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  LOVE, ONE OF THE DEVINE ATTRIBUTES
  by Thomas Gisborne
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Gisborne's theological meditation on divine love as a central attribute of God,
exploring the nature, manifestations, and implications of God's love for
Christian understanding, devotion, and daily life.

  Chapters: 12

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 01 - Chapter 01
    2. 02 - Chapter 02
    3. 03 - Chapter 03
    4. 04 - Chapter 04
    5. 05 - Chapter 05
    6. 06 - Chapter 06
    7. 07 - Chapter 07
    8. 08 - Chapter 08
    9. 09 - Chapter 09
   10. 10 - Chapter 10
   11. 11 - Chapter 11
   12. 12 - Chapter 12

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  CHAPTER 1: 01 - CHAPTER 01
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CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY STATEMENTS.

God is Love : concentrated, unchanging, perfect Love. Such is the declaration of
the Scriptures.

Such, objectors affirm, is not the conclusion of research and experience.

We hear and we read discussions on the Divine Benevolence. What is benevolence ?
It is qualifiedLove: Love proceeding to a certain degree. Literally, it is good
will. Good will implies a degree of friendly regard, a kind feeling, a portion
of Love towards the individual contemplated. Yet it does not necessarily imply
that the friendly regard, the kind feeling, the portion of Love, is in all
cases, or in the particular case, very large. Benevolence not only is capable of
gradations, but it is not the spirit of Love without circumscription. It may
exist with a warmth of affection and a diffusiveness of expansion falling far
short of concentrated and perfect Love; far short of that Love which so
characterises a being in whom it dwells as to be justly identified with Him.
Writers who contend for the Divine benevolence, according to the usual
acceptation of the term, may thus set before themselves a seemingly easier task:
but they do not contend for the character of God as declared by His Spirit. In
God dwells Love in immutable perfection: so pervading, if we may thus speak, the
whole essence of the Deity, so directing all His counsels and all His
operations, that Love may be rightly identified with Him, and He with Love. God
is Love. When we speak, therefore, of the benevolence of God, we employ a term
lowering the attribute which we design to ascribe to Him; and tending to excite
and to establish in our minds indefinite, and inadequate, and therefore unworthy
thoughts of the glorious perfection which we profess to extol. Let us take our
stand on the ground provided for us in His own word: God is Love. Believers In
His truth and in the Christian Revelation, we believe the assertion upon the
credit of the Divine veracity. But we may lawfully rejoice in finding
corroborations furnished to it by research and experience.

God is the sole self-existent Being. The objects, therefore, as to which His
Love is exercised and exemplified must be the sentient beings whom He has
created. The numbers and the diversities of the sentient beings dispersed
throughout the universe, the workmanship of His power and the recipients of His
bounty, may be vast beyond the reach of the most exuberant imagination. That it
is thus vast is unquestionable. Consider this little globe which we inhabit,
this atom in illimitable space; and try to approach towards a computation of the
various tribes and kinds of living essences known to exist on its surface and in
the seas, from the elephant down to the minutest insect discoverable by the most
powerful microscope, from the whale to the animated particle which builds the
coral reef. What, then, must be the incalculable ramifications and modes of
vital existence, the count less hosts of distinct classes of beings, contained
merely in the orbs within that corner of creation on which alone the human eye
can gaze! What may be anticipated in the universe! Our experimental reasonings,
however, on the Divine attribute of Love must be deduced from the proceedings of
God towards those divisions of beings, concerning which we possess indubitable
intelligence. Of such divisions there are only three: Angels, the human race,
and the collective mass of irrational animals. The term irrational is here used
in its ordinary but inaccurate application.


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  CHAPTER 2: 02 - CHAPTER 02
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CHAP. II. OF THE DIVINE LOVE AS MANIFESTED RESPECTING ANGELS.

Concerning Angels we know simply that which is revealed in the Scriptures. In
modern ages, those beings, of whatever description, are not personally the
objects of perceptible communication with men. And, though we rest assured that,
in the earlier periods of the world, even to the days of the Apostles, Angelic
Messengers were commissioned to render themselves manifest to individuals; our
information is restricted to the brief details recorded in the Sacred Writings.
That the various particulars which the Scriptures relate concerning Angels
concur in attesting the statement that God is Love, is a proposition which it
will not be presumptuous to maintain. The circumstance evidently requiring to be
noticed antecedently to all other intelligence, which the Scriptures impart
concerning Angels, is the separation of those superhuman beings into two
divisions, holy Angels, and evil Angels. All the Angels were created holy and
happy, partakers of the Love of God and exemplifications of its fulness. What
was the period in the unseen ages of eternity during which this blissful state
continued, we know not; but we know that as to numbers amid the Angelic Hosts it
came to an end. Temptation assailed them; they sinned and fell. They kept not
their first estate of righteousness and felicity: they left their own original
habitation in heaven: they were cast into hell, and are reserved in chains and
darkness unto the Judgement of the great day. The consideration of their
condition will be resum ed; and the conclusions to which it leads, as connected
with our general subject, will be developed, when we shall have contemplated the
conduct of the Deity respecting the holy Angels, and the inferences to be
deduced from it. Of those Angels who, though subjected to their appropriate
probation, whatever may have been its nature, maintained their first estate of
obedience and blessedness, the characteristic designation is holiness. It is the
characteristic designation attributed to them by our Saviour. The Son of Man
shall come in His glory, and all the holy Angels with Him.[1] Of all men who in
this world are ashamed of Him and of His words, of them also shall He be ashamed
when he cometh in the glory of His Father with the holy Angels.[2] They are
described in other passages of Scripture by additional titles, indicating them
as beings exalted to signal preeminence, and endued with most noble qualities
and attainments. They are termed Angels of God ; Angels of the Lord; Angels of
Light; Mighty, excelling in strength, and in wisdom.[3] They have received the
gift of immortal life. They stand in the presence of the Most High, and are made
acquainted with many of His counsels. The multitude of the Angelic Hosts is
beyond computation. They are the innumerable company of Angels.[4] They are
distributed into orders and degrees. We hear of Michael the Archangel; we hear
of other Angels, described by the name of Seraphim[5]; we hear of thrones, and
dominions, and prin-

1 Matthew 25:31; Matthew 14:20. Psalms 103:20. 2 Mark 8:38; Luke 20:36 . 3 2
Thessalonians 1:7; 2 Sam. 4 Hebrews 12:22. 5 Isaiah 6:2-6 . dualities, and
powers of Heaven.[1] But, whatever be the rank of the different Angels of God,
all of them are holy. All of them are ministering Spirits to the Lord Almighty,
doing His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His word, ministers of His
that do His pleasure.[2] It may be that He sees fit to conduct in part by their
agency the government of the universe. But, whatever be the manner in which He
may have determined to exercise his superintendence over worlds to us unknown;
we are assured that, in ruling the globe on which we dwell, He is pleased
largely to employ the services of Angels. When the foundations of the earth were
laid, the Angels were present, and beheld the new creation with rapture. The
Morning Stars sang together: and all the Sons of God shouted for joy.[3] When
the law was promulgated on Mount Sinai, they were present ; and, though
invisible to mortal eyes, had functions of dignity and sacredness assigned to
them in the aweful solemnity. The Law was received by the disposition of Angels.
It was [1] Colossians 1:16 : Ephesians 3:2Hebrews 1:7 [2] Psalms 103:20-21. [3]
Job 38:7. ordained by Angels in the hand of a Mediator. [1] When the Son of God
invested Himself with human nature, for the purpose of accomplishing the mystery
of redemption, that stupendous mystery of Divine Love into which the Angels
desire to look [2]; their ministry was called forth in its most ample extent to
glorify the mighty Saviour. To announce His incarnation, an Angel was sent to
the Virgin Mary. The birth of His forerunner John the Baptist was predicted by
an Angel to Zacharias. From the moment of the birth of Christ, to Him, though he
had taken upon himself the form of a servant, to Him, even when he had thus
humbled Himself, all the hosts of heaven were placed in subjection. His
Everlasting Father, when He brought His First-begotten Son into the world, said:
Let all the Angels of God worship him.[3] When the appearance upon earth of the
Lord Jesus was communicated to the shepherds by an Angel, suddenly there was
with Him a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God
in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men.* [1] Acts 7:53.
Galatians 3:3Hebrews 1:6. [2] Luke 2:13-14. [3] 1 Peter 1:12.

It was by an Angel that God commanded Joseph to remove the Infant and His Mother
into Egypt from the murderous machinations of Herod. It was an Angel who, after
the death of Herod, appeared to Joseph, and directed him to return with the
young Child into the land of Israel. When our Redeemer had encountered and
repelled the temptations of the Devil in the wilderness; behold, Angels came and
ministered unto Him.[1] When he was in his Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane,
there appeared unto Him an Angel from heaven strengthening Him. [2] When seized
by his enemies, He could instantly have received the aid, had He chosen to
deliver Himself from death, of more than twelve legions of Angels.[3] When the
hour of his Resurrection was come, an Angel of the Lord, whose countenance was
Uke lightning and his raiment white as snow, descended from heaven, and rolled
back the stone from the door of the sepulchre.[4] It was by Angels that the
women who came to the tomb were instructed that Christ was risen. When, after
the completion of his undertaking of mercy upon earth, [1] Matthew 4:11 [2]
Matthew 26:53. [3] Luke 12:43. [4] Matthew 28:2-3.

He ascended into heaven, two Angels showed themselves by the side of his
disciples, and averred to them that He should again come from heaven, in the
same manner in which they had witnessed his ascent. To Him, as Head of his
Church, now that he is exalted in his human nature to the right hand of God,
Angels, and authorities, and powers, are made subject.[1] Of His present
government, of His flock throughout the world, they are spectators and
ministers, to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly
places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God.[2] When He shall
come in his glory, to judge the world, all the holy Angels shall be with Him.
And He shall send them forth, and they shall gather out of His Kingdom all
things that offend, and them which do iniquity. And they shall sever the wicked
from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire.[3] The
Scriptures discover to us various purposes for which Angels have been
commissioned to appear to men. Sometimes they have been sent to convey practical
directions from God to His [1]1 Peter 3:22 [2] Matthew 13:39. Matthew 13:49-50.
[3] Ephesians 3:19. servants: as when the prophet Gad was commanded by an Angel
to bear a message to David; and Philip the Evangelist to go down into the desert
between Jerusalem and Gaza, that he might be ready for the service on which he
was there to be employed. Sometimes they were to reveal far distant events, as
to Daniel and to St. John. Sometimes they were to communicate special assurances
of the Divine favour, which in certain cases were also accompanied with a
disclosure of future events, or with instructions to the individuals: as to
Abraham, to Hagar, to Zachariah, to Cornelius. Sometimes they were charged with
messages of wrath : as to Balaam the soothsayer, and to the rebellious people of
Israel at Bochim.[1] Sometimes they were commissioned to afford to the servants
of God assistance and deliverance in seasons of affliction or of peril: as to
the Israelites in their departure from Egypt; to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-
nego in the furnace ; to Daniel in the den of lions ; to the diseased at the
pool of Bethesda ; to Peter in the prison; to Paul on his voyage into Italy.
Sometimes they were sent forth to execute judgements for iniquity: as to destroy
[1] Numbers 22:23. Judges 2:1-5. the first-born of the Egyptians; to rain fire
and brimstone upon Sodom and the neighbouring cities; to bring low the multitude
of the people whom David in the pride of his heart had unlawfully numbered; to
disable the army of Sennacherib; to smite Herod on his throne, when with
blasphemous satisfaction he appropriated to himself honour pertaining to God.
But it is not only to some favoured nation involved in some extraordinary trial,
or to individuals eminent, as Prophets, as Apostles, or as Martyrs, that Angels
are commissioned with purposes of mercy. Of all the faithful worshippers of the
Most High these heavenly intelligences are the appointed and the constant
protectors. Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for
them that shall be heirs of salvation? [1] They are sent forth to minister for
good to every follower of Cb rist. The angel of the Liord encampeth round about
them that fear Him, and delivereth them.[2] What was the language of our Lord to
his disciples, when he placed in the midst of them a little child as an example
of lowliness of mind ? Whoso shall despise one of these Uttle ones that believe
in me, it were [1] Hebrews 1:14 [2] Psalms 34:7. better for him that a millstone
were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea.
Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you that
in heaven their Angels (the Angels to whose care they are specially committed)
do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.[1] That generally the
Angels are entrusted by their gracious God with a previous knowledge of events
which he has decreed to bring to pass upon the earth, our Saviour evinces by a
very emphatical exception as to a particular case, the time of his future return
in glory : of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the Angels of heaven?
Other passages in the word of God imply that

[1] Matthew 18:6-10. [2] Matthew 24:36. Il£p( dt rng iifitpag tutivnc. ovdttg
oiStv. The word ovStie had been better rendered in its indefinite sense, no one,
no being in the creation, not even any angel, no existence save God himself. Our
translators of the New Testament, in their singularly excellent version, have
fallen more than once into a similar mistake respecting the local meaning of
ovStic.. ThusRevelation 5:3. we read, And no man in heaven, nor in earth, nor
under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. So again in
the succeeding verse, And I wept much became no man was found worthy to open and
to read the book. The original stands thus :— Kat ovStiQ rjBvvaro tv rw
ovpavt,i,&c. Kat tyia Ik\o.iov iroXXa on ovdtic . ajiof tvptf/n, &c. The meaning
in each verse evidently is, that no being, neither angel nor man nor departed
spirit, was able or worthy to open or even to look upon the book. the Angels are
continual and attentive witnesses of human actions. St. Paul, speaking of the
incessant persecutions experienced by himself and by the other apostles, has
this remarkable expression : We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to
Angels.[1] On another occasion, when he is enforcing a solemn admonition upon
Timothy, his words are these: I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus
Christ, and the elect Angels[2] Nor is this inspection of earthly transactions
on the part of the heavenly hosts a mere exercise of curious observance
respecting the manners of inferior beings; nor simply a reverent and admiring
contemplation of the unbounded wisdom and the diversified operations of the Most
High. It is accompanied by warm and affectionate solicitude for the welfare of
man. "When one sinner repenteth, there is joy over him in heaven, in the
presence of the Angels of God? Our Saviour’s declaration that at the day of
judgement He will confess, as his own, every one who has confessed Him, and will
deny every one who has been ashamed of Him, before the assembled Angels, attests
the lively interest [1] 1 Corinthians 4:9. [2] 1 Timothy 5:21. [3] Luke 15:7-10.
which they will feel in the sentence that shall be passed upon different
persons. And in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus He appears to authorise
the conclusion, that one part of the ministration of Angels is to convey and to
welcome to everlasting rest the unbodied spirits of the righteous. Is it not
then manifest from the scriptural statements which have been produced, that the
divine conduct respecting the Holy Angels fully sustains the proposition that
God is love? Is it not manifest from the exalted qualities with which He has
endowed them, from the glory and blessedness with which he has arrayed them,
from the gift of immortal existence with which he has crowned them, from the
condescending confidence with which he renders them partakers of His counsels,
from the ministrations in which he employs their service? If the conclusion be
undeniable, in what an unbounded measure is His love multiplied and magnified to
our conceptions, when we reflect that these highly-favoured beings form an
innumerable company ! Do we ask what are their own sentiments respecting their
Almighty Benefactor ? We hear with Isaiah their sentiments from the lips of the
Seraphim, when they appear standing by the throne of God in his Temple, and in
adoration, veiling their faces with their wings, exclaim, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is
the Lord of Hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory"[1] We hear them with
St. John, when he beheld and heard the voice of many Angels round about the
Throne, and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and
thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice ; Worthy is the Lamb that was
slain to re- ceivepower, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and
glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven, heard I saying,
Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the
throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. Again, we listen with the same
Apostle when all the Angels stood round about the throne, and fell before the
throne on their faces and worshipped God, saying, Amen ! Blessing, and glory,
and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God
for ever and ever! Amen! [2] It is possible that an objector may ask [1] Isaiah
6:1-3. [2] Revelation 5:11; Revelation 7:11-12. whether it can be consistent
with love on the part of God towards Holy Angels, to require them, according to
admitted facts, to be the bearers of messages of rebuke and wrath, or to be the
executioners of penal inflictions, even to the extermination, nay, to the final
perdition, of the offenders. An answer to this question will be deduced from the
reply to be returned to another. Is it consistent with love, to send messages of
rebuke and wrath, to decree penal inflictions, to ordain the extermination and
even the final perdition of offenders ? If these messages and decisions be
consistent with love, it cannot be inconsistent with love to employ other beings
as agents to communicate and to accomplish them. Are they then consistent with
the character of a Being who is Love? Unquestionably messages of rebuke and
indignation may be proceedings of positive and signal kindness to the
transgressor, calculated to awaken his conscience and to lead him to repentance
and forgiveness. If he remains perseveringly and determinately unimpressible by
these manifestations of love, and can no longer be fitly an object of the
exercise of love; his merited and necessary punishment, be it even to final
perdition, may yet be an exercise of love towards incalculable multitudes of
other intelligent and responsible existences, whom the example of his punishment
may stimulate as a powerful admonition to obedience ; whom impunity permitted to
him might have encouraged to transgression, and have beguiled to destruction. In
noticing the preceding objection I have purposely forborne from entering
prematurely into the discussion of the great question, which must inevitably be
met in the progress of this investigation ; How can the existence of evil,
physical or moral, among created beings, be compatible with the truth of the
position that God is love? The objection seemed entitled to be produced; and the
remarks which have been made concerning it appear to furnish for the present a
sufficient reply.


