E 02 - The Testimony of Human Life
2. The Testimony of Human Life.
" The Scripture hath concluded all men under sin: " this we have already seen to be the sum of the Scripture testimony regarding the moral character and condition of our race. It is not to Scripture alone, however, that we may appeal in this case; the same conclusion is supported by the testimony of consciousness, by certain phenomena of human conduct, and by certain facts in human experience.
(i.) The testimony of consciousness conspires with the Bible doctrine that all men are sinners. All men know that they have done wrong, that they are continually doing wrong.
They not only perceive that, tried by a certain assumed standard, they have deflected from the path of goodness and virtue, but they blame themselves for this, they cannot but blame themselves for it. In this self-blame lies the con sciousness of sin. A man never thinks of blaming his head for aching, or his foot for being clumsy, or his nose for being twisted, because he knows that with these aberrations sin has nothing to do; they are not the result of free choice. But let a man perceive that he has acted in a way that is crooked, perverse, or mischievous, and he at once pro nounces of his conduct that it is wrong, and condemns himself for it. It is true that by habit he may blunt his sense of the evil of his conduct; but this is effected rather through his diverting his attention from this aspect of his conduct than from his having ceased to feel it to be wrong and blameworthy when he fairly considers it. If \ve would see how a vivid consciousness acts in this matter, we must go back to the commencement of the man’s wicked career; we must look at the workings of his mind when the sin was new to him, when he was tempted to commit it for the first time.
How painful and agitating were the exercises of his mind ere he came to the point of yielding to the temptation; and when 1 Living Temple, Part II. cli. iv.; Works, vol. iii. p. 291, Rogers ed. he had committed the sin, how bitter and agonizing was the remorse that ensued ! In some minds the remembrance of one sin committed, it may be in secret and never brought to li<rht so as to bring down censure from others, abides as a constant source of theme and self-reproach, covering the coun tenance with blushes, and causing the heart to throb at the very thought of it, "Some fatal remembrance, some sorrow that throws Its bleak shade alike on his joys and his woes."
If any were to question the fact that man is conscious of sin, we might appeal to the curious fact that men who will repudiate at once the charge of being guilty of any particular sin they know they have not committed, will yet not only suffer themselves to be accused of sin in the general, but will even go voluntarily where they know this charge will be brought against, nay, will prefer a man who prefers it against, them boldly and strongly to one who merely feebly suggests it, or tries to explain it away. Let a preacher, c.y. t tell a congregation of respectable people that they are thieves, and drunkards, and liars, and unclean, and they will very soon forsake his teaching; but let him tell them plainly and forcibly that they are sinners, that they all do what is wrong, that they are verily guilty and blameworthy before God, and they will not only take no offence, but will commend and approve his teaching. Why is this but that they know in themselves that what he says is true?
Now, whence this self-blame, this self-reproach, but from the consciousness of sin? and if there be no one who is altogether a stranger to this, does it not manifestly follow that there is no one of our race who is not at the bar of his own con science adjudged to be a sinner?
(ii.) We appeal to certain phenomena of human conduct as attesting the existence of sin in all men.
1. And here the first that strikes us is that all men impute Uame to their fellow-men for what they do that is wrong.
There is no man who seriously believes that his neighbour is not blameworthy when he injures him. Why is this? We never attach blame to the storm that injures our crops, to the lightning which strikes our cattle dead, or even to one of the lower animals which injures us. Why, then, do we blame our fellow-men when they do us harm? Because, simply, we regard them as moral agents, and count their doing of harm to us sin. But if, when they harm us, they are counted sinners, are they not also sinners whatever wrong they do?
It is not merely because it is against us that they have done wrong that we impute blame to them; it is because we regard them as free agents who could have done otherwise if they had pleased, and who are consequently to blame for not doing otherwise. Whenever men, then, act wrongly, they are liable to blame they are to be counted sinners; and as no man ever yet lived who did not do wrong, as no person ever knew a man who at no time swerved from the path of right, we are shut up to the conclusion that all are sinners wilful wrong-doers, who are therefore to be blamed.
