S I N AN ND ITS CONSEQUENCES. BOSTON: AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION, 21 BIROMIFIELD STREET. 185 4. Stereotyped by HOBART & ROBBINS, IIW ENGIoAND TYPE AND SBBREOTYPE FOUNDRV, BOSTON. TO THE READER. You will find in this little book two sermons; the first by Rev. Dr. Channing, the second by Rev. Dr. Dewey. They both relate to the same subject;-perhaps the most solemn subject to which man can give his thoughts. In relation to it, as you are well aware, the Christian world has entertained a variety of opinions. Some divines have preached the doctrine of an outward, material cause IV TO THE READER. of suffering to follow wrong-doing; others have taught a retribution which flows from the laws of the soul itself. Some divines believe that the future agonies of the transgressor will be infinite in duration; while to others it seems that such a statement provokes doubt, and tempts to a rejection of a sure faith in any coming retribution, and therefore they prefer to leave this subject where they think the Bible leaves it, affirming that sin and suffering are linked together, -that the latter must be endured till the former is forsaken and loathed; and that we know not in what periods of duration such transformations may be effected with those who have been hardened against all the gracious calls and hopes of this life. The two eminent men above named agree TO THE READER. V in maintaining the second view here discriminated. You are not asked to read their words, however, for any controversial purpose. You will at once see that these sermons were written with a far different design. In the presence of the fearful realities even of the milder views of retribution, controversy seems impossible. Too solemn and too awful is the subject for you to waste your time in disputation. Rather may you feel like taking this book with you to your chamber of retirement, and there pondering its lessons even unto prayer. More than twenty years ago, the writer of this heard the first of the following sermons preached in the college chapel, at Cambridge. Of the hundreds of young men then assembled, no one will ever forget j iVI TO THE READER. the lessons of that hour. May God give to the readers of this sermon impressions as solemn and admonitory as are still left on many minds, even after the lapse of so many years. H. A. M. BOSTON, JULY, 1854.. THE EVIL OF SIN. BY REV. WILLIAM E. CHANNING, D. D. THE EVIL OF SIN. PROVERBS 14: 9. -" Fools make a mock at' sin." MY aim in this discourse is simple, and may be expressed in a' few words. I wish to guard you against thinking lightly of sin. No folly is so monstrous, and yet our exposure to it is great. Breathing an atmosphere tainted with moral evil, seeing and hearing sin in our daily walks, we are in no small danger of overlooking its malignity. This malignity I would set before you with all plainness, believing that the effort which is needed to resist this enemy of our peace is to be called forth by fixing on it our frequent and serious attention. I feel as if a difficulty lay at the very threshold of this discussion, which it is worth our while to remove. The word sin, I apprehend, is to many obscure, or not sufficiently plain. It is a word sel 10 THE EVIL OF SIN. dom used in common life. It belongs to theology and the pulpit. By not a few people sin is supposed to be a property of our nature, born with us; and we sometimes hear of the child as being sinful before it can have performed any action. From these and' other causes the word gives to many confused notions. -Sin, in its true sense, is the violation of duty, and cannot, consequently, exist before conscience has begun to act, and before power to obey it is unfolded. To sin is to resist our sense of right, to oppose known obligation, to cherish feelings, or commit deeds, which we know to be wrong. It is to withhold from God the reverence, gratitude, and obedience, which our own consciences pronounce to be due to that great and good Being. It is to transgress those laws of equity, justice, candor, humanity, disinterestedness, which we all feel to belong and to answer to our various social relations. It is to yield ourselves to those appetites which we know to be the inferior principles of our nature, to give the: body a mastery over the mind, to sacrifice the intellect and heart to the senses, to surrender ourselves to ease and indulgence, or to prefer outward accumulation THE EVIL OF SIN. 11 and power to strength and peace of conscience, to progress towards perfection. Such is sin. It is voluntary wrong-doing. Any gratification injurious to ourselves is sin. Any act injurious to our neighbors is sin. Indifference to our Creator is sin. The transgression of any command which this excellent Being and rightful Sovereign has given us, whether by conscience or revelation, is sin. So broad is this term. It is as extensive as duty. It is not some mysterious thing wrought into our souls at birth. It is not a theological subtilty., It is choosing and acting in opposition to our sense of right, to known obligation. Now, according to the Scriptures, there is nothing so evil, so deformed, so ruinous, as sin. All pain, poverty, contempt, affliction, ill success, are light, and not to be named with it. To do wrong is more pernicious than to incur all the calamities which nature or human malice can heap upon us. According to the Scriptures, I am not to fear those who would kill this body, and have nothing more that they can do. Such enemies are impotent compared with that sin which draws down the displeasure of God, and draws after it misery and 12 THE -EVIL OF SIN. death to the soul. According to the Scriptures, I am to pluck' out even a right eye, or cut off even a right arm, which would ensnare or seduce me into crime. The loss of the most important limbs and organs is nothing compared to the loss of innocence. Such, you know, is the whole strain of Scripture. Sin, violatedduty, the'evil of the heart, this is the, only evil of which Scripture takes account. It. was from this that Christ came to redeem us. - It is to purify us from this stain, to set us free from this yoke, that a new and supernatural agency was added to God's other means of promoting human happiness. It is the design of these representations of Scripture to lead us to connect with sin or wrong-doing the ideas of evil, wretchedness, and debasement, more strongly than with anything else; and this deep, deliberate conviction of the wrong and evil done to ourselves by sin, is not simply a command of Christianity. It is not an arbitrary, positive precept, which rests solely on the word of the lawgiver, and of which no account can be given but that he wills it. It is alike the dictate of natural and revealed religion, an injunction of conscience THE EVIL OF SIN. 13 and reason,'founded in our very souls, and confirmed by constant experience. To regard sin, wrong-doing, as the greatest of evils, is God's command, proclaimed from within and without, from heaven and earth; and he who does not hear it has not learned the truth' on which his whole happiness rests. This I propose to illustrate. 