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  CHAPTER 3: 03 - CHAPTER 03
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CHAP. III. RESPECTING EVIL ANGELS. Of Evil Spirits, as of Holy Angels, our
knowledge is derived exclusively from the word of God. The Scriptures, which
never afford insight into such circumstances connected with the unseen Universe,
as, if disclosed, would merely gratify curiosity and foster unprofitable
speculation, say little concerning the rebellion of these unhappy beings against
their Maker in addition to the statement of the fact and of its consequences.
And that statement is uniformly introduced in the way of an aweful warning to
men not to offend. God spared not the Angels that sinned, but cast them down to
hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto
judgement.1 The Lord knoweth how to reserve the unjust unto the day of
Judgement, to be punished. Of these fallen spirits who revolted from their
allegiance to Jehovah, the instigator and the leader, himself originally, as [1]
2 Peter 2:4-9., and Jude 1:6. it should seem, an Angel eminent in dignity, is
denominated specifically, The Devil, and also Satan, the adversary, the
adversary of God and subsequently of man, and Beelzebub the Prince of the
Devils.1 From the time of his original apostasy he has persisted in his enmity
against God; and since the formation of the human race has displayed unceasing
hatred against them as favoured creatures of the Almighty. No sooner were our
first parents stationed in Paradise, than Satan planned and accomplished their
ruin. Assuming the shape, or using the organs, of the serpent, he persuaded Eve,
and by her instrumentality, induced Adam to transgress the commandment, ordained
to be the test of their obedience. Thus, having drawn them away from God, and
subjected them to his own influence and dominion, he became the author of sin,
and of wretchedness, and of death, to them and to all their posterity. Hence the
Scriptures describe the Devil as having the power of death.2 With reference to
this transaction, he is termed in the New Testament the Serpent, the old
Serpent, the great Dragon, which deceiveth the whole world. With re- [1] Matthew
12:24. [2] Hebrews 2:14. ference also to the destruction, which by his subtle
falsehood he brought upon mankind, and perhaps with a view to the everlasting
misery in which he has overwhelmed the Angels whom he has deluded; he is
pronounced by our Saviour to have been a murderer from the beginning: to have no
truth in Mm: to be a liar and the father of lies. Through his temptations all
flesh has corrupted its way upon earth: the whole world lieth in wickedness.1
Hence unrighteous men are denominated in the Scriptures the children of Satan.
He that committeth sin is of the Devil : for the Devil sinneth from the
beginning. In this the children of God are manifest and the Children of the
Devil.’* The field is the world: the tares are Children of the wicked one: the
enemy that sowed them is the Devil.3 Ye are of your father the Devil: and the
lusts of your father ye will do* One of you is a Devil.6 Sins of every
description, and without exception, are habitually described as works of Satan.
Christ came to destroy the works of the Devil.6 The coming of the Man of Sin is
after the working of [1] 1 John 5:19. [2] John 8:44. [3] 1 John 3:8-10. [4] John
6:70. [5] Matthew 13:38-39 [6] 1 John 3:8.

Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness
of unrighteousness.1 I know the blasphemy of them which are the synagogue of
Satan. I know where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is, where Satan
dwelleth. As many as have not this (corrupt) doctrine, and have not known the
depths of Satan? Then cometh the Devil, and taketh the word out of their hearts,
lest they should believe and be saved. 3 In the Old Testament, we read a
memorable example of the malignant activity of this Apostate Spirit. And Satan
stood up against Israel and provoked David to number Israel.* The New Testament
sets before us his unwearied hostility against the followers of Christ; and
unceasingly warns us to vigilance and exertion under the grace of God to
withstand it. The Devil hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat.
We would have come unto you once and again, but Satan hindered us 5 by
opposition and persecution which he excited. The Devil shall cast some of you
into prison.*’ Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the

[1] 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10. [2] 1 Chronicles 21:1. [3] Revelation 2:9:Revelation
2:13-24. [4] 1 Thessalonians 2:18. [5] Luke 8:12. [6] Revelation 2:10.

Holy Ghost? 1 Neither give place to the Devil.2 Lest he fall into the snare of
the Devil. s That they may recover themselves out of the snare of the Devil, who
are taken captive by him at his will.4 That Satan tempt you not.5 Lest Satan
should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.6 Lest the
Tempter have tempted you, and our labour be in vain.7 Be strong in the Lord
and-in the power of’his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be
able to stand against the wiles of the Devil.6 Your adversary the Devil like a
roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour.9 So powerful is the
control which the Devil exercises over mankind, so predominating is the
influence which he has established in the very nature and over the hearts of all
men, that by our Lord he is styled the Prince of this world10, and by St. Paul
the God of this world,.11 Well knowing that to accomplish the destruction of his
kingdom, the redemption of the world from his bondage, to turn men from

[1] Acts 5:3. [2] 1 Thessalonians 3:5. [3] Ephesians 4:27. [4] Ephesians
6:10-18. [5] 1 Timothy 3:7 [6] 1 Peter 5:8. [7] 2 Timothy 2:26. [8] John 12:31;
John 14:30. [9] 1 Corinthians 7:5. 1 Corinthians 16:2. [10] 2 Corinthians 2:2.
[11] 2 Corinthians 11:4. darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God1,
was the object for the achievement of which the Son of God manifested Himself in
human nature; this adversary of all righteousness unabatingly directed his
darkest machinations against our Lord. No sooner had Jesus been proclaimed to be
the promised Redeemer by the testimony of John the Baptist, by the visible
descent of the Holy Ghost upon Him after his baptism, and by the voice of his
Almighty Father; than the Devil assaulted Him in the wilderness during forty
days with diversified temptations. When they all had been proved inefficacious,
Satan departed from Christ, but only, as St. Luke pointedly observes, for a
season.2 We cannot doubt that internal trials were among the means by which the
Devil continued to afflict our Lord. He also stirred up the malice of the
Pharisees, of the Sadducees, of the Herodians. He put it into the heart of Judas
to betray his master.3 Christ himself, when his sufferings and his death were at
hand, ascribed them to the Devil. Hereafter, said he to his disciples, I will
not talk much with you; for the Prince of this world [1] Acts 26:18. [2] Luke
4:13. [3] Luke 22:3-4. John 13:2-27. cometh. To his enemies when they seized Him
He pronounced the hour to be that of the Powers of darkness. Thus at length
Satan prevailed to bring our Lord to the Cross; unconscious that, while he was
exultingly bruising the heel of the Son of God, he was receiving on his own head
a mortal wound. But he is permitted to retain a portion of power till the Day of
Judgement Against every person upon earth he continually practises his devices.
He tempts us to remain in slavery to him, to add iniquity unto iniquity, to
harden ourselves against the grace of God, to refuse deliverance through the
blood of Christ: and thus labours to ensnare us into all the present
wretchedness which accompanies sin, and into the punishment which in another
world is awaiting every impenitent transgressor. In his enmity against God and
his attempts for the destruction of men he is constantly seconded by the hosts
of Evil Spirits. They are termed in the New Testament his Angels.1 He is the
Wicked One2, the Tempter3, the Spirit that still worketh

[1] Matthew 25:41. Revelation 12:7-9. [2] Matthew 13:19-38. 1 John 2:13-14; 1
John 3:12; 1 John 5:18. [3] Matthew 4:3: 1 Thessalonians 3:5. in the children of
disobedience.1 His angels are Evil Spirits, foul Spirits, unclean Spirits,
seducing Spirits, Principalities and Powers at his command, Rulers of the
darkness of this world.2 In the Old Testament we meet with few traces of power
openly exercised by Evil Spirits over the bodies of men. In the days of our
Lord’s ministry, the Devil and his Angels not only occupied themselves, as
throughout all former ages, and as they will continue to act to the end of time,
in harassing and beguiling the soul by temptations ; but were left at liberty,
under the permission of God, to disturb and completely to derange the
understandings of individuals, and to afflict their bodies with grievous
infirmities and with unwonted and torturing maladies. The divine purpose in this
permission we cannot but conclude to have been, that the power of Christ to
deliver all that in any way, corporeal or spiritual, should be oppressed of the
Devil, might be the more gloriously manifested.’3 The number of persons rendered
miserable by these invisible and irresistible tormentors was very great. In
what-

[1] Ephesians 2:2. [2] Luke 7:21; Acts 19:13, &c. Mark 9:25; Matthew 10:1; 1
Timothy 4:1; Ephesians 6:12. [3] Acts 10:38. ever part of Judaea and Galilee our
Saviour preached the Gospel, into whatever part he sent forth His disciples,
persons possessed with Devils were found. On a single evening Jesus healed at
Capernaum manyl who were thus possessed. The sufferings with which the Evil
Spirits overwhelmed those whom they had seized were various. We read of a man
who had a deaf and dumb Spirit; that is to say, who was under the domination of
an Evil Spirit which rendered him both deaf and dumb: so that when the Spirit
was cast out, the man instantly recovered his faculties of hearing and of
speech. We read of another man possessed by a Devil who deprived the sufferer of
speech and of sight: and when the Evil Spirit was expelled by our Lord, the
blind and dumb both spake and saw.2 We read also of a woman bent double by a
Spirit of infirmity: and our Lord, on healing her, expressly declared that Satan
had bowed her down for eighteen years.3 In other instances we find the Devils
driving their victims to mountains and deserts, tearing them by the most violent
convulsions, or casting them into water or into [1] Luke 4:41. [2] Matthew 12:22
[3] Luke 13:11, Luke 13:16. fire. The derangement of intellect, which, from the
representations given by the sacred writers of persons possessed, we might
conclude to be a common part of their calamities, is pointedly noticed by two of
the Evangelists as to a particular individual: for when he was delivered by our
Lord from the Evil Spirits, he is described as being again in his right mind.l
That the loss of understanding in persons possessed had not proceeded from
ordinary causes of insanity, but was the actual consequence of the possession,
is incontestable. St. Matthew, in one of his accounts of afflicted people healed
by Christ, carefully distinguishes those which were possessed with Devils from
those which were lunatic.* And not only did the language addressed to our Lord
by the Devils through the lips of the person possessed correspond at all times
with the reality of the possession, but on many occasions it did actually and of
itself prove the possession. For it proved that the speakers knew that which man
by his natural powers could not know ; that which men had not attained under the
offer of Divine teaching [1] Mark 5:15; Luke 8:35. [2] Matthew 4:24. to know;
that which men in general, when it was declared to them, would not believe.
While the Jews refused to acknowledge Jesus Christ, notwithstanding his
wonderful works, to be the promised Redeemer; while some said, He is Elias ;
while others affirmed, He is Jeremiah; while others answered, He is a Prophet,
or as one of the Prophets; while Herod pronounced Him to be John the Baptist
returned from the grave; the Devils were under no such delusions. They believed
and trembled.1 They confessed their Divine Adversary, their appointed conqueror,
in his earthly humiliation. They loudly exclaimed, by the organs of the
individuals whom they occupied; " We know Thee who Thou art, the Christ, the
Holy One of God! Send us not into the deep, Thou Son of the Most High God ! We
adjure Thee that Thou torment us not."2 The same confession continued to be
made, the same attestation to be borne, in the days of the Apostles. The Evil
Spirit by whom the young woman at Philippi was possessed, was constrained to
proclaim by her lips concerning Paul and his companions, These [1] James 2:19.
[2] Matthew 8:29; Mark 1:1-45; Mark 2:4-28; Mark 5:7; Luke 4:34-41; Luke 8:31.
men are the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of
salvation.l

If the Holy Angels are an innumerable company, there are grounds for inferring
that the host of fallen Angels, however inferior in amount to those who remained
stedfast in righteousness, may also be characterised as surpassing computation.
The New Testament exhibits them as always at hand to combine in order to harass
a single individual. When an Evil Spirit is described in the Parable as
determined to take renewed possession of a man whom he had quitted, he has no
difficulty in finding seven other Spirits more wicked than himself, who enter
with him into his former abode and dwell there. It is distinctly recorded that
out of Mary Magdalen our Saviour had expelled seven Devils.2 Consider also that
such a multitude of Evil Spirits had united to afflict a sufferer already
noticed as to be described by the term Legion.3

There are passages in Scripture which imply that the Deity sees fit occasionally
to constrain Evil Spirits to act as his agents in executing [1] Acts 16:16; Acts
17:3; Mark 5:9; Luke 8:1-56.

[2] Luke 8:2. chastisement upon transgressors. It was thus that God sent an Evil
Spirit between Abime- lech and the men of Shechem to cause dissensions among
them, that the cruelty done to the threescore and ten sons of Jerubbaal might
come, and their blood be laid upon Abimelech their brother which slew them, and
upon the men of Shechem which aided him in the killing of his brethren,1 It was
thus that an Evil Spirit was sent to inflict punishment upon Saul. The same
instrumentality appears to have had its place in the plagues poured out upon the
Egyptians. God cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and
indignation, and trouble, by sending Evil Angels among them.2 A still more
remarkable passage occurs in the writings of St. Paul. Iii reference to a
flagrant offender by an incestuous marriage among the Corinthians the Apostle
writes, I have judged concerning him that hath so done this deed; in the name of
our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the
power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the
destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord
Jesus.3 It should seem [1] Judges 9:23-24 [2] 1 Cor. 5:35. [3] Psalms 78:49.
that Satan, the prime author and instigator of the iniquity, was compelled by
power from the Lord Jesus Christ committed to the Apostle to inflict some very
aweful and painful kind of bodily malady on the offender, that thus the Tempter
himself might be forced to give aid in defeating his own purpose of ruining the
soul of his victim, and in stimulating that victim to seek the path of
repentance and salvation. A similar course of proceeding may be implied in the
declaration of the same Apostle concerning Hymenaeus and Alexander ; Whom I have
delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blasphemed So determined is the
hostility of Satan against the holy purposes of God, that, when he shall be
loosed from his prison, the bottomless pit, after having there been chained
during the Millennian reign of righteousness upon earth, he will instantly go
out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, to
gather them to battle against the servants of the Most High. The attempt shall
bring ruin on all engaged in it, and specially on its author. And they went up,
saith St. John, prophetically 2 Tim. 1:20. beholding and describing the event as
present, — they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of
the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came downfromGod out of heaven
and devoured them. And the Devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of
fire and brimstone ; the everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels,
to which they shall be finally adjudged in the last Day.1

There is a circumstance revealed in the New Testament as connected with the
ultimate judgement of these fallen spirits, which is highly impressive. St.
Paul, in reproving the Corinthian converts for their litigious selfishness,
which impelled them to carry any dispute to a heathen tribunal instead of
referring it to the arbitration of some of their Christian brethren, exclaims, 1
speak to your shame. Do ye not know that the Saints shall judge the world ? And
if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest
matters ? If then ye have judgements of things pertaining to this life, better
were it even to set them to judge who are the least esteemed in the Church, than
to resort as ye do to the tribunal of idolaters.

[1] Revelation 20:1. Revelation 2:10. Matthew 25:11. The argument, were it left
at this point, would be conclusive. But the Apostle has raised it to the highest
strength by the additional question, Know ye not that we shall judge Angels ? In
this additional question he announces to the Christian Church, that holy men
who, under the grace of their Redeemer, shall have been enabled to withstand in
their mortal course the wiles of Satan and his associates, shall be openly
exalted in that aweful Day to be as it were assessors with their Lord in
appreciating the guilt and in pronouncing the condemnation of those apostate
hosts, which had laboured to involve them in eternal perdition. Know ye not that
we shall judge Angels ?l

" But God," retorts the objector, "is declared to be a God of love. Is he a God
of love to spirits whom he consigns to everlasting torments ? " He who asks this
question cannot refuse to allow us to propose inquiries in our turn. Is it
necessary to the character of a God of love that he should love wickedness and
the consummately wicked? Would you main tain such an affirmation respecting a
human character.of the

1 Corinthians 6:1-6. most elevated benevolence ? Is not the presence of certain
qualities in an object essential to render that object fit to be loved, capable
of being loved ? Can that be the object of love which is in itself essentially
unlovely, odious, detestable ? Is it inconsistency in a God of love, in a God
who is love, to abominate sin and determinate sinners ? Would it not be an
imperfection, would it not be a proof that he is not a God of holiness, were it
otherwise ? Is it not characteristic of a God of holiness and of justice to
impose punishment on determinate sinners ? And may not the imposition of such
punishment be an act of pure and eminent love towards multitudes of beings to us
unknown, themselves in a state of probation, and witnesses of the consequences
which Satan and his Angels have drawn down upon themselves by disobedience ? "
Be those things as they may," the objector rejoins, "you will not deny that the
disobedience of these beings was foreseen of God before he created them: and
therefore you cannot deny that it was knowingly permitted by Him." Undoubtedly.
" Can it then be consistent with the character of the Deity, of whom you afiirm
that He is Love, to create beings whose existence, exclusively owing to Him and
on His part wholly spontaneous, He foresees as entailing upon them eternal
perdition ? " In this question is involved much more than may at the first
glance seem to be included within the limited terms in which it is couched. The
subject requires a separate discussion.


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  CHAPTER 4: 04 - CHAPTER 04
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CHAP. IV. ON THE EXISTENCE OF MORAL AND PHYSICAL EVIL. The question attributed
at the termination of the preceding chapter to an objector, though apparently
restricted to the conduct of the Deity towards a particular class of beings,
comprises in the principle on which it rests the far more comprehensive inquiry;
If God, the Creator of all things, Omnipotent, Omniscient, perfect in Wisdom, be
also a God of love: how can evil, physical or moral, find admission into any
part of the Universe?