2. Another phenomenon of human conduct to which we may appeal in support of this position is the unwillingness men have to think or speak about God. That such is the fact needs hardly to be proved. Men like not to retain the knowledge of God in their thoughts. They are ready to say in their hearts, " No God." They resort to every expedient to banish Him from their reflections. They cannot, indeed, eradicate the religious principle wholly from their bosoms; they must have something to worship and fear; but to meet this they resort to the expedient of inventing a God for themselves, to whom, either in gross idolatry or with more or less of avowed and open superstition, they do homage, rather than keep before them the knowledge of the living and true God. So familiar is this to us, that in civilized society it has become a sort of recognized courtesy that God shall not be spoken of; and were any one to introduce the subject into a company, not of bad men, but men of ordinary average good character, there would be immediately, if not by words, yet by most significant signs, clear indications given that the sub ject was felt to be a most unwelcome one, and that his intro duction of it was a most unseasonable one, if not a piece of unpardonable rudeness. Now, how is this fact to be accounted for? No one can say the subject is unworthy his notice. No one can pretend that it is otherwise than most proper and necessary that intelligent and accountable creatures should have their thoughts occupied with God, and should often con verse together concerning Him. And it would be idle to trace the reserve which men show in respect of God to any feeling of reverence for Him such as would prompt them to confine their consideration of Him to their most secret and solemn moments; for the very men who are most unwilling that the truth should be brought before them concerning God are the most ready to consider and embrace every false or sceptical view that can be thrown out in relation either to His perfec tions or His government. I can see no way of accounting for this fact but by referring it to the existence of sin in men, and the consciousness of it in every human breast. A company of pure and sinless intelligences would not, if placed in a world like this, be so shy of God so averse from think ing and speaking of Him, whilst all around proclaims His majesty and His beneficence. The conduct of man in this respect can be accounted for only by the supposition that he is not sinless and pure. " The only and true explanation is that God and the soul are themes that move disturbance.
They suggest blame; they lacerate, in this manner, the com fort of the mind." " Men," adds the same writer, " are under a subtle and tacit but damning sense of blame, and cannot bear, on all occasions, or anywhere but in the public assem blies of religion, to have subjects introduced that remind them of it, and stir again the guilt of their conscience." ] To all pure and intelligent beings the name of God is a name of joy: that among men it should have power to strike into silence or inspire with uneasiness is an ominous circum stance which can be accounted for only by the fact that man though intelligent is not pure, but feels himself guilty before God.
3. Another fact to which we may appeal as showing from man’s conduct his consciousness of sin, is the fact that all men act on the supposition that sin is a thing to be con stantly dreaded or guarded against. Whatever men may think or say of themselves, all men show by their conduct that they cannot implicitly trust others in this respect. They feel that they have an enemy in the souls of their fellowmen against which they have to guard. Hence they surround 1 Bushnell, Nature and the, Supernatural, p. 155. themselves with protection of every kind. In simple states of society they cultivate powers of self-defence, go abroad more or less prepared for battle, and lie down at night with weapons within their reach. In states where society is better organized, men surround themselves with the protection of penal laws, directed against the various offences by which one man may suffer at the hand of another; and not relying wholly on these, they seek by various other precautions to protect themselves and their property and their households from the sin of others. What are the locks and bars by whicli we secure our dwellings against the intruder, the bonds, and receipts, and deeds by which we seek to guard against fraud and deceit the oaths by which we endeavour to constrain men to speak truth, and other such like contrivances with which all who live in society are familiar, what are they but evidences that men universally hold themselves prepared for wrong, and have to guard against it? Now, why this con stant expectation of evil, this constant dread of harm, this uneasy state of preparation against possible iniquity? Is it not because men know that there is a terrible reality in the world called sin, and that from the influence of this no man is free, so that the only way to be at all secure is to act on the presumption that there is no quarter from which the incursions of the enemy are not guarded against? In a sin less state of society, in a society where sin was the exception, would not such precautions be regarded as needless and preposterous?
4. Another fact to which we may appeal under this head is the necessity universally felt for family discipline. "A child left to himself," says the wise man, " bringeth his mother to shame" (Proverbs 20:15); and to the truth of this all experience gives testimony, so that wherever such a parent is seen following such a course with his child, the common sense of the neighbourhood confidently anticipates a result such as Solomon announces. Now, why is this? Why may not children be left to themselves to spring up as the flowers, or to develop their powers as the birds without control, with out check, without chastisement? Why should their young life be disturbed by law, and discipline, and reproof, and punishment? Why should all wise men who care for their children act on the principle that the best thing they can do for them is from the beginning of life to subject them to a system of discipline which it is often far more painful for the parent to enforce than it is for the child to submit to? Can any rational defence be offered for this, except that it is a known and undeniable fact that sin is in the bosom of every child, and that it is only by keeping him from the beginning under a scheme of government that that sin can be kept from growing into a monstrous and all-commanding power before which all moral restraint would be impotent, and by which life would be rendered a scene of lawless ferocity and reckless indulgence?