1. If we look within, we find in our very nature, a testimony to the doctrine that sin is the. chief of evils; a testimony which, however slighted or smothered, will be recognized, I think, by every one who hears me.. To understand this truth better, it may be useful to inquire into and compare the different kinds of evil. Evil has various forms, but these may all - be. reduced to two great divisions, called by philosophers natural and moral.. By the first'is meant the pain' of suffering which springs from outward condition and events, or from causes independent of the'will. The.latter, that is, -moral evil, belongs to character and conduct, and is commonly expressed by the words sin, vice, transgression of the rule of right. Now I say.that there is no man, unless he be singularly hardened and an exception to his race, who, if 14. THE EVIL OF 0 IN. these two classes or divisions of evil should be clearly and fully presented him in moments of calm and deliberate. thinking, would not feel, through the very constitution of his mind, that sin or vice is worse and more to be dreaded than pain. I am willing to take from among you the: individual who has studied least. the great questions of morality and religion, whose mind has grown up with least discipline. If I place before such a hearer two examples in strong contrast, one of a man gaining. great property by an atrocious crime, and another exposing himself to great suffering through a resolute purpose of duty, will he not tell me at once, from a deep moral sentiment, which leaves not a doubt on his mind, that the last has chosen the better part, that he is more to be envied than the first t On these great questions, What is the chief good. and What the chief evil. we are instructed by our own nature. An inward voice has told men, even in heathen countries, that excellence of character is the supreme good, and that baseness of soul and of action involves something worse than suffering. We have all of us, at some periods of life, had the same conviction; and these have been the peri. THE EVIL OF SIN. 15 ods-when the mind has been the healthiest, clearest, least, perturbed by passion. Is there any one here who does not feel' that -what the divine faculty of conscience-enjoins as right has stronger claims upon him than what is- recommended as merely agreeable or advantageous; that duty is something' more sacred'than' interest or pleasure-; that virtue is a good of a higher order than, gratification; that crime'is something worse than, out-, ward loss? What means the admiration with; which we follow the conscientious and disinterested man, and which grows strong iin. proportion to his sacrifices to duty.. Is - it not the - testimony of our whole souls to the truth and greatness of, the good, he has chosen? What means the feeling.of abhor-. rence, which we cannot repress if; we would,-towards him who, by abusing confidence, trampling on weakness, or.hardening~himself against the appeals of mercy, has:grown rich or great-? Do we think that such' a:man has;made a.: good bargain..in bartering: principle for wealth? Is prosperous fortune a.balance for vice' In our deliberate moments, is: there not a voice which pronounces his craft:fo]ly,.and his success misery 16 THE..EVIL. OF. SIN. And, to come nearer home, what' conviction is it which springs up most'spontaneously in our more reflecting moments,'.when: we look back without passion on our:own lives. Can vice stand that calm look? Is there a single wrong act, which we would not then.rejoice to. expunge from the unalterable records of our. deeds' Do we ever congratulate ourselves on having despised the inward monitor, or revolted against. God., To what portions of' our history do we'return. most joyfully? Are they those' in which we gained the world and lost the soul, in which temptation mastered our principles, which levity and sloth made a blank, or which a selfish and unprincipled activity made worse than a blank, in our existence. Or are they those in which we suffered, but were true to conscience, in which we denied ourselves for duty, and sacrificed success through' unwavering rectitude? In' these moments of calm recollection, do not the very transgressions at which: perhaps we once mocked, and which promised unmixed joy, recur to awaken shame and remorse? And do not shame and remorse involve a consciousness that we have sunk beneath our proper good? that our highest THE EVIL OF SIN. 17 nature, what constitutes our true self, has been sacrificed to low interests and pursuits I make these appeals confidently. I think my questions can receive but one answer. Now, these convictions and emotions, with which we witness moral evil in others, or recollect it in ourselves; these feelings towards guilt, which mere pain and suffering never excite, and which manifest themselves with more or less distinctness in all nations and all stages of society; these inward attestations that sin, wrong-doing, is a peculiar evil, for which no outward good can give adequate compensation, - surely these deserve to be regarded as the voice of nature, the voice of God. They are accompanied with a peculiar consciousness of truth. They are felt to be our ornament and defence. Thus our nature teaches the doctrine of Christianity, that sin, or moral evil, ought of all evils to inspire most abhorrence and fear. Our first argument has' been drawn from sentiment, from deep and almost instinctive feeling, from the handwriting of the Creator on the soul. Our next may be drawn from experience. We have said that even when sin or wrong-doing is 2 18 THE EVIL OF SIN. prosperous, and duty brings suffering, we feel that the suffering is a less evil than sin. I now add, in the second place, that sin, though it sometimes prospers, and never meets its full retribution on earth, yet, on the whole, produces more present suffering than all things else; so that experience warns us against sin or wrong-doing as the chief evil we can incur. Whence come the sorest diseases and acutest bodily pains? Come they not from the lusts warring in our members, from criminal excess? What chiefly generates poverty and its worst sufferings? Is it not to evils of character, to the want of self-denying virtue, that we must ascribe chiefly the evils of our outward condition? The pages of history, how is it that they are so dark and sad? Is it not that they are stained with crime? If we penetrate into private life, what spreads most misery through our homes? Is it sickness, or selfishness? Is it want of outward comforts, or want of inward discipline, of the spirit of love? What more do we need to bring back Eden's happiness, than Eden's sinlessness? How light a burden would be life's necessary ills, were they not aided by the crushing weight of our own THE EVIL OF SIN. 19 and others' faults and crimes! How fast would human woe vanish, were human selfishness, sensuality, injustice, pride, impiety, to yield to the pure and benign influences of Christian truth! How many of us know that the sharpest pains we have ever suffered have been the wounds of pride, the paroxysms of passion, the stings of remorse; and, where this is not the case, who of us, if he were to know his own soul, would not see that the daily restlessness of life, the wearing uneasiness of the mind, which, as a whole, brings more suffering than acute pains, is altogether the result of undisciplined passions, of neglect or disobedience of God? Our discontents and anxieties have their origin in moral evil. The lines of suffering on almost every human countenance have been deepened, if not traced there, by unfaithfulness to conscience, by departures from duty. To do wrong is the surest way to bring suffering; no wrong deed ever failed to bring it. Those sins which are followed by no palpable pain are yet terribly avenged even in this life. They abridge our capacity of happiness, impair our relish for innocent pleasure, and increase our sensibility to suffering. They spoil us of the 20 THE EVIL OF SIN. armor of a pure conscience, and of trust in God, without which we are naked amidst hosts of foes, and are vulnerable by all the changes of life. Thus, to do wrong is to inflict the surest injury on our own peace. No enemy can do us equal harm with what we do