question are really 
 ascribed. By the rule which Coleridge himself allows, 
 the passage has to be taken out of the category of mixed 
 or imperfect inspiration. But further, if the words had 
 been Deborah's own, what proof could they yield of a 
 chaotic state of the affections, that would not apply 
 equally to the parting words of our Lord to the 
 Pharisees, Matt, xxiii. ? The liveliness of Deborah's 
 emotions cannot disprove the inspiration of these words, 
 without casting a deep and foul reproach upon the 
 righteous severity of warnings uttered by the Incarnate 
 Son of God. 
 
 It might well be allowed that in Deborah's heart the 
 Divine message caught something, in its reflection, of 
 earthly weakness. Her zeal for God may have been 
 mingled with national zealotry, and her love for Israel 
 with secret kindlings of martial pride, or even her 
 denunciations of Meroz with secret whispers of self- 
 righteous exaltation. But the light of heaven is not 
 less pure when it shines on a troubled stream. The 
 inspired song of praise which she sang need not be less 
 pure and holy, because its echo, even in the heart of the 
 Prophetess, might catch from the imperfectly regenerated 
 soul some jarring dissonance. The truth of inspiration, 
 
Coleridge's confessions, 87 
 
 rightly conceived, detracts nothing from the reality of 
 deep emotions in the heart of the messenger, while it adds 
 greatly to the authority, the fulness, and the glory of the 
 message. The description applies to the earliest as well 
 as the latest revelations — " The words of the Lord are 
 pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified 
 seven times in the fire."" Only it must be remembered 
 that they are also purifying words ; and therefore, without 
 losing their own purity, condescend both to seeming and 
 real contact with persons and things impure. This 
 is especially true in the first stages of the inward work 
 of redemption, and, by parity of reason, in the earliest 
 parts of Revelation. The light of heaven shone in the 
 darkness. But it was only in order to turn it into 
 brightness, abiding itself in spotless and stainless beauty. 
 
 The second instance is equally misconceived. For 
 what is the received doctrine with regard to the Royal 
 Harper ? Not that we are to deny him his own title, 
 given him by Scripture itself, the sweet Psalmist of 
 Israel, but only that we are to acknowledge in his 
 words that deeper and higher truth — " The Spirit of the 
 Lord spake by me, and His words were on my tongue/'' 
 
 How fully are both these truths, in their contrast, 
 confirmed by our Lord himself in the New Testament ! 
 Matt. xxii. 43—45. "Why then doth David himself 
 in spirit call him Lord?" First, David speaks in his 
 human person, else the contrast fails. And yet he 
 speaks inspired and certain truth. David in spirit 
 called him Lord. Our Saviour would surely never rest 
 so wonderful a claim as that of proper Godhead on one 
 
88 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 solitary word of an uninspired man. The argument, on 
 such a view, would be monstrous and indefensible. And 
 this shows the dangerous tendency of that laxer school 
 of thought which Coleridge has here espoused. 
 
 Let us turn to what is called " the crucial test " of the 
 Book of Job. Here, with all due respect be it spoken, 
 Coleridge is surprisingly rash and unaccountably super- 
 ficial. The subject has its real difficulties. But he 
 does not solve one of them, and quite misunderstands 
 the common view. First, the book is a narrative, and 
 not, as he elsewhere explains it, with several German 
 theologians, a dramatic fiction. See Ezek. xiv. Jas. v. 11. 
 Surely no one was ever so foolish as to suppose that 
 in every inspired narrative the words of every speaker 
 are inspired, as the blasphemies of Pharaoh, and the lies 
 of the old prophet of Bethel. Still, the record of these 
 may be from the All-wise Spirit, no less than the record 
 of the words of Prophets and Apostles. And again, 
 when God expressly rebukes them in the words, "Ye 
 have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my 
 servant Job hath/'' who can infer at once that all the 
 words of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, are in every sense 
 inspired truth ? Inspiration, then, does not, of itself, 
 require us to pronounce upon the statements of Job 
 and his friends. Both were reproved by God himself, 
 though with unequal censure. 
 
 But here a second question arises. Were their dis- 
 courses simply false, or merely truth ill-timed and mis- 
 applied? We can scarcely read them without being 
 driven to the latter view. And this is strongly con- 
 
coleridge's confessions. 89 
 
 firmed by St. Paul's authority, who quotes from the 
 first speech of Eliphaz as inspired Scripture (1 Cor. iii. 19. 
 Job v. 13). Surely, then, even the routiniers have no 
 despicable authority for the practice Coleridge treats 
 as absurd. What was Divine wisdom in the Apostle 
 need not be denounced, in their case, as mere thoughtless 
 folly. Like Job's friends, they may sometimes grievously 
 misapply the truth they borrow. But this is equally 
 possible with texts of the most unquestionable inspiration, 
 as the Sermon on the Mount, or the words of Christ 
 respecting the after-life of the beloved disciple. 
 
 In truth, Coleridge seems to have a very faulty view 
 of the book on which he grounds his censure. He 
 seems wholly to invert Elihu's character, and even adds 
 darker features to the other friends than the account 
 will justify. To treat them merely as malignant, super- 
 cilious bigots, is simple caricature. They were true 
 friends, and their tears and silence attested the depth and 
 sincerity of their sorrow. They were righteous men, 
 and zealous for God and for righteousness. But they 
 lived in a time of dimmer light, when godliness had 
 eminently the promise of the life that now is ; and Job 
 was dealt with after the law of a higher dispensation, 
 the main features of which were still unknown. Hence 
 their affection, tears, and honour, from imperfect know- 
 ledge of God's ways, were soon turned into doubt, 
 censure, suspicion, and at last into direct calumny. The 
 words they uttered were, in the main, sacred truths, but 
 truths misapplied, that wrought the effect of calumnious 
 falsehood. 
 
90 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 Let. IV. p. 39 (68). "If, with the exception of the 
 passages already excepted, the recorded words of God, 
 the Tenet in this sense be inapplicable to the Scripture, 
 destructive of its noblest purposes, contradictory to its 
 own express declarations, again and again, I ask, What am 
 I to substitute ? What other sense is conceivable that 
 does not destroy the doctrine it professes to interpret — 
 that does not convert it into its own negative ? " 
 
 What a surprising leap does Coleridge here make in 
 reaching his conclusion ! It is absurd to think that the 
 recorded speeches of Pharaoh, or Saul, or the old pro- 
 phet, or Rab shaken, or Sanballat, or the orator Tertullus, 
 are inspired truth; and therefore the Scriptures which 
 record these sayings cannot be inspired, or purely and 
 wholly true. Surely, to a simple mind, there is a wide 
 open space between these limits. A record may be 
 inspired truth selected by the Holy Spirit, and still it 
 may recount many sayings of wicked men, and even 
 sayings of good men that are neither true nor wise. 
 The expostulation is aimed against a sentiment which 
 hardly any one has ever espoused ; the argument against 
 a doctrine which our best and soundest divines have 
 ever maintained, as taught directly by our Lord's own 
 emphatic sayings. 
 
 The next objection is against the minute correctness of 
 the Scripture histories, a topic wholly distinct from the 
 former, with which it seems to be confounded. 
 
 Let us examine this new objection for a moment. 
 And first, what does Coleridge himself allow ? That the 
 discrepancies are so trifling as to make it highly pro- 
 
coleridge's confessions. 91 
 
 bable, in some instances, and perhaps possible in all, 
 that they are only apparent. Can such difficulties, then, 
 be a sufficient reason for setting aside a doctrine which 
 seems to be many times asserted by our Lord himself, 
 and without which the fence is removed from the Word 
 of God, so that every one may feel at liberty to receive 
 just as much or as little as falls in with his own pre- 
 possessions ? Surely not ! 
 
 Again, allowing that many harmonies have been de- 
 fective, is it needful to reflect their errors in imputations 
 against the narratives themselves? Coleridge seems to 
 have been misled by the theories of the German divines 
 of last century, first imported into this country by 
 Bishop Marsh. The analogy of human histories is very 
 deceptive, when we remember the vast importance of 
 the revelation, and the character of the Gospels as the 
 law of faith to the Christian Church. For if it was 
 true of the law of Moses that not one jot or tittle 
 could pass till all was fulfilled, surely the same might 
 be affirmed of the Gospels, whose brighter light throws 
 even the former into the shade. The words of Greswell 
 are here very true : cc Some of the events are falsely 
 reputed to be the same, and are not even similar ; others 
 are proved by the testimony of the same Gospel to have 
 happened more than once. And it is far better, on 
 every principle, that either actions or discourses should 
 be considered to have occurred again, than that the 
 historians should be set at variance, and their credibility 
 be endangered, by obstinately pronouncing such events 
 to be the same. There is little antecedent improbability 
 
92 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 in the former, while there is the utmost hazard to 
 Christian truth in the latter. In a ministry of three 
 years' duration, every day of which was similarly em- 
 ployed, a great deal of historical matter must and would 
 come over again, the same incidents frequently transpire, 
 similar and almost identical miracles be performed ; and 
 any one Evangelist who had recorded such things in 
 one instance of their occurrence, might pass them over 
 for that very reason in another. And this is precisely 
 the case : they are not found twice over in the same 
 Gospel, nor at corresponding points of time in different 
 Gospels. ... If such and such parts of their narrative 
 are not actually the same, it is in vain to attempt to 
 make them so, without submitting them to a torture 
 like that of the bed of Procrustes. " 
 
 P. 43 (71). " Here there can be neither more nor less. 
 Important or unimportant gives no ground of difference, 
 and the number of the writers as little. The secretaries 
 may have been many, the historian was one and the 
 same, and He infallible. This is the minor of the syllo- 
 gism."" . . . 
 
 No difference ! yes, a great difference. Let us con- 
 sider three or four conceivable hypotheses. First, that 
 every writer was divinely inspired, and his hand infallibly 
 guided, and every copyist and translator also miraculously 
 overruled, so that no cursive error in mistranslation 
 should ever mar the perfection of the Scripture copies 
 and versions. Secondly, that the writers were inspired, 
 and their mind infallibly guided, and their hand also 
 miraculously or providentially overruled in writing, but 
 
Coleridge's confessions. 93 
 
 copyists and translators left to the common laws of 
 providence and of human infirmity. Thirdly, that the 
 minds of the writers were inspired with perfect truth, 
 clothed in fit expressions, but their hand, as amanuenses 
 of the unwritten word, liable to error like their own 
 copyists. Fourthly, that they were infallibly inspired 
 as to doctrine, but only assisted or indirectly guided, in 
 various degrees, with regard to facts of history. Fifthly, 
 that in historical matters they were left wholly to their 
 own natural and unaided diligence. Sixthly, that in 
 points of doctrine their inspiration was nothing more 
 than those promptings of God's Spirit which are common 
 to all writers who are good and honest men. 
 
 Now the first view alone leads to a result mathe- 
 matically and absolutely complete. In all the others 
 the question is one of degree, since no one ever saw or 
 read in one volume all the autographs of the two 
 Testaments. The difference between the second and 
 third is comparatively unimportant. That between the 
 third and fourth might be so, if the suspensions of full 
 inspiration, replaced by partial suggestion, were few, 
 and we had any test by which to discern them. But 
 since these conditions are plainly wanting, the difference, 
 which in the abstract might be small, becomes vast 
 and momentous. Either on the second or third hypo- 
 thesis, the slight variation of our present copies from 
 the Divine autograph, mental or external, might be 
 passed by in silence in a general statement of the doc- 
 trine of inspiration. But, on the other hypothesis, we 
 cannot really be sure of any part that it is the word 
 
94 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 of God, and not merely the mistaken assertion of fallible 
 men. 
 
 P. 43 (71). " In fact, it is clear that the harmonists 
 and their admirers held and understood the doctrine 
 literally. And must not that divine likewise have so 
 understood it, who, in answer to a question concerning' 
 the transcendent blessedness of Jael, and the righteous- 
 ness of the act in which she inhospitably, treacherously, 
 perfidiously murdered sleep, the confiding sleep, closed 
 the controversy by observing that he wanted no better 
 morality than that of the Bible, no other proof of an 
 action being praiseworthy than that the Bible declared 
 it worthy to be praised ? " 
 
 How much better, though far more difficult, to untie 
 the knot in a case like this, than by rudely and hastily 
 cutting it to endanger the faith of Christians in the 
 most solemn statements of the word of God! No 
 doubt it is true that it is far better that a single text 
 should be set aside, than to contravene the whole scope 
 and tenour of revealed truth. But is .the difficulty 
 inexplicable ? The case resembles that of the mid- 
 wives, of RahaVs treatment of the spies, of the 
 Gibeonites and others. In all these the action is mixed. 
 There was real faith in God, and that He was a party 
 in the controversy against the sin of the Canaanites, 
 and the oppressions of Jabin. But approval of the 
 faith, which in each case was the mainspring of the 
 action, by no means implies an approval of the deceit 
 by which that faith was attended, and its true character 
 obscured. Yet faith in God is precious and blessed, 
 
coleridge's confessions. 95 
 
 even in spite of a grievous intermixture of corruption 
 or infirmity; because,, as it grows and strengthens, it 
 has power to root out and destroy the very evils and 
 corruptions which disguise and obscure its moral beauty. 
 But to adopt the principle in the " Confessions " would 
 tend to abolish all use of Scripture as a moral guide. 
 
 Pp. 45. 73 — "Or who exclaims ' wonderful/ when 
 they hear that Sir M. Hale sent a crazy old woman 
 to the gallows, in honour of the witch of Endor ? " 
 
 This passage is merely an appeal to the prejudices 
 of an anti-spiritual and Sadducean age. To the sincere 
 believer in God's word, Sir M. Hale's belief in the 
 existence of witches is far more reasonable than Cole- 
 ridge's professed disbelief in the existence of angels. 
 There is no good reason for doubting the truth of Sir 
 Matthew's dictum, whatever be thought of the appli- 
 cation. To those who have any adequate view of the 
 power and malice of evil spirits, and the corruption 
 of sinful men, the wonder will not be that witchcraft 
 should exist, but that distinct cases of its occurrence 
 should be so rare. But it seems a part of the Divine 
 economy that, while the open agency of good angels 
 is restrained or suspended, the malice of bad angels 
 should be put under a like restraint. Nor does it seem 
 that the double embargo will be removed, at least until 
 some brief hour of especial temptation, before the full 
 revelation of the kingdom of God. 
 
 Pp. 45, 46 (74, 75). " But I challenge these divines 
 and their adherents to establish the compatibility of 
 a belief in the modern astronomy and natural philo- 
 
96 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 sophy with their and Wesley's doctrine respecting the 
 inspired Scriptures, without reducing the doctrine itself 
 to a plaything of wax."" 
 
 How inconsistent with Coleridge's own admission at 
 p. 24 (48), where he says that incompatibility exists 
 only between "the first and second," or the language 
 of sense and of science, both of them being " indifferent 
 and of equal value to the third," or the language of 
 philosophy ! Yet here that the Bible employs consistently 
 the language of sense is made an argument against its 
 full inspiration, in the teeth of his own express decision. 
 The simile of the bladder is as wholly inapplicable as 
 it is pretty and ingenious. 
 
 P. 46 (75) . "Now I pray, which is the more honest . . . 
 self-justification." 
 
 It may be the less of two evils to adopt a lowered 
 theory of inspiration, and still to bring a cautious and 
 reverent spirit to the perusal of Scripture in each 
 particular case ; rather than in terms to assert loudly the 
 full perfection of the Bible, and then to treat it with a 
 bold, presumptuous spirit, distorting it, without scruple, 
 into the mould of systems of human manufacture, or 
 subjecting it to all the rash glosses of a wild and untamed 
 imagination. But the less of two great evils is not 
 therefore a good. The thoughtful Christian will desire 
 to be kept far from either of these errors. No doubt, 
 when the evil heart of unbelief prevails, every truth 
 retained becomes a fresh occasion of scandal and sin. 
 But this is no just reason for paring down our creed 
 to a minimum, under the vain fancy that we shall 
 
coleridge's confessions. 97 
 
 thus deter others from stumbling at the threshold of 
 faith to their own ruin. 
 
 P. 47. "When in my third letter I first asked the 
 question, Why should I not ? the answers came crowding 
 to my mind. I am well content, however, to have 
 merely suggested the main points, in proof of the 
 positive harm our religion sustains from this doctrine. 
 Of minor importance, yet not to be overlooked, are the 
 forced and fantastic interpretations, the arbitrary alle- 
 gories, and mystic expressions of proper names to which 
 this Bibliolatry furnished fuel, spark, and wind. A still 
 greater evil, and less attributable to the visionary 
 humour and weak judgment of the individual expositors, 
 is the literal rendering of Scripture in passages which 
 the number and variety of the images employed to 
 express one and the same variety plainly mark out for 
 figurative. " 
 
 These two objections really destroy one another. 
 What ! the same doctrine teach us to allegorize the 
 literal and to literalize the allegorical ! This is tirade 
 and mere prejudice, not argument. The objection is 
 merely this, that faith in the inspiration of the Scriptures 
 cannot ensure perfect wisdom in their interpretation, 
 and does not hinder many expositors from diverging 
 widely from Coleridge's own judgment on the question, 
 what is literal and what figurative. Such errors, even 
 admitting their reality to the extent implied by his 
 words, are in no respect chargeable on the doctrine 
 under review. The only way in which it could affect 
 them is by giving a deeper sense of the vast importance 
 
 H 
 
98 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 of the Scriptures, and thereby securing to them a greater 
 measure of thought and careful study. 
 
 P. 48 (76). "And lastly, add to all these the strange, 
 in all other writings unexampled, practice of bringing 
 together into logical dependence detached sentences from 
 books composed at the distance of centuries, nay, some- 
 times a millennium from each other, under different dis- 
 pensations, and for different objects." 
 
 How strange and instructive that Coleridge here lays 
 an indictment, which applies just as strongly to St. 
 Paul as to preachers and writers of the present day ! 
 For, passing by Hebrews, about the authorship of which 
 he is sceptical, let any one read Rom. iii. ix. — xi., and 
 he will see that the Apostle, taught by the Holy 
 Spirit, does that repeatedly which is here denounced as 
 unnatural and absurd. Nay, St. Peter lays this down 
 for the first condition of true insight into Divine 
 prophecy (2 Pet. i. 20, 21). The very first truth we 
 need to learn for our guidance is, that no prophecy is 
 an isolated composition of man, depending on itself 
 alone for its solution, but must be solved by comparing 
 it with the rest ; because all are parts of one harmonious 
 system, of which the true Author is the Spirit of God. 
 Nothing can be more flatly opposed to the rebuke which 
 Coleridge here utters than this parting admonition of 
 the great Apostle. 
 
 P. 48 (76). "Accommodations of elder Scripture 
 phrases, that favourite ornament of Jewish eloquence, 
 incidental allusions to popular notions, traditions, apo- 
 logues, as the dispute between the devil and the Arch- 
 
COLERIDGE S CONFESSIONS. \)\f 
 
 angel about the body of Moses ; fancies and anachronisms 
 imported from the synagogue of Alexandria by the 
 Septuagint version, and applied as mere argumenta 
 ad 7iominem, as the delivery of the law by the disposition 
 of angels ; these, detached from their context, and, con- 
 trary to the intention of the writer, first raised into 
 independent theses, and then brought together to pro- 
 duce some new credendum, for which neither separately 
 could have furnished a pretence ! By this strange 
 mosaic, Scripture texts have been worked up into possible 
 likenesses of purgatory, Popery, the Inquisition, and 
 other monstrous abuses." 
 
 How true are those words of caution in Spenser — 
 
 " He that erreth once from the right way, 
 The further he doth go, the more doth go astray." 
 
 The one grand error of the book misleads Coleridge, 
 even with his deep thought, into minor errors without 
 end. 
 
 And first, as to this dispute of Michael and the devil, 
 what evidence have we that such a tradition existed ? Or, 
 supposing it did exist, how could this prove the idea to 
 be groundless ? How strange and unnatural that, with 
 abundance of instances to illustrate the sin, St. Jude 
 should quote a groundless and vain tradition ! It would 
 be just as natural to suppose that an Apostle would 
 quote iEsop's Fables in one of his most earnest appeals 
 to the conscience. And who can read Dan. x. and Zech. 
 iv., and not feel the entire harmony between their state- 
 ments and those in St. Jude ? Once suppose the whole 
 h 2 
 
100 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 statement to be true, divinely inspired, and now revealed 
 to the Apostle, and by him to the Church, and how solemn 
 and impressive the whole passage will appear ! Suppose 
 it to be mere fiction, with no answering event, and 
 its solemnity disappears. It becomes worse than puerile 
 folly. 
 
