Sermon 6. On Justice, as a Principle of Divine Governance

 "They have healed the hurt of the daughter of My people slightly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace." Jer. viii. 11.

 T HERE will ever be persons who take a favourable view of human nature, as it actually is found in the world, and of the spiritual condition and the prospects of mankind. And certainly the face of things is so fair, and contains so much that is interesting and lofty, that the spectator may be pardoned if, on the first sight, he is disposed to believe them to be as cheerful and as happy as they appear, the evils of life as light and transitory, and its issue as satisfactory. Such easy confidence is natural in youth; nay, it is even commendable at a time of life in which suspicion and incredulity are unbecoming; that is, it would be commendable, did not Scripture acquaint us from the very first (by way of warning, previous to our actual experience) with the deceitfulness of the world's promises and teaching; telling us of the opposition between Sight and Faith, of that strait gate and that narrow way, the thought of which is to calm us in youth, that it may enliven and invigorate us in old age.

 2. Yet, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that even the information of Scripture results in a cheerful view of human affairs, and condemns gloom and sadness as a sin, as well as a mistake; and thus, in fact, altogether sanctions the conclusions gathered from the first sight of the course of the world. But here is an instance, such as not unfrequently is found, of an opinion being abstractedly true, and yet the person who holds it wrong in his mode of holding it; so that while the terms in which he conveys it approach indefinitely near to those in which the true view is contained, nevertheless men who maintain the very reverse may be nearer the truth than he is. It often happens that, in pursuing the successive stages of an investigation, the mind continually reverses its judgment to and fro, according as the weight of argument passes over and back again from the one alternative of the question to the other; and in such a case the ultimate utility of the inquiry does not consist in the conclusion finally adopted, which may be no other than that with which the inquiry was commenced; but in the position in which we have learned to view it, and the circumstances with which we have associated it. It is plain, too, that the man who has gone through many of these progressive alternations of opinion, but has for some cause or other stopped short of the true view legitimately terminating the inquiry, would be farther from it in the mere enunciation of his sentiments, but in the state of his mind far nearer to it, than he who has not examined the subject at all, and is right by accident. Thus it happens, men are cheerful and secure from ignorance of the evils of life; and they are secure, again, from seeing the remedy of the evils; and, on the other hand, they are desponding from seeing the evils without the remedy: so that we must never say that an individual is right, merely on the ground of his holding an opinion which happens to be true, unless he holds it in a particular manner; that is, under those conditions, and with that particular association of thought and feeling, which in fact is the interpretation of it.

 3. That superficial judgment, which happens to be right without deserving to be so, is condemned in the text. The error of the prophets and priests there spoken of consisted, not in promising a cure for the wounded soul, but in healing the hurt of the daughter of God's people slightly, saying, Peace, peace, before they had ascertained either the evil or the remedy. The Gospel is in its very name a message of peace, but it must never be separated from the bad tidings of our fallen nature, which it reverses; and he who speaks of the state of the world in a sanguine way, may indeed be an advanced Christian, but he may also be much less even than a proselyte of the gate; and if his security and peace of mind be merely the calm of ignorance, surely the men whom he looks down upon as narrow-minded and superstitious, whose religion consists in fear not in love, shall go into the kingdom of heaven before him. We are reminded of this important truth by the order of our ecclesiastical year. Easter Day, our chief Festival, is preceded by the forty days of Lent, to show us that they, and they only, who sow in tears, shall reap in joy.

 4. Remarks such as these are scarcely necessary, as far as we of this place are concerned, who, through God's blessing, are teachers of His truth, and "by reason of use have our senses exercised to discern both good and evil." Yet it is impossible not to observe, and it is useful to bear in mind, that mankind at large is not wiser or better than heretofore; rather, that it is an especial fault of the present day, to mistake the false security of the man of the world for the composure, cheerfulness, and benevolence of the true Christian; while all the varying shades of character between these two, though indefinitely more deserving of our respect than the former of them I mean the superstitious, the bigot, the intolerant, and the fanatic are thrust out of the way as inhuman and offensive, merely because their knowledge of themselves is more exact than their apprehension of the Gospel, and their zeal for God's honour more energetic than their love of mankind.