5. We appeal once more under this head to the fact that all men confess their sinfulness by adopting a religious system which is exclusively adapted to a sinner. There have been many different forms of religion in vogue among men, but however they may differ in other respects, they all agree in this, that they presuppose man’s guilt, and profess to meet and provide for emergencies thence arising. In all of them we find the idea of propitiating an offended Deity; in all of them the rite of sacrifice is inculcated as a means of attaining this end; in all of them penances, mortifications, and painful inflictions are recommended as means of securing the divine forgiveness; in all of them ablutions as a method of purging away pollutions are set forth as important; in short, they are essentially expiatory in their character and pretensions. Now, why is this, but that man feels himself a sinner, and knows that he can come into the presence of Deity only to be con demned and punished for his sin unless some method of removing it be found? In the piety of a sinless being such ideas and acts have no place; they would never so much as enter his mind. An offering of expiation is a confession of guilt. As has been strikingly said with regard to the offering ot human sacrifices, a rite which " has prevailed under every form of nature-worship," there goes up from all such painful and costly expiations " a dreadful, in some sense a prophetic, cry for help on the part of man, conscious that he is without God, and which could only on Golgotha be resolved into hymns and thanksgivings." l 1 Kurz, History of the Christian Church, p. 4:6.
(iii.) In turning to the facts in human experience which go to attest man’s universal sinfulness, we may, in the outset, appeal to the large and unqualified admission of this which men, the most competent to speak on such a subject, have in all ages made. If we turn, for instance, to the literature of nations, what ample admissions do we find of this fact alike in poetical, historical, and philosophical composition ! The experience which breathes through all the remains of ancient literature is that of men who were not ignorant of right and wrong, who were not weak so as to be unable to follow the right and refuse the wrong, but who were and felt themselves to be wicked, prone to prefer the wrong, and who knew that in consequence of this they were constantly doing wrong.
"Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor," are words which express the experience, not merely of the man who uttered them, but of all men in all ages, so that they have passed into a proverb. " Nemo sine vitiis nascitur," exclaims Horace; J and says a poet of Greece, 2
" There appears," says Aristotle, " another something besides the reason natural to us which fights and struggles against the reason; and just as the limbs of the body when under paralysis are when they would move to the right are carried away to the left, so is it in the soul."
How pointed is the language of Plutarch in speaking of the mingled good and evil of our nature: " Some portion of evil is, mingled in all who are born; for the seeds of our being are mortal, and hence they share in causing this, whence depravity of soul, diseases, and cares creep upon us." 4 How uniform also was the belief of the ancients in the defilement with which the soul went into the future world, and the need of a severe purga tion there before it could be admitted to the place of the blessed !
" Quisque suos patimur manes; exinde per amplum Mittimur Elysium, et pauci Ireta arva tenemus :
Donee longa dies perfecto temporis orbe Concretam exemit labem, purumque relinquit jEtherium sensum, atque aurai simplicis ignem." 5 1 Sat., i. 3. 68:2 Sophocles, Electra.
3 Eth. Nicom., 1:11:4 De Consol. ad Apoll 5 JSneid, 6:743.
" That the world lieth in wickedness," says Kant, " is a lament as old as history, nay, as old as the oldest poetry. The world began, it is allowed, with good, with a golden age, with a life in Paradise, or with one still happier in communion with heavenly being. But this felicity, it is admitted, has vanished like a dream; and now man’s course is even with accelerated speed from bad (morally bad, with which the physically bad ever advances pari passii) to worse. A few moderns have advanced the opposite opinion, which, how ever, has found favour only with philosophers, and in our day chiefly among psedagogues, that the world is progres sively tending from bad to better, or, at least, that the basis of this lies in human nature. But this opinion assuredly is not derived from experience, if it is of moral goodness and badness, not civilisation, they speak; for the history of all times speaks decisively against it." * " Profound observers of the human nature," says Halm, " in great numbers since Kant have acknowledged the truth of the Biblical doctrine, that the root of man’s nature is corrupt, so that each feels himself by nature morally sick and unfree, and no one is able of his own strength to fulfil the divine law, though he acknow ledges it to be good and inviolable."
It is needless to multiply extracts: those I have given may be taken as a specimen of how the universal experience of mankind falls in with and attests the position so fully asserted in Scripture of man’s universal sinfulness and guilt.