 How strange, again, that such a mind could acquiesce 
 in such an explanation, so meagre and shadowy, of the 
 allusions to angels at the giving of the law ! Acts vii. 53. 
 Gal. iii. 19. Heb. ii. 2. What! the touching, powerful, 
 impressive discourse of the first martyr, of which the 
 very object was to uproot the prejudices of the Jews, in 
 the climax of its most earnest appeal to their conscience, 
 contain the direct assertion of a falsehood, in order to 
 flatter those prejudices at the moment when he is 
 reproving them with just severity ! How monstrous the 
 supposition ! And on what ground is it affirmed ? 
 Because " it was imported from Alexandria with the 
 Septuagint version." If Coleridge had studied the word 
 of God more profoundly, he would have escaped these 
 wretched trammels of German neology. The doctrine 
 is taught as plainly as possible in Ps. lxviii., long before 
 the date of the Greek version or the Alexandrian syna- 
 gogue. Even apart from this distinct assertion, it might 
 be inferred from the general current of Scripture. The 
 voices as of a trumpet, and the flames of fire, if its uni- 
 form tenour is to be our guide, were tokens of the presence 
 of angels when the Lord came down upon the holy 
 mount. 
 
 P. 50 (78). " It will, perhaps, appear a paradox, if, 
 
Coleridge's confessions. 101 
 
 after all these reasons, I should avow that they weigh 
 less with me against the doctrine than the motives 
 usually assigned for maintaining and enjoining it. Such, 
 for instance, are the arguments drawn from the antici- 
 pated damage that would result from its abandonment ; 
 as that it would deprive the Christian Church of its only 
 infallible arbiter in questions of Faith and Duty; sup- 
 press the common and only inappellable tribunal ; that 
 the Bible is the only religious bond of union and ground 
 of unity among Protestants, and the like. For the con- 
 futation of this reasoning it might be sufficient to ask, 
 Has it produced these effects ? Would not the contrary 
 statement be nearer to the fact ? - J 
 
 The relative importance of the doctrine that all Scrip- 
 ture is fully inspired may, doubtless, be overstated. It 
 is overstated when this truth is magnified beyond its 
 Scriptural proportions. If the Gospel of St. John con- 
 tains, as we are told, truth enough for salvation (chap. 
 xx. 30, 31), the same amount of inspired truth diffused 
 through the Bible, the rest being uninspired, might, if it 
 had pleased God so to reveal Himself, have sufficed for the 
 same purpose. But though the doctrine is not primary, 
 and does not, strictly speaking, enter into one of the 
 Creeds, still, if true, it must be highly important, and 
 cannot be rejected without loss to the soul, and casting 
 some dishonour on the Holy Spirit and the word of God. 
 
 The confutation in this passage proceeds wholly on 
 false ground. Is it among those who own the full in- 
 spiration of the Scriptures that heresies have been most 
 rife ? Certainly not, either in ancient or modern times. 
 
102 NOTES ON INSPIRATION, 
 
 The Gnostics, Valentinians, Marcionites, and Manicheans 
 in early ages, and the Socinians and Neologians of later 
 days, to whom we may add the Tridentine Church, with 
 its Apocryphal Canon, are all of them cases in proof of 
 this latter view. 
 
 Pp. 51—53 (79, 80). "The Bible is the appointed 
 conservatory, an indispensable criterion, and a continual 
 source and support of true belief. But that the Bible is 
 the sole source; that it not only contains, but constitutes, 
 the Christian Religion ; that it is in short a Creed, con- 
 sisting wholly of Articles of Faith ; that consequently 
 we need no rule, help, or guides, spiritual or historical, 
 to teach us what parts are and are not Articles of Faith, 
 all being such . . . this scheme differs widely from the 
 preceding, though its adherents often make use of the 
 same words in expressing their belief. And this latter 
 scheme was brought into currency by and in favour of 
 those by whom the operation of grace, the aid of the 
 Spirit, the need of regeneration, the corruption of our 
 nature, all the peculiar mysteries of the Gospel were 
 explained and diluted away." 
 
 There may doubtless be an idolatry of the Bible, as of 
 any other Divine gift ; and from this danger the Church 
 has never been wholly free. Whatever some may assert, 
 there is a real subordination in the various truths and 
 doctrines of Scripture. To erect the Bible into the 
 exclusive means of instruction and guidance, and there- 
 upon to despise the Church, the Ministry, the Sacra- 
 ments, or even the Book of Nature, is to contradict the 
 Bible itself, and does violence to some of its most express 
 
coleridge's confessions. 103 
 
 and solemn statements. The theory which starts with 
 such a false assumption may naturally proceed, in a later 
 stage, to reject the Person and work of the Holy Spirit ; 
 and thus end by reducing" the Bible to a mere lifeless 
 carcass, which the critic proceeds to carve and dissect at 
 pleasure, with a loathsome familiarity of fancied anato- 
 mical skill. 
 
 Pp. 52—54 (80, 81). "And how have these men 
 treated this very Bible ? . . . I, who hold that the Bible 
 contains the religion of Christians, but who dare not say 
 that whatever is contained in the Bible is the Christian 
 religion — I tremble at the processes which the Grotian 
 divines, without scruple, carry on in their treatment of 
 the sacred writers, as soon as any texts declaring the 
 peculiar tenets of our Faith are cited against them; 
 which, according to my scheme, every Christian born in 
 Church membership, ought to bring with him to the 
 study of the sacred Scriptures as the master key of inter- 
 pretation. Whatever the doctrine of infallible dictation 
 be in itself, in their hands it is in the last degree nuga- 
 tory. . . . Every sentence in a canonical book, rightly 
 interpreted, contains the dictum of an infallible mind; 
 but what the right interpretation is, or whether the 
 words be corrupt or genuine, must be determined by the 
 industry and understanding of fallible and prejudiced 
 theologians ! " 
 
 These remarks are forcible and true when applied to 
 the Grotian school of divines. To hold in words the 
 plenary inspiration of Scripture, while rejecting its funda- 
 mental truths, is a wretched pretence or delusion. But 
 
104 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 what does this really prove ? That the doctrine in ques- 
 tion cannot long be retained in a declining state of faith 
 and spiritual life. Thus it forms a kind of spiritual 
 barometer. Mere adhesion may sometimes keep the 
 mercury to a high level when the sky is lowering ; but 
 the least shock, almost a touch, reveals the declension, and 
 the altered state of the atmosphere. Thus the doctrine in 
 question may be outwardly retained for a moment, when 
 the heart is revolting from the great truths of the Gospel ; 
 but, after the first shock in the world of thought, Grotian 
 divines will be succeeded by theologians of a bolder 
 school, and a lowered view of the Bible, as a work merely 
 human, will be openly and boldly maintained. The 
 hypocrisy which Coleridge here condemns is most repul- 
 sive to an ingenuous mind. To profess in words that the 
 Scriptures are inspired, and then to ascribe to them a 
 travesty of their real meaning, which would convict any 
 other writer of incompetence or gross dishonesty, is 
 miserable trifling. The only conclusion, however, which 
 needs to be drawn, is the folly of poisoning children with 
 strong meat unsuited to their weak appetite; or the 
 worse folly of casting pearls before swine, who have no 
 capacity to apprehend even the simplest lessons of the 
 Christian faith. 
 
 P. 54 (81). "And yet I am told that this doctrine 
 must not be called in question, because of its fitness to 
 preserve unity of faith. . . . For the prevention of an 
 evil which already exists, and which the boasted preven- 
 tive itself might rather seem to have occasioned, I must 
 submit to be silenced by the first learned infidel who 
 
coleeidge's confessions. 105 
 
 throws in my face the blessing of Deborah, or the 
 cursings of David, or the grievous and heavier difficulties 
 in the biographical chapters of the Book of Daniel, or 
 the hydrography and natural philosophy of the Patri- 
 archal ages. I must forego the prospect of convincing 
 an alienated brother, because I must not answer, My 
 brother, what has all this to do with the truth and worth 
 of Christianity ? . . . Thorns are not flowers, nor is the 
 husk serviceable. But it was not for its thorns, but for 
 its sweet and medicinal flowers that the rose was culti- 
 vated ; and he who cannot separate the husk from the 
 grain, wants the power because sloth or malice has pre- 
 vented the will." 
 
 We are on slippery ground when we maintain 
 any doctrine, true or false, on account of its supposed 
 consequences alone. Truth, if it is to be held firmly, 
 must be held for its own sake, and by the light of 
 its own evidence. Our faith must else be a reed 
 shaken with every wind ; for who can trace all the con- 
 sequences of a single action, or of one solitary maxim in 
 the world of thought ? Still, so far as results are trace- 
 able, whatever is proved to be true will be found to be 
 profitable. The notion, it has been well said, that faith 
 will be confirmed by giving up subordinate points, 
 rests entirely on self-deception. That it is contradicted 
 by experience is easily shown. Is morality, for instance, 
 strengthened, when we are careless in small matters, and 
 seek to be right only in great ones ? Is not faithfulness 
 in small things the surest means of moral improvement ? 
 How much the assertion contradicts the nature of faith 
 
106 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 is confirmed by many instances where the doubts of 
 unsettled minds find support on this very ground, and 
 thence extend themselves to other points of the Christian 
 faith. 
 
 The whole tone of this page is very unhappy. It is 
 not fair to allege that the doctrine is maintained merely 
 as useful, with no prior conviction of its truth. It is no 
 fair test of a doctrine being useful, to ask whether it has 
 prevented all heresies. It is most unreasonable to make 
 the garbled version of Socinians one consequence of a doc- 
 trine, which it is notorious that most Socinians disclaim. 
 It is not true that the doctrine has occasioned the evil of 
 divisions. On the contrary, when those divisions run to 
 seed, they invariably lead to a rejection of the doctrine, or 
 efforts to lower it, as in German Neology, and Tracts for 
 the Times on the chance-medley formation of Scripture. 
 
 Again, the whole question is assumed, that the Christian 
 needs to be silenced, that the difficulties are real, not 
 imaginary. For why stay at the points selected ? If 
 the " cursings of David " are such a stumbling-block, why 
 not the " woes " denounced by the Son of David (Matt. 
 xxiii.) ? If the Book of Daniel, quoted by our Lord, is 
 to be set aside, why not the Apocalypse, with which the 
 infidel quarrels just as strongly ? Take what Coleridge 
 seems to think the strongest case : try it on grounds of 
 pure reason, and how rash the assumption must appear ! 
 If no action may have a blessing pronounced on it but 
 one of unmingled moral goodness, no blessing could ever 
 reach this fallen world. But if it be lawful for holy men, 
 and, much more, for God himself, to pronounce a blessing 
 
coleeidge's confessions. 107 
 
 on mingled actions, so that the good is dwelt upon and 
 the evil passed by, who dare pretend, after three thousand 
 years, to be wiser than Scripture, and to affirm that Jael's 
 deed was unmingled sin? If there were a righteous 
 zeal for God and His people, however much sin may 
 have defiled it, who shall prescribe to the God of love 
 and holiness, where He shall pronounce, and where He 
 shall withhold His blessing? The presumption and 
 the folly are enormous when, under the covert of such 
 an axiom, the word of God is defamed and assailed. 
 After Israel's foulest sins in the wilderness, it is said 
 presently : " He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, nor 
 seen perverseness in Israel/'' Must these words be 
 another missile by which the infidel is to silence us, and 
 prove the word of God immoral ? especially since here 
 the miracle of the ass must be thrown into the scale. It 
 is more important, doubtless, to hold wilful treachery a 
 hateful sin, than to receive one chapter of Judges as part 
 of the inspired word of God. But the scruples of our 
 author, once allowed, would uproot our faith in all Scrip- 
 ture. Thus, for example, Rahab lied flatly to the king of 
 Jericho. But St. James pronounces her to be justified by 
 this very act, therefore the Epistle of St. James is not 
 inspired. St. Paul commends her by the same proof, 
 therefore the Epistle to the Hebrews must be rejected. 
 Jehu is praised for destroying the house of Ahab, and 
 yet it plainly appears that self-interest was his chief 
 motive, therefore we must expunge the Second Book of 
 Kings. And thus, when the talisman is broken, and the 
 smoke of this one error is let loose, it soon expands 
 
108 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 into an enormous monster, a giant enemy of the truth of 
 God. 
 
 The answer in all such cases is easy and simple. Where 
 mixed actions are recorded, God, in His wisdom, may 
 sometimes see fit to record His blessing on them for the 
 good, or His judgment and curse for what is evil. Uzzah, 
 no doubt, had a pious wish to preserve the ark of God, 
 but in the manner there was rashness and haste. The 
 word of God marks this only, and the hand of God 
 visited him in judgment. In Jael there was a breach of 
 confidence to a stranger, but genuine zeal for the cause 
 of God and of Israel against one who had long been a 
 fierce and cruel oppressor. The words of the song dwell 
 on her act in the latter aspect alone. Lot committed a 
 hateful incest. Yet St. Peter says of ■ him only : " That 
 righteous man . . . vexed his righteous soul with their 
 unlawful misdeeds." It is strange that Coleridge should 
 overlook a principle so simple and natural, which removes 
 nearly the whole of the difficulty he thinks insurmountable. 
 
 As to the alleged Grecisms of Daniel, the charge seems 
 to have been abandoned, even by advanced Neologists, 
 since Coleridge wrote. When we have scarcely any 
 Chaldee of that age remaining, the pretension to say 
 that a particular phrase is not Chaldee is no slight pre- 
 sumption. Coleridge, doubtless, borrowed here on trust 
 from some less scrupulous writer. 
 
 P. 56 (83). "As the general warmth to the informing 
 light, even so is the predisposing Spirit to the revealing 
 Word." 
 
 There is in this paragraph much that is beautiful and 
 
coleeidge's confessions. 109 
 
 true. But when reviewed in connexion with the main 
 argument, it suggests some difficult inquiries. All truth 
 cannot justly be expected to be received at once. There 
 is an order to be observed in its reception, and a lawful 
 condescension to ignorance or prejudice in its publication. 
 The great truths of the Gospel might still be true, and 
 even have been preserved in the world, if no New Testa- 
 ment Scriptures had been written. An infidel may be 
 reasoned with on this ground : " You have no right to 
 reject the great facts and doctrines of Christianity, 
 because of supposed errors, on lesser points, in the word 
 of God. The evidence of those facts, both historically 
 and to the conscience, is clear and strong. But your 
 rejection of them must involve three or four premises, 
 some false, and all of them to you uncertain ; that the 
 supposed errors are real, and not the result of misconcep- 
 tion ; that all the Scriptures openly profess to be written 
 under plenary and verbal inspiration ; and that the texts, 
 which seem to claim this for the whole or particular 
 parts, are not among the minor errors. Till you have 
 weighed the main doctrines in a reverent spirit, you 
 cannot be sure of any of these premises, on which you 
 secretly ground your own unbelief. Hence you must be 
 inexcusable in rejecting Christianity for such reasons." 
 
 The Apostle sometimes speaks " after the manner of 
 men;" and so may we also, when the occasion requires it, 
 without any sacrifice of truth. But this accommodation 
 to weak faith or strong prejudice by no means requires 
 us to resign our own convictions. We must not and 
 ought not to believe less ourselves, that others may believe 
 
110 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 more than they now do. Yet, in reasoning with them, 
 we have to keep in mind the right order of thought, and 
 not to oppress those with strong meat, who can hardly 
 endure and digest even " the sincere milk of the word." 
 
 The passage, however, is rather a development of 
 Coleridge's own views than a mere condescension to the 
 doubts of a sceptical mind. The subject then becomes 
 one of great delicacy. It turns on the difference between 
 two kinds of imperfection, that of a fallible penman, or the 
 perfect condescension of a Divine message to the wants 
 and weakness of those to whom it is sent. Coleridge 
 maintains the former ; the latter is the more Scriptural 
 view which he condemns. But he forgets how 
 much even the latter implies. A revelation to men 
 cannot be the same as one to angels. Its perfec- 
 tion requires it to be, in one sense, imperfect; as the 
 perfection of our Lord's work of redeeming mercy re- 
 quired Him to become a man of sorrows. The message 
 must stoop to human language, sympathies, and intelli- 
 gence. And since every part has its own immediate as 
 well as final purpose, such a message to Jews, by a Jewish 
 prophet, must have a different tone and character from 
 one to Christian believers by an Apostle of Christ. But 
 the Divine wisdom may be as really, even when less 
 conspicuously exercised, in the form and vehicle as in the 
 substance of the message. To vary slightly Coleridge's 
 own metaphor, — we read of no thorns or husks on 
 the tree of life (Prov. iii. 13. 18), and yet, along with 
 the excellence of its fruits, " the leaves of the tree are for 
 the healing of the nations " (Rev. xxii. 2) . Let us take 
 
coleridge's confessions. Ill 
 
 the fruit to denote the inner and spiritual truth, and the 
 leaves the outward clothing, the protecting drapery it 
 assumes, human in appearance, but also really Divine ; 
 and the metaphor he has chosen well describes the true 
 doctrine of inspiration. Assuredly the leaves have 
 withered, and the fruit itself is left exposed to serious 
 injury, when, as in this paragraph, the Bible, in theology, 
 is placed on the same level with the works of Lord Bacon 
 in physical science. 
 
 P. 57 (83, 84) . " If I should reason thus— but why do 
 I say if? — I have reasoned thus with more than the 
 serious and well-disposed sceptic, and what was the 
 answer ? ' You speak rationally, but seem to forget the 
 subject. I have frequently attended meetings of the 
 Bible Society, where I have heard speakers of every de- 
 nomination, Calvinist and Arminian, Quaker and Metho- 
 dist, Dissenting ministers and Clergymen, nay, dignitaries 
 of the Established Church; and still I have heard the 
 same doctrine, that the Bible was not to be regarded or 
 reasoned about in the way that other good books are or 
 may be ; that the Bible was different in kind, and stood 
 by itself. By some, indeed, this doctrine was implied 
 rather than expressed, but yet evidently implied. But 
 by far the greater number it was asserted, in the strongest 
 and most unqualified words that language could supply. 
 What is more, their principal arguments were grounded 
 on the position that the Bible throughout was dictated 
 by Omniscience, and therefore, in all its parts, infallibly 
 true and obligatory ; and that the men whose names are 
 prefixed, were, in fact, but as different pens in the hand of 
 
112 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 one and the same writer, and the words, the words of God 
 himself; and that on this account all notes and comments 
 were superfluous, nay, presumptuous, a profane mixing" 
 of human with Divine, the notions of fallible creatures 
 with the Oracles of Infallibility; as if God's meaning 
 could be so clearly or fitly expressed in man's as in God's 
 own words ! But how often you yourself must have 
 heard that same language from the pulpit ! ' What could 
 I reply to this ? I could neither deny the fact, nor evade 
 the conclusion that such is at present the popular belief." 
 
 A true doctrine may often be plausibly assailed through 
 the errors of its advocates. The shrewd reply of Cole- 
 ridge to the sceptic may be retorted on himself : " Surely 
 it is beneath you to reject [the doctrine of plenary in- 
 spiration], on the score of rash conclusions, which other 
 men think fit to include in their idea of it." 
 
 Truth, like the God of truth, must be sought " in due 
 order" (1 Chron. xv. 13). The doctrine of plenary in- 
 spiration, on a platform of twenty sects, if they are real 
 contrasts of creed and doctrine, and not minor diversities 
 of discipline only, is too much like a Popish relic set up 
 to be worshipped. It is precious when it belongs to the 
 living man ; but if saved from the corpse of a decaying 
 faith, it becomes little more than an unseemly idol. 
 What is the worth of having certain infallible truth in the 
 Bible, if no certain truth, or almost none, can be gained 
 from it ? But the greater the discord, the lower the amount 
 of certain truth actually attained. In such a case, when 
 many sects, loud and clamorous in their hostility and 
 mutual contradictions, still maintain the plenary in- 
 
coleeidge's confessions. 113 
 
 spiration of the Bible, it is like a man's coat of mail 
 upon a dwarf, burdensome and unnatural. The doc- 
 trine becomes grotesque, and almost absurd, when dis- 
 severed from a full creed, and constant steady growth 
 in Divine knowledge. If it can be retained in a chaos 
 of sectarianism, it must be as a lifeless relic. Still it is 
 a memorial of better things, and serves to humble those 
 who profess to receive it, as being " dwindled sons of little 
 men/' A dwarf would be ridiculous in the armour of 
 Achilles. The doctrine then reveals its real value, when 
 we are seeking truth, and have begun to find and prize 
 it in every corner of the Divine word. Our Lord's 
 assurance then becomes a strength and guide, that 
 "the Scripture cannot be broken," and that "one jot 
 or tittle can in no wise pass from the law until all be 
 fulfilled." 
 