 5. This in fact is the fault incident to times of political peace and safety, when the world keeps well together, no motions stirring beneath it to disturb the continuity of its surface, which for the time presents to us a consistent and finished picture. When the laws of a country are upheld and obeyed, and property secure, the world appears to realize that vision of constancy and permanence which it presented to our youthful imagination. Human nature appears more amiable than it really is, because it is not tried with disappointments; more just, because it is then its interest to respect the rights of others; more benevolent, because it can be so without self-denial. The warnings contained in the historical Scriptures, concerning the original baseness and corruption of the heart, are, in the course of time, neglected; or, rather, these very representations are adduced as a proof how much better the world now is than it was once; how much more enlightened, refined, intellectual, manly; and this, not without some secret feeling of disrespect towards the writers of the plain facts recorded in the Bible, as if, even were the case so bad as they make it appear, it had been more judicious and humane to have said nothing about it.

 6. But, fairly as this superficial view of human nature answers in peaceful times; speciously as it may argue, innocently as it may experimentalize, in the rare and short-lived intervals of a nation's tranquillity; yet, let persecution or tribulation arise, and forthwith its imbecility is discovered. It is but a theory; it cannot cope with difficulties; it imparts no strength or loftiness of mind; it gains no influence over others. It is at once shattered and crushed in the stern conflict of good and evil; disowned, or rather overlooked, by the combatants on either side, and vanishing, no one knows how or whither.

 7. The opinions alluded to in the foregoing remarks, when assuming a definite doctrinal basis, will be found to centre in Socinianism or Theophilanthropism, the name varying according as it admits or rejects the authority of Scripture. And the spirit of this system will be found to infect great numbers of men, who are unconscious of the origin and tendency of their opinions. The essential dogmas of Socinianism are such as these; that the rule of Divine government is one of benevolence, and nothing but benevolence; that evil is but remedial and temporary; that sin is of a venial nature; that repentance is a sufficient atonement for it; that the moral sense is substantially but an instinct of benevolence; and that doctrinal opinions do not influence our character or prospects, nor deserve our serious attention. On the other hand, sentiments of this character are evidently the animating principle of the false cheerfulness, and the ill-founded hope, and the blind charitableness, which I have already assigned to the man of the world.

 8. In order to illustrate the untenableness of such propositions as have just been adduced, and hence to show, by way of instance, the shallowness and feebleness of the minds which maintain them, their real feebleness in all practical matters, plausibly or loudly as they may speak during the hour of tranquillity in which they display themselves, it may be useful to make some remarks on what appears to be the real judgment of God upon human sin, as far as it is discernible by the light of nature; not as if any thing new could be said on the subject, but in order to remind ourselves of truths which are peculiarly important in these times.

 9. The consideration most commonly adduced by the advocates of the absolute, unmixed benevolence of the Divine Government, and of the venial nature of sin according to the provisions of that Government, is an à priori argument, founded on an appeal to a supposed instinct of our nature. It has before now been put familiarly thus: "Is there any man living who would not, if he could, accomplish the final restitution and eternal happiness of every individual? and are we more benevolent than God?" Or, again, the same general argument is sometimes stated more cautiously as follows; that "No man can be in a perfectly right state of mind, who, if he consider general happiness at all, is not ready to acknowledge that a good man must regard it as being in its own nature the most desirable of all objects; and that any habitual disposition clearly discerned to be, in its whole result, at variance with general happiness, is unworthy of being cultivated, or fit to be rooted out; that accordingly, we are compelled to attribute God's whole government to benevolence; that it is as much impossible for us to love and revere a Being, to whom we ascribe a mixed or imperfect benevolence, as to believe the most positive contradictions in terms; that is, as religion consists in love and reverence, it cannot subsist without a belief in benevolence as the sole principle of Divine Government."

 10. Now first, it is surely not true that benevolence is the only, or the chief, principle of our moral nature. To say nothing of the notion of duty to an Unseen Governor, implied in the very authoritativeness with which conscience dictates to us (a notion which suggests to the mind that there is, in truth, some object more "desirable in its own nature" than "the general happiness" of mankind viz. the approbation of our Maker), not to insist on this, it may be confidently asserted, that the instincts of justice and of purity are natural to us in the same sense in which benevolence is natural. If it be natural to pity and wish well to men in general, without reference to their character, or our personal knowledge of them, or any other attendant circumstance, it is also natural to feel indignation when vice triumphs, and to be dissatisfied and uneasy till the inequality is removed.

