July 1927
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T h e K i n g ’ s B u s i n e s s
eral rule of prayer for the pardon of sin. The fullest of the three synoptical notices is that of St. Matthew (12:31, 32; Mark 3:28; Luke 12:10) : “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him : but whoso speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.” The declaration is, as it were, cased in armour by being made to reach to our whole existence. That existence embraces two worlds; and forgiveness can never be, neither in this world, neither in the world to come (Matt. 10:28). The “can not” here presented to us is by no means, I apprehend, the fulmination of an arbitrary decree, but rather the announcement of a law of nature. When the last prop is withdrawn, the fabric falls. The manifestation of the Holy Spirit is the crowning and most potent means in the Divine armoury for the recovery of man: and when it is advisedly repudiated, nothing more remains. Even more stringent, if possible, is the second declara tion : “Better had it been for that man if he had never been born.” The theory before us is neither more nor less than a flat contradiction of a Divine utterance clothed with peculiar solemnity. If our existence is measured out in simple duration, and if the largest conceivable amount and highest quality of sin is only to be visited with a finite share of that duration, beyond which lies a stretch of happy existence reaching into immeasurable distance, then, as the infinite exceeds the finite, the sinner who com mits the sin in view is not a loser, but a great gainer by having come into the sphere of living entities. His future life will be a happy life, though subject to a certain, pos sibly a large, deduction. To presume upon overriding the express declarations of the Lord Himself, delivered upon his own authority, is surely to break up revealed religion in its very ground work, and to substitute for it a flimsy speculation, spun like a spider’s web by the private spirit out of its own jejune resources, and about as little cap able as is that web of bearing the strain by which the false has, one day, to be severed from the true. H abit H ardens I nto F ixity It is not surprising to find that a scheme which pre fers these crude fancies to the solemn declarations of the Lord, should also prefer them to the lessons of life and fact, and to all true and searching philosophy of human nature. If there be one fact more largely and solidly established by experience than any other, it is, apart from all controversy as to the relative weight of environment and endowment, that conduct is the instrument by which character is formed, and that habit systematically pur sued tends, and tends without any known limit, to harden into fixity. This is testified by what is so often said in the case of new ideas and methods, that it is idle to teach such things to the old, and that real progress is only to be made by impressing them upon the elastic malleable mind of a new generation. The settled laws of our nature are the corner stones of our education, as well as the land marks of our Creator’s will concerning us. From them we are enabled to comprehend the dispensation under which we live, and to turn it to account. But here there has risen a tribe, it might perhaps be said, of philosophers, who tell us that the experience of mankind tested through so many generations, is an illusion, and that its lessons are henceforth to be read backwards. They rely upon the guidance of an inner sense vouchsafed to them after it has been held from all their fellow-creatures; for even
Scriptures and the general conditions of Christianity, upon the weighty question how far the present tone of the pulpit and of theological literature assigns the penal ele ment in the Providential and Christian system of the world a really operative place ? I say an operative place, because among believers in the future state there are no denials of the abstract proposition that punishment awaits the wicked after death. But the proposition seems to be relegated at present to the far-off comers of the Christian mind, and there to sleep in deep shadow, as a thing need less to our enlightened and progressive age. So far as my knowledge and experience go, we are in danger even of losing this subject out of sight and out of mind. I am not now speaking of everlasting punishments in particular, but of all and any punishments intelligibly enforced; and can it be right, can it be warrantable that the pulpit and the press should advisedly fall short of the standard estab lished by the Holy Scriptures, and not less uniformly by the earliest and most artless period of hortatory Chris tian teaching? Is it not altogether undeniable that these authorities did so handle the subject of this penal element, in the fre quency of mention and in the manner of treatment, that in their Christian system it had a place as truly operative, as clear, palpable, and impressive, as the more attractive doctrines of redeeming love? I sometimes fear we have lived into a period of intimidation in this great matter. That broad and simple promulgation of the new scheme which is known as the Sermon on the Mount was closed with the awful presentation of the house built upon the sand. But as if men were now more easy to be persuaded, and there was no longer any sand to build upon, Christian teachers seem largely to be possessed with an amiable fear lest the delicate ear in the Church,. and the still more critical eye in the closet, should find their niceness repelled by any glimpse of hell; and to dwell exclusively on that grace and bounty, which, alas, are as far as ever from being generally comprehended and appropriated. For, if I am right, the effects wrought by this intimidation, not indeed in the distinct consciousness, yet in the language of the great teaching organs, is not confined to popular exhortation, but even finds its way into deliberate and systematic exhibitions of thought. G ladstone on U niversalism Upon this scheme of Universalism or Restitutionism, although it was at the outset the speculation of a great man, I cannot but regard it as largely, though uncon sciously, the offspring of impatience in combination with despair; and I speak on it, as distinguished with those who propound it, in terms of repugnance, on the following grounds: First, it proceeds with a reckless disregard of the sol emn declarations of our Lord, who has supplied us for our greater security with two declarations, which seem intended to close the door upon this discussion. One of these apprises Us, that there is a form of sin which is called the sin against the Holy Ghost, and which clearly brings home to us that we have a real capacity of spiritual suicide. The quenching of the Spirit, the lying to the Holy Ghost, which are per se so terrible, lead us step by step to a yet more deadly condemnation (2 Thess. 5: 19; Acts 5:3). There is a sin that cannot be pardoned. This sin is formally described in each of three Synoptic Gospels, and plainly referred to by the fourth Evangelist, St. John, when in his first epistle, he declares that there is a sin unto death, which he declines to include in the gen
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