We might further dwell here on the fact that human experience taken on the most extensive scale refuses to acknow ledge that it has ever come to the knowledge of a sinless and perfect man, a fact utterly inexplicable on the supposition that men generally, or that some men, are sinless. We might advert also to the fact that experience attests that it is much more easy to find a clever and able servant or agent than one thoroughly honest, virtuous, and trustworthy. But it is unnecessary; the fact is so notorious that no man ventures formally to deny it, and it is only by ignoring it, or by the most curious expedients of word-juggling, that those who are 1 Religion inmrhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vemunft, p. 1. Comp. also Part I. 3, p. 26 ff.
* Lekrbuch, p. 364. unwilling to contemplate or admit it get rid of its solemn presence or explain away its existence. Of these expedients one of the most common is to apply to this fact in the experience of our race some term, or to refer to it in phraseology, which insinuates that it is rather a misfortune that has befallen man, a calamity that has come upon him, than a state for which he himself is responsible, and which entails on him guilt. Thus it is spoken of as a disorder or a disease which has overtaken man, and Mr.
Theodore Parker speaks largely and eloquently of it as a " mis direction of human nature." Now, what is such language intended to convey? Those who use it cannot mean us to take it literally; they cannot mean that when a man goes contrary to the order of the moral world he simply suffers some disarrangement or suffering, such as he endures when his digestive powers are out of order, or when a limb gets dislocated; they cannot mean that when moral law is trans gressed by man an occurrence of the same kind has taken place as happens when an arrow shot from a bow swerves from the course it was intended it should follow, or a bullet fired from an ill-grooved rifle goes awry. In such a case everything like blame or censure would be out of place, and right and wrong would be terms of no moral significancy. On this principle all denunciation of vice is an absurdity, and all punishment of crime a piece of gratuitous cruelty. On this principle some of Mr. Parker’s own most eloquent and valuable utterances must be regarded as mere idle words, for they are denunciations of slaveholding and such arts as wicked and criminal. To take his doctrine literally, therefore, is to fix on him a charge of gross inconsistency and idle vituperation. But if such phraseology is not to be taken literally, how is it to be taken? To this no definite answer can be given by those who use it. The truth is they do not use it for the purpose of conveying a definite utterance of opinion. They employ it rather to conceal opinion than to express it. Their object is, without denying our position, to rob it of all its force. They cannot shut their eyes to the fact that evil has laid hold upon every individual of our race; but they seek to escape from unpleasant feelings in the presence of this fact by calling it by names that suggest other ideas than those of guilt and blame. It is a poor expedient, and as foolish as it is poor. It is a mere trick of wordcraft which may deceive the unwary, but leaves the case exactly as it was. Were it worth while reasoning with those who resort to such expedients, we might express to them our wonder that it does not occur to them to ask, Why should men blame themselves and others for doing what they call wrong? That men do so blame themselves and others is undoubtedly certain. We may appeal to any man’s consciousness and experience in support of this. An individual, perhaps, here and there, may by dint of long practice have succeeded in silencing the monitor within, or may so little heed it that he is in nowise hindered by it in his career of sin. But he knows that it took him a long time to do that, that it was not without a hard struggle that he succeeded in that, and that the voice within though silenced is not dead, but is still prone to rise up and stun him with its reproving utterances.
It is curious, also, to observe how the very persons who teach these views of human nature severely blame and censure others when they do them any wrong. Is this reasonable on their ground? Do they blame the elements when through their disorder some grievous injury is sustained by them in person or property? Do they blame the wind which blows down a tree or a house? Do they seriously pronounce censure on an epidemic, or animadvert on the moral im propriety of a pestilence? But if not, why blame a man if when he does what is wrong he is simply the victim of disease, or is simply following the bent of unfortunate cir cumstances? Does not this inconsistency show that they do not really believe their own theory, but in spite of them selves feel it to be true that the unalterable law of this universe is the law of right, and that the man who breaks that law in any of its requirements is not unfortunate and to be pitied, but is guilty and to be blamed?
There is thus abundant testimony from within man’s own soul and experience, as well as in nature without him, to the fact of sin. The testimony of Scripture is thus amply con firmed. And they who would aright estimate man’s condition and prospects as an intelligent agent must take this fact fully into consideration. If it is overlooked or misinterpreted, an essential factor in the calculation will be missed, and the whole conclusion thereby vitiated.