 11. In order to meet this objection, it is maintained by the writers under consideration, that the good of mankind is the ultimate end, to which even the principle of justice, planted in us, tends; that the rule of reward and punishment is a chief means of making men happy; and therefore that the feelings of indignation, resentment, and the like, must be considered as given us, not for their own sake (granting them given us), but in order to ensure the general good of mankind; in other words, that they are no evidence of the existence of justice as an original and absolute principle of the moral law, but only of that infinite unmixed benevolence of God, to which the feelings in question are in our case really subservient. But this is nothing but an assertion, and will not stand examination; for true as it is, that the instinct of justice, implanted in us, tends to general good, good on the whole, it evidently does not tend to universal good, the good of each individual; and nothing short of this can be the scope of absolute and simple benevolence. Our indignation at vice tends to the actual misery of the vicious (whether they be many or few) nay, to their final misery, except indeed there be provisions in the world's system, hitherto concealed, securing the ultimate destruction of vice; for while it remained, it and all connected with it would ever be the natural objects of our abhorrence, and this natural abhorrence evidently interferes with the hypothesis, that universal good is the one end to which the present system of Divine Governance tends.

 12. On the other hand, so far from its being "impossible (as the theory under consideration affirms) to love and revere a Being to whom we ascribe a mixed benevolence," while undoubtedly benevolence excites our love and reverence, so does a perfect justice also; we are under a natural attraction to admire and adore the great sight, just as we are led on (to compare small things with great) to dwell rapturously upon some exquisite work of man's designing, the beautiful and harmonious result of the highest and most accomplished genius. If we do not habitually thus search out and lovingly hang over the traces of God's justice, which are around us, it is because we are ourselves sinners; because, having a bad conscience, we have a personal interest in denying them, and a terror in having them forced upon us. In proportion as we grow in habits of obedience, far from our vision of the eternal justice of God vanishing from our minds, and being disowned by our feelings, as if it were but the useful misconception of a less advanced virtue, doubtless it increases, as fear is cast out. The saints in heaven ascribe glory to God, "for true and righteous are His judgments." "Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints." [Rev. xv. 3.] If, then, the infinite benevolence of God wins our love, certainly His justice commands it; and were we able, as the Saints made perfect are able, to combine the notion of both in their separate perfections, as displayed in the same acts, doubtless our awe and admiration of the glorious vision would be immeasurably increased.

 13. Moreover, that justice is a primary notion in our minds, and does not admit of resolution into other elements, may be argued from its connexion with that general love of order, congruity, and symmetry, to which I have been referring, that very desire of arranging and adjusting, which is made use of for the purpose of denying its elementary nature, and which must, in its essence, be considered, if any thing is considered, an original principle of human nature.

 14. Nay, it may be doubted whether the notion of justice be not more essential to the mental constitution of free agents, than benevolence can be. For our very consciousness of being free, and so responsible, includes in it the idea of an unchangeable rule of justice, on which the judgment is hereafter to be conducted; or rather excludes, as far as it goes, the notion of a simply benevolent Governor; a simply benevolent end being relinquished (as we may speak) by the Creator, so soon as He committed the destinies of man to his own hands, and made him a first cause, a principle of origination, in the moral world.