 How false and imperfect a view of the doctrine it is 
 that the sacred writers were merely pens, has been shown 
 already. That notes and comments are superfluous and 
 presumptuous is another falsehood, a conclusion drawn 
 from it without the least real warrant. The perfection 
 of Scripture is perfection for a special purpose, and chiefly 
 as a record of facts, and a standard of appeal in all matters 
 of religious doctrine. Now this really implies the need 
 of oral teaching, and also of notes and comments, which 
 are only another form of the same ordinance — the ministry 
 of the word. The opposite notion, whoever may have 
 held it, is false and even absurd. While it affects to 
 magnify the Scriptures, it flatly contradicts them. In 
 order to exalt them as the only means of attaining truth, 
 
114 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 it begins by imputing to them direct falsehood, since 
 the need and importance of an oral and personal ministry- 
 is one of their plainest doctrines. 
 
 The antithesis at the close between man's words and 
 God's words is perplexing only at first sight. The ques- 
 tion might be answered by another — Can you see best 
 by the late twilight or by moonlight ? Surely by the 
 latter, though less directly from the sun. One perfection 
 of the record, viewed with reference to its special design, 
 is its mystery and partial obscurity. It has parts where 
 the lamb may wade, and depths where the elephant may 
 swim. " It is the glory of God to conceal a thing," and 
 the Scriptures are a field in which heavenly treasure is 
 hidden. The words of a wise teacher, or thoughtful 
 divine, are means appointed for bringing to light, for 
 those who require them, the pearls of their deeper mys- 
 teries. Among the ends for which they were given are 
 these : to awaken curiosity, exercise wisdom, and also to 
 manifest Christian love, and the mutual dependence of all 
 parts of the mystical body of Christ. 
 
 P. 58 (85). "It cannot but be beneath a wise man to 
 be an infidel on the score of what other men think fit to 
 include in their Christianity."" 
 
 The remark is pointed and happy. But while it is a for- 
 cible reply to such an infidel, it cannot prove that Coleridge 
 includes as much as he ought in his view of inspiration. 
 His own figure in the next page is a witness against him- 
 self. If many a stick, that once seemed to him dry and 
 sapless, has become, with riper faith, an Aaron's rod, and 
 blossomed with almonds; surely it is safer and wiser, even 
 
coleridge's confessions. 115 
 
 where still perplexed, to believe that this would be true, 
 with still further insight, in the case of the few that still 
 seem lifeless, rather than to pare down and lower all the 
 statements of God's word as to its own perfection of truth. 
 How does he fail to observe that he has cut up the roots 
 of his own argument ? For what is his confession ? Once 
 many parts of Scripture seemed to be only withered sticks, 
 and with the growth of light one after another has 
 ' ( budded and yielded almonds " To his vision, now grown 
 clearer than of old, very few of these dry ones remain. But 
 here he turns round sharply upon us, and seems quite posi- 
 tive that these few are really lifeless. He will not believe 
 that, after his toilsome ascent, even he may have a few 
 steps to climb, before he reaches the mountain-top where 
 his eyes shall be fully purged " with euphrasy and rue/' 
 No, these branches are and must be withered for ever, and 
 it is vain for any one to think that these too may blossom 
 in their turn. Better do violence to fifty or a hundred 
 texts, than imagine that, with still deeper insight, every 
 jot and tittle of the Divine word may be found to share 
 in the life, which has been found by experience to belong 
 very nearly to the whole. Surely the opposite view is not 
 only simpler and safer, but nobler and more hopeful, and 
 even the most natural inference from the previous steps 
 of his own experience. 
 
 P. 59 (86). The real controversy here is not as to the 
 right order of the progress, but as to the true end of the 
 journey. From an implicit faith in Scripture, the result 
 of education, to the clear discernment of Divine truth 
 and wisdom in every part, the distance is great, almost 
 i 2 
 
116 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 immense. Still, the first is a help towards attaining the 
 last. But then it must not be thrust forward unduly, or 
 lifted out of its right place. It is not so much a part of 
 the Christian faith itself as a fence and barrier around it. 
 When it is held, however blindly, it may not be rashly 
 set aside ; but much wisdom may be needed before those 
 who hold it can rise into the full manhood of faith. For 
 this end the vital doctrines of Scripture need ever to 
 be kept in the foreground. When these have been 
 inwrought into the soul, there will be a hunger and 
 thirst for righteousness, and for that word which is the 
 food of heart-righteousness, and thus a deeper sense, daily, 
 of its preciousness and power. Its statements respecting 
 its own Divine source, instead of causing scruples, will 
 then be echoed by a secret instinct of faith. We may 
 thank Coleridge for setting his sceptic friends on the right 
 road. Our only quarrel with him is when he would 
 persuade them to rest satisfied a little more than half- 
 way on their spiritual journey, and even turns back a 
 little way himself for the pleasure of their company. 
 
 The description of the advance, p. 59 (86), is just and 
 beautiful. Doctrines true and useful in themselves may, 
 through some misconception, be hurtful for a time, and 
 hinder the acceptance of other truths. The Mosaic 
 system needed thus to be broken up for the spread of the 
 Gospel. And so, in some cases, perhaps, the doctrine of 
 plenary inspiration may hinder the progress of a restless, 
 earnest inquirer, struggling upwards to the light. It 
 may be useful, hypothetically, to lay it aside, and trace 
 out truth with earnest freedom, as if the Scriptures were 
 
coleridge's confessions. 117 
 
 honest, but not wholly inspired records. But as the 
 Gospel will issue in the " receiving of Israel/' which will 
 even be "life from the dead;" so that very inquiry, 
 pursued to its close, must lead to the recovery of the 
 truth that had been laid aside for a time, with a Shechinah 
 bathing it in glory. Read in the light of superstition, 
 or of a naturalizing theology, the doctrine of inspiration 
 may be like the mortal body, a drag on the spirit within. 
 But read in the light of mature faith, it becomes a resur- 
 rection body, a beautiful garment in which the truth will 
 stand arrayed for ever. 
 
 P. 60 (87). It would be heathenish love to a friend 
 to prize his bodily presence to such a degree as to main- 
 tain that without a body his soul would be a mere breath 
 and perish. And it is a spurious honour to that revealed 
 word of God, whose essence and inner life is the Gospel, 
 to affirm that with no Scripture fully and verbally in- 
 spired, there could have been no Christian Revelation. 
 But still the picture of Coleridge is slightly overdrawn. 
 When we trace the actual course of Christianity, while 
 attended by this inspired record, we may well affirm that 
 its pilgrimage in such a world as ours, as a bodiless appa- 
 rition, would have been full of peril ; and it would have 
 required no common miracle of love and wisdom to keep 
 it from utter extinction and death. The candlestick of the 
 Church would have burned very dimly, perhaps have been 
 quenched in darkness, if these two olive-trees of God had 
 not continually supplied their sacred oil to feed and sus- 
 tain the light. 
 
 The statement about the quod semper maxim* is far too 
 
118 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 strong. Apply it to the Church visible, as it has been 
 applied to the Scriptures, and almost nothing will be left 
 for us to believe. The maxim is one of the most foolish 
 ever devised, unless we expound it so loosely that it ceases 
 to be a maxim at all. Coleridge may perhaps only mean 
 that in every age there has been a body of sound divines 
 who, amidst minor varieties of thought, have held strongly 
 all the great truths of our religion, and that we may, by 
 a steady and patient eye, trace this stream of truth from 
 age to age, so that even in the absence of Scripture, we 
 might thus obtain all the knowledge needful to our sal- 
 vation. This is an important truth, and tends to clear 
 our reverence for Scripture from that superstitious perver- 
 sion, in which we are ready to slay living prophets, and 
 then to garnish their sepulchres. For what can be a 
 closer parallel, than to treat as hopeless the attainment 
 of any certainty, what truths are really taught in the Bible, 
 and to praise it in the same breath as pure truth with- 
 out mixture of error ? Thus, in a practical sense, we slay 
 and extinguish the living truth, and then adorn the 
 sepulchre, because of the lifeless corpse of truth that lies 
 buried within. 
 
 P. 6 (187 f ) . " What you find therein coincident with 
 your own pre-established convictions, you will of course 
 recognize as the revealed word." 
 
 If the sceptic friend, through the help of the new 
 theory, learns to receive only what coincides with his 
 "pre-established convictions/" he will have received a 
 very doubtful benefit. Here is the peril of this lax theo- 
 logy, that it submits the Scripture to the judgment of 
 
coleridge's confessions. • 119 
 
 the sinner's dim-sighted reason, instead of " bringing' 
 every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ/' 
 
 P. 61 (188). "Thenceforward your doubts will be con- 
 fined to such parts or passages of the received Canon, as 
 seem to you irreconcilable with known truths, and at 
 variance with the tests given in the Scriptures them- 
 selves/' &c. 
 
 The words " as seem to you/' give here a very wide 
 latitude. They are, however, much limited by the clauses 
 that follow, assuming only that the further examination 
 is carried on in an honest and reverent spirit. It is no 
 proof of a strong faith, never to have felt doubts, or seen 
 difficulties. The real error of Coleridge's remark, and of 
 the whole work, lies perhaps in this point. Because a 
 credulous and superstitious spirit may gulp down at 
 once, in words, the doctrine of plenary and verbal inspi- 
 ration, without pausing one moment to dwell on its 
 manifold and weighty consequences, or really believing 
 even the first letters of the Christian faith, he confounds an 
 advancing, but still very imperfect stage of progress in 
 the apprehension of Divine truth, and of the wisdom of 
 Scripture, with the right creed and final attainment of the 
 Christian believer. The closing sentences may be adopted 
 with one important substitution : " The result will be, 
 a confidence in the deep wisdom of the revealing Spirit 
 of God, increased only by the apparent exceptions." The 
 fact is clear, that some passages of Scripture, taken alone, 
 are very open to perversion ; just as in the best and noblest 
 music, some bars or passages, taken alone, may contain a 
 frightful discord. One reason for this is doubtless what 
 
120 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 Coleridge here suggests under a beautiful figure, when 
 he speaks of those who would "rend the Urim and 
 Thummim from the breastplate of judgment, and frame 
 oracles by private divination from each letter of each dis- 
 jointed gem/' The Spirit of God would constrain us to 
 study the whole word of God, and to study it with a 
 practical aim and in a reverent spirit. To the Jews that 
 one saying of our Lord, "Destroy this temple,"" &c, 
 might well be as great a stumbling-block, as the blessings 
 of Deborah or the cursings of David to men like Cole- 
 ridge, whose piety is more benevolent than profound. 
 Yet these very words strengthened the faith of the true 
 disciples, who were prepared to believe that every word 
 of their Lord must be wise and true. All Scripture needs 
 to be expounded according to " the analogy of faith." 
 If persons will rend it asunder, and "frame oracles by 
 divination from each letter of each disjointed gem," it 
 may be one proof of the perfection of the inspired word, 
 that it is so formed as to frustrate and disappoint the pro- 
 fane attempt. It is given " 7ro\i;/xe/3a)? kol iroXvrpoirax;" 
 in order that it may quicken spiritual diligence ; and its 
 truths will open to us with deeper interest, and with in- 
 tenser power, when we see in them not only the gift of 
 God, but the blessed fruit and gracious recompense of 
 our own assiduous and patient inquiry. 
 
 Let. V. p. 63 (89). "Yes, my dear friend, it is my 
 conviction, that in all ordinary cases the knowledge and 
 belief of the Christian Religion should precede the study 
 of the Hebrew Canon." 
 
 It does so in the case of those whose views you 
 
Coleridge's confessions. 121 
 
 condemn. I never heard of the most thorough " Bible 
 Christian/'' who would set a child to study the Canon 
 as its first lesson of Christian instruction. The practical 
 contrast is not at all such as your words imply. But 
 is it not better that a child should be set at once to 
 "learn and inwardly digest'" the true sayings of God, 
 without being taught or encouraged to suspect, from the 
 first, that some of them may prove to be only " false 
 sayings of men?'''' An explicit and mature faith in the 
 inspiration of every book of Scripture, and of every part, 
 as we have it now, could only be the fruit of persevering 
 thought and study, and of Christian knowledge in its 
 ripeness and perfection. But an implicit faith, such as 
 Christian children usually gain from pious parents, though 
 widely different from the other, is a vast negative gain. 
 It saves countless distractions in the acquisition of 
 Divine truth, and shuts the door, at least for a time, 
 against many heresies and delusions. Still it can hardly 
 pass into the other and higher kind of faith, by a spiritual 
 resurrection, without a season of death. In thoughtful 
 minds there will usually be a stage of inquiry, when the 
 truth, first obtained through implicit faith in Scripture, 
 having ripened in the conscience, becomes in its turn a 
 test for the Scriptures themselves ; just as light may be 
 used to test the healthiness or disease of the human eye, 
 though it is only by means of the eye that the light has 
 been discerned. The features of this middle stage may 
 vary widely, according to the relative intensity of feeling, 
 or fulness of truth previously attained. Where a few 
 main truths only have been learned, but these are held 
 
122 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 vividly, the effect will be as in these ' ' Confessions." Along 
 with the full reception and hearty love of those truths, 
 there may be a readiness to discard parts of Scripture, 
 because the range of truth accepted is not full or wide 
 enough to secure a just appreciation of the whole. There 
 may then be strong Christian faith in the citadel of the 
 soul, but scepticism may lodge in its battlements, or 
 lurk in its outskirts. In other cases, the range of truth 
 apprehended may be wider, but the apprehension of each 
 part be very feeble. The transition may then reveal no 
 such symptoms of partial incredulity, but too often will 
 be imperfect. Faith in the Scriptures, though for- 
 mally more complete, may really be more defective and 
 impure, through want of that intense life of truth in the 
 soul, which alone can blend all parts of the Divine 
 message into their true moral harmony. No part will be 
 rejected ; but many errors, alien from the spirit of the 
 word of God, may keep an undisturbed lodgment in the 
 soul. 
 
 The healthiest form, perhaps, of the transition, is mid- 
 way between these. It is when the implicit faith of the 
 child in the word of God, as one complete whole, is never 
 abandoned ; but when, also, there is such energy of faith 
 in its central truths, as will not rest content while any 
 moral contradiction of them even seems to be sheltered 
 under an authority so holy and divine. Difficulties will 
 then be examined, one by one, as they arise, with firm 
 faith that a solution does exist ; but also with a settled 
 purpose not to speak deceitfully for God, and rather to 
 pause and confess our own ignorance than offer explana- 
 
coleridge's confessions. 123 
 
 tions which find no response in the conscience and heart, 
 and run counter to the true laws of Divine morality. 
 Those who blame strongly the partial scepticism in minds 
 of the first class, will often do well to ask whether it is 
 not the feeble hold they have themselves on every part 
 of God's truth, which spares them the perplexities almost 
 inseparable from a faith, limited in its range, but vigo- 
 rous and deep within those limits. The word of God 
 is one vast problem to the thoughtful believer. Those 
 who have never felt any thing perplexing in its message 
 can never have grasped its main truths in all their 
 living power. And those, again, who are content to 
 explain its difficulties by contradicting its own outlines 
 of faith, or maxims of goodness, are really further from 
 the ripeness of Christian wisdom than some of those 
 whose partial laxity they condemn, and perhaps are less 
 likely to discover their own defect. But still each alike 
 is a defect, and a dishonour to the revealing Spirit of 
 God. 
 
 " To make the Bible, apart from the truths, doctrines, 
 and spiritual experiences contained therein, one subject 
 of a special article of faith, I hold an unnecessary and 
 useless abstraction."" 
 
 True, the Bible, " apart from the truths contained in 
 it." But not " the Bible, in connexion with one great 
 truth it contains/' namely, that " all Scripture is given 
 by inspiration of God," and that " one jot or tittle shall 
 not pass from the law till all be fulfilled." 
 
 a Who shall dare," it is asked, " to dissolve or loosen 
 this holy bond, this Divine reciprocity of faith and 
 
124 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 Scripture? Who shall dare enjoin aught else as an 
 object of saving faith, besides the truths that appertain 
 to salvation ? " But this truth does appertain to salva- 
 tion, though not in the first, yet in the second order. 
 It is not well to exalt it into the first place, as an essen- 
 tial of Christian faith. But neither is it wise or safe to 
 thrust it below its real place, as the main shield to that 
 faith against the inroads of delusion, the phial wherein 
 is treasured the one Divine test, whereby we are to dis- 
 cern truth from error, and light from darkness. 
 
 " The imposers take on them a heavy responsibility, 
 however defensible the opinion itself, as an opinion, may 
 be." 
 
 Here Coleridge seems to adopt the Popish conceit about 
 truth de fide, and not de fide. But it is rotten at the 
 core. Faith, saving faith, is not the acceptance of one 
 or two, or ten or twelve truths, specially, to the neglect 
 of all others. It is a habit of mind which may be de- 
 scribed as " a welcoming of God's truth into the soul."" 
 The degrees of truth proposed may vary widely, and still 
 there may be saving faith. On the other hand, the rejec- - 
 tion of any truth of God is an act of unbelief ; and so far 
 as its influence extends, dims and blights the faith in all 
 the rest, because it reverses that habit of soul in which 
 faith has its life and essence. An opinion, as an opinion, 
 is worth little or nothing. It may increase the prudence 
 of the outward actions, but can add nothing to the life 
 of the soul. Truth must be fully and cordially embraced, 
 and then it becomes spirit and life. No mere opinion is 
 or can be harmless. If false, it is pernicious from its 
 
Coleridge's confessions. 125 
 
 falsehood ; if true, it is harmful, because it is an opinion 
 merely, and not a firm and solid faith. In either case it 
 implies a sin of infirmity, and a token that the soul is 
 not yet " filled with the fulness of God." A measure of 
 this infirmity is unavoidable in the progress of the soul's 
 redemption from perfect ignorance and moral blindness 
 to the perfect knowledge of the pure in heart, who see 
 God. But to be willing that a truth should be held as 
 an opinion, if only it be nothing more than an opinion, is 
 a fatal error, destructive of real progress, and of all deep 
 reverence for truth as truth. 
 
 Two questions are very distinct — What we ought to 
 believe, as established Christians ? and in what order 
 should truth be presented to perplexed and sceptical 
 minds ? Remarks may be most true and wise, in refer- 
 ence to the second question, and perilously false when 
 applied to the first. Besides, no management can avoid 
 the real difficulty. The texts where the Scriptures speak 
 of themselves, that is, the later of the earlier, as the 
 word of God, are so numerous and plain, that the sceptic 
 cannot and will not fail to observe them. We ought 
 not, indeed, to set difficulties too early before him. 
 But still less should we make them insurmountable when 
 they arise, and betray the cause of revealed truth, by 
 owning that they are real, and not apparent only. Our 
 answer ought rather to assume the following hypothetical 
 form : — ' ' Assuming for a moment/' we may say, " that 
 the sixty-two books are in every part a revelation from 
 the Infinitely Wise to a world of sinners, given at 
 intervals through two thousand years, and designed for 
 
126 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 every age, nation, and character, revealing alike the 
 events of past and future ages, the plainest lessons of 
 duty, and deepest mysteries of Providence, is it natural, 
 possible, or reasonable, that they should not contain many 
 things which, at first sight, are difficult and hard to under- 
 stand ? Could they proceed from the God of Nature, 
 or the God of Providence, if all were clear, easy, and 
 consistent, at the first glance, to worms of the earth, to 
 children of the dust ? " 
 
 Let. VI. p. 67 (92). 
 