ourselves, whenever or however we -violate any moral or religious obligation. I have time but for one more view of moral evil, or sin, showing that it is truly the greatest evil. It is this. The miseries of disobedience to conscience and God are not exhausted in this life. Sin deserves, calls for, and will bring down, future greater misery. This Christianity teaches, and this nature teaches. Retribution is not a new doctrine brought by Christ into the world. Though darkened and corrupted, it was spread everywhere before he came. It carried alarm to rude nations, which nothing on earth could terrify. It mixed with all the false religions of antiquity, and it finds a response now in every mind not perverted by sophistry. That we shall carry with us into the future world our present minds, and that a character, formed in opposition to our highest faculties THE EVIL OF SIN. 21 and to the will'of God, will produce suffering in our future being, these are truths, in which revelation, reason, and conscience remarkably conspire. I know, indeed, that this doctrine is sometimes questioned. It is maintained by some among us that punishment is confined to the present state; that, in changing worlds, we shall change our characters; that moral evil is to be buried with the body in the grave. As this opinion spreads industriously, and as it tends to diminish the dread of sin, it deserves some notice. To my mind, a more irrational doctrine was never broached. In the first place, it contradicts all our experience of the nature and laws of the mind. There is nothing more striking in the mind than the connection of its successive states. Our present knowledge, thoughts, feelings, characters, are the results of former impressions, passions, and pursuits. We are this moment what the past has made us; and to suppose that, at death, the influences of our whole past course are to cease on our minds, and that a character is to spring up altogether at war with what has preceded it, is to suppose the most important law or principle of the mind to be violated, 22 TIIE EVIL OF SIN. is to destroy all analogy between the present and future, and to substitute for experience the wildest dreams of fancy. In truth, such a sudden revolution in the character as is here supposed seems to destroy a man's identity. The individual thus transformed can hardly seem to himself or to others the same being. It is equivalent to the creation of a new soul. Let me next ask, what fact can be adduced in proof or illustration of the power ascribed to death of changing and purifying the mindl What is death. It is the dissolution of certain limbs and organs by which the soul now acts. But these, however closely connected with the mind, are entirely distinct from its powers, from thought and will, from conscience and affection. Why should the last grow pure from the dissolution of the first? Why shall the mind put on a new character, by laying aside the gross instruments through which it now operates? At death, the hands, the feet, the eye and the ear perish. But they often perish during life; and does character change with them? It is true that our animal appetites are weakened and sometimes destroyed by the decay of the bod THE EVIL OF SIN. 23 ily organs on which they depend. But our deeper principles of action, and the moral complexion of the mind, are not therefore reversed. It often happens that the sensualist, broken down by disease, which excess has induced, comes to loathe the luxuries to which he was once enslaved; but do his selfishness, his low habits of thought, his insensibility to God, decline and perish with his animal desires? Lop off the criminal's hands; does the disposition to do mischief vanish with them?. When the feet mortify, do we see a corresponding mortification of the will to go astray 1 The loss of sight or hearing is a partial death; but is a single vice plucked from the mind, or one of its strong passions palsied, by this destruction of its chief corporeal instruments? Again, the idea that by dying, or changing worlds, a man may be made better or virtuous, shows an ignorance of the nature of moral goodness or virtue. This belongs to free beings; it supposes moral liberty. A man cannot be made virtuous, as an instrument may be put in tune, by a foreign hand, by an outward force. Virtue is that to which the man himself contributes. It is the 24 THE EVIL OF SIN. fruit of exertion. It supposes conquest of temptation. It cannot be given from abroad to one who has wasted life, or steeped himself in crime. To suppose moral goodness breathed from abroad into the guilty mind, just as health may be imparted to a sick body, is to overlook the distinction between corporeal and intellectual natures, and to degrade a free being into a machine. I will only add, that to suppose no connection to exist between the present and the future character, is to take away the use of the present state. Why are we placed in a state of discipline, exposed to temptation, encompassed with suffering, if, without discipline, and by a sovereign act of omnipotence, we are all of us, be our present characters what they may, soon and suddenly to be made perfect in virtue, and perfect in happiness? Let us not listen for a moment to a doctrine so irrational as that our present characters do not follow us into a future world. If we are to live again, let us settle it as a sure fact, that we shall carry with us our present minds, such as we now make them; that we shall reap good or ill according to their improvement or corruption; and, of conse THE EVIL OF SIN. 25 quence, that every act which affects character will reach in its influence beyond the grave, and have a bearing on our future weal or woe. We are now framing our future lot. He who does a bad deed says, more strongly than words can utter, "I cast away a portion of future good; I resolve on future pain." I proceed now to an important and solemn remark, in illustration of the evil of sin. It is plainly implied in Scripture that we shall suffer much more from sin, evil tempers, irreligion, in the future world, than we suffer here. This is one main distinction between the two states. In the present world sin does indeed bring with it many pains, but not full or exact retribution, and sometimes it seems crowned with prosperity; and the cause of this is obvious. The present world is a state for the formation of character. It is meant to be a state of trial, where we are to act freely, to have opportunities of wrong as well as right action, and to become virtuous amidst temptation. Now such a purpose requires that sin, or wrong-doing, should not regularly and infallibly produce its full and immediate punishment. For suppose, my |26 THE EVIL OF SIN. hearers, that, at the very instant of a bad purpose or a bad deed, a sore and awful penalty were unfailingly to light upon you; would this be consistent with trial; would you have moral freedom; would you not live under compulsion? Who would do wrong, if judgment were to come like lightning after every evil deed? In such a world, fear would suspend our liberty, and supersede conscience. Accordingly sin, though, as we have seen, it produces great misery, is still left to compass many of its objects, often to prosper, often to be gain. Vice, bad as it is, has often many pleasures in its train. The worst men partake, equally with the good, the light of the sun, the rain, the harvest, the accommodations and improvements of civilized life, and sometimes accumulate more largely outward goods. And thus sin has its pleasures, and escapes many of its natural and proper fruits. We live in a world where, if we please, we may forget ourselves, may delude ourselves, may intoxicate our