 15. But even if the general happiness of mankind could be assigned in hypothesis, as the one end to which all our moral instincts tended, and though nothing could be adduced in behalf of the intrinsic authority of the notion of justice, it would not be allowable thence to infer the unmixed benevolence of the Divine Mind, seeing we have actual evidences of His justice in the course of the world, such as cannot be explained away by a mere argument from the analogy of our own nature. Should any one attempt here to repeat the process of simplification, and refer in turn Divine Justice, as seen in the world, to Divine Benevolence, as if reward and punishment were but means to the one end of general good, let such a venturous speculator bethink himself what he is essaying, when he undertakes to simplify such attributes of the Divine Mind, as the course of things happens to manifest to him. Not to insist on the presumption (as I may well call it) of the attempt, let him ask himself, merely as a philosopher, whether there is no difference between referring phenomena to an hypothetical law or system for convenience sake (as, for instance, he is accustomed to refer the movements of the physical world to gravitation), and on the other hand undertaking to assign and fix, as a matter of fact, the real, primary and universal principles which guide the acts of a Mind, unknown and infinite, and that, from a knowledge of merely one or two characteristics of His mode of acting. After all, what is meant by affirming that God has, strictly speaking, any end or design at all in what He does, external to Himself? We see the world, physical and moral, as a fact; and we see the Attributes of God, as they are called, displayed in it; but before we attempt to decide whether or not the happiness of His creatures is the solitary all-absorbing end of His government, let us try to determine by the way of Reason what was His particular view in creating us at all. What indeed Revelation has told us, that we are able to speak confidently about, and it is our blessedness to be able; but Revelation does not come into this question. By the use of unaided Reason, we are utterly incapable of conceiving, why a Being supremely blessed in Himself from eternity should ever commence the work of creation; what the design of creation is, as such; whether, if there be any end in it, it is not one different in kind, utterly removed from any which ear hath heard or mind conceived; and whether His creation of man in the first instance, and therefore man's happiness inclusively, may not be altogether subservient to further ends in the scope of His purposes. Doubtless it is our wisdom, both as to the world and as to Scripture, to take things as we find them; not to be wise above what is written, whether in nature or in grace; not to attempt a theory where we must reason without data; much less, even could we frame one, to mistake it for a fact instead of what it is, an arbitrary arrangement of our knowledge, whatever that may be, and nothing more.

 16. Considerations such as these are sufficient for the purpose for which I have employed them; sufficient to act as a retort, by means of their own weapons, upon those who would undermine our faith, little as they may mean to do so, nay, rather who would lead us, not merely to a rejection or perversion of Christianity, but even to a denial of the visible course of things as it actually exists; that is, to that unreal and unpractical view of human nature which was described in the outset. And now, before concluding, let us observe what the world teaches us, in matter of fact, concerning the light in which sin is regarded by our great Governor and Judge.

 17. Here it is usual to insist on the visible consequences of single sins, as furnishing some foreboding of the full and final judgment of God upon all we do; and the survey of such instances is very striking. A solitary act of intemperance, sensuality, or anger, a single rash word, a single dishonest deed, is often the cause of incalculable misery in the sequel to the person who has been betrayed into it. Our fortunes are frequently shaped by the thoughtless and seemingly inconsiderable sins of our early life. The quarrel of an hour, the sudden yielding to temptation, will throw a man into a disadvantageous line of life, bring him into trouble, ruin his prospects; or again, into circumstances unfavourable to his religious interests, which unsettle his mind, and ultimately lead him to abandon his faith. All through life we may suffer the penalty of past disobedience; disobedience, too, which we now can hardly enter into and realize, which is most foreign to our present principles and feelings, which we can hardly recognize as belonging to us, just as if no identity existed between our present and our former selves.

 18. Should it be said that this does not in all or in most cases happen, I answer, that, were there but a few such cases, they would be sufficient to destroy the hypothesis, already remarked upon, of the unmixed benevolence of the Divine Government. For they are in many instances too definite and significant to be explained as remedial measures, or as any thing short of judgments on sin; and in fact, they have been acknowledged as such by the common sense of mankind in every age; and on the other hand, it constantly happens that they neither effect, nor evince a tendency towards effecting, the moral benefit of the individuals thus punished. But further, granting that they are but isolated instances of God's judgment concerning the guilt of disobedience; yet, if we believe that His Providence proceeds on any fixed plan, and that all deeds are impartially recompensed according to their nature, it seems to follow, that, since some sins evidently do receive an after punishment, therefore all have the prospect of the like; and consequently that those who escape here, will suffer hereafter; that this is the rule, and if there be any additional law counteracting it, this has to be proved. What measure of punishment is reserved for us, we cannot tell; but the actual consequences which we witness of apparently slight offences, make the prospect before us alarming. If any law is traceable in this awful subject, it would appear to be this, that the greater the delay, the greater the punishment, if it comes at length; as if a suspension of immediate vengeance were an indulgence only to be compensated by an accumulated suffering afterwards.