There are believers in Christianity to whom the existence of evil has been the
source of harassing perplexity. Among opponents of the truth of the Christian
Revelation, and specially among that class of its philosophical adversaries
whose arguments are built on oppositions of science falsely so called^, on
imaginary difficulties suggested by a philosophy which does

1 Timothy 6:20. not deserve the name, the objection now to be considered is
continually heard. It is brought forward not as a speculation suggesting doubts,
not as a topic demanding research; but as a plain matter of fact, triumphantly
disproving Scriptural statements concerning the perfection of the Divine
Attributes, and in particular as decisively subverting the proposition that God
is love. To show that the existence of moral evil is not inconsistent with the
Scriptural statements concerning the Divine Attributes, nor with the proposition
that God is love, will be the object pursued in the present chapter. It will be
my decided endeavour so to conduct the investigation as to avoid sundry
metaphysical disquisi- ’ tions, in which similar inquiries have frequently been
enveloped. To bring forward proofs of the Divine Attributes of Omnipotence,
Omniscience, Wisdom, Justice, Holiness, all in perfection, or of any other
Attribute, Love excepted, forms no part of my plan. It is not merely that they
have been amply demonstrated by other writers; but that objectors who deny that
God is Love, will at once allow the advocate of that proposition to assume the
truth to a. certain extent of the other Divine Attributes. The objectors
consider, and not without reason, the main strength of their case as resting on
the alleged reality of those attributes ; and rejoice that an opponent should
load himself with a burden which they trust will be insupportable, and should
entangle himself among insuperable difficulties by affirming the reality and the
perfection of those Attributes, and yet at the same time maintaining in the face
of physical and moral evil that God is Love. Affirming the reality and the
perfection of each and of all of those Attributes, let us proceed to the
ulterior discussion.

What then are the points, which he who avers that God is Love, and is met by the
undisputed existence of evil, can reasonably be required by the objector to
prove ?

He may reasonably be required to prove that which is indispensable to the
establishment of his proposition: but he cannot reasonably be required to prove
any point not indispensable. May he then reasonably be required to show, that
the admission of evil into the Creation is an arrangement which in itself
furnishes a proof that God is Love ?

No. He cannot reasonably be required to do more than to show, that the
arrangement does not furnish a proof that God is not Love ; that the arrangement
may be consistent with His being Love.

Reflect on the infinite distance in the scale of being between Man and God,
between human intellect and the Divinity. Canst thou by searching find out God ?
Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? It is as high as heaven; What
canst thou do ? Deeper than Hell; What canst thou know ? 1 Can it be possible
for any man so to fathom the profundity of the Divine counsels, so to penetrate
into the mysteries of the Divine administration, that he should pronounce at
once that it is demonstrable from some single proceeding on the part of the
Creator examined simply by itself that God is not Love ? Can it be reasonable
that a man, an atom, and fixed to a globe which is but as an atom in the
illimitable Universe, should be required to develope the effects which some one
arrangement bearing upon himself in the Divine i Job 11:7-8. government, may or
may not be intended and instrumental to produce on some other class, nay, on
numberless other classes, of sentient and intelligent existences dwelling, or
hereafter to be created to dwell, in other provinces of the immeasurable empire
of his God ?

Man is an atom, and the globe on which he dwells is but an atom in Creation. He
comes not now into perceptible contact with the inhabitants of any region beyond
the earth; nor does his abode, traversing in its annual circuit between five and
six hundred millions of miles, bring him into communication or contiguity with
any other planet. He is practically insulated from all beings which partake of
life, the fellow-tenants of his globe excepted. Yet are there the clearest
proofs that his existence is in close connection with the existence of other
beings; and also that he is the object of contemplation and of constant and deep
interest to intelligences of the highest order, stationed in the residence
assigned to them by his and their Father and Lord. To the discovery of the
connection, between his existence and that of other beings, he is guided by his
own observation and by the light of astrnomical science. He immediately
perceives that a relation is ordained between the earth and the two great
luminaries, of which the one warms and enlightens it by day, the other
irradiates it by night. Whether that splendid orb of fire be capable of
sustaining inhabitants, or, if capable, be appointed for that additional
purpose, he discerns not data for conjecturing. But with respect to the Moon, he
gradually notices indications, which appear to render probable, or even to
warrant, distinct and affirmative deductions. He observes her varied surface,
seemingly analogous to the mountains and the valleys, the land and the seas of
the earth. He discovers that she travels annually with the earth round the Sun,
and thus experiences like the earth successive changes of seasons. He detects
her revolution round her own axis; and her consequent possession of night and
day of her own. All these provisions suggest to him that there are beings on her
surface, who are to be benefited by them; and assure him, that he is linked by
common ties to a visible and habitable sphere. Speedily he advances farther. He
learns that there are other planets borne like the earth, each in its orbit and
in its allotted period, round the same nearly central Sun ; each revolving on
its own axis; each thus experiencing vicissitudes of seasons and alternations of
day and night: and that the more distant of these globes are furnished with
attendant moons, and one of them with an encircling band of radiance, in order
that in every case the requisite proportion of light may be complete. Can he
doubt whether these mansions are erected for inhabitants adapted to them ? He
doubteth not: he is convinced that he belongs to a system of worlds replete with
animated existences, the workmanship of his Creator, of his God. What is the
state physical or moral of those beings ; whether the events which have
characterised the history of those beings have displayed any resemblance to the
calamitous disobedience of Man; whether the prospect of futurity opens on those
worlds with views akin to those which it spreads before mankind; whether there
is found in any of those widely disjoined regions any knowledge of his
existence, any sympathy towards him; whether there have been received among them
any tidings of his deplorable Fall, and of the stupendously merciful plan of his
Redemption ; whether human transgression and human restoration to the Divine
favour are there revealed as practical warning, as practical encouragement, to
multitudes of beings individually stationed in their own modes of probation:
these things he knows not. But his ignorance on all these points affects not,
neither ought it to affect, his conviction, that man is not like a lonely
wanderer in an interminable desert, dissociated from every other form of
intellectual life: but that he is a link in a chain; that he is a member of a
system of beings among the different parts of which there subsist close bonds of
union, and amidst numerous diversities, features of general similitude. In this
stage of his reflections, Revelation is at hand to supply to him additional
information. The Divine Word imparts to him that he is the object of
contemplation, and of lively interest, to the highest class of created beings;
that the innumerable company of angels, the holy and exalted inhabitants of
heaven regard him with unceasing solicitude; that they are all ministering
spirits for his protection and welfare; that they are ardently desirous of his
salvation, and rejoice in every token of his penitence. Whether his own sin and
its fatal consequences, and the glorious restoration purchased for him if he
will yet be obedient, have been placed as a momentous lesson before other worlds
of moral agents in a probationary state; whether the fall and the recovery of
the human race are reserved to impress such a lesson in remote eternity on such
agents yet uncreated, he still remains in ignorance. But his conjectures are not
left without a rational bias. Revelation has disclosed to him the obedience and
the disobedience respectively manifested in the angelic hosts, and the several
consequences of each description of conduct; and in disclosing these facts has
expressly avowed that they are set forth to man for an example. It is for an
aweful admonition to man that the inspired volume sets forth that the angels who
kept their first estate of holiness, kept also their first estate of happiness;
and that the angels who sinned are reserved in everlasting chains under
darkness, unto the judgement of the great day: and thus makes manifest by proofs
from another world, that the Lord knoiveth how to deliver the godly out of
temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of Judgement to be
punished.1 How reasonable then is it for him to conclude that the history of the
human race, and the survey of its results of judgement and of mercy may be
rendered most instructive lessons to other classes of beings amidst the endless
ages of futurity!

After these statements and observations, the question whether the existence of
evil can be compatible with the character of a God, who is identified with love,
may fitly subject the objector to another question in return. Is he prepared
with proof to demonstrate, that it is incompatible with the character of a Deity
identified with love, to place created beings in a state of probation ? If he
has no such proof to produce, if he cannot demonstrate that these tilings are
necessarily incompatible, I am entitled to assume the possibility that they may
be compatible. But this assumption, though on the ground now stated it may
legitimately be made without the production of any additional argument in its
support, will be found to gain strength [1] Jude 1:6; 2 Peter 2:4. from the
examination of reasonings likely to be advanced against it.

Why then, we ask, should it be necessarily inconsistent with the perfection of
the Divine Love, to place created beings in a state of probation ? The answer
returned perhaps may be, That perfect Love must desire the communication of the
greatest happiness; and, when combined with Omnipotence, must be as able as
desirous to impart it: and that such love would at once have imparted to some of
the beings in question, whose success under probation is foreseen, the happiness
ultimately designed for them, and would not have called the rest into existence.
On this answer it must be in the first place observed, that it takes for granted
the very points on which its validity — if it possess any validity — depends. It
takes for granted that the Deity, if perfect in love, must necessarily confer,
and must confer at once, on each created being the greatest happiness which that
being is capable of receiving. To maintain that proposition consistently with
our knowledge of the Divine attributes is impossible. Suppose that the qualities
not of the great Creator and Governor of the universe, but of a human being,
were the subjects of our investigation. Suppose a particular man to be perfect
in valour — in character identified with valour — valour ever unshaken — ever
looking round for opportunities of action, superior to every emergency actual or
possible :—do you require this man, in order to show that his valour is perfect,
to consult nothing but his valour; to be continually exercising it to the
uttermost, exclusively and without limit, wisely or unwisely, justly or
unjustly? Do you pronounce his valour imperfect if he does not thus exercise it?
Suppose the individual a perfect character in another quality also, say Justice.
Must not the exercise of his valour stop, when it would interfere with the right
exercise of Justice ? Would you pronounce his valour to be imperfect, because it
then restrained itself? Suppose him also perfect in love and in wisdom. Must not
his valour pause in its exertions, when they would interrupt the right exercise
of love or of wisdom ? In the same manner must not his love modify or withhold
its manifestations, when they would counteract the dictates of wisdom ? Let us
humbly apply this reasoning to the Divine attributes. In considering the
perfections of God, while we discuss them separately, we are yet to estimate
them conjointly. Each attribute is perfect, if so exercised as to leave every
other uninterrupted in the perfection of its own right exercise. Each is
perfect, if at every moment it fills its sphere of action up to the points of
contact with the right action, at each moment, of every other attribute in its
own sphere : points of contact which will be in perpetual variation according to
the peculiarities of each particular case. Nor can it be doubted that higher
glory will redound to God, and a larger amount of beneficence and happiness will
result to his Creation, from the combined and harmonised exercise of all his
infinite perfections, than would have ensued from the insulated exertion,
however great, however extensive, of any single attribute. In the next place, we
cannot but advert to the preposterous and endless extravagance of the
conclusions, to which the principle taken for granted by the objector inevitably
leads. Perfect Love, as his argument implies and requires, must necessarily
confer, and must confer at once, on each created being the greatest happiness
which that being is capable of receiving. If love being able, fails so to act,
it is not perfect. If an Omnipotent God does not thus act, He is not Love. The
disputant, whoever he may be, who shall bring forward such reasoning, will
advance it, I trust, without being conscious that he is arraigning every part of
the Divine proceedings known to man.

Among all created beings with which we have intercourse, there is not one which
we may not rationally conclude to be capable with its existing faculties of
enjoying a larger measure of present happiness than it possesses. It is
obviously true of every human being. It appears equally true in all cases which
our observation can reach, of animals inhabiting the earth, or the air, or the
waters. And analogy justifies the same inference respecting those animated
tribes whose obscurity or minuteness eludes our research. Therefore, pronounces
the objector, God is not Love. But every one of these beings might have been
called into existence, and the enjoyment of complete happiness many ages ago,
even in the first ages, so to speak, of eternity; and might still be enjoying it
at the present moment with the prospect of unlimited continuance. Because these
things are not so, God is not Love! But manifestly there is room in the universe
for an infinitely greater number of happy beings. Because they exist not, God is
not Love! But each particle of insensible matter might have been made sentient
and happy. Because it is not so, God is not Love! But each being might be placed
in a higher station than that which he now occupies in the scale of existence,
and thus be invested with a larger capacity of happiness. A dog might have been
created a man; a man made an angel; an angel made an archangel; an archangel, it
may be, raised a step nearer towards his Creator. Because these things are not
so, God is not Love! But what if these things had been so? Would the objector be
silenced ? Would the principle which I am exposing have been satisfied ? Not in
the smallest degree. That principle would now demand that the dog which had been
raised into a man should forthwith be elevated into an angel; that the man who
had become an angel, should instantly be stamped an archangel; that the
archangel who had been exalted into a loftier essence whose denomination has
never vibrated on a mortal ear, should instantly attain a position nearer to
Divinity. Would the demands of the principle then be fulfilled ? Fulfilled !
Commencing afresh with the lowest being in the scale, it would require the
elevation of that being, and of every higher created being ; and never would
find its work of complaint, or its vigour and activity in censuring impaired,
until all created beings were raised to a perfect equality, and that equality as
nearly as Omnipotence could arrange it on a level with the throne of God.
Because these tilings are not so, God is not Love! Is it needful to add another
word on such outrageous and blasphemous absurdities ?


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58 CHAP. V. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

Although the objection combated in the preceding Chapter may have been repelled,
other difficulties of a kindred but more modified character will be alleged as
conclusive against the proposition that God is Love.

Perfect love, it is affirmed, would not have called beings into existence in
order to place them in a state of probation, foreseeing their fall. To this
affirmation we are now to attend.

It is not conceivable that the Deity can thoroughly approve beings who do not
act according to his known pleasure. Obedience on the part of the agent must be
the original groundwork of approbation on the part of God. Obedience, however,
if abstractedly considered, might be divided into different imaginable kinds. It
might be reluctant, rendered under the constraining influence of force or of
fear. It is not with such obedience that the Deity could be well pleased. Or it
might be involuntary and mechanical, as little the result of choice and
preference as the persevering motion of a planet in its appointed course.
Neither could such obedience, if the being be capable of higher motives, be
fully acceptable to God. Obedience, to be completely approved by a God who is
Love, must proceed from the principle of Love. From that principle it might flow
in beings replete by the gracious gift of their Creator from the first moment of
their existence with holy and grateful love to Himself, and exempted from the
capability of feeling the slightest temptation to evil. Surely on His own Divine
image reflected in these pure Intelligences, the Author of their spotless
excellence could not but look with complacency! There may yet be an obedience
distinguishable by its own discriminating marks and circumstances from all the
preceding descriptions : an obedience voluntary, the result of choice and
preference, and flowing from the principle of Love; but manifested by beings
placed in a probationary state, enabled to stand, yet free to fall. Such was the
obedience of-the holy angels: such was to be the obedience of all the angels who
fell: such was to be the obedience of man, who fell also. Shall not such
obedience be acceptable to the Deity ? May it not have even some especial value
in His sight? Shall we presume to affirm that it is inconsistent with the
character of a God who is Love, to place created beings in a state of probation
? The objector may probably reply that his argument rests on the annexation of
penal consequences to disobedience. Can there then be supposed a state of trial
without the annexation of penal consequences to disobedience ? Can wilful
opposition to the Divine will be permitted to continue perpetually, and with
impunity? " It is on the infliction," he answers, " of pain, bodily or mental,
on transgressors, that I rest my opposition to your doctrine. Perfect Love would
not inflict pain." What penalty would you tolerate ? " Annihilation :
annihilation only; let the transgressor cease to exist." In. other words, let
him lose the happiness which in his probationary condition he was enjoying. If
then it be consistent with perfect love to take away existing happiness; is it
obvious that to impose pain in any case, and for any purpose, and in any degree,
must be necessarily incompatible with perfect love in the Deity ? But farther;
Offences vary in their amount, in their malignity. The laws of Draco punished
every transgression with death; and are reprobated by the common reason of
mankind, not only for their sanguinary severity, but for their blind folly,
their undiscriminating injustice. You require annihilation to be the sole
penalty for offences against God. Is not your asserted lenity as blind as
Draco’s severity ? Is not your apathy in the punishment of the guilty as
indiscriminate as his ferocity ? Assume that in the scale of offences there^is a
certain point at which annihilation would be the equitable penalty. If there be
no such point, there is an end to your argument: but for the benefit of your
reasoning we will assume that there is such a point. Suppose offences then to
occur below that point. You will not contend that all such offences ought to be
freely forgiven. To exempt them from punishment would be to encourage the
offender to additional transgression ; and to promote sin, so far as the example
should become known, throughout the universe. How then is perfect love to
conduct itself ? Does it violate its own lustre, does it forfeit its
characteristic essence, if instead of annihilation it imposes on such
transgressors the minor penalty of a certain portion of pain ? Suppose the sin
committed to reach the level of the point of merited annihilation? Would the
Deity prove himself not to be a God of love, if harmonising, by means devised in
His infinite wisdom, the exercise of mercy with His other attributes, he should
mitigate the sentence of annihilation into that of some portion of suffering as
preparatory to forgiveness? Proceed to higher offences ; to acts of disobedience
transcending in their guilt the level of penal annihilation, and rising one
above another to successive stages of enormity ? For these transgressors what is
to be the appointed state ? Because God is Love, is there to be no law of
retributive justice in the divine administration of the universe; no
apportionment of the measure of punishment to the measure of guilt ? "Whenever
we witness a discussion concerning the nature and the effects of punishments
inflicted by men, the grand imperfection admitted and lamented on all sides is
the impossibility of adjusting the amount of penal infliction in due proportion
to that of criminality. Do you reduce the moral government of anOmniscient and
Omnipotent Deity within the limits resulting from the scantiness of human
knowledge, and the feebleness of human resources ?