 To assume that any view is held merely to avert certain 
 consequences, is really to assume that it is not held sin- 
 cerely, and that its advocates do not believe in its truth. 
 Now to maintain the full inspiration of the Scriptures, if 
 we do not really believe it, would be profane and wicked. 
 The attempt to exclude heresies by lying and hypocrisy, 
 would be a sure way to introduce and multiply them. 
 But while every truth ought to be held on its own direct 
 evidence, the evil results of an error are a lawful motive 
 for deepening our aversion. The contrast in this case 
 may be overstated. If we are to believe that all Scrip- 
 ture is inspired, and still are encouraged to think every 
 creed that has ever pretended to be derived from it 
 equally plausible, we are little forwarder than if we are 
 left free to discard any portion at our pleasure. The real 
 difference is that, so long as the doctrine of plenary in- 
 spiration is held, it needs a more violent strain on the 
 conscience for serious heresies to find entrance. And the 
 practical result is most serious; for, however little Cole- 
 ridge may reject, the same principle of a purely subjec- 
 
coleridge's confessions. 127 
 
 tive test will warrant others in rejecting' much, and an 
 immoral infidel in casting aside nearly the whole. For 
 what is the principle? The varying degree of moral 
 attainment in each Christian is to be the test by which 
 he decides how much is, and how much is not, Divine. 
 Coleridge may receive nearly all, but others, following 
 the same elastic rule, might reject nearly all. And this 
 kind of selection tends also to nourish intellectual pride, 
 both in what is received, and what is rejected. In one 
 we find a proof of our spiritual attainments, and in the 
 other of our superior judgment, compared with those 
 unhappy Bibliolaters who receive all on trust. This is 
 neither healthy nor safe, and must lead to countless evils. 
 The antithesis that follows, p. 68 (93), like many 
 others, is deceptive. It is really this — Are we to receive 
 the Bible from its external evidence, or from the moral ? 
 The true answer is, From neither alone, but from both 
 combined. To receive it wholly from external evidence 
 leads to a blind, dark superstition, which mistakes sha- 
 dows due to its own darkness for the hues and colours of 
 the Divine message. Receive it only for its moral evi- 
 dence, and your own conscience sits in judgment, as a 
 superior, on the words and messages of the living God. 
 The diseased palate is made the test of the medicine 
 designed for its own cure. The proud heart tries, by 
 its own pride, the precepts of humility ; the pigmy 
 reason, by its own littleness, the plans and counsels of 
 the All-wise. The evils of an opposite extreme do not 
 prove that such a course is not also full of peril, and 
 fraught with evil. 
 
128 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 Neither alternative here offered is a safe and wise 
 course, but one equally distinct from both. Three or 
 four truths need to be successively applied. First, the 
 Bible, in its plainest truths and general character, com- 
 mends itself to the conscience as good, holy, and gra- 
 cious ; and therefore contains, either purely or impurely 
 presented, a real revelation (morally) of truth. Secondly, 
 it comes to us with external evidence, clear as to the 
 main portions, that it is a supernatural revelation, or at 
 least contains and records messages from God. Thirdly, 
 the Bible affirms its own inspired character, and one 
 part of it bears witness to another that the Spirit of 
 God is its true and secret Author. Finally, all analogy 
 leads us to suppose that a message so various, from the 
 God of all wisdom to sinful creatures, must contain some 
 things hard to be understood, and perhaps harder to 
 receive. To copy Coleridge's Pentad, perhaps rather 
 curious and fantastic in its form, the Prothesis is, sub- 
 stantial goodness in the Scriptures, truth that commends 
 itself to the conscience of men. The Thesis is the exter- 
 nal evidence that such books are a part of the Canon ; 
 and the Antithesis, the external evidence of Nature and 
 Providence to the presence of mystery and difficulties in 
 all things truly Divine. The Mesothesis is the witness 
 of the Scriptures, each to other, and one to all, that they 
 are the word of God. The Synthesis is the plenary 
 inspiration of the whole. The other parts, robbed of the 
 Prothesis, lead to midnight superstition ; and the Pro- 
 thesis, stripped of the rest, would leave us floating in the 
 mists of Neology. From the union of all there will spring 
 
Coleridge's confessions. 129 
 
 a faith, hearty and intelligent, reverent and discriminat- 
 ing; while implicit reverence to the whole transforms 
 itself daily into reverence and love for every part, when it 
 has been found to be life and spirit to the whole being. 
 But it must be most pernicious to make the fallen con- 
 science the sole judge whether every part answers or not 
 to our conceptions of a perfect Divine message. There 
 is a Decretal which reads : " The Books of the Old and 
 New Testament are to be received, because there seems 
 to be a decree of holy Pope Innocent (i. e., the founder 
 of the Inquisition) in their favour ! " Is it not a close 
 parallel to say, Such and such parts of them are to be 
 received, because there seems to be a decretal of that 
 holy pope, my own conscience, in its favour ? To receive 
 them, in short, without any reference to their moral 
 features, is superstition ; but to make our moral sense, 
 the healing of which is one main object of them, the 
 sufficient test of any part, is presumptuous madness. 
 
 P. 68 (93), note, "It is remarkable that both par- 
 ties might appeal to the same text, 2 Tim. iii. 16," 
 &c. 
 
 Both might appeal to the text, but one appeal would 
 be truth, the other little better than open folly. For, 
 first, there is no difference of reading, or none worth 
 notice. Not one manuscript in Griesbach or Bengel 
 omits the copula, and the versions are often a slight 
 paraphrase, and no presumption for a different reading. 
 And next, the received text really admits of only one 
 sense. For the word ypa<j)r] is never used in the New 
 Testament for a writing in the abstract, but always for 
 
 K 
 
130 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 a passage of Holy Writ. In fifty cases not one excep- 
 tion is found. And not only the usage, but common 
 sense requires the same version. What could be more 
 unmeaning than to say, All those parts of the Canon which 
 God has inspired are also profitable ? Further, not only 
 common sense, but the context, enforces the same con- 
 clusion. The writings of the Canon have already been 
 styled collectively, ra lepa ypafifiara, the holy writings. 
 These Timothy had known from his childhood, and not 
 merely some vague extracts, or " genuine fragments " 
 mingled with uninspired rubbish, but the Old Testament 
 as known to the Jews. Having already called the whole 
 lepa ypdfi/jbara, the Apostle changes the term, and asserts 
 that iraaa ypacfrr), that is, every text or part of those 
 sacred writings, is inspired of God. This reasoning 
 seems decisive. Because jpafifiara is a general term, 
 St. Paul adds an epithet to confine it to the Scriptures. 
 But the other term, in the idiom of the New Testament, 
 of itself denotes the Scriptures only. He employs it, 
 then, in its known meaning ; and by the prefix, iraaa, 
 affirms that every passage of those holy writings, 
 known to Timothy, is inspired, and because inspired, 
 profitable also. 
 
 The second class of versions quoted are merely ambi- 
 guous, and admit the true sense just as naturally as the 
 other. To be a witness for Coleridge's view, the Vulgate 
 should have been, " Qusecunque Scriptura divinitus est 
 inspirata, etiam utilis est." The version of Calmet re- 
 quires the sense of our own translators, and the article 
 excludes the other. Tertullian's words strongly favour 
 
coleeidge's confessions. 131 
 
 the same view, " Legimus omnem Scripturam, sedifica- 
 tioni habilem, Divinitus inspirari."" Origen's, though 
 slightly ambiguous, are more naturally construed in the 
 same way. The external and internal evidence is equally 
 decisive for the rendering of our common version, and 
 the tone of every quotation in St. PauFs Epistles fully 
 proves it to be the true meaning of the Apostle. 
 
 Pp. 69 — 71 (94 — 96). "In every generation, and 
 wherever the light of Revelation has shone, men of all 
 ranks, conditions, and states of mind have found in this 
 volume a correspondent for every movement towards the 
 Better felt in their own hearts. The needy soul has 
 found supply, the feeble a help, the sorrowful a comfort ; 
 yea, be the recipiency the least that can consist with 
 moral life, there is an answering grace ready to enter. The 
 Bible has been found a spiritual world, spiritual, and at the 
 same time outward and common to all. You in one place, 
 I in another, all men somewhere, and at some time, 
 meet with an assurance that the hopes and fears, the 
 thoughts and yearnings that proceed from, or tend to, 
 a right spirit in us, are not dreams, nor voices heard in 
 sleep, or spectres which the eye suffers but not perceives. 
 As if on some dark night a pilgrim, suddenly beholding 
 a bright star moving before him, should stop in fear and 
 perplexity. But lo ! traveller after traveller passes by him, 
 and each being questioned whither he is going, makes 
 answer, c I am following yon guiding star/ The pil- 
 grim quickens his steps, and presses onward in confidence. 
 More confident still will he be, if by the wayside he 
 should find, here and there, ancient monuments, each 
 k 2 
 
132 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 with its notice lamp, and on each the name of some 
 former pilgrim, and a record that there he had begun to 
 follow the benignant star. 
 
 "No otherwise is it with the varied contents of the 
 sacred volume. The hungry have found food, the 
 thirsty a living spring, the feeble a staff, and the vic- 
 torious ever purer songs of welcome and strains of 
 music; and as long as each man asks on account of 
 his wants, and asks what he wants, no man will discover 
 aught amiss or deficient in the many-chambered store- 
 house. But if, instead of this, an idler or a scoffer 
 should wander through the ruins, peering and peeping, 
 either detects, or fancies he has detected, here a rusted 
 sword or pointless staff, there a tool of rude construction, 
 and superseded by later improvements, and preserved, 
 perhaps, to make us more grateful for them ; which of 
 two things will a sober-minded man, who from his child- 
 hood upward had been fed, clothed, armed, and furnished 
 with the means of instruction from this very magazine, 
 think the fitter plan ? Will he insist that the rust is 
 not rust, or a rust sui generis, intentionally formed on 
 the steel for some mysterious virtue, and that the staff 
 and astrolabe of a slippered astronomer are identical 
 with the quadrant and telescope of Newton or Herschel ? 
 Or will he not rather give the curious inquisitor the joy 
 of his mighty discoveries, and the credit of them for his 
 reward ? " 
 
 All here is beautiful, while Coleridge dwells with bright 
 eloquence on the excellence of the Divine Word. The 
 truth sparkles with life, when it flows from the heart's 
 
coleeidge's confessions. 133 
 
 fountains, which that word has purified by its heavenly 
 power. Where then does weakness enter, and tame 
 down admiration and honour into lame and timorous 
 defence ? " If an idler or scoffer, peering and prying, 
 either detects, or fancies that he has detected, rusted 
 sword, or pointless shaft/' &c. The two alternatives are 
 not the same. Reality and erring fancy may be wide 
 as the poles asunder. Why prefer the fancies of a peer- 
 ing scoffer to the eye of that great Architect who pro- 
 vided the ample storehouse, and taught you to use its 
 stores, and who assures you that one purpose of it is to 
 cure your dimness of vision, and to anoint your eyes with 
 eye-salve, that you may see wondrous things in the word 
 of God ? Whatever your dim eyes, or the dimmer eyes 
 of the scoffer, may think they see, "all Scripture is 
 inspired of God, and profitable/'' If we receive the 
 witness of men, nay, even of scoffers and sceptics, 
 surely " the witness of God is greater/' and ' ' this is 
 the witness of God, which He has testified" of the 
 excellence of the written word. 
 
 " Will he insist that rust is not rust ? " Metaphors 
 are not argument. Even when employed in a wrong 
 cause, they are deserters which the voice of Truth can 
 summon back to her own standard. Since our Lord 
 opened the eyes of the blind man with spittle and 
 clay, who shall assure us that what the scoffer tf fancies " 
 to be rust, even were it such really, being found in 
 these God-inspired Scriptures, has no Divine and healing 
 virtue? The humble means employed in that miracle 
 were surely the parable of a wider truth. Parts of the 
 
134 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 Divine message,, in appearance trivial, useless, or un- 
 worthy, may yet, when received in faith, be found to 
 be endued with healing" and enlightening* power. 
 
 P. 73. "A few parts may be discovered of less 
 costly materials, or inferior workmanship " 
 
 It is no true inference from the inspiration of all 
 Scripture, that every truth it reveals, and every part of 
 the revelation, is equally important. Scripture itself 
 teaches just the reverse. As there are ranks and orders 
 of dignity among the holy angels, why not also among 
 heaven-derived truths ? Some faithful sayings the 
 Holy Spirit has expressly singled out as of primary worth. 
 The tabernacle was all made after a celestial pattern, but 
 some of its materials were " less costly " than others, 
 and probably some parts of less finished workmanship. 
 Still every part answered to a Divine pattern. In a 
 revelation to men, the pure and heavenly truth must 
 stoop down to us, and why not stoop lower in some 
 parts than in others ? There is a wide difference between 
 the Books of Nehemiah and of Revelation, and still both 
 may be entirely divine. 
 
 The whole paragraph, as an appeal to the sceptic, is 
 beautiful and true. It is a cumulative argument from 
 the experience of ages. The inquiry, however, is not 
 into the best mode of dealing with an infidel, but what 
 ought to be our own faith as Christians. And here the 
 nature of the contrast is entirely changed. One question 
 is of this kind : Ought a few minor difficulties, and even 
 errors, granting them to be such, to outweigh the nume- 
 rous proofs of moral excellence and spiritual power in 
 
coleridge's confessions. 135 
 
 the Scriptures, viewed as a whole, when these have been 
 attested by the experience of the wisest and best of men 
 in so many ages of the world ? In the latter case, the 
 question is this : Ought difficulties few and small, which 
 have diminished confessedly with every step in the growth 
 of spiritual light, to outweigh the many full declarations, 
 that all Scripture, or each part in its turn, is the inspired 
 word of God, on the truth of which we may safely rely ? 
 Is it more reasonable to assume that our last step has 
 brought us to the perfection of spiritual insight, or that 
 the words of St. Paul, and of our Lord himself, are unre- 
 servedly true ? Stripped of metaphors, this is the one 
 real question, and it is amazing that such a mind as 
 Coleridge can strive laboriously to make his readers 
 accept the former alternative, and to dismiss the last as 
 a vain superstition. 
 
 The questions that follow, p. 73, are a direct disproof 
 of the alarming results which Coleridge assigns to the 
 doctrine he condemns. For if the maxim of expounding 
 separate parts by the spirit of the whole leads to the 
 same practical conclusion, it must be folly to renounce 
 the usual faith of the Church, and contradict St. Paul, 
 on the ground of the ill consequences that else must 
 follow. 
 
 But the practical conclusion is not the same. For 
 while the sound maxim of interpreting individual parts 
 by the spirit of the whole will secure us from a super- 
 stitious perversion of particular texts, the maxim that 
 some parts, distinguishable by no outward sign from the 
 rest, are uninspired, sets us free to follow our own fan- 
 
186 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 cies whenever we please, instead of the word of God. 
 On one principle we have a double safeguard against 
 error, the letter of the text, and the spirit of the context, 
 or the analogy of all Scripture. On the other we have 
 no check whatever. The moment a passage displeases 
 our taste, or crosses our theory, we have only to pronounce 
 it " rust/' or " a pointless shaft " — froth thrown up by 
 the fermentation of life in its lower stages, an accommo- 
 dation, a tradition, an apologue, a fancy, or an anachron- 
 ism, or that prophecy is " pretended history/' in fact, 
 whatever device we please, and the difficulty is at an 
 end. We are left free to be unbelievers by piecemeal, 
 and it is well if we, or perhaps our children, do not end 
 by becoming infidels complete. 
 
 We may trace the effects of this elastic principle by 
 earnests supplied to us even in the present day. Cole- 
 ridge accounts the history of the Fall a mere allegory. 
 Niebuhr and some of his followers describe the early 
 Books of Genesis and Exodus as myths, like the Roman 
 legends out of which he has sought to extract real his- 
 tory. The Books from Joshua to Chronicles are of course 
 taken as uninspired, except some prophetic messages in 
 them. Again, the Song of Deborah, the Book of Job, 
 Esther, Canticles, the Book of Daniel, except " perhaps 
 a few genuine fragments/' are excluded by Coleridge, 
 Arnold, Pye Smith, from the inspired Canon. In the 
 New Testament, if no book is wholly and absolutely 
 excluded, still between accommodations, Jewish fancies, 
 anachronisms, trivial errors, reasonings based solely on 
 prejudice and popular opinion, there will be little left of 
 
coleribge's confessions. 137 
 
 solid footing. Facilis descensus Avemi. When once we 
 have sacrificed the literal truth of repeated sayings of 
 God to the fancied infallibility of our own discernment, 
 it is impossible to say where the mischief will end. The 
 soundness of Coleridge in many great matters only 
 makes it more grievous that he should throw the weight 
 of his authority into the scale, which, to thousands, may 
 lead on in its descent to the worst delusions, and even 
 to spiritual death. 
 
 Pp. 74, 75 (98—100). "To assert and to demand 
 miracles without necessity was the vice of the un- 
 believing Jews of old, and from the Rabbis and the 
 Talmudists the infection has spread. . . . But all the 
 miracles which the legends of monk and rabbi contain 
 can scarcely be put in competition, on the score of 
 complication, inexplicableness, the absence of all intel- 
 ligible use or purpose, and of wanton self-frustration, 
 with those that must be assumed by the maintainers of 
 this doctrine, in order to give effect to the series of 
 miracles by which all the nominal composers of the 
 Hebrew nation before the time of Ezra, of whom there 
 are any remains, were successively transformed into 
 automaton compositors, so that the original text should 
 be, in sentiment, image, word, syntax, and composition, 
 an exact impression of the Divine copy ! In common 
 consistency the theologians who impose this belief on 
 their fellow-Christians ought to insist equally on the 
 superhuman origin and authority of the Masora/'' 
 
 This passage and what follows is more like superficial 
 railing than solid argument. The doctrine itself is 
 
138 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 strangely misstated and travestied. No one of sense 
 and piety believes that Isaiah, David, or St. Paul, was 
 a mere automaton in writing the Holy Scriptures. 
 They were tyepofjuevoi virb Trvevfjuaro^ aylov, " borne 
 along by the Holy Ghost ;" so that while they had full 
 sympathy with the message, and their understanding 
 was in full exercise, as conscious agents and ministers 
 of the word, they were under a power which guided 
 their thoughts and directed their words, so as to secure 
 a record of Divine truth suited for every age. 
 
 But the miracle is "complicated." So is every 
 miracle whatever,- — God, man, and nature all conspire 
 in it. It was very complicated, when God said to 
 Moses, " Stretch out thy rod over the sea/'' and Moses 
 stretched it out, the east wind blew, and the waters 
 became a wall on the right hand and on the left. No 
 motion of a rod would naturally cause an east wind, no 
 east wind naturally make the waters like a wall, or 
 " congeal " the depths in the midst of the seas. There 
 was the voice of God, the action of Moses, the motion 
 of his rod, the blast of the east wind, the congealing 
 of the waters. How complicated the process ! how 
 simple and sublime the result ! The body is one com- 
 plication, the soul is another, and the union of both 
 more complicated and more wonderful still ! Why 
 darken counsel by an objection which one glance at 
 the human body ought to prove worthless ? 
 
 But it is " inexplicable/'' What then ? " Canst thou 
 by searching find out God ? " So far, however, as it is 
 useful to understand it, it may be readily explained and 
 
coleeidge's confessions. 139 
 
 illustrated, and the words of 2 Pet. i. 21 are a sufficient 
 key to any simple mind. 
 
 It is charged, next, with " absence of all use and 
 purpose." Of no use, in a world of error and darkness, 
 to have a sure guide, a message of truth without error, 
 to be a light to our feet amidst snares and pitfalls ! The 
 voice of ten thousand believers in the first ages, and of 
 tens of thousands in the present day, condemns and 
 disproves the assertion. What privilege higher than to 
 have access to a fountain of pure unmingled truth? 
 an oracle, living oracles, where God speaks to us in 
 every variety of tone, from gentle whispers, suited to the 
 ear of children, to that voice of many waters and mighty 
 thunderings, before which archangels are silent with 
 awe, and tremble and adore ! 
 
 What follows is mere trifling. God has told us 
 that "all Scripture is inspired/'' and that it "cannot 
 be broken/'' And the reply is, We cannot believe this, 
 unless inspired versions are provided us in every 
 language, or unless others undertake to believe this 
 without warrant. 
 