 19. Then, as to the efficacy of repentance, which is so much insisted on, when repentance is spoken of as being a sufficient substitute in itself, by a self-evident fitness, though not for the consequences of sin in this life, yet at least for the future punishment, let the following remark be considered, which is a solemn one. I ask, does death, which is supposed to terminate the punishment of the penitent, terminate the consequences of his sins upon others? Are not these consequences continued long after his death, even to the end of time? And do they not thus seem to be a sort of intimation or symbol to survivors, that, in spite of his penitence, God's wrath is hot against him? A man publishes an irreligious or immoral book; afterwards he repents, and dies. What does Reason, arguing from the visible course of things, suggest concerning the efficacy of that repentance? The sin of the penitent lives; it continues to disseminate evil; it corrupts multitudes. They die, many of them, without repenting; many more receive permanent, though not fatal injury to their souls, from the perusal. Surely no evidence is here, in the course of Divine Government, of the efficacy of repentance. Shall he be now dwelling in Abraham's bosom, who hears on the other side of the gulf the voices of those who curse his memory as being the victims of his sin?

 20. Against these fearful traces or omens of God's visitation upon sin, we are, of course, at liberty to set all the gracious intimations, given us in nature, of His placability. Certain as it is, that all our efforts and all our regrets are often unable to rid us of the consequences of previous disobedience, yet doubtless they often alleviate these, and often remove them. And this goes to show that His Governance is not one of absolute unmixed justice, which, of course, (were it so) would reduce every one of us to a state of despair. Nothing, however, is told us in nature of the limits of the two rules, of love and of justice, or how they are to be reconciled; nothing to show that the rule of mercy, as acting on moral agents, is more than the supplement, not the substitute of the fundamental law of justice and holiness. And, let it be added, taking us even as we are, much as each of us has to be forgiven, yet a religious man would hardly wish the rule of justice obliterated. It is a something which he can depend on and recur to; it gives a character and a certainty to the course of Divine Governance; and, tempered by the hope of mercy, it suggests animating and consolatory thoughts to him; so that, far from acquiescing in the theory of God's unmixed benevolence, he will rather protest against it as the invention of those who, in their eagerness to conciliate the enemies of the Truth, care little about distressing and sacrificing its friends.

 21. Different, indeed, is his view of God and of man, of the claims of God, of man's resources, of the guilt of disobedience, and of the prospect of forgiveness, from those flimsy self-invented notions, which satisfy the reason of the mere man of letters, or the prosperous and self-indulgent philosopher! It is easy to speak eloquently of the order and beauty of the physical world, of the wise contrivances of visible nature, and of the benevolence of the objects proposed in them; but none of those topics throw light upon the subject which it most concerns us to understand, the character of the Moral Governance under which we live; yet, is not this the way of the wise in this world, viz. instead of studying that Governance as a primary subject of inquiry, to assume they know it, or to conceive of it after some work of "Natural Theology," [ n. ] or, at best, to take their notions of it from what appears on the mere surface of human society? as if men did not put on their gayest and most showy apparel when they went abroad! To see truly the cost and misery of sinning, we must quit the public haunts of business and pleasure, and be able, like the Angels, to see the tears shed in secret, to witness the anguish of pride and impatience, where there is no sorrow, the stings of remorse, where yet there is no repentance, the wearing, never-ceasing struggle between conscience and sin, the misery of indecision, the harassing, haunting fears of death, and a judgment to come, and the superstitions which these engender. Who can name the overwhelming total of the world's guilt and suffering, suffering crying for vengeance on the authors of it, and guilt foreboding it!

 22. Yet one need not shrink from appealing even to the outward face of the world, as proving to us the extreme awfulness of our condition, as sinners against the law of our being; for a strange fact it is, that boldly as the world talks of its own greatness and its enjoyments, and easily as it deceives the mere theophilanthropist, yet, when it proceeds to the thought of its Maker, it has ever professed a gloomy religion, in spite of itself. This has been the case in all times and places. Barbarous and civilized nations here agree. The world cannot bear up against the Truth, with all its boastings. It makes an open mock at sin, yet secretly attempts to secure an interest against its possible consequences in the world to come. Where has not the custom prevailed of propitiating, if possible, the unseen powers of heaven? but why, unless man were universally conscious of his danger, and feared the punishment of sin, while he "hated to be reformed"? Where have not sacrifices been in use, as means of appeasing the Divine displeasure? and men have anxiously sought out what it was they loved best, and would miss most painfully, as if to strip themselves of it might move the compassion of God. Some have gone so far as to offer their sons and their daughters as a ransom for their own sin, an abominable crime doubtless, and a sacrifice to devils, yet clearly witnessing man's instinctive judgment upon his own guilt, and his foreboding of punishment. How much more simple a course had it been, merely to have been sorry for disobedience, and to profess repentance, were it a natural doctrine (as some pretend), that repentance is an atonement for offences committed!