" The purpose," replies the objector, " of punishment in the hands of man is
different from that which must be ascribed to a God of love when he punishes."
The difference perhaps may be less than under your first impression you may have
concluded. What do you conceive must be the divine purpose in punishing ? " To
reform the offender." And what the purpose of human punishment? " To protect
society." Recently you pronounced annihilation to be the proper penalty for the
Deity to inflict upon transgressors of His law. Was the annihilation of an
offender meant to reform him ? But has not human punishment, in carrying into
execution its purpose of protecting society, a collateral design, in all cases
in which the two objects can be united, of reforming the individual ? Human
punishment is intended to protect society by three distinct modes of operation.
It is to deter other wicked men from imitating the pernicious example of the
criminal. It is to restrain, or, if necessity require, to disable him from
pursuing his iniquitous course. It is to impress him, whenever the forfeiture of
his life is not indispensable, with aversion to the habits which have produced
his suffering ; and thus to be a first step in rendering his heart less
reluctant to listen to the suggestions of religion. In this last mode, then, of
operation, human punishment seeks to attain, according to its measure of
capability, the same object which has been ascribed to divine punishments — the
reformation of the transgressor. And has not punishment, inflicted by the hand
of God, in addition to its purpose of amending the transgressor, if permitted to
continue in existence, the design also which has been attributed to human
punishment, of protecting society — I speak in the first instance of earthly
society and of divine chastisements poured forth on actual inhabitants of earth
— from the workers of iniquity ? And do not divine chastisements operate, with
whatever superiority of effect, yet in the very modes which have been stated as
belonging to human punishments, by deterring others from imitating the example
of the offender, and by restraining or disabling him from pursuing his evil
course ? If proofs be required, open the Bible. Pursue the research from the
widest visitations to the most circumscribed; from the destruction of the
antient world by the deluge ; from the fiery catastrophe of Sodom and Gomorrah,
making them an en- sample unto those that after should live ungodly^; from the
punishment, and final extinction in the wilderness of the disobedient generation
of Israelites who had been saved out of the land of Egypt, down to the
judgements recorded in the Old and in the New Testament, as executed upon
individual transgressors : and you will find them steadily applied as warnings
against sin to all generations, and to all persons, ourselves included, to the
end of time. All which things happened unto them for ensamples; and are written
for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come? But divine
punishments, whether they are poured forth upon sinful men, or upon Angels who
sinned; whether they fulfil their commission upon earth, or in some unknown
region of infinite space ; possess, in their office of repressing existing
iniquity, and of guarding against its revival, an immeasurable range beyond the
bounds of human society and the continuance of the globe on which we dwell.

[1] 2 Peter 2:5-6. Jude 1:5-7.

[2]1 Corinthians 10:5.

They look to the interests of the universe, and to those interests as pervading
eternity. Whether they overtake human beings, or any other class of sinful
agents; they were ordained to be solemn and momentous examples unceasingly to
warn now, and throughout eternity, all existences placed, or hereafter to be
created and placed, in states of probation, to be steadfast in perfect
obedience, to the Lord of all, the Fountain of Holiness and of bliss. To load a
transgressor with punishment more than commensurate with his guilt, for the
purpose of deterring other beings from becoming offenders, would be repugnant to
the justice of God. But if to inflict upon an offender, of whatever class or
rank in the creation, the degree of punishment which he has justly incurred
would promote, by the influence of the example, holy obedience and blessedness,
in the same province, or in other provinces, in the same period, or in
subsequent periods, of the universe ; would not every instance of the exaction
of such punishment be not only compatible with the character of a God who is
Love, but one among the proofs that he is Love ?


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67 CHAP. VI. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. A Separate objection to the doctrine
that God is Love has been deduced from the physical sufferings experienced by
the inferior orders of animal existence upon the earth. " Man," exclaims the
objector, " Man, according to your statement, has sinned and is punished ; and
you justify his punishment as merited by his guilt. But what say you to the lot
of the innumerable millions of millions of the classes which you term irrational
in animated life ? How will you attempt to reconcile with your doctrine the
pains endured by the beast, by the bird, by the fish, by the insect, by the very
zoophyte in its atom of incipient sensation? How, on your principle, will you
vindicate the ordained system, general, nay almost universal, throughout those
various tribes, that they are to be from day to day sustained in existence by
mutually preying one upon another; by the ceaseless infliction, on the part of
the stronger upon the weaker, of terror, anguish, and death ? Will you pretend
that these beings have sinned; that their sufferings are penal retribution?
Prove the sufferings consistent, if you are able, with justice. Dream not of
their compatibility with love."

Whatever may be the compatibility, or the incompatibility with justice or with
love, points remaining for examination, of the distresses and pains which
pervade the ranks of animated nature subordinate to man; the cause of all those
sufferings is incontrovertible. All had their origin in human transgression.
When the Great Author of the world, at the close of successive days in the
progress of creation, surveyed that which He had made; He testified that all was
excellence, without blemish, without spot. When He had said, Let there be light
and there was light; God saw the light, and it was good.1 When he had formed the
firmament, and had collected the dry land, and had gathered the seas into their
place; God saw that it was good.2 When he had clothed the earth with herbage,
and with trees yielding fruit; God saw that it was good.3 [1] Genesis 1:3-4 [2]
Genesis 1:9-10. [3] Genesis 1:12. When lie had formed the sun, and the moon and
the stars, and had stationed them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon
the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to be for signs and
for seasons, and for days and years; God saw that it was good.J When he had
replenished the waters and the air with living creatures severally adapted to
the element which they were appointed to occupy: God saw that it was good; and
God blessed them.2 When He had made the beast of the earth after its kind, and
cattle after their hind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after its
kind ; God saw that it was good.3 And how were these countless multitudes to be
sustained? Not by blood, not by mutual warfare, not by the infliction of pain.
All were to be supported, like man their lord, by the vegetable productions of
the earth. And God said, unto the human pair, Behold, I have given you every
herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in
which is the fruit of a tree, yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to
every beast of the [1] Genesis 1:14-18. [2] Genesis 1:20-22. [3] Genesis 1:25.
earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the
earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat. And it was
so.1 The food assigned to the animal inhabitants of the waters is not specified:
from analogy, however, we cannot but infer that they were to be nourished by
means of subaqueous vegetation. The work of creation being now completed, the
Almighty Maker of all things contemplated every part of his work. God saw every
thing that he had made: and behold, it was very good.’1 All was perfect in its
kind, and for its purpose. All was unbroken peace, unsullied excellence,
uninterrupted happiness.

Thus it was in Paradise. Thus, had man retained his abode in Paradise, it would
have now been over the whole earth. But when man transgressed, and like the
Angels who sinned, kept not his first estate ; not only was the ground cursed
for his sake3, but the animal inhabitants of the earth, of the air, and of the
waters, experienced a momentous change in their condition, extensive privations,
and a [1] Genesis 1:29-30. [2] Genesis 1:31 [3] Genesis 3:17. very large
accession of unknown difficulties and sorrows. Though they had not partaken with
man in sin, they became subjected through the sin of man to physical sufferings,
similar in kind to those which were entailed upon man : to the severity of
hunger and thirst, to bodily diseases and infirmities, to pain and danger in the
production of their offspring, to laborious exertions in the search for food, to
mutual hostility and devastation. I do not add that they become also subjected,
by human transgression, to death; because the Scripture contains no intimation
that they were originally designed for a perpetuity of existence. Another part
of their change of position consisted in the arrangement ordained very generally
respecting them, that the life of each individval should be supported by preying
upon the lives of others. Of the precise time when this new appointment
commenced, we are ignorant. But perhaps we may not unreasonably suppose that it
did not precede the deluge. For it was not until the waters of the flood were
dried up, that God, addressing Noah and his sons as the representatives of the
future generations of mankind, said unto them, Every moving thing that liveth
shall be meat for you ; even as the green herb have I given you all things. 1
From that time forward we may literally apply to the condition of the animal
world the declaration of the Apostle : We know that the whole creation groaneth
and travaileth together in pain until now? That a removal or a very great
mitigation of the existing state of animal suffering shall take place upon the
earth, and during a period of long continuance before the end of the world, is
an expectation which appears to be countenanced by the word of God. Prophet
after prophet announces that, during the millenium, when the kingdoms of this
world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ3, most important
ameliorations shall ensue to the temporal happiness of men. Expressions and
passages of figurative and allegorical import, and referring, under the veil of
earthly images, to things spiritual, are to be found in these predictions. But
various declarations are specific as to the extinction of calamities most widely
affecting the tranquillity and the comfort of in- [1] Genesis 9:3. [2] Horn.
8:22. [3] Revelation 11:15. dividuals and of society. War shall not be known.
They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning
hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn
war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his figtree,
and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. And
the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp : and the weaned child shall
put his hand on the cockatrice’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my
holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the
waters cover the sea.1 Is it unreasonable to anticipate, with respect to such a
season, a completion more or less literal of the accompanying predictions : The
wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid ;
and the calf and the young lion and the failing together; and a little child
shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed: their young ones shall lie
down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the oo;.’2 Is it unreasonable
to anticipate that the whole animal world shall partake [1] Isaiah 2:4. Micah
4:3-4 [2] Isaiah 11:6-9. with man in the remission, or the removal of evil which
the sin of man had entailed upon them? The objection, however, is repeated and
amplified. " How can you reconcile the sufferings of guiltless animals, and the
affirmed origin of those sufferings in human transgression, either with love or
with justice in the Deity ? Speculate not concerning the future. Vindicate the
past and the present." To these points, Justice and Love, let us accompany the
objector. There are, however, some preliminary considerations which it may be
expedient to suggest. When man, by expulsion from Paradise, was placed in a
wholly new condition upon the earth, an extensive change prospectively in the
state of the animal world appears to have been indispensable. Had no change been
ordained, the two following consequences, deeply injurious to human welfare, or
even destructive of it, must have ensued.

First. The precluding of men from the advantage, which experience proves to be
invaluable, of animal service and labour.

Secondly. The inordinate and unchecked multiplication of all the different
species of animal life. When God promised to the Israelites that he would
destroy before them the nations inhabiting Canaan, He said, I will not drive
them out from before thee in one year, lest the land become desolate, and
thebeastof the jieldmultiply against thee. By little and little I will drive
them out from before thee.1 "What then would have been by this time the
multiplication of the beasts of the field against man ; what the multiplication
against him of all the other animal tribes, if their increase had not been
perpetually encountered by their appointed habits of preying one upon another ?
The beasts of the field would have occupied the earth. The air would have been
unfitted for respiration by swarms, become infinite, of insects. Under the
existing system, the numbers of the beasts of the field are kept, one race by
another, within bounds. The birds clear and purify the atmosphere. Man finds
constant assistance from among the ranks of his enemies.2 [1] Exodus 23:29-30.

« Mr. Waterton, Essays, 2d. edit. p. 213., speaking of the ravages committed by
the rat, observes that man, by his own efforts, with " the assistance which he
receives We proceed with the objector to the subject of Justice.

If a being be created and so stationed that, unless it be through its own wilful
fault, it will derive from its existence a larger amount of pleasure than of
pain ; no complaint on account of that being can be urged against the divine
justice. So far we are able to study the modes of animal existence, to discern
the habits of the different sentient classes, and to appreciate the measures of
happiness and of suffering assigned to these various beings; we have no grounds
for concluding that there lives a single animal to whom existence is not on the
whole a blessing. On the contrary, we are authorised by the observation which we
are capable of exercising, to cherish the additional conviction that generally,
or universally, the balance, in the case of each individual, greatly
preponderates on the side of happiness. Concerning that which is unknown, we
must judge from that which is known. With regard to fishes, and from his
auxiliaries, the cat, the dog, the owl, the weasel, the ferret, and the foumart,
is enabled in some degree to thin its numbers and to check its depredations." To
this band of allies] might be added the kite, the fox, and the stoat, other
tribes concealed in their subaqueous habitations from our notice ; and
respecting those terrestrial classes which, through the minuteness of their
size, or the obscurity or inaccessibility of their abodes, elude our research,
we may fairly assume that the proportion of pleasure and of pain experienced by
individual beings is analogous to that which, in the forms of animal life open
to our notice, we have ampler means of estimating. It appears then to be the law
of Providence, concerning the animal world, that the portion of time passed in
pain by an individual being shall be very far less than that which is spent in
comfort and enjoyment; and that pain when acute shall be of brief continuance ;
and, whether acute or moderate, shall not bear, in its collective amount, a
comparison with the happiness which that being has received. A lark is chased by
a hawk, and after various evolutions is overtaken, seized, and killed by its
pursuer. You saw its terror ; you heard its outcries; you witnessed its
struggles and its destruction. Yet for each of those minutes of terror and of
anguish how many days had it previously experienced of quiet enjoyment of food
and freedom, in the fields of corn, on the sunny downs, and in the grassy
enclosure: how many mornings, and noons, and evenings, of rapture, in looking
down upon its mate and its young, and pouring forth its song in the skies! In
computing the sufferings of animals, we are apt to mislead our judgement by
inferences deduced from our own mental constitution. We attribute human
perceptions to the animal, and satisfy ourselves that it will suffer in any
given situation as we should suffer under similar circumstances. No basis of
reasoning is less accordant with facts: no conclusion can be more fallacious. Be
it assumed that an animal when severely wounded, or when violently deprived of
life, feels the torture as keen as it would be to a man. The real fact is
certainly not so in the lower tribes of animal existence. They often seem to
bear with little suffering inflictions which would be fatal or agonising to men.
An insect will leave some of its limbs in the hand of the captor, and fly away
apparently as before. Of a wasp, if cut in two, the fore-part, consisting of the
head, the wings, and the legs, will for some time continue to move about with
rapidity. If a worm be divided by a spade into two portions, one of them,
perhaps each, will become a perfect animal. If a polype be divided into many
portions, each will grow into a living being similar to the original whole. But
let the assumption be made. Still it would be too much to say that the animal
always, or commonly, suffers equally with the man. The suffering of the animal
is simply the present bodily pain. The corresponding bodily pain in the man is
very frequently and grievously aggravated by mental anguish resulting from his
apprehension or his foresight of consequences likely to ensue to others or to
himself from his disabled state, or from his death. But with respect to the mass
of ordinary suffering the difference is still greater in favour of the animal.
The animal does not look forward. It anticipates not evil to come. It feels the
sufferings of the moment; but thinks not of their continuance,— of their effects
— of their recurrence. It feels, like a man, an internal throb : the throb is
past, and speedily forgotten. The man knows that in his own case the throb may
be the token of an inward malady which will harass him with torture through
life. The bushes in which a bird found its shelter and its food are cut down: it
flies to a neighbouring thicket, and perceives the shelter as refreshing, and
the food as abundant. A man driven from his settled dwelling, and from his
established means of occupation and subsistence, sees or dreads that all his
prospects are blighted beyond the possibility of recovery. The alarm which
animals exhibit on the approach or under the suspicion of danger is, in a very
large majority of instances, rather an instinctive caution than a painful fear.
A hare feeding in a meadow hears a noise, or notices a peasant, and darts away
with the rapidity of an. arrow: but as soon as she has crossed the field, and
has crept through the hedge into the adjoining enclosure, she begins to crop the
herbage as before. You mark a butterfly sitting on a flower, and advance your
ringer. The insect is gone : it is drinking the juice from another flower half a
yard from the former. In another particular, also, our views of the condition of
animals, as to suffering, are liable to be erroneous. Pain discloses itself by
outward manifestations which forcibly attract attention, by gestures, looks, and
sounds of distress. Pleasure in most animals is ordinarily of a tranquil nature,
and wins little notice. A cow stung by a gadbee, or hearing but its distant hum,
gallops round the pastures as though she were frantic : separated from her calf,
or from her old companions, she fills the air with her lowings. But when she is
feeding unmolested in the field, or quietly recumbent in rumination, the signs
of her satisfaction are feeble in comparison with the demonstration of
inquietude exhibited in the seasons of her discontent. Who can doubt, at the
close of her life that she has reaped, during all her years of tranquillity, an
amount of gratification abundantly overbalancing her incidental perturbations
and ailments, inclusive of the sudden and short pang of death in a
slaughterhouse ? Even the ass and the post-horse, the animals to which our
thoughts naturally turn when we speak of sufferings inflicted on irrational
creatures by the selfishness of unfeeling men ; even these examples and victims
of evil treatment have enjoyed, during the progress of youth, years unconscious
of the burthen and the scourge ; enjoyment laid up in store and noted down in
the account-book of Justice to meet the subsequent troubles of mature and
declining life. And those troubles, frequently interrupted by long intermissions
of hard labour, are also met habitually throughout the period of their
prevalence by the positive comforts experienced in the constant recurrence of
customary food and rest. Had these arguments under the head of justice appeared
inconclusive, there would have been found another in reserve to supply their
defects. It must be acknowledged to be within possibility, that if the earthly
existence of any given animal had not proved to it a positive benefit, the
balance might be rectified by Omnipotence in the grant of a subsequent stage of
being. The words of Holy Writ, though decisive against the moral responsibility
of animals, might not of necessity forbid the idea of their surviving the stroke
of death. I mean not to intimate an opinion that in any case they survive it. As
little do I think the supposition necessary for the vindication of the divine
justice. But did that attribute need a present vindication, the possibility to
which I have alluded would furnish it. From the statement and considerations
vindicating divine justice against objections which arraign the conduct of the
Deity in subjecting the animal world to suffering, we are to proceed to shew
that His conduct in that respect is not inconsistent with the proposition that
God is Love. The free gift of an existence which is on the whole a blessing to
the individual being is a proof of love in the giver.