 P. 75 (100). "But I am weary of discussing a tenet 
 which the generality of divines, and the leaders of the 
 religious public have ceased to defend, and yet continue 
 to assert or imply. The tendency manifested in this 
 conduct, the spirit in which not indeed the tenet itself, 
 but the obstinate adherence to it against the clearest 
 light of reason and experience, is grounded, that it is 
 which, according to my conviction, gives venom to the 
 error, and justifies the attempt to substitute a juster 
 
140 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 view. As long as it was the common and effective belief 
 of all the Reformed Churches, that by the good Spirit 
 were the spirits tried, and that the light which beams 
 forth from the written word was its own evidence for 
 the children of light; as long as Christians considered 
 their Bible as a plenteous entertainment, where every 
 guest, duly called and attired, found the food needful 
 and fitting for him, and where each, beholding all around 
 him glad and satisfied, praised the banquet, and thank- 
 fully glorified the Master of the feast ; so long did the 
 tenet that the Scriptures were written under the special 
 impulse of the Holy Ghost remain safe and profitable. 
 Nay, in the sense and- with the feelings in which it 
 was asserted, it was a truth, a truth to which every 
 spiritual believer now and at all times will bear witness 
 by virtue of his own experience. . . . And if they did 
 not always duly distinguish the inspiration, the im- 
 breathment of the pre-disposing and assisting Spirit 
 from the revelation of the informing word, it was at 
 worst a harmless hyperbole. It was holden by all that 
 if the power of the Spirit from without furnished the 
 text, the grace of the same Spirit from within must 
 supply the comment." 
 
 The works of Gaussen and Hengstenberg, which ap- 
 peared almost as soon as the " Confessions/'' and many 
 others which have been written since, show the first 
 sentence to be palpably untrue. I, too, am weary of 
 replying to such empty declamation as Coleridge de- 
 scends into in the previous paragraph. Here he ven- 
 tures to say of the doctrine of plenary inspiration, as 
 
Coleridge's confessions. 141 
 
 held by the great body of the Fathers and the Reformed 
 Divines, that it is against " the clearest light of reason/' 
 The clearest light ! rather the sparks self-kindled by 
 human pride (Isa. 1. 2), with which all who compass 
 themselves lie down in sorrow. When reason rejects 
 the true sayings of God, it degenerates rapidly into 
 thick moral darkness. Nothing can well be more un- 
 reasonable than the assumption on which the whole 
 argument or invective rests. It is that the last step 
 he has reached, when difficulties have melted away in 
 every previous stage, is the pinnacle of wisdom ; and 
 that no further light would remove the few doubts or 
 perplexities that remain, even though earlier progress has 
 removed so many. And this, almost the height of un- 
 reasonableness, is here styled "the clearest light of 
 reason." 
 
 The contrast that follows is hardly less strange. Does 
 Coleridge, of all persons, mean to teach us that a great 
 error may, for a time, be safe and profitable ? Yet what 
 else can he mean when he says, safe and profitable, nay, 
 even a truth ? If the doctrine was safe and profitable, it 
 must have been true. If true then, it must be true now, 
 unless we hold the bright idea that the Scriptures were 
 inspired throughout three centuries ago, and that the 
 scepticism of the last century has dis-inspired them ! 
 Without faith in the central truths of Scripture, no doubt 
 faith in the hedge, the periphery, that is, their plenary 
 inspiration, will profit very little. It will then be a 
 superstition, a truth held in unrighteousness, and rather 
 a tax on the reason than a strength and joy to the heart. 
 
142 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 But which view is likely to be more correct — one held, 
 as with the great Reformers, amidst the sunshine of 
 faith ? or one held by those who, like Coleridge, have 
 emerged slowly, and with difficulty, out of the low fogs 
 of Socinianism and Neology engendered in a sceptical 
 age ? 
 
 The contrast here drawn, and again p. 88, is not 
 Scriptural nor just — that all supernatural revelation is 
 from the Word or Son of Grod, and all ordinary grace 
 and influence from the Holy Spirit. The antithesis is 
 altogether baseless and unsound. For all supernatural 
 revelation is not only by the Word, but through the 
 Spirit. It was so in our Lord himself (Isa. lxi. 1. Lev. 
 iv. 17 — 21), and in the Jewish prophets (Zech. vii. 12. 
 2 Pet. i. 21). In the New Testament, also, the mira- 
 culous gifts, the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge 
 and prophecy , were "by the same Spirit" (1 Cor. xii. 8. 
 10). It was so too in the latest and fullest prophecy, the 
 Book of Revelation (ch. i. 1. 10 ; xiv. 13 ; xvii. 3). Again, 
 all ordinary grace is from Christ the Word, by the opera- 
 tion of the Spirit. Nay, the fullest statement of this truth 
 is linked, not only with the person of Christ, but this 
 very title— the Word (John i. 14. 16, 17). But while 
 the contrast, as stated by Coleridge, is untrue, there is a 
 true contrast, held by Christians in general, between 
 regenerating and enlightening grace common to all 
 Christians, and special or supernatural inspiration. Here 
 there is, and is commonly held to be, a difference in kind. 
 The difference is not in kind, but in manner and degree, 
 between prophetic inspiration by voice, dream, and vision, 
 
Coleridge's confessions. 143 
 
 and the Apostolic, by the mighty inward working of the 
 Spirit of God, the Spirit of heavenly wisdom. 
 
 P. 81 (104— 106). "All men of learning . . . are not 
 to be credited." 
 
 As an appeal to the infidel, all this paragraph is just 
 and true. But as an implicit assumption that there are 
 real disproofs of plenary inspiration, it is baseless. " See 
 how the logic will look." David is recorded to have 
 treated cruelly the people of Rabbah. Therefore the 
 record is uninspired ; for either it is not true, or else if the 
 fact occurred, an inspired record would have concealed it. 
 Three large round numbers in Chronicles are so large as 
 to cause some doubt of their historical accuracy. There- 
 fore the fault, if there be a fault, cannot be due to later 
 copyists, though such numbers, 400,000 and 800,000, 
 are of all things the most open to the entrance of such 
 error. Or, again, our Lord refers His disciples to Daniel 
 the prophet in explanation of his own prophecy. There- 
 fore the book they ascribe to him, which contains the 
 passage our Lord quoted, is a forgery of late origin. Or 
 again, the Jews even now celebrate the feast of Purim, 
 therefore the history of the event they celebrate is an 
 eastern legend. This logic does not seem one whit 
 better than that which Coleridge ridicules. 
 
 The testimony, p. 84 (107), "This I believe," &c, 
 coming from such a mind, is weighty and important. 
 But the better his own state and the further his progress, 
 the greater the inconsistency of his creed. He has 
 groped his way from the midnight of his early days, and 
 finds himself, by morning light, within a stone's throw 
 
144 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 of a city " with glistening spires and pinnacles adorned/' 
 lit up in every part with the beams of the Sun of 
 Righteousness. But having approached so near, he is 
 confident he has reached the true end of his journey , and 
 losing patience to travel a few steps further, contends 
 that the city has been built out of its place, too far to 
 the north. The doctrine of inspiration, as taught by 
 the consenting voice of Prophets and Apostles, must be 
 lowered to suit the difficulties, not of the Archangel before 
 the throne, but of the poor way-worn " wrestler with the 
 Spirit till the break of day." It must be cast into this 
 new and singular form : — " The Scriptures are inspired, 
 not throughout, but in many parts, and perhaps in all ex- 
 cept those in which Coleridge finds difficulty at sixty years 
 of age, and not earlier in life ! " Viewed intellectually, 
 no position can be more untenable than that in which 
 Coleridge would land his disciples, when they compare 
 such frank admissions of his own progress with the 
 main drift of these " Confessions. " 
 
 The Seventh Letter is an argument against plenary 
 inspiration from the spirit of servile fear and bondage to 
 the letter, in which it has often been maintained. It may 
 be answered almost in Coleridge's own words : " Surely 
 it behoves you to inquire whether you cannot be a be- 
 liever in the inspiration of l all Scripture ' on your own 
 faith. It must be beneath a wise man to disbelieve it 
 on the ground of the superstitious way in which it is 
 held by those who have no solid faith in Christianity 
 itself." 
 
 In reality the evils alleged to arise from the doctrine, 
 
coleeidge's confessions. 145 
 
 when divorced from the vital truths of the Gospel, are no 
 real presumption against it. Tear down the temple of 
 Divine truth, leave one solitary pillar standing in its 
 porch, and offer incense before it, and you may have a 
 melancholy superstition, a pitiful idolatry. To renew 
 the temple on its original plan, in its first beauty, it may 
 possibly be more safe and convenient to remove this 
 pillar for a time, but it must be replaced before the 
 building can be complete. Till then, it might hinder 
 the masons, and be chipped and injured, or broken by 
 the scaffolding that must be placed around it. Remove 
 it then carefully, not dashing it in pieces, but remem- 
 bering it may have, ere long, to be replaced, and then 
 build freely and fast from the foundation to the top- 
 stone. When your building is complete, this pillar will 
 find its own place. In other words, be content to suspend 
 your faith in the all-inclusive inspiration of the Bible 
 for a time, until you can receive it on true grounds. It 
 cannot be so clear or so important a truth that every 
 verse of Scripture is a word from God himself, as that 
 contradictions cannot be true, that God requires a reason- 
 able service ; that He is holy, and hates all sin ; that 
 He is love, and delights in mercy; and that Jesus is the 
 Christ, the Son of God, whose commands you are bound 
 to obey, and on whose sacrifice all your hopes are to rest. 
 Do not venture to deny that all Scripture is inspired. 
 You may not be able to decide fully on so wide a question, 
 till first principles have been well mastered. With in- 
 creased knowledge, you may yet find your difficulties 
 melt away, and that the doctrine only adds to the har- 
 
146 NOTES ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 monies of revealed truth. But do not let consequences 
 from this doctrine, assumed too hastily, perplex your first 
 steps in the pursuit of Divine knowledge. Rather believe 
 the song of Deborah uninspired, than that the God of 
 Christians has pleasure in treachery ; or that the Psalms 
 owe their form, in part, to human infirmity in the 
 Psalmist, than that God would justify or approve private 
 hate and selfish malice. And so of all the rest. But 
 remember, it is one thing to suspend your faith in a 
 doctrine, once held superstitiously, till you can satisfy 
 yourself that it is in harmony with the spirit and scope 
 of God's revelation ; and another to reject it, in the face 
 of strong and direct testimonies of God's word that seem 
 to affirm it, when almost every difficulty has been re- 
 moved. 
 
 Such a temporary suspense of faith in plenary inspira- 
 tion may be the safer course for an inquiring and scep- 
 tical Christian to pursue, who is honest in his inquiry. 
 To receive nothing on false grounds, and no truth out 
 of its due order, may be the best preparation for a healthy 
 and vigorous faith at the last. But we smooth the path- 
 way of recovery for hopeful sceptics at far too dear a 
 price, when, for their sake, we set aside, or pare down a 
 revealed truth, inject doubts and difficulties into the 
 life-blood of the Universal Church, and impute error to 
 those messages, which the Holy Spirit has caused to be 
 written and recorded for our learning by men of God, 
 and which He has sealed in every part with the signet of 
 heaven. 
 
THE NATURE AND EFFECTS OF THE 
 ATONEMENT. 
 
 Atonement by the sacrifice of Christ is the heart and 
 life of Christianity. The Gospel rests upon the truth, 
 that " Christ died for our sins, according to the Scrip- 
 tures/'' that He " was made a curse for us/'' and " bore 
 our sins in His own body on the tree." But a clear appre- 
 hension of this great doctrine is a hard and high attain- 
 ment, and no slight obscurity rests on it in many minds, 
 which desire to hold it with a reasonable faith. Great 
 questions arise, to which conflicting answers have been 
 given. Did our Lord bear the sins of the saved only, 
 or of all mankind ? How far is the transfer of guilt to 
 the innocent consistent with the eternal laws of truth 
 and righteousness ? Is the substitution total or partial ? 
 Does it include all sins, and sin in all aspects, or some 
 only? What is the nature of the curse which Christ 
 endured ? What are the results of the sacrifice itself, and 
 what are those which depend on the faith and repentance 
 of the sinner ? Is all punishment of those for whom an 
 atonement has been made illegal and unjust ? If Christ 
 L % 
 
148 THE NATUEE AND EFFECTS 
 
 died for all, how is it that it is still " appointed for all 
 men once to die V 3 Can the sentence be repealed by 
 atonement, and still remain ? 
 
 In the " Ways of God/' chap. vii., I have attempted 
 to throw some light on these difficulties. But the 
 thoughts there published are too briefly expressed,, and 
 liable to misconstruction ; and have been approved by 
 some, and condemned by others, on mistaken or insuffi- 
 cient grounds. A clearer exposition of them will, I 
 trust, be a real help to many perplexed and thoughtful 
 minds. Heresy itself is often the natural recoil from 
 a distorted and lifeless orthodoxy. The moral govern- 
 ment of God can hardly be subject to a worse travesty 
 than when lowered to this one claim, that a certain 
 amount of suffering must be exacted, it matters not 
 from whom, for a certain number or amount of sins. 
 The conscience revolts from a view so unworthy of the 
 Divine holiness, so alien from the whole tenour of 
 Divine revelation. A creed in which there is no sub- 
 stitution, and a creed in which there is nothing but sub- 
 stitution, depart equally, on opposite sides, from the 
 truth of God. Let us try, with modesty and reverence, 
 to disentangle, one by one, the difficulties in this part of 
 revealed religion. 
 
 I. First, what is the extent of the atonement ? Did 
 Christ die for the saved only, or for all mankind ? 
 
 Here the answer of the Bible is plain. There are 
 texts where Christ is said to give himself for the 
 Church, for His sheep. There are others where, in- 
 definitely, He is said to die for many, for sinners, for 
 
OF THE ATONEMENT. 149 
 
 men unjust. There are none where He is said to die for 
 the Church only, for His sheep only. Such alone could 
 exclude a wider message, while these agree with it, and 
 are included in it, as a part in the whole to which it 
 belongs. 
 
 On the other hand, the language of many texts is 
 strictly universal. "All we like sheep have gone 
 astray ; we have turned every one to his own way ; and 
 the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all" 
 (Isa. liii. 6) . " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh 
 away the sin of the world" (John i. 29). "The bread 
 I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of 
 the world " (vi. 51) . " If one died for all, then all died : 
 and he died for all, that they who live should not hence- 
 forth live to themselves, but to him that died for them, 
 and rose again" (2 Cor. v. ]4, 15). "God was in 
 Christ, reconciling the world unto himself" (v. 19). 
 " That he, by the grace of God, should taste death for 
 every man" (Heb. ii. 9). "Who gave himself a ran- 
 som for all " (1 Tim. ii. 6) . " And he is the propitia- 
 tion for our sins ; and not for ours only, but for the sins 
 of the whole world " (1 John ii. 2) . " We have seen, 
 and do testify, that the Father sent his Son to be the 
 Saviour of the world " (1 John iv. 14) . 
 
 The same truth is implied in the very nature of the 
 Gospel. It calls on the sinner to believe what must be 
 true before he believes it, and this on the authority of 
 God's message, not of some secret hidden revelation 
 to himself alone. What he has first to believe is what 
 the Corinthians received first of all from the Apostle^ 
 
150 THE NATURE AND EFFECTS 
 
 that Jesus Christ died for our sins (1 Cor. xv. 3) . If 
 He died for the saved only, then the faith of the sinner, 
 when he first hears the Gospel, cannot rest on the 
 simple word of God. It must be builded rather on a 
 secret persuasion of his own final safety, for which that 
 word, as yet, gives him no warrant. None of the signs 
 of grace, which it supplies to the believer, can precede, 
 but all must follow, the first act by which he believes that 
 Christ died for his sins, and rests his hope on that 
 atoning sacrifice. 
 
 The Church of England, in full harmony with Scrip- 
 ture, announces plainly the same truth, that Christ died 
 for all men, and for all their sins. We read it in 
 Art. XXXI., in the summary of the Creed, in the Cate- 
 chism, and in the Communion doubly — both in the 
 prayer of consecration, and in the sublime thanksgiving 
 near the close. Thus it meets us in the first and the 
 last steps of that ladder of Jacob, by which babes and 
 sucklings are promoted into fellowship with the anthems 
 and the worship of heaven. 
 
 II. Our Lord Jesus Christ, then, died for all. He 
 tasted death for every man. He is the propitiation, not 
 for Jews only, nor for believers only, but for the sins of 
 the whole world. And now the question must arise, 
 Did He die for multitudes wholly in vain ? Can sins 
 be atoned for, and the sinner still perish ? Can punish- 
 ment be exacted from a Divine substitute, and those be 
 punished for whom this costly ransom has been paid? 
 If the atonement includes all men, and still all men are 
 not saved, but many lost, must we not lower its efficacy, 
 
OF THE ATONEMENT. 151 
 
 and admit that, in many cases, Christ has died in vain ? 
 In what sense, then, can He have borne the sins of the 
 whole world ? What are the proper and direct results 
 of this atonement? And what are those which flow 
 from it, but still depend on that moral change which is 
 wrought by the Gospel in the hearts of true penitents 
 alone ? 
 
 The answer to these questions must be sought in a 
 further truth. Christ bore indeed the sin of the world, 
 the collective guilt of all mankind. A truth how 
 strangely solemn, how sublimely glorious ! But all 
 sin has two different, almost opposite, characters. In 
 one of these it can, in the other it cannot, be transferred. 
 It is an act done once for all, which cannot be undone. 
 Once committed, it stands engraven on the scheme of 
 Providence, a transgression of God's law, a rebellion 
 against the Supreme Lawgiver, which needs some public 
 vindication of His outraged authority. But it is also 
 the act of a conscious agent, the sign of his present 
 state, which may be changed or even reversed, but which, 
 while it lasts, must make him hateful in the sight of a 
 holy God. 
 
 Sin is a debt, and also a disease. It is a transgression 
 of the Divine law, without and above the sinner. It is 
 a transgression, also, against the health and life of the 
 spirit within. Each view of it is equally Scriptural, 
 equally important. The debt needs a ransom, the disease 
 a cure. If sin were only a disease, there would be much 
 room for sympathy, none for substitution. Atonement 
 and propitiation would be wholly out of place. Our 
 
15£ THE NATURE AND EFFECTS 
 
 only want would be the healing, soothing power of some 
 attractive pattern of perfect love. If sin were only a 
 debt, substitution would be a complete Gospel, and all 
 for whom an atonement was made would be heirs of 
 salvation, because of that substitution alone. Those for 
 whom Christ died would then be saved, even before they 
 believe. Their debt once paid, no punishment or loss 
 could reach them any more. Again, those who are not 
 saved, on this view, must have had no sacrifice provided, 
 no glad tidings sent. The Gospel, if preached to them 
 at all, would be only a falsehood, a snare, and a delusion. 
 They would be wholly beyond the redemption of Christ, 
 like the fallen angels. The Saviour would neither have 
 lived nor died for them, and to invite them to believe 
 this would be simply persuading them to believe a lie. 
 
 These two aspects of sin, outwardly towards the law 
 of God, and inwardly as the present sign of a state of 
 heart displeasing to God, and ruinous to the soul's health, 
 have an opposite relation to the doctrine of repentance. 
 An act once done cannot be undone. No repentance 
 can wipe out the stain, or reverse the record of rebellion. 
 But sinful acts cease to be the index of a sinful heart, 
 when the heart itself is changed by true repentance. 
 The sinner then dies to the sin, and the sin itself expires, 
 in its character of a moral test. Thus the disease of sin 
 needs to be healed by an inward work in the heart, and 
 not by substitution. The debt may be borne and paid 
 by a substitute, but can never be done away by repent- 
 ance alone. So also, in actual life, a workman, disabled 
 by grievous illness for his work, may contract a debt he 
 
OP THE ATONEMENT. 153 
 
 cannot pay. He now suffers under a double burden — a 
 debt unpaid, and a disease uncured. A physician might 
 cure the complaint, but the debt would remain. A 
 benefactor might pay the debt for him, and still the 
 disease be unhealed. It is only a double gift, a payment 
 and a cure, which can restore him to a state of freedom, 
 health, and peace. And these two benefits might be 
 linked with each other. If there is a medicine that 
 can heal, and the sick man, through ignorance or 
 prejudice, should refuse to apply it, he might be de- 
 graded into a helpless and worthless pauper, a mere 
 drain on wasted benevolence, by help unwisely given. 
 A wise benefactor might then make his promise to pay 
 the debt already due to depend on proof of willingness 
 to consult the physician, and use the prescribed re- 
 medies. The medicine would not pay the debt, nor the 
 payment heal the disease; and still the payment and 
 the first step in the cure would be linked inseparably in 
 one work of love. 
 
 These two distinct aspects of all sin, when we look 
 below the surface, enter into the whole economy of re- 
 demption, and even serve to define the very form of 
 Divine revelation. It consists of two distinct parts, the 
 Law and the Gospel, the Old Covenant and the New. 
 Again, the law may be viewed in a double light, either 
 as the earnest and preparation for the Gospel, containing 
 ail the germs of the later message, or else as its antithesis 
 and contrast. The former aspect of the law is unfolded 
 in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the latter, mainly, 
 in those to the Galatians and the Romans. 
 