minds with false hopes, and may find, for a time, a deceitful joy in an evil course. In this respect the future will differ from the present world. After death, character will THE EVIL OF SIN. 27 produce its full effect. According to the Scriptures, the color of our future existence will be wholly determined by the habits and principles which we carry into it. The circumstances which, in this life, prevent vice, sin,'wrong-doing, from inflicting pain, will not operate hereafter. There the evil mind will be exposed to its own terrible agency, and nothing, nothing will interfere between the transgressor and his own awakened conscience. I ask you to pause, and weigh this distinction between the present and future. In the present life, we have, as I have said, the means of escaping, amusing, and forgetting ourselves. Once, in the course of every daily revolution of the sun, we all of us find refuge, and many a long refuge, in sleep; and he who has lived without God, and in violation of his duty, hears not, for hours, a whisper of the monitor within. But sleep is a function of our present animal frame, and let not the transgressor anticipate this boon in the world of retribution before him. It may be, and he has reason to fear, that, in that state, repose will not weigh down his eyelids; that conscience will not slumber there; that, night and day, the same reproaching 28 THE EVIL OF SIN. voice is to cry within; that unrepented sin will fasten, with unrelaxing grasp, on the ever-waking soul. What an immense change in condition would the removal of this single alleviation of suffering produce! Again, in the present state, how many pleasant sights, scenes, voices, motions, draw us from ourselves! and he who has done wrong, how easily may he forget it, perhaps mock at it, under the bright light of this sun, on this fair earth, at the table of luxury, and amidst cheerful associates! In the state of retribution, he who has abused the present state will find no such means of escaping the wages.of sin. The precise mode in which such a man is to exist hereafter, I know not. But I know that it will offer nothing to amuse him, to dissipate thought, to turn him away from himself; nothing to which he can fly for refuge from the inward penalties of transgression. In the present life, I have said, the outward creation, by its interesting objects, draws the evil man from himself.' It seems to me probable that, in the future, the whole creation will, through sin, be turned into a source of suffering, and will perpet THE EVIL OF SIN. 29 ually throw back the evil mind on its own transgressions. I can briefly state the reflections which lead to this anticipation. The Scriptures strongly imply, if not positively teach, that, in the future life, we shall exist in connection with some material frame; and the doctrine is sustained by reason; for it can hardly be thought that, in a creation which is marked by gradual change and progress, we should make at once the mighty transition from our present state into a purely spiritual or unembodied existence. Now in the present state we find that the mind has an immense power over the body, and, when diseased, often communicates disease to its sympathizing companion. I believe that, in the future state, the mind will have this power of conforming its outward frame to itself, incomparably more than here. We must never forget that, in that world, mind or character is to exert an all-powerful sway; and, accordingly, -it is rational to believe that the corrupt and deformed mind, which wants moral goodness, or a spirit of concord with God and with the universe, will create for itself, as its fit dwelling, a deformed body, which will also want concord or harmony with all 30 a THIE EVIL OF SIN. things around it. Suppose this to exist, and the whole creation which now amuses may become an instrument of suffering, fixing the soul with a more harrowing consciousness on itself. You know that even now, in consequence of certain derangements of the nervous system, the beautiful light gives acute pain, and sounds which once delighted us become shrill and distressing. How often this excessive irritableness of the body has its origin in moral disorders, perhaps few of us suspect. I apprehend, indeed, that we should be all amazed, were we to learn to what extent the body is continually incapacitated for enjoyment, and made susceptible of suffering, by sins of the heart and life. That delicate part of our organization, on which sensibility, pain, and pleasure depend, is, I believe, peculiarly alive to the touch of moral evil. How easily, then, may the mind hereafter frame the future body according to itself, so that, in proportion to its vice, it will receive, through its organs and senses, impressions of gloom, which it will feel to be the natural productions of its own depravity, and which will, in this way, give a terrible energy to conscience! For myself, I see no need of a local THE EVIL OF SIN. 31 hell for the sinner after death. When I reflect how, in the present world, a guilty mind has power to deform the countenance, to undermine health, to poison pleasure, to darken the fairest scenes of nature, to turn prosperity into a curse, I can easily understand how, in the world to come, sin, working without obstruction according to its own nature, should spread the gloom of a dungeon over the whole creation, and, wherever it goes, should turn the universe into a hell. In these remarks, I presume not to be the prophet of the future world. I only wish you to feel how terribly sin is hereafter to work its own misery, and how false and dangerous it is to argue, from your present power of escaping its consequences, that you may escape them in the life to come. Let each of us be assured that, by abusing this world, we shall not earn a better. The Scriptures announce a state of more exact and rigorous retribution than the present. Let this truth sink into our hearts. It shows us, what I have aimed to establish, that to do wrong is to incur the greatest of calamities, that sin is the chief of evils. May I not say that nothing else deserves the name I No 32 THE EVIL OF SIN. other evil will follow us beyond the grave. Poverty, disease, the world's scorn, the pain of bereaved affection, - these cease at the grave. The purified spirit lays down there every burden. One, and only one, evil can be carried from this world to the next, and that is, the evil within us, moral evil, guilt, crime, ungoverned passion, the depraved mind, the memory of a wasted or ill-spent life, the character which has grown up under neglect of God's voice in the soul and in his word. This, this will go with us, to stamp itself on our future frames, to darken our future being, to separate us, like an impassable gulf, from our Creator and from pure and happy beings, to be as a consuming fire and an undying worm. I have spoken of the pains and penalties of moral evil, or of wrong-doing, in the world to come. How long they will endure, I know not. Whether they will issue in the reformation and happiness of the sufferer, or will terminate in the extinction of his conscious being, is a question on which Scripture throws no clear light. Plausible arguments may be adduced in support of both these doctrines. On this and on other points revelation aims not to THE EVIL OF SIN. 33 give precise information, but to fix in us a deep impression that great suffering awaits a disobedient, wasted, immoral, irreligious life. To fasten this impression, to make it a deliberate and practical conviction, is more needful than to ascertain the mode or duration of future suffering. May the views this day given lead us all to self-communion, and to new energy, watchfulness, and prayer, against our sins. May they teach us that to do wrong, to neglect or violate any known duty, is of all evils the most fearful. Let every act, or -feeling, or motive, which bears the brand of guilt, seem to us more terrible than the worst calamities of life. Let us dread it more than the agonies of the most painful death. 