If we have reason to believe that, to every animal which exists, life is on the
whole a blessing ; we have in every animal which exists a proof of love on the
part of God. That we have ample reason for the belief that, to every animal
which exists, life is on the whole a blessing, is a truth which, as I apprehend,
has been established in the present chapter. In every animal then which exists
we have a proof of love on the part of God. In corroboration of this argument,
reflect on the singular care, precision, and kindness with which Divine
Providence has formed and adapted the bodily frame and organs of every animal to
the element, the station, the locality, which it is intended to occupy. To
produce illustrations is needless. Every creature possessed of life and known to
man is an example ; and by parity of inference, includes all living creatures
unknown to him. The observation extends to their several faculties. In the lower
gradations of animal life, instinct may be the sole guide of the individual. In
the higher classes, of whose habits and proceedings we have opportunities of
taking cognisance, the power of reasoning, in different proportions and within
certain limits, is unequivocally manifested. Let not human pride take alarm at
the assertion. Let not the earthly head of the globe vauntingly and ignorantly
exclaim, " All the tribes of living beings over which I am constituted the head
are governed solely by the blind though sufficient impulse of instinct. I
possess, I alone possess, reason. The exclusive possession of reason is my
discrimination, my characteristic." Reason is not the exclusive possession of
man. By the common Creator of man, and of all beings dwelling upon the earth, it
is bestowed on various classes in a measure proportioned and adapted to their
respective necessities.1 On man it is bestowed

1 Any accredited work entering in detail into the habits of animals will confirm
the fact. I quote, as follows,from Studies in Natural History, by William
Rhine], 2d edit. Edinburgh, pp. 165, 166. "A German artist, a man of strict
veracity, states that, in his journey through Italy, he was an eye-witness to
the following occurrence. He in a measure of strength, of comprehensiveness, of
diversity of application, incalculably surpassing that in which it is conferred
on the animal world. But reason in a superior degree is not the characteristical
discrimination separating man from the animal world. What is the
characteristical discrimination ? It is, that no being in the animal world is
endowed with any faculty of religious perception, with any capability of knowing
that there is a God. Man is born to know, to adore, to serve, and to love God.
Thus saith the Lord: Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, but let him
observed a species of beetle busily engaged in making for its egg a pellet of
dung, which, when finished, it rolled to the summit of a small hillock, and
repeatedly suffered to tumble down its side, apparently for the sake of
consolidating it by the earth which each time adhered to it. During this process
the pellet unluckily fell into an adjoining hole, out of which all the efforts
of the beetle to extricate it were in vain. After several ineffectual trials,
the insect repaired to an adjoining heap of dung, and soon returned with three
of its companions. All four now applied their united strength to the pellet, and
at length succeeded in pushing it out; which being done, the three assistant
beetles left the spot, and returned to their own quarters." Mr. Rhind proceeds
to relate a similar and equally conclusive circumstance, seen by himself, on the
part of a beetle. If the beetle gives such evidence, what would be the testimony
advanced by the horse, the fox, the dog, the elephant? that glorieth glory in
this; that he under- standeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord.[1] If then we
are satisfied that in every animal which exists we have a proof of love on the
part of God, let us pause to contemplate the immeasurable and inconceivable
aggregate of proofs of his love, thus furnished in the animal creation. A brief
phrase disposes of the largest quantities. Hence it may arise that we converse
respecting immense numbers without having on the mind an adequate impression of
their amount. The number of individuals of the human race now living on the
earth is supposed to reach eight hundred millions. " A vast population !" we
exclaim. Perhaps we shall have a stronger conception of its vastness if we
attend to the following fact, which the multiplication table will speedily
verify : that if a person would count this whole number one by one, advancing at
the rate of sixty units in a minute, and pursuing his task regularly during
eight hours every successive day; the time requisite for completing the sum
would exceed seventy-six years. But what is the proportion of the human
inhabitants of the globe to the [1] Jeremiah 9:23-24. other animated tribes ? It
is as one to infinity. When we attempt to compute the numbers of these
existences, language and imagination at once sink beneath the effort. Go to the
nearest pasture overspread with ant hillocks, and tell how many millions of that
single race are reposing in those receptacles. Observe on a summer evening the
cloud of gnats incumbent over half an acre of marsh; and tell the millionth part
of their numbers. Hear Linnaeus striving to express his astonishment, in
departing from Lapland, at the continuity of the migrating armies of water fowl
which covered, during eight succeeding days and nights, the surface of the river
Calix. Survey the annual host of herrings approaching the isles of Shetland. "
Its breadth and its depth are such as to alter the appearance of the very ocean.
It is divided into distinct columns of five or six miles in length, and three or
four in breadth.[1] See the sky curtained by locusts. View the living inundation
of the lemings. Expose to a powerful microscope a solitary drop of water, and
try to enumerate the active animalcula which it includes. When you have pondered

[1] Pennant’s British Zoology, 1776, vol.iii. pp. 336, 337. on these few and
slight specimens of an interminable series of similar illustrations, represent
to yourself a computer counting at the rate of sixty units in a minute, and
enabled to prosecute his labour during the four and twenty hours of each
succeeding day; and ask yourself how many thousands, how many myriads, of years
would be occupied in thus approximating towards the sum. of individual beings of
the animal creation at this moment existing in the earth, in the air, and in the
waters. Every one of these existences is a living proof of love on the part of
God. Have not we in this stupendous survey most powerful attestations that God
is Love ?

"The proof," it will be replied, " is incomplete. Why is not the measure of
happiness bestowed without the accompaniments and drawbacks of pain? To evince
that God is Love, the happiness ought to be unsullied." Not necessarily. Not if
the present measure of qualified happiness be as large a gift to the irrational
creation as can be bestowed, consistently with the amplest and wisest
manifestation of love to the universe. Never are we to forget that the earth
forms an extremely small portion of the illimitable dominions of the Most High.
Nor are we ever to forget that we have scriptural evidence for the conclusion
that the events which take place upon this globe, and the scheme of divine
administration displayed in this little, province of his empire, as connected
with human transgression and its consequences, are objects of the most earnest
inspection, of the warmest interest, and of the most important instruction, to
other ranks of intelligent beings. Is it possible for us, in our contracted
sphere, and amid our short-sighted ignorance, to affirm that the subsisting
amount of animal suffering resulting from the fall of man, and the very modes in
which the suffering takes place (although, if the amount of pain be definite,
the mode can offer no just ground of objection), may not be arrangements
conducive to purposes of universal good ? May not they be arrangements which, at
the same time that they are entirely accordant, as already has been shewn, both
with justice and with love to the animal creation subjected to them, are
physically and morally adapted to the condition of man as a sinner ? And both to
man himself, whose guilt introduced them, and also to unseen worlds, may not
they be most salutary exemplifications of hateful and widely diffused effects of
sin? May they not thus be among the means selected by wisdom which cannot err
for the production of the largest amount of ultimate happiness; and be in
themselves among the proofs that God is Love ?


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CHAP. VII. PROOFS OF THE DIVINE LOVE TO MAN ANTECEDENTLY TO THE FALL. To the eye
of Omniscience there is no unknown or distant futurity. There is in fact no
futurity. With the Lord a thousand years are as one day.1 By parity of
reasoning, ten thousand or ten thousand millions of ages are with him as one
day. When He created our first parents, He equally knew the state of holiness in
which he created them; the condition of guilt and misery into which they would
speedily plunge themselves and their posterity by disobedience ; and the plan
which His mercy had predetermined for their redemption by the Lamb slain for
them in the divine counsels from the foundation of the world.’1 The love of God
then, if it was to be exemplified in perfection towards man, was to be adapted
and exercised in modes corresponding to the peculiarities of these successive
conditions of the beings who were to be the objects of that love, [1] 2 Peter
3:8. [2] Revelation 13:8.

Each of those states, taken in connection with the arrangements of the divine
love displayed respecting it, will require separate consideration.

We are in the first place to regard man in Paradise.

Concerning the state of our first parents, as dwellers in the garden of Eden, a
state of very brief continuance, the Scriptures enter not into details. It was
like the morning dew that passeth away. But so long as the commandment of God
was kept, it was a state of unsullied happiness. Man, stationed amidst scenes of
exquisite beauty; needing no artificial shelter in a climate of congenial
temperature ; exempted from pain and from external violence ; called to no
labour which was not in itself a delight; invested with dominion over all the
creation around him; honoured with the promise of a posterity which should
multiply and overspread the earth; and assured of immortality in happiness if he
should maintain his obedience to the Giver of all these blessings: man was a
most eminent demonstration that God is Love. But there was a contingency, an
aweful contingency. " If he should maintain his obedience!"

Adam and Eve were placed in a state of trial. They were so placed from the
beginning by their Creator. All his purposes are the determinations of
Omniscience. When he fixed the newly formed pair in a state of trial, he
foreknew the result. That it is not necessarily incompatible with the perfection
of divine love in the Creator to call into existence a class of beings, that
their obedience may be manifested under probation, and that its wilful failure
may be visited with deserved punishment, is a position which has been discussed
in a former chapter, and, as I apprehend, has been rationally established. A
state of probation implies the possibility of failure in the beings subjected to
the trial. If all the circumstances constituting and accompanying the appointed
trial are compatible with perfect love on the part of God, the result, whatever
it be, may not only be consistent with the amplest measure of love which could
rightly be exercised, antecedently to the trial, or subsequently, towards the
beings in question; but may be a most appropriate and an efficacious instrument
in the hands of a God of love for illustrating his counsels ; for confirming
obedience to his laws; and for immeasurably increasing happiness by the example
thus displayed before the dwellers in countless worlds throughout the universe.
It may be a proof throughout eternity, and to all creation, that God is Love.

If then we should consider a state of probation abstractedly, what are the
circumstances which, so far as we may presume to judge, we should deem
essentially connected with it if it be ordained by a God of Love ? We might
reply, that the appointed trial should be adapted to the faculties of those on
whom it would attach; that it should be definite; simple; fully intelligible;
and distinctly made known beforehand, and with all its consequences, to the
beings exposed to it; that they should be exempted from all extraneous
compulsion or constraint towards disobedience; that the trial should not exceed
the strength previously granted, or avowedly ensured, if sought, to the tempted
individuals; that the rewards annexed to obedience should be abundantly
encouraging; that disobedience, if it should ensue, should be voluntary, and
chosen with open eyes.

We turn to Adam and Eve in Eden. What was their condition as to the several
particulars which have been enumerated ? The purpose and the essence of every
trial ordained for man on the part of God are to constitute it a test whether,
as to the point of trial, the individual will prefer obedience to the authority
and the clearly understood will of his Creator to the gratification of his own
desire. Under this point of view, the medium of trial, however important with
reference to attendant characteristics already enumerated, is immaterial.
Wilfully to pick up a prohibited feather, or to snatch at the crown of an
empire, would equally prove rebellion in the heart against God. But in the trial
of our first parents, all the accompanying circumstances were adjusted
beforehand with the most gracious care. Various objects which, at this day,
would be temptations to human desire, were unknown, or would have been wholly
indifferent to inhabitants of Paradise. What could have been more appropriate
than the selected object of prohibition ? Of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil, thou shalt not eat.’ Could any object of trial have been more
thoroughly simple and definite ? The fruit of one single tree. Observe that it
was not the fruit of one particular species [1] Genesis 2:17. of tree of which
there might be a number of individuals dispersed in the garden of Eden. It was
the fruit of one tree, the only tree of its species, and placed centrally and
conspicuously in the midst of the garden.^ The verj sight of the tree was a
perpetual memento against trangression. The penalty of disobedience was
previously announced, and was also plain and definite. In the day that thou
eatest thereof thou shalt die. Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch
it, lest ye die? The recompense of obedience, the permanence of that state of
felicity the fulness of which they were experiencing, was equally distinct and
certain. The power of external violence on the part of the tempter was wholly
out of the question. And allurements could not succeed but by the decided and
free assent of the tempted. Could more have been expected ? God is Love !

[1] Genesis 3:3. [2] Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:3.


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CHAP. VIII. PROOFS OF THE DIVINE LOVE TO MANKIND SUBSEQUENTLY TO THE FALL. The
expulsion of the offenders from Paradise was the immediate, and requisite
consequence of their transgression. Yet in the very judgement which the Almighty
pronounced on the guilty pair three signal manifestations of mercy emanating
from His persevering Love were interwoven. In the first place, a solemn promise
was given of a future Deliverer, ordained to remove the evil brought upon the
world by that malignant spirit, who under the assumed form of the serpent had
withdrawn Adam and Eve from theij allegiance to their God. Secondly, this
Deliverer would be the offspring, and the offspring in some mysterious and
special sense, of the woman, who had been foremost in yielding to the wiles of
Satan, and the instrument of beguiling her husband into the same sin. Thirdly,
the execution of the sentence, Dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou a return,
was delayed: and the intimations given concerning the future Deliverer, and also
respecting the labour and sorrow which should attend the cultivation of the
earth by Adam for his subsistence, implied that Death might not be near at hand;
-that space would be granted for deep remorse and contrition to work upon the
heart; and that in the unbounded compassion of the Most High means might be
vouchsafed through which true repentance might be attainable, and might not be
in vain in the eyes of a heart-searching God. We know that life was mercifully
protracted in the case of Adam and of successive generations of his posterity to
the length of many centuries.

While a most afflicting example of the corruption of human nature, a tremendous
demonstration of the loss of the holy image of God in the soul of man, was
exhibited in the family of Adam when Abel was murdered by his brother; the
acceptance of Abel and of his sacrifice was a most encouraging attestation that
grace was not denied to the fallen race of man. At the same time the punishment
of the murderer, not by a sudden stroke cutting him off from the earth, from the
eyes and from the thoughts of men, but by a continued judge? ment speaking aloud
during the life of Cain to every contemporary individual, proclaimed the
sanctity and the steadfastness of the Divine justice, and the certainty of the
doom that would await every unrepenting sinner. It appears incontestable that
the shedding of the blood of animals in sacrifice as exhibited by Abel—a
practice thus shown to be nearly coeval with the existence of the human race,
yet so little likely to have suggested itself to the family of Adam as in any
way pleasing to God, especially as the flesh of animals was not granted to man
for food — must have been an institution commanded of God, and opening a
prospective view to that Great Redeemer, who should take away sin by the
sacrifice of Himself. From the time therefore when our first parents were
removed from the Garden of Eden, they were placed as sinful beings in a state of
penal probation, cheered by animating indications of attainable mercy. Their
posterity inheriting their corrupted nature, were to be continued under a
corresponding condition of trial.

Before we proceed to investigate the proofs of the Divine Love towards man in
the progressive preparations for the appearance of the predicted Redeemer, and
in the complete developement of the plan of Redemption when he descended from
heaven to dwell in human nature upon the earth ; the more convenient course will
be to notice the manifestations of that Love in the powers and faculties granted
to man, and in the nature and the arrangements of the external objects with
which he was now to be conversant. Man found himself exposed to vicissitudes of
seasons, against which the protection of clothing and of shelter were requisite.
The Divine compassion had already indicated means of supplying the first of
these wants; and the recesses of the woods would offer a present provision for
the other. Man was under the necessity of procuring food by labour: and
experience speedily showed that he was endued with strength and knowledge, and
opportunities adequate for the purpose. He was surrounded by the animal
creation, still subjected to his dominion, and retaining a large portion of the
fear of him originally impressed upon them; yet now become in most instances
subjects of precarious allegiance, and in many of harassing or dangerous
hostility. The smaller tribes infest his abodes, plunder his stores, injure his
crops; a larger race invades his flocks and herds ; and the more savage kinds
glare upon him with an eye of defiance as he passes along, and will not hesitate
to attack him when they are goaded by hunger, or irritated by his intrusion into
their haunts. Still, however, by forethought and skill, and by concentration of
force, he maintains his superiority. The dwellers in the wild give place before
him: even the most powerful fly, or are progressively destroyed as he advances.
Fallen as he is, Heaven sustains him in the substance of his primeval dominion
over the other inhabitants of the globe. No living being which he has had
occasion to encounter has proved capable of withstanding him. Every kind of
beasts and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, it tamed
(subdued) and hath been tamed of mankind.1 Various species of animals, — as the
cow, the horse, the camel, the reindeer, the majestic elephant, — he has trained
by domestication to minister most usefully to his support, or to his
convenience. In the dog he has gained a watchful guard, and an attached and
eminently

[1] James 3:7. serviceable associate and ally. And such, with respect to the
irreclaimable species of the animal race, are the hardihood and the sagacity
which man is qualified by his Creator to attain; that amidst the relative
feebleness of his frame as to muscular vigour and activity, and its destitution
of natural instruments of offence, an individual will assail, single-handed and
victoriously, the bear in the den, the lion in the desert, and the shark in the
ocean.