154 THE NATURE AND EFFECTS 
 
 What, then, is the nature of this contrast, which 
 determines the whole structure of the word of God ? The 
 Law exhibits a perfect standard, and exacts a penalty for 
 every failure. The Gospel assumes the moral bankruptcy 
 of those to whom it is given, and provides a ransom for 
 their guilt, and healing medicine for their moral and 
 spiritual sickness. One deals with man as a creature, 
 sets before him the rule of perfection, and severs all 
 creatures into the unfallen and the fallen, the sinless and 
 the sinful. The other deals with men as fallen creatures, 
 sets before them a way of recovery, and severs them into 
 the impenitent and the penitent, the faithless and the 
 believing, those who still turn their backs upon the God 
 of grace, and those who seek Him diligently, to regain 
 His lost image in righteousness and true holiness. And 
 thus the Law, as law, makes no provision for repentance. 
 Its message is simple and solemn. " The soul that 
 sinneth, it shall die." " Cursed is every one that con- 
 tinueth not in all things written in the book of the law, 
 to do them."" But it also recognizes the truth, that sin, 
 though repentance cannot undo it, may be transferred 
 from the sinner, and be the object of a Divinely-provided 
 atonement. The Gospel reveals a true and Divine atone- 
 ment, as the basis on which it wholly rests. But its 
 own message, from the first, is a call to repentance, and 
 a promise of forgiveness, adoption, and every blessing, 
 to the penitent alone. It is the voice of the Law, that 
 sin is a debt, a moral bankruptcy, a just exposure to 
 death and the curse, which no mere repentance can do 
 away, and which it needs a sin-offering to remove ; and 
 
OF THE ATONEMENT. 155 
 
 also that human help is vain, since " no man can redeem 
 his brother, or give unto God a ransom for him/'' It is 
 the voice of the Gospel, that a Divine atonement has 
 been made, that Christ is "the Lamb of God, who 
 taketh away the sin of the world ;" and that an inward, 
 personal change of heart, a present acceptance of God's 
 mercy, a genuine faith in Christ, is the needful moral 
 condition, that the disease of sin may be healed, and 
 the sinner may be restored to the favour of God in this 
 life, and the full enjoyment of His glorious presence in 
 the life to come. The Law deals thus with all sin ob- 
 jectively, in reference to the strict claims of Divine 
 justice, and the rights of the Supreme Lawgiver. The 
 Gospel, first of all, reveals this claim as already satisfied 
 by the death of Christ alone ; and then deals with sin sub- 
 jectively, in the actual rebellion of the heart, and brings 
 the power of the Cross, and the energy of the quickening 
 Spirit, to bear on these strongholds of the kingdom of 
 darkness in the hearts of sinful men. 
 
 III. What, then, apart from the Atonement, is the state 
 of mankind before God ? What is their legal standing, 
 and the nature of the curse and sentence under which 
 they lie ? 
 
 The Law of God is the standard of right and moral 
 perfection. Its claim is unalterable, and cannot be 
 lowered : perfect love to God, and love to man, and the 
 actions that flow from perfect love. This is God's 
 righteous claim, and, whenever it is not satisfied, the soul 
 is morally bankrupt. Sin once committed, debt once 
 incurred, can never be cancelled by later obedience. 
 
156 THE NATURE AND EFFECTS 
 
 That obedience is already due, and its absence would be 
 a new debt added to the old. Thus, when sin has once 
 entered, the Law, as law, provides no remedy. Its pro- 
 mise is to the sinless alone. To the sinful it denounces 
 God's sentence — " The soul that sinneth, it shall die." 
 
 The sentence of the broken law is death. But what 
 is the meaning of this death, the curse denounced by 
 the law on every transgressor ? It needs some care and 
 thought to answer this question aright. The death 
 meant must be the same which was threatened in Para- 
 dise, and which entered the world through Adam's sin. 
 Again, it is a contrast to the second death, the final 
 sentence of the last judgment. When one is inflicted, 
 the other is abolished. " And death and hell were cast 
 into the lake of fire " (Rev. xx. 14) . It is not the mere act 
 of dying. In all Scripture it is ascribed to the soul, even 
 when separated from the body. " In death there is no 
 remembrance of thee ; and who will give thee thanks 
 in the pit?" The words temporal and eternal, often 
 applied to death, tend rather to mislead, than to 
 explain the true nature of this contrast. The first death 
 is temporal, because its future abolition is a revealed 
 promise ; but in its own nature, apart from Christ's re- 
 demption, it would be everlasting. Neither the faculties • 
 of the creature, nor the nature of sin, nor the justice of 
 God, assign it any limit or bound. It is due to a 
 mighty work of redemption alone, that it is swallowed 
 up in eternal victory. 
 
 This death, the sentence of the law, extends to the 
 whole man, both soul and body. To see its nature as 
 
OE THE ATONEMENT. 157 
 
 respects the soul, we must reflect on its work with re- 
 ference to the body. One is the visible sign and sacra- 
 ment of the other. . The body is then parted from the 
 soul, its life ; and being thus parted, becomes the prey 
 of inward corruption. So, also, death is the separation 
 of the soul from God, the true source of life ; and all the 
 confusion, chaos, and moral corruption and dissolution 
 which follows that awful separation. Without, there is 
 banishment from the presence of God, and from all the 
 light of His favour and blessing. Within, there will follow 
 the unrestrained working of moral corruption, degrading, 
 perverting, desecrating all the faculties and powers of 
 the immortal spirit. Sin would thus become, under the 
 name of death, a " finished " evil, its own ever-growing 
 torment, and the soul sink deeper and deeper in an 
 abyss of hopeless misery. 
 
 On this view we may see the force of the contrasted 
 figures, by which the first and second death are portrayed. 
 One is " the lake of fire/'' solemn indeed and most awful, 
 yet bounded in its range, shut in by firm land on every 
 side. The other is " the deep/'' the abyss, " the bottomless 
 pit," evil reigning, rioting, growing, deepening without 
 limit and without end, in its fatal descent, farther and 
 farther, from light, happiness, and heaven. By the 
 sentence of the law, fulfilled without atonement or 
 redemption, mankind, once fallen, would be shut out 
 from God's presence, and sink and sink, and sink for 
 ever, in this abyss of hopeless and endless ruin. There 
 would have been, through ages without end, the awful 
 reality of a God-dishonouring, God-hating, God-bias- 
 
158 THE NATURE AND EFFECTS 
 
 pheming, self-tormenting, God-abandoned universe. 
 Such death is the wages of sin, its due desert, and the 
 issue to which it naturally tends. It is the fatal harvest 
 from the seeds of moral corruption harboured in the soul. 
 " Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death/'' 
 
 IV. What, now, is the nature of Christ's Atonement ? 
 What is the curse He endured for sin ? What is the 
 direct and proper result of that Atonement, apart from 
 the mighty moral change, in all who obey the Gospel, 
 wrought by the magnetic, transforming power of the 
 Cross of Christ ? 
 
 Here the testimony of Scripture is plain. u The Lord 
 hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." " He made 
 Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin." " Christ hath re- 
 deemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse 
 for us." " He suffered for our sins, the just for the un- 
 just." " Who himself bore our sins in his own body on 
 the tree." " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh 
 away the sin of the world." A sinful character was never 
 once ascribed to our Lord. He was, and was ever held 
 to be, in the midst of His sufferings, the Holy One of 
 God, who might not see corruption, the Lamb of God 
 without blemish or spot, who " knew no sin." Sin was 
 ascribed or imputed to Him, not as the sign of a sinful 
 character, but in direct contrast to the claims of a 
 character declared to be free from all spot or stain of 
 sin. It was in its other aspect, as a series of acts done, 
 that could not be reversed, of transgressions against the 
 authority of the Supreme Lawgiver, that the sin of the 
 world, one vast collective whole, was laid, like the wood of 
 
OF THE ATONEMENT. 159 
 
 the sacrifice, upon the shoulders of the world's Redeemer. 
 And the curse which He bore was death, the first death, 
 so far as it was due to the demerit of sin and the claims 
 of Divine justice alone, and was not aggravated by the 
 further working of moral corruption in the heart of God- 
 abandoned sinners. 
 
 When God reveals His justice in dealing with the 
 moral character of men, He must deal with them accord- 
 ing to the truth. The Holy One, who loved righteous- 
 ness and hated iniquity, whose life was sinless, and whose 
 love is perfect, must then be anointed with the oil of 
 gladness above His fellows. But when He deals with 
 sin in its other aspect, as transgression of the law, re- 
 versible by no repentance, the perfection of the Victim 
 on whom the guilt is laid, and from whom the penalty 
 is exacted, serves only to place in the clearest light the 
 essential sinfulness and hatefulness of sin, and the autho- 
 rity of that law which the sinner has despised. The 
 claim of God's holiness is ill explained by a law of 
 mechanical compensation, as if the sufferings, for a few 
 days and nights, of an Infinite Person, were exactly equal 
 to those of the multitudes of mankind through a whole 
 eternity of ruin and sorrow. Sin and its punishment are 
 not such finite, measurable things. What is needed for 
 the full vindication of God's authority is that His holy 
 anger against all sin, as sin, should, once for all, be 
 displayed to the uttermost, before any soul that has fallen 
 from God, and rebelled against Him, can be restored to 
 the perfect enjoyment of His favour and blessing. This 
 is the baptism of fire, of which our Lord said, " How 
 
160 THE NATURE AND EFFECTS 
 
 am I straitened, till it be accomplished ! " He endured 
 for our sakes that death which is the curse of the broken 
 law, and in His case its sting was not removed. He cried 
 upon the cross, " My God, my God, why hast thou for- 
 saken me ? " He suffered the pains, the pangs of death. 
 He was laid " in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps/'' 
 and was vexed with all the storms and waves of God's 
 holy displeasure against the sin of a guilty world. The 
 Highest and the Holiest stooped to the lowest abasement 
 of shame and sorrow. He endured death, the sentence 
 of the law, in all its darkest terrors, so far as these are 
 separable from the aggravations caused by reigning sin, 
 gloomy remorse, fierce, untamed passion, deep self-tor- 
 ment, and utter despair. 
 
 When once this claim of Divine justice against sin, 
 as sin, had thus been fully satisfied, and the Holy One 
 had descended to the deep of Sheol, enduring the bitter 
 anguish of sojourn in the dark land of death, then the fur- 
 ther claim of the same justice, that all shall be dealt with 
 according to their true moral character, began forthwith 
 to assert its unchangeable authority. The pains of death 
 were loosed, because it was not possible that the Sinless 
 One should be holden thereby. No sooner had He en- 
 tered the deep, fathomed its dark abyss, and endured the 
 worst extreme of separation from His Heavenly Father, 
 than the curse exhausted its bitterness, and the blessing 
 began to reveal its power. That same day He left the 
 deep of Sheol or Hades, and entered its Paradise, the 
 sheltered resting-place of the faithful dead. The third 
 day He left the under- world of the dead, and rose victo- 
 

 OF THE ATONEMENT. 161 
 
 rious from the grave, to die no more. The fortieth day 
 He completed His upward return, and "journeyed into 
 heaven, angels, and authorities, and powers being made 
 subject unto him." Because He had stooped unutter- 
 ably low, He was raised unutterably high, " far above all 
 principality, and power, and might, and every name 
 that is named, not only in this world, but in the world 
 to come." 
 
 The direct and immediate result of this great atone- 
 ment answers to its character, as thus denned, and is 
 clearly pointed out in the word of God. The world is 
 now reconciled to God. Rom. xi. 15. £ Cor. v. 19. The 
 veil of the law's condemnation, spread over the face of 
 all nations, is taken away and destroyed. Isa. xxv. 7. No 
 amount of past sin is now any barrier to the instant 
 restoration of the sinner to God's favour and blessing. 
 The middle wall of partition, which no bitter repentance 
 could remove, is broken down, and there is free and 
 instant access for every returning penitent to the house 
 and home of love, from which their sins had banished 
 them. There is left no hindrance, no barrier without, on 
 the part of Divine justice, administering a perfect Law ; 
 but only the hindrance within, from the present unbelief 
 and pride of those who will not accept a Divine remedy, 
 and who resist and cast aside the grace of the Gospel. 
 The curse and condemnation of the Law is done away 
 in the cross of Christ. The condemnation of the Gospel 
 alone remains. " And this is the condemnation, that 
 light is come into the world, and men loved darkness 
 rather than light, because their deeds were evil." And 
 
 M 
 
162 THE NATURE AND EFFECTS 
 
 thus the effects of Christ's Atonement, common to all 
 mankind, are these : the removal of an impassable and 
 hopeless barrier between sinful creatures and a holy God ; 
 the provision of a day of grace, in which mercy may be 
 found ; rich forbearance and long-suffering towards years 
 and ages of abounding sin; the abolition of the first death, 
 the wages of sin, which is to be swallowed up in eternal 
 victory ; the resurrection of the body ; and the transfer of 
 men from the reign of death, and the curse of utter vanity, 
 to a state in which God, the God of love and holiness, 
 will be for ever glorified — though by some in the height 
 of heavenly glory, and by others only in the depth of 
 just retribution and eternal shame. 
 
 V. What, in the last place, is the connexion between 
 the Atonement and the special benefits obtained by those 
 who believe and obey the Gospel ? 
 
 Sin is both a debt and a disease. It is doubly a debt, 
 both directly, as a transgression, or series of transgres- 
 sions of God's law; and indirectly, as the sign of a 
 rebellious state of heart, involving guilt as well as cor- 
 ruption before God. The Atonement, in itself, removes 
 the debt only, and in its first and simplest aspect alone. 
 But the guilt of present rebellion, and the disease of reign- 
 ing sin, can be removed only by an inward change of 
 heart, the work of the regenerating Spirit of God. Here 
 the Atonement avails, not by the mere fact of its accom- 
 plishment on the cross, but as a moral magnet, a 
 mighty fountain of new and heavenly life to the souls 
 of men. The substitution of Christ belongs to His 
 sacrificial death alone. But His incarnation, His sinless 
 
OF THE ATONEMENT. 163 
 
 life, His glorious resurrection and ascension, are all 
 equally the source of those gifts which, as the Federal 
 Head of mankind, and more especially of the Church, 
 He pours down abundantly upon all His people. He 
 bore the curse of the Law, that men might not bear it. 
 He died, that men might not taste of death in its full 
 bitterness, armed with its deadly sting, nor remain under 
 its power, but that it might be destroyed for ever. But 
 He stooped from heaven, that He might raise us to 
 heaven. He obeyed, that we too might obey. He 
 humbled himself, that He might make us humble. 
 He rose from the dead, that we too might rise. He 
 ascended, as our Forerunner, that in due season we also 
 might ascend, and sit with Him in heavenly places in 
 the world to come. In these aspects of His redeeming 
 work, substitution has no place, but federal headship 
 alone. The Atonement prepares the way for these 
 further benefits. It is the only foundation on which they 
 rest. But it does not secure them by the mere fact 
 that a full sacrifice has been made. They depend on 
 a further work of repentance and faith in the heart of 
 the sinner, whereby the soul is engrafted into the 
 True Vine, and becomes a living member of the mys- 
 tical body of Christ. Till this change is wrought, 
 the curse of the Law is removed, but the curse of the 
 Gospel remains. " He that believeth not is condemned 
 already, because he hath not believed in the name of 
 the only begotten Son of God/'' And the disease of 
 sin also remains still without a cure. The rebellion is 
 even aggravated by the greatness of the mercy which 
 m 2 
 
164 THE NATURE AND EFFECTS 
 
 is still despised, and the rich provision of grace, which 
 the soul refuses to receive. But the same Atonement 
 which removes the legal curse is the grand instrument, 
 appointed by God, and applied and used by the Holy Spirit, 
 for working this inward and mighty change in the hearts 
 of men. When a rich and kind friend pays a debt for a 
 prisoner, the substitution properly belongs to the payment 
 only, and its immediate effect is his release from prison. 
 But the same friend, when the debtor is released, may receive 
 him into his family, provide him with a fresh education, 
 and introduce him into a new sphere of life, leading to 
 riches, happiness, and honour. The prisoner, condemned 
 before to the society of criminals, and sinking fast in 
 moral degradation, may come under better and nobler 
 influences ; and gratitude for the benefit he has received 
 may lead him to copy the moral excellences of the beloved 
 benefactor by whom his ransom was paid, and on whom 
 all his present comforts and blessings depend. All these 
 results are no part of the payment which was first made. 
 No law of justice requires that they should exactly equal 
 that sacrifice of comfort or ease to which the rich friend 
 submitted on his payment of the debt. And yet they 
 are so entirely dependent on this first act of love, that, 
 in a looser sense, they may be called the purchase of that 
 first ransom. In strictness of speech, however, this 
 phrase does not apply, and rather tends to obscure the 
 true nature and condition of these latter benefits. And 
 thus we find in the Scriptures that Christ is never said to 
 have bought blessings for His people ; nor are adoption, 
 regeneration, holiness, peace, resurrection, ever styled 
 
OF THE ATONEMENT. 165 
 
 the purchase of His precious blood. It is His people 
 themselves who are purchased, bought, redeemed from 
 the power of the curse, the bondage of sin, the do- 
 minion of Satan ; that being brought out of the prison- 
 house, and made once more the freemen of the Lord, they 
 may freely receive, with no impediment from Divine 
 justice, whatever blessings the free bounty of God the 
 Father is pleased to bestow. And yet all these gifts 
 and blessings come to them through Christ alone. He 
 is the Vine, and they are the branches. He is the Head, 
 and they are the members. He is the great Fountain, 
 from whom and through whom alone every stream of 
 grace must flow down to a sinful world. Spiritual union 
 with the risen Saviour is the fixed, unalterable condition 
 on which all the blessings of personal salvation must for 
 ever depend. The curse of the Law can be removed by 
 the Atonement alone, believed or disbelieved. The curse 
 of the Gospel, the moral guiltiness of present rebellion, 
 the sore sickness and disease of indwelling sin, can be 
 removed by repentance and faith alone, and in no other 
 way. Here substitution can have no place. Each must 
 repent for himself. Each must believe for himself. Each 
 for himself must lay hold upon the promises of the new 
 covenant. To bear the burdens of others is the law of 
 Christ, which finds its highest fulfilment in His atoning 
 sacrifice alone. But this work of the Redeemer in our 
 stead must . be followed by a work of the Holy Spirit 
 within us, in which the spirit of man is a fellow- worker 
 with God, before salvation can be ours in the fulness of 
 
166 THE NATURE AND EFFECTS OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 its revealed blessings. And here the further truth 
 applies, that u every man shall bear his own burden." 
 " He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap cor- 
 ruption ; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the 
 Spirit reap life everlasting/'' A great work of Divine 
 love has been wrought for mankind, once for all, upon 
 the cross, whereby the first death has been abolished, and 
 will be swallowed up in eternal victory. But a further 
 work is needful, wrought by the Spirit of God in every 
 contrite heart, through faith in that Divine atonement ; 
 that the soul may attain a full salvation, and being freed 
 from the power of the second death, may have right to 
 the tree of life, and enter in through the gates into the 
 celestial city. 
 
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 The doctrine of the Atonement is closely linked with 
 the teaching of Scripture concerning" the solemn truth 
 of judgment to come. Some remarks on this subject 
 have been offered in the previous letters, but they need 
 to be further unfolded, that we may gain, if it be pos- 
 sible, a clearer and fuller insight into these deep things 
 of God. 
 
 A double perplexity presses here upon every thoughtful 
 mind. If Christ died for all, how can multitudes for 
 whom He died perish in their sins, and be lost for ever ? 
 And again, how can a Being of perfect love create vast 
 numbers of intelligent creatures, capable of largest 
 happiness, with the certain foresight that the result of 
 that creation will be their everlasting misery ? Out of 
 these two difficulties a further question will arise. What 
 is the nature of that death which is abolished by the 
 death of Christ, and of that second death which abides 
 and endures for ever ? 
 