 23. Nor is this all. Not only in their possessions and their offspring, but in their own persons, have men mortified themselves, with the hope of expiating deeds of evil. Burnt-offerings, calves of a year old, thousands of rams, and ten thousands of rivers of oil, their first-born for their transgression, the fruit of their body for the sin of their soul, even these are insufficient to lull the sharp throbbings of a heavy-laden conscience. Think of the bodily tortures to which multitudes have gloomily subjected themselves, and that for years, under almost every religious system, with a view of ridding themselves of their sins, and judge what man conceives of the guilt of disobedience. You will say that such fierceness in self-tormenting is a mental disease, and grows on a man. But this answer, granting there is truth in it, does not account for the reverence in which such persons have usually been held. Have we no instinct of self-preservation? Would these same persons gain the admiration of others, unless their cruelty to their own flesh arose from a religious motive? Would they not be derided as madmen, unless they sheltered themselves under the sanction of an awful, admitted truth, the corruption and the guilt of human nature?

 24. But it will be said, that Christians, at least, must admit that these frightful exhibitions of self-torture are superstition. Here I may refer to the remarks with which I began. Doubtless these desperate and dark struggles are to be called superstition, when viewed by the side of true religion; and it is easy enough to speak of them as superstition, when we have been informed of the gracious and joyful result in which the scheme of Divine Governance issues. But it is man's truest and best religion, before the Gospel shines on him. If our race be in a fallen and depraved state, what ought our religion to be but anxiety and remorse, till God comforts us? Surely, to be in gloom, to view ourselves with horror, to look about to the right hand and to the left for means of safety, to catch at every thing, yet trust in nothing, to do all we can, and try to do more than all, and, after all, to wait in miserable suspense, naked and shivering, among the trees of the garden, for the hour of His coming, and meanwhile to fancy sounds of woe in every wind stirring the leaves about us, in a word, to be superstitious, is nature's best offering, her most acceptable service, her most mature and enlarged wisdom, in the presence of a holy and offended God. They who are not superstitious without the Gospel, will not be religious with it: and I would that even in us, who have the Gospel, there were more of superstition than there is; for much is it to be feared that our security about ourselves arises from defect in self-knowledge rather than in fulness of faith, and that we appropriate to ourselves promises which we cannot read.

 25. To conclude. Thoughts concerning the Justice of God, such as those which have engaged our attention, though they do not, of course, explain to us the mystery of the great Christian Atonement for sin, show the use of the doctrine to us sinners. Why Christ's death was requisite for our salvation, and how it has obtained it, will ever be a mystery in this life. But, on the other hand, the contemplation of our guilt is so growing and so overwhelming a misery, as our eyes open on our real state, that some strong act (so to call it) was necessary, on God's part, to counterbalance the tokens of His wrath which are around us, to calm and reassure us, and to be the ground and the medium of our faith. It seems, indeed, as if, in a practical point of view, no mere promise was sufficient to undo the impression left on the imagination by the facts of Natural Religion; but in the death of His Son we have His deed  His irreversible deed making His forgiveness of sin, and His reconciliation with our race, no contingency, but an event of past history. He has vouchsafed to evidence His faithfulness and sincerity towards us (if we may dare so to speak) as we must show ours towards Him, not in word, but by action; which becomes therefore the pledge of His mercy, and the plea on which we draw near to His presence; or, in the words of Scripture, whereas "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God," Christ Jesus is "set forth as a propitiation for the remission of sins that are past," to declare and assure us, that, without departing from the just rule, by which all men must, in the main, be tried, still He will pardon and justify "him that believeth in Jesus."

 (Preached on Sunday afternoon, April 8, 1832, by appointment of the Vice-Chancellor.)

Note

 [This was an allusion to Paley. Vide " Lectures on University Subjects," No. vi., p. 252.]