3 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. BY REV. ORVILLE DEWEY, D. D. THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. GALATIANS 6: 7. -" ~ Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." I UNDERSTAND these words, my brethren, as laying down, in some respects, a stricter law of retribution than is yet received, even by those who are considered as its strictest interpreters. There is much dispute about this law at the present day; and there are many who are jealous, and very properly jealous, of every encroachment upon its salutary principles. But even those who profess to hold the strictest faith on this subject, and who, in my judgment, do hold a faith concerning what they call the infinity of man's ill-desert, that is warranted neither by reason nor Scripture; even they, nevertheless, do often present views of conversion and of God's mercy, and of the actual scene of retribution, which, in my apprehension, detract l 38 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. from the wholesome severity of the rule by which we are to be judged. Their views may be strong enough, too strong; and yet not strict enough, nor impressive enough. Tell a man that he deserves to suffer infinitely, and I am not sure that it will, by any means, come so near his conscience as to tell him that he deserves to endure some small but specific evil. Tell him that he deserves an infinity of suffering, and he may blindly assent to it; it is a vast and vague something that presses upon his conscience, and has no edge nor point; but, put a sword into the hand of conscience, and how might this easy assenter to the justice of infinite torments grow astonished and angry, if you were to tell him that he deserved to suffer but the amputation of a single finger! Or tell the sinner that he shall suffer for his offences a thousand ages hence, and though it may be true, and will be true, if he goes on offending till that period, yet it will not come home to his heart with half so vivid an impression, or half so effectual a restraint, as to make him foresee the pain, the remorse and shame, thathe will suffer the very next hour. Tell him, in fine, as it is common to do, - tell him of retribu THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 39 tion in the gross, - and, however strong the language, he may listen to it with apathy; he often does so; but, if you could show him what sin is doing within him at every moment; how every successive offence lays on another and another shade upon the brightness of the soul; how every transgression, as if it held the very sword of justice, is cutting off, one by one, the fine and invisible fibres that bind the soul to happiness; then, by all the love of happiness, such a man must be interested and concerned for himself. Or tell the bad man that he must be converted, or he cannot be happy hereafter, and you declare to him an impressive truth; but how much would it add to the impression if, instead of leaving him to suppose that bare conversion (in the popular sense of that term), that the brief work of an hour, would bring him to heaven, you should say to him, " You shall be just as happy hereafter as you are pure and upright, and no more.; just as happy as your character prepares you to be, and no more; your moral, like your mental character., though it may take its date or impulse from a certain moment, is not formed in a moment; your character, that is to say, the 40 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. habit of your mind, is the result of many thoughts, and feelings, and efforts; and these are bound together by many natural and strong ties; so that it is strictly true, and this is the great law, of retribution, that all coming experience is to be affected by every present feeling; that every future moment of being must answer for every present moment; that one moment sacrificed to sin or lost to improvement is forever sacrificed and lost; that one year's delay, or one hour's wilful delay, to enter the right path is to put you back so far in the everlasting pursuit of happiness; and that every sin, ay, every sin of a good man, is thus to be answered for, though not according to the full measure of its illdesert, yet according to a rule of unbending rectitude and impartiality." This is undoubtedly the strict and solemn Law of Retribution; but how much its strictness has really entered - I say not now into our hearts and lives; I will take up that serious question in another season of meditation - but how much the strictness of the principle of retribution has entered into our theories, our creeds, our speculations, is a matter that deserves attention. THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. "41 It is worthy of remark, indeed, that there is no doctrine which is more universally received, and, at the same time, more universally evaded, than this very doctrine which we are considering. It is universally received, because the very condition of human existence involves it; because it is a matter of experience; every after-period of life being affected, and known to be affected, by the conduct of every earlier period; manhood by youth, and age by manhood; professional success by the preparation for it; domestic happiness by conjugal fidelity and parental care. It is thus seen that life is a tissue, into which the thread of this connection is everywhere interwoven. It is thus seen that the law of retribution presses upon every man, whether he thinks of it or not; that it pursues him through all the courses of life with a step that never falters nor tires, and with an eye that never sleeps nor slumbers. The doctrine of a future retribution has been universally received, too, because it has been felt that in no other way could the impartiality of God's government be vindicated; that. if the best and the worst men in the world,- if the ruthless oppressor and his innocent victim; if the proud and 42 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. boasting injurer and the meek and patient sufferer are to go to the same reward, to the same approbation of the good and just God; there is an end of all discrimination, of all moral government, and of all light upon the mysteries of Providence. It has been felt, moreover, that the character of the soul carries with it, and in its most intimate nature, the principles of retribution, and that it must work out weal or woe for. its possessor. But this doctrine, so universally received, has been, I say, as universally evaded. The classic mythologies of paganism did, indeed, teach that there were infernal regions; but few were doomed to them; and for those few who, failing of the rites of sepulture, or of some other ceremonial qualification, were liable to that doom, an escape was provided by their wandering on the banks of the Styx a while, as preparatory to their entering Elysium. So, too, the creed of the Catholics, though it spoke of hell, had also its purgatory to soften the horrors of retribution. And now there are, as I think, among the body of Protestants, certain speculative, or rather may I say mechanical views of the future state, and of the preparation for it, THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 43 and of the principles of mercy in its allotments, that tend to let down the strictness of that law which forever binds us to the retributive future. Is it not a question, let me barely ask-in passing, whether this universal evasion does not show that the universal belief has been extravagant; whether men have not believed too much to believe it strictly and specifically to its minutest point? It certainly is a very striking fact that, while the popular creed teaches that almost the whole living world is going down to everlasting torments, the popular sympathy interposes to save from that doom almost the whole dying world. But, not to dwell on this observation, I shall proceed now briefly to consider some of those modern views which detract from the strictness of the lawv of retribution. 