It is unquestionably true that toil, certainty of toil, and also that frequency
of disappointment attend all the proceedings of man; that pain and sickness and
grief chequer his days ; and that the inevitable termination is death. He
experiences the execution of the sentence, Cursed is the ground for thy sake ;
in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life: thorns also and
thistles shall it bring forth unto thee. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat
tread, till thou return unto the ground ; for out of it wast thou taken. And he
complains that for three thousand years he has found the ordinary duration of
his life, the space for improvement under trial, reduced to less than a tenth of
the period granted to Adam and to many subsequent gene- traions. To advert, in
the first instance, to this complaint of the curtailment of human life. The
fitness of the length assigned to a term of probation is not to be measured by
the greater or the less number of years which it occupies. The true criterion is
this : Is the term amply sufficient, under the actual circumstances of the case,
to prove the habitual desire and state of the heart of the individual; to evince
whether he remains unmoved by the Divine mercy, and wilfully abandons himself to
irreligion and sinful indulgences, or faithfully strives under the grace set
before him to be turned from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto
God? When the fall of the first pair was recent, a very protracted delay of the
stroke of death might reasonably act upon the minds of themselves and of their
immediate descendents as a merciful encouragement to the hope that they should
signalise, under a long course of steadfast obedience, their abhorrence of sin,
and their solicitude to be pardoned and accepted by their Creator. But when the
world before the flood gave itself up recklessly and determinately to
wickedness; when because sentence against an evil work was not speedily
executed, therefore the heart of the tons of men was fully set in them to do
evil1; when the probable remoteness of death was perverted into a constant
incitement to perseverance in transgression: it became an act of kindness, a
token of love, in the Supreme Being gradually and effectively to diminish the
duration of human life. The limits within which, since the days of David, it has
been circumscribed afford abundant room for the final developement of the
character. And we have complete assurance that as to every particular connected
with those limits, in the case of each individual, every allowance which equity
can suggest will be manifested from the throne of Judgement. The Judge of all
the earth will do right.

Labour, and disappointments, and sorrows, are the lot of man. Man is born to
trouble as the sparks fly upwards. Are these appointments inconsistent with
Divine Love ? No. What could be more injurious to an unholy being than idleness;
than continual leisure for temptation and unrighteous pursuits ? Look to
experience. Look to the idle. Are they the excellent of the earth ? Are they the
most virtuous portion of 1 Eccles. viiL 11. the community ? Are they the men who
are the most beneficial to their neighbourhood and to their country ? Are they
the men distinguished for denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, and living
soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world ? Then, with respect to
disappointments and sorrows. Consider their object. Their tendency is constantly
to press upon our remembrance that we are sinners placed under a merciful
dispensation of trial; to teach us that our present abode is not our home ; to
lead us to set our affections on things above; to strive through the grace
offered to us for an inheritance in eternal blessedness. Before I was afflicted
/ went astray : but now have I kept thy word. It is better to go to the house of
mourning than to the home of feasting, for that is the end of all men: and the
living will lay it to heart. By the sadness of the countenance the heart is made
better. Thou shalt also consider in thine heart that as a man chasteneth his
son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee. Therefore thou shalt keep the
commandments of the Lord thy God to walk in His ways and to fear Him. Whom the
Lord loveth He chasteneth ; and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. As many
as I love I rebuke and chasten : be zealous therefore and repent. l In the case
of all true servants of Christ, the declaration of the Apostle concerning the
persecuted Christians in his days shall be verified. Our light affliction, which
is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of
glory ; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which
are not seen, For the things which are seen are temporal: but the things which
are not seen are eternal.* Should any person, objecting to the preceding
statement, contend that the aggregate amount of disappointments and troubles in
human life is greater than is necessary for the accomplishment of the purposes
alleged; due consideration of the two following circumstances may reasonably
suffice to alter his opinion. First, a very large prc*- portion of that amount
is produced, not by the arrangements of Providence, but wholly by the wilful
proceedings of men: by their determined indulgence of evil and malignant
passions, of envy, [1] Psalms 119:67. Revelation 3:19. Ecclesiastes 7:2-3.
Deuteronomy 8:5. Hebrews 12:6.

[2] 2 Corinthians 4:17-18. and ambition, and pride, and covetousness, and
deceit, and sensuality, and of every form of worldliness and selfishness. The
more closely you examine this statement in the details, by which your reflection
will show that it might be illustrated, the more clearly will you be satisfied
as to its truth. Thus of persons labouring under habitually bad health before
old age has brought forward its infirmities, what numbers owe their ailments not
to constitutional weakness, but to intemperance or other misconduct ! Of
individuals and families reduced to poverty, on how many has the distress been
inflicted by extravagance on their own part, or by evil proceedings of others
towards them ! Of the secret anxieties and cares which corrode the bosoms of
multitudes, how great is the proportion which arises from the consciousness of
sinful practices formerly indulged or still continued ; or from the apprehension
of injury from unprincipled conduct experienced or dreaded from other men ! Then
look to the varied miseries attendant on war ; miseries extending far and wide
over both the contending parties, — over the party on whose side the hostility
is that of aggression, over the other party who are compelled to resort to arms
in order to repel aggression. Charge not an atom of any of these classes of
suffering upon Providence. Secondly, The amount of which complaint is made is
practically shown by the records of history, and by the existing state of the
world, not to have been, nor at present to be, such as to prevent the rapid
extension of population, the continual progress in each branch of art and
science conducive to the private and the public accommodation and welfare of
mankind, and to the universal improvement of human society ; nor to hinder, as
is most deeply to be deplored, the general prevalence of irreligion and
wickedness. The measure of labour and affliction appointed by Providence to man
is a distinct manifestation of love on the part of God. And this character is
the more strongly stamped upon tribulation by the unexpected and seemingly
improbable deliverances which He frequently vouchsafes to the distressed, even
to the flagrantly unrighteous ; and by the inward consolations with which He
cheers and sustains His true servants under their sorrows, — the peace of God
which passeth all understanding the peace which the world neither can give, nor
can take away. An accession to the proofs of Divine Love still exercised towards
man is derivable from the consideration of the intellectual powers and
capacities continued to man in his present state. If he were left possessed only
of such a measure of mental endowments as would be requisite to meet the current
demands and wants of life, and to secure the general enjoyment of reasonable
comfort, the attribute of Love would stand clear from grounds of impeachment.
How much more powerfully does it vindicate itself, when it points beyond the
range of those ordinary wants and enjoyments to the scientific attainments and
the pleasures of intellect which are not only within the reach of man, but are
largely possessed by him, and to an extent constantly spreading itself on every
side, and ’without discernible limitations ! He explores the composition and
dives into the hidden properties of material substances. He analyses the
chemical constituents of the water which he drinks, the elementary ingredients
of the air which he breathes. He draws down the lightning from the clouds. By
his optical combinations he brings distance into vicinity. He pushes his
researches among worlds removed by hundreds of millions of miles from the globe
to which he is fixed. He constrains the planets severally to reveal to him the
distances of one from another, from the sun, and from the spot where he is
standing; and to disclose with scrupulous accuracy the length of their days and
of their years. He computes their bulk, he calculates their weight, he
ascertains the form and measures the circumference and the very aberrations of
their orbits. He predicts the return of the comet rushing in its trackless
career: and with unerring precision announces, fifty years beforehand, to a day
and an hour and a minute and a second, the eclipse of an inconsiderable
satellite. The continued possession, then, of the intellectual powers and
capacities productive of these and similar results, and of the temporal
advantages and of the high mental gratifications arising from them, is one among
the eminent proofs of Divine Love to man. But to say no more would be to leave
this branch of the subject not only imperfect, but devoid of its .most important
and most beneficial character- istics. Every one of those results is an
additional discovery of the power, the wisdom, and the goodness of the Great
Creator and Disposer of all things, from whom cometh every good and perfect gift
1 ; and thus demonstrates itself to be both designed and adapted to lead men to
adore, to love, and reverently to fear and obey Him; to train them onward
habitually in religious improvement; to conduce to the accomplishment of that
momentous purpose for which the state of human probation was graciously
appointed, the reconciliation of repentant sinners to God through the Great
Redeemer, and their future and eternal establishment in a state of blessedness
and glory. Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall
understand the loving-kindness of the Lord. 2 [1] James 1:17. [2] Psalm 112:43.


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CHAP. IX. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED WITH RESPECT TO RELIGIOUS DISPENSATIONS.

If God is Love towards the human race in their present fallen condition, we may
anticipate that the clearest demonstration of the fact will be found in,his
proceedings bearing directly upon the point the most important to men, their
eternal salvation. On that inquiry we are now to fix our attention.

Before we enter upon the consideration of the dealings of God with men severally
under the different dispensations of religion, under successive disclosures,
Antediluvian, Patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian, of revealed truth through
which He has conducted men to the present hour; we may seasonably refer to one
leading appointment of His providential care, one immutable attestation of His
holy purposes, one decisive proof that He is Love, which has equally
characterised and pervaded all those dispensations. It is this: that obedience
to His laws has always had, as it has at this moment, a settled and an
indisputable tendency to promote the present happiness of every individual, and
disobedience to produce unhappiness. This result, confirmed by universal
experience, is scripturally and immutably established on the difference between,
the works of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit.1 Can there be found a man
to maintain that licentiousness and impurity, that thieving, covetousness,
drunkenness, reviling, extortion, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance,
emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, en- vyings, murders, revellings,
conduce to the happiness of individuals, of families, of society ? Can a
question exist whether love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness,
faith, meekness, temperance, are not main ingredients in public and private
comfort,—main supports of public and private welfare ? Is it not an
incontestable proof not only of the holiness of God but of the divine love to
men that, in the fixed arrangements of His Providence, He has caused those
things, of which He has solemnly announced that whosoever does them shall not
inherit the kingdom of God, to be sources of present wretchedness, as an
admonitory warning to i 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. Galatians 5:13-24. transgressors:
and righteous conduct, which alone can lead to the gift of eternal happiness
from our Redeemer, to be accompanied throughout its progress by the cheering
conviction that godliness is profitable unto all things; that it has the promise
of the life which now is, as well as of that which is to come.1 The narrative
contained in the book of Genesis of the events which took place between the
death of Abel and the deluge is so brief that large details cannot be expected
as to the particular exemplifications by which, during that period, the love of
God towards men was displayed. But we are by no means left without specific and
signally impressive instances of its manifestations both in encouragements and
in warnings. Enoch walked with God. And he ivas not, for God took him? A
righteous man exempted from the general sentence pronounced upon the human race
: exalted at once from the earth to the kingdom of God without passing through
the valley of the shadow of death ! What a demonstration to the world of the
divine approval of holiness. What an assurance that blessedness beyond the power
of i 1 Timothy 4:8. a Genesis 5:25. imagination is reserved in a future state of
existence for every follower of holiness! In the progress of the ante-diluvian
history, when all flesh had corrupted its way upon earth, we learn that the
earth was fitted with violence l ; that is to say, with rapine, confusion,
insecurity, and wretchedness. Here we have an incidental testimony to the truth
brought forward in the early part of this chapter, that, by the settled
arrangements of Providence, sin is the parent of misery in the present life.
When the wickedness of men drew forth the declaration, 7 will destroy man whom I
have created from the face of the earth ; Noah found grace in the eyes of the
Lord. Why did Noah find grace ? The Lord said unto Noah; Come thou and all thy
house into the ark: for thee have I seen righteous before me in this
generation.2 Here we have another proof that God fails not to regard the
righteous ; a proof that the Lord, when he reserves the wicked unto the day of
Judgement to be punished, knoweth how to deliver the godly.3 The divine love,
however, had been specially exercised in the most open and comprehensive manner
towards that pre-eminently corrupt ge- i Genesis 6:11: 2 Genesis 7:12 Peter 2:6.
neration. They had received a warning from heaven one hundred and twenty years
beforehand of the impending judgement. They had been, assured that this period
of one hundred and twenty years was mercifully granted to them, as a term of
trial whether they would turn unto God. And God was pleased graciously to
appoint means singularly adapted to their intended objects of keeping the
warning and the assurance in universal and perpetual recollection, and of
rousing men to repentance, to be in operation during this momentous interval.
The means were three. The first of them, without which the others would have
been of no avail, was the continued striving of the Holy Spirit, by his inward
grace, against the corruption of the human heart. The declaration of God, My
Spirit shall not always strive with man, shall not strive for an unlimited
period; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years, included an evident
promise that during those years the striving of the Divine Spirit should not be
withdrawn. The two remaining means were committed to the instrumental agency of
one human individual. Who was that individual ? Noah. What were the means ? One
of them was the admonitory voice of Noah himself. He was constituted a preacher
of righteousness l, that he might summon the inhabitants of the world to
consider their ways, to renounce their iniquities, to embrace the offered mercy
while the day of grace yet remained. Nor would we doubt that there were numbers
to whom the preaching would be blest unto salvation; to whom an entrance into
everlasting peace was granted before the flood came upon the obstinately
irreclaimable world of the ungodly. The second of the means appointed to Noah
was the building of the ark designed for the preservation of himself and his
family; but intended, also, throughout the progress of the work, to call a
sinful generation to reflection and repentance. The construction of so immense a
fabric necessarily occupying many years; necessarily and constantly visible to
the dwellers in the surrounding region, while fame was spreading the tidings far
and wide ; its unexampled singularity ; the uniformly declared purpose of its
erection; the perseverance of Noah unabated amidst sneers and scoffs from
unbelieving multitudes, while thus by faith, being warned of God of things not
seen as yet, moved with fear, he pre- i 2 Peter 2:5. pared an ark to the saving
of his house ; by which he condemned the world, and became heir of the
righteousness which is by faith? What could be more mercifully calculated to
excite men to deep contrition and to earnest endeavours under divine grace to
escape the wrath about to come ?

We advance to Patriarchal times.

Indications of the divine love attended and followed the descent of Noah and his
family from the ark. The original grant to man of dominion over the whole animal
creation was renewed. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every
beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth
upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea : into your hands they are
delivered? The probable apprehensions of men that another deluge might arise and
sweep them from the surface of the globe, were anticipated and obviated. Iwitt
establish my covenant with you: neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by
the waters of a flood., neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the
earth.3 Was not this solemn assurance sufficient ? In condescension to human
distrust- i Hebrews 11:7:2 Genesis 9:2. a Genesis 9:9-11. fulness and to human
usages, the Almighty vouchsafed to institute a perpetual sign, to be a pledge
that He, the God of truth, would never be unmindful of his engagement. / do set
my bow in the clouds : and it shall be a token of the covenant between me and
the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that
the bow shall be seen in the cloud. And I will remember my covenant which is
between me and you, and every living creature of all flesh: and the waters shall
no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.1 In the mode of chastising the
presumptuous and rebellious purpose of erecting the tower of Babel, love on the
part of God towards men was manifest. He did not destroy one even of the
principal offenders. He did not send painful inflictions upon any offender. He
simply introduced diversities of languages among them; and thus, by confusion of
speech, constrained the multitude not only to abandon their undertaking, but to
separate into distinct masses, as the individuals in each found themselves and
their neighbours mutually intelligible ; and forwarded his gracious purpose of i
Genesis 9:12-17. spreading the settlements of men and the rudiments of nations
over the face of the earth. The period was now arrived in which a larger
developement of the plan of redemption by the mysterious seed of the woman who
should bruise the serpent’s head, was to be granted. It commenced with the
Patriarch Abraham. The wisdom of the Almighty had predetermined to raise among
the generations of mankind a people which should be in a peculiar manner set
apart to Himself; brought near to Himself; dedicated and devoted by a special
covenant to Himself; honoured and sustained by unexampled mercies, so long as
they should be faithful in obedience to their Divine Benefactor ; yet liable to
signal chastisements, and to the loss of all their distinguishing privileges, if
they should ungratefully refuse to keep His commandments. This people was to be
the depository of express revelations of the divine will; the earthly guardian
of pure religion; a light amidst the darkness of an idolatrous world ; and the
instrument in the hands of God for preparing that world, while they were
themselves mercifully receiving a similar preparation, for the coining of the
promised Redeemer, whose human descent was appointed to proceed from their race.
Of this chosen nation Abraham was to be the immediate forefather. He received
from God repeated assurances that from him should descend a posterity countless
as the stars of heaven, who should possess the land of Canaan for their
inheritance ; that his name should be great; that he should be a blessing ; that
in him and in his seed1 should all the families of the earth be blessed. To
Isaac, by the typical offering of whom on Mount Moriah, not only was the faith
of Abraham openly proved, but the sacrifice of our Lord on the cross was
prefigured, the promise of being the ancestor of the Messiah was carried forward
; and was subsequently assigned in succession to Jacob, to Judah, and to David.
The deliverance of the people of Israel from the bondage of Egypt was followed
by the communication of the Law to them from Mount Sinai, proclaimed with
unexampled and majestic impressiveness. It was replete with ordinances and
institutions typifying daily the future atonement and offices of the Redeemer; i
Genesis 22:18. and precluding all facility of intercourse or contact with
surrounding idolaters. After their departure from Sinai the Israelites were
preserved to the end of forty years in the wilderness by continual miracles. To
similar interpositions of the uplifted arm of God they were wholly indebted for
their establishment in the land of Canaan. Have we not here most eminent proofs
of divine love ? They were the more astonishing, because the conduct of the
Heavenly Benefactor of the race of Abraham was one continued display of
long-suffering kindness towards rebellious ingratitude andmost audacious
provocation. The same description may be extended throughout the eventful series
of vicissitudes which marked their history until the appearance upon earth of
their expected Messiah. In the mean time God had been graciously preparing the
Israelites, by the unwearied voice of prophecy, for the manifestation of this
great Deliverer in the midst of them. From age to age, in succession, chosen men
inspired by the Holy Ghost arose not merely to rebuke transgressors, to enforce
righteous practice, or to announce the purposes of God respecting some existing
crisis in the concerns of the nation ; but, mainly, to predict the leading
circumstances which should characterise the Redeemer, and the immeasurable
blessings which He would ultimately confer on the twelve tribes of Israel, and
on all the kingdoms of the earth. Under every dispensation the testimony of
Jesus is the spirit of prophecy’.- the universal object of prophecy is to make
known and to glorify the Saviour. Prophecy announces him as the offspring of a
virgin mother; declares the place and the period of his birth ; his wonderful
works; his sorrows; his sufferings; his death. Then changing its tone to sounds
of stupendous import, it proclaims him as the Great Being who in the beginning
laid the foundations of the earth, and of whose hands the heavens are the
workmanship; by whom all things were created, visible and invisible, the Son of
God; the Mighty God; God with us.

