Power

Scripture used as proof-text for the doctrine under consideration. It is another way of asserting the pure arbitrariness of the principle or unprinciple upon which He proceeds. Now if a man acted on that principle, there is not one among us but would pronounce it intolerable and vicious. For a despot to say to each of two criminals, independently of their respective characters, to one, “I reprieve you," and to the other, "I am going to hang you," would be tyranny at its worst; and no man educated under civilized government would be able to conceive of it otherwise. The tyrant's power to do as he pleases has nothing to do with his right to do as he pleases. does not begin to be righteousness even though expanded to the limits of infinitude. There is an ineradicable something in each man's own bosom that insists upon this. There are within us certain moral instincts that are as valuable as anything that the Bible can teach us; in fact, instincts of such a character that without them no teachings of the Bible would be of any value. The Bible was made for man, not man for the Bible. These instincts are older than the Bible. These instincts are as divine as the Bible; as much God's own workmanship as the Bible, and the meaning of the Bible, when there is any possible question of interpretation, is to be tested by them. If the general consciousness of men with a conscience says that it is tyranny for people in power to treat their subjects just as they please, then they have got to feel that it would be tyranny for God to treat His subjects just as He pleases. If you try to make the same conscience talk two ways and glorify God for the same quality of act that you would reprobate if done humanly, is to outrage conscience and make it eventually incapable either of religion or of ethics. As is well and frankly stated by Dr. Hamilton, any doctrine that shocks the religious consciousness is

equal to the

doomed.* It does not touch nor even approach to the point to say that we ought to believe what God tells us. If it is a thing that lacerates our moral sense, we are not going to believe that it was God that told us. We believe that God does right, and no proofs will be task of convincing us that that is right for God to do which we would reprobate as criminal if seen in each other. To persuade a man that his conscience is no criterion of what is right for God to do, is a long step towards convincing him that it is of no great account as an index of what he ought to do himself. If divine righteousness and human propriety are circles described from distinct centres, so that there is no reading backward and forward from one to the other, there is an instant end of all revelation. If the mere fact that God is not accountable to any one makes it right for Him to do what it is wrong for us to do, then irreligion is the mode of religion most worthy of us, and blasphemy our most commendable cultus.

In view of what is implied in our Confession of Faith as to the arbitrary character of God's dealing, electing some simply because He chooses to elect them, rejecting others simply because He chooses to reject them in view of all that, we appreciate easily the remarkable contribution of the truth of the matter made by our selection from John: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins," just to forgive us. Arbitrariness is ruled out. He is no more free to act independently of considerations than we are. He does not forgive because there are some that He takes a fancy to forgive; He forgives them not only because He loves to do so, but becausé there would be an injustice in His not doing so. God's justice seems in some quarters to be so thought of, as

* See p. 134.

though it were of that quality according to which God would be warranted in treating every man exactly as he deserves. It is not always just to treat a man as he deserves. Justice, in order to be just, has sometimes to be forgiving as well as to be retributive. Our text declares

that. Error and misunderstanding have crept in by conceiving of justice and mercy, as set over against each other, and working at cross-purposes. It has not been conceived that both attributes can be present in congeniality and plentitude in the same person; and that is one reason why the personalities of the first and second members of the Trinity have been forced sufficiently widely apart to allow separate embodiment to each of the two attributes. Instigated by the demon of analysis, we sacrifice God to the interests of our theological inquisition, like the botanist who ruins his flower by pulling it to pieces to see to what species it belongs. The charm of this verse is that it conceives and represents the justice and mercy of God as so inseparable and so contained in each other, that the only way in which God can be perfectly just, is by being merciful. He is not merciful on occasion, simply because he chooses to be so, but merciful because mercy alone can comport with the requirements of His own Holy Being. He is just to forgive. His compassion is holy, and His holiness is compassionate, being in this like the sun which shines with no capricious or one-sided refulgence, but out of the abundance of its luminous life makes known everywhere the power of its splendid presence; and wherever it puts its touch of brightness, also leaves enfolded within it a genial token of its own mellowness and warmth.

VI.

THAT TENTH CHAPTER.

BY PROF. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D.

THERE are two sections of the tenth chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith that are the centre of contest in the Revision movement that is now agitating the church. These sections read as follows:

III. “Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word."

IV. "Others, not elected, although they may be called by the ministry of the word, and may have some common operations of the Spirit, yet they never truly come to Christ, and therefore cannot be saved: much less can men, not professing the Christian religion, be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature, and the law of that religion they do profess; and to assert and maintain that they may is very pernicious, and to be detested."

Some find in these sections the doctrine that all the heathen and their babes are doomed to everlasting punishment. Others think that they may believe in the salvation of some of the heathen who have never heard the Gospel, and in the universal salvation of infants dying in infancy, without doing violence to the statements of the Confession.

It is important, therefore, to determine what the authors of these sections of the Confession designed to teach when

they framed them; and what has been the history of opinion in the Presbyterian churches on the subject.

In the seventeenth century, orthodox theologians, so far as I have been able to determine, were unanimous in the opinion that the heathen and their infants were doomed to everlasting fire. The Baptists pressed the doctrine of the salvation of their unbaptized children as the children of believers; but they did not teach the salvation of the heathen and their babes. It was first the Unitarians, then the Latitudinarians of the Church of England, and finally the so-called Quakers, or Friends, as they called themselves, who are entitled to the credit of opening up the doctrine of the universal salvation of children and the partial salvation of the heathen. This was made possible by the great stress they laid upon the light of nature, and "the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (John i. 9).

I. CULVERWELL AND TUCKNEY.

Nathaniel Culverwell published his book entitled "Light of Nature" in 1652, in which he advocated the salvation of some of the heathen. He was immediately attacked by Anthony Tuckney, the chairman of the Committee that framed the Westminster Shorter Catechism, in a sermon. at Cambridge, July 4, 1652. This was published in 1654, under the title "None but Christ," with an appendix discussing the salvation of "(1) Heathen; (2) Those of the Old World; the Jews and others before Christ, and (3) Such as die infants and idiots, etc., now under the Gospel." This is Culverwell's statement :

"Yet notwithstanding their censure is too harsh and rigid, who as if they were judges of eternal life and death, damne Plato and Aristotle without any question, without any delay at all; and do as confidently pronounce that they are in hell, as if they saw them flaming there.