1. And the first which I shall notice is the view of the actual scene of retribution, as consisting of two conditions, entirely opposite and altogether different. Mankind, according to this view, are divided into two distinct classes; the one of which is to enjoy infinite happiness, and the other to suffer infinite misery. It is a far stronger case than A44 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. would be made by the supposition that man's varied efforts to gain worldly good were to be rewarded by assigning to one portion of the race boundless wealth, and to the other absolute poverty; for it is infinite happiness on the one hand, and not the bare destitution of it, but infinite misery, on the other. Let me observe, before I proceed further to point out what I consider to be the defect which attends this popular view of retribution, that the view itself is not warranted by Scripture. The Bible teaches us that virtue will be rewarded, and sin punished; that the good shall receive good, and the evil shall receive evil; and that is all that it teaches us. It unfolds to us this simple, and solemn, and purely spiritual issue, and nothing more. All else is figurative; and so the most learned interpreters have generally agreed to consider it. It is obvious that representations of what passes in the future world, taken from the present world, must be of this character. When heaven is represented as a city, and hell as a deep abyss, and Christ is described as coming to judgment on a THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 45 throne, with the state and splendor of an oriental monarch, and separating, in form and visibly separating, the righteous from the wicked, we know that these representations are figurative descriptions of a single and simple fact; and this fact is, - and this is the whole of the fact that is taught us, - that a distinction will be made between good men and bad men; and that they will be rewarded or punished hereafter according to the character they have formed and sustained here. It is to be remembered, too, in appealing to the Scriptures, that there are other teachings in them than those which are figurative, and teachings which bind us far more to the letter. It is written that, whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap; and that God will render unto every man according to his deeds; that is, according to his character, as by deeds is doubtless meant in this instance. But now, to return to the view already stated, I maintain that the boundless distinction which it makes in the state of the future life, is not rendering unto men according to their deeds; that is to say, according to their character. Because, of this character there are many diversities, and degrees, 46 THE LAW OF 1RETRIBUTION. and shades. Men differ in virtue precisely as they differ in intelligence; by just as many and imperceptible degrees. As many as are the diversities of moral education in the world, as numerous as are the shades of circumstance in life, as various as are the degrees of moral capacity and effort in various minds, so must the results differ. If character were formed by machinery, there might be but two samples. But if it-is formed by voluntary agency, the results must be as diversified and complicated as the operations of that agency. And the fact which every man's observation must show him undoubtedly is, that virtue in men differs just as intelligence does; differs, I repeat, by just as many and imperceptible degrees. But now suppose that men were to be rewarded for their intelligence hereafter. Would all the immense variety of cases be met by two totally different and opposite allotments. Take the scale of character, and mark on it all the degrees of difference, and all the divisions of a degree. Now what point on the scale will you select at which to make the infinite difference of allotments Select it where you will, and there will be the thousandth part of a degree above, TH.E LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 47 rewarded with perfect happiness, and a thousandth part of a degree below doomed to perfect misery. Would this be right with regard to the intelligence or virtue of men? We are misled on this subject by that loose and inaccurate division of mankind, which is common, into the two classes of"' saints and sinners." We might as well say that all men are either strong or weak, wise or foolish, intellectual or sensual. So they are, in a general sense; but not in a sense that excludes all discrimination. And the language of the Bible, when it speaks of the good and bad, of the righteous and wicked, is to be understood with the same reasonable discrimination, with the same reasonable qualification of its meaning, as when it speaks of the rich and poor. The truth is, the matter of fact is, that from the highest point of virtue to the lowest point of wickedness there are, I repeat, innumerable steps, and men are standing upon all these steps; they are actually found in all these gradations of character. Now to render to such beings according to their character is not to appoint to them two totally distinct and opposite allotments, but just as many allot l 48 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. ments as there are shades of moral difference between them. But does not the Bible speak of two distinct classes of men as amenable to the judgment, and of but two; and does it not say, of the one class, "these shall go away into everlasting fire," and of the other, " but the righteous into life eternal " I Certainly it does. And so do we constantly say, that the good shall be happy and the bad shall be miserable in the coming world. But do we, or does the Bible, intend to speak without any discrimination? Especially, can the omniscient scrutiny and the unerring rule be supposed to overlook any, even the slightest differences and the most delicate shades of character. On the contrary, we are told that " one star differeth from another in glory;" and we are told that there is a " lowest hell;" and we are led to admit that, in the allotments of retributive justice, the best among bad,men, and the worst among good men, may come as near to each other in condition as they come in character. I am not saying, let it be observed, -that the difference, even in this case, is unimportant; still less THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 49 that it is so in general. Nay, and the difference between the states of the very good man and of the very bad man may, indeed, be as great as any theory supposes; it may be much greater, in fact, than any man's imagination conceives; but this is not the only difference that is to be brought into the final account; for there are many intermediate ranks between the best and the worst. I say, that the difference of allotment may, nay, and that it must be great. The truly good man, the devoted Christian, shall doubtless experience a happiness beyond his utmost expectation. The bad man, the self-indulgent, the