1 Revelation 19:10.


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  CHAPTER 10: 10 - CHAPTER 10
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CHAP. X. THE LOVE OF GOD IN REDEMPTION. The plan of human redemption is set
before us in the Scriptures not only as the consummation of the divine mercy
towards men, but as an exemplification of love so wonderful as to exceed in its
fulness the grasp of our conceptions. In this was manifested the love of God
towards us; because that God sent his only- begotten Son into the world, that we
might live through Him.

Herein is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to
be the propitiation for our sins.1

God so loved the world, that he gave his only- begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.2 When we were yet
without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a
righteous man will one die : yet i 1 John 4:9-10 :2; John 3:16. peradventure for
a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth His love towards us,
in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. When we were enemies, we
were reconciled to God by the death of His Song of Solomon 1:1-17 You that were
sometime alienated and enemies in your minds by wicked works, yet now hath He
reconciled in the body of his flesh through death? God, who is rich in mercy,
for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath
quickened us together with Christ? Behold what manner of love the Father has
bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God*

It may be desirable to adduce some additional passages among the scriptural
declarations in which the procuring cause of pardon, of justification, of
sanctification, of an inheritance in the kingdom of heaven for fallen man, is
exclusively pronounced to be the voluntary and atoning sufferings and death of
our Redeemer, accepted through the unbounded love of God as an adequate ground
for the granting of all those blessings. i Romans 5:6. 3 Ephesians 2:4-5.

" Colossians 1:21-22. * 1 John 3:1.

Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world.1

Neither is there salvation in any other : for there is none other name under
heaven given among men whereby we must lie saved?

All have sinned and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by
His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set
forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.3 Being now justified by
His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. We also joy in God through
our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.*

It pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell: and having made
peace through the blood of his cross, by Him to reconcile all things to Himself,
by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven.5 Who His own
self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins
should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed?

I lay down my life for the sheep.7 1 John 1:29. s Colossians 1:19-20.

2 Acts 4:12. e1 Peter 2:24. See Isaiah, liii. s Bom. Hi. 25. ^ John,x. 15. i
Romans 5:9-11.

Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for
your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich.1 Ye were
not redeemed with corruptible things, but with the precious blood of Christ?

We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, once for
all.3 The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin*

Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, to Him be
glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.5 Such are the announcements of our
Lord and of His apostles upon earth. What is the language of Heaven ? And I
beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts 6 (living
creatures) and in the midst of the elders stood a Lamb as it had been slain,
having seven horns, and seven i 2 Corinthians 8:9. * 1 Peter 1:18-19. s Hebrews
10:10. * 1 John 1:7. s Revelation 1:5-6. e The term beasts is a most
inappropriate and unhappy rendering of the original £wa, living creatures,
emblematical representatives of the universal church of Christ. Full of eyes
before and behind and within : and they rest not day and night saying, Holy,
holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. Revelation
4:6. eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. And
He came and took the book out of the right hand of Him that sat upon the throne.
And when He had taken it, the four living creatures and four and twenty elders
fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full
of odours, which are the prayers of Saints. And they sang a new song, saying, "
Thou are worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for Thou wast
slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood, out of every kindred and tongue
and people and nation : and hast made us unto our God kings and priests, and we
shall reign on the earth.’’ And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many Angels
round about the throne, and the living creatures and the elders, and the number
of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, saying
with a loud voice; " Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and
riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing." And every
creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as
are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying; " Blessing and honour
and glory and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb
for ever and ever." And the four living creatures said, " Amen" And the four and
twenty Elders fell down and worshipped Him that livethfor ever and ever.1 In
reflecting on the sufferings of our Lord throughout the period of His
continuance in our nature upon earth, we ought never to lose sight of a
circumstance to which we should pay deep attention in the case of an individual
of the human race — the dignity of the sufferer. What is the incidental dignity
of any human being, of Patriarch, Prophet, Saint, in comparison with the
inherent majesty of the Eternal Son of God ! Submission on His part even to
slight suffering would have been incalculable humiliation, incalculable mercy
and love. But the language in which the Scriptures describe the whole amount of
anguish which our Lord underwent for the redemption of the world, is
characteristic of intensity of pain and distress. He was preeminently a man of
sorrows, and acquainted with grief. His visage was marred more than any man, and
his form more than the sons of men,11 It was not, however, by the severity of
those trials, great i Rev. 5:6:14. 2 Isaiah 53:3. Isaiah 52:10.

I as it was, concerning which the Scriptures enter the most into details, that
the keenest darts of his sorrows and his grief were infixed. It was not hy the
obstinate unbelief of the Jews, by the constant machinations of his enemies for
his destruction, by the vacillation and unfaithfulness of his disciples, by the
treachery of Judas, by the denials of Peter, by the iniquity of Pilate, and the
brutality of the Roman soldiers. It was not by the pains of the Cross; pains
which might not be in themselves more acute than those endured by the malefactor
on either side. He had undertaken to be the representative of sinners. It was
appointed that a feeling of the most aweful part of the doom in reserve for
sinners, the withdrawing of the light of God’s countenance, the being cast off
by the Most High, should at times be experienced by Him on whom the Lord laid
the iniquity of us all.1 Hence the agony of Gethsemane. Hence the despairing
exclamation on the cross. My God ! My God I Why hast thou forsaken met *

1 Isaiah 53:6.

2 There are various’passages in the Psalms, as illustrated by Bishop Horsley in
his translation and the accompanying notes, which appear prophetically to
indicate that our sinless Redeemer would be called on different occasions to
sustain these terrors of the Lord, See Psalm Ixxxviii. The energy of the Divine
Love is manifested in the amount of the provocations which it pardons. To the
sinfulness, the corruptions, the continual rebellions of the human heart, in
every period of the world, reference has already been made. But still farther;
the love of God is magnified by its unbounded comprehensiveness.

Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of
the wicked; but tliat the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye,
from your evil ways : for why will ye die ? 1 God our Saviour would have all men
to be saved.2 Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.3 Christ was the
true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world* We are
sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.5

Jesus Christ the righteous is the propitiation for our sins ; and not for ours
only, but also for the sins of the whole world.6 1 Ezekiel 33:11. « John 1:9.

2 1 Timothy 2:4. * Hebrews 10:10. , 3 John 5:40. « 1 John 2:1-2.

We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of
death, crowned with glory and honour, that he, by the grace of God, should taste
death for every man. 1 Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every
creature.2

Thus universal is the love of God. There is no exclusion, no rejection. No man
is overlooked, no man is forsaken, no man is passed by. Every man has sinned :
for every man the Son of God has suffered. To every man, through the sufferings
of the Son of God, is grace vouchsafed sufficient to enable him to attain
salvation. Not only are all these blessings spontaneously provided by the Divine
Love for mankind, and offered to every individual; the matchless condescension
of God proceeds still farther. The Father against whom we rebelled, the Son who
of His own free love came down from heaven and died for us, the Holy Ghost
addressing us by his inspired messengers the apostles, unite, as it were, in
earnestly requesting and entreating men to accept the astonishing mercies of
Redemption. Now then we are i Hebrews 2:9 :2 Mark 16:15. ambassadors for Christ,
as though God did beseech you by us. We pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye
reconciled to God,1

Here, perhaps, some objector may inquire ; " Whence is it that the sufferings
and the death of Christ were necessary to render God, thus characterised as
Love, placable to transgressors?"

They were not necessary to render God placable to transgressors. They had no
effect in rendering him placable. They were in no degree designed to render Him
placable. There is no greater mistake concerning the purpose of the atonement of
Christ than to imagine that its object was to render God placable. And why?
Because God is love: because the very phrase of rendering God placable implies,
ignorantly and falsely, the existence of a feeling in the Divine Mind which
never had a place, nor by any possibility could have a place there : because,
foreknowing from eternity all the transgressions of every individual of the then
uncreated human race, His love arranged, beforehand, means of pardon through the
sacrifice of the Lamb thus slain in the Divine counsels/rom the foundation of ’
2 Corinthians 5:20. the world. Of what character must the means be? They must be
means which, while they should signally display the love of God towards mankind,
should also be in full accordance with His own holiness, and with the moral
interests of the universe. Forgiveness was to be extended to the sinner. But
how, without affording encouragement to sin ? The penalty of the law was to be
remitted. But how, without impairing the authority of the law ? A wicked world
was to be replaced in the favour of God. But how, without disparagement to His
justice ? A revolted province of his empire was to be reinstated in its
privileges, yet neither making nor offering to make any satisfaction for its
rebellion. But how, without holding forward inducements to other provinces to
rebel ? The Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom, alike infinite, had provided. We
have seen, and do testify, that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the
world.1 Grace be to you, and peace from God the Father, and front our Lord Jesus
Christ, who gave himself for our sins? The life which I now live in the flesh, I
live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.3
for.

, i John 4:14. Galatians 1:4 3 Galatians 2:20. there is one God, and one
Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom
for all.1 Who is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and
redemption."1 Christ was the end of the law for righteousness.3 Think not that 1
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* Christ has
redeemed us from the eurse of the law, being made a curse for «s.5 Were not then
the means employed by the Divine Mercy for the salvation of mankind so
stupendously rich in wisdom and in love as to deserve the inexpressible
admiration of men and of angels? Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of the Father,
God manifested in the flesh: he who in the beginning was with God, and wasGod,
He by whom all things were created, visible and invisible, was made man, and
crucified for men! If we could suppose ourselves wholly unacquainted with the
plan which it pleased God to adopt for our redemption; if we were then to i1
Timothy 2:5-6. * 1 Corinthians 1:30:3 Romans 10:4. * Matthew 5:17-18. *
Galatians 3:13. conceive ourselves to be informed that in some distant region of
the universe there is a world the inhabitants of which have grievously sinned
against their Creator, and are lying under the sentence of everlasting
condemnation; if we were farther apprised that the compassionate love of their
God purposes to bestow, on this rebellious race, an opportunity of being
restored to his favour, and has devised means for making atonement for their
transgressions and for rescuing the transgressor from the dominion of sin, means
which not only are in perfect consistency with his wisdom, and his justice, and
his holiness, but in the highest degree prove and glorify his love : though our
minds, incapable of searching out the counsels of the Almighty, could not arrive
at any discovery, could not attain to any reasonable conjecture, as to the
nature of the means by which that ruined world was to be saved; could our
imagination represent to itself any means so glorious in love, so wonderful in
mercy, as those by which our heavenly Father has actually been pleased to save
ourselves ? The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ was the conclusive proof
that He was the Son of

God; that the ransom which He had paid for sinners was accepted; and that He
would raise all men from the dead at the last day. He ascended into heaven there
to exercise in His glorified human nature the fulness of Divine Power for the
protection of his Universal Church, and for the salvation of every individual
who shall believe in Him, and obey Him. Thus He ever liveth to make intercession
for us. If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous, the propitiation for our sins.1 To Him the final judgement of all
mankind is committed, because He was the Son of Man 2; because, though the Son
of God, He humbled himself to become man. And thus His penitent servants are
mercifully assured that they will not have a Judge who cannot be touched with a
feeling of our infirmities ; but one who on earth was made like unto his
brethren, and was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.8 Are
human salvation and the plan by which it is accomplished objects of interest to
men only ? They are objects of the deepest interest i Hebr. 8:25:1 John 2:1-2.

« John 5:22-27. s Hebrews 2:17. Hebrews 4:15. to the universe. They are objects
of the most influential importance to all created beings endued with moral
responsibility who may now exist, or who may be called into existence during
eternity, in any portion of the unbounded empire of the Lord of all. The
inhabitants of earth are a spectacle to angels. There is joy in heaven over
every penitent sinner. The angels are all ministering spirits unto those who
shall be heirs of salvation. The angels of the very children presented to our
Redeemer constantly beheld the face of the Lord God. The mysteries of Redemption
are depths into which the angels desire to look. The calling of the Gentiles
into the Universal Church of Christ is also to the intent that unto the
principalities and powers in heavenly places might be made known by the Church
the manifold wisdom of God.1 Think not that this earth, the abode of sinful man,
this minute orb, this feeble spark amidst the blaze of the firmament, is an
object little worthy of notice, in comparison with the magnificence of the
surrounding wonders of Creative Power. Is it presumption to intimate that it may
be more worthy of admiring contemplation, than ’ Ephesians 3:10. each of them,
than all? Is it presumption to believe that this earth has been dignified in a
manner, and to a degree, unexampled in any other of the heavenly bodies
revolving in infinite space ? If on this minute and glimmering orb, and for the
salvation of its sinful inhabitants, Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of
God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God ; made himself of no
reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the
likeness of men : and being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself, and
became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross’; then it is not
presumption to believe that on this earth was accomplished the most astonishing,
the most memorable, event that ever took place in the Divine administration of
the universe; that on this earth was displayed the most decisive, the most
affecting, proof ever given to the Universe that God is Love. On certain parts
of the Divine proceedings, either past, or prophetically announced as still
future, questions have arisen, the subjects of which a due consideration of the
intimate connection between events characterising the con- i Php 2:5-8. duct of
God respecting mankind and the moral interests of the Universe may tend in some
measure to elucidate.

It has not unfrequently been asked, Why, after the original promise to Adam of a
Redeemer, four thousand years were permitted to elapse before his appearance
upon earth ? Why were ignorance, and superstition, and idolatry, and wickedness,
suffered during so many ages to reign triumphant over the world ? To all such
inquiries it would be a conclusive reply, that He who gave the promise knew the
fittest period for fulfilling it; and therefore reserved the times and the
seasons in his own power. " Yet might it not have been expected," the objector
answers, " that a shorter interval would have been sufficient to dispose men to
welcome the Messiah ?" Even the longer interval did not suffice to produce that
effect. But setting apart that line of discussion, is there not reason for
believing that the open spectacle of a world perseveringly continuing during
four thousand years under the dominion of evil, notwithstanding the revelations
of the Divine wil^ from time to time vouchsafed to it, and the mercies and the
judgements displayed upon it» might most beneficially manifest to beings in
worlds beyond our own sphere such proofs of the malignity and hatefulness of
sin, as the same spectacle exhibited during a shorter period would not have
adequately impressed ?

Surprise has also been felt at the slow progress of Christianity during eighteen
hundred years since its promulgation: at the corruptions by which it has been
and is still defaced; and at its little more than nominal influence over a large
proportion of its professors. But may not these unequivocal demonstrations of
human depravity and of the tenacity with which sin retains its victims in
blindness and bondage, be employed as warnings and spiritual safeguards to
dwellers in other worlds now in a state of trial, or hereafter to be created and
to be subjected to probation ?

There is yet to ensue upon earth a period prophetically announced in the Old
Testament under a variety of grand and beautiful figures indicative of holiness
and happiness, and extended in the New Testament over not fewer than a thousand
years, during which the author of evil shall be chained in the abyss, and all
the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His
Christ. That God, after having permitted the wilful disobedience of men to
overspread the earth with confusion and misery during many thousands of years,
should glorify himself by rendering it in long and splendid contrast the
manifestion of righteousness and felicity, can excite no surprise. But when we
read that at the termination of the Millennium Satan, loosed from his prison,
shall find the nations of the earth prepared for a new outbreak of rebellion
against the Most High1, we are astounded. Yet may not this overwhelming
demonstration that sin, when once it has implanted itself in any class of
beings, can be eradicated by no power but that of the Holy Spirit of God, be a
lesson of instruction to the Universe, and throughout eternity ?

If the preceding suppositions be realities, are not they collateral signs that
God is Love ?

’ Revelation 20:7.


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CHAP. XI. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED WITH RESPECT TO A FUTURE EXISTENCE. The
comfort of a Christian in the present life rests on the prospect of a happy
existence after death. Beset by the troubles common to all men ; bearing
strongly in mind the uncertainty and the short continuance of all earthly
possessions and enjoyments ; perpetually feeling and lamenting his sinfulness,
and the worth- lessness of his best actions when tried by the holy law of his
God : he turns his thoughts to futurity, and supports and delights himself in
the hope that, when this house of his earthly tabernacle is dissolved, it shall
be replaced to him by a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in
the heavens. In this hope the true disciple of Christ is warranted by the
Gospel, which has brought life and immortality to light. He is warranted in it
by the most solemn and express declarations of his Saviour. Our Lord affirms,
that in his Father’s house are many mansions ; that in the unbounded and
illimitable dominions of the Almighty, in comparison with the extent of which
all conceivable space is but a point, are worlds beyond worlds capable of
receiving all the created servants of God, whether angels, or spirits of just
men made perfect, or purified beings of whatever other nature and description
unrevealed to man, into abodes of secure and appropriate happiness. Of this
animating intelligence He communicates, as it were, additional confirmation to
his apostles, by an assurance uniting the simple dignity of truth with the most
affectionate condescension— If it were not so, I would have told you: had the
case been otherwise, I would not have deluded you by any groundless
expectations. He proceeds to apply the encouragement specially to themselves.
And in that application, manifestly addressing them also as the representatives
of all who should afterwards believe on him through their ministry and the
ministry of their successors, he carries forward the promise to all true
Christians even to the end of the world:— / go to prepare a place for you.1
Respecting these promised mansions in his i John 14:2.