 The effects of the Atonement are gloriously complete 
 in the case of all who believe and obey the Gospel. 
 They are translated from darkness to light, from death 
 
168 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 to life, from the curse of the broken law to the blessing 
 of the new covenant, from the shame, sorrow, and misery 
 of the Fall to the perfect joy and blessedness of the 
 kingdom of God. There are other effects, less complete, but 
 no less real, which extend to all mankind. The Apostle 
 ascribes to it plainly " the passing over of bygone sins 
 in the forbearance of God." Strict justice would imply 
 the instant punishment of all transgression. But man- 
 kind have been placed, from the first, under an economy 
 of rich mercy and long forbearance. The sun has risen 
 upon the evil and the good, and rain has been sent upon 
 the just and the unjust. Such a time of probation and 
 day of grace to all mankind implies a Divine propitia- 
 tion. All the countless gifts of God, bestowed on suc- 
 cessive generations of fallen sinners for six thousand 
 years, can only be explained by the fact that God, from 
 the first, had provided for Himself a spotless Lamb, to be 
 the sin-offering for the whole world. 
 
 Again, it is a revealed truth and promise of God's 
 word, that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both 
 of the just and the unjust. And this resurrection, in 
 every case, is an effect of the redeeming work of Christ. 
 " For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be 
 made alive." " For this end Christ both died, and rose, 
 and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead 
 and the living." It is by virtue of his death for all, 
 that all who are in the graves shall hear his voice, and 
 come forth to stand before him in judgment. 
 
 But are these the only results of the Atonement in 
 the case of those who die in their sins, and reject the 
 
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 169 
 
 offered grace of the Gospel ? Are temporal blessings 
 during the day of grace, and the bodily resurrection, 
 which issues in solemn judgment, the sole gain, in the 
 case of these multitudes of sinners, resulting from the 
 anguish and bitter agony of the Son of God ? 
 
 The true answer, I believe it will be found on deeper 
 thought, is widely different. The death which Christ 
 came to abolish, and will abolish, is far more than the 
 dissolution of the body alone. It implies a calamity to 
 the soul, in separation from God, answering to mortality 
 and corruption in the body, when it is parted from the 
 soul, and becomes a lifeless and loathsome carcase. It 
 means the abandonment of the spirit, driven out from 
 God's presence, to the unchecked, unbounded, unabated 
 consequences of its own inward corruption and wicked- 
 ness. " Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death/'' 
 Those ideas, which many connect with the doom of the 
 lost, of ever-during, self-tormenting wickedness, un- 
 restrained by the hand of God, belong rather to that 
 death, which is God's last enemy, and which Christ has 
 come to destroy and abolish for ever. This is the dark 
 mysterious power of the abyss, that bottomless pit, in 
 which new and strange forms of rebellion and blasphemy 
 have their secret birth, darkening the bright sunshine 
 and the free air of heaven. And it is the common boon 
 which the Atonement secures to all mankind, the saved 
 and the unsaved alike, that this awful, mighty enemy of 
 God and man, the sum of all possible evil and misery in 
 a God-forsaken universe, is destroyed, abolished, and 
 done away for ever. 
 
170 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 The second death is solemn and terrible. It is a 
 fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. 
 Is it more terrible and awful than that first death, which 
 is the finishing and consummation of sin, and which the 
 Redeemer came to destroy ? One is God's minister, the 
 other is God's last and mightiest enemy. One is a 
 resurrection, the other corruption and darkness without 
 end. One is described as a lake, though a lake of fire, 
 shut in by Emmanuel's land on every side ; the other is 
 the bottomless pit, the deep, the abyss, a depth of evil 
 unexhausted, and without redemption inexhaustible. One 
 is the state in which the enemies of Christ are made His 
 footstool ; the other would be the reign of those enemies, 
 in a rival dominion of blasphemy and outer darkness, a 
 deep as unsearchable below as the height of heaven above. 
 For God " is not the God of the dead, but of the living/' 
 and the reign of death would imply the awful fact of an 
 empire of evil, rivalling both in extent and continuance 
 the dominion of the living God, the God of love. 
 
 It is a deep thought of Plato in his Dialogues, that 
 just as the sick man resorts to the physician, so wicked 
 men, if they were wise, and knew what was really good, 
 would offer themselves up, of their own accord, to undergo 
 the punishment which is the only fit medicine for their 
 inward disease. This truth will apply even to the last 
 act of solemn judgment. Compared with the awful 
 wages of sin, left without redemption, of death without 
 resurrection, of corruption working ever without re- 
 straint, and evil triumphing for ever, and tormenting 
 itself for ever, in its own abyss of darkness, even the 
 
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 171 
 
 second death with all its terrors may be, not only in the 
 sight of a holy God, but even in the consciousness of the 
 lost themselves, an infinite gain. That death and hell 
 should be cast into the lake of fire is a work of redemp- 
 tion, a triumph of Divine love. The Atonement, then, 
 even in its wider effects on all mankind, as well as in 
 its special blessings to those who obey the Gospel, may 
 procure what in God's sight is an inestimable gain. 
 Through his own death our Lord has destroyed the 
 reign of him who had the power of death, the devil, and 
 abolished that fatal and awful power, God's last enemy, 
 which involves the worst and most nn mingled misery of 
 the creature, as well as the foulest dishonour to the 
 name of the Most High. Alike in the case of the saved 
 and the unsaved, the heirs of glory and of shame, the 
 Son of God will not have borne the curse and endured 
 anguish and agony in vain. The result in each case is 
 widely different, but in each it is a triumph of redeeming 
 goodness, when in the resurrection of the faithful " death is 
 swallowed up in victory/' and when, in the judgment of the 
 unfaithful, " death and hell are east into the lake of fire/' 
 Let us now inquire with reverence, what light does 
 Scripture throw on the nature of the second death. 
 Does it really contradict the perfections of the God of 
 love? It is a state of punishment and anguish, of 
 shame and everlasting contempt. Is it revealed to be 
 such pure, unmingled, uncompensated misery, as to 
 make God's original gift of being no boon whatever, 
 but an infinite evil to all who incur this fearful sentence 
 of eternal judgment ? 
 
172 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 The direct statements of Scripture on the state of lost 
 souls are solemn and fearful. We do well to take heed 
 how we tamper with God's threatenings, or say or do 
 any thing to weaken their voice of warning to the heed- 
 less sinner. " Their worm/' our Lord tells us repeatedly, 
 " dieth not, and their fire is not quenched/'' They rise 
 " to shame and everlasting contempt. - " They " go away 
 into everlasting punishment.'''' They are " punished with 
 everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord."" 
 God is to be feared, because He " is able to destroy both 
 body and soul in hell/'' They " suffer the vengeance of 
 eternal fire."" They " are tormented in the presence of 
 the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb/' and 
 " the smoke of the torment goeth up for ever and ever." 
 Even the Gospel itself is defined by the Baptist and St. 
 Paul, as a message of deliverance from " the wrath to 
 come." 
 
 Again, there seem to be no direct statements of Scrip- 
 ture, to mitigate, reverse, or explain away these solemn 
 warnings. In the Old Testament the doctrine itself had 
 hardly begun to be revealed, and hence further light, to 
 modify or unfold the warning, could scarcely be given. 
 The doom there denounced to sinners, to be turned into 
 Hades, belongs to the first death, and is a contrast to 
 their resurrection to judgment. This is announced in 
 Dan. xii. 2, but even there it is not proclaimed as an 
 universal truth. It cannot surprise us that little or no 
 direct light should be thrown upon the doctrine, when the 
 doctrine itself was hardly revealed. In the New Testa- 
 ment, again, no word occurs of direct mitigation, no 
 
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 173 
 
 hint of any close to the judgment,, no sound of comfort, 
 which could weaken the solemn effect on the sinner of 
 these warnings of God. If such further truths exist, 
 they must be derived, not from direct statements of 
 Scripture, but from meditation on its revealed truths 
 below the surface, and from indirect inference alone. 
 
 On the other hand, this silence of Scripture is no real 
 presumption against the presence of a further truth, 
 secretly implied in its statements, though not expressly 
 and openly revealed. There is a weighty reason for this 
 silence, as already shown. Supposing the future state 
 of souls unsaved to combine two contrasted elements, 
 coexisting for ever, infinite goodness to them as creatures 
 of the God of love, and everlasting punishment as rebels 
 against a God of holiness, there is a most weighty reason 
 why, in this time of probation, the wisdom of God should 
 veil the first in silence, and reveal the second alone in 
 stern and solemn warning. It is the highest victory of 
 perfect love to be willing, for long ages, to endure the 
 hard speeches and blasphemies of ungodly sinners, 
 rather than disclose that part of God's counsels which 
 would convict the blasphemers of ignorance and folly, 
 but might also weaken the force of the warnings, by 
 which the guilty may be reclaimed from their rebellion, 
 and attain the happiness and glory of the ransomed 
 children of God. 
 
 If, however, the silence of Scripture may thus be fully 
 explained, does it not still supply a powerful motive 
 against any attempt to remove the veil ? If some hidden 
 aspect of Divine truth, shedding hope and comfort on 
 
174 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 that dark future, be revealed to a few thoughtful and 
 reverent -minds, which desire to see their Father's coun- 
 tenance more clearly, as the God of perfect love, beyond 
 these dark clouds of the judgment to come, ought they 
 not to reverence the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, and 
 while they rejoice in the treasure they have found, and 
 buy the field that conceals it, to hide it still, lest the 
 thoughtless and profane should abuse it to their own 
 ruin ? 
 
 There is much force in this question. It proves the 
 great responsibility involved in any public treatment of 
 this doctrine, which strives to pass beyond the surface of 
 the Divine warnings. It is no full warrant, in this case, 
 for any public utterance, that it is true, and based on the 
 deepest truths of God's word, unless it be also truth in 
 due season. On the other hand, it is the office of the 
 well-instructed scribe to bring out of the treasure-house 
 of Scripture new things as well as old. There is a true 
 no less than a false development of revealed doctrines, 
 which must be ever in progress in the history of the 
 Church of Christ. God's truth is a living thing, planted 
 in the soil of God's Providence ; and as that Providence 
 unfolds from age to age, the truth, because it lives, 
 must grow and shoot out fresh branches, that may bear 
 fruit to the glory of God. The message of judgment to 
 come, though a doctrine, is also a prophecy, and gradual 
 expansion is the common law of all prophetic truth. At 
 the eventide of the Gospel there is to be added light. In 
 the time of the end, "many shall run to and fro, and 
 knowledge shall be increased/'' 
 
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 175 
 
 Again, there is a moral sign when a further disclosure 
 of God's purposes in coming judgment, if He vouchsafes 
 to throw new light upon it, becomes seasonable, and may 
 lawfully be made known. When the sense of God's 
 universal goodness, derived from His own word, has been 
 more widely diffused, and has a firmer hold on the 
 general conscience, than the authority of His word itself, 
 then the silence, which once deepened the power of His 
 warnings, will abate their force. Even serious and earnest 
 minds will be tempted to disbelieve those parts of God's 
 message, which they cannot reconcile with a truth plainly 
 revealed, that His tender mercies are over all His works. 
 To maintain a general conviction of the truth of God's 
 warnings, it may then be needful to show that these are 
 not the whole truth, and that in the case of all men, the 
 saved and unsaved alike, in the depth as well as the height, 
 it is true that " mercy rejoiceth against judgment." 
 
 Such a state of the Church and the world seems 
 now to have come ; so that a further unfolding of 
 God's purpose of love towards all men, amidst the 
 unreversed and irreversible messages of "the wrath 
 to come," may now be, in the fullest sense of the words, 
 " meat in due season." In this sense, as well as others, 
 it may be that at the close of the mystic times of delay, 
 and in the days of the seventh angel, " the mystery of 
 God shall be finished, as he hath declared to his ser- 
 vants the prophets." Let us endeavour, then, with 
 reverence and humility, to glean light from all the 
 declarations of Scripture which relate to this solemn 
 subject. 
 
176 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 First of all, the Second Death is not the reign of Satan 
 in a kingdom of his own, where he torments his victims 
 for ever. 
 
 This view of the state of lost souls is very often set 
 forth in popular appeals to the fears of men. But it is 
 wholly opposed to the real teaching of the word of God. 
 We read in St. John, " For this purpose was the Son of 
 God manifested, that He might destroy the works of the 
 devil/'' The fire, to which the ungodly are sentenced by 
 their judge, is " prepared for the devil and his angels." 
 And before their judgment the solemn announcement is 
 made, — " The devil that deceived them was cast into the 
 lake of fire and brimstone, and shall be tormented day and 
 night for ever and ever." The foremost in guilt among all 
 the countless rebels will then be foremost in punishment. 
 He who is " king over all the children of pride," will be 
 crushed, beyond all the proud, under the heaviest load of 
 Divine judgment. The head of the old serpent will be 
 bruised under the feet of the Seed of the Woman, the 
 victorious Redeemer of mankind. No trace of a per- 
 mitted reign of this Prince of darkness can be found, 
 when once "death and hell" have been "cast into the 
 lake of fire." Death is the last enemy to be destroyed. 
 All others, Satan included, in their power of active re- 
 bellion, must therefore have been first destroyed. This 
 Lucifer, son of the morning, once most exalted in blas- 
 phemous pride, will then be lowest in shame among those 
 vanquished enemies, who are become the footstool of the 
 King of kings, and Lord of lords. 
 
 Again, the Last Judgment and the Second Death are 
 
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 177 
 
 one main part in a wise, holy, and perfect work of the 
 God of love. 
 
 We read at the close of the Law this striking" procla- 
 mation of God's name : " He is the Kock, his work is 
 perfect; all his ways are judgment; a God of truth 
 and without iniquity, just and right is he."" The 
 work of God is perfect. There is no flaw, no error, no 
 mistake in the scheme of His universal Providence. On 
 the side of the creature there is a vast and awful amount 
 of sin, folly, and perverseness ; but in that dominion of 
 God, whereby He overcomes evil, there is no defect either 
 of wisdom or goodness. "All his ways are judgment/'' 
 Though " clouds and darkness are round about him/'' and 
 may for a time conceal His goodness from weak or sinful 
 eyes, yet "justice and judgment are the habitation of 
 his throne."" 
 
 When the prophet was told to go down to the potter's 
 house, " the vessel he made of clay was marred in the 
 hands of the potter, and he made it again another vessel, 
 as it seemed good to the potter to make it"" ( Jer. xviii. 4) . 
 But the scheme of Providence is one vast work of God, one 
 mighty whole. Once begun, it can never be reversed and 
 begun anew. One single flaw would here be irreparable, 
 and could never be cured. One unjust or unwise act of the 
 God of Providence, like one sin in the perfect obedience 
 of Christ, would mar the perfection, and change the 
 character, of the whole work. Creation, Providence, 
 Redemption, would then become one gigantic and irre- 
 trievable failure. But this can never be. " His work 
 is perfect/'' The forbearance towards evil, while it lasts 
 
 N 
 
178 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 and seems to triumph, is a perfect forbearance. The 
 victory over evil, when that forbearance is full, must be 
 a perfect victory. The issues of judgment, however 
 solemn, are such, and must be such, that the All-wise, 
 whose understanding is unsearchable, the All-good, whose 
 mercies are over all His works, can acquiesce in them 
 with a deep complacency and delight. The glory of the 
 Lord shall endure for ever, the Lord shall rejoice in His 
 works. His delight is eminently "to exercise loving- 
 kindness and righteousness in the earth."" 
 
 Now this revealed perfection of the whole work of 
 God must shed its light on the mysterious subject of 
 the second death. The first death is God's last and 
 greatest enemy. It may be borne with for a time, but 
 its continuance would be fatal to the dominion and 
 glory of the Most High. " God is not the God of the 
 dead, but of the living. " And hence the indignant 
 sentence, " O death, I will be thy plagues ; O grave, I 
 will be thy destruction ! " But the second death proceeds 
 directly from the appointment of the Supreme Judge, 
 who is perfect alike in wisdom and goodness. However 
 terrible, it is the Divine remedy for all that is most 
 fearful and appalling of possible and actual evil in a 
 fallen and rebellious universe. And thus the God of 
 love and holiness can and will acquiesce in it, as one 
 main element in His fore-ordained counsel of wisdom 
 and goodness. To read in it the continuance of rebellion, 
 hatred, and blasphemy, for ever, and deepen its terrors 
 by heaping up all kinds of moral horrors, the unchecked 
 ravings of fiendish malice, the blasphemous utterances 
 
OX ETEKXAL JUDGMENT. 179 
 
 of raging despair, is to deny and reverse, so far, the 
 revealed object of the work of Christ. " For this purpose 
 the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy 
 the works of the devil/'' The purpose of His judgment 
 cannot be to stereotype and eternize active rebellion 
 against God, but to abolish it for evermore. The second 
 death, however solemn, completes a perfect work of God, 
 the Only Wise, and crowns the victory of His perfect 
 goodness over the worst malignity of evil. 
 
 The Doom of the Lost, it is farther revealed, is the 
 object of acquiescence and holy contemplation to all the 
 unfallen and the redeemed. 
 
 "With the views of hell-torment which have often 
 been held, to hide it from the thoughts must be almost 
 essential to happiness, in hearts not wholly dead to 
 feelings of compassion. The bliss of heaven is then 
 conceived to depend, very mainly, in being removed 
 far away from sights and sounds unutterably mournful. 
 Such, however, is not the revealed description of saints 
 and angels in the kingdom of God. Their happiness is 
 not made to depend either on their ignorance or their 
 forgetfulness of the doom of the lost. This is placed 
 among the objects of their ceaseless and solemn con- 
 templation. "He shall be tormented with fire and 
 brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in 
 the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their 
 torment ascendeth up for ever and ever." cc And again 
 they said Alleluia : and her smoke rose up for ever and 
 ever." This acquiescence will not be that of stern, fierce, 
 unloving hearts, but of tt the spirits of just men made 
 H 2 
 
180 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 perfect/' and baptized into full sympathy with the 
 tears, the compassion, and the agonies of the Son of 
 God. That doom, however awful, can scarcely be one 
 of unrelieved horror and darkness, which is the 
 object of deep complacency and holy adoration to saints 
 and angels, free from all selfishness and made perfect in 
 love. 
 
 In this day of judgment, also, the honour due even to 
 the wicked, as God's creatures, will still be fully re- 
 cognized by the Righteous Judge. 
 
 The law of God is the reflection of His own eternal 
 righteousness. The life of man is there fenced round, 
 like a sword of flame turning every way, with this threat- 
 ening, — " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his 
 blood be shed : for in the image of God made he man." 
 Many victims of murder have themselves been most 
 degraded, guilty, and vile. But God here measures tlie 
 sacredness of man's life, not by the debasement sin has 
 caused, but by His own original work of creation. " In 
 the image of God made he man." This law, the voice 
 of His own truth and wisdom, will doubtless apply to 
 His own acts of righteous judgment. Even while He 
 punishes guilty rebels, He cannot cease to honour in 
 them the workmanship of His own hands. And hence 
 the same truth re -appears in this very form, in reference 
 to God's own visitations of anger : " For I will not 
 contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth : for the 
 spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have 
 
 But the law of God supplies a further evidence of the 
 
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 181 
 
 same truth. When the judges of Israel have' been 
 charged to justify the righteous and condemn the 
 wicked, this further precept is given, that if the wicked 
 man is worthy to be punished, he shall be beaten with 
 stripes. But a limit is prescribed, with a reason for the 
 limitation. " Forty stripes he may give him, and not 
 exceed : lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above 
 these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem 
 vile unto thee. - ''' 
 
 Here a double lesson is taught. Wickedness that 
 deserves and requires stripes is not to destroy the sense 
 of brotherhood. Even when punished, the wicked man 
 is called a brother still. Nay, the punishment is to be 
 so measured that his due honour, as a brother, may not 
 perish. He who first gave this law is the same in whose 
 heart, as the Son of Man, it was written, and who will 
 also pronounce the final sentence on the ungodly. The 
 stripes, whether few or many, in the great day of account, 
 will be inflicted by His sentence alone, Luke xii. 45 — 48. 
 The doom, being measured on one side by the deep malig- 
 nity of aggravated sin, may be unutterably severe. But 
 this law is a pledge to us that the righteous Judge of 
 quick and dead w r ill still remember the honour of all men, 
 as God's creatures, made at' first in God's image, and 
 that link of brotherhood which, through the Wonderful 
 grace of the incarnation, has linked Him with every 
 sinner of mankind. 
 