self-ruined man, will doubtless find his doom severer than he had looked for. I say not what it may be. But this, at least, we may be sure of, that the consequences both of good and bad conduct will be more serious, will strike deeper, than we are likely, amidst the gross and dim perceptions of sense, to comprehend. But this is not the point which I am at present arguing. It is not the extent of the consequences; but it is the strict and discriminating impartiality which shall measure out those affecting results; it is the strict law by which every man shall reap the 4 50 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. fruits of that which he sows. And I sav that the artificial,; imaginative, and, as I think, unauthorized ideas which prevail with regard to a future life, let down the strictness of the law. Let me now illustrate this by a single supposition. Suppose that you were to live in this world one thousand or ten thousand years; and suppose, too, that you felt that every present moment was a probation for every future moment; and that, in order to be happy, you must be pure; that every fault, every wrong habit of life or feeling, would tend and would continue to make you unhappy, till it was faithfully and effectually corrected; and corrected by yourself, not by the hand of death, not by the exchange of worlds. Suppose yourself to entertain the conviction that, if you plunged into self-indulgence and sin, diseases, and distempers, and woes would accumulate upon you, with no friendly interposition or rescue, no all-healing nostrum, no medicine of sovereign and miraculous efficacy to save; that diseases, I say, and distempers, and woes would accumulate upon you, in dark and darkening forms, for a thousand years. Suppose that every evil passion, anger, or avarice, THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 51 or envy, or selfishness in any of its forms, would, unless resisted and overcome, make you more and more miserable, for a thousand years. I say that such a prospect, limited as it is in comparison, would be more impressive and salutary, a more powerful restraint upon sin, a more powerful stimulus to improvement, than the prospect, as it is usually contemplated, of the retributions of eternity! Are we then making all that we ought to make of the prospect of an eternal retribution l God's justice will be as strict there as it is here. And although bodily diseases may not accumulate upon us there, yet the diseases of the soul, if we take not heed to them, will accumulate upon us; and he who has only one degree of purity, and ten degrees of sin in him, must not lay that flattering unction to his soul, that death will " wash out the long arrears of guilt." I know that this is a doctrine of unbending strictness; a doctrine, I had almost said, insufferably strict; but I believe that it is altogether true. " But," some one may say, " if I am converted, — ifI have repented of my sins, and believed on IL I 52 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. the Lord Jesus Christ, then I have the assurance, through God's mercy, of pardon and heaven." This statement embraces the other doctrinal evasion of the law of retribution which I proposed to consider. And I must venture to express the apprehension that, by those who answer thus to the strict and unaccommodating demand of inwrought purity, neither conversion, nor repentance, nor the mercy of God, are understood as they ought to be. A man says, " I am not to be judged by the law, but by the Gospel." But when he says that, let me tell him he should take care to know what he says, and whereof he affirms. The difference between the Law and the Gospel, I believe, is much misapprehended in this respect. The Gospel is not a more easy, not a more lax rule to walk by, but only a more encouraging rule. The Law demands rectitude, and declares that the sinner deserves the miseries of a future life; and there it stops, and of course it leaves the offender in despair. The Gospel comes in, and it did come in, with its teaching and prophetic sacrifices, even amidst the thunders of Sinai, saying, If thou wilt repent and believe,if thou wilt embrace the faith and spirit of the all THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 53 humbling and all-redeeming religion, the way to happiness is still open. But does the Gospel anything more than open the way? Does it make the way more easy, more indulgent, less self-denying? Does it say, You need not be as good as the Law requires, and yet you shall be none the less happy for all that? Does it say, You need not do as well, and yet it shall be just as well with you? "Is Christ the minister of sin? God forbid!" Nay, be it remembered that the solemn declaration upon which we are this day meditating -" Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap," — is recorded,.not in the Law, but in the Gospel. "But, if I repent," it may be said, "am I not forgiven entirely? " If you repent entirely, you are forgiven entirely; and not otherwise. What is repentance? It is a change of mind. That, as every scholar knows, is the precise meaning of the original word, in the Scriptures, which is translated repentance. It is a change of mind. If, then, your repentance, your change of mind, is entire, your forgiveness, your happiness, is complete; but on no other principle, and in no other proportion. Sorrow is only one of the indications of this repent 54 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. ance or change of heart; though it has unfortunately usurped, in common use, the whole meaning of the word. Sorrow is not the only indication of repentance; for joy as truly springs from it. It is not, therefore, the bare fact that you are sorry, however sincerely and disinterestedly sorry, for your offences, that will deliver you from all the suffering which your sins and sinful habits must occasion. You may be sorry, for instance, and truly sorry, for your anger; yet, if the passion breaks out again, it must again give you pain; and it must forever give you pain while it lives. You may grieve for your vices. Does that grief instantly stop the course of penalty? Will it instantly repair a shattered constitutionl You may regret, in declining life, a state of mind produced by too much devotion to worldly gain, the want of intellectual and moral resources and habits. Will the dearth and the desolation depart from your mind when that regret enters it l Will even the tears of repentance immediately cause freshness and verdure to spring up in your path? "But," it may be said once more, "does not all depend on our being converted, or being born again? THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 55 And is. not conversion, is not the new birth, the event of a moment! I answer, with all the certainty of conviction that I am capable of, No; it is not the event of a moment. That conversion which fits a soul for heaven is not the event of a moment. And, my brethren, I would not answer thus in a case where there is controversy, if I did not think it a matter of the most serious importance. Can anything be more fatal, -can any one of all loose doctrines be more loose, than to tell an offender who is going to the worst excesses in sin, that he may escape all the evil results, all the results of fifty, sixty, seventy years of self-indulgence, by one instant's experience. Can any one of us believe, dare we believe, that one moment's virtue can prepare us for the happiness of eternity. Can we believe this, especially when we are, on every page of the Bible, commanded to watch, and pray, and strive, and labor, and, by patient continuance in well-doing, to seek for glory, and honor, and immortality; and