Father’s house, in which our Redeemer since His ascension into heaven has
provided an everlasting abode for His faithful followers; respecting the nature
of the blessedness which shall there be their unfading portion; and respecting
the changes which, if we ourselves shall be admitted through His atonement and
His grace into those regions of bliss, will be wrought in our own nature, in our
capacities and in our powers, in order to qualify us for the occupations of
heaven, for the society of angels, for the presence of God; the mind may
reasonably feel a deep and longing interest, an ardent desire for all the
knowledge which it is lawful for man to possess. Yet reflection will speedily
convince us that these are subjects on which our present knowledge of
particulars cannot be great. Great it cannot be; for it cannot exceed the
measure of our existing faculties. If the righteous are to be exalted after
death to a more elevated state of existence, to a state of existence wholly
different from the condition of mortal life upon earth; it is to be presumed
that faculties wholly new, and adapted to new objects, will be conferred on
those glorified spirits. Even if the intellectual change then to be manifested
in the immortal soul were but a change in degree; if the powers then to be
possessed, then to be developed and exercised in the contemplation and the
enjoyment of the unknown objects of eternity, were to be merely the present
faculties of man exalted and expanded in measure proportioned to the difference
between earth and heaven: how could that immense enlargement be comprehended by
the existing scantiness of human perception? How then could new faculties, how
could the objects with which they are to be conversant, be rendered intelligible
to man ? How could they be comprehended by a being who does not himself possess
the faculties, nor understand nor know the objects ? Take a man who has been
blind from his birth. Can you communicate to him any distinct idea of the
faculty of seeing ? Can you cause him to understand the nature of light, of
colours, of the visible forms and appearances of the woods, and the mountains,
and the clouds ? Take another who has always been completely deaf. Can you
convey to him any conception of sound, of language, of conversation, of music ?
As reasonably might you expect to render sight intelligible to the blind, and
hearing to the deaf, as to comprehend in your present state the unknown
faculties with the possession of which departed saints are to be blessed, or the
objects on which those faculties are to be employed. It is not only in
magnitude, but in nature also, that the things which God has prepared for those
who love Him are such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it
entered into the heart of man to conceive. Neither would it be consistent with
the wisdom of God, so far as we may presume to reason by the analogies which the
Scriptures furnish, nor with the statements which he has there recorded
concerning human obligations, that the knowledge in question should be largely
communicated to men, even if they were capable of understanding it. A wide
insight into the details of future existence beyond the grave would have been
inconsistent with that course of duty which God has appointed to us while on
this side of the grave. As followers of Christ we are to walk by faith, not by
sight.1 We are not to be made acquainted with the i 2 Corinthians 5:7. mysteries
of eternity. We are not to refuse to trust our Redeemer who died for us farther
than we see him. We are to remember that faith is the evidence of things unseen.
Though our life, if we are servants of Christ, is hid with Christ in God; though
it doth not yet appear what we shall be1; we are with undoubting confidence to
leave the sources and the adjustment of everlasting blessedness in the hands of
its glorious author, who purchased it on the Cross. But while, for the evident
reasons which have been stated, possibly on various other accounts also, which
do not or cannot present themselves to mortal conceptions, the New Testament
does not profess to furnish detailed information concerning the nature of
heavenly existence; it neither forbears from throwing some general light on the
subject, nor suffers us to remain without decisive demonstration that the
happiness and glory reserved for the blessed in heaven are greater than language
can describe.

Let us attend to some of the leading circumstances which the Scriptures have
revealed.

1 Colossians 3:3: 1 John 3:2. In the first place, the Sacred Writings pronounce
that unhappiness of every kind and in every degree, together with all the
causes, and instruments, and occasions of discomfort, shall be for ever unknown
in heaven. There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither
shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away, ’ These are
appendages and adjuncts to the mortal frame, and together with the mortal frame
will drop away from the ascending spirit of the righteous. Above all, sin, the
origin of all misery, is excluded. Into the kingdom of God nothing entereth that
defileth. The Devil and his angels are cast into hell, and bound in everlasting
chains. To the same prison, to the same chains, wicked men, the servants of the
Devil, are consigned for ever. In heaven all is unsullied peace, and joy, and
security, and holiness. In the next place, the greatness of the happiness and of
the glory of the righteous is declared by the nature of the general terms in
which they are described. The signs and emblems, which are employed by the Holy
1 Revelation 21:4.

Ghost in the Sacred Writings to express that happiness and glory, must
necessarily be borrowed from objects and circumstances which are familiar to
men. And they are uniformly chosen from objects and circumstances which bear in
the eyes of men the strongest impressions of power, dignity, and delight. Thus
the righteous are represented as inheriting a kingdom; as wearing a crown of
glory that fadeth not away; as reigning with Christ; as sitting with Christ on
his throne; as shining like the brightness of the firmament, like the sun and
the stars for ever and ever. They are with God in heaven, in the habitation of
his holiness, the place where his honour dwelleth; with God, in whose presence
is fulness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore,

Farther; the body is to be raised from the grave and again united to the soul,
that in every particular the happiness of the individual may be complete. The
body which on earth was a clog and a burden, a continual occasion of anxiety and
pain, sinking under infirmities, and tending to decay, shall be changed in its
nature, purified in its qualities, fitted for the bliss of its heavenly abode.
Tliis corruptible must put on incorruption; this mortal must put on immortality.
It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonour,
it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power: it is sown
a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. Christ shall change our vile
body, that it may be like unto His glorious body, according to the wonderful
working whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself.

Farther; the blessedness of heaven will in part consist in the delight which the
righteous will experience in the society of holy men of all generations from the
beginning of the world. The Patriarchs of ancient days; the Prophets, who in
succession were luminaries of the Church of God through a long course of ages;
the Apostles of our Lord; the Martyrs, who, with Saint Stephen at the head of
the glorious company, for the love of their Redeemer laid down their lives; all
the Saints of the Most High whose characters we read with reverence in the
Scriptures; all the excellent of the earth who in various lands and in various
periods have trodden in their steps; — all will be assembled in heaven to
welcome every other servant of God as a brother, and to contribute to the
increase of his happiness. But among these new associates from distant regions
and ages, these new promoters of his felicity, the righteous man will also meet
others, once like himself inhabitants of earth; associates who, if they do not
excite equally sublime emotions, will awaken and perpetuate more tender
recollections. He will meet all those friends, all those relatives, all those
companions endeared and united to him by the closest of human ties, who, like
himself, have died in the Lord. He meets them never again to be separated. He
meets them to dwell together in bliss never to be dimmed by offences, by
infirmities, by contentions, by jealousies, by suspicions, by any of those
disquietudes which shade with passing clouds the purest sunshine of human
friendships and affections. He meets them with the certainty that their
happiness and his own, both already inexpressible, will be uninterruptedly
heightened throughout eternity by mutual participation. But still more to
enhance his blessedness, he is surrounded by a yet nobler host of companions in
glory, the innumerable company of angels; the countless myriads of those
heavenly spirits, who, having been called into being by the voice of God in the
unknown depths of duration antecedently to the existence of the earth, withstood
the rebellious wiles of Satan, kept their first estate, and are established in
it for ever. But can men, the offspring of yesterday, transgressors pardoned
through grace, can they presume to join themselves to angels, can they be fitted
to associate with the thrones, and dominions, and principalities, and powers of
heaven ? Yes. The redeemed inhabitants of the earth, justified through the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and sanctified by his Spirit, are equal unto the
angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.l If
the spirits of just men made perfect are the associates of the angels, are equal
to the angels; their faculties must be the faculties of angels, their
occupations must be the occupations of angels. What views of magnified and
multiplied blessedness are opened by these considerations! The righteous,
endowed in

1 Luke 20:36. heaven with the powers now granted to angels, will become jointly
with the Angels ministering spirits to the Most High; will contemplate His
works, will comprehend His operations, will execute His purposes, will rejoice
in manifesting His glory, throughout the universe of creation, and during
existence without end. But loftier certainties of bliss remain. The righteous
shall dwell through eternity in the immediate presence of God Himself; in
communion, resembling the intercourse between children and a father, with the
fulness of Infinite Perfection. They shall ever be with the Lord1— with the Lord
Jesus Christ; with the Son, with the Father, and with the Holy Ghost. Not only
shall they for ever be with the Lord, their glorified Redeemer, but to that
glorified Redeemer shall they be rendered like in glory; and not only in the
splendour of outward glory, but like to Him in the nature of the powers and
faculties with which, as the Christ exalted to heaven, he is arrayed. Are their
bodies become like unto His glorified body ? Their spirits also are become like
unto His glorified Spirit. The words of St. John i 1 Thessalonians 4:17.
concerning the state of the true servants of Christ at the resurrection proceed
argumenta- tively and decisively to that conclusion. WTien he shall appear, we
shall be like Him: for we shall see Him as He is.1 St. John first affirms that
the righteous shall be like unto Christ: and then proves their likeness to
Christ by stating that they will see Christ as He is. He argues that, as
inferior animals could not see a man as he is, could not discern the nature of a
man, could not comprehend his faculties, could not have any perception of his
characteristic excellences, unless they should themselves first be raised to the
possession of human faculties, to a rational and moral conformity with man: so
the righteous in heaven could not see Christ as he is, they could not comprehend
the powers, and the excellences, and the glory of Christ, unless they were
themselves endowed with a large measure of the same glorious powers and
excellences. But they are to see Christ as He is : therefore they are to partake
of the excellences of His glorified nature. They are to be like unto Christ:
they are for ever to enjoy the immeasurable i 1 John 3:2. privilege, dignity,
and blessedness of being like unto the Son of God.

Judge, then, whether St. Paul employed too strong language; judge whether his
language, if stronger could have been found, would not have been liable to be
reproved for its weakness; when he affirmed that the blessings which God has
prepared for those who love Him are such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
neither has it entered into the heart of man to conceive. Judge how
inexpressibly glorious must be that place, which Christ is gone to prepare among
the many mansions of His Father’s house for the redeemed who shall be made like
unto Him, and shall dwell with Him throughout eternity. Could we desire
additional proof that God is Love ?


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  CHAPTER 12: 12 - CHAPTER 12
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CHAP. XII. CONCLUSION. The investigations pursued in the preceding chapters have
illustrated, by their concurrent results, the truth of the scriptural position,
that God is Love. Not that we are to presume, that while we receive with
unhesitating submission any truth revealed from God, and then proceed, according
to the general encouragements conveyed in His word, to impress it on our minds
by examination of circumstances in His works of creation, and in the various
dispensations of His Providence confirming that truth, that incidental
difficulties, or seeming incongruities in detached instances, may not present
themselves. How can limited and feeble reason fathom the depths of Infinite
Wisdom ! Such difficulties and seeming incongruities fall within the province of
faith. " Rather," exclaims an objector, " within the province of credulity." No.
The two provinces are discriminated by accurate boundaries. To mistake or to
disregard their respective boundaries is one of the most common errors of
scepticism in religion. Faith believes on sufficient evidence; credulity on
insufficient. Scepticism is incredulous in the face of the sufficient evidence
which is justly satisfactory to faith. The special objects of faith are facts,
the reality of which cannot at present be ascertained to us by our own actual
knowledge, but is believed on the credit due to the testimony of others. That
God is love, we believe on the word of Himself, who is the God of truth,
who\cannot Hebrews 1:1-14 If, in a reverent examination of the Divine
proceedings, so far as our faculties are competent to the inquiry, we meet,
among many clear confirmations of the fact, some insulated points in which we
discern not its operation, or even imagine that indications militating against
it seem apparent, what conclusion will sober reason suggest ? It will teach us,
in the first place, to ask ourselves, " Are you convinced that all Scripture is
given by inspiration of God ?" Firmly. " Are the words of Scripture respecting
Love as an attribute of God definite and plain ?" Indisputably: God is Love. "
Remember, then, the narrow i Titus 1:2. Hebrews 6:18. range, the feeble powers,
of the human intellect. Remember that you now see things as through a glass
darkly: that the ways of God are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts :
that although clouds and darkness are round about Him, righteousness and
judgement are the habitation of His throne."1 Is additional elucidation desired
respecting the just authority of faith, and the sound process of reasoning, as
each has here been stated ? Behold it in the ordinary transactions of life.
Behold it in your own. Consider in how many instances you assent on the
testimony of observant and credible men to alleged facts which you have not
personal means of verifying, and even though some incidental grounds of
hesitation as to their certainty might be perceptible. But let us represent a
single case bearing as near a degree of resemblance as may be to our immediate
subject. Suppose yourself to have received through life continual and great
kindnesses from a particular individual, in whom you have also ^remarked the
steady influence of strict principles of veracity. Yet suppose that, in a recent
transaction, you think that ’ 1 Corinthians 13:12. Isaiah 50:8-9. Psalms 97:2.
some traces are discernible of absence of kindness. He assures you that,
although he cannot as yet put you into possession of the explanatory
circumstances, you will find your suspicions to have been groundless. You would
say, " The experience of the past satisfies me that his affirmation is true, and
his kindness undiminished." If such would be the confidence given to the
assurance of a human being subject to the frailties and the sinfulness pressing
upon every man ; what is the faith due to the word of the Most High ? What is
the faith due to God, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning1;
to Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever?* A question, most
important to us individually, remains: What is to be the practical influence
upon ourselves of the conviction that God is

Love ? The answer is included in the declaration of St. John; We love Him,
because He first loved us. 3 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
This is the ’ James, 1. 17:2 Hebrews 13:8. s 1 John, 4:10. first and great
commandment; a commandment, rightly so placed and so denominated, because it
plainly comprehends every other. Its binding force rests on the sovereignty of
God; but is farther impressed upon our hearts by the love which He has displayed
towards us. Most justly, therefore, are we required, whatsoever we do, to do all
to the glory of God.1 Similar reasoning is irresistibly applied by St. Paul as
to our duty to our Redeemer. The love of Christ constraineth us ; because we
thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead : and that he died for
all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto
Him which died for them, and rose again."1

Whosoever, said our Lord, shall confess me before men, him will I confess before
my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I
deny before my Father which is in heaven.9 As dedicated to the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, can we build up ourselves on our most holy faith, which was
once delivered to the saints, — a faith which is to i 1 Corinthians 10:31:2 2
Corinthians 5:14-15. s Matthew 10:33-34. In Mark 8:38 and Luke 9:26 the
expressions are, Whosoever shall lie ashamed of me and of my words. work in us
by love; can we keep ourselves in the love of God, can we pray in the Holy
Ghost, can we look for mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life,J if we
are ashamed of Him and of His words ? Our Divine Redeemer descended from heaven,
became man, and suffered on the Cross, not solely that He might make atonement
for the sins of the world, but also that He might pour out upon men the
sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit, to rescue the heart of the sinner from the
dominion of the powers of darkness, to convert him from the love of evil to the
love of holiness ; to accomplish in him progressively a moral transformation,
rendering him so different from his former self that he may justly be described
in language figurative but not hyperbolical, as born again, created anewt a new
creature in Christ Jesus? The change was to be proved by its fruits. He gave
Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto
Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.* How then are we to i Jude
1:3. Galatians 5:6.

- John 3:3-5. a Cor. 5:17. Ephesians 2:9. Ephesians 4:21.

1 Titus 2:14. know whether we love our Redeemer ? He has set before us a plain
criterion. If ye love me, keep my commandments. If a man love me, he will keep
my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our
abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings.1 But our Lord
Jesus Christ is not only our Lawgiver; He is personally our pattern in all
holiness. Having died for all, He commands us to love all men for His sake; and
by this proof, among other testimonies, to evince our love for Himself. A new
commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another: as I have loved you, that
ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples,
if ye have love one to another.,2 Well might it be termed a new commandment,
when renewed by such authority, and enforced by such an example. His apostles
frequently repeat the direction. Thus St. Paul addresses the Ephesians: Walk in
love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering
and a sacrifice to God.3 The First Epistle of St. John abounds, i John 14:15.
John 14:23-24. ’- John 13:34-35. ’’ Ephesians 5:2. particularly in the third and
fourth chapters, with similar passages. Encouragements and warnings are
frequently united by the sacred writers. St. Paul, while he concludes one of his
epistles with a prayer that Grace may be with all them that love our Lord Jesus
Christ in sincerity,1 closes another with announcing the aweful judgements
awaiting any man who does not love Him.2 For this cause, he elsewhere adds I bow
my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in
heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you according to the riches of
His glory to be strengthened with might by His spirit in the inner man; that
Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith ; that ye, being rooted and grounded in
love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the length, and breadth,
and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge,
that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.3

God, then, is Love. His love never faileth. We know that all things work
together for good to them that love God.* His love is immeasur- i Ephesians 1:1:
2 1 Corinthians 16:22.

’ Ephesians 3:14-19. * Romans 8:28. able in length, in breadth, in depth, in
height; in all its dimensions great beyond the extent of our conceptions. He
that spared not his own Son, but delivered Him up for us all; how shall He not
with Him also freely give us all things ? Are you faithful servants of the Son
of God ? Persevere. Then shall all things be given unto you through Him,— Whom
having not seen ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye
rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory ; receiving the end of your
faith, even the salvation of your souls?

1 Romans 8:32. * \ Peter, 1. 8, 9. THE END.

London:

Printed bv A. Spo-mswocmR, Ncw-Street-Sqiiare.


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