 Again, the Last Judgment is the work of God's mercy, 
 as well as of His righteousness. This is plainly revealed 
 to us in those words of the Psalmist : "Also unto thee, O 
 
182 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 Lord, belongeth mercy ; for thou renderest to every man 
 according to his work/'' 
 
 In the judgment of the righteous, it is easy to explain 
 this inspired message of Divine truth. The works re- 
 warded are the fruits of the Spirit, and flow from 
 redeeming mercy alone. Hence the reward itself must 
 be traced back to the same fountain, as in the prayer of 
 our Church : " Grant that whosoever is here dedicated 
 to Thee by our office and ministry may also be endued 
 with heavenly virtues, and everlastingly rewarded through 
 Thy mercy, who dost live and govern all things, world 
 without end/'' 
 
 When applied, however, in their wider range, to " every 
 man/'' to the lost as well as the saved, the sentence con- 
 ceals a deeper truth. Can it be true, even of the souls 
 that perish, that there is mercy in the sentence which 
 dooms them to the lake of fire ? Does not the deep 
 thought, which revealed itself more dimly to Plato by 
 the light of nature, receive here a direct and full sanction 
 from the Spirit of God ? Compared with that unequalled 
 and most awful curse of evil being left to work out its 
 own terrible issues in the darkness of utter banishment 
 from the Divine presence, even the justice of God, in all 
 its severity, may be like a medicine to guilty sinners. 
 Their doom will be awful, but a world abandoned to its 
 own unrestrained and consummate wickedness would be 
 more terrible and awful still. The revealed place of 
 judgment is a lake, not a sea, an ocean, an abyss of 
 fire. In the same hour, the abyss, the bottomless pit, 
 boundless in its breadth and depth, the yawning, craving 
 
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 183 
 
 Sheol,that can never be satisfied, is destroyed and abolished 
 by the power of the Redeemer. It is mercy to the wicked 
 to deny them the fatal power of adding sin to sin for 
 ever. It is mercy to keep them, under the mighty hand 
 of God, from the power of tormenting each other by the 
 ever-growing indulgence of their own fierce and hateful 
 passions. It is mercy to force them back, though captive 
 and in chains, to the presence of that Infinite Goodness, 
 from which their own rebellious hearts would hide them 
 still deeper and deeper in delusion and darkness for ever- 
 more. 
 
 Again, the Second Death is a resurrection to " shame 
 and everlasting contempt/' Dan. xii. 2. It involves 
 thus, in its very nature, the mystery of an eternal con- 
 trast. Since it is a resurrection, it is a work of redemp- 
 tion, a fruit of the great atoning work of the world's 
 Redeemer. But it is not simply a work of redemption. 
 It is the perpetual, abiding manifestation of the creature's 
 shame and moral emptiness, in contrast to the immutable, 
 glorious perfection of the God of holiness. It obscures 
 the Gospel, and distorts our view of the whole course of 
 Providence, when we ascribe a result so solemn to a 
 capricious, unaccountable withholding of Divine grace, to 
 some defect either of wisdom or goodness in the Most 
 High, some deliberate preference of the destruction of 
 sinners to their salvation. An oath of the Most High 
 shields His name from this dark suspicion of unbelieving 
 hearts, which have never fathomed the sinfulness of sin, 
 or the stubbornness of evil. But when we refer it for its 
 hidden key to the contrast between the Only Good and 
 
184 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 the creatures of His hand, then we may see how the 
 work of redemption can turn what might seem an 
 incurable triumph of evil into the crown and seal of its 
 own perfect victory. It may be this continual spectacle 
 of what the creature is in itself, which maintains the whole 
 unfallen and ransomed universe in its only true and safe 
 position of dependence on the Fountain of life and love. 
 The Israelites were warned before they entered the land 
 of promise,, " lest when all thou hast is multiplied; then 
 thy heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God " 
 (Deut. viii. 14) . When the redemption has been so com- 
 plete, in myriads on myriads of ransomed souls, that no 
 trace of sin, corruption, or mortality remains, how easily 
 might pride creep in once more, and a second and more fatal 
 apostasy ensue, if the lessons of the past, fading ever into 
 the further distance, were not renewed and deepened by 
 the present sight of those in whom is still to be learned 
 the creature's lesson of self-emptiness and utter shame. 
 That solemn doom, though no choice of the free bounty 
 of the Most High, whose love and wisdom have displayed 
 themselves to the utmost in warnings to keep the sinner 
 from the path of ruin, may yet be the object of His deep 
 and holy acquiescence, because in this way alone a 
 rescued universe may be upheld for ever in the enjoyment 
 of a blessedness based on perfect humility, and therefore 
 capable of enlarging* itself without end. It may be thus 
 through the work of judgment alone, that the bulwarks 
 will be reared of that heavenly city, whose walls are 
 Salvation, and her gates are Praise. 
 
 Let us now pass on to the New Testament, and trace 
 
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 185 
 
 the lessons which flow indirectly from the teaching* 
 of our Lord and his Apostles on the judgment to 
 come. 
 
 First of all, the Second Death is a work of the God of 
 truth, abolishing pride and falsehood out of the whole • 
 universe. 
 
 The New Testament opens its messages with the his- 
 tory of the temptation, the conflict of the Evil One, the 
 king of pride, with the meek and lowly Redeemer. And 
 the result of the conflict there begun is revealed in the 
 maxim, often repeated : — " Whosoever exalteth himself 
 shall be abased ; and he that humbleth himself shall be 
 exalted/'' 
 
 This great truth has to receive ten thousand thousand 
 illustrations. But the first and chief is in the contrasted 
 lot of the proud Tempter and the lowly Man of sorrows. 
 The Son of God, because He stooped low with wondrous 
 humility, is to be crowned with eternal and infinite glory. 
 The Adversary, the proud Son of the morning, because 
 he said in his heart, I will be like the Most High, shall 
 be condemned to the shame and vengeance of eternal 
 fire. And thus that fire, prepared for Satan and his 
 angels, must be the destruction of guilty pride, become 
 consubstantiate with the immortal spirit, and capable of 
 being destroyed in no gentler way than by this ever-during 
 stroke of Divine judgment. " Them that walk in pride 
 he is able to abase. " The created being itself will not 
 fail, since it is a gift of God, without repentance, and 
 is secretly upheld by the Creator's mighty hand. But 
 
186 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 the stubbornness of that pride which is no longer separable, 
 along with the sinful flesh, as in the day of grace, but 
 has its home in the spirit, will encounter something 
 firmer and mightier than itself, the inflexible holiness 
 of the God of judgment. Proud imaginations, the 
 high things which exalt themselves against the know- 
 ledge of Christ, are idols of the heart, and these idols God 
 will utterly abolish. That last great day will be " against 
 every thing that is high and lifted up, and it shall be 
 brought low." The rebellious creature will be taught, in 
 spite of itself, to take its true and right place at the foot- 
 stool of triumphant holiness; and the twin reign of false- 
 hood and of pride will cease, under the searching, hum- 
 bling, penetrating presence of the God of truth and 
 holiness, even that presence which is a consuming fire to 
 every form of delusion and rebellious pride. 
 
 Again, the Second Death is a work of the God of 
 love, wherein He displays His holy anger against every 
 sinner, whose heart and life are marked by reigning 
 selfishness, and the utter want of genuine love. 
 
 The revealed ground of the sentence of condemnation 
 is given by our Lord himself in these words : " Inasmuch 
 as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not 
 unto me." It is the absence of the works and fruits 
 of love which is made the ground of their fearful doom. 
 Thus the excellency of a pure and perfect love is taught 
 and confirmed by the severity of the sentence, for which 
 the absence of that love is the one cause assigned by the 
 Judge himself. It follows that the Judge who pronounces 
 
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 187 
 
 the sentence is perfect in love, and in love even to those 
 on whom the sentence falls. The Holy One would else 
 be a sharer in the sin, which He is visiting in His creatures 
 with the most solemn and severe condemnation. The 
 second death, therefore, from the very ground on which 
 the sentence of doom is based, implies the highest honour 
 given to love, as the crowning grace, and the image of 
 the Divine perfection; and also the exercise of such love 
 by the Judge himself, even to those against whom He 
 denounces wrath for the crime of a selfish and unloving 
 heart. It may be a deep mystery how the Divine love 
 can possibly reveal itself, where Divine righteousness has 
 to be displayed for ever in a sentence of everlasting 
 shame and punishment. But if righteousness and grace 
 co-exist for ever in the infinite perfections of the Most 
 High, their exercise may co-exist for ever in His dealings 
 even with those whose guilt requires that righteousness 
 should assume the form of irreversible and lasting punish- 
 ment. Every stroke of the Avenger is a solemn testi- 
 mony to God's anger against selfishness, and His delight 
 in pure and perfect love. 
 
 The Resurrection of Judgment, like the Resurrection 
 of Life, is one main part of the redeeming work of 
 Christ. 
 
 The two main issues of judgment, in the sheep and 
 the goats, the righteous and the wicked, however deep 
 and solemn the contrast of reward and punishment, have 
 one main feature common to both, that they follow on a 
 resurrection. And hence the Apostle combines them in 
 one common statement, before he marks the contrast 
 
188 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 between " them that are Christ's " and all others. " For 
 since by man came death,, by man came also the resur- 
 rection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in 
 Christ shall all be made alive. " Just as the first death, 
 in every case, comes through the sin of Adam, so the 
 life-restoring resurrection is to come, in every case, 
 through the power and work of the Second Adam, the 
 Lord from heaven. Thus the judgment itself on the 
 lost is based on a present work of redemption, which they 
 share with the saved; and on a victory over death, 
 wrought by Christ, and by the power of His atonement 
 and resurrection. Their bodies are first restored completely 
 from the ruin of the grave, and the dominion of death, 
 so far, is wholly abolished. 
 
 What now is implied in this truth, so plainly and 
 fully revealed ? The contrast of state, due to the con- 
 trast of faith and unbelief, of personal rebellion or re- 
 pentance, during the time of probation, is to abide and 
 endure. But those results, which flowed directly from 
 the sin of the first Adam, are to be reversed and repealed 
 by the grace of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. 
 For all mankind there has been a federal ruin, and for 
 all mankind there is to be a federal recovery from that 
 ruin. The opposite results of personal character are to 
 remain and endure ; but the common results of the 
 Redeemer's work, who is u the head of every man,-" will 
 endure also. The lesson of the Law is thus repeated by 
 the Gospel in a deeply mysterious form. The wicked 
 will be punished for his wickedness by the righteous 
 Judge, but his brotherhood with the Judge will be eter- 
 
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 189 
 
 nally revealed by the resurrection which precedes the 
 judgment. " In Christ shall all be made alive/'' But 
 in the first death the dissolution of the body, and its 
 corruption, was only the type, the sign, and the parable 
 of a deeper curse on the immortal spirit, when driven 
 out wholly from the presence of Him who is Light and 
 Love. This correspondence can hardly cease, when the 
 dead are raised by the power of Christ. When death 
 and hell are cast into the lake of fire, the soul will no 
 longer remain under the curse of utter vanity. It will 
 be compelled, by the mighty hand of God, to glorify 
 Him even in those fires of penal judgment. To glorify 
 the Creator is the great end for which every creature 
 was made. And thus to glorify Him in any way, how- 
 ever solemn, humbling, and mournful, when compared 
 with the utter vanity, darkness, and corruption of that 
 death which is God's enemy, may be, nay, must be, even 
 to the souls of the lost, a real and infinite gain. 
 
 Again, the love of Christ has a depth, as well as a 
 height, that passeth knowledge. Its height will be dis- 
 played for ever in the glory bestowed upon the risen 
 saints, whom He promotes to sit with Him on His 
 throne. Its depth has been revealed, once for all, in His 
 own agony and death, when He went down to the deep, 
 to darkness, and the lowest pit, for man's redemption. 
 But is its manifestation to cease, and not rather, like 
 that of the height of His love, to endure for evermore ? 
 It is more natural and consistent to believe that the 
 depth, like the breadth, and length, and height, will be 
 eternally revealed. But this can only be by the mani- 
 
190 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 festation of love towards the guilty and condemned, 
 whose doom is declared to be " shame and everlasting* 
 contempt. " To them, Divine love, if displayed at all, 
 must assume its strangest and most mysterious form. 
 But since it has a depth that passes knowledge, how can 
 this be seen but in the perpetual yearnings of a deep and 
 true compassion towards those whom the nature of their 
 sin, and the truth of God's threatenings, has laid under 
 a sentence of irreparable loss, and irreversible punish- 
 ment ? When the pride of spirits, once rebellious, has 
 been crushed under the fire of Divine wrath, and they are 
 conscious that their folly and guilt has lost them a glory 
 which can never be regained, and brought them under a 
 righteous sentence never to be repealed, how may the 
 discovery of the unexhausted grace of the Redeemer, the 
 depth of a love which can stoop infinitely low, to encom- 
 pass them with Divine compassion, pierce through their 
 conscience, and pervade their whole being, amidst their 
 sense of deepest shame and loss, with an awful and stu- 
 pendous consolation ! Self-destroyed, like Israel, their 
 only help can be in a love which is able to reach even to 
 the lowest gulf of shame and helpless misery. In this 
 way not only the height of the love of Christ to the glo- 
 rified, but its depth, in wondrous compassion to the lost, 
 may be found to surpass all human or created know- 
 ledge. 
 
 The Apostle, again, declares of the living God, that 
 " he is the Saviour of all men, specially of them that 
 believe/'' This name of God will be most fully and com- 
 pletely revealed in the future happiness and glory of 
 
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 191 
 
 believers alone. But He is also "the Saviour of all 
 men/'' Can this apply to temporal benefits alone, which 
 will wholly cease, and are to be followed by total, absolute 
 destruction and ruin ? Can it be satisfied with condi- 
 tional benefits, made wholly void through the perverse - 
 ness of the sinner ? How will this agree with our Lord's 
 reasoning on another Divine title, " the God of Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob?" Such a name, He there teaches, 
 implies no transient, but an enduring relation. Here, too, 
 it would seem that the same law of reasoning must apply. 
 Unbelievers are not saved from judgment, from righteous 
 punishment, from the second death, from shame and ever- 
 lasting contempt, from everlasting fire. Is there any 
 sense in which they may still be saved, consistently with 
 the inflexible truth of these solemn messages of God ? 
 They will be saved from bodily corruption, " for as in 
 Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." 
 They will be saved from the curse of hopeless vanity, from 
 that first death, in which the creature is self-ruined, and 
 God himself is not glorified, but for ever blasphemed. 
 They will be saved from the abyss, unfathomable and 
 unsearchable in its depth and darkness, when " death and 
 hell are cast into the lake of fire." Will they not also 
 be saved from that utter, hopeless misery, where no ray 
 of light or comfort breaks in on the solitude of ever- 
 lasting despair ? Will they not be saved, in a strange, 
 mysterious sense, when the depth of their unchangeable 
 shame and sorrow finds beneath it a still lower depth of 
 Divine compassion, and the creature, in its most forlorn 
 
192 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 estate, is shut in by the vision of surpassing and infinite 
 love ? 
 
 A further light seems to dawn on this mysterious sub- 
 ject, when we trace its connexion with the moral attri- 
 butes and perfections of the Most High. 
 
 Every child of man is related to God under three suc- 
 cessive forms of Divine goodness. The first is the simple 
 bounty of the Creator. The second is the equity of the 
 moral Governor of the world. The third is the mercy 
 and compassion of the Saviour and Redeemer. These 
 answer to the outer court, the holy place, and the most 
 holy, of the temple of God. The Lord is good to all, 
 His tender mercies are over all His works. He giveth 
 to all men life and breath, and all things. He is also 
 the God who loveth righteousness, and hateth iniquity. 
 He resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. 
 He is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look 
 upon iniquity. He is also a God of infinite compassion 
 and grace. He reclaims the lost, restores the wanderer, 
 welcomes the returning prodigal, and entreats with 
 tender compassion all those who have erred and gone 
 astray. 
 
 The second character of God, as the righteous Governor, 
 is that on which the issues of judgment depend. Man- 
 kind are parted into two great classes, according to their 
 moral character, their use or abuse of offered grace in the 
 day of probation and forbearance. " Then shall ye re- 
 turn, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, 
 between him that serveth God and him that serveth 
 
ON ETEENAL JUDGMENT. 193 
 
 him not/'' Personal righteousness, in one class, and 
 personal unrighteousness in the other, is the revealed 
 ground of the eternal contrast and separation ; but the 
 righteousness of the just, though real, is wholly the 
 fruit of Divine grace, and because it is grace, which 
 " reigns through righteousness/'' their salvation is due 
 to God alone. 
 
 But this wide contrast between the saved and the lost, 
 in their relation to God's judicial righteousness, does not 
 set aside their common relation to the bountiful Creator 
 of all men, and to the God of boundless compassion and 
 grace towards those who are sunk in guilt and misery. 
 The threefold cord, which links them to the throne of 
 God, cannot be broken. " The gifts and calling of God 
 are without repentance." The love of the All- wise 
 Creator to all His creatures is displayed in the very fact 
 of their creation. It may be veiled for a time, but can- 
 not be destroyed by the later unfolding of moral evil. 
 And thus His judgments, when most awful, have to be 
 tempered into strange harmony with this earlier revelation 
 of His goodness. " I will not contend for ever, neither 
 will I be always wroth : for the spirit should fail before me, 
 and the souls which I have made/'' In like manner, the 
 link between sorrow and misery, wherever found, and 
 however caused, and the Divine compassion, must abide 
 and endure. " God so loved the world, that he gave 
 his only begotten Son " to be the propitiation for their 
 sins. Our Lord is " the Lamb of God, who taketh away 
 the sin of the world." When He stooped from His 
 
 o 
 
194 ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 glory, and became the Son of Man, He became the 
 brother and the head of every man ; and the law, " thou 
 shalt love thy neighbour as thyself/' was written in His 
 heart. No mysterious depth in the perverseness of evil, 
 and no revealed certainty of inexorable righteousness, 
 when the Judge sits upon the throne of judgment, can 
 ever contract this revealed grace of the Father and of the 
 Son within narrower bounds ; so that sinners to whom 
 the Son of God was given, for whom He bore the curse, 
 and over whom there have been the patient broodings of 
 God's infinite compassion, should cease, in their deepest 
 shame, to be encircled evermore with the infinite com- 
 passions of Him whose name is Love. 
 
 One more remark, in closing, needs to be made, that 
 no voice of the Spirit may seem to be passed over in 
 silence. Our Lord has said of the guilty traitor, " Good 
 were it for that man if he had not been born." The 
 word is icaXov, and not aya66v. The best and highest 
 state, as Greek philosophy saw and taught, is one in 
 which these epithets are combined, the honourable and 
 the good, or happiness united with honour, dignity, and 
 glory. The state of lost souls is one, not of honour, but 
 of deepest shame. In respect of honour, it were far 
 better for them not to have been born. The shame of 
 the creature, in contrast to the glory of the Creator, will 
 be revealed in them for ever. But with regard to the 
 good, as distinct from the honourable, no such declara- 
 tion is once made. It would even seem to imply that 
 the destructive power of evil, in their case, outweighed 
 
ON ETERNAL JUDGMENT. 195 
 
 and surpassed the free bounty of their first creation, and 
 all the stupendous riches of redeeming grace. May 
 we not rather believe that their condition will be a 
 mysterious paradox, an eternal contrast, where the fcaXbv 
 has been reversed into utter shame through the perverse- 
 ness of evil ; but the dya0bv remains, because the love of 
 the Creator, and the grace of the Redeemer, even in the 
 depth as well as the height, are mightier than the 
 mightiest power of the creature for self-destruction and 
 utter ruin ? 
 
 So also it is written, " He shall have judgment without 
 mercy, that showed no mercy/'' These words may well 
 describe the stern severity of God's anger, while pride or 
 unmercifulness remains uncrushed in the hardened sinner. 
 But when that prostration of the rebellious will is com- 
 plete, under a doom solemn and irreversible, then may the 
 rest of the statement be also fulfilled, — " mercy rejoiceth 
 against judgment."" The doom itself, by the nature of the 
 sinful spirit, and the truth of the Divine threatening, will 
 be irreversible, and the contrast between the saved and 
 the lost an everlasting separation. And still, out of the 
 depths of their shame there may dawn such a vision of 
 the perfect goodness of the Most High, such a discovery 
 of the wisdom, holiness, and love which have borne with 
 a world of rebels, such strange and vast unfoldings of 
 victorious goodness through the ages to come, as may 
 become a message of real mercy to those who abide for 
 ever under the solemn sentence of the Most High. God 
 shall then be " all in all/' when the depths of that fiery 
 
subjects collateral to the text the Editors of the present 
 Series will be able to substitute reference for quota- 
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 discussing points of scholarship closely connected with 
 the text itself. The Series is intended to be available 
 not only for Classical Students at the Universities, 
 but also for the highest Forms of Public Schools. 
 
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