this as the express condition of obtaining eternal life or happiness? No, Christians! subjects of the Christian law! 56 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. No conversion, no repentance, no mercy of Heaven, will save you from the final operation of that sentence, or should save you from its warning now. " Be not deceived "- as if there was special danger of being deceived here -" be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap; he that soweth to the flesh shall of his flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting." It is a high, and strict, I had almost said a terrible discrimination. Yet let us bring it home to our hearts, although it be as a sword, to cut off some cherished sin. 0, this miserable and slavish folly of inquiring whether we have enough piety and virtue to save us! Do men ever talk thus about the acquisition of riches or honors l Do they act as if all their solicitude was to ascertain and to stop at the point that would just save them from want, or secure them from disgrace. " Enough virtue to save you," do you say? The very question shows that you have not enough. It shows that your views of salvation are yet technical and narrow, if not selfish. It shows that all your THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 57 thoughts of retribution yet turn to solicitude and apprehension. The law of retribution is the law of God's goodness. It addresses not only the fear of sin, but the love of improvement. Its grand requisition is that of progress. It urges us at every step to press forward. And however many steps we may have taken, it urges us to take still another and another, by the same pressing reason with which it urged us to take the first step. Yes, by the same pressing reason. Let him who thinks himself a good man, who thinks that he is converted and on the right side, and in the safe state, and who, nevertheless, from this false reasoning and this presumptuous security, indulges in little sins, - irritability, covetousness, or worldly pride, -let him know that his doom shall be hereafter, and is now, a kind of hell, compared with the blessedness in store for loftier virtue and holier piety; and let him know too that, compared with that loftier standard, he has almost as much reason to tremble for himself as the poor sinner he looks down upon. For if woes are denounced against the impenitent sinner, so are woes deI..1~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 58 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. nounced, in terms scarcely less awful, against the secure, lukewarm, negligent Christian. God is no respecter of persons nor of professions. It is written that he will " render to every man according to his deeds." It is written, too, that "'whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." I repeat that language of fearful discrimination, " whatsoever a man soweth, that" — not something else-'that shall he also reap." That which you are doing, be it good or evil, be it grave or gay; that which you are doing to-day and -to-morrow, each thought, each feeling, each action, each event, every passing hour, every breathing moment, is contributing to form the character by which you are to be judged. Every particle of influence that goes to form that aggregate, your character, shall, in that future scrutiny, be sifted out from the mass, and shall fall particle by particle, with ages perhaps intervening - shall fall a distinct contribution to the sum of your joys or your woes. Thus every idle word, every idle hour, shall give answer in the judgment. Think not, against the closeness and severity of this inquisition, to put up any barrier of theological speculation. Conversion, THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 59 repentance, pardon - mean they what they will - mean nothing that will save you from reaping, down to the very root and ground of good or evil, that which you have sowed. Think not to wrap that future world in any blackness of darkness, or any folding flames; as if for the imagination to be alarmed were all you had to feel or fear. Clearly, distinctly, shall the voice of accusation fall upon the guilty ear; as when, upon earth, the man of crime comes reluctantly forth from his hidingplace, and stands at the bar of his country's justice, and the voices of his associates say, " Thou didst it!" If there be any unchangeable, any adamantine fate in the universe, this is that fate; that the future shall forever bring forth the fruits of the past. Take care, then, what thou sowest, as if thou wert taking care for eternity. That sowing, of which the Scripture speaketh, what is it? Yesterday, perhaps, some evil temptation came upon you; the opportunity of unrighteous gain, or of unhallowed indulgence, either in the sphere of business, or of pleasure, of society, or of solitude. If you yielded to it, then and there did you plant a 60 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. seed of bitterness and sorrow. To-morrow, it may be, will threaten discovery; and, agitated, alarmed, you will cover the sin, and bury it deeper in falsehood and hypocrisy. In the hiding bosom, in the fruitful soil of kindred vices, that sin dies not, but thrives and grows; and other and still other germs of evil gather around the accursed root, till, from that single seed of corruption, there springs up in the soul all that is horrible in habitual lying, knavery, or vice. Long before such a life comes to its close, its poor victim may have advanced within the very precincts of hell. Yes, the hell of debt, of disease, of ignominy, or of remorse, may gather its shadows around the steps of the transgressor, even on earth; and yet these - if holy Scripture be unerring, and sure experience be prophetic - these are but the beginnings of sorrows. The evil deed may be done, alas! in a moment, in one fatal moment; but conscience never dies; memory never sleeps; guilt never can become innocence; and remorse can never, never whisper peace. Pardon may come from heaven; but self-forgiveness, when will it come at Beware, then, thou who art tempted to evil THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 61 and every being before me is tempted to evil - beware what thou layest up for the future; beware what thou layest up in the archives of eternity. Thou who wouldst wrong thy neighbor, beware! lest the thought of that injured man, wounded and suffering from thine injury, be a pang which long years may not deprive of its bitterness. Thou who wouldst break into the house of innocence, and rifle it of its treasure, beware! lest, when many years have passed over thee, the moan of its distress may not have died away from thine ear. Thou who wouldst build the desolate throne of ambition in thy heart, beware what thou art doing with all thy devices, and circumventings, and selfish schemings; lest desolation and loneliness be on thy path as it stretches into the long futurity. Thou, in fine, who art living a negligent and irreligious life, beware! beware how thou livest; for bound up with that life is the immutable principle of an endless retribution; bound up with that life are elements of God's creating which shall never spend their force; which shall be unfolding and unfolding with the ages of eternity. Beware! I say once more, and be not deceived. Be not deceived; God is not mocked. 62 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. God, who has formed thy nature thus to answer to the future, is not mocked. His law never can be abrogated; his justice can never be eluded. Beware, then; be forewarned; since forever and forever will it be true that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap!